TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHIC EXPRESSIONS
IN LITERATURE AND FILM
MARY LYNN DODSON, B.G.S., M.A
A DISSERTATION
C
/'
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No. \h
C ' '^
I would like to express my appreciation to my dissertation director, Dr.
Michael Schoenecke, an ever-patient source of guidance and encouragement. I
also thank Dr. Wendell Aycock and Dr. John Samson for their time and
advice. I extend my gratitude to the many scholars who have taught me and
who have inspired me to keep leaming.
I thank my family for their support in this endeavor and dedicate this
work to my father from whom I inherited a love of boolcs.
11
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ii
CHAPTER
L INTRODUCTION
1
11. THE AWAICENING AND GRAND ISLE:
"THE ULTIMATE FEMINIST CRY"
10
III. JACK LONDON'S "NATURALISM": THE SEA-WOLF
CURTIZ'S ON-COURSE ADAPTATION
50
IV. CAPTURING C. S. LEWIS'S "MERE" CHRISTL\NITY:
RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH'S SHADOWLANDS
98
V. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN:
AN ADAPTATION OF AN ADAPTATION
135
VI. OLD AGE ROMANTICISM / NEW AGE HUMANISM:
PETER WEIR'S DEAD POETS SOCIETY
N. H. KLEINBAUM'S "ADAPTATION"
178
VIL CONCLUDING REMARKS
216
LITERATURE CITED
220
111
CHAPTERI
INTRODUCTION
Postmodem theory contends that the world is intelligible only through
discourse. Indeed, the way we explain the world we live in-our very
philosophies explaining the underlying conduct, thought, and nature of our
universe-have always been communicated via the discourse of stories. This is
as true today as it was centuries ago; however, the method of story-telling has
changed. For many years, story-telling was an oral activity. Finally, it
progressed to the written form, reaching its "heyday" in the nineteenth
century. This dissertation intends to explore various philosophic expressions
during the twentieth century: stories now communicated in the written mode
and, perhaps more signifîcantly since the majority of people see and hear these
stories in this manner, in the visual mode. The intent is to see if the story, told
in one medium, communicates the same philosophic expression when told in
another, i.e., to analyze the adaptation of text to cinema, cinema to text. A
second intent is to suggest that cinema, often regarded as a rather banal
intellectual activity, frequently regarded as the enemy of the written text,
actually enhances the literary mode.
The early fîhn theorist, Pudovkin, daimed that "[m]ost good movies are
characterized bv verv simple themes and relatively uncomplicated action" (36).
This statement may have been valid in its day; howe\'er, the fíve
"conversations" between literature and cinema under consideration in this
studv prove that cinema is equall\' capable of communicating the most
complex of themes: philosophv. The earlier noted broad description of
philosophv as a way of "explaining the underlying conduct, thought, and
nature of our universe" is the definition offered bv Webster's. A second
descriprion of the term that affords clarification of its usage in this work is
James W. Sire's description of philosophy as "a world \ic\v . . . a set of
presupposirions which we hold about the basic make-up of the world" (17).
An analysis of Kate Chopin's feminism as expressed in her novel, The
Awakening. and in Mary Lambert's Grand Isle adaptation; an analysis of Jack
London's "naturalism," i.e., Americanism, as expressed in his tale of adventure,
The Sea-Wolf. and in Michael Curtiz's cinematic adaptation bv the same
name; an analysis of John Fowles's existenrialism as expressed in The French
Lieutenant's Woman and in Karel Reisz's creative dnematic version; and an
analysis of C. S. Lewis's Chrisrian Theism as expressed in various apologetics
and in Richard Attenborough's adaptarion, Shadowlands. answer Seymour
Chatman's query: "How do intelligent film adaptations grapple with the . . .
philosophizer?" (163-64). Furthermore, a careful examination of Peter Weir's
modem humanism as expressed in Dead Poets Sodety and N. H. Kleinbaum's
subsequent written adaptation (novelization) support Randall D. Larson's
contention that films are actually good for books (44).
This studv makes no claim to be an exhaustive analysis of all twentiethcentuiy philosophic thought. The selection of these individual text and
dnemaric conversations is dependent upon the interests of the investigator
regarding prevalent twentieth-century \iews, dependent upon the judgn^ient of
the investigator regarding literarv works that ingeniouslv express these ^iews,
and dependent upon the perception of the investigator regarding adaptations
that differ widely in adaptation approach but are equally effective in conve\ing
the originally expressed philosophy.
The question then becomes, what is the "originally expressed
philosophy" under consideration and what is the individual "adaptation
approach" found in each "conversation?"
As explained by Nancy Cott, the new language of Feminism-the desire
for sexual equality shared by a general female common consdousness-did not
exist until the I910s (4). Therefore, it would have been impossible for Kate
Chopin to have labeled her world \iew, her philosophy of life, as feminism;
nevertheless, her fiction continually addresses what it meant to be female at
the tum-of-the-century. Chopin's women characters iUustrate the idea that
women did dream past the reakies of their 1900 confined existence, but that
they rarely achieved their dreams (Toth "Introduction" xxv). Emily Toth
contends that Chopin's once most infamous, now most famous work, The
Awakening. "iUustrates the need for women's psychological, physical, sodal,
and sexual emandpation-the goals of feminists in the twentieth century as well
as the nineteenth" ("Feminist" 241). Wendy Martin notes that "Chopin was a
writer who was ahead of her time" (11). Chapter II of this study iUustrates
that, perhaps more importantly, Chopin was a woman who was ahead of her
time: a woman crossing the frontier of American feminism (Burchard 35).
Jean Mitry proposes two possible solutions to the adaptation problem.
He suggests that "(1) [ejither the adaptor foUows the story step-by-step,"
resulting in a "representation or illustration" of the original text or "(2) not
troubling to remain faithful to the author, he rethinks the subject" using the
original text "as a point of departure, as an inspiration" (4). Maiy Lambert, the
director of the 1992 production of Grand Isle. opted for Mitry's first solution.
I recently interviewed the director; she stated that she agreed with Emily
Toth's highly feminist interpretation of The Awakening. describing the novel
as "the ultimate feminist cry." Lambert's adaptation is highlv exacting:
dialogue, stmcture, setting, and characters are perfectly replicated. Lambert
interprets and presents the mysterious drowning of Chopin's protagonist as a
dramatic statement on female confinement at the tum-of-the-century.
Arriving at Jack London's philosophical stance is no easy task. His
literature indudes sodalist protests, sdence fiction fantasies, anthropological
romances, utopian writings, agronomical tracts, ecological essays, hoboing
tales, prize-fighting accounts, apocalyptical imaginations, autobiographical
portrayals, sea sagas, and dog stories. He is most often categorized as a
philosophic naturalist; however, his stories are permeated with optimism,
continually affirm life, and consistently applaud the heroic individual, thereby
negating the basic tenets most often assodated with naturalism-pessimism,
materialism, and determinism.
Jack London described The Sea-Wolf as a dualistic novel. He believed
that "[t]he superfidal reader [would] get the love story and the adventure;
while the deeper reader [would] get all this, plus the bigger thing undemeath"
(Letters 338). The "bigger thing" is clearly London's philosophical debate
between the physical and the romantic, the material and the spiritual, the
Nietzschean and the Schopenhauerean. Years later London lamented that
many had missed the bigger thing: "[l]ong years ago, at the very beginning of
my writing career, I attacked Nietzsche. . . . This was in The Sea-Wolf. Lots of
people read TTie Sea-Wolf. no one discovered that it was an attack on the
superman philosophy" (Letters 1513).
Chapter III continues by focusing on an adaptation by one individual
who clearly did not miss the "bigger thing": Michael Curtiz. In 1940,
Hollywood was called upon to motivate America toward full involvement in
World War II. Curtiz's use of London's novel was tmly inspired; he opted for
Mitry's second solution. The director made numerous changes in the interest
of intensifying the Larsen/Nietzsche/Hitler connection. Advance reviews of the
film defined the protagonist as a sadistic tyrant, a Nietzschean superman, a
Hitlerian egomaniac. My discussion of novel and film suggests that The
Sea-Wolf is not philosophic naturalism at all, but oprimistic Americanism.
Chapter IV is devoted to a discussion of Richard Attenborough's use of
film language in Shadowlands. This is not a "traditional" adaptation
analysis-it is not a study of the film as an adaptation of WiUiam Nicholson's
stageplay but rather as a brilliantly wrought adaptatíon of various apologeric
works written by the ever-so-intellectual Oxford don, C. S. Lewis, most notably
The Problem of Pain. Mere Christianity. and Christian Reflections. In his
review of the film, Philip Yancey notes that "[s]ome evangelicals will complain
that the movie distorts Lewis's life and waters down his Christian message"
(112). I contend, however, that there should be no complaints: Attenborough
uses film language as effectively as Lewis used the English language-the
director minces no filmic "words" and succeeds in accurately presenting C. S.
Lewis's Christian Theism. If a reader of C. S. Lewis fails to comprehend
Attenborough's messages regarding Lewis's theological position on such issues
as death, heaven, hell, prayer, and pain the fault does not lie with the directorthe problem is a lack of visual literacy on the part of the viewer. This chapter
illustrates what an audience can gain by knowing how to "read" a film.
The next chapter is a study of an adaptation of an adaptation. John
Fowles once said that he would "first like to be a good poet, then a sound
philosopher, then a good novelist" (Newquist 222). In 1964 he tried his hand
at sound philosophy, publishing The Aristos. a dogmatic and difficult
presentation of his existential philosophy. Friends advised him not to publish
the work; they predicted failure. They were right. In 1969 Fowies published
another book, The French Lieutenant's Woman. Chapter V iUustrates that
this successful novel is an adaptation of the earlier unsuccessful Aristos. I
contend that Fowles craftily and cleverly used the reader-responsive style of
allegory to once again communicate his existential beliefs. Fowles himself
supports this contention. Fowles confesses: "The novel is simply, for me, a way
of expressing my views on life" (Newquist 222).
Daniel Taradash, who wrote the adaptation of From Here to Etemity.
said: "You have to be bold in breaking away from the book when it becomes
necessary. But there are certain key scenes and definite aspects of character
which have to be retained" (qtd. in Wald 64). Direaor Karel Reisz appears to
have taken these words to heart. Adapting Fowles's three hundred and
sixty-six-page novel fiUed with existential mind games was immensely
chaUenging. Fowles was most interested in seeing this novel adapted to film;
however, he conduded that "as it stood (or lay printed) the book was, and
would always remain, unfilmable" (Fowles F.L.W.: A Screenplay viii). The
second half of Chapter V describes the bold steps Harold Pinter and Karel
Reisz took to film the unfilmable adaptation of an adaptation.
The final chapter is an analysis of Peter Weir's humanism as expressed
in his film, Dead Poets Sodety. I acknowledge a debt to Gary Hentzi's "Peter
Weir and the Cinema of New Age Humanism"; Hentzi argues that Weir
"make[s] films that retum again and again to a relatively fixed set of concems"
(3), the concems of New Age humanism. Hentzi focuses on Weir's Picnic at
Hanging Rock. GalIipoU. Witness. and The Year of Living Dangerously. kindly
leaving my personal favorite virtually unexamined. This chapter demands not
only an analysis of New Age humanism but an analysis of romantidsm and an
exploration of the connection between the two as weU. This chapter concludes
with commentary on the subsequent textual adaptation-N. H. Kleinbaum's
novelization of the film-and the merits thereof.
Albert Camus claimed that "[a] novel is never anything but a philosophy
expressed in images" (199). Indeed, the "conversations" under consideration
illustrate that there is an ever-so-nice fit between the novel, philosophy, and
the images of film. Philosophy, it seems, is best understood by most when it is
presented via the discourse of stories, whether read in a novel and imagined
mentaUy or watched on a film and comprehended visually. In a discussion of
C. S. Lewis's success at communicating his beUefs about the world we Uve in,
Thomas Howard states that
Lewis understood the daunting improbabiUtv of awakening the
stultified modem imagination. . . . He understood the task, and
he undertook it by means of the oldest method there is. He
began to teU stories (sometimes you can smuggle something in as
fiction that you can't force on people in a debate). (15)
This strategy is equaUy appUcable to aU of the other writers and directors
addressed in this dissertation: they aU do an exceUent job of communicating
philosophy by "smuggUng it into a story."
CHAPTERII
THE AWAKENING AND GRAND ISLE:
"THE ULTIMATE FEMINIST CRY"
Kate Chopin's once most infamous, now most famous work, The
Awakening. was pubUshed in 1899. The storv is about a woman attempting to
free herself from the Umitations of tum-of-the-centurv sodetal dictates seventy
years before America would hear "I am woman/hear me roar." This
ahead-of-its-time novel was not adapted to film until Marv Lambert directed
her "exacting" dnematic version entitled Grand Isle. in 1992.
Chopin's objective point-of-view presentation of The Awakening's
complex late-Victorian protagonist, Edna PonteUier, has aUowed for a
multitude of diverse critical responses. Wendy Martin concludes her editorial
comments to New Essays on The Awakening' by stating that "[t]he essavs in
this book suggest but a few of the extraordinary range of possible
interpretations of The Awakening" (28). Edna has been described by one critic
as "selfish [and] capridous" (qtd. in Eble 192), by another as a "drifter" (Arms
198), and by yet another as a character possessing great "strength of wiU"
(Spangler 209). Early reaction to the novel was generallv negative: the book
was regarded for the most part as "'an essentially vulgar story'" ("Literature"
10
11
168); however, later critics have assessed the novel as "first-rate" (Eble 188).
Daniel Rankin, the original Chopin biographer, treats the author as a regional
wTÍter; Per Seyersted, the second Chopin biographer, emphasizes her reaUsm
and existentiaUsm; the most recent Chopin biographer, Emily Toth, sees the
novel as an expression of feminist philosophy.
Toth's position and reflections on The Awakening appear to have the
greatest merit: studying the story in Ught of feminism seems to provide the
most insightful approach to comprehending the impUcations of Chopin's tragic
tale. Toth describes The Awakening as "the story of what happens when a
woman does not accept her place in the home. . . . [the novel] illustrates the
need for women's psychological, physical, sodal, and sexual emandpation-the
goals of feminists in the twentieth century as weU as the nineteenth" (Toth
"Feminist" 241). Indeed, the book is very much a nineteenth-century "Nora
doU house revolt"; it, however, is much more-the work is also a
twentieth-century cry for fuU equality. Toth proceeds to analyze the novel in
terms of its feminist thematics, contending that Chopin "transforms the
insights of feminist critics into fiction" (242). Toth continues: "[Chopin's]
translation involves a movement firom the abstract to the concrete . . . [from] a
generaUzation [to] a case study" (242). The Awakening. Toth contends, is
"both fiction and sodal commentary" (241).
12
Toth would applaud another Chopin critic's summation of the novel's
theme: Katherine JosUn contends that the book addresses "female suffocation
in the home" (167) at the tum of the century. This theme-confinement so
intense that it psychologically, sodaUy, and sexuaUy chokes the Ufe out of its
victim-is best explored when the novel is analvzed via the stmcture of past,
present, and future: contextuaUzing Edna's dreams about her childhood,
addressing the reaUties of her present existence, and analyzing her awakened
contemplations conceming her future enables readers to experience the
complexities of pursuing female emandpation as the doors opened to the
twentieth centurv.
Edna's most significant childhood dream comes to her mind as she sits
gazing at "the sight of the water stretching so far away . . . " (Chopin 16).
She thinks about "a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big
as the ocean to the very Uttle girl walking through the grass, which was higher
than her waist. She threw out her arms as if swimming when she walked . . . "
(17). Edna remembers this experience as seeming without end, fuU of
emotional possibiUties, and highly entertaining (17). It is a positive memory.
Edna laughs and suggests that this adventure in nature was probablv an escape
from the gloom and doom of her donnineering Presbyterian father. Toth
explains that
[i]n Edna's description of herself as a young girl, the child is
active, in control of her body. She strikes out at her
environment; it does not mold her. She is outdoors, not confined
in the home. The analogy to the ocean and swimming suggest no
restrictions . . . ("Feminist" 244-45)
Thus, this dream connotes a flight from the dark Umitations of the known-her
present restricted existence-to the bright limitless opportunities awaiting in
the unknown-an unbridled, child-like, active pursuit of personal fulfiUment.
As Edna reflects upon her past she recaUs her dreams of lost loves: she
remembers a "sad-eyed calvary officer" (18) who visited her father when she
was very young-she was quite taken by his charms. And she recaUs that when
she was just "a Uttle miss, just merging into her teen's" (18), she was smitten
with a neighboring young woman's fiancee. Too, she reflects on her
infatuation with "a great tragedian" (18). Chopin notes that "[t]he persistence
of the infatuation lent it an aspect of genuineness" (18). Thus Edna developed
a habit of falUng in love, not with a genuine person, but with romantic illusions
of love itself. Her in-the-present daydreams about her past are very much
reflections on earUer romantic iUusionary dreams.
Were Edna's youthful dreams of romance exceptional, out of the
ordinary? No. In Women and Economics. pubUshed in 1898, Gilman
laments:
14
To the young girl. . . marriage is the one road to fortune, to Ufe
. . . What she has to gain even as a child is largely gained by
feminine tricks and charms. Her reading, both in history and
fiction, treats of the same position for women; and romance and
poetry give it absolute predominance. Pictorial art, music, the
drama, sodetv, everything teUs her that she is she, and that all
depends on whom she marries. . . . It is Lancelot riding through
the sheaves that caUed the lady from her loom at Shalott: "he is
the coming world." (86)
As early as 1784, Judith Sargent Murray bemoaned the fact that young girls
were not taught to "reverence selF; they were onlv taught to seU self to the
first "he" who expressed romantic words of flatteiy. Murray states: "The
province of imagination hath long since been surrendered up to [females], and
we have been crowned undoubted sovereigns of the regions of fancy" (131). In
1849, Lucretia Coffin Mott wamed against "[t]he kind of homage that has
been paid to woman, the flattering appeals which have too long satisfied
her-appeals to her mere fancy and imagination" (143-44).
Indeed, young girls daily dreamed of the coming of the "he." Edna, Uke
the vast majority of young women, grew up beUeving that when her "knight in
shining armor" came to daim her complete bUss would become the order of the
day; no longer would she need to dream-"he" would be her aU. She would
easily be able to "dose the portals forever behind her upon the realm of
romance and dreams" (18). Thus, when Leonce PonteUier "pressed his suit
with an eamestness and ardor which left nothing to be desired . . . " ( 1 8 ) , Edna
15
thought her "he" had arrived. She recaUs that "he pleased her; his absolute
devotion flattered her. She fanded there was a sympathy of thought and taste
between them"; however, "in this fancy she was [very much] mistaken" (18).
Edna soon found herself confronting her present: "[she] found herself face to
face with the reaUties" (19). Certainly one of these reaUties was her
mismatched marriage. She had been taught that "he" would satisfy aU her
dreams: Leonce, the "when he makes the monev he feels he has done his whole
duty" (Dix 146) e\^er-so-typicaI nineteenth-centurv husband, did not fulfiU
Edna's dreams in any respect.
Edna also found herself confronring the reaUries of Ufe for an upper-dass
woman in Southem and, perhaps of greater significance, in Creole sodetv. The
reaUtv was confinement: strict adherence to fixed codes of behavior. First and
foremost was the dictum of "woman, know thy place." This place was
narrowly confined to "the domestic alter" and within the "tranquil prednct of
the sodal drde" (Kerber 15). The very idea that women were beginning to
question this code was repugnant to aU "tme" Southemers:
So far as this movement may have any tendency to take woman
out of her tme place in the home, to give her man's work to do
and to develop mascuUne quaUries in her, it finds no svmpathv in
the South. The Southem woman loves the retirement of home,
and shrinks from everything that would bring her into the pubUc
gaze. (TiUet 16)
16
Shaffter's description of Creole women is most enlightening. Creole women
were intensely reUgious in their devotion to hearth and home: "[w]omen's
rights, for them, [were] the right to love and be loved, and to name the babies
rather than the next president or dty offidals" (138). Shaffter notes that "as a
class they [were] not progressive" (139). Ob\iousIy, this "class" of women
epitomized "tme" womanhood.
In 1772, Mary WoUstonecraft wTOte: "Confined then in cages Uke the
feathered race, [women] have nothing to do but plume themselves and walk
from perch to perch. It is tme they are provided with food and raiment. . .
but health, Uberty, and \irtue, are given in exchange" (70). Kate Chopin
deverly expresses her sentiments on Edna's present existence-her life of
choking confinement-by borrowing this much-referenced earlv feminist
analogy. Chopin begins her novel: "A green and yeUow parrot, which hung in
a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: 'Allez vous-en! AUez
vous-en! Sapristi!'" (3). Indeed, Chopin's bird imageiy mirrors Edna's
confinement. After Leonce falsely accuses Edna of putting Raoul to bed with a
fever, Edna cries accompanied by the "moumful luUaby" (7) of an owl. Edna is
not one of the mother-women on Grand Isle: she does not "flutter about with
extended, protecring wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threaten[s] [her]
predous brood" (9). Only Mademoiselle Reisz and one other "character" on
17
the island are honest enough to openly defy convention: this other character is
the parrot who voices his annoyance at being subjected to the "talents" of the
Farival twins. As Edna Ustens to noctumal music, stories come to her mind.
She recaUs thinking about a naked young man looking at a distant bird
winging his flight up and away. Later, MademoiseUe Reisz "tests" Edna's
wings to see if they are strong enough "to soar above the level plain of
tradition" (79). Edna's defiant move toward asserting her independence lands
her in a "pigeon house." And, as the novel concludes, the now naked Edna
sees a bird "with a broken wing . . . [futilely] beating the air above, reeUng,
fluttering, circUng disabled down . . . " (108).
The symboUc connotations are dear. The novel begins with a beautiful,
wild, free creature serving primarily as a household omament, trying to
communicate the need for soUtude, the desire for freedom from others. The
parrot speaks "a language which nobody understood, unless it was the
mocking-bird that hung on the other side of the door" (3). Obviously, the
parrot represents Edna. She, too, is primarily an omament: the perfect accent
piece Leonce desires to grace his home. She, too, is in need of a language to
communicate her desire for freedom, for selfhood; her desire is to "swim far
out, where no woman had swum before" (27). Edna does swim in virtually
untried "language waters." As explained by Cott, the new language of
18
Feminism-the desire for sexual equaUty shared by a general female common
consdousness-did not exist unril the 1910s (4). The vocabulaiy Edna needed
to express her growing frustrations eluded her; "she [was] an individual without
adequate means of self-expression" (Burchard 42). Edna is extremely sensitive
as she tries to share her awakened state: her newly-found desire to Uve beyond
the conventions of Victorian Creole sodety. On the night of her first
successful venture into the unknowTi waters, she cautiously tells Robert that
nothing seems real; people seem only "half-human" (28). Robert replies with
his story about a spirit who searches for one worthy of being elevated beyond
the present: "Tonight he found Mrs. PonteUier. Perhaps he wiU never whoUy
release her from the speU. Perhaps she wiU never again suffer a poor, unworthy
earthUng to walk in the shadow of her divine presence" (29). Edna is
frustrated: she knows he does not understand her-she is just beginning to
comprehend her fmstration with the confining, prevaiUng gender ideology
herself. Edna is mute because she lacks the terms-the language-necessary to
define her state of mind; much like the parrot, Edna beUeves that trying to
express her heightened state of awareness, her "awakened" self, wiU only be
mocked.
Edna's not being a mother-woman, not being a protective brooding hen
is of supreme importance. She was not and could not pretend to be one of the
19
Creole "women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and
esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings
as ministering angds" (9). Edna's "I w^ould wiUingly die for my children but
cannot sacrifice my living to them" credo echoes the thoughts of the first
advice-to-women columnist in America, Dorothy Dix. Dix states: "The tmth
of the matter simply is that women have awakened to the fact that they have
been overdoing the self-sacrifice business" (145). As Fletcher explains:
[Edna] is not Uke the Creole women in being able to continue as
a long-suffering, self-sacrificing, faithful, and loyal wife and
mother when love is gone. She is also unable-perhaps because of
her Protestant rigidity, anarchic individuaUsm, pride, and
conscience-to live on and enjoy the fuller, happier Ufe of which
her 'aw^akening' has made her aware. (194)
Edna was weU aware that her society would condemn her approach to
motherhood-she had been taught that "the most serious source for women's
dissatisfaction with the homemaking occupation must be 'personal
maladjustment'" (Cott 165), that if the nursery seemed Uke a prison it was
because the mother had a perverted mother-sense (WeUs 123). However, in
her heart she Imew that this w^as not so-that the mother-woman "brooding
hen" prescribed role was part of the "Ufe-long stupid dream" (103) subUmated
by sodety. Thus, Edna is tom between what her sodety says she should feel
and be and what she knows she feels and is. She is beginning to awaken to the
20
reality that, as the progressive-thinldng Dr. Mandelet put it, "[wjomen are not
all alike" (63).
When the parrot refuses to quietly submit to the "gradous
performances" of the Farival twins, "Old Monsieur Farival, grandfather of the
twins, grows indignant over the intermption, and insists on having the bird
removed and consigned to regions of darkness" (23-24). There are
consequences awaiting any bird who dares to defy; only those with "strong
wings" can rise above sodetal prejudices: "the weakUngs bruised, exhausted,
flutter . . . back to earth" (79). MademoiseUe Reisz loiows whereof she speaks.
She insists on her independence; she remains free of the confines of marriage.
However, defying her "natural duty" to be a wife and mother costs her dearly;
she is a dried-up disagreeable spinster whose self-assertive personaUty leaves
her quite friendless, quite "in the dark." Madame RatignoUe cautions Robert
conceming his flirtation with Edna. She reminds him that
"[i]f your attentions to any married women here were ever offered
with any intention of being convindng, you would not be the
gentleman we all know you to be, and you would be unfit to
assodate with."
Madame RatignoUe had spoken what she beUeved to be the law
and the gospel. (20)
Later when Madame RatignoUe visits Edna in her pigeon house, she asks Edna,
her very best friend, to come to her "when her hour of trial over[takes] her"
(91). Despite this fast friendship, Madame RatignoUe reminds Edna that her
21
connection with Alcee Arobin is causing talk and that if Edna chooses to
continue seeing him Madame RatignoUe will have to end the friendship; "it
was very, very impmdent" (91) of her to come to Edna at aU. Thus, one of the
consequences of Edna's freer Ufestyle is the UkeUhood of losing her best friend.
Edna defies her society's rules of convention when she tells Robert that
she is "no longer one of Mr. PontelUer's possessions to dispose of or not. 1 give
myself where I choose. If he were to say 'Here, Robert, take her and be happy;
she is yours,' I should laugh at you both" (103). Robert's lack of
comprehension is understandable-Edna's statement blatantly challenges the
law of the land:
By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law; that is,
the very being, or legal existence of the woman is suspended
during the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated
into that of the husband under whose wing, protection and cover
she performs everything. (qtd. in Grimke 72)
Robert is conventional. He longs to protect and cover Edna according to aU of
the dictates of his sodety; he longs "to hold her and keep her" (103). In other
words, he wiU treat her like a child and subUmate her personality and being
with his in much the same manner that Leonce does. Edna's honest appraisal
of the situation and her insistence on her own free wiU is too much for Robert.
Again, the cost for openly defying convention is great: it costs her what she
believes at the time to be "her own tme love."
0-1
Edna's maid's name for her new little abode, the "pigeon house," is most
appropriate. As noted by Black, "the pigeon is a domestic bird, usually
monogamous, that we associate with a coop or wobbUng parasitically on the
ground, hoping to be fed. Even pigeons capable of sustained flight are called
homing pigeons" (105). The foreshadowing is obvious. Since Edna has not
evolved into a creature that can soar high, her defiance will be short-Iived.
However, her escape from the confining waUs of Leonce's mansion does allow
her to experience enough freedom to accept Arobin as a lover and to leam that
"the nineteenth-century ideal of female 'passionlessness'-the beUef that women
did not have the same sexual desires as men" (Showalter 37)-was false.
Chopin relates that
the pigeon house pleased [Edna] . . . she herself invested it with a
charm which it reflected like a warm glow. . . . Every step which
she took toward reUeving herself from obligations added to her
strength and expansion as an individual. She began to look with
her own eyes; to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents
of Ufe. No longer was she content to 'feed upon opinion' when
her own soul had invited her. (89)
When Madame RatignoUe visits Edna in the pigeon house, she asks: "Where
on earth [wiU] . . . [you] put Mr. PontelUer in that little house, and the boys?"
(91). The question is not answered.
