Fall 2013
Dating Violence in The Notebook
Tasha Bianchi-Macaraig
Theories: Gender &
Sexuality
Fall 2013
Dating Violence in The Notebook 1
Down by an eerie creek in the middle of a small town of South Carolina, a young
seventeen year old woman seemed cornered by the teasing chants from her peers and the violent
screams from her impatient boyfriend. Even though she was saying that she just couldn’t do it,
her whimpers held an underlying tone of a strong desire of not even wanting to jump into the
creek. Simply ignoring her true feelings and silent calls of terror, her boyfriend yells viciously
“get in the water!” and quickly fixes his aggressive behavior by saying “I’m sorry, get in the
water baby, baby would you get in?”; this retraction from his aggression to present an
apologetic side is a common behavior for perpetrators of abuse
(http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm).
The young woman fell for his staged apology and tried to muster the courage to jump but
her strong fear took a hold of her again as she almost cried out that she couldn’t. At this point,
her boyfriend addressed her fear violently and screamed with a threatening tone “get in the
water!” Her fear towards her boyfriend’s rash behavior was stronger than her fear of jumping
into the creek, so right before she jumped, she screamed in anticipation for the pain she was
about to experience from the cold water and perhaps later from her demanding boyfriend.
This short scene was taken from the contemporary love story and film adaptation of The
Notebook. The in-depth reading of certain scenes and interpretation of both main characters’
personality traits is a resistance reading that will demonstrate how our construed ideas of love
promulgated by the media shares characteristics of damaging relationships. By analyzing our
century’s infamous love story, I hope to uncover characteristics of dating violence in the
enthralling relationship between Noah and Allie, as a prime example of how the media’s
portrayal of true romantic love is a highlighting reason as to why rape culture continues to
normalize dating violence in our society.
Dating Violence in The Notebook 2
With rape culture hugging our society ever so tightly, dating violence hides securely as a
normality in our American culture which blinds people from understanding how terrifyingly
prevalent and damaging it truly is. As we continue to listen to the misconstrued idea of dating
violence, the truth in numbers of the reality of abuse can be seem as extreme, or unreal, but the
true sadness comes with the quantity of people who don’t seem to grasp abuse as a disgusting
and regularly exercised act that according to the American Psychological Association’s past
summer research, “about one in three American youths age 14-20” will experience dating
violence.
Our American society is so immersed in this rape culture that publicized myths have
successfully caused widespread confusion about when a consensual sexual act stops and where
rape starts. We are exposed to countless types of media that reinforces rape myths and further
exacerbates the problem of violence and it’s gotten to the point that people are beginning to
confuse abusive elements in a relationship for passion in classic Hollywood love stories. One
way the media has manipulated rape culture to be portrayed as a passionate love story everyone
desires, can be found in the infamous romantic film, The Notebook.
With its film debut in 2004, two Canadian amateur actors made their big break and were
then known for years to come as the two leads from the great love epic, The Notebook. The
movie is being narrated as a story by present-day Noah Calhoun to his wife Allie Hamilton.
Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams bring to life both of these characters and the story of how
they met and fell in love with the backdrop of the Second World War.
Defining Gender Roles
In our American society, gender roles have been promulgated to fully depict society’s
expectations of women and men’s behavior. The most exemplary gender role found in dating
Dating Violence in The Notebook 3
violence is aggressive behavior, which is expected of the male, being the opposite of the
submissive behavior, which is expected of the female. These gender roles are then later
translated to expectations of heteronormative sexual behaviors, placing the heterosexual man in a
position of domination and control, which therefore leaves the heterosexual women in a position
of vulnerability as she waits patiently and accepts any type of rash behavior.
Joining an aggressive man with a submissive woman causes sexual acts to become a catand-mouse game as the “men are expected to be avid initiators of sexual activity who are
continuously seeking or are at least amenable to any opportunity for a sexual encounter. In
contrast, women are expected to be somewhat resistant to the sexual advances of men by
controlling the amount of sexual access a pursuant man is permitted” (Hartwick, pg. 31).
Society implores all humans to follow this “model example” based on gender roles to
create the perfect representation of a man and a woman. So when one or two of the players
decides to defy the cultural expectations of their sexual behavior, the relationship to their
counterpart changes. The incredibly affluent and confident character of Allie in The Notebook
portrays this type of rebellion against the delicate and helpless persona, a feminine role society
has pushed on her gender when she falls in love with a man from a working class background.
Not only does she have money, a symbol of her dominance, her personality traits of stubbornness
against Noah’s pleas places her in a position of power. Noah does not accept the change in power
dynamics and, as Craig Anderson would state in his article titled “Men Who Target Women:
Specificity of Target, Generality of Aggressive Behavior”, Noah feels “threatened by women,
particularly those in positions of power over them, and seek(s) to assert dominance over women.
Dominance of women can range from sexual or nonsexual manipulativeness, verbal or physical
coercion, or aggressiveness” (Anderson, pg. 607).
