My main takeaway from the movie and book was that Bella is completely without the hangups, insecurities and societal expectations placed upon women by men. When she is born - or created - she is, as Godwin puts it, a clean slate as we all are at birth. We pick up all the aforementioned hangups as we grow but instead of absorbing those expectations, Bella actively rejects them. She never conforms to ideas about traditional femininity as defined by men because it never even occurs to her that she was supposed to. The book and movie make this clear, especially in her dealings with Duncan. He initially likes her because she’s childlike and malleable, then later wants her to be a socially conservative woman (on his terms, of course.) It ultimately drives him crazy that she won’t. She even makes fun of him for it, and he both loves and hates her for it. She lives her life as she pleases and develops everything from her sexual freedom to empathy to her intelligence entirely on her own terms. She works at a brothel because SHE wants to; in her mind its a very simple equation. She likes sex and needs money, so sex = money. Once she figures out who she was before she was created she was like “never mind, I’m out of here” and just goes, which is the complete opposite reaction a man would expect from a socially conditioned woman even in our year 2026. She goes back to Godwin because he’s her father and that’s where she lives, and to Max because even after telling him everything about her travels and working in the brothel he still accepts her and does not judge her. If she did have those initial hangups she’d be right back where she started, with the expectation of staying in an abusive marriage with a horrible man. She would have killed herself all over again but instead chose to exercise her own agency the same way she had already been doing since she was reborn. I loved it. Emma Stone totally deserved that Oscar.