Not
everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth
reading. "Something old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique
classic to a good book first published four or more years ago.
“WASHINGTON SQUARE” by Henry James (first
published 1880)
A couple of
years ago on this blog, writing about Henry
James’ Roderick Hudson , I explained what my basic attitude to Henry James was
and still is. I admired and enjoyed the novels of James’ early and middle
periods, but I could never get my head around those rambling, ruminative,
frequently pompous and often otiose dissections of the wealthy and the
privileged that made up his last period. I recycled the old joke about James
the First, James the Second and James the Old Pretender – and I still can’t
stand the Old Pretender. From The
American up to Portrait of a Lady
– fine. From there on to the likes of The
Awkward Age and The Golden Bowl –
no thanks.
What I neglected
to note in my dyspeptic comments were two very important points. First, that the
earlier James had a sly sense of humour, and it should never be underestimated.
Second, that he wasn’t always the best judge of his own work.
I take as my
example of these two things the wholly delightful early piece of James, the
very short novel Washington Square (154
pages of text in the paperback edition on my shelves). James himself did not
think highly of it. He excluded it from the collected edition of his works that
he oversaw late in life. And maybe this was a good thing. James had the unlovely
habit of tinkering with, and rewriting, bits of his earlier novels when they
came to be collected - and I’m glad Washington
Square escaped this fate.
Part of the
delight of Washington Square is that
it is often so funny, even if it has sometimes been interpreted as a domestic
tragedy.
Plain,
untalented, and in fact not particularly bright, young Catherine Sloper lives
with her widower father Dr Austin Sloper in New York’s fashionable Washington
Square. Dr Sloper is a wealthy man and naïve Catherine will obviously inherit
his money. The lively and handsome young fortune-hunter Morris Townsend takes
an interest in her. Catherine believes he loves her for herself and believes
she is in love with him. She is encouraged in this delusion by her aunt Lavinia
Penniman, whose view of young lovers is moulded by the drivelling romantic
fiction she reads, and who acts as letter-carrying and assignation-making
go-between behind Dr Sloper’s back. But Dr Sloper stands in the way of the
union of his daughter and the young man. He knows full well that Morris Townsend,
without a profession or means of support, has only a mercenary interest in
Catherine. He is all flash and no cash.
Given his stern
demeanour, given the patronising way he treats his daughter, given the
downright cruel things he sometimes says about her lack of both talents and
good looks, Dr Sloper could easily be seen as nothing more than a villainous,
tyrannical father. He frequently remarks that she has none of the beauty, poise
and wit of her mother, who died giving birth to her. But the nuanced thing is
that he is absolutely right about lively, charming Morris Townsend. The young
man really is interested only in Catherine’s inheritance; the father has read
the situation more accurately than the daughter has; and for all his
unkindness, the father really is protecting the daughter from making a match
that can only end in unhappiness.
In the novel
this plays out as Catherine only gradually being undeceived. Realising that he
will never get his hands on Catherine’s money, Morris goes off on a “business
trip” from which, despite his protestations to Catherine, he never returns. The
years go by, and Catherine (whose father has died in the interim) slowly comes
to realise that Morris never loved her and has deceived her. This, as she
continues to live unmarried with her aunt Lavinia, becomes the great
psychological fact in her life. She was not loved for herself. She was cheated
by a young man with his eyes on her inheritance.
After about twenty
years, Morris Townsend returns to New York. Foolish Aunt Lavinia arranges for
him to meet with Catherine, much against Catherine’s will. When she lays eyes
on him (in the novel’s last chapter) “[Catherine] would never have known hm. He was forty-five years old, and his figure
was not that of the straight, slim young man she remembered.” Morris,
clearly having made nothing of his life, wants once again to court her for her
money. Catherine is not moved and firmly tells him to be on his way. He leaves.
Catherine goes back to her crocheting, and the novel ends.
There are some
scenes in which Catherine defies her father even when she has come dimly to
understand the truth about Morris; but if she has grown in any way, it is
simply in a very limited self-knowledge. She now knows that she is not
attractive to men, she will never marry, and her lot is to sit out life quietly
in the residence her father has left her.
The novel is
told in the third-person. James lets us share the thoughts of Catherine, Dr
Sloper and Aunt Lavinia; but Morris is seen from the outside only. The tone is
consistently ironical, witty, barbed. We pity and sometimes laugh at
Catherine’s naïvete, but we are never encouraged to see her as a tragic
heroine. Dr Sloper’s cruel comments about Catherine are often cruelly funny
(Chapter 13 – a minor character asks of Catherine “Doesn’t she make a noise? Hasn’t she made a scene?” to which Dr
Sloper dryly replies “She isn’t scenic.”)
So this is,
first and foremost, a sad little social comedy, perfectly proportioned.
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Okay, gentle
reader, I have been leading you on a bit here. In deciding to write about Washington Square this week, I was
really looking for the excuse to tell you what the movies have made of this
dry, ironical, witty little domestic tale.
For years I have
had a DVD copy of William Wyler’s 1949 film The
Heiress, based on the stage adaptation of Washington Square by Ruth and Augustus Goetz, which had already wowed
Broadway before the film was made. I have seen this film a number of times.
When I was a
film reviewer, I saw on its first release Agnieszka Holland’s 1997 film version
of the story, called Washington Square.
I recently borrowed a copy of it from my local video library and watched the
two films once again. And – goodness – it did tell me something about the
difficulties of adapting this sort of literary source to the screen.