Dating Violence in The Notebook 4
When Noah laid his eyes on Allie at a fair, his good friend Fin introduced her as having a
dad that “has more money than God”. Noah’s quick flicker of the eye as his response is a type of
wince of the pain from feeling emasculated. Even though the introduction to Allie’s character is
that her family and more specifically the male provider is the one who is wealthy, compared to
Noah, she has a life filled with opportunities and a chance of receiving a well-rounded education.
In comparison to Noah, Allie has the upper hand because of her class status. This piece of
information is later stated by the narrator of the movie when he mentions that “she had the world
at her feet while he didn’t even have two dimes to rub together”.
He continues to stare at Allie driving around in the fair’s bumper cars, searching for the
ways to assert his dominance over her. The first words he exchanged with her was when she was
walking away from the bumper cars and he approached her and left almost no personal space
between them both. Allie’s facial expression communicates that she felt that her space was being
violated by this stranger. She looked at him defiantly as she knew a person of her class held the
power in exchanges like so. He looked down at her as if trying to appear powerful and with a
stern voice asked “do you want to dance?” which causes Allie to feel flustered for no one from a
poor background usually stands up the face of wealth, and so she answered with a strong no.
This short introduction to the two characters speaks volumes as it demonstrates the need
Noah has to want to dominate Allie after the understanding of her wealth. As well, it was a slap
of reality for Allie because her class stature was not enough to save her from that predicament
for the sole reason of her gender. In that instance as Noah tried to assert his dominance, he
understood her material wealth was not enough to cover up the fact that she remained a woman,
with certain gender roles left to uphold.
Dating Violence in The Notebook 5
Asserting Dominance
In their short confrontation, she defied her societal expectation to be submissive since she
stood her ground to Noah’s invasive self which only caused Noah to want to take it to the next
level to prove his dominance. She proceeds to continue walking towards the Ferris wheel and sits
in one of the seats of the ride with another man. Noah doesn’t take the rejection lightly and
begins to climb up the Ferris wheel to execute his final and successful attempt in having Allie
realize what he is capable
of doing and what he
deems necessary in order
to “put her in her place”
by establishing himself as
the dominant risk-taker.
As he hung from the bar
of the Ferris wheel, he
kept asking Allie “will
you go out with me?” with a manipulative tone. Allie kept rejecting him which caused Noah to
pretend as if he was about to fall by letting go of one hand. He proceeds to build up the tension
by exclaiming that the bar was starting to get slippery and implied that he would stop trying to
make himself fall from the top of the Ferris wheel if Allie just gives in to his forceful demand
and accepts the fact that she has to comply with society’s construed roles for her female gender
by accepting the invitation to the date. Allie succumbs to his drastic measures and is forced to
say that not only she will go on this date but that she wants to go on this date.
Dating Violence in The Notebook 6
Noah already had the satisfaction of her acceptance of the date, but that wasn’t enough to
put her in her place in society. He continues to force her to exclaim for all to hear that she does
truly want to go on this date. She yells stating that she does want to go on a date with him, which
causes a pleased look on Noah’s face accompanied by a mischievous smile. This particular scene
carries a lot of emotion and viewers tend to think first of how romantic that gesture was on
Noah’s part and ignore the fact that Allie had repeatedly said no to Noah. She was cornered,
pressured by her friends, and felt uncomfortable as she yelled that she wanted to go on a date
with him. To me, it sounds like a bad start to a rocky relationship.
Abusive Characteristics
Nick Cassavetes, director of The Notebook, wrote the character of Noah Calhoun to be a
passionately driven man, only searching for his true happy ending with Allie Hamilton. By doing
so, Cassavetes unintentionally filled Noah’s character description with abusive characteristics
such as his “(a) proclivity for intense, unstable interpersonal relationships, characterized by
intermittent undermining of the significant other, devaluation, manipulation, and masked
dependency; (b) an unstable sense of self, with an intolerance for being alone, and acute
abandonment anxiety; and (c) intense anger (expressed "more or less directly"), demandingness,
and impulsivity, which may lead to substance abuse or promiscuity” (Clift, pg. 2).
Noah Calhoun meets this description to a T. His “proclivity for intense, unstable interpersonal
relationships, characterized by intermittent undermining of the significant other, devaluation,
manipulation, and masked dependency” can be seen throughout the movie. Throughout his
summer romance with Allie, moments of unstable and high emotions occur quite frequently. One
of those moments happen several weeks after the first time they met at the fair, when Noah and
Allie are seen walking down the street in the small town seemingly in bliss when suddenly a
Dating Violence in The Notebook 7
remark was made by Noah that caused Allie to be infuriated and so she reacted in a defensive
manner and pushed him away from her. The remark was enough to make Allie want Noah to not
touch her but Noah,
trying to uphold his
manhood reached out to
her and pulled her into
his arms. What might
have seem like a loving
embrace was a complete
rejection of the fact that
no consent was given to the embrace, in fact her complete disapproval of it was announced when
she pushed him away in disgust. With their faces inches apart, he kissed her on the lips and she
resisted for a split second but then succumbed to the forceful and unwanted kiss. People in
abusive relationships accept the insignificantly small amount of random acts of love as the full
picture of their relationship. By this point, Allie begins to not only accept but love the idea of
being with such a manipulative and aggressive man. With his forceful language and his constant
invasion of personal space, Noah disrespects her as an attempt to not only assert his dominance
and devalue her worth, but also as a sneakily way to mask his dependency for her. At this point
in their relationship, he has become dependent on her availability to him. Some perpetrators of
abuse tend to become dependent on their significant other because of their need to exert some
sort of brutality on to another person.