The question is not answered because, as noted earUer, Edna lacks the
language of Feminism. She has no words to explain her awakened feelings; she
23
cannot, therefore, explain herself even to herself. For Edna, there is no way to
articulate, address, or arrive at a solution. Chopin's final bird image connotes
the futility of Edna's dreams about her future life. The disabled bird can go
nowhere but "down to the water" (108). Why is Edna's wing broken? Why
can she not sustain her freedom flight? Answering these questions requires an
analysis of Edna's future desires.
Edna has been Uving in a fantasy world. Husband and children have
been absent; she has become accustomed to coming and going as she pleases.
Leonce's retum is imminent; again, Edna wiU be face-to-face with the reaUty of
her existence. However, she now refuses the terms of her conventional,
"unawakened" past life. She no longer wants Leonce to dole out her spending
money. As explained by Davis: "Edna needs to see herself as one capable of
economic independence" (149); i.e., she dreams of finandal freedom. Edna no
longer wants to be the kind of sexual, sensitive "rich, rare blossom" (39)
described by Margaret Fuller:
Woman is the flower, man the bee. She sighs out of melodious
fragrance, and invites the winged laborer. He drains her cup, and
carries off the honey. She dies on the stalk; he retums to the
hive, well fed, and praised, as an active member of the
community. (qtd. in Showalter 53)
Edna is not satisfied with her allotted "flower" role: she dreams of sexual
relationships that are reciprocal-that provide sexual "intensity of experience"
(Toth "Feminist" 248) for the female as weU as for the male. Edna no longer
24
wants to have to choose between "artistic fulfillment requir[ing] the sacrifice of
matemal drives, and matemal fulfiUment requir[ing] the giving up of artistic
ambitions" (Showalter 39): Edna dreams of being free to pursue "multiple
possibiUries of fulfilUnent" (Wolkenfeld 243). Edna is sick-to-death of doing
nothing: in her awakened state she teUs Madame RatignoUe she "beUeve[s]
[she] ought to work again. I feel as if I wanted to be doing something" (emp.
added 53). Edna dreams of resisting the Victorian definition of "the wife in a
finandaUy comfortable . . . marriage [being] largelv ceremonial. . . . "; she does
not want "through her conspicuous consumption of leisure [to] confer status
on her husband" (Martin 19). Edna does not want to be bound to her children
"with iron fetters" (D\x 148); she refuses to "be made a martyr" (Dix 149).
She dreams of being a mother without denving her inner self. She dreams of
having her own wav without "trampling upon the Uttle Uves" (105). Edna no
longer wants to reside in the house on Esplanade Street; it never seemed Uke
her home. In the pigeon house, "[t]here was with her a feeUng of having
descended in the sodal scale, with a corresponding sense of having risen in the
spiritual" (89). Edna no longer wants to "consider first and foremost, and
above aU else, what people would say" (88). She dreams of being free from
Leonce's god of appearances.
Immediately after Edna first perceives that she is "awaken[ing] gradually
out of a dream" (31) and immediately after she first perceives "that her will
had blazed up" (31), she sleeps, but is "disturbed with dreams that were
intangible, that eluded her, leaving only an impression upon her of something
unattainable" (31-32). Indeed, Edna's dreams conceming her future Ufe are
intangible, elusive, and unattainable. As explained bv Martin:
Edna PonteUier's stmggle for selfhood is doomed because there is
Uttle possibiUty for self-determination for women in a sodety
where legal and economic practice and sodal custom prohibit
female autonomy. At the tum of the century . . . marriage in
New Orleans was based on the Napoleonic Code, which defined a
wife and everything she possessed, including her clothes, as her
husband's property. Divorce was an infrequent and scandalous
event, particularly in Louisiana, which was a CathoUc state. In
1890 there were only 29 divorces per 100,000 population. (17)
Thus, the first reason Edna cannot sustain her freedom flight is because the
prescribed sodal code "waU" is simply too formidable. As Delbanco explains,
"Edna lost a battle that according to the respectable opinion of her time, she
should never have began" (emp. added 103).
Edna's second hurdle is equally defeating. A century before the
pubUcation of The Awakening, Judith Sargent Murray lamented that young
girls were not taught to think She wrote:
WiII it be said that the judgment of a male of two years old, is
more sage than that of a female's of the same age? I beUeve the
reverse is generally obsen'ed to be tme. But from that period
what partiality! how is the one exalted, and the other depressed.
26
bv the contrary modes of education which are adopted! the one
is taught to aspire, and the other is earlv confíned and limited.
As their vears increase, the sister must be whoUv domesticated,
while the brother is led by the hand through aU the flower\^ paths
of sdence. Grant that their minds are b\' nature equal, vet who
shaU wonder at the apparent superiority. . . . At length arrived at
womanhood, the uncultivated fair one feels a void, wiiich the
empIo^Tnents aUotted her are by no means capable of filUng.
What can she do? to books she manv not apply; or if she doth,
to those only of the novel kind. lest she merit the appeUation of a
leamed lady. . . . (132)
Indeed, Murray summarizes much of Edna's problem. She was not taught to
think, was not aUowed to develop a language of self-expression, and could only
tum to romantic novels encouraging fulfiUment \ia the "he." It is not
surprising that when Edna is asked what she is thinking about, she repUes: "I
was reaUv not consdous of thinking of anvthing . . . " (16). And, later, when
she attempts to confide in Dr. Mandelet, she gives up, crying: "Oh! I don't
know what I'm saving, Doctor" (105). Edna has not been trained to logicaUy
think through difficult issues nor express her thoughts: this is forbidden
territory-it is man's domain.
In On the Subjection of Women, John Stuart MiU explained that
when people are brought up, Uke many women of higher classes
. . . a kind of hot-house plants, shielded from the wholesome
vidssitudes of air and temperature, and untrained in any of the
occupations and exerdses which give stimulus and development
to the drculatorv and muscular system . . . it is no wonder if
those of them who do not die of consumption, grow up . . .
without stamina to support any task, physical or mental,
requiring continuity of effort. . . . (qtd. in Toth "Feminist" 247)
27
No wonder that when Edna swims for the first time she finds the physical
exerdse so stimulating that "[a] feeUng of exultation overt[akes] her . . . "(27).
No wonder, too, that she "overestimates her strength" (27), that, in the end,
she does not possess the strength needed "to regain the shore" (109). Thus,
the second reason that Edna cannot sustain her freedom fUght is two-fold.
Edna has not developed the skiUs needed to think, and she has not developed
the skills necessary to conmiunicate and sustain her resolve.
FinaUv, Edna fails because she awakens to the fact that "the fairies
would [not] fix it aU right" (90); she reaUzes that the fair\^-tale she was told as
a child-that romance magicaUy insures fulfiUment-was false. This is the
ultimate disappointment. Edna reflects that
[d]espondency had come upon her there in the wakeful night, and
had never lifted. There was no one thing in the world she desired.
There was no human being whom she wanted near her except
Robert; and she even realized that the day would come when he,
too, and the thought of him would melt out of her existence,
leaving her alone. (108)
Martin explains that "although Edna has freed herself from the domestic
imperatives of her husband's house, she becomes ensnared by romantic love,
which, masquerading as freedom, actually undercuts her possibiUty of
autonomy" (23). Indeed, Edna's drifting toward her death is at least partially
due to "the reaUzation that romantic love is a myth" (Burchard 43). Edna sees
28
clearly that "he," any "he," is insufficient: she requires more, and this more is
beyond her grasp.
Burchard's analvsis of Edna's suidde condselv summarizes her
"choices:"
Edna's suidde is a rather pathetic, if not tragic, gesture of
defiance mixed with the ultimate acceptance of the sodal code. If
your instincts direct you to Uve outside the generaUy imposed
sodal rules, you can either suppress them and remain respectable,
foUow them and be outcast, or do sodetv's dirtv work for it bv
doing away with yourself, thereby avoiding the tiresome burden
of Uving honestly, and sa\ing sodety the trouble of castigating
you. (44)
In Ught of Burchard's remarks, Edna then saves herself and sodetv a great deal
of trouble by finaUy submitting to physical suffocation"drowTdng-certainl\^
symboUc of her inability to escape the prescribed "female suffocation in the
home" described by JosUn.
Much has changed since Kate Chopin wTOte her tragic tale. While some
may argue that it is sriU "a man's world," no one can deny that American
women have greater freedoms today than they did at the tum of the century.
What was once labeled as a "most vulgar story" is now applauded as a realistic
portrayal of one woman's stmggle for personal fulfillment. I recently
inteiviewed Mary Lambert, the director of the 1992 producrion of Grand Isle.
the first dnematic adaptation of The Awakening. Ms. Lambert agrees with
Toth's feminist interpretation of the novel. Lambert defines the novel as "the
29
ultimate feminist cry." "Edna," Lambert continues, "has everything that her
sodety says should make her happy but she isn't [happy]. She has everything
but she awakens to the reaUzation that without personal freedom she has
nothing." Lambert states that she and the producer (KeUy McGiUis) "were
both passionate about the material." She confides: "I respected the novel and
what it had to say. . . . I wanted to be exacting in mv adaptation."
She succeeded. Grand Isle is an accurate dnematic representation of
Chopin's novel. In the Los Angeles Times' review, Loynd describes Grand Isle
as "the story of a woman's sensual and emotional awakening." He notes:
the tropical Gulf imagery of dnematographer Toyomichi Kurita
pictures a lazy, stuffy, privileged world of rich Creole gentlemen,
happilv suppressed wives, and black maids holding up parasols for
pampered children running around the beach in white cottons.
Loynd describes Lambert's Edna PontelUer as "the ensnared heroine"; he
recognizes swimming as "the central awakening metaphor"; and he perceives
that the protagonist "shocks herself by falUng in love with an indolent young
man" long after closing the doors on dreams of romance.
Byrge's article in The HoIIywood Reporter is equaUy reflective of the
novel. He states: "Grand Isle is a gentle forthright film about a . . . woman's
self-awakening. . . . touching aU those who can identify with the overpowering
need for personal expression." Byrge, too, perceives that the dnematic Edna's
problem is a result of the prescribed role for aU upper-dass women of the age:
30
"the story centers on Edna (KeUy McGiIUs), a 28-year-oId mother of two
whose marriage to a wealthy older broker (Joe DeVries) affords her no outlet
other than familiar task-etry." He continues: "Edna's familv life is portrayed as
offering not one iota of emotional sustenance to her." Byrge explains: "A
playful, Grand Isle friendship with a younger Creole gentleman, Robert (Adrian
Pasdar) stimulates long lost urges in her-sexual and artistic pangs that she has
not, seemingly, experienced since her dreamy youth." According to Lovnd,
both novel and film clearly express "an early vision of emandpation."
Fem Champion's casting work deserves comment. In the novel, Edna is
described as "rather handsome than beautiful" (5). Her good-Iooks are not of
the Madame RatignoUe womanly, soft, deUcate kind. Indeed, Edna (KeU\'
McGiIUs) looks powerful: she is taUer and larger-boned than either Leonce or
Robert, appearing more statuesque and giving the iUusion of physical strength.
Jon Devries is Mr. PontelUer-forty, medium in height, slender, stooped. He
parts his brown hair on the side; he continuaUy speaks in directives. Chopin's
first adjective describing Robert Lebmn is "young" (4). And this is the first
visual impression that Lambert conveys: Robert (Adrian Pasdar) is the epitome
of a young, charming, tum-of-the-century Creole male. Madame RatignoUe
(Glenne Hedley) is sweetly pretty; Mademoiselle Reisz (EUen Burstyn) is coldlv
pretentious.
Cinematographv, too, is due accolades: the Gulf coast has never looked
more sensual, more lush; the waters have never looked more infinite, more
etemal. Bryge explains that "Toyomichi Kurita's radiant late aftemoon hues
are in sync with Edna's personal timetable while ElUot Goldenthal's original
music and sa^-^y score selection, primarilv Chopin's Noctume in E minor, lend
a melancholy but strong cadence to Edna's resolve."
The majoritv of the fiUn is highlv exacting: dialogue, stmcture, setting,
and characters are aU perfectly repUcated. Lambert, too, intends for her
audience to recognize Edna's freedom as a child, to comprehend her lack of
freedom in her present existence, and to perceive her desperate desire for a
retum to the earUer, less-constrictivel Ufe: the theme is identical.
The dnemaric adaptarion is "exacring" in vet another respect. Long
before Emily Toth explored Chopin's work as an expression of early feminist
thought, other critics had categorized the author as a reaUst. To Lambert's
credit, she effecrivelv uses fihn language to capture Chopin's reaUstic stvle.
Lambert accuratelv conveys Chopin's "use" of Afro-Americans in Louisiana,
manages to communicate the real power of reUgion on women, and ingeniously
uses Ughring to comment on the falseness of Edna's world.
Anne Goodw^oi Jones contends that Chopin used blacks "as an objective
correlative for her feeUngs about oppression" (qtd. in Taylor 300). As
32
Thorstein Veblen argues in his Theory of the Leisure Class. Chopin's analogy
connecting the "free" slaves and the dutiful wives was a logical one. An upperclass man gained status via the possession of an excess of servants, i.e., by
having an excess of hands free to do nothing but by their very presence say:
"My mastuh has enough money to just have me stand here." In much the
same manner, the wife enhanced her husband's status by conspicuously
consuming leisure. Veblen darifies that
[t]he servant or wife should not only perform certain offices and
show a servile disposition, but it is quite as imperative that thev
should show an acquired fadUty in the tactics of subservience-a
trained conformity to the canons of effectual and conspicuous
subservience. (60)
Lambert's adaptation indicates that wives, Uke black servants, were used
as objects to convey status on their white male "employers." Her treatment of
this subject is Hemingwayish: she succeeds in conveying Chopin's servant/wife
connection via understatement. In Grand Isle. black maids quietly trail behind
Edna and Adele, doing nothing but holding parasols above the ladies' heads.
The black male servants (always appropriately attired in white jackets and
white gloves) are very much "invisible men." At Madame Lebrun's ballroom
dance, they unobtrusively stand against the wall. Their only function is to
make a statement by their presence. In this scene, the camera does zoom-in on
33
one nameless servant's face-his expression is bland; he is non-descript; he
appears empty-headed, devoid of thought. He says nothing.
During the film, viewers hear only one black voice. Etoinne and Raoul
are outside, shouting "You can't get me . . . You can't get me!" Their
quadroon nanny giggles and repUes, "Oh, yes I can!" Contemporary critics
often regard the feminist analogy between bourgeois white marriage and
treatment of blacks as a "distasteful excess" (Taylor 307); Lambert obviously
disagrees. Her adaptation does not "play down" Chopin's analogy; it clearly
connects the two. Neither servants nor wives were allowed to think or speak;
both were treated as children by the "superior" white male.
Lambert also manages to convey Chopin's thoughts regarding reUgion.
Chopin's first novel, At Fault (1890), is a simple story about a young widow
contemplating remarriage. The protagonist finds out that her groom-to-be is a
divorcee. The simple story is actually not so simple; it addresses the reaUties of
the reUgious and sodal dictates of the day versus a moral and natural sense of
right and wrong that defies time. At one point in the novel, Therese LaFirme
admits that "the prejudices of her CathoUc education color her sentiment" (42)
toward David Hosmer. Readers of The Awakening leam that Edna's thinking,
too, is very much colored by her reUgious upbringing. In the novel, after Edna
34
describes her dream to Adele, Adele asks: "Where were you going that day in
Kentucky, walking through the grass?" Edna replies: "I don't remember now.
. . . Likely as not it was Sunday and I was running away from prayer, from the
Presbyterian service, read in a spirit of gloom by my father that chills me yet to
thinkor(17).
Lambert wisely indudes Chopin's Grand Terre church scene in her
adaptation. The church is smaU; the shots are tightly framed; the camera
foUowing the priest's swinging of the incense back and forth, back and forth
has a nauseating effect. Edna is ever-so-properly dressed for church; her hat is
particularly noteworthy. It is a broad-brimmed affair with swaths of shirred
musUn attached, wTapped securely about Edna's head. A close-up reveals
Edna's face through the oppressive veil; she is short of breath, gasping for air.
Her eyes roU back in her head; she is obviously "in a swoon." She mns outside,
Robert close behind her. Edna teUs him that an unexplainable feeUng of
oppression overcame her-she simply could not breathe. Viewers readily
comprehend that reUgion has been a negative experience for Edna, yet another
aspect of her confining world. Indeed, the tum-of-the-century church defined
"the appropriate duries and influence of women" as those "clearly stated in the
New Testament" (qtd. in Bartlett 2). The clerics interpreted and Umited these
duties to "unostentatious praying," teaching children "in Sabbath-schools,"
35
"leading reUgious inquirers to the pastor for instmction," and "all such
associated efforts as become the modesty of her sex" (2). They were quick to
caution that "when [a woman] assumes the place and tone of man . . . she
yields the power which God has given her for her protection . . . " (2). The
reaUty was that the church had an ever-so-tight hold on women. It is no
wonder that Edna cannot breathe in the stifling church atmosphere.
Thematic faithfulness, exceUent casting, sensual and sensitive
cinematography, and creative methods of conveying Chopin's realistic style are
all commendable. Perhaps Lambert's stroke of genius in this adaptation,
however, can be found in her ingenious use of lighting. The film is
exceptionally bright. The Louisiana sl<y is consistently cloudless. Throughout
the film, it never rains. Evening scenes are shot under a full moon. The
women all wear white dresses, carry white parasols, put on white gloves. The
children wear only white clothing. The sand on the beach is a sun-drenched,
bleached white. The houses are white; the lace curtains are white; the wicker
fumiture is white. The sun reflecting off of the ocean is a dazzling white.
Lambert consistently fades-out of shots to a soUd white frame-the effect is
blinding whiteness. By aU appearances, Edna lives in a bright, bright
"unsoiled" world.
Indeed, the extemal brightness of Edna's world dramaticaUy contrasts to
the intemal darkness of her tormented self. Lambert carefullv communicates
Edna's dark psychological state: three scenes are particularly reveaUng.
After her "awakening" summer at Grand Isle, Edna and family retum to
their fashionable home in the French Quarter of New Orleans. As they puU up
in thdr carriage in front of their Victorian mansion, Leonce gives the servants
some brisk instmctions and immediatelv continues on to the office. The bovs
scamper off with their nanny to find friends. Edna enters the house alone,
slowiy closing the door behind her, leaning against it in the entryway cubicle.
Once again, Edna has the veiled hat on her head. An extremely high-angled
camera looks down on Edna. Lambert cuts to a medium shot of Edna as she
tums her head upward, staring at a massive grandfather clock. The "male"
dock seems to look down on Edna. Time ricks solemnly away. Thus, Edna
appears trapped in the Umited space, overwhelmed by Leonce's prized
household fi^ctures.
Edna is frustrated with her life, at times angry. However, for the most
part she keeps her temper in check Uke a proper lady should. After Leonce's
sermon on the sin of disrespecting the calUng day, he storms out of the house.
Edna paces back and forth in front of the fireplace. She stops, picking up an
obviously expensive vase from the mantel. She studies it, then deliberatelv
i/
slams it to the floor, shattering it into pieces. Things, Leonce's possessions,
play an important role in the film. Not too manv davs later, Leonce scolds
Edna for not wanting to shop for more new things for the house. She angrily
tells Leonce that no new things are needed. However, as Edna w^ell know^s,
they are needed. They are needed because women w^ho are seen spending
money are declaring to the world that the man they are married to is
successful-so successful that there is ample money for siUy "unnecessary"
things.
Edna is a woman tom between duty to self-almost unheard of at the
tum of the century-and duty to others. Lambert conveys this by carefuUy
adhering to Chopin's story-Une and dialogue, most importantly, perhaps,
during the "deUvery" scene. Edna finaUy has Robert aU to herself; she has
pushed the relationship to a new level by reaching for and kissing the man of
her dreams. At this point, she beUeves that Robert is her one tme love and
that she needs him, sexuaUy and emotionaUy. She feels a duty to herself and
to Robert to pursue a sexual relationship that is redprocal: to give to each
other and to take firom each other. However, this moment is intermpted by
Edna's promise to rush to Adele when her "moment of trial" begins. Thus,
Edna chooses to honor her duty to Adele and leaves Robert and her OWTI
38
desires behind. After the baby's birth, Adele cautions Edna to "think of the
children," to "remember them!"
To a large extent, Adele's waming is Edna's undoing. Dr. Mandalet
foUows Edna out of Adele's room and into the haU. He asks her if she is going
to Europe with Leonce. She responds: "Perhaps-no, I am not going. I am not
going to be forced into doing things. I don't want to go abroad. I want to be
let alone. Nobody has any right-except children, perhaps-and even then, it
seems to me-or it did seem." Lambert's direction of Kellv McGiUis is exceUent
throughout the film and never better than at this point. McGilUs's voice
graduaUy loses aU assertiveness, breaks in just the right places, and weakens to
nothingness. Her blank face, too, reflects her lack of coherent thinking on the
subject of duty. It is no wonder that Edna begins to question all. Dorothv
Dix, writing in 1897, explains that
[f]rom time immemorial it has been the custom of woman to
sacrifice herself whenever she got the chance, and any deflection
from the course she was expected to pursue must necessarily
occasion a deal of comment. Unselfishness with her has been a
cult. She has wom it ostentatiously, and flaunted it in the face of
the world with a feUing that it would make good any other
defidendes or shortcomings. She has courted persecution, and
gone out of her way to become a martyr. She has accounted it
unto herself for righteousness to do those things she did not wish
to do, and to leave undone those things she was dying to do. On
the platform of pure and unadulterated unselfishness she has
taken a stand, and defied competition, and now when she wishes
to cUmb down and off, and give other people a chance to practice
39
the virtue they admire so much, she is cmelly misjudged and
assailed. (144-45)
Edna does begin to question her behavior, harshly judging herself. She
confesses to Dr. Mandelet that what she wants "is her own way." She
continues: "That is wanting a good deal, of course, when you have to trample
upon the Uves, the hearts, the prejudices of others-but no matter-still, I
shouldn't want to trample upon the little lives." Adele's w^aming suddenly
confronts her with the reaUties of her world: her unconventional behavior
cannot help but taint-soil-the little Uves.
Thus, viewers comprehend that the film's brightness is false: Edna is a
dark character, tormented by the entrapments of sodetal "do's and don'ts" and
tormented by her inability to voice her frustrations. She is angry, confused,
and guilt-ridden. The darkness of the sea begins to caU her.
Although the adaptation very closely adheres to the novel, at three
spedfic points screenplay writer Hesper Anderson and director Mary Lambert
did choose to deviate from, to sUghtly alter, Chopin's work. As previously
noted, Chopin began her novel by "zooming in" on the parrot futilely trying to
connmunicate the need for freedom. Lambert, however, begins Grand Isle with
an estabUshing shot of children playing on the seashore. The sea is dramatic,
powerful-the waves msh in to the shore and the undertow pulls back with
great force. A wide-angle lens enhances the sea's exceptional expansiveness.
40
seeming endlessness. Voice-over narration by Kelly McGiUis provides essential
background information: it is the first summer the Pontelliers have vacationed
at Grand Isle; Mrs. PonteUier is not Creole and is somewhat uncomfortable in
their more open society. The narration stops: viewers see a medium shot of an
attractive woman, obviously the Mrs. PontelUer just discussed in the voiceover, being led into the ocean by a young, handsome, dark-haired man and
hear her ever-so-hesitantly ask: "I'm not very brave, am I?" There is no reply.
Thus, the opening estabUshing shot is a briUiantly compacted
introduction to the story. Within two minutes, viewers have leamed
a great deal about Grand Isle and about the protagonist: Grand Isle is an
affluent summer resort inhabited by the wealthy Creoles of New Orleans; Edna
PonteUier is not one of them-viewers have blatantly been informed that she is
different. Viewers also realize that Edna has been chosen by Robert Lebrun for
spedal attention. And, most significantly, viewers hear Edna describe herself
as not very brave. Grand Isle's opening presents Edna's fears and isolation-she
obviously prefers the safety of dry land, the Umitations of the known.
The second point of departure from the novel is an altered conversation
between Edna and Madame RatignoUe. In the novel, the first time Edna
mentions her "little girl walking through the grass" memory occurs when she
and Madame RatignoIIe sit alone, gazing at the ocean. However, in the film by
41
the time Edna and Madame RatignoUe sit down under the shade of the bathhouse for their intimate sea-side conversation, Edna has already dreamed her
little-girl dream. Edna, sitting beside Madame RatignoUe, contemplates the
ocean, relating her dream of a few weel<^ ago. She teUs her friend that it is the
water "stretching so far" that makes her recall the dream. Edna dreamily looks
into the ocean, the dose-up momentarily focuses on her eyes, and continues:
"I was little again. It was a summer day in Kentucky walking
through a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean. I stretched
my arms as if swimming . . . " (she laughs and adds
contemplatively), "Oh, I see."
Madame RatignoUe asks, "Where were you waUdng through the
ocean?"
Edna pauses, then answers: "I don't remember. Sometimes this
summer I feel as if I'm walking through that meadow again."
Madame RatignoUe responds, whispering cautiously: "Pauvre, cherie." She
wams Edna that married women must not contemplate freely running through
meadows; the only acceptable "dream" is the real one of husbands and
children. This, Edna says, as she wearily lays her head on her friend's shoulder,
mal<:es her ever-so-sad. She confesses that the meadows were joyous, leaving
them behind left her joy-less. Almost magically Robert Lebmn appears in front
of Edna with her two Uttle boys and says: "The children are missing you, Mrs.
PonteUier."
Certainly part of successful adapting depends on economy. Grand Isle
was a made-for-television movie, a T.N.T. production. Mary Lambert had only
42
one hour and forty-five minutes to teU Edna's story; thus, the altered
Edna/Adele conversation, clearly expressing Edna's disappointment in her
marriage, clearly expressing her disappointment in having to leave all of her
dreams for self behind, was a necessary textual departure. The dnematic
conversation rather blatantly states what readers have unlimited time to
deduce from the novel. The brief conversation reveals four significant aspects
of Edna's fmstration with her Ufe. First, Edna not only left dreams of romance
behind, she also abandoned her dreams of joy. Edna's Ufe with Leonce is
perfunctory; she does the right things; she correctly puts one foot in front of
the other-but it is aU pretense. As Chopin describes it, Edna Uves in "a
fictitious selP (55). She sleep-walks through her "Ufe-Iong stupid dream"
(103): this ineffectual state brings her no joy. Second, the altered Edna/Adele
conversation does address Edna's desire to retum to romantic dreams: dreams
of finding something more than her relationship with Leonce and life as
mother provide. Third, these dreams, as indicated by Madame RatignoUe's
cautionary tone as she says "pauvre," are poor ones and must remain "offUmits." Last, and of great significance, is the fact, the reality, of Edna's
mother-role: her children Uterally stand before her "Uke iron fetters." They are
the ultimate factor tearing her away from her dreams of a freer life: they do
"holdher."
43
Certainly the most perplexing aspect of the Edna PontelUer story is the
condusion: Edna's ambiguous drowning at Grand Isle. Wolkenfeld notes:
"This finale constitutes the critical crux of the novel. . . it is central to the
interpretation of Edna's character and the theme of the storv . . . " (241). To
clarify, the way the individual reacts to the condusion very much reflects how
one regards Edna PontelUer. Thus, it is only logical that there are as many
varied critical responses to Edna's suidde as there are possible interpretations
of the story at large. Seyersted regards Edna's death as her spiritual
emandpation; Eble claims that Edna's suidde elevates her to a tragic heroine;
Ringe sees her last waUc to the sea as an assertion of her need for soUtude;
Arms regards it as yet one more "drifting"; Spangler beUeves it to be a pathetic
defeat; Wolff defines her drowning as a symptom of her psychological
disintegration-the Ust goes on and on (Wolkenfeld 242-43). Toth believes
that Edna's suicide reflects a "giving up," a self-resignation to the
"incapab[ility] of escaping woman's state of confinement" ("Feminist"
249-50).
Mary Lambert, once again, is highly "Tothian." She, too, interprets
Edna's drowning as a final, highly dramatic statement on female confinement
at the tum-of-the-century. She states:
In the film, I tried to soften the idea of suicide, of death. Edna
did not intend to kiU herself. She simply tumed to the wide, big.
44
deep ocean-it was the only space for her, the onlv place she could
attempt to exerdse her freedom.
Lambert's filming of her interpretation of Chopin's much-debated conclusion is
methodical, intricate, complex. It requires careful analvsis.
