Cinema in English

Novels and movies

Novels

• Little Women Louisa May Alcott, (1868) (recommended edition Penguin Classics, Foreword by Patti Smith, Introduction by Ann Boyd Rioux, (2018)
• The Portrait Of A Lady Henry James, (1881)
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman John Fowles, (1969)

Movies

• The Piano
• The Portrait Of A Lady Jane Campion, (1993) and (1996)
• Little Women Gillian Armstrong, (1994)
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman Karel Reisz, (1981)

The Piano

The thread uniting the three books and has to do with treat the subject of marriage, the struggle for freedom and independence, romantic love, women, class prejudice, self-fulfilment and in general social stratification in relation to sexual politics and gender.

Closed reading and detailed analysis of three novels exploring in particular: prevailing and abuse on women, class prejudice, sexual politics, and marriage.

Victorian era: Queen Victoria period of rule (1837-1901)

Particular era of history unique for its solidity and far reaching achievements;

• Establishing a clear close direct connection between the development of society and a distinct paradigm in the history of Great Britain, a period revolving around Queen Victoria political career;
• Victorian age marks the climates of Britain socio-political, economic and cultural development;
• Victoria becomes in 1876 Empress of India;
• She is the last of the house of Hannover and she gave her name to an era;
• During her reign the British monarchy took on its modern ceremonial character: she and her husband Prince Albert had 9 children;
• The choice of representing an entire era by means of the name of an individual implies the idea of stability and uniformity of character;
• Victorian’s values are stability, authority and respectability;
• Importance of the institution of monarchy with the identification with Queen Victoria who very consciously promotes her image of wife and mother (her husband died prematurely);
• Feminist ideas spread through middle classes only during the last years of the Victorian age.

Society was therefore conceived as a large family built on respect and decency. In many ways, Sarah Woodruff is a proud, independent, poor, unconventional woman who becomes a social outcasted because she refuses deliberately to conform to the standards of women of her class. Also, she is the one who initiates the romance with Charles (unconventional).

Similarly, the heroine Isabel, is an unconventional, independent woman who at the beginning of the novel becomes an heiress. American girls are different than English girls: they have more freedom and more independence (Victorian rules affected American society too, however they tried to free themselves from the ties of Europe and its traditions).

Is it freedom she desires? How does one explain her choice to marry the cynical and self-centred man only interested in her money?

Henry James: a true cosmopolite, a citizen of the world

Henry James was He was and moved freely in and out of Europe and America. He was perhaps more at home in Europe than he was in America, but the roots of his life belong to the American continent.

• Henry James was born in New York in 1843. His father, Henry James, Sr., had inherited a considerable sum of money, and spent his time in leisured pursuit of theology and philosophy. The father often wrote essays and treatises on aspects of religion and philosophy: he was a prominent theologian and follower of Swedenborg (18th century Swedish mystic). Among the guests in the James' household were some of the most famous minds of the mid-nineteenth century like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, George Ripley Dante Gabriele Rossetti, Darwin, John Raskin, Flaubert, and George Elliot. The father was insistent that his children learn to approach life as widely as possible.
• In his twelfth year, his father took the entire family to Europe where they moved freely in pursuit of stimulating conversation and intellectual ideas. The world of Europe left an everlasting impression on the young Henry James. His father's visitors were the most prominent artists of the day, and James was able to follow the latest literary trends.
• In 1869 he made his first extended visit to Europe and by the mid 1260es he already regarded himself as an expatriate. During these early years he began his literary career writing short stories, reviews, critical essays, etc.
• His career as a novelist started shortly after he took up residence in London and Ward am 37 years old; I have made my choice…”. (Watch was his first novel): “I His life covered a tremendous chain of events in Victorian period, he was the father of the next generation more than a child of his time.
• And finally, James was the first American to develop the theme of the American in Europe. By the time he made his decision to settle in Europe, he had made several trips there and had lived and attended school in several parts of Europe. Thus, the subject matter of most of James' works is about American innocence meeting or becoming involved with European of experience.
• He was cast in the role of the observer, a role which in The Portrait of a Lady is taken on by Ralph. The James’s were the American pioneers in the American rediscovery of Europe and the cultivation of the self.
• Henry James was a novelist of manners concerned with the small details of social behaviour both for comic purpose and especially for the light these details shared with individual characters and his fiction was notable since the very start.
• His particular territory was the meeting between Europeans and Americans. Most importantly than a novelist, he was the master of psychological realism which focuses on interior characterization as well as the motives behind action. In the course of his career, he became less interested in realism and increasingly into psychology and perception.
• Over the course of 5 decades, the quintessential bachelor dedicated in “literature with growing self-denial lucidity and happiness” writing and dictating to his secretary until the moment of his death in early 1916.
• He wrote 22 novels, more than 100 novellas and approximately 300 criticism. His novels include the indisputable masterpieces “The Portrait of a Lady”, “the Golden Bowl” (1904), “The Beast In The Jungle” (short story), “English Hours” (1905), “Italian Hours”, “The American Scene”, “The Art Of The Novel”, etc.
• After 1904 Henry James became a British subject largely in reaction to US reluctance to enter WWI. After one year of his death, he became an English citizen.