Noah expressed “intense anger (expressed "more or less directly"), demandingness, and
impulsivity, which may lead to substance abuse or promiscuity” during his summer fling with
Dating Violence in The Notebook 8
Allie, as he continued to struggle to keep control over her. Several times throughout their
relationship you see scenes of quick anger being sparked in Noah and he would command her to
do things such as the scene by the creek. She refused to go in because she didn’t want to but he
yelled at her over and over again until she finally succumbed to his power. When their
relationship ended, his
impulsive tendencies grew and
he decided to remodel an entire
house to meet the description of
Allie’s dream home. This was
not only an unprecedented
impulsive act, but also an
excessive attempt to win
Allie’s heart back due to his dependency on her. When he never heard back from Allie after
finishing the remodel, he entered a sexual relationship with Martha Shaw, only expressing how
compliant with his impulsivity he is and his sudden desire to be promiscuous.
With his short and only sexually rewarding relationship with Martha Shaw, the viewers
can see that Martha Shaw is very unhappy with Noah but remains in the relationship because of
her search to fill the void in her widowed heart, while Noah remains in the relationship because
of his true and actual feelings of dependency on women. He continues to be hung up about Allie
while he uses Martha Shaw for her body. Noah proves to have “an unstable sense of self, with an
intolerance for being alone, and acute abandonment anxiety”.
Dating Violence in The Notebook 9
Undeniably, Noah Calhoun perfectly embodies the aforementioned description of an
abusive person as he continuously devalues and manipulates Allie throughout their summer
romance which materializes his desire to not be alone through impulsive and vicious acts.
Conclusion
Noah Calhoun is a representation of an abuser in a relationship, constantly upholding his
authority because abusive individuals feel the need to be in a position of power and domination
inside a relationship
(http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.htm).
Allie Hamilton is a classic example of a victim in an abusive relationship because
although she put a strong stance in the beginning of their relationship, over time she succumbed
and allowed the aggressive behavior to rule her life. Most victims in a dangerous situation like
hers cannot see the abuse, especially if it’s mental, emotional, or financial abuse. To the
character of Allie, she was in love with a passionate man and she overlooked his manipulating
and intimidating tendencies.
The characters of Allie and Noah accurately describes how a modern day abusive
relationship might look like. While the director’s intention was not to make a movie of an
abusive relationship, the actions committed by the characters speak louder than words as
elements of power, domination, control, masked realities, and enforced gender roles are found in
the movie.
Our day to day life choices, aspirations, and opinions are molded by the media and if our
media is trying to sell The Notebook as the love story of the millennium with all these different
aspects of dating violence embedded, no wonder we aren’t able to identify abusive relationships
in our real life. A writer for the Journal of Family Violence, Laura Miller states that “members of
Dating Violence in The Notebook 10
a couple and their self-perceptions may reflect a lack of awareness of what types of behaviors
constitute violence, and that members of a couple may not perceive victimization in their
relationship unless there is observable, physical harm. The normalization of violent behaviors in
dating relationships is evident in studies” (Miller, pg. 72).
As moviegoers watch and think they fall in love with the character of Noah Calhoun, what
they really fall in love with is his tenacious hold on Allie’s love life, and his desire to control her
and the relationship.
People who become victims of dating violence don’t always understand how their
relationship matches up to the characteristics of an abusive relationship due to two highlighting
reasons: 1) the lack of circling knowledge pertaining to signs and examples of all accurate
interpretations of dating violence; most people just think of a brutal physical and/or sexual abuse
to be the only description of an abusive relationship, ignoring the fact that mental, emotional, and
economic abuse is also a part, and 2) the exploitative nature of our current media’s portrayal of
passionate and genuine love to appear as an overly dependent, gender role enforcing, dominance
seeking relationship.
Dating Violence in The Notebook 11
Work Cited
Anderson, Craig A., and Kathryn B. Anderson. "Men Who Target Women: Specificity Of
Target, Generality Of Aggressive Behavior." Aggressive Behavior 34.6 (2008): 605622. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
Clift, Robert J. W., PhD., and Donald G. Dutton PhD. "The Abusive Personality in
Women in Dating Relationships." Partner Abuse 2.2 (2011): 166-88. ProQuest. Web. 31
Oct. 2013.
Miller, Laura M. "Physical Abuse in a College Setting: A Study of Perceptions and
Participation in Abusive Dating Relationships." Journal of Family Violence 26.1 (2011): 7180. ProQuest. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
Hartwick, Cailey, Serge Desmarais, and Karl Hennig. "Characteristics Of Male And
Female Victims Of Sexual Coercion." Canadian Journal Of Human Sexuality 16.1/2 (2007):
31-44. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Oct. 2013.
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2013/07/dating-violence.aspx
http://www.helpguide.org/mental/domestic_violence_abuse_types_signs_causes_effects.
htm