As viewers approach the end of the film, Edna walks out of the bathhouse on the now deserted beach at Grand Isle. The camera zooms-in on
Edna's release of her highly constricting bathing dress. Certainly designers of
the period (male) created ensembles that mirrored sodety's demand that
women be confined creatures. Daily attire in the mid-to-Iate 1800s stiU
required pantalettes, a corset, a petticoat, an imderskirt, and finaUv, a gown.
The do's and don'ts of fashion could not have been more extreme. Thus,
Lambert's careful attention to Edna's leaving her highly conventional bathing
suit behind is most significant.
Edna is next seen at the ocean's edge discarding her final piece of
dothing. Here, Lambert dramatically iUustrates John Stuart MiII's argument
that women must be aUowed to "share in the healthy physical education and
bodily freedom of their brothers," that women, too, "need to free their bodies
from physical limitations and to Uberate their energies from confinement..."
(qtd. in Toth "Feminist" 247). The now naked Edna very deUberately tums
her back against the known land and enters the ocean. Her strokes are long
and strong, highly energetic. As Edna swims away from the firm, knowTi
45
ground, Lambert superimposes one shot over another. Edna's freely mo\ing
naked body gradually yields to other images. First, there is-for the sixth time
in the film-a cut to the "Uttle girl walking through the grass" memory only
twice referenced in the novel. A dose-up reveals a young face free from care;
slow motion dramatizes freedom of movement, the child's easy, graceful
control of her body. Throughout the film, Lambert cross-cuts between Edna's
frequent moments of dreamy repose to either the sunny little girl image or the
bright image of the sea; thus, the relarionship between the two images has been
pre-estabUshed. Both connote endless, bright possibiUties: individual freedom.
Lambert cuts from the Uttle girl direcriy back to Edna swimming. The
film began with voice-over narration; Lambert condudes the film by retuming
to this technique. Viewers hear Chopin's words: "The water was deep, but she
Ufted her white body and reached out with a long, sw^eeping stroke. The touch
of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, dose embrace" (Chopin
109). As these words are softly, seductively spoken, various images fade-in and
out. The first image is a low angle dose-up profile of Leonce. The Ughring is
low key. GraduaUy, the shot doIUes back to include Edna's sons. Leonce holds
Etienne in one arm and reaches out to Raoul with the other. Significantly,
Leonce is off center, dressed in black; the boys are near the center of the screen
in vertical aUgnment, dressed in white. Thus, Lambert uses film language to
46
iUustrate Edna's "it doesn't matter about Leonce PontelUer-but Raoul and
Etienne!" (Chopin 108) concem. As the image of Leonce and the boys fadesout, a blurry, dreamy, dark, soft focus close-up of Robert quickly fades-in and
out: this technique allows Lambert to briUiantlv communicate that romance is
but a fleeting solution for Edna, not a permanent answer at all. The soft focus
image of Robert is foUowed by a cut to a sharply defined medium shot of
MademoiseUe Reisz playing the piano in front of a sun-filled window. The
contrast between these two images could not be more extreme: Lambert's film
language suggests that Edna now comprehends the futility of romantic dreams
and prefers the reaUty of the Ufestyle and spirit of women such as
MademoiseUe Reisz. There is a cut to Edna swimming; a dose-up focuses on
Edna stopping, pausing momentarily contemplating the endless free space
before her. Voice-over narration begins again: "She did not look back now, but
went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed
when a Uttle child, beUeving that it had no beginning and no end" (Chopin
109). As the viewers hear these words, the sea, for the final time, dissolves
into the grass. The child, with her back to the camera, mns farther and farther
away, becoming smaller and smaUer. Then, mysteriously, the little girl fades-in
to the sea of grass.
47
Lambert's condusion fulfiUs her purpose: she does not in any way
portray Edna's drowTiing as deUberately suiddal. In fact, much Uke in the
novel, the audience ne\^er "sees" Edna drown; the focus is not on suidde or
death but on Edna's tuming her back on convention and desperately reaching
out, trying to arrive at freer space. Howe\'er, finding such an en\ironment at
the tum-of-the-century was hopeless: Edna cannot resist the suffocation
prescribed by sodetv. These three departures from the novel ser\'e Lambert's
feminist interpretarion weU: they assist \iewers in seeing Edna's stor\' in Ught
of feminist sodal critidsm.
To Lambert's credit, she exacriy dupUcates one aspect of the novel, one
generaUy neglected by critics: the "Sleeping Beaut\^" scene. After Edna
awakens at Madame Antoine's, she playfuUy asks Robert how many years she
has slept. She notes: "The whole island seems changed. A new race of beings
must have sprung up . . . " (37). Robert repUes: "You have slept a hundred
years" (37). Indeed, Edna subconsdously seems to reaUze that the current
age-tum-of-the-century America-is not where she belongs. She dreams about
a new race that surely must spring up. Chopin appears to share Edna's
sentiments. She states:
If it were possible for my husband and my mother to come back
to earth, I feel that I would unhesitantly give up every thing that
has come into my Ufe since they left it and join my existence
again with theirs. To do that, I would have to forget the past ten
48
years of my growth-my real growth. (qtd. in Toth " A New
Biographical" 113)
Obviously Chopin beUeved it impossible for a woman to be married and yet to
develop as an individual. She, too, perhaps, looked fonvard to another time, a
"Dr. Mandalet world" where women would not aU have to be aUke, where
women, whether married or single, would be free to pursue "multiple
possibiUties of fulfillment" (Wolkenfeld 243)-meaningful work, deep thinking,
self-expression and female sexuaUty. As noted by Martin: "Chopin was a writer
who was ahead of her time" (11). Seyersted explains:
The great achievement of Kate Chopin was that she broke new
ground in American Uterature. She was the first woman writer in
her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious,
outspoken fiction . . . she undertook to give the unsparing tmth
about a woman's submerged Ufe. (31-32)
Lambert's description of The Awakening as "the ultimate feminist cry"
seems most appropriate: Cott relates that one 1913 writer defined the newly
labeled Feminist movement as "the stir of new Ufe, the palpable awakening of
consdence" (qtd. in Cott 14). Toth relates:
A work Uke The Awakening functions not only as a story, but also
as a critique. When we can see more clearly its place in
nineteenth-century sodal critidsm, we can understand more
easily its impact on its original readers and its meaning for us as
part of our widening knowledge of women's past. Because it
expands our field of vision, The Awakening is the best kind of
feminist critidsm. ("Feminist" 251)
49
Loynd reflects that The Awakening was a "novel ahead of its rime wairing to be
filmed." Lambert's nearly a century-after-the-novel film production was then
perhaps most appropriately timed: a new race has sprung up-a race that does
allow, however gmdgingly at times, for women to pursue multiple possibiUties
of fulfiUment. The Awakening and Grand Isle both proclaim "the goals of
feminists in the twentieth century as weU as the nineteenth" (Toth "Feminist"
241): individual freedom of choice. Edna's story, communicated in prose by
Chopin, told in film language by Lambert, clearly illustrates that "[n]o amount
of gilding ever made a cage attractive to the poor wretch within" (Dix 148).
CHAPTER III
JACK LONDON'S "NATURALISM": THE SEA-WOLF
CURTIZ'S ON-COURSE ADAPTATION
Jack London (1876-1916) was a most proUfic writer. During his short
life, he wrote more than fifty books, two-hundred short stories, and
four-hundred non-fiction articles (White 45). These works have been
translated into more than fifty-seven languages; three coUections of his works
have been pubUshed in the Soviet Union, seventeen volumes in Portugal, and
four volumes in England (Wilcox 87). His literature includes sodaUst protests,
sdence fiction fantasies, anthropological romances, utopian writings,
agronomical tracts, ecological essays, hoboing tales, prize-fighting accounts,
apocalyptical imaginations, autobiographical portrayals, sea sagas, and dog
stories.
London's name is instantly recognized by a world-wide audience. Soviet
scholar Vil Bykov perhaps best simmiarizes the reaction of many readers across
the globe when he queries: "Who has not heard of Jack London, the famous
American writer who has conquered milUons of hearts by his faith in man, in
man's unlimited strength and possibiUties?" (qtd. in Labor "Humanist" 27). It
is, however, for only three novels that Jack London is primarily "heard o P in
50
51
this, his homeland (White 45). London's The CaU of the Wild, the story of a
dviUzed dog retuming to its primordial state, is an American classic. Since its
pubUcation in 1903, this dog story has sold over seven miUion copies
(Tavemier-Courbin 1). Carl Sandburg claims that "The Call of the Wild is the
greatest dog story ever written and is at the same time a study of one of the
most curious and profound motives that play hide-and-seek in the human soul"
(qtd. in Kingman 116). The companion piece to this American classic, White
Fang, (1906), has stood the test of time on its own merit, recently finding a
new audience via Randall Kleiser's 1991 dnematic adaptation. The third of
London's most weU-known works in America is the stoiy of a cmel,
materiaUstic sea captain and his sensitive, spiritual captive, symboUcaUy
entitled The Sea-Wolf. This fictional work, published in 1904, was a success,
rivaling The Call of the Wild and White Fang in sales and outranking them
both in motion picture productions. Earle Labor notes that " [o]ver a
half-milUon copies of this novel have been sold in hardback edition by
MacmiUan-not induding the countless paperback sales" (Tack London 59).
This story has been adapted for the big screen eight times.
The commonly held perception in this country of London as a writer of
dog stories and adventure tales has perhaps contributed to problematic
assessment and dassification. JacqueUne Tavemier-Courbin claims that
52
London is stiU seen by most American readers and Uterary critics
as a writer of dog stories and children stories, as a hack writer
who, for some mysterious reason, was far more successful than he
deserved to be and who, therefore, should be dismissed by
intelUgent readers. (2)
London's reputation has suffered from his dassification as an American
NaturaUst. Early critics described him as a ". . . sideshow in the naturaUst
camival" (Hoffinan 44); C. C. Walcutt Ukened London's naturaUstic writings
to "sentimental slush" (293); Donald Pizer, author of Realism and Naturalism,
insists that the only way to make any sense of London's "naturaUstic" writings
is to approach them as parables (166). Gordon Beauchamp may have hit the
proverbial nail on the head: he insists that "[t]he very variety and lack of
system in [London's] Uterary creations beUe the simpUstic textbook
classification of him as a NaturaUst" (16).
What is the textbook dassification of a Naturalist? C. C. Walcutt
contends that
the word naturaUst. . . labels a philosophy fairly adequately, but
by the time we have passed through the varieties of sodal and
ethical appUcations that have been drawn from it and Usted the
form, styles, and motifs that it has evoked, we dare speak of the
"naturalistic** novel only with the reseivations impUed by
quotation marks. (23)
However, textbook definitions of naturaUsm minus quotation marks abound.
Kirzner and MandeU define naturaUsm as
53
a pessimistic philosophy that presents a world which at worst is
hostile and at best is indifferent to human concems. It pictures
human beings as higher-order animals who are driven by basic
instincts-espedaUy hunger, fear, and sexuality-and are subject to
economic, sodal, and biological forces beyond their control.
(1026)
The Dictionary of Literary Terms defines naturaUsm as simply "an attempt to
achieve fideUty to nature by rejecting ideaUzed portrayals of Ufe" (252). The
Oxford Companion to American Literature explains that naturaUsm is an
outgrowth of Darwin's biological determinism and Marx's economic
determinism. The author of this entry calls attention to the highly pessimistic
tone of this movement (525). In the Dictionary of World Literary Terms the
author of the naturalism entry (Monroe C. Beardsley) clarifies that naturalism
must be defined in three ways: a) it can "reflect a love and concem for nature
and natural beauty," b) it can mean "reaUsm," and c) it can be "reserved for
works of Uterature . . . that utiUze realistic methods . . . to embody . . .
philosophic naturaUsm" (210). Beardsley condsely defines philosophic
naturaUsm as pessimistic materiaUstic determinism. He darifies that
pessimistic materiaUstic determinism
emphasizes the strength of extemal forces (sodal and natural)
that obstmct human freedom, and the strength of intemal forces
(genetic and unconsdous) that Umit human rationaUty and moral
responsibiUty. There is a tendency in naturalistic writing to look
upon Ufe as a downhiU stmggle with the only outcome in
quiescence or death. (210-11)
54
Using the last offered and most complete definition, i.e., Beardsley's
three separate and distinct descriptions of naturalism as a guide, what does an
analysis of London's most weU-known story via print and fiUn, The Sea-WolL
say about Jack London's Naturalist classification?
First then, what does The Sea-Wolf communicate relative to NaturaUsm
as an expression of "love and concem for nature and natural beauty?" In this
novel, London consistently connects nature with "bad," with unfavorable,
gloomy images of Ufe. As the story begins, Hump reflects that "[t]he danger
lay in the heavy fog . . ." (I). Only a few pages later, London portrays women
drowning in the cold sea, caught Uke "rats in a trap" (12). Later, Hump and
Maud contemplate how best to kiU the seals. Hump, in a state of near-panic,
insists that they must succeed and cries out, "Winter is almost here. It is our
lives against theirs" (224).
London metaphorically ties the bmtish hunters to the sea: the six
hunters possess "a laugh that was as rough and harsh and frank as the sea
itselP (24). Later, Hump intensifies the connection between the sea and
bmtaUty by noting that Larsen's eyes "were bleak, and cold, and gray as the sea
itselT (30). After the heartless "funeral service" of the dead sailor, Hump
reflects: "Then it was that the cmelty of the sea, its relentlessness and
awfulness, rushed upon me" (33).
53
The name of the material, Nietzschean "blond beast" must not be
overlooked. Wolf Larsen, however, is not only described as "a mad wolf" (71),
the reader often sees him possessing the "fearful symmetry" of Blake's demonic
tigen Wolf moves with "the softness of a tiger" (63); he leaps for his victims
"without first gaining a standing position" (93); he leaves chairs "springing
from the sitting posture Uke a wild animal, a tiger, and Uke a tiger cover[s] the
intervening space" (93-94). Hump blatantly "Uken[s] him to some great riger,
a beast of prowess and prey . . ." (169). London further connects Wolf to yet
another beast: the ultimate enemy of creation-Ludfer-MiIton's "[b]etter to
reign in heU than serve in heaven" materialist (197). The talkative and
perceptive Louis describes Wolf as the Antichrist""the great big beast
mentioned iv [sic] in Revelation . . . " (49).
The Sea-Wolf is a most connotative titie: London uses a hyphen to
connect the dangerous, destmctive, demonic beastly Wolf Larsen to the
entrapping sea-the two intertwine, becoming one in their assessment of nature
as evil, nature as the enemy. The Sea-Wolf clearly does not lend itself to either
ecological concems or "God's Grandeur" reflections. Thus, this work fails to
pass the first-offered Beardsley definition of NaturaUstic writing as a tranquil
love for nature and natural beauty.
56
Second, Beardsley offers a definition equating naturalism with realism.
This Uterary movement, too, lacks predsion. The Oxford Companion to
American Literature condsely defines realism as "a term appUed to Uterary
composition that aims at an interpretation of the actuaUties of any aspect of
Ufe, free from subjective prejudice, ideaUsm, or romantic color. It is opposed to
the concem with the unusual that forms the basis of romance" (628). The
Dictionary of Literaiy Terms defines realism as "a theory of writing in which
the famiUar, ordinary aspects of Ufe are depicted in a straightforward manner
designed to reflect life as it actually is; treatment of subject matter in a way
that presents careful descriptions of everyday Ufe . . . " (316). And The
Dictionaiy of World Literary Terms insists that "in reaUstic writing, the author
. . . rigorously excludes his own feeUngs, normative judgments, philosophical
interpretations, and reconmnendations for action" (266).
How does The Sea-Wolf fare when measured against these guideUnes?
Is it "opposed to a concem with the imusual, the romantic" and "free from
ideaUsm?" Does it "exclude [authorial] philosophical interpretations" and
"recommendations for action?"
Setting is a cmdal aspect of reaUstic writing: Mark Twain's Mississippi
River, Kate Chopin's New Orleans, Edith Wharton's upper-crust New York
exemplify reaUstic setting. In The Sea-Wolf. however, readers enter a
57
netherland. The Ghost is a "UtUe floating worid" (48) unto itself, a hellship
with Ludfer as its guide. This world is sun-Iess; it is a world dominated by fog
and gloom. Pain, torment, and cmelty reign. A confrontation with "Death"
awaits "the world's" population. Readers are transplanted to Dante's Infemo
and begin to wonder if all of the Ghost's crew are doomed. Clearly, The SeaWolf is "not opposed to a concem with the unusual."
Is the tale "free from idealism?" Early in the novel, Hump romantically
queries: "How could I explain my idealism to this man? How could I put into
speech a something felt, a something Uke the strains of music heard in sleep, a
something that convinced yet transcended utterance?" (45). Only a bit further
into the stoiy, Wolf Larsen once again leaves Hump speechless: "Value of Ufe?
How could I answer the question on the spur of the moment? The sacredness
of life I had accepted as axiomatic. That it was intrinsically valuable was a
truism I had never questioned" (58). Later, however, Hump does find the
words to describe his ideaUsm: "An altmistic act is an act performed for the
welfare of others. It is unselfish, as opposed to an act performed for self, which
is selfish" (67). This, the novel proclaims-altruistic behavior-makes aU the
difference. It is the only hope for finding meaning in Ufe-it is the ultimate
truism. Wolf and Hump discuss Johnson, the sailor who continuaUy defies
Wolf in the interest of the other inhabitants of "the Uttie world":
58
"Look at [Johnson], Hump," Wolf Larsen said to me, "look at
this bit of animated dust, this aggregation of matter that moves
and breathes and defies me and thoroughly beUeves itself to be
compounded of something good, that is impressed with certain
human fictions such as righteousness and honesty and that wiU
Uve up to them in spite of aU personal discomforts and menaces.
WTiat do you think of him, Hump? What do you think of him?"
"I think that he is a better man than you are," I answered,
impeUed somehow with a desire to draw upon myself a portion of
the wrath I felt was about to break upon [Johnson's] head. "His
human fictions, as you choose to call them, make for nobility and
manhood. You have no fictions, no dreams, no ideals. You are a
pauper." (93)
Hump is not a pauper because he comes to fuUy comprehend what makes a
man rich: "After aU, I thought, it is better and finer to love than to be loved, if
it makes something in life so worthwhile that one is not loath to die for it. I
forget my own life in the love of another life; . . . " ( 2 1 1 ) . Free from idealism?
Hardly.
Does the novel "exclude [authorial] philosophical interpretations?" In
1899 Jack London wrote a letter to his friend, Cloudesley Johns: "I early
leamed that there were two natures in me. This caused me a great deal of
trouble, tiU I worked out a philosophy of Ufe and stmck a compromise between
the flesh and the s p i r i t . . . " (Letters 103). However, readers leam in a 1902
letter to the same friend that London was stiU stmggUng with "working out a
philosophy of Ufe" (Letters 300). The Sea-Wolf. pubUshed in 1904, obviously
reflects London's philosophical stmggle at this point in time. Carolyn
59
Johnston explains that "[i]n The Sea-Wolf one sees the tension between
London's emotional and aesthetic attraction for Nietzsche and his inteUectual
rejection of the latter's thought" (83). The novel opens with Hump reflecting
that he "scarcely know[s] where to begin" (7) telUng the Wolf Larsen story.
But he does know "the cause of it aU" (I )-Charley Fumseth's escape to his
winter residence to read "Nietzsche and Schopenhauer" (7). As explained by
Michael Dimford:
This confUct, Nietzschean versus Schopenhauerean ethics, is
readily apparent in The Sea-Wolf. Wolf Larsen is the primary
spokesman for the transvaluation. The traditional "higher" moral
values-altmism, compassion, unselfishness-are transgressions
against Larsen's Superman philosophy and are therefore regarded
by him as sinful and immoral. (41)
Jack London described The Sea-Wolf as a duaUstic novd. He beUeved that
"[t]he superfidal reader [would] get the love story and the adventure; while the
deeper reader [would] get aU this, plus the bigger thing undemeath" (Letters
338). The "bigger thing" is dearly London's philosophical debate between the
physical and the romantic, the material and the spiritual. Years later London
lamented that many had nússed the bigger thing-his philosophical argument:
"[l]ong years ago, at the very beginning of my writing career, I attacked
Nietzsche and his super-man idea. This was in The Sea-Wolf. Lots of people
read The Sea-Wolf. no one discovered that it was an attack upon the superman
philosophy" (London Letters 1513).
60
Obviously then, the novel does not fulfiU Beardsley's second offered
definition equating naturalism with reaUsm because the novel does not concem
itself with the "famiUar" and the "ordinary," it does concem itself with
romantic ideaUsm, it does concem itself with authorial philosophical debate,
and it does reconmiend a course of action: altruistic behavior. Earle Labor,
the foremost London scholar, blatantly states that "[c]ontrary to his own
beUef, [London] was not a reaUst at aU" (lack London 49).
Is the novel a work reflecting pessimistic materialistic determinism?
Answering this question requires a three-part analysis: (a) does The Sea-Wolf
"emphasize the strength of extemal forces (sodal and natural) that obstmct
human freedom," (b) does the work "emphasize the strength of intemal forces
(genetic and unconsdous) that obstmct human rationality and moral
responsibiUty," and (c) does London's sea saga portray Ufe "as a downhiU
stmggle with the only outcome quiescence or death?"
The novel clearly addresses the impact of sodal forces. Early in the
book, Hump reflects on the wonders of the division of labor. Later, Wolf
Larsen, too, reflects on this division. He looks at Hump's hand and teUs him
that "[d]ead men's hands have kept it soft" (26). The division is simple: there
are those who labor and those who do not. London seems to suggest that there
are those bom to "no chance" and those bom to a Ufe of opportunity. Hump
61
analyzes Thomas Mugridge, reflecting that "[l]ife had been unfair to
[Mugridge]" (101); indeed, Hump asks himself, "[w]hat chance had he to be
anything else than he was?" Hump relates:
And as though answering my unspoken thought, [Mugridge]
wailed, "I never *ad no chance, nor 'arf a chance! 'Oo was there
to send me to school, or put tommy in my 'ungiy belly, or wipe
my bloody nose for me w'en I was a kiddy? *Oo ever did
anything for me, heh? 'Oo, I s'y?" (101)
Hump reflects on yet another of sodety's "sins" committed against the poor
sailors:
In years and years not one of them has been in contact with a
good woman, or within the influence or redemption which
irresistibly radiates from such a creature. There is no balance in
their lives. Their masculinity, which in itself is of the bmte, has
been overdeveloped. The other and spiritual side of their natures
has been dwarfed-atrophied, in fact. (105)
Indeed, London notes that aU of them had "receiv[ed] repeated impresses from
the die which had stamped them" (99): i.e., from sodety.
Just as emphatic is London's assertion that nature is a strong extemal
force. He continually personifies nature's components: the sun is "angry"
(26); the sea gleefuUy "tosses foanning whitecaps to the sky" (26); the ocean is
described as "a seething green" (150). When the crew confronts a
life-threatening storm, Wolf Larsen cries: "Old Mother Nature's going to get
up on her hind legs and howl for all that's in her, and it'U keep us jumping . . ."
(127). Too, London asserts the strength of genetics. Wolf Larsen (once again
62
missing the spiritual impUcations in his reading) misinterprets Christ's parable
of the sower and describes his birth as an implantation in "a stony place where
there was not much earth," where the "thoms sprung up and choked [the
seedUngs]"(10I).
Most dramatic is London's reUance on Danvinism as he continuaUy
emphasizes the connection to primordial man and his antidpation of Jung as
he continuaUy emphasizes the role of the coUective unconsdous. Hump's first
description of Wolf Larsen relates that his strength
was what núght be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind
we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of
his heavy build, partook more of the enlarged goriUa order. Not
that in appearance he seemed in the least goriUaUke. What I am
striving to express is this strength itself, more as a thing apart
from his physical semblance. It was a strength we are wont to
assodate with things primitive, with wild animals and the
creatures we imagine our tree-dwelling prototypes to have been-a
strength savage, ferodous aUve in itself, the essence of Ufe in that
it is the potency of motion, the elemental stuff itself out of which
the many forms of Ufe have been molded; in short, that which
writhes in the body of a snake when the head is cut off and the
snake, as a snake, is dead or wiiich Ungers in a shapeless lump of
turtle meat and recoils and quivers from the prod of a finger. (20)
Later, listening to the hunters arguing in their beds at night, Hump reflects
that they sounded "Uke some semihuman amphibious breed" and that their
"bunks looked Uke the sleeping dens of animals in a menagerie" (39). As
Thomas Mugridge introduces himself, Hump notes that "[a] soft Ught suffused
his face, and his eyes gUstened as though somewhere in the deeps of his being
63
his ancestors had quickened and stirred with dim memories of tips received in
former Uves" (19). As Hump confronts the seals, determined to survive, his
Darwinian/Jungian instincts become particularly evident: "I shall never forget
in that moment how instantly consdous I became of my manhood. The
primitive deeps of my nature stirred. I felt myself masculine, the protector of
the weak, the fighting male" (228).
Although London does emphasize the strength of extemal forces-sodal
and natural-as well as the strength of intemal forces-genetic and unconsdoushe does not iUustrate that these forces negate free wiU. James G. Cooper
contends that the only hope the reader has of deaUng with the many paradoxes
in London's writing is to constantly factor in London's concem with individual
freedom (24). At least three characters dramatize this concem, defying the
"dictates" of their environment. George Leach, the strong-wiUed cabin boy,
has "good reasons for forgetting his name" (27). His probable criminal past is
a source of amusement for the cmel Wolf Larsen. Obviously, Leach's
background is shady; clearly, he was not bom a gentleman. However, he
refuses to "knuckle under" and surprises the crew by his kind behavior, defying
Larsen's orders at the risk of his own Ufe to "dress [Johnson's] wounds as well
as he could and mak[e] him comfortable" (95). Later, fadng the reaUty of his
precarious existence, he voices a final request:
64
"I want to ask a favor, Mr. Van Weyden," [Leach] said. "If it's
yer luck to ever make Frisco once more, wiU you hunt up Matt
McCarthy? He's my old man. He Uves on the HiU, back of the
Mayfair bakery, runnin' a cobbler's shop that everybody knows,
and you'U have no trouble. Tell him I lîved to be sorry for the
trouble I brought him and the things I done, and-and just teU
him God bless him, for me." (124)
London describes the general lot of the sailors on the Ghost as "heavy,"
"stoUd" men of "EngUsh or Scandinavian birth" (32). Johnson fits this
description must accurately. Hump notes: "The man addressed as Yonson, a
man of heavy Scandinavian type, ceased chafing me and arose awkwardly to
his feet" (16). Yet this man displays remarkably different behavior fi-om the
others. After Hump severely injures his knee, he relates that "what stmck me
most fordbly was the total lack of sympathy on the part of the men whom I
served" (36). However, Johnson continuaUy exhibits kindness-of-heart. He it
is who mbs Hump's body back to warmth after his near-drowning; he it is who
"strive[s] to help the unfortunate Harrison at the risk of incurring Wolf
Larsen's anger" (56). Hump relates that "[o]ne was stmck at once by
[Johnson's] straightforwardness and manUness . . . " (51). London portrays
both Leach and Johnson rising above the bmtaUty of their environment.
Hump wonders if he is becoming tainted by this bmtal world (56). He reflects
that "[t]he continual bmtaUty around [him] was degenerative in its effect"
(99). However, Hump, too, refuses to give in to the "animaUty of man" (99).
65
In the end, Hump's higher nature prevails: he is "unable to shoot a helpless,
unresisting man" (250) even when "the law of club and fang" dictates the need
for the execution.
London iUustrates that nature, too, can be defied. The sea is cold, and
mthless but "Sissy" Van Weyden "trie[s] with aU the power of [his] wiU to
fight above the suffocating blankness . . . " (14). When the Ghost faces the
great storm, Hump queries, "But if it is going to howl, and there are only two
of us?"- Larsen repUes, "Why, we've got to make the best of the first of it and
mn down to our boats before our canvas is ripped out of us" (127). In the
midst of nature's violent attack on the Ghost, Hump sees Wolf "standing at
the wheel in the midst of the wild welter, pitting his wiU against the wiU of the
storm and defying it" (132). And when Maud and Hump are wrecked on the
shore of "Endeavor" Island, they do exert every effort, not only to survive, but
to escape. Hump asks Wolf, "'But don't you care to escape as weU as we?'
'No,' was his answer. 'I intend dying here.' 'WeU, we don't,' [Hump]
conclude[s] defiantly" (251). And Hump and Maud proceed with thdr
survival endeavors to triim\ph over nature.
