Carousel the musical

I remember for my sister's 10th birthday , my mom took a bunch of her friends and I to the Country Dinner Playhouse to see Carousel. The score was beautiful and the carousel itself was only shown at the beginning of the musical. At the time I was only sixteen with the lack of experience with men and relationships and clueless about the moral of this play. The score was beautiful although the storyline was very sad and It sounded like the story of my life.

The story takes place in a New England fishing village.The musical starts off with a young millworker who gets on a carousel with her friend and meets a barker on a carousel, falls in love quickly and marries him. The night she meets him , Julie Jordan and her friend Carrie Pipperidge talk about Mr. Snow who Carrie is seeing, an ambitious fisherman.On the other hand, Billy Bigelow the carousel barker is a drifter who lacks money and ambition and falls for the innocent Julie Jordon. He fits the description of an abusive man, whose a smooth talker, cocky, and charming. It is revealed shortly into the story that he hits her, but she takes it and says that it was his frustration over not being able to find work. She stands by him anyway despite the treatment, but that was the 19th century, but if it was the 21st century she had the option of leaving him. Julie gets pregnant with his child shortly thereafter and they are staying at her cousin Nettie's spa and hardly have a dime to support the both of them. In order to make money to support Julie and the child their expecting he takes the easy way out and gets involved in a robbery that goes wrong and ends tragically. She raises the daughter Louise on her own and the girl becomes troubled herself and Billy takes a day back on earth to redeem himself.Billy talks to his daughter and tries to give her a star that he stole, but she refuses it. Julie steps out, takes the star, and she feels Billy's presence and he sings "If I loved you" to her. She still loved him 15 years after his passing.  He comes back an extra day for her graduation and sings along "You'll Never Walk Alone" with the rest of the company.

I've been with several Billy Bigelows in my life and I can see how they can prey on innocent women. They are very bold and slick in order to get women. They come across as the Alpha males who can be very dominating with their charm to draw women in. Women who come across as vulnerable, pretty, and innocent are easy targets. Even though they may lack education they are smart on picking up the subtle cues. I've done research on abusive men and they are very charming at times and ugly other times and that's the cycle that keep their partners hooked and that's what Julie Jordon was hooked on with Billy. Whenever the men I was with put me down with words I thought that was out of love and caring which the opposite was true. Julie Jordon came into it with lack of experience and no self esteem at the time. I was looking back and reading about this musical as I was thinking about those classic Rogers and Hammerstein musicals that I was exposed to growing up and this was the one I could relate to the most since I been there although I was not physically beaten. Billy Bigelow was an inappropriate man in society who was not a hero to anyone and targeted an innocent girl like Julie Jordon who had a lot of potential and a future ahead of her. If I was to rewrite this play I would have showed Julie moving on remarrying a nice man since she was young enough to do so and have a good life. The musical covered issues like domestic violence which was taboo in the '40's and '50's. In my opinion I would not let young children see this until their older and understand the messages in the musical.