The American versus the European

Henry James was the first novelist to write on the theme of the American versus the European with any degree of greatness. Almost all of his major novels may be approached as a study of the social theme of the American in Europe in which James contrasts the active life of the American with the mannered life of the European aristocracy. Embodied in this contrast is the moral theme in which the moral innocence of the American is contrasted with the knowledge and experience (and evil) of the European. One of the great differences that is emphasized is the difference between the American's utility and the European's insistence upon form and ceremony.

Furthermore, the American is a man of action; he does not mind working and has worked (he is not afraid of labour). The European aristocracy have been bred to view work as vulgar. They are people of inaction. The American's sense of spontaneity, sincerity and action leads a person into natural actions. On the other hand, the European's emphasis on form, ceremony, ritual, and urbanity seems to suggest the artificial. It represents art as an opposing entity to nature.

• Ultimately, the ideal person is the one who can retain all of the American's innocence and honesty, and yet gain the European's experience and knowledge.

Henry James wrote the biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1879, and this biography conveniently supplies the motives for having settled in Europe, where he lived with only occasional returns to the US. Writing about an author required a substantial accumulation of cultural history, whereas the American society could boost only “a thin and impalpable deposit”. His inventory of the items “of high civilisation absent from the texture of American life”, no social classes, no picturesque activities, no depositary of Art, etc., so the inventory of items absent from American life and society explains his preference for the richer, warmer, European spectacle.

His most memorable heroines, from the cruelly exploited Isabel Archer to Milly Theale (The Wings of the Dove), constitute studies in the confrontation between American Idealism well-meaning but very naïve and European worldliness, sophistication, in which duplicity, avarice, and intrigue are the order of the day. Some of the most distinguished villains in James’s plots, Gilbert Osmond, and Madame Merle, who are the two unscrupulous schemers are themselves expatriate Americans or deracinated Americans.

The Portrait Of A Lady (1881)

It marked the climax of James’s early maturity; it was a considerable success in both England and America. It was meant to establish James as a major writer, who could avail himself of the strength of both European and American tradition while developing the “international themes”. This novel is one of the major works of 19th century.

Isabel Archer

Overview young heiress ends up into an unjust marriage with a hateful Gilbert Osmond, American expatriate, and so cannot dispose of her remaining inheritance anymore (by right and law it now belongs to her husband). Her husband is a narcissistic hateful gentleman of no particular social standing, desperate for recognition and admiration of those around him (and for money). He is therefore ready to sacrifice his only daughter by marrying her to a rich noble man.

Isabel Archer’s aunt, Mrs Touchett, comes to America after the death of Isabel’s father in order to take her niece to Europe. Isabel is delighted on the prospect of going to Europe with her aunt, because she feels that she has few ties to her own mother country America.

Isabel is an energetic girl with a great desire to see the world and to experience it to the full, she also has a great love of independence and freedom. On her arrival in Gardencourt, England, Isabel meets her uncle, Mr Touchett (he is a retired American banker), his disabled son Ralph, and his neighbour Lord Warburton, who are enjoying tea on the loan (opening scene of the novel). Mr Touchett is deeply attached to England, although many years of residence in this country have not entirely subdued his American personality. His only son Ralph is an intelligent, loyal, generous young man.

Isabel has never been in England before and she is charmed by everything, yet when Isabel talks to her cousin Ralph she stresses her Americanness and American values. Ralph is very fascinated by Isabel, just as Lord Warburton, who immediately falls in love with her and invites her to see his ancestral home. Isabel is initially charmed by his personality. A short time later, Henrietta Stackpole, a journalist friend of Isabel, also arrives in England (she is a “new woman”, an independent young lady, aggressively patriotic, and very critical of Europeanised American Ralph) and tells her that American suitor Caspar Goodwood has followed Isabel to England.

A few days later Isabel receives a letter from Caspar Goodwood and a proposal of marriage by Lord Warburton. Although Isabel likes him, she turns him down, because she cannot bring herself to sacrifice her freedom (she cherishes her freedom and independence).

[Ch. 14] Dialogue between Isabel and Lord Warburton when he proposes to her: Isabel tells him about her impossibility to escape her fate.