Is The Sea-Wolf s ultimate statement supportive of biological
determinism? Again, the defiant Leach and the altruistic Johnson provide
insight. Wolf Larsen suggests that Leach was a person of low birth, probably a
66
bastard, yet his actions set him apart from the other self-centered and
hardened men on the Ghost. Nowhere in the novel does London give the
reader any information that suggests that Johnson's birth station was superior
to the other sailors. Yet Johnson insists that his name be pronounced
correctly. Words don't come easy to this blundering man: he "grope[s] in his
vocabulary" (17), stmggUng to find the right phrases, stmggling to estabUsh his
dignity. The impUcation is clear: mankind can, if he so chooses, rise above the
limitations of birth.
Does the novel suggest that the primordial is strong enough to limit
human rationaUty and moral responsibility? Hump, eaves-dropping on the
sailors' conversation, notes that there was "very little reasoning or none at aU"
(38) evident in their arguments. However, Leach reasons weU, "counting to
ten," "master[ing] his temper" (28). Johnson is a superior man because he has
reasoned out a humane code to Uve by; he has the "courage of his convictions"
(51). And Hump, too, triumphs via rational thought. He teUs Maud: "The
battle is not always to the strong. We have not the strength with wiûch to
fight this man; we must dissimulate, and win, if win we can, by craft" (165).
Hump's final triumph-indeed, the novel's triumph-is its clearly stated
rationale for Uving, a rationale based solely on moral responsibiUty: "plac[ing]
67
the least value on [one's] own Ufe" (211), pladng the greatest value on the
Uves of others.
In The CaU of the Wild. London argues in favor of a primordial state; in
White Fang. he argues in favor of a dviUzed state. Indeed, a dog can be "a
success" in either world; however, man, London suggests, does not have that
option. The Sea-Wolf impUes that Hump's success is highly dependent upon
his abiUty to balance the primordial and the dvilized state. Hump never
forsakes his ability to reason; his experiences on the Ghost intensify his
commitment to Spencer's higher conduct~to actively Uving his Ufe for others.
However, his time spent in "hell" also teaches him the need for being
connected to the animal within. London relates that Hump is joyous when he
realizes that "[t]he youth of the race seemed burgeoning in me, overdviUzed
man that I was, and I lived for myself the old hunting days and forest nights of
my remote and forgotten ancestry" (228). Hump adnûts that "[he] had much
for which to thank Wolf Larsen" (228). This "much" is the abiUty to stand on
his own legs, to find the primordial man within and suivive.
London's use of Milton must not be overlooked. When young Jack
went to the Klondike to hunt for gold, he took with him only five books: one
of these was Paradise Lost (Johnston 43). Obviously, London was famiUar
68
with Milton's God's justification of Himself to the Son by accentuating His
lack of control regarding man's faU:
whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee
AU he could have; I made him just and right,
Suffident to have stood, though free to fall.
(P.L. 96-9)
This proclaimed distandng of God the Father from man's fall estabUshes the
theme of the epic: Milton's passionate beUef in human free will. In Book IV,
Satan reminds himself that he, too, had "the same free wiU and power to stand
. . . " (66) but that he dedded to choose behavior supporting his "[b]etter to
reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n" (1.263) credo. Thus, London's deUberate
connection of Wolf Larsen to Milton's Ludfer says much: Wolf, London's
Ludfer, also possesses firee wiU.
When Hump first sees the now-blind Wolf in the Ghost at Endeavor
Island, he states: "It was uncanny. I felt myself a ghost, what of my
invisibiUty. I waved my hand back and forth, of course without effect; but
when the moving shadow feU across his face I saw at once that he was
susceptible to the impression" (245). The portrayal of Wolf as one who resides
in a ghost-Uke world and sees only ghost-Uke shadows is significant. Wolf
never possesses visual darity. Hump adapts to his environment and clearlv
sees what he must leam. Wolf, however, refuses to do the same. Life did
69
present Wolf with opportunities: a superior mind susceptible to the
impressions of books, a superior mind adept at leaming "navigation,
mathematics, sdence, Uterature, and what not" (84). However, Wolf blames
the books, insisting that "[his] mistake was in ever opening [them]" (84).
Hump is eager to shed Ught on Wolf s dark and mistaken interpretations
regarding much of the philosophy he has read, particularly on Spencer's
"highest, finest, right conduct" (68), i.e., altmism, but when Himip attempts to
clear up Wolf s perceptual eyesight, he is promptly dismissed. Hump assesses
the situation most accurately: "Wolf Larsen evidently had sifted the great
philosopher's teachings, rejecting and selecting according to his needs and
desires" (68). Wolf sardonically reflects on aU of his studying: "And of what
use has it been?" (84). It has been of no use because he has seen nothing
clearly. It has also been of no use because his purpose for leaming was invaUd:
"I did it," he cries, "aU for myself" (84). It is Wolf Larsen's continual lack of
moral responsibility to others that leaves him forever submerged in darkness.
This leaves only the final portion, item "c" of Beardsley's third offered
definition of NaturaUsm, to be addressed. Does The Sea-Wolf portray Ufe "as
a downhiU stmggle with the only outcome quiescence or death?" Here The
Sea-Wolf most clearly defies naturaUstic categorization. London once stated
that he "h[ad] smaU regard for an utter bmte or an utter saint" (Letters 103).
70
And, indeed, the reader finds Uttle to admire in either the bmtish, material
Wolf or in the Uly-white Hump. Larsen's materiaUstic approach to Ufe-his
utter selfishness~is so intense that it leads Hump to summarize him as "a man
so purely prinútive that he was of the type that came into the world before the
development of the moral nature" (81). Humphrey is such an obvious
dilettante that the reader agrees with Larsen's assessment of him as one who
"couldn't walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for [his] belly"
(25). The antagonism between the two characters is early estabUshed.
London, ever concemed with Ufe as a high-stakes game (Payne 10), misses no
chance to set up a winner/loser scenario. This veiy fact, the reader's early
comprehension of an eventual moment of triumph, does not mesh weU with
NaturaUsm's final criteria: quiescence or death. The entrance of Maud
Brewster intensifies the early-perceived dichotomy. Hump, reflecting on Maud
and Wolf, notes that "[e]ach was nothing that the other was, everything that
the other was not" (168). Dunford explains that Maud "seems a Uterary
characterization of [the] Schopenhauerean ethic: *Hurt no one, rather help aU
as much as you can'" (41). The couple's cooperative spirit aboard their escape
ship and their commitment to teamwork on Endeavor Island aUows them to
triumph over great adversity. Wolf, as explained by Jack London, "prove[s]
that superman cannot be successful in modem Ufe. The superman is anti-sodal
71
and in these days of our complex sodety and sodology he cannot be successful
in his hostile aloofness" (qtd. in London, C. 57). Thus, Nietzschean wiU to
power-in the form of Wolf Larsen-dies, but Schopenhauerean altmism-in the
form of the soon-to-be Van Weyden couple-Uves. The novel's final statement
is highly optimistic, suggesting that there is no force so great as to prevail
against a committed and united front.
And it is this, The Sea-WolPs optimistic, Ufe-affirming spirit that most
flies in the face of Naturalism. Michael Schoenecke daims that this same
optimistic spirit "permeated London's writing" (3) at large. Russ Kingman,
too, reflects on the optimistic tone continually found throughout the London
canon. He explains that London's work "stress[es] the wiU to live and man's
enthusiastic victoiy over his environment, whether it be in the ghettoes of
Oakland, the firozen wilds of the Klondike, or the depressing, debiUtating heat
of the South Seas" (104). Professor Li Shuyan of Beijing University reflects
that
[w]hatever happens in the critical world, London wiU go on
enjoying the admiration of the Chinese readers. . . . the many
heroes of London's stories wiU always be an encouraging force to
those who are fighting against adversities, and who beUeve the
worth of man Ues in doing, creating, and achieving. (qtd. in
Labor "Humanist" 27)
Labor continually emphasizes the author's "lust for Ufe" (Robb 6). IronicaUy,
the ultimate rebuttal of the author's NaturaUst dassification comes from
72
London himself. In "What life Means to Me," London wrote of the purpose
he found in his sodaUst affiUation:
Here I found, also, warm faith in the human glowing ideaUsm,
sweetness of unselfishness, renundation, and martyrdom-aU the
splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here Ufe was clean, noble,
and alive. Here Ufe rehabiUtated itself, became wonderful and
glorious; and I was glad to be aUve. I was in touch with great
souls who exalted flesh and spirit over doUars and cents, and to
whom the thin wail of the starved slum child meant more than
the pomp and drcumstance of conmnerdal expansion and world
empire. All about me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of
effort, and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine, aU
fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever buming and blazing, the
Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm human, long-suffering
and maltreated, but to be rescued and saved at the last. (London
303)
Indeed, what London found appeaUng about sodaUsm was the altmistic
effort and the romantic, heroic notion of saving the less fortunate. In her
perceptive work, Carolyn Johnston argues that London "was a rebel protesting
against the injustices of capitaUstic sodety" (emp. added 181), but that his
poUtics were ultimately "enmeshed in traditional American values" (182),
"affirm[ing] those pioneer values of individuaUsm, self-reUance, and
cooperation . . ." (183). She further reminds readers that "the depth of a
comnútment must be measured by one's actions" (186) and contends that
London's "personal achievement was ultimatdy more important to him than
coUective stmggle" (186). Before his death, London resigned from the
SodaUst Partv- London was a self-admitted romantic dreamer-at times he was
73
a disappointed ideaUst, but never a "natural" pessimist. Furthermore, his work
continually iUustrates his own anti-deterministic stance. In 1898, London
wrote to a friend:
I don't care if the whole present, aU I possess, were swept away
from me-I wiU build a new present; If I am left naked and hungry
to-morrow~before I give in I wiU go on naked and hungry; if I
were a woman, I would prostitute myself to all men but that I
would succeed-in short, I wiU. (Letters 26)
It is most difficult to accept Jack London as a disdple of textbook NaturaUsm.
If Jack London is, at best, a freak sideshow in the naturaUst camival,
what tent then should cover him? Earle Labor titied his first chapter of his
definitive London work "The American Adam." In this chapter, he describes
London as the most American of Americans, as very much epitomizing "the
American folk hero" (21). His commentary on London's writing in this text,
however, focuses on the American Adam's primordial vision and Jungian
antidpation. I contend that another look at The Sea-Wolf suggests that there
is an appropriate canvas for the American Adam-not in a NaturaUst sideshow
booth, but in a "big top" American tent. Perhaps Jack London's philosophy
can best be described as Americanism.
Exactiy what Americaiúsm is has been an estabUshed subject of inquiry
since Jean De Crevecouer first asked "What Is an American?" in 1782.
Historians, sodologists, anthropologists, and psychologists have all addressed
74
the question. A single and complete Ust of those characteristics labeled
American is allusive; however, there are some aspects of Americanism that
surface regardless of disdpUne. Jack London's president, Theodore Roosevelt,
said that "Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, tmth,
sincerity, and hardihood-the virtues that made America" (326). These
characteristics are continually reflected in American Uterature, perhaps finding
no greater expression than in Jack London's The Sea-Wolf.
As earlier noted, London describes nature as "dangerous" and "bmtal."
The sea is a force to be reckoned with. The protagonist, the cmel Larsen, is a
creature of nature: a "mad wolf," "a demonic tiger," "a fallen Ludfer-Uke angel
who must be overcome. As explained by anthropologist Conrad M. Arensberg
and research sdentist Arthur H. Niehoff: "For Americans, the natural
environment is something to overcome. . . . American man attempts to
conquer nature" (169). John Smith was one of the earliest to give voice to the
American notion of the American land-the natural environment-as a "thing"
to be mastered: "Heaven and earth," he daimed, "never agreed better to frame
a place for man's habitation" (qtd. in Quinn 19). Indeed, grasping the
Calvinist concept of America as New Promised Land here for the taking is
fundamental to understanding American thought: much Uke the IsraeUtes
75
triumphing over the land of Canaan, the frontiersman, in MelviUe's words, was
a "Moses in the Ex:odus" (The Confidence-Man 164).
The romantic idealism so eloquently argued by London's H u m p - that
nobility, manhood, and unselfishness are dreams worth dreaming-too, is
typically American. Thomas Jefferson best defined American nobiUty as a
"natural aristocracy" based on individual virtue and self-chosen goodness. It is
this self-chosen "fight for the right unto death if need be" that has historically
made a man a man in America: from Patrick Henry-"Give me Uberty or give
me death"-to Douglas Macarthur "I shaU retum," from Mark Twain's Huck
Finn-"rU go to heU [to free Jim from slavery]"-to Emest Hemingway's Robert
Jordan-"I have fought for what I believe in," America has consistently
applauded those natural aristocrats who stand by their convictions despite the
cost to self.
John Erskine's words support the contention that London's-and The
Sea-Woirs-notable preoccupation with philosophy is typically American. He
states:
The American wonders wiiy Europe does not recognize his
extraordinary preoccupation with ideas. His wars have been
fought for ideas, his universities are debating grounds of new
ideas, he rebuilds his dties at great inconvenience in order to
carry out his latest ideas . . . (50)
76
Indeed, America itself is nothing but an experiment with an idea, the idea of
democracy. "Liberty," remarks Erskine, "is an opportunity to experiment" (2);
America can be described as one great idea adventure.
Americans, by and large, have rejected the tenets of pessimistic
materialistic determinism; a beUef in individual free wiU remains a comerstone
of Americanism. London's Johnson and Leach rising above the "dictates" of
heredity and environment, Hump's "never say die" attitude on Endeavor
Island, and Wolf as Milton's "free to choose" Ludfer evince London's
commitment to free wiU. Indeed, Americans have historically applauded free
and independent thinking: Thoreau and Emerson preached reasoning for self;
Whitman and Hemingway advocated leaming via first-hand experience. As
noted by Wright: "The desire for self-improvement has been one of the most
characteristic quaUties in Americans from the earUest time to the present day"
(43). Hump's Ben FrankUn determination to use his wits to achieve success, to
balance book-leaming with active Uving, and to improve himself through hard
work are certainly all in keeping with the American character. As explained by
Wright, hard work and America go hand-in-hand: "The Puritans were not the
only ones wiio taught the virtues of diUgence, thrift, and sobriety, but they
emphasized these quaUties to such a degree that extravagance became a
cardinal sin and work was regarded as a worthy end in itselP (42). Thus,
77
Hump's tuming from a "sissified" dilettante to a hard-working man capable of
standing on his own two feet is a highly Emersonian self-reliant statement.
Although Americans strongly believe in the individual and individual
free wiU, this beUef is tempered by compassion for the underdog. "Give me
your tired, your poor," a wiUingness to extend to aU a second chance, and a
strong sense of "picking a fight with someone your own size," has historicaUy
prevailed. London's Johnson is "straightforward" and "manly," yet
compassionate; Hump and Maud are washed up on an island's shore and are
given another chance at a more meaningful Ufe; Hump refuses to play a game
he cannot win and balances the odds by sharpening his own knife.
Individualism, too, is tempered by a sense of equality and team spirit.
Commenting on London and America, Labor writes: "Jack London was no
more paradoxical than the American character itselP (21). One of the most
paradoxical elements of the American character is this individual/group
dichotomy. Give Americans a cause-an idea, a disaster, a mission-and
individuaUsm fades, unity reigns. Lincoln's "united we stand, divided we fall"
is as reflective of Americanism as Ben FrankUn's "God helps them that h d p
themselves." And, somewhat paradoxicaUy once again, nothing makes
individuaUsm take a back seat as quickly as one individual threatening others'
78
individual freedom. Tme to Americanism, Hump and Maud's united team
spirit in the face of disaster triumphs over Larsen's lone wolf approach to Ufe.
Geofft-ey Gorer titles his chapter on the American character "Rejection
of Authority." Americans, he claims, are a rebeUious sort who have a chip on
their shoulder regarding authority. He contends that this is a result of the
original geographic separation of fathers and sons and that the American
culture has developed without a sense of "the father [as] a model on which the
son is expected to mold himself" (99). This separation, too, has contributed to
a nation that looks forward, not backward. Erskine states: " [Americans] are
incUned to judge a man by his future-by the record his son is Ukely to make
rather than by the record his father made" (20). "Our future," he contends, "is
the only part of our histoiy which we aU have in common" (13). This
futuristic outlook, Erksine further suggests, is etemally optimistic. He asks: "Is
the American, then, an ideaUst?" and repUes, "He certainly is in the sense that
he Uves in the prospects of hopes" (10). Arensberg and Niehoff shed Ught on
American optimism:
Effort is good in itself and with effort one can be optimistic about
success. The high values connected with effort and activity pass
quickly to the prindple that, "It is better to do something than to
sit back and do nothing." When there is an obstade one should
do something about it. Effort pays off with success. This national
Uking for effort and activity, and the optimism which holds that
trying to do something about a condition or problem wiU almost
79
invariably bring success in solving it, seems to be spedficaUy
American. (165)
One event in The Sea-Wolf dramaticaUy iUustrates this American
effort/optimism credo: Hump and Maud's determination to exert every effort
in order to succeed on "Endeavor" island.
Americans are frequently critidzed for one particular characteristic:
competitiveness. Everything, it seems, has win/lose, either/or consequences.
However, Arensberg and Niehoff argue that this is in keeping with the
American tendency to "make twofold judgments based on prindple" (159).
"Twofold judgments," they continue, "are the rule in American Ufe:"
"success-failure," "moral-immoral," "right-wrong" (160). Wright explains:
"The stmggle between the good and evil angels for the soul of man was a
popular theme in medieval drama" (38); he continues, "the development of
American sodety from the first settlement at Jamestown until the latest
outpost in the Far West has exempUfied the contest between the powers of
darkness and the forces of Ught for the soul and mind of the American dtizen"
(38). Certainly Jack London's The Sea-Wolf is faithful to American twofold
judgment: thematics can be addressed in terms of Nietzschean "me-first"/bad;
Schopenhauerean "others-firstVgood. Bantam's 1991 reissue of The Sea-Wolf
includes this description of the book on its jacket:
80
Jack London was a worshiper of the strong and virtuous hero,
and a firm beUever in the inevitable triumph of good. The master
storyteUer nowhere demonstrates this theme more vividly than in
this dassic American tale of peril and adventure, good and evil.
Indeed, Jack London's The Sea-Wolf is the most American of stories.
The above is but a brief analysis of The Sea-Wolf as an expression of
Americar sm. Exploring Michael Curtiz's 1941 dnematic adaptation of the
novel further supports the contention that London's sea saga is not textbook
naturalism, but romantic Americanism.
1941 found the United States-and HoUywood-divided into two camps:
the isolationists and the pro-war"ists." Indeed, the isolationists were gearing
up for a "last-ditch stmggle against America's inexorable drift towards
intervention" (Koppes 19). They initiated Senate Resolution 152, calUng for a
thorough and complete investigation of any propaganda
disseminated by motion pictures and radio or any other activity
of the motion picture industry to influence pubUc sentiment in
the direction of partidpation of the United States in the present
European War. (qtd. in Hoopes 70-71)
Wamer Studios (responsible for a tuming point in poUtical films via
Confessions of a Nazi Spy 1939) was under attack at the hearing. When Jack
L. Wamer was caUed to testify regarding using dnema to "indte the United
States to war," he responded: "If Wamer Brothers had produced no pictures
conceming the Nazi movement, our pubUc would have had good reason to
critidze. We would have been Uving in a dream world" (qtd. in Hoopes 71).
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President Roosevelt, "the consummate media poUtidan of his day, tried
to influence pubUc opinion through his speeches and his manipulation of the
power of films to influence the pubUc" (Koppes 50). Thus, with Washington's
unmitigated support, HoUywood created highly poUtical films, films designed
to "expound, emphasize, and proclaim the virtues of the tme American way"
(qtd. in Koopes 47), films designed to denounce, dramatize, and reveal the
vileness of the false Nazi regime.
1941 found the Hungarian-bom director, Michael Curtiz, looking for a
timely project. He had two prerequisites. His first interest was action: his
films-Captain Blood (1935), Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Adventures
of Robin Hood (1938). Santa Fe Trail (1940)-iUustrate his mastery of the
action drama. His second interest was political: the next year, 1942, found
Curtiz directing the unabashedly patriotic Yankee Doodle Dandy. immediately
foUowed by Casablanca. the now-dassic story of love sacrificed in the name of
anti-Nazi pursuits. The temporaiy outUne of The Sea-Wolf drafted by Abem
Finkel and ReiUy Raine fulfiUed both of Curtiz's criteria. Although London's
novel had been adapted for the big screen five times before (1913, 1919,
1920, 1926, 1930), in 1937 Wamer Brothers eagerly purchased the rights
from David O. Selznick. It was a natural in the sequence of recent Wamer
82
releases, foUowing Intemational Squadron. Underground. Sergeant York. and
Confessions of a Nazi Spy.
Curtiz's desire for continuing his action-packed, "Errol Flynn" dramas
could have found no better outlet. After reading the outline, Curtiz stated:
"Finally, I found my ideal picture, one that is all action" (qtd. in FUnn 202).
Pressbook pubUdty claimed forty-seven fights; actually the eleven fights and
three suiddes added up to more than enough intense activity. The American
concept of tough guys physically stmggUng to overcome adversity is
ever-apparent.
Too, the narrative perfectly filled the demand for anti-Nazi
"propaganda" filmwork. Advance publidty notices could not have been more
blatant in their description of the movie as a pro-American, anti-German
statement. The film's "good guys" are portrayed as those "dar[ing] to tiy for
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Wolf Larsen is described as
"sardonic," "cmel," and "conniving," a "bmte who preaches the doctrine of
intolerance," a man who aUows "no escape." Larsen, the notices proclaim, is "a
merdless tyrant, he mled his shanghaied crews with methods that remind us of
today's totaUtarian dictators." They further prodaimed that "[w]hen Jack
London wrote the novel, The Sea-Wolf. in 1903 he didn't reaUze that he was
writing about a strong man who would come to the fore [sic] decades later and
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become known as 'dictator.'" Ida Lupino, the film's female star, claimed that
"if The Sea-Wnlf had been set on land instead of on the ocean, it would pass as
current history." She continued: "Edward G. Robinson would have been caUed
The Dictator instead of Wolf Larsen." She described George Leach (John
Garfield), and her character, Ruth Brewster, as "have nots," as "slaves." Van
Weyden (Alexander Knox), Lupino said, is an "idealist whom the dictator
cannot understand. Knox," Lupino clarified, "represents the democrades."
Reviews of the released film echo the advance notices: Larsen is described as a
"sadistic tyrant" (Time). a "Nietzsche superman" (MPG 2786), and a
"Hitlerian egomaniac" (Mosher 66).
Edward G. Robinson, the Jewish actor who took on the role of Wolf
Larsen, welcomed the opportunity to foUow his Confessions of a Nazi Spy
performance with another pro-American, anti-Nazi film. The death threats he
received while filming Confessions (taken seriously enough that Wamer's
hired armed guards to protect the star) only fueled his hatred of Hitler and the
Nazis. Robinson became "one of the most intense anti-Nazis in HoUywood"
(Hoopes 32) and was one of the leaders in drafting a petition to impose an
economic boycott on Germany (31). In a pre-release Sea-Wolf interview,
Robinson said that his great hope was that the film's "comparison with history
[Woli^itler] holds to the end. Wolf Larsen sinks with the ship."
84
As noted earUer, Jack London lamented that many Sea-Wolf readers
missed his attack on Nietzsche and the super-man idea. Wamer Brothers,
Michael Curtiz, and the stars of the 1941 adaptation dearly did not miss the
attack; they reaUzed that "the Nietzschean philosophy of Captain Wolf Larsen,
so close to Nazism" (Peary 7) was a near-perfect vehide for debunking
isolationism. However, in Ught of the extreme poUtical cUmate and in Ught of
the ever-present adaptation concem with time, several significant changes were
made to make the story "perfect."
London begins his story with Humphrey Van Weyden standing on the
deck of the Martinez contemplating philosophical and sodological concems:
Nietzsche and Schopenhauer and divisions of labor. The opening scene of the
movie, however, is totaUy different. A fade-in reveals a dark, foggy night in
"San Frandsco-1900." A young man runs through the dimly-Ut streets-he
pauses as he hears a poUce whistle and ducks into a smoke-fiUed honky tonk.
In the bar, the man gets into a brawl with a thug who tries to sUp him a
mickey. With the poUce on his tail, he accepts an "invitation" to sign on with
the next boat leaving San Frandsco. Curtiz maintains the ominous and
oppressive tension estabUshed in this opening, tightly-framed scene throughout
the entire film.
85
The young man is the George Leach of London's novel; however, in the
film this character takes on new dimensions. He epitomizes the American
"chip on his shoulder regarding authority" characterisric. In the interest of
time and in the interest of audience appeal, Curtiz wisely omitted the entire
"Endeavor Island" last third of the novel. Even early critics who praised the
book were disappointed with London's romance. Ambrose Bierce reflected: "I
confess to an ovenvhelming contempt for both sexless lovers" (qtd. in Labor
99). Certainly Hump and Maud's chaste survival episode would not do for
HoUywood's glamorous Golden Age. However, omitting this "chapter"
eUminated the opportunity to iUustrate Hump's developing manliness and to
grasp London's presentation of the American optimistic effort=success
equation. Therefore, Curtiz divided London's Hump between two characters:
the film kept the sensitive and inteUectual Hump (Alexander Knox), but gave
the romantic, tough-guy characteristics to the "new" George Leach (John
Garfield).
Too, the poetess Maud Brewster, w^o is fished out of the novel's waters
late in the stoiy, is changed to an escaped prisoner, Ruth Brewster, fished out
of the film's waters along with Hump at the sinking of the Martinez. A dever
addition is Ruth's desperate need for a blood transfusion; Leach is sdected by
Wolf as the appropriate donor-the cmel Wolf sardonicaUy suggests that their
86
blood should coagulate nicely since they share "jailbird blood." It is another
new character who supeivises the transfusion-the ship doctor, Louie (Gene
Lockhart), desperately stmggUng to reestabUsh his personal nobiUty as Dr.
Prescott.
The basic tenets of Americanism presented in London's novel are aUve
and weU, even intensified, in Curtiz's film. The natural environment is stiU a
force to be reckoned with, to be overcome. Curtiz, Uke London, uses the
merdless sea to examine the subject of mercy.
After leaving Leach on a doiy moving through the fog in the company of
a perfealy cast Thomas Mugridge, "Cooky" (Barry Fitzgerald), Curtiz cuts to a
medium shot of a passenger Uner. A long shot reveals Humphrey Van Weyden
reading a book. He is approached by a nervous-looking young woman who
pleads with him to feign famiUarity. Two detectives soon hand Hump a
"wanted" sheet, bearing the picture of the woman beside him. Hump's reply is
thematicaUy significant: "I'm sorry, miss. There's nothing I can do . . . the
law." The Martinez is then rammed by another ship-a sea vessel named the
Ghost-and Hump gradually begins to comprehend the wisdom of Jeffferson's
dictum: it is the Right-the Duty-of People to "alter or aboUsh" some laws and
all tyrants. The camera tracks Hump as he, along with the other Martinez
passengers, desperately endeavor to survive the cold, merdless sea. A long shot
87
through the fog and darkness reveals Hump holding on to a piece of debris; a
medium shot reveals long hair floating nearby on the top of the ocean water.
MerdfuUy, compassionately, Hump reaches out to save a drowning person:
ironically, it is the trying-to-escape Ruth Brewster. Amidst the sound of fog
homs and ship beUs, Hump cries: "Ahoy there . . . Ghost. . . ahoy," and the
couple is thrown a UfeUne from the "heUship."
Conquering the merdless sea aUows Curtiz an opportunity to illustrate
not only compassion, but altmism and American nobility as well. Near the
end of the film's narrative, Leach, Ruth, Hump, and Johnson escape from the
Ghost. They are elated until they reaUze that Wolf has antidpated their escape
and poisoned their water. As the others sleep, the noble Johnson
self-sacrifidally casts himself overboard so that the younger three might have a
chance at ft-eedom.
George Leach epitomizes American tough-guy "never say die" optimism.
Advance notices reveal that Garfield "was completely won to the motion
picture . . . because it permitted Leach [a person of questionable background]
to emerge as a character of unimpeachable character." After Leach attempts to
rid the Ghost of its tyrannical master, Larsen tums to him and says:
Mr. Leach . . . according to the laws of the sea, I could have you
hung for that. But I won't. You're going to save me that trouble.
By the time this voyage is over, you'U hang yourself.
88
With a look, Larsen commands some rough sailors to initiate Leach's
dictated "suidde joumey." Only a bit later in the film, Ruth goes down to the
hold to check on the much-bmised but stiU defiant Leach. She expresses no
hope and prodaims her fataUsm: "Tomorrow wiU be Uke today and the day
before"; however, Leach does not share her philosophy. Amidst swirUng
dgarette smoke, he teUs her how very wrong she is: "You gotta fight. . . you
can't quit!" He adds: "What I got inside me Larsen wiU never get out." A
close-up of the two reveals an exchange of looks that speaks louder than words.
