On ‘Love and War and Snow,’ I wanted to talk about one of my first realizations of Lorelai being a teen mom. Up until now, we knew that Lorelai had been a young mother, but it wasn’t something that was a big deal – after all, look at how great her relationship is now with Rory!
However, it’s a scene with Lane in this episode that reminds me how young Lorelai was when she had Rory. Lane was embarrassed about touching a boy’s hair “without his permission” and how she thought the whole school would be talking about it. Lorelai gently reminds her:
“Everybody does stupid things in high school. It’s like a requirement. [Lane: Not like this!] No, some people get pregnant! Talk about something really juicy for the gossip mill.”
And this is when it hit me… Lorelai was about Rory’s and Lane’s age when she got pregnant! While Rory just had her first kiss and her first date, and Lane is thinking about a boy she really likes, Lorelai had gone much further. Such contrast! And such an impressive way to bring this to our attention with such subtlety! I mean, could you imagine Rory, so young and naive, getting pregnant now? How come Lorelai was so much more promiscuous at her age?
BTW, don’t forget to check out our earlier discussion about snow!
Watch this episode of Gilmore Girls on TheWB.com here.
Love of life.
Zest for living.
Making the simple an adventure.
Lorelai pushed the limits, to her enjoyment and her mother’s pain.
Getting pregnant was not the plan but the out come of exploring sex.
Yeah, I’ve always thought one of the points of this episode was to bring to the audience’s attention that, even though we and the characters forget and even ignore it, Lorelai was a teen mother. The characters themselves display this fact pretty well not only in the scene between Lane and Lorelai but in the scenes with Rory in her mother’s old room and the scenes with her and her grandparents as well. I also particularly like the final scene where Rory watches Lorelai and Max talking on the couch and gazes at the old photobooth picture of her parents and kind of comes to terms with the fact that Lorelai was and still is a person and not just her mom.
I can’t watch the episode on the WB, I had to cancel my proxy when I lost my job. Fortunately, I can watch it on DVD. Witch I will soon.
Yet Arieanna seems to miss one of the cruel aspects of that remark:
[[[“Everybody does stupid things in high school. It’s like a requirement. [Lane: Not like this!]No, some people get pregnant! Talk about something really juicy for the gossip mill.”]]]
A logical deduction of this sentence would be: “Having Rory was a mistake” Which can be very hurting for any children.
In the real life, so much people say they had children by accident. Some of them, don’t even love them. Some would have liked to have one, and never had.
We, human, think too much that the reality at easy reach is the Reality. Sometimes it is. Very often, it is not. All convention, civilization, all that we have learnt to know as the truth, can disappear in less than a few seconds, and never come back again. But that force that constrained Lorelai to have Rory, will never disappear because it’s a part of the humanity, something that is beyond any convention.
I don’t think Lorelai meant it as Rory was a mistake.
Like she said in “One’s Got Class, The Other One Dyes”, sure she wished she had waited but she has no Rory “it brought me Rory”.
Great topic Arieanna, as always!
Sorry, but I really take exception to calling Lorelai “promiscious.”
English is not my first language, so I looked it up to be sure, and most references that I find list the word as meaning “casual” or “not restricted to one sex partner.”
The Christopher-hate is pretty strong around Gilmore Girl fansites, but if we take the scripts as they are, in a Palladino written episode (“Christopher Returns”) it’s pretty clear that Lorelai said she was in love with Christopher and always would love him.
Human beings develop to become sexual in our teens. Sex at that age is a NATURAL thing. And it did not seem to be a “casual” experience for Lorelai or Christopher. They got carried away and made a mistake regarding their use of contraception for their professional lives. They got caught up in their emotion and affection, like Lane did in this episode – but it does not make them promiscuous.
Is it wise for teenagers to have sex and have children? Not in a world where we live long lives and doing that can derail our futures. Waiting is surely the wiser course.
But the moral judgment of Lorelai’s behavior is a bit much for me.
This contribution is so true. I mean also if Lorelai isn’t was the mature mother ever so is she still that :).
example the first time i kiss a boy was one month befor I have a 16 years birthday. IN same age was Lorelai pregnant this big at different way.
Also if Lorleai was a childlike thus is she the pefeckt Mother ideal, thats it. So we have children when we are 16 or we are 30 she the perfekt mother ideal ;).
I agree with Marie. I don’t like your use of the word “promiscuous”. I wouldn’t say that Lorelai was necessarily “promiscuous” as a teenager just because she got pregnant. Saying that someone is promiscuous implies multiple sex partners. You just need to have sex ONCE to get pregnant. As far as we know, that’s what happened.
Anyway… back to the actual topic:
I’m not saying that it’s okay for teens to have children. Waiting is most definitely the smarter choice.
Promiscuous seems a little harsh for Lorelai’s behavior as a teenager. Careless for sure [and necessary for the show's plotline] but then in the early 80′s everyone was not bombarded by constant messages about practicing safe sex and an initial unprotected event seems more probable behavior than today. However, was Lorelai’s consistent “love-of-life” pattern as an adult at least occasionally promiscuous? Much more gray area here!
I think some of Lorelai’s behavior as a teen could be the effect of growing up in the household that she did. Lorelai felt very restricted by the way her parents expected her to act. It seems to me that she acted out just to prove to her parents that she was her own person and she wasn’t going to conform to their idea of a proper young lady.
I’m not saying it’s her parents fault she got pregnant so young, just that the way she and her parents differed contributed to her actions… She was a free spirit, had her own ideas of how she wanted to live her life, knew at a young age she didn’t want her parent’s life, and she tried to make her feelings clear to Richard and Emily. It seems the only time they paid attention to her was when she was acting out. Lorelai always encouraged Rory to be her own person, she gave her the household she herself wished she’d had when she was growing up.
Great topic, nice to hear all the different opinions on the subject.