Summary
In an era where personal autonomy often bowed to pecuniary exigency, Nan Everard, a woman of discernible spirit, finds her destiny irrevocably tethered to the financial solvency of her patriarch. To staunch the hemorrhage of her father's impending bankruptcy, she consents, albeit under duress, to a matrimonial alliance with the monied industrialist, Peter Craddock. This transactional union propels her across continents, a reluctant voyage to the verdant, untamed expanse of South America, a journey symbolic of her forfeiture of self. A cruel twist of fate intervenes en route; a vehicular mishap leaves Nan physically scarred, a corporeal manifestation of her emotional lacerations. Yet, Craddock, driven by an almost dispassionate ambition or perhaps a deeply ingrained sense of purpose, presses onward, leaving his newlywed in the wake of his expedition. Upon his eventual return, he discovers Nan gravitating towards a rekindled acquaintance, a vestige of a past life, a potential harbinger of rediscovered agency. The film charts her internal struggle, her nascent hope for emancipation through divorce, pitted against the inexorable gravitational pull of Craddock's dominant will. Ultimately, the narrative culminates not in a triumphant assertion of her titular 'free will,' but in a profound, perhaps weary, capitulation to the formidable resolve of her husband, a denouement that interrogates the very essence of self-determination within the stringent confines of societal and marital expectations of the period.
Synopsis
To save her father from bankruptcy, Nan Everard marries wealthy Peter Craddock and under protest goes with him to South America. En route she is injured in an automobile wreck, but Peter continues the trip. He returns to find her renewing an old friendship, and though she hopes to obtain a divorce she finally surrenders to his stronger will.
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