Summary
The narrative arc of 'The Self-Made Wife' traces the jagged trajectory of the Godwin family, catapulted from the grime of visceral penury into the rarefied, often suffocating, air of the American plutocracy by a fortuitous geyser of crude oil. While Tim Godwin embraces this metamorphosis with a predatory zeal, shedding his proletarian skin for the tailored suits of a magnate, his wife Corrie remains an immutable relic of their impoverished origins. Her refusal—or perhaps intrinsic inability—to assimilate into the performative opulence of the nouveau riche creates a domestic schism of profound proportions. Tim, increasingly mortified by her lack of social polish, resorts to the clinical intervention of a 'social secretary,' a move that essentially attempts to manufacture an aristocratic pedigree where only grit and domesticity once existed. The film dissects the friction between sudden wealth and the static nature of identity, revealing the psychological toll of class mobility in a society obsessed with the aesthetics of success.
Synopsis
Tim Godwin and his wife Corrie are living in poverty when Tim's oil well strikes it rich. He soon works his way to the top of the social scale, but Corrie doesn't change at all--she stays a dour, drab woman with no social skills whatsoever. Tim gets so embarrassed by her that he hires a "social secretary" for her to teach her how to function in the social strata in which they find themselves.
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