During a visit to London, Henrietta (concerned about Isabel increasingly becoming Europeanised) tries unsuccessfully to arrange for Caspar Goodwood to visit Isabel. Isabel encounters Caspar Goodwood, who tries to convince her that she should marry him. Again, Isabel says that she must have time to see the world and make a few independent judgments. She promises Goodwood that she will discuss the subject again in two years. He leaves, promising to remain in America for this time.

Madame Merle

While in London, Isabel hears of the sickness of her uncle. While Henrietta decides to tour around Europe accompanied by Mr Bantling (Ralph’s friend), Isabel returns to Gardencourt, where she finds Mr Touchett dying. She also finds another guest, Madame Merle, an American widow living in Europe. According to Ralph “she's too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything, too complete”. Madame Merle is superbly accomplished, both socially and intellectually, and Isabel addresses to her, her affection and admiration. During the long days when the house is involved with sickness, Isabel and Madame Merle become good friends.

[Ch 18] Isabel enters in the drawing room to find a lady playing the piano with a great deal of talent and passion. She has already heard a lot about Isabel, and introduces herself as Madame Merle, an old friend of Mrs Touchett. A collector of fine porcelain, and also a connoisseur of beautiful strands, a worshipper of appearances, Madame Merle appropriates the arts of living in order to make of herself an accomplished work of art. She is so accomplished and experienced that she manages to live off the Touchettes for several years without showing any irritation, “a miracle of living” [Ch.44].

Madame Merle first appeals to Isabel’s admirations for the kind of feeling to which the term “aesthetic” has been adopted in common modern usage. That is to say, feeling for the arts, and by extension, for the conventions of manners as arts of living. When Madame Merle is not engaged in writing letters, which obviously she writes beautifully, Isabel sees her painting, playing the piano, or employed in beautiful tasks of rich embroidery. Madame Merle’s aspirations are promoting herself as “fine art”. The reader must always keep in mind that Madame Merle is one of the most accomplished women in the world.

It would, of course, take a woman as clever and as perfect as Madame Merle to deceive Isabel. Even here though, we are given a few insights into Madame Merle's true nature. She is not a natural person; she is the woman of acquired graces. She is the American who has developed forms, rituals, and ceremonies to their highest degree of perfection. We do not learn the real truth about her until the end of the book. She uses her cultivated pose to cover up an essentially base nature.

Ralph Touchett knows that his father plans to leave him a huge fortune, but he also knows that he is slowly dying himself and does not need much money. He therefore convinces his father to leave some of his fortune to Isabel. It becomes quite evident that Ralph finds Isabel amusing and thinks that she will use her new wealth to develop her capacity to the fullest. Ralph interest in Isabel in not totally selfless, in fact he is very curious to see what the girl will do with such a large sum of money at her disposition.

[Ch.20] Recognition scene that shows how quickly and acutely Madame Merle’s perception and intuition is, to understand how she can possibly exploit the situation: she learns about the fact that Isabel is becoming the Touchett heiress. Madame Merle admits that she still has great ambitions (to marry Pansy well). To do this, she will need Isabel's money at her disposal. Madame Merle also begins cleverly to interest Isabel in the character of Gilbert Osmond. She is too intelligent to push Isabel toward Gilbert; instead, she begins to plant some subtle hints about Osmond's talents this early in their relationship.

After Mr. Touchett's death, Isabel becomes a great heiress. She starts to travel with her aunt, and they first visit Paris, where Isabel meets Henrietta (again) and her childhood friend Edward Rosier, together with other American expatriates (who she finds rather indolent). Henrietta worries that wealth will have bad effects on Isabel (puritan attitude towards money and wealth: puritans believed in hard work, and we can see that the puritan’s ethic is embodied by Caspar Goodwood).

After that, Isabel and her aunt will stay at Mrs. Touchett's home in Florence, Italy. Isabel rejoices in her freedom through Florence and Rome and realizes that LW and CG belong to the distant past. In the meantime, Gilbert Osmond welcomes his daughter Pansy back from the convent (she is 15); she has been taught to obey her father and all people of authority without question. In his view, she has the perfect education. He has a very small income but possesses exquisite taste; rather than working, Osmond paints and collects art objects.

One element that will be emphasized throughout the novel is Pansy's dislike for Madame Merle. Realization of this will later make Isabel feel pity for Madame Merle in spite of all the treachery on her part.

Before introducing this important character, we have a description of his house. Madame Merle starts plotting behind Isabel’s back and tells Gilbert Osmond that she wants him to make the acquaintance of Isabel Archer. We see that the type of person that Osmond likes is a person who performs all the correct rituals and ceremonies with perfection and who obeys him with complete subservience: someone like his daughter Pansy. This will be what he expects of Isabel as a wife.

[Ch.22] In Florence Madame Merle introduces Isabel to her old friend Gilbert Osmond. Madame Merle has already instructed Osmond to be nice to Isabel because she thinks that Gilbert should marry her.

Madame Merle