Who... Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) and then Tina Durrance How... She falls in love and directs that love to something good, sacrificing self to save Tina as well.
There's a lot here that can be worked with. Charlotte's relationship with her mother (Gladys Cooper) seems to be beyond rescuing, although it comes close as she works through her own issues at the Cascade Sanitarium. What happens there is she comes into her own: she manages to be someone other than her Mother's daughter/servant.
I found the plot line disturbing in a number of ways. The only way out for Davis is through. Mom has to die here for the thing to work. There is even the one spooky voice over "remember 'honor thy parents' is still a good idea." but even that bow to tradition is unworkable here when the only way for Davis to honor her mother is to kill her. That's a symbol of course. Good Freudian psychology talks of the domineering mother and the absent father. That's what's going on here. Of course Freud usually talks about men in this role, but here it's a woman. Davis is destroyed, nearly, by her mother's controlling nature. No man is good enough. No clothing is mean enough. No shoes are sensible enough. Any attempt at looking pretty is frowned upon. Any attempt to "have fun" is decried as "common".
All of these should, from an "ultra-traditional" Orthodox view, be perfectly fine. From an "Orthodox Taliban" mode, these should all be required. (I've seen the "Ortho-burkha" on women who veil their head by wrapping up most of their body.) The only thing missing is fasting and Mrs Vale frowns on dieting so I doubt that would happen.
So, the plot carries an odd double message to me, one side good, the other bad. How do you live within a tradition that destroys you? So much of this movie made me stumble... the question must be why do I love it so much?
Then there is the relationship with Charlotte and Jerry (Paul Henreid): it is, from the get go, right on the dividing line between moral and immoral. It is nearly - but not quite - adultery. They love each other, this is evident even from the get go, when they meet on the boat going ashore. They take only few days to realize it and then, suddenly, just when in a modern movie they would have been "doing it" they are parted. They only see each other three more times in the rest of the movie. But it must be said that Jerry is staying married because he must and that neither he nor Charlotte will cross that line - as much as the desperately want - because of their honor for Jerry's honoring of that vow.
Is there such a thing as "unfaithful in heart"? The Jerry is that... he sends flowers daily to Charlotte. But his love and honor for the vow he made his wife means that he will stay with her, care for her.
Every time they see each other, there is torture. There is temptation. There is heartbreak. Until finally, there is no more. And there is, here as well, healing.
And last there is Charlotte's relationship with Jerry's daughter, Tina Durrance (Janis Wilson). Seeing in Tina no small part of herself, she takes it upon herself to care and protect Tina. She shows Tina the love she never had shown to her. In that love the very things that her own mother did to her are healed: yes, she tells Tina how to dress and even how to walk. But she does it in love and in care and with an eye towards Tina's growth - rather than stunting the same. Charlotte becomes what she had never known by virtue of her willingness to sacrifice self. She becomes what she is not by giving up what she is...
And there the whole thing either falls apart or else transforms into something else.