Summary
In an era where the celluloid medium was still grappling with its own adolescence, 'How Could You, Caroline?' emerges as a quixotic exploration of youthful impressionability. Caroline Rogers, portrayed with an effervescent luminosity by Bessie Love, returns from the sequestered halls of boarding school to the domestic turbulence of her sister's impending nuptials. Her psyche is heavily marinated in the lurid, hyper-romantic tropes of 'Twin Souls,' a novel that serves as her distorted moral compass. Donning a gown that borders on the scandalous for 1918, she navigates the rehearsal not as a bridesmaid, but as a predator of destiny, seeking a cosmic connection. Her target is the suspiciously named Reginald Van Alden, a man whose poetic nomenclature masks a predatory, mercenary heart. The narrative takes a harrowing detour to a disreputable roadhouse, a common silent-era signifier for moral peril, leading to a botched, tragicomic suicide attempt via cologne ingestion. The resolution, a labyrinthine masquerade involving a cabaret disguise and a 'mock' wedding that proves legally binding, serves as a didactic yet whimsical commentary on the performative nature of courtship and the inescapable gravity of social contracts.
Synopsis
Caroline Rogers, a spirited young girl with a taste for highly romantic novels, comes home from boarding school to attend her sister Ethel's wedding. Having read a particularly lurid novel entitled Twin Souls recently, she arrives at the rehearsal wearing a daring gown in the hope of ensnaring a "soul mate." Because of his poetic name, Caroline becomes involved with Reginald Van Alden, a married fortune-seeker. On the morning of the wedding, she abandons her old sweetheart, Bob Worth, to take a ride with Reginald, but when he takes her to a disreputable roadhouse, she escapes and then tries to commit suicide by drinking cologne. Later she becomes engaged to Bob and attends his bachelor party disguised as a cabaret dancer. At the party, the two are married in a mock ceremony, but the next day Bob reveals that the friend who presided at the "wedding" is a real judge, and that he and Caroline are legally married.