Take The Heiress first of all. Filmed in
crisp black-and-white, it follows James’ plot fairly closely, but manages to
turn James’ ironical social comedy into a sort of hothouse Racinian drama,
focusing almost exclusively on the four main characters. 28-year-old Montgomery
Clift is appropriately charming as Morris Townsend, and his habitual
tentativeness (and bewildered Method Acting stare) makes it credible that he
has half-convinced himself that he really loves Catherine for more than her
money. Miriam Hopkins flutters around effectively enough as silly Aunt Lavinia.
The outstanding performance is by Ralph Richardson as Dr Sloper – stern and
mocking of his daughter, but very sly in the way he interrogates Morris and
ironically cuts the young man down to size. At this point I note how amusing Old
Hollywood always was in its habit of casting English actors in American roles
that required some gravitas. But there is the big problem of Catherine herself.
How can you get a really young actress (Catherine is about twenty years old for
most of the story) to carry the story with the proper nuance? The Heiress has 33-year-old Olivia de
Havilland in the role. To her and the producers’ great credit, she is
deglamourized and is made as credibly “plain” as Catherine is supposed to be.
She acts well (she won an Academy Award for her turn here). But – alas – all
the time we are aware that this is a grown woman, far too old for the role and
pretending to be a giddy and innocent 20-year-old.
Then there is
the ending. The Heiress makes it far
more melodramatic than the novel. Morris arranges to elope with Catherine, but
he discovers he will not gain as much money as he thought he would out of such
a manoeuvre. Catherine sits up all night waiting for him to snatch her
romantically away. He never turns up. She realises that he has deceived her.
But the film-makers want to give her heroic status by showing that she is
capable of turning the tables on him. Some time later (but when he is still
young and attractive – not middle-aged) Morris turns up again, seeking her hand
in the hope of at least getting a comfortable life out of her. Catherine
pretends to be ready to go with him. He dashes off to get his things, but when
he returns, she has barred the house door to him and ordered the servants not
to let him in under any circumstances. The film ends with her, stoic and
grim-faced, climbing the stairs away from the door upon which Morris is
hammering futilely and which we know she will never open to him.
So, as seen in The Heiress, Catherine has got her
revenge, even if she still faces an unhappy and loveless life. (And might I add
that that fade-out shot of Montgomery Clift hammering on the door and shouting
“Catherine! Catherine!” reminds me of another Method Actor, Marlon Brando, a
couple of years later at the end of A
Streetcar Named Desire wailing “Stella! Stella!” to the wife who won’t let
him in.)
It is a very
good film, the acting is fine, it works well as a tightly-structured melodrama
and I have enjoyed it thoroughly a number of times. But it is not the ironical
thing that Henry James wrote.
Turning to the
1997 film Washington Square, we find
a very different sort of beast. It more-or-less follows James’ story, but from
the opening shots we know that this version (scripted by one woman, Carol
Doyle, and directed by another, Agnieszka Holland) is going to do its darndest
to turn Washington Square into a
feminist tract. We begin with a shot of Dr Sloper’s wife dying in childbirth,
with blood smeared all over the sheets (so, dear viewer, see what women had to
endure in those days when fathers ruled households). Later there is a scene
where Catherine, as a child, is so frightened at having to sing a song in
public that she urinates on the carpet. (See the cruel things little girls were
forced to do in these male-dominated households.) Following the tradition of gravitas-seeking
Old Hollywood, most of the leading roles in this American story are played by
English actors – Albert Finney as Dr Sloper, Maggie Smith as Aunt Lavinia and
28-year-old Ben Chaplin as Morris Townsend (a comely enough lad but – as even
heterosexuals such as I can see – not as gorgeous a chap as the young
Montgomery Clift). And once again, when the main part of the story finally gets
going, we have an over-aged Catherine Sloper, played by 35-year-old Jennifer
Jason Leigh. Let me make it clear that I think she is a very, very good
actress. In her coyness, her finger-counting, her moments of embarrassment, she
does get across Catherine’s little girl qualities in the early parts of the
film. But she is still a grown woman and a very attractive one. It is hard to
believe that there is no eligible bachelor who would court her for herself.
In this version,
Morris’ venality is downplayed. We do know he is after Catherine’s money, but
the emphasis is thrown onto the father’s cruelty. The film is stacking up to
show us the evil of the domineering patriarchy, rather than the naïvete of the
girl. By film’s end (and rather improbably given the helpless thing she has
been earlier on) Catherine has become an assertive woman, scorning both father
and suitor. In the last sequence, Morris visits her when she is undeceived
about his motives. She is busily running a kind of creche for little girls. She
is seated at a piano playing. She sends Morris away curtly, then turns and
gives a wise smile to the little girl sharing the piano bench with her. The
implication is obvious, dear sisters. In the nineteenth century, women cannot
have power, but Catherine is a pioneer in showing that women can live free of
fathers and dodgy men who might become their husbands; and the little girl
represents the future generations who will assert their full equality with men.
This version has
some good moments, but also some supremely silly ones. As an example, there is
a sequence where Maggie Smith’s doddery Aunt Lavinia (far more doddery than
Miriam Hopkins’ turn in the same role) makes one of her covert appointments
with Morris to keep his connection with Catherine going. The scene is set in
what is obviously a brothel and we can hear women in the background moaning
orgasmically as they are rough-handled by customers. Ah yes, dear viewer, see
another way in which women are exploited and mistreated by men. But the
possibility that a woman like Aunt Lavinia would enter such a place is
virtually nil.
Believe it or
not, I do not condemn films for being different from their sources – it is
almost inevitable that they will be – but I do note that both these films play
to the audience expectations of their day. The
Heiress, in the 1940s, gives us romantic melodrama. Washington Square, in the 1990s, gives us girls-can-do-anything
tract. The wit of Henry James is lost in both. But for sheer entertainment
value, and as a well-structured drama, The
Heiress still wins hands down.
