In Its Honesty and Beauty, Carol Is a Revolutionary Piece of Filmmaking

When Patricia Highsmith’s novel about a love affair between a suburban socialite and a younger shopgirl was published in 1952, it was revolutionary in its depiction of healthy, overt female desire and for its hopeful ending. (Spoiler alert: Neither of the women ended up relegated to a mental institution or in a loveless marriage with a man she loathed or dead.) While lurid lesbian pulp with gruesome endings proliferated at the time, Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (also titled Carol and written under the pseudonym Claire Morgan) elevated love between women to the realm of the possible, offering a kind of representation, surely, that very few queer women of the time would have previously known.  Read more via the Advocate