Curtiz then dolUes in on Ruth whispering: "To be free . . . to Uve in peace . . . I
don't expect that anymore." A fireeze frame shows Leach's strong reaction to
her words: his determined, dreamy "another world" stare connotes his
commitment to out-thinking, out-fighting, and out-Uving the tyrant. Later,
when Leach, Ruth, Hump, and Johnson attempt their escape, Ruth again
professes her fataUsm. She cries: "No, I'm not going. You go without me. I'm
a jinx." Leach knocks her unconsdous and throws her in the Ufeboat. After the
group reaUzes that they only have two gaUons of water and 1,500 miles to go,
Leach asserts his self-wiU. He defiantiy shakes his fist in the direction of the
Ghost. toward Wolf, and cries: "So you think you tricked us, don't you? Sure,
I can see you now, sittin' on that deck and laughin' at us . . . but that laugh'II
choke in your throat, because we'U make i t . . . we'U make i t . . . water or no
89
water . . . D'ye hear me, Larsen? . . . We'U make it!" Leach may be battered
and bmised, deceived and dejected, but he is clearly not beaten, not defeated.
Although Curtiz omitted some of Hump and Wolf s complex
philosophical debates, the film's concem with London's ideas is stiU apparent.
As Hump cleans Wolf s "lair," the camera slowly pans over books on
shelves-Shakespeare, Tennyson, Poe, DeQuincy, Schopenhauer, Darwin,
Nietzsche-suddenly resting as a close-up reveals an open Paradise Lost, with
Satan's "Better to reign in HeU than serve in Heaven" Unes underUned. The
film intensifies Larsen's need to justify his hatred and cmel treatment of
others. Much Uke Hitler, Larsen is interested in "proving" his superiority by
using bmte force on those he labels inferior. Hump risks much when he points
out to Larsen that "an ego such as [yours] must constantly be fed . . . must
constantly be reassured of its supremacy . . . so it feeds itself on the
degradation of people . . . it is cmel."
The loftiest Ufe sentiment expressed in the film is also voiced by Hump.
Tom FUnn and John Davis describe Louie, the ship's doctor, as "a good
example of a type of failed professional" (198) typical in films of the day.
Louie is a drunk-a drunk who suffers from his loss of personal dignity. After
Leach sobers him up, Louie does successfuUy perform Ruth's much-needed
transfusion. Louie's sense of self-worth is temporarily restored. The next day a
90
sober and neatly-suited Louie enters Larsen's cabin, voidng a request. He
fooUshly asks Larsen to order the men to address him as Dr. Prescott,
indicating his-and "everyman's"-need for individual value recognition.
However, he is quite mistaken. The cmel Larsen uses the request to "set Louie
up for a faU." Larsen ever-so-sadistically brings Louie before the men,
announdng Louie's request; he then promptly trips Louie, causing him to fall
into the hands of "Gestapo-type" sailors. After being completely humiUated
via base cmelties, Louie escapes and begins cUmbing the mast. A medium
dose-up shows Van Weyden and Larsen looking upward as Louie climbs higher
and higher. Van Weyden implores Larsen: "He's an old man. He's liable to
lose his balance. Let him come down!" Larsen repUes: "Let him beg first. By
the time he comes off that mast, he'U be the old Louie again. He'U forget all
about his ideas of dignity and respect. He'U kiss every inch of this deck . . .
just glad to be aUve." A close up shot of Louie show^ him shaking his fist
defiantly at Wolf, screaming: "You'U regret the day you tried to make a fool of
Louie!" Louie proceeds to inform the sailors of Wolf s historical deception of
his crews:
This ship is a scavenger and he, Larsen, is the worst scavenger of
them aU! SeaUng vessel! . . . sure there'U be skins of seals on
board this boat. . . but it'U be the skins he steals from other men
. . . from his brother . . . from his own brother . . . Sure, I know
. . . steaUn' doesn't mean anything to men like you . . . but losin'
your Uves does . . . and that's the price he's gonna pay for those
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skins . . . your Uves. There'U be less of you that come back alive
from this voyage than went on it. I can promise you that. Tell
them, Larsen! TeU them about your brother, "Death" Larsen.
Tell them about the fear that comes into your heart at the
mention of his name . . .
Larsen denies being afraid of any man, but Louie intermpts him with these
words, as descriptive of Hitler as of Larsen:
Go ahead, Larsen, teU them about your brother . . . teU them
about the oath he's taken to kill you . . . tell them about his ship,
"The Macedonia," teU them about the cannon he has on board it,
primed to blow you, your ship and aU on board to kingdom come
. . . He didn't tell you any of that. . . no . . . What does he care
about your lives? You're not men in his eyes, you're dogs. And if
you as much as raise your voices sayin' you a right to die your
own way, those gunmen of his'II shoot you down Uke dogs . . .
A close-up of Louie portrays a man suddenly in control; while standing erect on
a cross tree, he adjusts his clothing, straightens his tie, and fixes his cuffs.
Louie then deliberately hurls his body to the deck below, dying on contact. A
white-faced Hump teUs Wolf that he (Wolf) was wrong; Louie did not quietly
submit, forgetting his ideas of dignity and respect. Hump then voices Curtiz's
grand message: "There is a price no man wiU pay for Uving." Louie's death,
FUnn and Davis contend, aUows him to "attain a kind of heroic stature" (198).
It is the kind of heroism attained by dying for the cause of individual freedom
and dignity.
The film is 100% American in its support of free will. When Leach first
gets the stupored Louie to discuss Ruth's need for a transfusion, Louie savs:
92
"No . . . no . . . it might happen again. I couldn't stand it if it did. I'd kiU
myself. This way her Ufe is not in my hands. It's in the hands of fate. I've got
nothing to do with it." Louie's dignity is restored by his dedsion to reject his
fataUstic statement and to become activelv involved in Ruth's chance to Uve.
Johnson, too, freely chose to sacrifice himself so the others might have a
chance. And, as the fiUn nears conclusion, Ruth debunks her own fataUstic
approach to Ufe and iUustrates her new-found commitment to free wiU and
optimistic thought.
Obviously since Curtiz did not include the final one-third of the novel,
he had to find another ending. After Johnson's self-sacrifidal act, the other
three-Ruth, Leach, and Hump-spend an undefinable amount of time drifting
in confusion through the fog. Suddenly, Hump, peering through the foggy
shadows, cries: "A ship. I see a ship!" One of the few long shots in the film
reveals a barely visible vessel. Ironically, the three have drifted in drdes-the
"rescue" ship is none other than the Ghost. Indeed, the ship appears
ghost-Uke: the masts are battered, the mainsail appears chopped, the Ufeboats
normaUy on the side of the ship are aU gone. The heUship appears deserted
and is sinking. Leach tums to Ruth and Hump and savs that he wiU quicklv go
on board and stock up on enough food and water to secure their escape. A
medium shot captures Leach groping, as he stmggles to see through the
93
oppressive fog, searching for the gaUey. He piles up some supplies outside the
storeroom door; suddenly, as he once again enters the closet, the doors slam
shut behind him. Hump and Ruth, waiting fearfuUy in the Ufeboat, begin to
sense that something is wrong: too much time has elapsed. Ruth, embradng
FrankUn's "God helps them who help themselves" credo, teUs Hump that they
must go on board and help Leach. Hump and Maud crawi on board, surveying
the wreckage as they caU for Leach. They foUow a muffled response and are
confronted by a locked storeroom door. Leach explains that Larsen snuck up
behind him and imprisoned him. He explains: "There isn't a chance in the
world of breaking this door down in time" and nobly teUs them to "get off the
boat before he gets you too." However, Ruth wiU not budge and says with tme
American gusto: "There's got to be a way to get you out of here . . . there's got
to be!" Van Weyden responds to her desperate outcry by firmly committing
himself to confronting Larsen and getting the key.
Ruth remains huddled against the door and voices an ever-so-Ruth-Uke
commitment: ^'lf you Uve . . . I Uve . . . If you die . . . I die. That's the way it
is." Leach teUs her that her statement renûnds him of the wedding pledge:
"For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to
love and to cherish . . . tiU death do iis part" and then adds: "I guess we're
gonna skip everything but the last part." Ruth, echoing Robert Jordan's
94
thoughts as he lay dying, says: "No . . . that's not tme. We've had all the rest.
It just happened quicker with us, that's all. We crowded aU of our Ufe together
into a few days" and unselfishly adds, "So if this is the way it's gotta end, it's
aU right with me." Leach softjy adds: "With me, too."
Meanwhile, a defiant and detennined Hump walks to Wolf s cabin,
confronting the near-bUnd tyrant. Hump bluntly states: "The key to the
storeroom. I want it." Hump moves toward Wolf; a medium shot shows Wolf
with a gun in his hand; he says: "If you take another step . . . I'U blow your
brains out." Curtiz then shows Hump through Wolf s eyes: to Wolf Hump
appears blurred, vague, and distorted. Wolf then asks why Johnson didn't
come on board and Hump explains that Johnson gave up his Ufe for the others.
Wolf sarcastically says that "I thought it would be you who would make the
noble sacrifice. Why didn't you Mr. Van Weyden?" He continues: "AU your
fine words, Mr. Van Weyden, were just fine words, weren't they? I was right
aU the time, wasn't I? When you were faced with the choice yourself, you let
Johnson die. Once you said to me that there's a price no man wiU pay for
Uving . . . what's your price, Van Weyden?"
Wolf soon gets his answer. He informs Hump that they are only two
núles from land-the fog wiU soon Uft and freedom wiU be visible. He also
informs him that the crew tumed on him and that he blames Leach for their
95
defiance. Therefore, he wiU let Hump and the girl leave, but he will not permit
George Leach, the leader of the "war," to Uve. His reason for letting Hump Uve
is in keeping with his character: it is in the interest of "me""he wants the book
Hump has been working on about the great Wolf Larsen to be pubUshed and
darifies that he wants Milton's Satan's "Better to reign in heU than serve in
Heaven" credo to serve as his epitaph. Hump begins taunting Wolf, telUng
him he is a "pathetic, broken hulk of what once was a man" and that there is
"nothing heroic in his death"-he claims that Wolf is afraid to go on Uving.
Hump "reads" his "book" to Wolf: "For now there was no longer his great
strength to sustain him. Now he was bUnd and helpless . . . now he had to go
to other people and ask for help." Wolf intermpts Hump's reading, teUing him
to "shut up." FinaUy, in a bUnd rage, Wolf fires the gun at Hump's ill-defined
shape.
A dose-up then shows Wolf passing his hand across his eyes. A shot of
the doorway from Wolf s angle reveals nothing except a dark, blank screen: the
tyrant is totaUy bUnd. He shuffles to the doorway, touching the floor,
expecting to find Hump's body. Hump's voice is heard off screen: "So now
you can't even see shadows." A cut to Ruth, wdio has heard the shot, shows
her running toward the cabin. Larsen tums the door, bolting it. In a
bewildered voice, he cries: "I couldn't have missed you . . . I fired right at
Kv
96
you." Hump repUes: "It's hard to kiU the tmth, Larsen, isn't it?" Hump then
names his price: he wants the key to the storeroom . . . he wants to secure
Leach's Ufe. Ruth is at the door, crying out for Hump. He teUs her to stay
there a moment. Hump teUs Wolf that he wants to prove him wrong: he wants
to prove to Wolf that nobiUty, manhood, mercy, and altmism do exist. Hump
quietly says: "I stay here and die with you. Leach goes free." Larsen cannot
resist finding out if this is a trick or if Hump's contentions are viable. Wolf
sUdes the key under the door to Ruth. Van Weyden teUs her to free Leach.
When Ruth asks him, "And you, Mr. Van Weyden . . . what about vou?," he
quietly says that he will meet them . . . on deck. Wolf then cries out to Hump;
however, there is no reply. He finds the dead Hump and believes that Hump's
death invaUdates his words. Thus, Curtiz conveys how very blind Wolf
actually is: Hump's final thoughts and choices were in the interests of others.
He proved that altmism is a truism; it does exist. Hump risked his Ufe for
Leach and Ruth.
The final long shot conveys much. Leach and Ruth are back in the
Ufeboat, watching the Ghost sink forever into the ocean depths. The sun
begins to break through the fog; land is dearly in sight. The two heads are
romanticaUy pressed dose together as they sail to freedom's shores to pursue a
second chance at Ufe.
97
Curtiz's ending is a clearly American statement. It advocates individual
heroism, argues for a united effort, validates self-sacrifice, iUustrates Jefferson's
description of a natural aristocracy, and suggests that dreams are worth
dreaimng, and can, if backed by determination and effort, come tme. There is
never "nothing one can do." Evil is defeated; a sense of right prevails.
Admittedly, the discussion of London's The Sea-Wolf and Curtiz's
adaptation offer a non-naturaUstic, pro-Americanistic assessment of only one of
London's stories. However, I contend that a careful analysis of much of this
American author's work measured against Beardsley's definition of NaturaUsm
would not support a London-NaturaUst equation, would support Beauchamp's
contention that " [a] significant segment of the London canon is not
naturaUstic at all" (16), would support my contention that London's work can
best be described as Americanism, i.e., as writing that embodies and reflects the
American character.
CHAPTER IV
CAPTURING C. S. LEWIS'S "MERE" CHRISTL\NITY:
RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH'S SHADOWLANDS
CUve Staples Lewis was bom on November 29, 1898 in Belfast, Ireland.
He was the son of a prosecuting soUdtor, and a gented Irishwoman, Flora
Hamilton, who died of cancer when Lewis was nine years old. As a child, he
was an avid reader-a bookworm. He had one older brother, Warren (Wamie),
who Uved with him most of his Ufe. As a young man, Lewis became involved
with a friend's mother, Janie Moore. His World War I buddy, Paddy Moore,
took Lewis home with him during a brief leave. Paddy and Lewis agreed to
care for the other's lone parent in the event either should be kiUed in the
trenches. Paddy was kiUed, and Lewis fulfiUed his promise. The exact nature
of the relationship between Lewis and Mrs. Moore remains a subject of debate;
however, most Lewis scholars agree that if the relationship was initiaUy of a
sexual nature, the "romance" was short-Uved. For the majority of Mrs. Moore's
Ufe, Jack (the nickname C. S. Lewis adopted) took the place of Paddy as son
and caretaker. Jack Lewis was a professor of dassical Uterature-an Oxford don
(1925-1954) and later a Cambridge University Chair (1955-1963) spedaUzing
in the Uterature of the medieval and Renaissance periods. He married Joy
98
99
Davidman Gresham late in Ufe. Lewis was an intensely intellectual man, "one
of the most leamed scholars of his generation" (Wilson). He was an avowed
atheist tumed cmsading Christian. He gained fame through his children's
fantasy stories and his works of Christian apologetics. In his The Achievement
of C. S. Lewis (1980), Thomas Howard reflects that Lewis's Ufe was "not
terribly exdting," and adds, "[i]t would be hard to make a big box-office fiUn of
it"(13).
Hard-yes. Impossible-no. Thirteen years after Howard's statement
and thirty years after Lewis's death, Richard Attenborough, one of England's
most esteemed actor-directors, brought Lewis's life to the big screen; his
presentation of the repressed Oxford don meeting, faUing in love with, and
losing the brash Joy Gresham transforms the unexdting into the memorable.
Stefan Ulstein summarizes the film's theme: "The central question addressed
by Shadowlands is whether it is better to live safely or to risk all for
transcendent love" (50). Indeed, this question appUes not only to C. S. Lewis's
relationship with Joy, but to his relationship with God as weU.
In his review of Shadowiands (1993), PhiUp Yancey exdaims:
Imagine my surprise at finding a theater packed with patrons
awaiting the matinee showing of Richard Attenborough's
Shadowlands. Did these people know what they would see-a film
with no violence, no naked flesh, no dirty jokes, and not even a
swear word, a film whose main character prays, beUeves in
heaven, and lectures on theology? (112)
100
Yancey continues: "Some evangeUcals will complain that the movie distorts
Lewis's life and waters down his Christian message" (112). I contend that
even the most fundamental evangelical should have no complaints-the secret
to this film's success lies in Attenborough's exquisite use of film techniques to
present an ever-so-accurate presentation of Lewis, the man of books, and of his
philosophy, his "mere" Christianity.
Commenting on his selection of projects, Richard Attenborough
explained:
Young Winston was the first of the film biographies which
people seem to think I do all the time. Making a film biography
is a challenge for aU sorts of reasons because invariably people will
disagree with your interpretation of the character. It's one of the
things people ask me about. Why must I take on such difficult
projects? The honest answer is that I don't know [sic] but I think
it may possibly be simply because aU my Ufe I've been much more
interested in biography and history and so on than I have in
fiction. I don't mean I don't read any fiction but given the choice
I wiU read biography. I am simply fasdnated by the way in which
our lives are affected and moved and redirected in terms of other
people's Uves.
I beUeve that during each centuiy or even each decade there are
various figures, a number of people who, by virtue of their
convictions-for evil or for good-actually change the course of
history. They actuaUy change the way in which we conduct our
Uves and indeed even affect us in terms of our relationships with
one another. The people wdiose Uves I have shown on the
screen-Winston ChurchiU, Mahatma Gandhi, Donald Woods,
Steve Biko, CharUe ChapUn and C. S. Lewis-have all done that.
(qtd. in Dougen 31)
101
It is this, Attenborough's self-declared interest in the historical and his
honest admiration for C. S. Lewis, that allows Ralph C. Wood to assess
Attenborough's "demand[ing] a whole packet of tissues" film as rooted not in
sentimentaUsm, but in "tme sentiment" (200). Indeed, Attenborough's abiUty
to accurately portray the man of books and, more significantly, to capture the
thoughts expressed in this inteUectuaU man's writings-The Problem of Pain.
Christian Reflections. The Case for Christianity. Mere Christianity. A Grief
Obseived. The Screwtape Letters. and his Namia series-that justifies
Attenborough's "This tme story takes place in The University City of Oxford
1952" opening statement.
How does Attenborough's film biography portray C. S. Lewis? Linda
Seger, author of The Art of Adaptation, advises anyone attempting a
biographical film to remember that "it is impossible to teU a 'womb to tomb'
story in two hours" (52). Thus, Attenborough's dedsion to stick with
screenwriter Nicholson's portrayal of only a few short years in Lewis's life was a
wise one. BasicaUy, the time under consideration is a two-to-three year
telescoped period in the early 1950s focusing on Lewis's faUing-in-lovewith-Joy experience. The "facts" revealed in the film are exact: Attenborough's
C. S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) is a late middle-aged professor, a writer of
children's stories, and an author of Christian apologetic works. He is a
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bachelor Uving with an alcoholic elder brother in an old country home (The
Kilns). Three of the most important aspects of C. S. Lewis are foregrounded:
the film portrays Lewis as a brilUant debater, as a beloved pubUc figure, and as
an emotionally isolated man.
Lewis's fame as a debater requires comment. He did not gain
recognition for one-on-one "in the face" debating expertise. Rather, his
reputation for debating prowess was estabUshed via his abiUty to pursue his
way reasonably and relentlessly through an argument. In 1942, Lewis
conducted a BBC series of Broadcast Talks, defending Christian theism. These
talks were later published in a work entitled Mere Christianity (1952).
Thomas Howard describes this book as one of "magnanimity, clarity, and
craftsmanship.
Lewis," he continues, "knew backwards and forewards the art
of argument-of rhetoric, actuaUy in its Renaissance meaning, designating the
whole enterprise of opening up and articulating and working through a given
Uneofthought"(ll).
This abiUty to think logicaUy and effectively communicate his ideas also
served him weU in his face-to-face experiences, most particularly with The
Inklings, a Uterary dining club whose members came and went through the
years, but was consistently anchored by C. S. Lewis and his good friend, J. R.
R. Tolkien. Tolkien explained Lewis's name for the group: "it was a pleasantly
103
ingenious pun in its own way, suggesting people with vague or half-formed
intimations and ideas plus those who dabble in ink" (qtd. in Wilson 159). No
topic was barred at the meetings, but most debates focused on issues of
Christian concem or on critiquing members' current writings. Attenborough's
coUection of InkUngs, particularly Christopher Riley (John Wood), serve a
somewhat different purpose, generaUy providing foils to Lewis's spiritual
certainty. Nonetheless, the group does portray a sense of Lewis's pre-Joy
world: it was very much male, very much academia-oriented.
Oxford dons in the 1950s were part university lecturer, part Magdalen
FeUow (involved in administration), and part coUege tutor. CoUege tutoring
involved private weekly sessions "in which the pupil read aloud an essav of
some three thousand words to his tutor and they then discussed it" (Wilson
95). The pupil had to be able to oraUy present and defend his thesis; this
one-on-one intimacy required the don to adapt a detached manner to ensure
maintaining a proper distance between student and professor. Lewis had his
share of students who did not Uke him nor enjoy their gmeUng hour of debate
with the master debater.
Lewis used his fiction to further his grand argument: the vaUdity of
Christianity. Thomas Howard explains:
Lewis understood the daunting improbabiUty of awakening the
stultified imagination to andent and etemal bUsses and realities.
104
He understood the task, and he undertook it by means of the
oldest method there is. He began to tell stories (sometimes you
can smuggle something in as fiction that you can't force in a
debate). (15)
While Lewis's abiUty to win an argument, to successfuUy drive home a point, is
not the main concem in Attenborough's fiUn, it certainly receives significant
attention. Early in the film, Lewis deUvers a speech to the Assodation of
Christian Teachers. He debates the big question addressed in The Prob em of
Pain: If God is all-powerful and can prevent evil, but does not prevent evil,
then God is not all-loving; if God intends to prevent evil but cannot, then God
is not aU-powerful; if God does intend to prevent evil, and is capable of
preventing evil, then how can evil exist? Lewis defines God's love as a desire
for humankind to be lovable-to become suitable inhabitants of heaven.
He
insists that God wants people to grow up. "Pain," Lewis teUs the women, "is
God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world." Pain, suggests the scholar, is God's
tool for destroying the dream that all is weU. "God," Lewis cUnicaUy continues,
"makes us the gift of suffering." The women Usten attentively to Lewis's
argument, writing down the professor's ready answers to Ufe's "big" questions.
It might prove difficult to find another film wd\ere the director gets more
mileage scene-per-scene than did Attenborough in Shadowlands. A case is
point is an Inkling debate conceming Jack's use of the wardrobe in his Namia
series. The group is meeting in an ever-so-typical British pub. Christopher
105
Riley, the agnostic, tries to argue that the wardrobe is a Freudian sexual image.
Jack cries out: "No, no-not Freudian. Not Christian. It's Magic!" "The
child," he explains while getting up and moving to a doorway, "steps into the
wardrobe-the child must push through-press in close." As Hopkins deUvers
these words, a medium/close-up of Hopkins reveals child-like big-eyed wonder.
He continues in a mysterious voice-"suddenly-white Ught, crisp cold air-the
snow"-he pauses dramatically, transposed to some other place-"gateway to a
magical world." Lewis was a Romantic in the sense that he very much believed
that Imagination is essential to ascertaining higher tmths. Indeed, he
contended that "the inability to believe in Christianity [is] primarily a failure
of the imagination" (Wilson 135), and Lewis beUeved it his first duty to
reawaken in the modem child the desire to move beyond the sdentific and
embrace what may lie beyond.
Attenborough's film also reveals Jack as the classroom debater. Only
there is Uttle debate because Professor Lewis has all the answers. One student
aptly summarizes the student/teacher relationship. He teUs Lewis: "I just don't
see my way ahead quite as clearly as you." Attenborough's Lewis epitomizes
the sup)erior, detached professor.
Indeed, much of Lewis's attraction to Joy (Debra Winger) is her brash,
combative personality. Attenborough's C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham meeting
106
is historically accurate. They became acquainted through letter
correspondence, discussing issues of faith and various points in Lewis's
writings. She did invite him to tea at Eastgate Hotel; he did bring big brother
along; she was rather abrasive. Only a few weeks later, Lewis invited her to a
lunch party at Magdalen. Wamie later recaUed this occasion:
I was some Uttle time in making up my mind about her; she
proved to be a Jewess, or rather a Christian convert of Jewish race,
medium height, good figure, hom rimmed specs, quite
extraordinarily uninhibited. Our first meeting was at lunch in
Magdalen, where she tumed to me in the presence of three or
four men, and asked in the most natural tone in the world, 'Is
there anywhere in this monastic estabUshment where a lady can
reUeve herself?' But her visit was a great success. . . . (qtd. in
Wilson 239)
Debra Winger, known for her own element of abrasiveness, was a
natural choice for portraying such a feisty American lady. In the film, this
brashness is early established. Joy enters the hotel restaurant after arranging to
meet the Lewis brothers for lunch. A medium shot shows a middle-aged,
attractive woman looking over the restaurant's patrons. She asks the maitre d'
if he can point out C. S. Lewis. He informs her that he cannot. Joy takes a
deep breath and with a Brooklyn accent shouts out: "Anybody here caUed
Lewis?" The camera pans the rather astounded British diners. A rather taken
back C. S. Lewis timidly raises his hand-schoolboy fashion. Attenborough's
Joy remains tme to character. At a Christmas party, Jack introduces Joy to
10"
Christopher Riley. Riley asks her if she's read Jack's children books. She
repUes that she has and that she finds them magical. Riley tums to Jack and
sarcasticaUy says, "Jack, I beUeve you've found a soulmate." Jack reminds Riley
of his agnostic status, and Riley clarifies that what he means by soul is the
concept of the anima and the animus. "This," he says, "is how I explain the
otherwize puzzUng difference between the sexes. Where men have inteUect,
women have soul." Joy does not let this comment go by. She repUes:
"Professor Riley, as you know, I'm an American, and different cultures have
different modes of discourse. I need a Uttle guidance here. Are you being
offensive, or merely stupid?" With a tilt of her head and a triumphant smile at
Riley, she disappears into the crowd. Neither does Joy let remarks made by
Jack pass by. One argument between the blunt Joy and the scholarly Lewis is
particularly revealing. When Joy, with her young son Douglas (Joey MazzeUo)
in tow, arrives at the Lewises for her first visit, Jack reflects on Joy's redtation
of her "Madrid" poem; Joy acknolwedges that she has never been to Spainthat she has never had the "personal experience." Jack, a Uttle-traveled man,
states that reading has provided him with aU the world he needs: "Personal
experience," he suggests, "isn't everything." Joy's reply is thematicaUy
significant: she promptiy disagrees and insists that reading, though wonderful,
is a poor substitute for the real thing-Uving. In Joy, Lewis has met his match.
108
Attenborough succeeds in accurately portraying C. S. Lewis as a debater;
he is equaUy successful in portraying him, somew^at paradoxically, as a
beloved pubUc figure and as an emotionaUy isolated private man. Lewis was
famous. His fame stemmed from such scholarly works as The AUegoTy of Love:
A Study in Medieval Tradition (1938), Preface to Paradise Lost (1942), and
EngUsh Literature of the Sixteenth Century (1954). He was equally famous
for his numerous Christian apologetic writings, induding The Problem of Pain
(1940), The Screwtape Letters (1942), and Mirades (1947). His childrens'
series, The Chronicles of Namia, beginning with The Lion. the Witch. and the
Wardrobe (1950), was a pubUshing success. He became a household staple in
England during World War II via his Broadcast Talks on Christian behavior.
And, although antipathetic to letter-writing, Lewis also kept in touch with a
world-wide audience through daily letter correspondence, beUeving that "taking
time out to advise or encourage another Christian was both a humbUng of
one's talents before the Lord and also as much the work of the Holy Spirit as
produdng a book" (Kilby 7). Attenborough captures this pubUc Lewis in his
film: he is often at his desk diUgently writing away; he is shown reading his
personal correspondence, remarking on it to Wamie; he is shown signing
autographs at a book release; he is shown, more than once, addressing pubUc
109
crowds, insisting in these lectures that "something must drive us out of our
nursery into the world of others!"
Attenborough does more than just succeed in conveying the second half
of the paradox-he excels in portraying C. S. Lewis as an emotionaUy stagnated
man, one w^o has never left his own nursery. Part of this excellence must be
attributed to perfect casting. Attenborough relates:
I knew that casting a film like Shadowlands would be of
paramount importance. It is a two-hander and I perhaps ought to
have played the two hands a little more cautiously than I did, but
I was so certain. . . . I knew that Tony Hopkins was just
potentially the most wonderful casting. . . .
