Carol, a 2015 film directed by Todd Haynes, tells the story of a 1950’s romantic relationship between two women, including the trials and hostility that they experience. The road trip that takes place in Carol serves multiple purposes: it is a metaphor for marginalization from the center (home/established city lives), it is a necessary step forward in the relationship between Carol and Therese, and it foreshadows the conclusion of the film. Additionally, I make the claim that Carol does not have(?) an optimistic viewpoint of queer happiness or futurity.
The majority of this film is not set on the road, and I don’t think that road-tripping is a central theme of the film. However, I classify Carol as a queer road-trip film because of the development of Carol and Therese’s relationship that occurs in the margins of the road. When the main characters pulled themselves out of their daily lives and went away together, they found something special that exists in the margins (on the road) but was limited by the center (in their established lives). This is particularly true for Carol, that her desire for Therese finds a home on the outskirts but faces challenges at home.
Carol and Therese left New York for slightly different reasons. Carol’s custody of her daughter had been challenged by a morality clause served by her husband, issued based on the fact that she’d had a previous relationship with a woman. She is not supposed to interact with her daughter for the next while, so she decides she must leave and invites Therese. Therese, who is in a relationship with a man she very clearly doesn’t want to be with, and has no other familial ties that we know of, pays her rent ahead and leaves indefinitely. Her departure from her straight relationship, and the city, provides her with the opportunity to explore who she is. Marginality is important for both of them on the road. Although Carol has a daughter tying her to home, which could make her seem generally less marginal than Therese, she sought out marginality because her established life caused her to “live against her grain.” Carol and Therese’s relationship, not accepted by wide society at the time, was fostered by marginalization and needed the safe emptiness that their road-trip provided. The only problem, of course, was the private investigator Carol’s husband sent with them.
In his analysis of Carol, James Brunton brings up how prohibition promoted the desire between Carol and Therese, as the masochism of their contractual relationship (outlawed) was a present theme that caused them to sacrifice their existing stories for one another. This is a slightly narrow reading of their relationship, which to me bloomed naturally and didn’t rely on any sense of criminality. Rather, it was only slowed by being criminalized. For example, they don’t see each other for a while after they return to the city, as Carol is dealing with legal proceedings regarding custody of her daughter and the “morality clause” her husband called against her. Carol’s decision to sacrifice custody in order to continue her relationship with Therese, a trade that she reluctantly makes because it would be “living against her grain” to proceed otherwise, provides more evidence that the “crime” of their relationship was not helping it forward.
The road-trip foreshadowed the conclusion of the film because it also had Carol making a decision to separate herself from her family in order to be with Therese. Although Therese is presented with the same opportunity (to be with Carol) before the road-trip and when Carol asks her to live together, her initial hesitation to say yes at the end of the film shows that the growth she underwent throughout the film (during and after the road-trip) allowed her to weigh her options. Although the final scene of the film depicts their reunion, Carol presses a slightly pessimistic view on queer happiness. A main factor is that Carol and Therese were only really able to be together when their relationship was defined in front of the law, which could be seen as a form of assimilation. In The Price of Salt, the novel that this film was based off of, Carol was vocal against the compulsory nuclear family dynamic that was pushed on her by patriarchal society. In Carol, Carol’s main argument for giving up custody was that her daughter would benefit from a happier (better) mother, which plays into the state’s desires of reproduction. This switch in the film adaptation changes the tone of the story, although Carol is forced in both to sacrifice custody of her daughter in order to pursue her outlawed, queer relationship. Is this a happy ending? The present and the future, for these two, is undoubtedly difficult, although they have a promise of life together.
Haynes, Todd. Carol. The Weinstein Company, 2015.
Brunton, James. Representing Queer Identity after Same-Sex Marriage: Biopolitical Revisionism in Todd Haynes’ Carol. Literature Film Quarterly. (n.d.). Retrieved May 9, 2024, from https://lfq.salisbury.edu/_issues/48_3/representing_queer_identity_after_same_sex_marriage_todd_haynes.html
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