There was a time when they said that a woman with an education was like a dog who could talk–a curiosity, a freak of nature, but not much more.

Today, it is recognized that the key to empowering women worldwide is education. An educated woman has better earning ability and overall health than an uneducated woman, and a woman in a developing nation who has had at least a primary education has an infant mortality rate half that of those without that education.

These days, university enrollment of women is at least equal to that of men. But before it became the norm for a woman to work outside the home, an education meant a limited kind of upward mobility that enabled one to become a schoolteacher or nurse, or it served as a means to attain a degree of cultural refinement characteristic of a certain social class. After all, who was going to be making small talk with the husband’s boss?

Wellesley College in the 1950s was a college that aimed to produce the latter. Founded in 1870, Wellesley is still one of the most prestigious all-female universities in the United States; its purpose is "to provide an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world." Nevertheless, there seems to be no question that a woman, no matter how educated, is eventually meant to be a support to a husband.

Such is the case for Betty Warren (Kirsten Dunst), Giselle Levy (Maggie Gyllenhaal), Connie Baker (Ginnifer Goodwin), and Joan Brandwyn (Julia Stiles), all students in an art history class taught by Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), a wide-eyed idealist and first-time teacher from California.

Pegging her as a commoner and a spinster, the students attempt to test Katherine’s mettle, but are soon captivated by her fierce independence and life experience–except for Betty, who is thoroughly convinced of her own place in the world as a future wife and mother. Or is she? For Katherine, her exceptionally bright students are a symbol of a new American woman, and she projects her own independent life onto Joan, in particular. Joan is a model student–the top of her class–but she feels torn between a life of motherhood and Yale law school.

Giselle the seductress and Connie the mouse round out the group. Their roles provide these young actors with an opportunity to play something other than diversionary female interests in superhero movies, for a change. Mona Lisa Smile–the title refers to the enigma of female happiness–is something of a girl version of Dead Poets Society, and shares with that film an optimistic message for young people who are about to make some important decisions in their lives.

Julia Roberts–too, too thin!–is a sane, plucky, unconventional teacher, who shoots the familiar anti-feminist fish in the classroom/barrel: prescribed social roles, stereotyping, and chauvinism. Oh, and those philandering, neglectful, NO GOOD MEN. You won’t necessarily learn anything new, right down to the "homemaker is a choice too" backlash fodder.

In spite of this, the film is an interesting look at pre-feminist attitudes in an institution that was always pro-woman, even in those days. But what is really interesting is what that era says to today’s young woman: at one point, college president Jocelyn Carr (a stunningly grey Marian Seldes) tells Katherine not to rock the boat–after all, only one hundred years ago it was unheard of to offer a woman such an education.

We are still being told this. It is too easy to skip over feminism in these self-proclaimed post-feminist times. For women starting university, it seems ludicrous that 25 or 30 years ago there might have been a great resistance to hiring women professors, or that even 10 years ago it was perfectly OK for the Federal government to pay their male employees more than their female counterparts. But in the working world there are still plenty of men (and, sadly, women) who think nothing of belittling their female co-workers, or to think of them not at all. In law, women are defined as social equals, but changes in attitude take place much more slowly.

A valuable lesson. Imagine what could happen in another 50 years.