I gave him the script. I said, *Tony, I've got a script here that
came in. You might be interested to look at it?' Tony said he
didn't want to read anything just at the moment but I persisted
and he took the script. I got home I suppose around eight and
there was a message to say would I phone Tony, so I did. I said
'Hi Tony, it's Dick . . . ' and there was silence. So I said: 'HeUo?
Tony. . . . ' Then there was this Welsh voice. 'You bloody devil,'
he said. 'You devil, you knew exactly what you were doing, didn't
you? I had to put that script down three times in order to get
through it and the last time I had to go out and walk up and
down outside the house. It's the most emotionally disturbing
piece of writing I think I have ever read. What are you going to
do with it?' I said I didn't know yet since I'd only read it the
night before, but would he Uke to play Lewis? 'Like to?' he said.
'I'U kiU any actor who came between me and this part.' (qtd. in
Dougen 156)
Indeed, no other actor could have so accurately portrayed C. S. Lewis. As
Ulstein notes: "Hopkins greatest talent is in portraying men trapped within
their own emotions" (50).
110
Why was C. S. Lewis so trapped within his emotions? This is by and
large the question A. N. Wilson addresses in his biography of Lewis. He
convindngly argues that Lewis's personality was drastically affected by the loss
of his mother and by the reaction of his father to his wife's untimely death.
On August 23, 1908 Flora Lewis passed away after suffering terribly from the
ravishes of cancer. Jack long remembered one night when he was iU four
months prior to her death:
crying both with headache and toothache and distressed because
my mother did not come to me. That was because she was ill too:
and what was odd was that there were several doctors in her room
and voices and comings and goings all over the house. And then
my father, in tears, came into my room and began to try to
convey to my terrified mind things it had never conceived before.
(Surprised by loy 18)
Jack's father, Albert, had never been a man of steady nerve. The loss of
his wife, Lewis recaUs in his autobiography, left him with an "incalculable
temper," speaking wildly and acting unjustly (Surprised by Joy 19). Jack
coped with the loss of his mother and the outbursts of his father by retreating
into a safe shell; simply put, he opted for the safety of non-involvement,
particularly with young women. He chose the "if you do not faU in love and
marry, you run no risk of losing wife~or selP credo. However, this approach to
Ufe-protection-led to isolation and emotional entrapment.
111
Attenborough aptly captures Lewis's isolated emotional state. Lewis is
first shown in the film with his colleagues-all male-at a magnificently
fumished high table in the Oxford coUege dining haU. He Uves a doistered Ufe.
The dialogue at this luncheon emphasizes Jack's lack of real-Ufe involvement.
As Lewis's coUeagues discuss his Namia books, one asks Wamie: "Does Jack
know any children?" Jack, overhearing, ironically replies that he certainly does
(or rather did)-he knew Wamie as a child and, he adds rather wickedly, that
he knew himself as a child as well. When Joy reveals her marital problems to
Jack-her husband is having yet another affair and wants a divorce-she
addresses Lewis's greatest shortcoming: "I ran away. But it's a mistake, isn't it.
You always have to face things in the end." Perhaps the most insightful
revelation of Jack's discomfort with intimacy is after Joy and he leave the dvil
wedding ceremony. He has previously explained to Wamie: "I'm manying Joy
technicaUy-before a govemment offidal, not God. It seems Uke the right thing
to do." He "technicaUy" gives her his name so that she can remain in England
in order to pursue publication of her own writing with a British editor.
However, Lewis is most uncomfortable even with the impUcations of this
technical union, wanting the "wedding" to be kept secret. After the ceremony,
Joy asks Wamie and Jack to join her in a toast to her new Ufe in England. Jack
tums her down: "Sorry, Joy. I have to catch the 12:22" and quite literaUy runs
112
from any possible intimades. Wamie apologizes to Joy for his brother's mde
behavior; Joy repUes that she understands Jack-and his weaknesses-quite weU.
Perhaps of greater significance to the film's greatness-and to the
consideration of this dissertation-is Attenborough's abiUty to adapt Lewis's
philosophy, his Christian theism. Lewis himself defined his "mere"
Christianity as "the beUef that has been common to nearly aU Christians at aU
times" (Mere Christianity 6). He was not interested in divisive doctrines,
describing his The Case for Christianity as "more what might be caUed
philosophy" (Preface) and defining philosophy as did Plato-not as a subject
but as a way. However, as Attenborough's film iUustrates, Lewis's way was less
easily traveled than the scholar had-for twenty-five years-proclaimed.
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy (1955), Lewis relates that when
he was nine and his mother had surgeiy he prayed to a God whom he viewed
"neither as savior or judge, but merely as a magidan" (21). The magidan
failed to work his magic and Uttie Jack began to doubt God. In his father's
traumatic grief, he sent Jack away to Wynyard Boys' School in England. Jack
passionately hated the school and a series of semesters spent at other schools
proved no better solution. Wamie later wrote about Jack's public school
experiences:
The fact is he should never have been sent to pubUc school at aU.
Already, at fourteen, his inteUigence was such that he would have
113
fitted in better among undergraduates than among schoolboys;
and by his temperment he was bound to be a misfit, a heretic,
and object of suspidon within the coUective-minded and
standardising PubUc School System. (qtd. in Sibley 30)
Finally, in 1914 Lewis came home to be privately tutored by W. T.
Kirkpatrick, described later by Lewis as "the only man he ever met who had
come near to being 'a purely logical entity'" (qtd. in Sibley 32). Kirkpatrick
was an atheist. Thus, through early disillusionment with unanswered prayers
and through admiration of Kirkpatrick, Lewis arrived in Oxford in 1916 a
self-proclaimed atheist.
This philosophy, however, did not prove satisfactory. The people Lewis
most admired at Oxford tumed out to be Christians. Lewis's endless readings,
too, left him questioning the reasonableness of atheism. Lewis's conversion to
Christianity, explains Howard,
was the least 'reUgious' conversion imaginable, if by reUgious we
mean rhapsodic, or emotional, or impressionistic. It was almost
entirely an intellectual conversion. . . . His mind was
commandeered by God: he became convinced of the
philosophically imtenable nature of atheism, then of agnostidsm;
then the Christian claims began to seem not so out-ofthe-question, and so forth. (Howard 12)
Thus, by the age of twenty-nine, Lewis had graduaUy reasoned his way
back to "the faith of his fathers." The Christian daims that Lewis were to
address throughout the 1940s and 1950s were not trivial doctrinal disputes,
but the big issues of death, of heaven and of heU, of the purpose of Ufe, of
114
prayer, and of pain. Thomas Talbott, Professor of Philosophy at WiUamette
University, describes reading Lewis's The Problem of Pain as his first
introduction "to the world of philosophical theology" (36). He explains:
Reading the book was Uke eating forbidden fruit; it was
exhilarating but also a bit frightening. For one thing, the book
actually contained arguments, even arguments about God, and
more importantly the arguments seemed to make sense! . . .
Lewis's arguments . . . were addressed, it seemed, to the thinking
mind and seemed to have the authority of reason behind them.
Wlien I finished the book and finally set it aside, I was awakened
to the world of ideas and to the adventure of philosophical
discoveiy. (36)
One of the subjects that Lewis often addressed is one that most avoid
"discovering"-or pondering-for more than brief seconds: death. Shortly before
Lewis died, he related that a young lady, once asked about dying, repUed with
sincerity: "By the time I reach that age sdence wiU have done something about
it" (qtd. in Lindskoog 12). Lewis saw death much differently. In Miracles.
Lewis defines death as "Satan's great weapon and also God's great weapon: it is
holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ
came to conquer and the means by which he conquered" (151). In his
correspondence to an American friend, Lewis wrote:
Think of yourself just as a seed patiently waiting in the eaith;
waiting to come up a flower in the Gardener's good time, up into
the real world, the real waking. I suppose that our whole present
life, looked back on from there, wiU seem only a drowsy
half-waking. (Letters 116)
115
And in his allegorical Namia books, Lucy asks Aslan (the Great Lion) how to
get to His country from our world. The Great Lion repUes: "I wiU not teU vou
how long or short the way wiU be; only that it Ues across a river. But do not
fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder" (Voyage 209).
Because he beUeved so firmly in Christ as the great Bridge Builder, Lewis
urged Christians to embrace death with confidence; heaven, he insists, is not
myth but reality. Lewis assesses heaven as "that Countiy hinted at and
guessed at and dreamed of and longed for in aU tales of joy and merriment and
homecoming and reunion and harmony" (qtd. in Howard 45). In his final
Namia book, The Last Battie. the characters arrive in the "new" Namia. The
Unicom cries: "I have come home at last! This is my real countiy! I belong
here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew
it till now. The reason why we loved the old Namia is that it sometimes
looked Uke this" (162). Lewis ends this tale with Aslan softly teUing the
children:
"There was a real railway acddent. Your father and mother aU aU
of you are-as you used to call it in the Shadowlands-dead. The
term is over: the hoUdays have begun. The dream is ended; this is
the moming."
And as He spoke He no longer looked to them Uke a Uon; but the
things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful
that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of aU the
stories, and we can most tmly say that they aU Uved happily ever
after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.
116
AU their Ufe in this worid and aU their adventures in Namia have
only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were
beginning Chapter One of the Great Stoiy which no one on earth
has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better
than the one before. (173-74)
Lewis never shyed away from death or heaven-or the issue of heU. The
Screwtape Letters. perhaps Lewis's most famous adult work, is the story of two
Milton-Uke demons: uncle Screwtape and nephew Wormwood. The elder
demon writes letters to his nephew, outUning strategies that tempt humankind
to foUow a way leading to "the Lowerarchy," i.e., heU. Lewis's intent is clearly
to wam humankind of a very real "Satan and crews'" tactics. And, after
presenting his anti-atheism argument in The Case for Christianity. Lewis
states:
Very weU then, atheism is too simple. And I'U teU you another
view that is also too simple. It's the view I call Christianity-andwater, the view that just says there's a good God in Heaven and
everything is all right-leaving out aU the difficult and terrible
doctrines about sin and hell and the devil, and the redemption.
Both these are boys' philosophies. (35)
Lewis's concept of heU did not include endless buming fires. As explained by
Wilson, Lewis's heU was that of his matemal grandfather's: "When the Bible
says that the damned suffer etemal punishment it must mean punishment
etemal in its effects. They do not go on suffering continuously. They are
snuffed out, they cease to be" (2). In other words, Lewis's heU was etemal
separation from the God of love and comfort and joy.
117
In his writings, Lewis, again and again, addresses the "why" for Ufe.
What is the purpose for humankind's existence? In response Lewis argues that
the reason for living is for the individual to leam to submit to God's lessons,
lessons that wiU make him or her the kind of person who can be happy-not for
a season or for some seventy years-but for an etemity (Talbott 47). As Lewis
presents his "Lord-or-lunatic" argument, he stresses that the dedsion to accept
God's purpose for life is an individual one:
I'm trying here to prevent anyone from saying the reaUy siUy
thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus
as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His daim to be God."
That's the one thing we mustn't say. A man who was merely a
man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn't be a great
moral teacher. He'd either be a lunatic-on a level with the man
who says he's a poached egg-or else he'd be the Devil of HeU.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son
of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him
up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kiU Him as a demon; or
you can fall at His feet and caU Him Lord and God. But don't let
us come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great
human teacher. He hasn't left that open to us. He didn't intend
to. (Case 45)
Living, then, according to Lewis, is a dedsion to develop via acceptance
of Jesus as Lord "into [either] a heavenly or a helUsh creature" (Mere 107).
This development, argues Lewis, is a daily one accompUshed by repentance-"a
wilUng submission to humiUation" (Case 49)-and through obedience-"the one
condition of joy" (Howard 159). Indeed, much of Lewis's "case" rests on
Hebrews 10:1: "The Law having a shadow-a reflection-of good things to
118
come." To clarify, Lewis argues that obedience to God's laws results in a joy
on earth that is an insubstantial shadow of the tme heavenly form.
This purpose for Ufe, to develop into a suitable inhabitant of heaven,
Lewis contends, explains pain and suffering. In The Problem of Pain, Lewis
describes God as one not interested in a "feel good" kind of life experience for
his human "children." Rather, he describes God as a Divine Father "us[ing] his
authority to make the son into the sort of human being he, rightly, and in his
superior wisdom, wants him to be" (Problem 33). In the film, Lewis states:
"I'm not sure that God particularly wants us to be happy. I think he wants us
to be able to love, and be loved. He wants us to grow up." Throughout The
Problem of Pain, Lewis argues that this growing up can be best accompUshed
by individual submission to the lessons offered through suffering. He further
suggests that God has chosen to limit his power in order to allow humankind
free wiU and that free human choices often result in suffering to self and others.
Lewis argues that suffering, though bad in itself, can also be an instmmental
good. He states: "What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer,
his submission to the wiU of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion
aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads" (Problem 98). Lewis ends his
lengthy argument on the subject of pain with this statement: "I am not arguing
that pain is not painful. . . . I am only tiying to show that the old Christian
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doctrine of being made 'perfect through suffering' is not incredible. To prove
it palatable is beyond my design" (Problem 93).
One of the remarkable aspects about Lewis's arguments conceming "big"
subjects-death, heaven, heU, Ufe, pain-is his cerUinty. His chapter on prayer
is an exception to the rule. He titles this discourse "Petitionary Prayer: A
Problem Without an Answer." He explains:
My problem arises from one fact and one only; the fact that
Christian teaching seems at first sight to contain two different
pattems of petitionary prayer which are inconsistent: perhaps
inconsistent in their theological impUcations, but much more
obviously and depressingly inconsistent in the practical sense that
no man, so far as I can see, could possibley foUow them both at
the same moment. I shaU call them the A Pattem and the B
Pattem. (Chrisrian Reflections 142-43)
Lewis then examines "The Lord's Prayer," spedfically the "Thy wiU be done"
clause. He clarifies that Christians are commanded to pray-to make their
requests known to God-and then to submit to God's wiU. He then tums to
Pattem B, spedficaUy Matthew 21:22: "If you beUeve, you wiU receive
whatever you ask for in prayer," and tries to analyze one "pattem" in Ught of
the other. Lewis simply cannot account for the apparent inconsistency
between having to pray according to God's wiU but also being able, with faith,
to pray "on demand," and ends his chapter by aying: "I come to you, reverend
Fathers, for guidance. How am I to pray this very night?" (Christian
Reflections 151).
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To Attenborough's credit, he covers aU of these ever-so-big issues. The
film not only portrays C. S. Lewis; it manages to adapt-and lay out for
examination-Lewis's philosophical theology as weU. The film's question is: Do
C. S. Lewis's ready answers suffice? Attenborough's film begs the questions:
Does Lewis's philosophy hold up?
The obvious subject of concem in the film is death-not the Merle
Oberon Wuthering Heights mystical, romantic, beautiful death, but the
morphined, agonizing, suffering real death of a real person. C. S. Lewis began
corresponding with an American admirer, Joy Davidman Gresham, in 1950.
As she entered adulthood, Joy shocked her Jewish parents by announdng that
"[p]Ieasure was the only real goal in life, and hedonism the only reUgion"
(Sibley 76). She later rejected the selfishness of this philosophy, opting for
allegiance to Communism. She began writing for the Daily Worker and
pubUshed a book of poetry: Letter to a Commrade. which received the Russell
Loines Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, shared jointiy with
Robert Frost. Joy was an avid reader and a searcher after Tmth. She credited
Lewis's works, particularly this passage from The Screwtape Letters with
"chaUenging some of her most precariously held philosophies" (Sibley 96):
Your man [Screwtape teUs his nephew Wormwood] has been
accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen
incompatible philosophies dandng about together inside his head.
He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily "tme" or "false", but as
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"academic" or "practical", "outwom" or "contemporary",
"conventional" or "mthless". Jargon, not argument, is your best
ally in keeping him from the Church. Don't waste time trying to
make him think that materialism is tme! Make him think it is
strong, or stark, or courageous-that is the philosophy of the
future. That's the sort of thing he cares about. (11-12)
Joy finaUy conduded that Communism was "not a case of bad men perverting
a good philosophy . . . but a case of cormpt philosophy perverting many
persons who start out as unusuaUy good and unselfish persons" (qtd. in Sibley
101).
Joy credits her acceptance of Christianity with sustaining her through
years of marriage to a philandering, alcohoUc husband. Attenborough's Joy's
admission to Lewis that her showing up on his doorstep was a "running away"
from problems at home was tme-to-Ufe. She later said: "I was so much under
BiU's influence that I had to run away from him physicaUy and consult one of
the clearest thinkers of our time" (qtd. in Sibley 107). She did consult Lewis,
inviting him to the now-famous luncheon, and the rest, as they say, is histoiy.
In the film, shortiy after the "technical" marriage, Attenborough shows Joy
suddenly falUng down in her apartment. Doctors diagnose cancer. Jack faces
the tmth; he is in love with this sick woman. Joy's cancer goes into remission.
A happy period foUows, but the shadow of her illness grows ever longer. The
cancer, again active, consumes her body. She suffers. She dies.
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Jack's grief was intense. His "faith-so ardently championed in his
books-was shaken to its very foundarion" (Sibley). Attenborough's film
visuaUy captures this dark period of doubt and bittemess. The suspense builds
as the viewer wonders if Lewis can continue to regard death as a simple
river-crossing on a bridge built by the great Bridge Builder. Shortly after Joy's
death, Jack attends a sodal gathering. Eveiyone tums as Jack enters the room,
quietly whispering, one by one, "so sony, Jack," "so very sony." Harry
Harrington (Michael Denison) reminds him that "we see so Uttle here." Faith,
he points out, is aU that sustains one. "Only God," he says, "knows why these
things happen." Jack tums on him with a vengeance, angrily shouting: "We're
the creatures in the cosmic laboratory. I have no doubt the experience is for
our own good, but it stiU makes God the viUainous vivisectionist!"
Attenborough pays great attention to Lewis's beUef in the reaUty of
heaven. When Jack voices his anger at Riley's suggestion that the Namia
wardrobe is a Freudian sexual image, insisting instead that it is a symbol of
magic, he impUes much. Howard argues that Lewis's greatest achievement was
his attempt to retum the modem child to the possibilities of imaginative
t m t h - t o embrace fantasy, imagination, and the supematural and the
possibiUties of glories and the glorious. Lewis was convinced that the myths of
aU cultures shed some Ught on the "one myth that reaUy happened" (Sibley).
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Thus, the Namia wardrobe that the children in the stories must open, enter,
and push through in order to magically enter another world is but a metaphor
for death as the doorway to heaven.
However, the greatest iUustration in the film of Lewis's thoughts
regarding heaven are given via the Ck>lden VaUey picture. As Joy enters Lewis's
masculine study, surrounded by books, she stops and stares at a picture on the
wall. Jack teUs her that when he was a very Uttle boy it hung in his nursery
and that he thought it was a picture of heaven. Later, after the "marriage
before God and the world" on Joy's hospital sickbed and during her period of
remission, Joy suggests taking a holiday and locating the valley actually
portrayed in the picture. When they arrive at the inn and ask the keeper for
directions, she informs them that the vaUey's name was mistranslated. The
actual translation from the French should have been "door," not "golden."
They drive to the place, get out of the car, and behold-before them Ues
Namia! The EngUsh countiyside has never looked more radiant; golden shafts
of sunshine bathe a green, green meadow. A perfect sky smiles down on Joy
and Jack as they walk through the pasture, holding hands and laughing over
Uttie intimate jokes. It very much is the Golden VaUey of the picture; it
appears to be as heavenly a place as the imagination can conjure. However,
rain soon begins to faU, reminding aU that "the old Namia" does sometimes
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provide a gUmpse of heaven but clouds soon appear, shadows soon fall. The
"real country"-heaven-can only be reached by opening death's door.
HeU, too, is addressed. Joy is in the hospital daily taking cobalt
treatments, suffering from her fight with cancer. Jack, too, suffers-intensely.
It is this intense suffering that wakens him to the reaUzation of how very much
Joy matters to him. He puzzles over his feeUngs for Joy and says to himself:
"How could Joy be my wife? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? I'd have to care
more for her than for anyone else in this world. I'd have to be suffering the
torments of the damned," and, through sobs and tears, reaUzes that he is. His
state of grief over the possibiUty of separation from Joy is so intense that he
paraUels it to his vision of heU-etemal separation from the God of Love. Thus,
Attenborough's film makes it increasingly clear that the love that exists
between Jack and Joy mirrors the love that Lewis advocates between God and
humankind.
"Something must drive us out of our nursery into the world-we must
grow up!" becomes the film's C. S. Lewis dictum. This statement very much
summarizes the plot of Attenborough's story. The "something" that drives
Lewis out of his cloistered world-his nursery-into the real world of open
spaces fuU of bright joys and dark shadows is love; the something that forces
the man to grow up is intense suffering and tragic loss. Attenborough
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iUustrates this humanizing joumey through careful attention to Jack's
progressive relationship with Joy, his detached professor to human being
relationship with student Whistler, his increasingly intimate relationship with
Douglas, and his deepening relationship with God.
Ulstein aptly summarizes the Jack and Joy relationship:
What separates Shadowdands from ordinarv romances is that it is
built upon eros rather than erotica. Lewis and Gresham slowly
discover one another as human beings. They develop a chaste
friendship based first on mutual respect, then on sacrifice. When
they many and finally acknowdedge their love, it is not a
"relationship" that binds them but a great love. (50)
Spedfic scenes iUustrate his words. After Joy admits to Jack the state of her
marriage, he says: "I wish there was some way I could help." She repUes that
there is. Lewis looks at her, braced for her request. She says simply: "Be my
friend." Lewis again looks at her and answers sincerely: "I hope I'm that
already." However, Joy is the better friend; she introduces Jack to Ufe. Lewis
has "Uved" at Oxford for decades; he has, however, never managed to witness
the May 1 Sunrise tradition. In the film, after the luncheon, Jack and Wamie
take Joy on a tour of Oxford. After cUmbing a long, narrow, endosed, winding
stainvay they come out into the sunshine at the top of one of Oxford's towers.
Joy takes in the view and says: "Now there's a world worth saving." Jack teUs
her that every year on May 1 the choir school stands wiiere they are standing
and sings to the rising sun. Joy asks him for further description, and he admits
126
that he's never made it a point to get up early enough to hear them. The next
year on May 1 Mr. and Mrs. Lewis are among the early risers taking in the-as
Jack describes it-"pagan, vulgar, silly, but it works"-pageant. Attenborough
reveals the couple's growing intimacy in yet another scene. Joy takes the train
from London to Oxford to attend the solemn, grandiose Pageant of Leaming.
During the glorious service, Attenborough cross-cuts from Joy looking lovingly
at Jack to Jack locking his eyes on Joy's face. This eye connection is noted by
Riley-there is no mistaking the intimate connecting of the pair. One other
scene is worth noting: when Joy, now his "technical" wife, is in the hospital, a
weary Jack travels from Oxford to London almost daily, sacrifidng seU to be
with her. He faces the tmth: what was once genuine friendship has progressed
to a higher level. Anthony Hopkins could not have delivered C. S. Lewis's
humble proposal more perfectly. With just the right tendemess, he reveals
that Lewis is becoming a different human being-one not deUvering certain
answers, but one tentatively asking questions. A medium shot reveals Hopkins
tenderly Ufting Winger's hand, whispering: "WiU you take this fooUsh,
frightened, old man who needs you more than he can bear to say, and loves
you even though he hardly knows how?" It is Hopkins at his best.
Attenborough introduces the character of Whistier (James Frain) to
further iUustrate Jack's humanizing development. Early in the story, Jack
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presents a classroom lecture on plot. A "problem" student-Whistler-sleeps in
dass. Lewis "picks on" the sleeping student. "Aristotle," he teUs the class
while looking at the misbehaver, "would say not why does he sleep, but what
wiU he do next?" BeUs chime; the student wakes up. Lewis reminds him that
this class is not mandatory-the boy hastily leaves the room. Lewis continues
his lecture, "He came; he sleeps; he goes." His concem is dearly with plot
development, not with the erring student. Later in the film, Lewis witnesses
the same erring student steaUng a book He foUows the young man to his
dorm room, knocking at the door. When Whistier admits to the theft, Lewis
does the "right" thing-he offers him a smaU loan. However, what Whistler
needs the most is not a loan but a friend. He teUs Lewis that he loves to read,
explaining that his father beUeves that people read in order to "know we're not
alone." Lewis abmptly leaves. Whistier leaves Oxford, yet Lewis is destined to
see him again. On one of his joumeys to the hospital, Lewis, dozing on the
train, hears someone caU his name. Looking up, he sees Whistler. The two
men share a drink together. Lewis recaUs Whistier's father's daim. Whistier
teUs him that his father has recentiy died. The "superior" professor and the
wayward student are united in their common suffering.
When Joy introduces Douglas to his hero, the author of the boy's muchloved Namia books, Lewis is somewhat at a loss for words. He does not, after
128
all, know any children. Joy and Douglas enter the room. Jack-caught in the
act of trying to get the fire blazing before company arrives-sheepishly brushes
the dust off of his hands and says, none too brightly, "You're Douglas."
Douglas shyly asks his mother to ask Jack to sign his book: The Lion. the
Witch. and the Wardrobe. Jack rather formaUv signs it: "To Douglas. The
magic never ends." Wamie saves the strained first meeting by offering to take
Douglas to the attic to see the wardrobe. One of Attenborough's most
memorable shots, perhaps because of its understated beauty, is of an
in-remission Joy sitting outside on a bench with autumn leaves surrounding her
tranquil face as she looks lovingly at the two she most cares for: C. S. Lewis,
Oxford don, is running after young Douglas, teaching him how to ride his
bicycle. Then there is the scene almost too emotional to dissect: the funeral is
over; some days have passed; grief hangs heavily over The Kilns. Wamie teUs
Lewis that he must try to comfort DougIas-"Talk to him!" An emotionaUy
wrought Lewis methodicaUy cUmbs the stairs to the attic, finding Douglas
sitting in front of the old wardrobe, staring intently at the door. Lewis sits
down beside Douglas, and teUs him: "I loved your mother very much." Littie
Douglas says, "I don't see why she had to get sick." And C. S. Lewis quietlv
admits, "Nor I." Douglas asks his step-father: "Jack, do you beUeve in
heaven?" Lewis simply repUes, "Yes." Douglas says that he doesn't, and Jack
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teUs him that that is okay. Then a close-up reveals one tear falling from the
Uttle boy's eye as he whispers: "I sure would Uke to see her again." "Me, too,"
Jack cries. In a medium shot Lewis wraps his arms around the child;
heartbreaking grief-fiUed sobs are all that is heard as Attenborough cuts to a
non-intmsive, silhouetted shot of Lewis and Douglas as they weep in each
other's arms.
For decades Jack Lewis had been voidng and writing words of faith.
Even great losses had been addressed with ready answers. In one of the film's
lectures, he waves a newspaper at the audience. And begins:
Yesterday I read a letter that referred to an event that took place
almost a year ago. That was the night that a number 1 bus drove
into a column of young Royal Marine cadets in Chatham, and
kiUed twenty-four of them. You remember? The letter asks some
simple but fundamental questions. Where was God on that
December night? Why didn't He stop it? Isn't God supposed to
be good? Isn't he supposed to love us? Does God want us to
suffer? What if the answer to that question is yes. You see, I'm
not sure that God particularly wants us to be happy. He wants us
to love and be loved. He wants us to grow up. I suggest to you
that it is because God loves us that he makes us the gift of
suffering. Or to put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to
rouse a deaf world.
Lewis continues his discussion, reasoning that "we're Uke blocks of stone, out
of wiiich the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of His chisel, wdiich
hurt so much, are what makes us perfect." Attenborough's film suggests that
Lewis's God put the man and his philosophical claims to the test. What does a
130
writer do when overcome by any emotion? He writes. Lewis's A Grief
Observed, claims Ralph C. Wood, is "darker than anything in Kafka or Sartre"
(203): Lewis accuses God of being a Cosmic Sadist, an evil tvrant. Lewis later
described the book as one "which ends in faith but raises aU the blackest
doubts en route" (qtd. in PurtiU 33). In the film, a drained Lewis, sitting
behind his desk, voices his Grief Obseryed thesis. He tums to his brother and
admits: "Im so terribly afraid. Of never seeing her again. Of thinking that
suffering is just suffering after aU. No cause. No purpose. No pattem. No
sense. Just pain, in a world of pain."
