ABSTRACT
Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the sinking of the luxury liner has been the subject of copious articles, historical accounts, coffee-table books, and museum exhibitions, while James Cameron's record-breaking Titanic transformed the story of the event into one of the most watched romances in film history. The feminist implications of her story and image were subsequently compromised, first by early-twentieth-century nationalists and antisuffragists, then by her portrayal in the popular movie The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and later by Cameron's Titanic. It provides a visual context for the following analysis of Molly Brown. Even though Brown's lifeboat heroism remained part of the fabric of revised Molly Brown stories, so too did the louder, conservative nineteenth-century vision affirming American masculinity and feminine vulnerability. But ironically, as we progress in this analysis to the end of the twentieth century and to James Cameron's hugely successful film, Molly Brown's heroism is diminished even more.