Some Christian critics negatively assess Attenborough's film's ending,
suggesting that it beUttles the reaUty of Lewis's re-estabUshed, re-strengthened,
"metal toughened by fire," faith. I disagree. The final scene is, once again,
Namia-like in its imagery. A long shot reveals Lewis and Douglas walking
through another Golden Valley meadow. Richard Dyer explains: "The
romance literally embodies the theology and, as suggested by the last surging
(music, camerawork, roUing green valley) shot, [Lewis's] love for God is
enriched by his experience of love in the here and now" (17). Attenborough
leads into this final shot via bleedover. Lewis has previously been
"interviewing" a new tutoree. He has been asking the boy probing questions;
not deUvering pat answers. He asks the new student what he thinks of
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Whistler's father's claims: Do we read to know we are not alone? The lad
thinks this through and begins voidng his opinion. Lewis goes to the
classroom window and looks outside. Attenborough uses voice-over: Lewis
queries, "Why love if loving hurts so much? I have no answers-only the Ufe
I've Uved. Twice I've been given a choice: the boy chose safety; the man
chooses suffering." The film in its entirety answers the voiced questions. It
proclaims that it 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at
aU; indeed, pain and suffering is part of the Uving experience: as Joy puts it,
"it's part of the deal." Safety provides only that; accepting the risk of suffering
provides the p>ossibiUties of experiendng great joy. Furthermore, the film, and
spedfically the conclusion, again reiterates the thinking of a previous great
inteUect: "There Uves more faith in honest doubt. . . than in half the creeds."
As he condudes A Grief Observed. Lewis muses: "The best is perhaps
what we understand least" (71). Attenborough provides a perfect example of
such. In the film, Lewis, who was troubled by the issue of prayer since
childhood, prays-continuaUy. When Joy's cancer goes into remission,
Reverend Harrington tells Jack, "God is answering your prayers." Jack repUes
with fervor: "That's not wdiy I pray-I pray because I can't help myself-the
need flows out of me. It dæsn't change God; it changes me." Thus, the fiilm
suggests that prayer, never understood by Jack, was stiU one of the "best"
13:
things. Life, Lewis finaUy leams, is not to be fully understood. Shortly before
his death, Lewis concluded an intervdew with these thoughts:
The world might stop in ten minutes; meanw^hile, we are to go on
doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one's post as a
child of God, Uving each day as if it were our last, but planning as
though our world núght last a hundred vears. (qtd. in Lindskoog
12)
Attenborough's final portrayal of Lewis shows him practidng his own
advice. He is "at his post," taking care of Douglas, enjoying the Namia that
sometimes resembles heaven, contemplating the mysteries of this experience
called Ufe. The camera dolUes farther and farther back; a long shot reveals
Douglas and Lewis, arm-in-arm, walking toward a horizon of blue doudless
skies.
There is yet one aspect of the film that must be addressed. The titie.
Never, I dare say, has one author used one word quite so consistentlv
throughout his canon. Never, I dare say, has one director managed to use
shadows more phiIosophicaUy. Attenborough opens his film with a long shot
of a glorious sunrise; however, the sky is not doudless-"heaven" is obstmcted
from dear view. The douds make shadows on the land bdow. The douds
become heavier, hanging somewhat ominously over an impressive Oxford
skyUne. Attenborough then cuts to a shot of shadowy, fUckering candles as
solemn, L a t i n ^ choir music is heard as the Oxford chapel comes into focus.
133
An astute viewer perceives that this is a land clouded by shadows and that the
Ught of knowledge is, at times, dim and uncertain. When Douglas visits the
Lewdses for the first time, he asks if he might see their wardrobe. Douglas
enters the attic; a low-angle shot pans the piece of fumiture, and the
wardrobe-the magical gateway to the other world described in the Namia
stories-casts a long shadow over the child. Thus, Attenborough communicates
Lewis's contention that each person must choose whether or not to joumey
through the shadows of the mind and embrace the possibilities of the
imagination-the possibiUties that Ue beyond sdentific reason. After Joy's
initial visit with Jack and Wamie, she boards the train leaving Oxford. She
looks at the brothers through the window; they appear shadowy. In this scene,
Attenborough manages to use shadows as a foreshadowing: Jack and Wamie
are later left behind in the land of shadows as Joy departs on yet another
joumey-a joumey to the shadowless land of heaven.
The final chapter in Lewis's Namia books is entitied "FareweU to
Shadowlands." As earUer discussed, the children have arrived in the "new
Namia," i.e., heaven. They have left the Shadowlands behind. Lewis's
description of this world as a land of shadows accuratdy describes his final
thoughts on Christian thdsm. This world, he contends, provides rare gUmpses
of the perfection that awaits the beUever in the new, shadowdess land. Human
134
comprehension, too, is, at best "shadowy"; Lewis finally condudes that there is
much that Ues beyond human reason-"uncertainty," he told Joy shortly before
her death, "is what God has given us for a cross" (qtd. in Sibley 131). As
explained by Ulstein: "BeUef without the looming specter of doubt is not really
faith, because nothing is at risk" (50).
Attenborough's Shadowlands reminds us that all thinkers long to make
sense of life, arriving at perfect answers to Ufe's complexities, but that even the
greatest inteUects have met with defeat. The complexities of pain and suffering
are perhaps best approached by contemplating Attenborough's Lewis's
conduding words on the subject: "The pain now is part of the happiness then."
Reading Lewis's story via Attenborough's film reminds us that we are, indeed,
not alone in the land of shadows.
CHAPTERV
THE FRRNCH LIRIJTFNANT'S WOMAN:
AN ADAPTATION OF AN ADAPTATION
Seymour Chatman titles his chapter on The French Lieutenant's
Woman "A New Kind of Film Adaptation." His study analyzes the adaptation
in light of its narratological interest, i.e., Karel Reisz's and Harold Pinter's
"innovative solution" (164) to "the problem of communicating [Fowles's] overt
narration" (164). Indeed, this "solution" has been much analyzed. What has
been overlooked is the fact that this is a "new kind" of adaptation in yet
another respect. I contend that the film is actually an adaptation of an
adaptation.
Fowles's first novel, The Collector (1963), sold extremely weU. With
the popular success of this novel behind him, John Fowles was secure enough
to pubUsh The Aristos (1964), his philosophic treatise. Fowles defines his
philosophy as existentialism; he perceives the primary concem of existentialism
as "preserv[ing] the freedom of the individual against all those
pressures-to-conform" (7). Critical reaction to Fowles's existential expression,
his "self-portrait in ideas," was negative. R. A. Gray claims that "[Fowles's]
approach is only partiaUy successful inasmuch as many of his topics are
135
136
definitely not amendable to this kind of staccato treatment" (240). J.
Mortimer reflects many reviewers' sentiments regarding the work: "The sad
fact is that the meaning of Ufe is not to be trapped in numbered paragraphs,
even with the aid of HeracUtus, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Latin word for
no one" (900). Geoffrey HeptonstaU states that The Aristos contains "no
thread of speculative logic. . . . [and offers] no satisfying condusion" (262).
Fowles admitted that this book is offensive in manner because of the
"dogmatic way in which [he] set out [his] views on Ufe" (Aristos 7). He later
insisted that his purpose in The Aristos was not in any way intended to "sell"
the reader on his existential philosophy: that "[i]f [he] wanted that [he] should
have written in a very different form and style, and wrapped [his] piUs in the
usual sugar coating" (7-8).
In 1969 John Fowles pubUshed The French Lieutenant's Woman. This
book was as successful as The Aristos was unsuccessful; Barry Olshen notes
that "with the pubUcation of The French Lieutenant's Woman . . . Fowles's
work appeared as a best seUer on both sides of the Atiantic . . . his reputation
was extended into the . . . atmosphere of academe" (63). Katherine Tarbox
relates that "[w]hen Fowdes first pubUshed The French Lieutenant's Woman.
critics invested a good deal of energy in tiying to determine what spedes of
novel Fowles had created" (60). Some critics view the novel as primarily
137
historical because it dramatizes Victorian England and captures the hypocrisy
and uncertainties of the age. Others categorize the novel as primarily
Victorian: there are predictable stmctures, Dickensian descriptions, a
Hardy-Uke plot. Another group note the novel's modem aspects: problems are
unresolved; endings are open. Yet others see the novel as metafictional,
focusing on Fowles's commentaiy about writing as an art form. Some
recognize the novel's philosophical dimensions: Almansi and Henderson
describe the stoiy as "a novel of ideas" (95). Although critics may not have
agreed on "what spedes of novel Fowles had created," they did agree that the
book was first-rate. Richard CorUss finds the story "speUbinding" (48). Peter
Wolfe describes the novd as "a magical mystery tour through Victorian
England" with Fowles as the impressario-guide (18). Joy Boyum states that the
novel "is a viituoso Uteraiy performance-a novel of great originaUty and style"
(104). Richard Schickel reflects that The French Lieutenant's Woman "is
beautiful-and set down in a style of such surpassing grace that it puts the
average American popular noveUst to shame" (146). Critical reaction to this
work was sweet indeed! This time Fowles wrote in a different form and style:
aUegoiy. This time he made sure his piU was sugar-coated; The French
Ueutenant's Woman is coated with entidng moments of pierdng
self-examination and moments of unpredictable passion. Fowles manages to
138
allow the reader to experience Victorian England through the eyes of a
stereotypical young lady, an educated and refined gentleman, and an ousted
woman-the mysterious Sarah. The reader also experiences 1867 from the
vantage point of an additional one himdred years, i.e., through the eyes of a
twentieth-century and UteraUy intrusive author highly concemed with the
tension between "the then" and "the now." Fowles craftily weaves a story that
shades the Une between what is real and what is imagined. He communicates
little-known facts about theVictorian Age; he tums prophet as he projects
characters into their futures; he leaves the reader no altemative but to move
toward existentialism: the reader must exerdse individual freedom and choose
how to end Fowles's tale. Fowles brilUantly uses aU of these avenues to
communicate, once again, his views on life, his existential philosophy.
The French Lieutenant's Woman was pubUshed in 1969. By 1980,
readers had purchased four miUion copies; the novel had been translated into
eighteen languages (CorUss 48). In 1981, Karel Reisz's and Harold Pinter's
film adaptation was released. It, too, has been endlessly reviewed and
analyzed. It, too, met with critical acdaim. CorUss applauds the film's
"cunning" approach, describing the fiJbn as a "multilayered meditation on the
blurring Unes that connect actor, character and audience" (50). David Ansen
reflects that Reisz and Pinter "invented an entirely new superstmcture while
139
remaining faithful to the novel's spirit." He continues: "The movie is smart
enough not to try to supplant the novel. It's a companion piece, raising its
own set of questions, supplying its own set of satisfactions" (96). Harlan
Kennedy claims that "[i]n The French Lieutenant's Woman . . . [Reisz] has
brought off just about the best fiUn of his career" (26). In an early film review,
Georg Gaston predicted that the movie "would become a dassic of
Uterature-to-film adaptation" (qtd. in Barber 225); critics agree that "[t]his
prophecy seems more and more justified" (Barber 225). So successful was the
economized, visually appeaUng dnematic version that the original bland and
diy Aristos "piU" was nominated for five Academy Awards.
An analysis of Fowles's dry Aristos "piU"-his existential philosophical
treatise-is in order. In his introduction to ExistentiaUsm from Dostoevsky to
Sartre, Walter Kaufman clarifies that"existentiaUsm is not a philosophy but a
label for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy" (11).
He states that "existentiaUsm is not a school of thought nor redudble to any
set of tenets" and insists that the "one essential feature shared by
[existentiaUsts] is their perfervid individuaUsm" ( I I ) . John Fowles shares
Kaufman's sentiments. In The Aristos he states that existentiaUsm "is capable
only of one man's resistance; one personal expression of view" (123). Fowles
140
disassodates himself from all others who may be labeled existentialists; he
insists that existentialism can be existentiaUsm only in the singular.
Fowles darifies that his use of the term "aristos" stems from the andent
Greek philosopher Heraclitus's idea of mankind divided between the aristoi,
the few good responsible ones, and the hoi poUoi. the many, who unthinkingly
conform (9). According to Fowles, the individual who stmggles to arrive at
aristoi status assists in achieving an aristos world: "the best for our situation at
thistime"(212).
Fowles sees individual fi-eedom as the foundation of his philosophy; all
other precepts discussed in The Aristos are discussed relative to a Uberated self.
However, he insists that freedom is not absolute, but limited by the mysteiy of
fate, luck, chance-wd\at he labels "hazard." He further insists that hazard is
necessary to the human condition because it creates mystery and mystery, in
tum, creates pleasure: "AU our pleasures are dependent on [hazard]. Even
though I arrange for a pleasure and look forward to it my eventual enjoyment
of it is stiU a matter of hazard" (18). Life without hazard, contends Fowles,
would exclude freedom: fi'ee wiU could not exist because choice depends upon
an element of "if." Fowles further contends that the mysteries of hazard
promote energy. He iUustrates this via the man of "too much leisure." The
man of too much leisure has too much comfortable certainty, too Uttle energy.
141
Indeed, "[t]he greater the leisure, the greater the lack of tension" (118).
According to Fowles, insuffident hazard results in insuffident energy which
results in an over-abundance of complacency which can only end in stasis.
Not only is freedom affected by hazard, but it is also affected by
responsibiUty. Excessive individualism Fowles condemns: "obstinate
individualism lays [existentialism] open to misrepresentation by those
soi-disant existentiaUsts who are really anarchists . . . " (122). Fowles insists
that freedom without responsibiUty is mere anarchy-when individual choice
conflicts with universal good, individuaUsm must take the back seat.
Responsible freedom must be regarded, insists Fowles, not as a duty but as a
privilege: "Doing good for some public reward is not doing good: it is doing
something for public reward" (79).
Fowles blatantly denounces fasdsm because he claims that equaUty
breeds an environment hostile to the individual. Paradoxically, he denounces
inequaUty because inequality breeds resentment. He argues for "better"
distribution of doUar wealth, educational wealth, and gender wealth. As Fowles
discusses doUar wealth, he continues to advocate responsible freedom, stating:
"Free enterprise . . . is to aUow a man to become as rich as he Ukes. This is not
free enterprise, but free vampirism" (44). He maintains that "[w]ealth in itself
is innocent. The rich man in himself is innocent. But wealth and rich men
142
surrounded by poverty and poor men are guilty" (125). Fowles reminds his
readers that "[i]t does not necessarily require any of the nobler human qualities
to make money" (126) and wams against "the monetization of pleasure: the
inabiUty to conceive of pleasure except as being somehow connected with
getting and spending" (128).
In The Aristos. Fowles addresses his concem with gender relations. He
explains that
[t]he male and female are the two most powerful biological
prindples; and their smooth inter-action in sodety is one of the
chief signs of sodal health. In this respect our world shows, in
spite of the now general poUtical emandpation of women,
considerable sickness; and most of this sickness arises from the
selfish tyranny of the male. (165)
He denounces the contemporaiy affaire de corps. describing it as "a flight from
reality . . . and responsibiUty" (172).
Fowles, the artist, is complimentary regarding art, uncompUmentary
regarding sdence. "Sdence," he says, "is what a machine can or might do; art
is what it wiU never do" (152). What he condemns about sdence is the
tendency of the sdentist to live "remote from the tme hub of sodety of which
he is a member," to atomize rather than synthesize, to withdraw rather than
draw together, to particularize rather than universaUze, to dehumanize rather
than to humanize. He continues: "For what good sdence tries to eUminate,
good art seeks to provoke-mystery, which is lethal to the one, and vital to the
143
other" (153). "Good" sdence, Fowles concedes, is possible: sdence is good if it
demoUshes tyranny and dogma, melts petrification, and breaks ironclad
situations, as does art.
Fowles describes attaining aristos status as a "becoming" process. One
of the first steps in this process, he suggests, is spending time alone with self.
His definition of maturity summarizes his thoughts on this subject:
"Adulthood is not an age, but a state of knowledge of self (165). "Knowledge
of self" can only be acquired, Fowles insists, through "'God'," i.e., through a
"situation. Not a power, or a being, or an influence" (22). To clarify, Fowles
contends that we gain self-knowledge through anxiety-laden situations,
presenting new mysteries, new unknowns. These "anxieties are in some sense
goads . . . it is essential that humanity . . . is goaded" (40).
John Fowles's existentiaUsm is founded on individual freedom; this
foundation is strengthened by its relative status. Indeed, absolute individual
freedom is Umited by the element of hazard and the privilege of responsibiUty
to the whole. ResponsibiUty to the whole, claims Fowles, requires doing good
solely for the sake of doing good, understanding the artist's role, wilUngly
submitting to the lessons of loneUness, and accepting situational-anxieties.
A careful reading of the Victorian novel, The French Lieutenant's
Woman. leaves Uttle doubt that this work again prodaims John Fowles's
144
Aristos existential philosophy. The story-Une in this most complex novel-the
triangular love plot-is not complex: it is surprisingly unoriginal and easy to
foUow. It is the story of a man who must exerdse his free wiU by making a
choice. The novel begins in 1867. The setting is Lyme Regis "on the south
coast of England" (F.L.W. 9). Charles Smithson, a thirty-two year old
Londoner and a baronet's nephew, and his twenty-one year old fiancee,
Emestina Freeman, take a proper Victorian stroU along the Cobb. They notice
a dark figure gazing out to sea. Emestina informs Charles that the figure is a
female, a mysterious and ostradzed creature whom she refers to as "poor
Tragedy." She hints at Tragedy's sin: the ex-govemess was defiled and deserted
by a shipwrecked French naval officer. Charles is intrigued by the scarlet
woman. The next day, while he htmts fossils in the UndercUff, he stumbles
across the sleeping Sarah in a "tender and yet sexual" repose (F.L.W. 61).
Sarah and Charles keep "stumbUng" into each other-finaUy into each other's
arms. Charles gives up all pretense of maintaining a relationship with
Emestina and determines to make Sarah his wife. He breaks off his
engagement. Alas, wdien he retums for Sarah, she has disappeared! He
searches for her everywhere; he hires a detective to intensify efforts to find her.
Driven by despair, ousted by sodety, Charles escapes to America. FinaUy, a
145
telegram arrives stating that she is found. Charles immediately retums to
London and once again faces Sarah.
The basic stoiy, a man tom between two women, is certainly nothing
new; what makes the triangular love plot so interesting is the existential
dimension of the characters. The Victorian gentleman, Charles Smithson,
Fowles's "everyman," is engaged to marry young Emestina Freeman, "the
catatonia of convention" (F.L.W. 300). Indeed, Emestina is eamest in her
aUegiance to the "petty provindal day" (11); ironicaUy, her "proper respect for
convention" (28) left her enslaved to the dictates of Victorianism, not a "free
man" at aU, much less a free woman! Fowles describes Emestina as
fashion-consdous, demure, obedient, shy, pampered, frail, and proper. "Hers,"
Fowles remarks, is "exactly the right face for the age-smaU-chinned, oval,
deUcate as a violet" (26). Emestina is most comfortable in her proper
Victorian home, particularly in the conservatoiy: a confining hothouse fiUed
with flowers and plants stmggUng to grow in an unnatural environment. The
nairator teUs readers that Emestina's father seived two gods: Profit and
Eamestness; Emestina was most certainly her father's child. She iUustrates
Fowles's Aristos remarks regarding the "monetization of pleasure"; indeed,
Emestina possesses "no talent except that of conventional good taste . . . that
is, she knew how to spend a great deal of money" (154). Obviously, Emestina
146
stands for her age: artifidal, unpassionate, and eamestly committed to
maintaining the status quo. Evidently, however, Fowles was not fully satisfied
with Emestina as an allegorical figure. He created Mrs. Poulteney to represent
the more extreme sins of the age.
Mrs. Poulteney is a wealthy old widow who Uves by the letter of the law
and expects others to do Ukewise. Mrs. Poulteney, Fowles teUs his readers,
"was an epitome of all the most crassly arrogant traits of the ascendant British
Empire" (23). She had two obsessions: "One was Dirt. . . and the other
Immorality" (22). Mrs. Poulteney sees her God, not as Fowles's Aristos
"situation," but as a lawyer and wonders "whether the Lord calculated charity
by what one had given or by what one could have afforded to give" (24). It is
this perception of God that leads her to "help" Sarah, cleverly iUustrating
Fowles's Aristos contention that doing good for reward's sake negates the good.
Despite Mrs. Poulteney's intemal hypocrisies, her extemal charities result in
sodetal approval. Fowles portrays Mrs. Poulteney's God as being not so easilv
fooled. When Mrs. Poulteney arrives at St. Peter's door (in Charles's
imagination), she cries: "My man! Make way. I am she. Mrs. Poulteney of
Lyme Regis." The heavenly butler responds: "Formerly of Lyme Regis, ma'am.
And now of a much more tropical abode" (265).
14^
The usual adjectives connected with the Victorian Age are pmdish,
conventional, and hypocritical. Emestina and Mrs. Poulteney are carefully
sketched aUegorical figures embodying the negative aspects of Victorianism.
Emestina's rival, Sarah Woodmff, is a more complex individual, yet
equaUy recognizable as an aUegorical figure. As Sarah's stoiy evolves, the
reader leams that she is the daughter of a tenant-farmer who never forgot that
his ancestors were of a more genteel station. Therefore, he determines to send
his daughter to a boarding school which is totaUy out of keeping with her
sodal rung on the Victorian ladder. Sarah's poor father dies. She is left alone,
devoid of family and sodal connections, possessing only the "gift" of
education. As Bany Olshen explains: "she has been forced out of her own class
without being raised to the next" (74); thus, Sarah is a most melancholy
person: she reaUzes that her only means of escape from a Ufe of serving as a
govemess requires a high cost-manying shame. When opportunity knocks in
the form of a shipwrecked French Lieutenant, Sarah seizes her day. Knowing
the nature of the age and, more spedficaUy, the nature of the "pious" women
of Lyme Regis, she counts on gossip tuming her into a damned woman: "the
French Lootnt's Hoer" (F.L.W. 73). Sarah flaunts her "supposed" sexual
immoraUty, thereby freeing herself from aU of the demands of Victoriarúsm,
i.e., once she chooses to blatantly offend sodety, she no longer has to concem
148
herself with its approval. Sarah affronts fashion: her riding coat is described as
black and bizarre. Unlike Emestina, Sarah is most at home in the isolated
botanical UndercUff, a short stretch of coastal wildemess outside of Lyme
Regis, "one of the strangest coastal landscapes in Southem England" (58).
Sarah's scandalous choice in favor of freedom gives her the opportunity to
pursue a "do your own thing" lifestyle.
Such a Ufestyle, however, forces Sarah to undertake a joumey of
isolation, a "becoming" joumey. Sarah's suffering makes her espedaUy
sensitive to the suffering endured by her feUow sufferers: "She saw that there
was suffering; and she prayed that it would end" (52). Sarah cries often-her
tears are not only for herself, but for the age as a whole: for the many who
cannot escape the cmel employment of serving such as Mrs. Poulteney, for the
"Millies" scarred by intense poverty resulting from being bom "fourth of eleven
children" (129), for the London Sarahs forced into prostitution. Sarah finds
her way as a New Woman, working in the artistic Rossetti household. She
emerges from her becoming jovimey equipped to assist others in search of a
better way-a way not yet historicaUy defined as existential, but existential
nonetheless. Indeed, Fowies's primary existential concem-freedom against aU
those pressures-to-conform-is personified in the character of Sarah Woodruff.
149
The novel's title-The Frenrh íieutenant's Woman-is misleading. It
impUes that the novel focuses on Sarah's story; this is not so. Simon Loveday
explains: "In the field of Uterature a character wdio develops wiU always steal
the show . . . Sarah cannot hold the place of importance . . . she is merely the
means. It is Charles who is the end" (71). Throughout his novel, Fowdes
quotes Victorian poets. The Unes of poetry most assodated with the novel's
protagonist, Charles Smithson, are taken from Matthew Amold's "The Grand
Chartreuse." They describe the pUght of the inteUectual Victorian caught
"wandering between two worlds, one dead / the other powerless to be bom"
(85-86). Fowles describes Charles as "a man stmggUng to overcome history"
(F.L.W. 234), a man standing "with one foot over the predpice" (150).
Charles is Victorian in his aUegiance to ideas, in his worship of order, in his
attention to the outward man, and in his "scandal as the ultimate sin"
approach to Ufe; he is non-Victorian in his desire for honesty, in his
anti-materialistic stance, in his intrinsic tendency to embrace nature, and in his
sensitivity to the "seeming respectabiUty" of the age. Charles is indeed a tom
man: a man tom between aUegiance to Victorian convention (Emestina) and
John Fowles's existential fi-eedom (Sarah).
Fowles uses two primary motifs in the novel-fossils and mirrors-both
are assodated with the character of Charles Smithson. In The Aristos. Fowies
150
argues that stasis (non-evolving) is antithetical to aristos status. Fowles's
Charles-a "gentleman"-the Aristos man of too much leisure-dabbles in
paleontology. Charles "begins with a misconception of his own place in
Darwin's universe. He considers himself an educated young gentlemen,
naturaUy selected for survival, Uttle suspecting that his class is marked instead
for extinction" (Huffaker 110-11). Indeed, Charles's choice develops into a
dedsion between "energized" existential freedom via evolution with Sarah or
"comfortable" Victorian duty and fossiUzation with Emestina.
Fowles introduces a foil character, Sam Farrow, to further comment on
Charles's need to evolve. Sam clearly, aUegoricaUy, represents the evolving
rising middle class: an emergence resulting from years of economic exploitation
and nineteenth-century industrial expansion. Fowles references Dickens's Sam
WeUer and states that "the difference between Sam WeUer and Sam Farrow
(that is, between 1836 and 1867) was this: the first was happy with his role,
the second suffered it" (40). Fowles's Sam resorts to diaboUcal means to end
his suffering and free himself from servant status. Sam's story again reminds
the reader of Fowdes's Aristos advice: the privileged must strive for a system
that aUows greater equaUty because the underprivileged wiU only suffer so long.
Part of Charles's evolving, becoming joumey requires recognition of this fact.
151
The other motif is mirrors. Early in the novel, Charles "interrogate[s]
his good-Iooking face in the mirror" (27); later he "cover[s] the ambiguous face
in lather "(38)-obviously stiU unable to confront the superfidalities of his
character. To his credit, while looking in the mirror he does comprehend that
his face is "faintly fooUsh," "[t]oo innocent," and reflects "too Uttie achieved"
(38). After Charles deddes to confront Emestina face to face with the tmth,
he stares at his reflection "with a kind of awed pleasure . . . " ( 2 9 1 ) . He
recognizes this Charles as a "tme[r] selP (299). Thus, Charles iUustrates
Fowles's Aristos claim: self-analysis is the first step toward aristoi status.
Fowles devotes much energy to juxtaposing "the then"-the Victorian
Age-and "the now"-the twentieth century. In The Aristos, Fowles states:
Adam is stasis or conservatism; Eve is kinesis, or progress. Adam
sodeties are ones in which the man and the father, male gods,
exact strict obedience to estabUshed institutions and norms of
behavior, as during a majority of the periods of history in our era.
The Victorian is a typical such period. Eve sodeties are those in
which the woman and the mother, female gods, encourage
innovation and experiment, and fresh definitions, aims, modes of
feeUng. The Renaissance and our own are typical such ages.
(165-66)
Therefore, The French Lieutenant's Woman. Fowdes's existentiâl aUegory, is set
in Victorian England, a period noted for unprecedented demands of
conformity, excessive sexual inhibitions, and an overwhelming need to appear
respectable. Fowles goes to great length in his novel to describe this age in a
152
highly negative Ught; in contrast, he minces no words describing our own
"uninhibited" (168) age as positive. However, he cautions that our current
freedom, particularly modem sexual freedom, is lessening our abiUtv to
imagine, to long for, to appredate. In The Aristos. Fowles reminds readers that
"[f]ree love does not encourage tme love" (168). In The French Lieutenant's
Woman. Fowles discusses sex "then" and "now." He says that
the desire is conditioned by the frequency it is evoked: our world
spends a vast amount of its time inviting us to copulate, while our
reaUty is as busy in fmstrating us. We are not so fmstrated as the
Victorians? Perhaps. But if you can only eat one apple a day,
there's a great deal to be said against Uving in an orchard of the
wretched things; you might find apples sweeter if you were
allowed only one a week. (F.L.W. 213)
Charles Smithson confesses his plans to break his contractual agreement with
Emestina to a confidant, the sdentist, Dr. Grogan. Katherine Tarbox describes
Dr. Grogan as
a "dry Uttle kestral of a man" who has never known real
commitment to another human being. He showed Charles the
telescope with which he enjoys Lyme's bathing beauties, and as
he did "his tongue fUcked widely out and he winked" (150). In
this rather disgusting image Grogan-the-voyeur reveals himself as
one who looks but does not leap . . . who plays with ideas rather
than Uving them, as he demonstrates in his childish playing with
Charles at a secret sodety of Darwinism, in his histronic swearing
on Danvin rather than the Bible. (70)
Grogan is more knowdedgeable conceming other doctors' case studies than he
is at diagnosing his own patients: he is the one who mistakenly advises pladng
153
Sarah in an insane asylum. Grogan inhabits "the masculine, more serious
world" (123) of the confirmed bachelor and condescends to Sarah's female
status when he reminds Charles: "You must not think she is Uke us men, able
to reason clearly, examine her motives, understand why she behaves as she
does. One must see her as being in a mist" (127). Grogan insists that the only
cure for Sarah rests upon another's penetrating that mist, i.e., solving the
mystery. This insistence opposes Fowles's Aristos precept, iUustrating what
Fowles finds objectionable in sdence and sdentists-the inabiUty to allow
mysteries to remain mysteries. Nevertheless, Fowles allows the sdentist to
partially redeem himself by reacting to Charles's intent to break his vow with
Emestina and openly admit his love for Sarah thusly: "If you become a better
and a more generous human being, you may be forgiven. But if you become
more selfish . . . you are doubly damned" (F.L.W. 311).
Sarah's mysterious flight from Charles after their intimacy is a source of
critical debate. Was her desertion in Charles's best interest or was it in her
own, i.e., was her desertion self-less or selfish? Robert Huffaker interprets
Sarah's "love" for Charles thusly:
In gaining the self-awareness and self-suffidency that characterize
the existential consdousness, both characters have also embraced
something of the selfishness that accompanies acting what one
knows. This side-effect of the existential awareness, far more
advanced in Sarah's case, is the twentieth century's greatest
barrier to love . . . unfortunately, Uke Sarah, most of us have
154
evolved so fiercely in pursuing our ends and preseiving our selves
that we have devalued our feeUngs. . . .(114)
As noted earlier, the story^-Une-the triangular love plot-is simple. That
is, it is simple until the reader approaches "the end" of the novel. At this
point, Fowles, who beUeves "that freedom is the highest human good" stops
and ponders his beUef. He deddes that he must Uve up to this code; as a
result, he offers his readers two endings. Fowles creatively "enters" his novel,
becoming a temporaiy character. He is perplexed because he realizes that
whichever ending he places last wiU appear to be the "real" ending. Tme to his
beUef in the importance of hazard (chance), he tosses a coin to determine
placement. Also, while "in" his novel Fowles tums his watch back fifteen
minutes; thus, both endings occur at the same time. To clarify, he intensifies
the iUusion that neither ending has authorial preference. The ending that is
printed in the novel first (but "actuaUy" occurs simultaneouslv) is the Victorian
ending. In this ending, Charles and Sarah are romanticaUy reunited; Charles is
introduced to his daughter (the child of Sarah and Charles's ninety seconds of
passion) and aU ends weU. This ending "is, in short,. . . the triumph of the
Victorian-romantic side of Charles's personaUty" (Loveday 59). In the "final"
ending, the twentieth century existential ending, Charles chooses to exerdse
his own free wiU by refusing Sarah's "sex without commitment" offer. He sees
the relationship Sarah proposes as self-defeating-incapable of providing the
155
"emotional and domestic reward in Ufe" Fowdes advocates in The Aristos,
incapable of ever resulting in "the harmonious marriage that is [most] human"
(97). Thus, Charles emerges triumphant because he chooses to remain tme to
his convictions and because he chooses to remain isolated rather than live his
Ufe on Sarah's terms. Indeed, he "preseive[s] [his] freedom against aU those
pressures-to-conform" (Aristos 7).
Reintrodudng his dry existential Aristos piU by coating it with
allegorical sugars was nothing short of brilUant. However, Fowles stiU was not
satisfied. Fowles is an author highly interested in film as art: unUke many
writers, he claims that "for tme dnema . . . I have always had the greatest
Uking and respect. I have never had any beUef in the notion that the dnema is
'kilUng' the novel'" (Fowles F.L.W.: A Screenplay xiii). Thus, despite his
dissatisfaction with WilUam Wyler's adaptation of The CoUector (1963), and
despite his reflection that The Magus (1965) adaptation was a disaster
(CorUss 48), he wanted to see his sugar-coated book packaged for the big
screen. Indeed, the novel's Wuthering Heights passion, endless Uterary awards,
and "just enough sex" (CorUss 48) made The French Lieutenant's Woman a
director's dream. However, all that Fowles induded in the novel to again
communicate his existential philosophy-the contrast between Emestina and
Sarah, Charles's desire to move into existential freedom yet maintain his
156
aUegiance to Victorianism, the constant juxtapositions between "the then" and
"the now" via an intmsive twentieth century narrator, and the compUcations of
the daring double ending-tumed it from a director's dream to a director's
nightmare. Somewhat ironically, yet another obstacle was the novel's positive
reception. Fowdes relates,
I suspect a chief thing that baulked and fmstrated the directors
and writers we talked with was the distinctly mushroom
reputation of the book itself. It had been lucky enough to gain
not only a huge commerdal but a considerable critical success,
and its text was in grave danger of becoming sacrosanct. (Fowles
F.L.W.: A Screenplay ^nii)
After meeting with numerous screenwriters and directors, Fowdes was ready to
concede defeat. He recalls that one HoUywood scriptwriter came to England
and six weeks into the writing had a nervous breakdown (CorUss 50). Fowles
concluded that "as it stood (or lay printed) the book was, and would alwavs
remain, unfilmable" (F.L.W.: A Screenplay viii). There was only one hope for
adapting the book to film: finding "a demon barber-in poUter terms, someone
suffidently skiUed and independent to be able to rethink and recast the thing
from the bottom up" (viii). Fowles's pubUsher, Tom Maschler, found just such
a barber. Harold Pinter had estabUshed his reputation in Britain not only as a
premier dramatist, but also as a superlative and creative scriptwriter. His script
for Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu has been described as
"magnificent," the trilogy of scripts he wrote for Joseph Losey as "celebrated"
157
(Almansi 95). Almansi and Henderson reflect that Pinter's work continually
affirms that "the other" always remains a mystery and that man must accept
his aloneness in this world (15)-interestingly, two of Fowles's Aristos
reflections.
EquaUy chaUenging was the selection of a director: Karel Reisz was
Fowles's original and only choice. Harlan Kennedy sheds some Ught on this
"must." He explains:
If there was ever a tme meeting of minds, it's that between John
Fowdes, the EngUsh author who penned the 1968 bestseUer that
dismantled Victorian romantidsm even as it exploited it, and
Karel Reisz, the Czech-bom British director whose clear-eyed and
eclectic films are fasdnated by the immediacy and connectabiUty
of Experience regardless of the barriers of time and culture. (26)
Perhaps of greater significance is Kennedy's description of the two men as "gut
existentiaUsts" (26). In 1969, before the pubUcation of the novel, Fowles
approached his soulmate-the other "gut existentiaUst"-with the proofs, asking
Reisz to consider directing a dnematic adaptation. The timing was off. Reisz
decUned Fowles's offer. Nine years later with Pinter on board, Reisz
reconsidered. Thus, more than a decade after the pubUcation of The French
Lieutenant's Woman the combination of screenwriter Harold Pinter and
director Karel Reisz accompUshed the impossible: they began filming Fowles's
"unfilmable" three hundred and sLxty-six page, complex novel.
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Pinter and Reisz realized that the biggest obstade fadng them was the
necessity to somehow indude Fowles's "existential mind games" (Ansen 97), to
somehow indude Fowles's "aromatic blending of Victorian and modem
sensibiUties" (CorUss 48). Reisz astutely comprehended that
[t]he novel is a sdence fiction-a Victorian story and a modem
speculation about fiction. Take away that acknowdedgment of the 20th
century, and the story doesn't add up. Our sense of Sarah's sexual
awareness is a modem thing; inside her head, during the story, she
jumps from the I9th to the 20th century. (qtd. in CorUss 49)
Reisz is given credit for coming up with the much applauded narrative
solution. He reasoned that since "the book is essentiaUy a novel within a
novel" maybe the translation might work as a "film within a fiUn" (Boyum
105). Further discussion of Fowdes's story Une revealed that much of Fowles's
denouncement of the Victorian age was portrayed through the characters'
sexual frustrations. It occurred to Pinter that this might just be the key:
"'Suppose,'" he mused, "'we had a modem relationship that started in bed and
went from there?'" (CorUss 49). Thus, the idea of presenting the novel via an
entirely new structure, modem actors having a modem affair acting out the
Sarah/Charles love stoiy, evolved.
As John Fowdes indicates, The Aristos is his "un-sugar-coated" existential
presentation; I contend that The French Lieutenant's Woman is his
sugar-coated existential piU. Pinter's adaptation then is a highly compressed.
159
intense, economized, "extra-strength," if you wiU, capsule. According to Pinter,
" . . . the key word is economy, economy of movement and gesture, of emotion
and its expression, both the intemal and the extemal in spedfic and exact
relation to each other so that there is no wastage and no mess" (Bold xii).
The primary method Pinter and Reisz use to achieve this economy in their
adaptation of The French Lieutenant's Woman is to concentrate on the
impUcations of sex in the Victorian Age and contrast them with modem
existential sexual impUcations. Seymour Chatman claims that
[b]asicaUy, the film's only real theme is love-Victorian versus
modem. . . . The novel's narrator examines Victorian love
cUnicaUy, as one among other aspects of the history of the era.
The elaboration is expositoiy and comparative; he explains erotic
states of mind that modems might find incomprehensible. The
film, on the other hand, immerses the viewer in the experience of
Victorian love in a way calculated to seem famiUar, for aU its
Gothic trappings-empathy is always the dnema's long suit. (169)
Thus, although Reisz and Pinter subtly address many aspects of Fowles's
existentiaUsm, the writer and director "zoom in" on the impUcations of sex
then and now as exempUfying Fowles's concem that fi-eedom devoid of
responsibiUty, freedom carried too far, becomes nothing more than mere
selfishness.
Daniel Taradash, who wrote the screenplay of From Here to Etemity.
contends: "You have to be bold in breaking away from the book when it
becomes necessary. But there are certain key scenes and definite aspects of
160
character, which have to be retained" (Wald 64). It appears that Reisz and
Pinter fuUy comprehended the wisdom of Taradash's contention. In the
interest of economizing they were "bold in breaking away from the book";
however, economizing did not keep them from retaining "key scenes" and
"definite aspects of character" essential to thematic faithfulness.
Pinter begins his screenplay where Fowles does the novel: in the 1981
present. Viewers immediately reaUze that they are watching a movie about a
movie being made. They see clapperboard that reads: "The French
Lieutenant's Woman. Scene I. Take 3." The camera zooms-in on Meryl
Streep playing Anna, who in tum plays the Victorian Sarah. Final touches are
being appUed to her makeup. The film crew is revealed; they graduaUy back
away as someone off screen says, "AU right. Let's go." The audience hears an
off-screen director firmly say: "Action." Anna, costumed in the bizarre, black
cape described in the novel, lets go of her hair, begins walking into the past,
along the 1867 stone pier in the Harbour of Lyme. The camera tracks with
her. In this opening shot, the suspension of disbeUef usuaUy desired by
directors has been dispeUed. However, miraculously, by the time the figure
reaches the end of the Cobb, the I98I present and the presence of Anna have
mysteriously disappeared from the viewer's mind and the audience is focused
on the Victorian Age and on Sarah. How is this accompUshed? First of all.
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Reisz allows viewers to see Anna transformed into Sarah, pladng emphasis on
the "created" Sarah character. Secondly, romantic, hauntingly serious music
echoes back to an earUer era. Thirdly, the setting is poignantly Victorian; as
described by Boyum "the Victorian segments [are] luxuriantly photographed in
sepia tones that make the world of Lyme Regis a moody and passionate one"
(107). Lastly, Meryl Streep, under Karel Reisz's careful direction, physicaUy
tums from the reality of 1981 and step-by-deliberate-step moves into the past.
Pinter is exacting in his dupUcation of the Victorian story line. The
heart of the movie is the nineteenth-century love story. Again, Charles escorts
his proper fiancee, Emestina, along the Cobb. Again, he is mysteriously drawn
to the sorrowful figure gazing out to sea. Again, he is bewitched by Sarah's
soul-penetrating eyes. The viewer becomes deeply involved in the unfolding
drama. Charles quite properly proposes to the ever-so-proper, ever-so-deUcate
Emestina in the confining conservatoiy Fowles so carefuUy describes in the
novel. The miracle is that the viewer, mdely tom from the story Une at this
point (and at thirteen other dramatic points in the Victorian plot) to join Mike
and Anna in their contemporaiy "romance," is not offended.
When viewers are tom away from Charles's ever-so-proper proposal to
Emestina, they retum to Jeremy Irons playing Mike, Anna's co-star and lover.
It takes the viewer Uttle time to reaUze that Mike is falUng in love and that
162
Anna is merely having an affair. Mike has much in common with Charles
Smithson; there is something about the New Woman that attracts him. As
Pinter's existential romance unfolds, viewers comprehend that Mike is Uving
out his Charles role, confusing reaUty with fiction.
In the novel, Fowles not only offers the two endings previously
described, he also offers a third-Chapter 44. Critics have generaUy overlooked
the significance of this ending: the "only in Charles's mind" fictionalized
projection. They have also paid Uttle attention to the fact that Reisz and
Pinter manage to include their own "Chapter 44." They, too, comment not
only on "then/now" but also on "fiction/reality."
In The Aristos. Fowles applauds aU artistic endeavors because they assist
humankind in the "becoming" process. Furthermore, recaU that he describes
god as a situation. Fowles claims that we make our destinies by our choice of
gods (situations). He states:
. . . we are aU poets . . . so are we aU noveUsts, that is, we have a
habit of writing fictional futures for ourselves. . . . We screen in
our minds hypotheses about how we might behave, about what
might happen to us, and these noveUstic . . . hypotheses often
have very much more effect on how we actuaUy do behave, when
the real future becomes the present, than we generaUy aUow.
(F.L.W. 266)
Chapter 44 cleverly iUustrates the effects of the above. In this chapter, Charles
scripts out his future Ufe married to Emestina, and in so doing, scripts out his
163
version of a Ufe-long situation. Indeed, Charles's novel is most displeasing:
"The book of his existence, so it seemed to him, was about to come to a
distinctiy shabby close" (267). His hypothesis has a drastic effect: he refuses
to accept his old conformist self and his old conforming Ufe as his only end.
His franticaUy desperate state forces him to look for options: " . . . what he felt
was reaUy a very clear case of the anxiety of freedom-that is, the realization
that one is free . . . " (267). Charles rejects his projected non-free, highly
Victorian situation and chooses to pursue another god: existential freedom.
Mike's Ufe is the reaUty of Charles's fictionaUzed Chapter 44 "ending."
Mike's "book of existence, so it seem[s] to him, [had] come to a distinctly
shabby close." His wife is a 1981 reincamation of Emestina: dutiful, proper, a
perfect hostess, a good mother (she even sews her daughter's dresses), a faithful
wife. But the marriage to "this Emestina" has obviouslv been a "shabby"
choice for Mike-the relationship reflects the comfortable certainty of Charles's
Chapter 44 projected Ufe. It also, more importantly, reflects the fact that
Charles's thoughts about this comfortable Ufe were right-on-target: Mike's
relationship is faiUng because it lacks any mystery. Thus, Mike be^ns to
prefer his scripted out Ufe, his "Charles" pursuit of a mysterious, New Woman.
Reisz shows Anna and Mike rehearsing their scenes, "screen[ing] in [their]
minds hypotheses about how [they] might behave" the next day when
164
shooting the "real" scene. Several medium-to-Iong shots in the movie show the
cast at large. Interestingly, the entire cast has managed to remove their
Victorian makeup and costumes-except for Mike. He alone Ungers in his
Victorian garb. Pinter's dialogue enhances viewers' comprehension of the
blurring of reaUty and fiction. In one scene, Anna leaves for London to spend
the weekend with her French lover, David. Mike is most upset and begs, "I'm
losingyou. Stay tonight. I'm going mad. I want you so much." Anna
laughingly repUes: "But you just had me in Exeter," referring to their scripted
passionate love scene just acted out before the camera. Charles's desire for his
fictionaUzed, scripted-out world is most dramatically conveyed, however, with
the deUveiy of a single word. As the film ends, Mike searches for Anna.
However, when he caUs for her, he cries "Sarah." Freudian sUp? Obviously.
Thus, Reisz and Pinter successfuUy communicate Fowles's Chapter 44 thoughts
about the significance of fiction, particularly those fictions we write for
ourselves.
Charles's one-word Freudian sUp is not the only time Pinter economizes
via superb word choices, reveaUng definite key aspects of character. He
ever-so-condsely, ever-so-cleverly simis up Emestina's superfidaUty with four
perceptive words. Sam and Mary are in the kitchen discussing Charles's
marriage proposal. Sam asks, "She's [Emestina's] not going to tum him down.
165
is she?" Mary repUes, ever so sincerely, "Never. She'd give her left arm. And
aU her dresses!" Charles's lack of comprehension regarding the emergence of
an evolving middle-dass is coimnunicated in one brief shot. As he looks out of
his bedroom window, Charles observes Sam flirting with a "flower-girl." He
leans out of his window, beUowing "Sam. Come here!" Sam enters the room.
Charles informs him that they are driving out to Emestina's and
condescendingly instmcts Sam "not to daUy with Miss Emestina's maid!" This
shot contrasted against Charles's later defense of Sam and Maiy's behavior
when it is attacked by Mrs. Poulteney reveals much that Fowles didacticaUy
teUs his readers about Charles: he is, indeed, a man tom between his allegiance
to Victorian do's and don'ts and his sensitívity to the "seeming respectability"
of the age. In the film, E)r. Grogan is, once again, the Aristos sdentist who
inhumanly sentences Sarah to an insane asylum. He is once again allowed to
somewhat redeem himself; this time by fordng Charles to confront his own
feeUngs. He says, "My dear man, you are half in love with her!" Mrs.
Poulteney's character, too, is perfectly recreated. Reisz reveals much about
Mrs. Poulteney by showing Sarah reading from the Bible-Psalm 140 per the
"good" lady's instmctions-while the "good" lady snores away.
Pinter and Reisz do a most interesting job of capturing Fowies's motifs:
fossils and mirrors. At the beginiúng of the movie, Charles is yelUng for Sam
166
to get ready to go to Miss Emestina's. Charles reveals that he has dedded to
marry the young lady: at this point, he beUeves marriage to Emestina will keep
him from becoming a "crusty old sdentist" trapped in a room fuU of fossils
(Scmggs 18). It is, once again, Charles's desire for fossils, in sdentific terms
"tests" ( F.L.W. 42), that leads him to explore the UndercUff. And, once again,
Charles is tested by w4\at awaits him in the UndercUff: Sarah. Once again,
Charles is portrayed as a man desperately in need of personal evolution,
desperately in need of avoiding "fossiUzation."
Reisz, Uke Fowles, uses mirrors to communicate the need for aristos
self-analysis. As described in the novel, the dnematic Charles frequentlv
reflects on his image. Of more interest is the shot of "Mike reflecting on his
image in front of a darkened window, whdch becomes a mirror because of the
interior lighting" (Scmggs 17). In this scene, Anna is asleep and mistakenlv
caUs for her French lover. Mike's ever-so-troubled eyes look back at him,
trying to comprehend the depths, or lack of depth, in his relationship with this
new woman. Sarah, too, is portrayed as one coming to terms with herself.
Midway through the film, Sarah, knowing she wiU soon be dismissed from the
"good" Mrs. Poulteney's employment because of her "disgraceful" walking in
the UndercUff, sits in front of a Victorian mirror, depressed, drawing
self-portraits. Although the reflection viewers see of Sarah in the mirror reveals
16^
a silent, suffering woman, the various sketches reveal a woman expressing her
anger, rebelUng. Indeed, these "mad" sketches convey Sarah's evolving process:
her moving toward asserting and expressing her artistic self. However, Reisz
"best" uses mirrors to conm\ent on Anna's character. The earUer-described
opening shot shows Anna becoming Sarah. The modem Anna, holding a
hand-mirror, takes one last assessment of hair and makeup before she begins
her joumey back to Sarah. The final medium shot of Anna is an interesting
reversal. Anna has completed her Sarah joumey; she takes a final glance in
Sarah's Victorian mirror. Her face is emotionless, cold, empty. Self-analysis
and emotional growth, i.e., evolving as a human being has not touched Anna.
Reisz's subtle use of mirrors effectively communicates that Anna is a static
character.
Anna and Mike's relationship iUustrates much of what John Fowles
blatantly states in The Aristos. thoroughly discusses in The French
Lieutenant's Woman regarding sex without commitment. In the novel, Sarah
invents the entire "French Loot'n'nt's Hoer" tale to set herself beyond sodety's
reach. She accepts scandal as the price she must pay for individual freedom.
Reisz portrays Anna much differently. It is early moming. Mike and Anna are
sleeping together in Anna's bed in Anna's room. The phone rings. Mike
answers: "Yes. Who is it? Yes, it is. I'U teU her." He teUs Anna that she is
168
late for makeup. Obviously, the crew now knows that the stars are sleeping
together. Anna responds, giggUng: "They'U think I'm a whore." Another
"Mike and Anna" scene is particularly revealing. They are again in bed.
Moonlight shines on Anna's sleeping form. Her foot is exposed, and Mike
tenderly tucks it under the cover as he watches her. She stirs and drowsily caUs
for David-her other current lover. Mike looks stricken and repUes, "It's not
David. It's Mike." Anna looks at him and teUs him to come back to bed. She
puts her arm around him and faUs back into untroubled sleep, leaving Mike to
face the isolation of his modem, without commitment, Aristos affaire de corps.
Charles and Sarah's secret "bam" meeting is beautifully described in the
novel. However, Reisz's dnematic rendition of this dandestine encounter
surpasses Fowles's wordage. Shafts of early moming sunUght filter through the
doorway. The setting is tranquil, pastoral. Dew-drops sparkle on the lusdous
growth surrounding the bam. Charles enters, gently laying his hand on Sarah's
shoulder. She tenderly raises it to her Ups, kissing it. He abmptiy puUs back
his hand, scolding her: "Pray, control yourself." Sarah, falUng to the ground,
weeps, "I cannot. I cannot." Viewers see Charles lose the whole Victorian Age
as he bends down, slowly Ufting Sarah back to her feet, brushing away strands
of golden hay tangled in her hair, taking her into his arms, and kissing her
169
deeply. Indeed, this scene confirms Chatman's claim that "empathy is film's
longsuit" (169).
Perhaps the movie's most memorable scene is the almost bmtish mating
between Charles and Sarah, resulting from "Victorian pursuit that denies
sexuality until it bursts out" . . . (Ansen 96). Here, Director Reisz excels in
bringing Fowles's Uteraiy vision to the screen. The viewer has previously
witnessed Sarah planning the evening carefuUy studying the effect of a dark
green merino shawl against a new, sheer nightgown. A medium shot shows
Sarah sitting in front of a hot fire, her "injured," naked foot propped on a
stool. Her long hair is set free and tumbles seductively downward. Charles
enters the room. The mood is all it should be: fireUght flickers over the sheer
gown, Sarah's face, and her hair while rain patters ever so lightly against the
window. At just the right moment, a coal faUs from the fire, landing on the
edge of the blanket Sarah has across her lap. Charles slaps the blanket, lays it
once again ever so gently across her legs. They embrace; he sweeps her into his
arms and carries her into the dimly Ut bedroom. The audience hears the sound
of stripping dothes; hears Sarah cry out with pain. When they consummate
their love, Charles leams the tmth: Sarah's relationship with the French
Deutenant was not what she had daimed. Charles says with aU of the weight
of the Victorian Age in his voice: "I was . . . the first" (Pinter 71). Indeed,
170
this scene suggests the pent-up sexual frustration of the nineteenth century and
contrasts it with the "freer," less cUmatic "love" scenes of Mike and Anna.
Much of the success of the film adaptation is the result of superb
casting. CorUss pays immense tribute to Meiyl Streep's portrayal of
Sarah/Anna: "She seems to be thinking on-screen, sorting through a hundred
nuances before Ughting on the one she uses-for just that moment" (98). John
Fowles, in the habit of dropping by the film's location often during filming,
was particularly impressed by Streep's "exact translation" of hds descriptions in
the novel. She is equaUy adept at portraying the mysterious Victorian Sarah
and the nervous modem Anna. Streep's performance, CorUss condudes, "is
the creation of a film character that does predse and breathtaking justice to
Fowles, to Sarah and the actor's art" (48). Critics are just as enthusiastic about
Jeremy Irons's portrayal of Charles Smithson, "a man wandering between two
worlds, one dead / the other powerless to be bom" (85-86), and find no fault
with his portrayal of Mike. CorUss notes that "[a]s Mike, a sUcker, gUbber
man, [Irons] is effortlessly charming at first, but as his involvement with Anna
intensifies, perhaps fed by his identification with the role he's playing, Mike's
eyes take on Charles's haimted look" (48). He continues his praise of Irons,
explaining that this "haunted look" along with his love-scene performances
prove that "Jeremy [Irons] does have his HeathcUff side" (48). Obviously,
171
Jeremy Irons comprehended John Fowles's concem about sexual freedom gone
awry. Irons confides: "'I hope what [the audience] come[s] out feeling is a
sense of regret that maybe we've lost something'" (Ansen 97). He continues,
in very Fowlesian terms: "'I think disdpUne and difficulty do increase pleasure
when it's finally attained.'" Thanks to Pinter's screenplay, as weU as Streep's
and Irons's impressively-directed performances, viewers comprehend the
Umitations of personal freedom in the Victorian Age, as weU as confront the
danger of modem existential freedom: selfishness.
As previously noted, in The Aristos John Fowles, a proclaimed agnostic,
explains that "'God' is a situation" (22). Thus, he defines writers of fiction as
novelist/gods because they excel at creating anxiety-laden situations, fordng
choice. He insists, however, that the noveUst/god must create "with freedom
[as his] first prindple . . . " (F.L.W. 82). Pinter and Reisz evidently took
Fowles's words to heart. They, too, created a work that forces the audience to
exerdse free wiU: Uke Fowles, they managed to offer the viewer a choice
between a happily-ever-after Victorian ending or a bleak unromantic existential
condusion.
The Victorian ending is similar to the one Fowles described in the book;
differences from the text are in the interest of simpUfying a compUcated
authorial digression into the Pre-RaphaeUte artistic community. In both
172
endings, Charles and Sarah have been separated for three years. Sarah sends
for Charles and he retums to confront a much different Sarah: a more mature,
serene woman who is now ready to love Charles and be loved. In the novel,
Fowles conveys the falseness of this situation: Charles, another self-proclaimed
agnostic, suddenly retums to the faith of his father-"it had been in God's
hands . . . " (F.L.W. 360). Clearly the noveUst/god hopes that his reader wiU
refuse this ending. In Pinter's "happy ending," too, Reisz clues the audience
that this ending is "off." The acting is suddenly ragged, the camera is too far
back for an intimate scene (there is no zoom-in to the rapturous long-awaited
kiss), Sarah falls with a thud and nervously giggles, loosing her British accent,
becoming suddenly more Anna-Uke than Sarah-Uke (CorUss 50). It, too, seems
to be an un-real ending.
In the novel's unhappy, existential ending Charles refuses Sarah's terms
for continuing their relationship. He chooses to exerdse his free wiU and
accepts the price for existential freedom: isolation. In Pinter and Reisz's
existential ending, the cast is having a wrap party. Mike firanticaUy searches
for Arma, fearful of losing her. Anna is in the room where the "happy"
Victorian ending was shot. As explained earUer, she is looking into one of
Sarah's Victorian mirrors. With a superfidal glance at her reflection, she
disappears: Anna clearly portrays one wdio has "evolved so fiercdy in pursuing
173
[her] ends and preserving [her] sdf that she has devalued [her] feeUngs"
(Huffaker 114). Mike runs into the once-Victorian room, now empty. Scmggs
notes that Reisz "photographs this scene with a wide-angle lens so that the
room looks Uke a long tunnel . . . a tunnel in which there is no Ught (dark
window) at the end" (27). He further contends that Reisz resorts to film noir
low-key Ughting: "the Ughting is hard, casting sharp, dark shadows on half of
Mike's face as he perceives that the only thing left of Anna in this room is the
wig she wore when she played Sarah. This sheU is the only remnant of the
Sarah that once existed in Anna" (27). Mike, alone and bewildered-looking,
hears a car take off. He races to the window and sees Anna but cries "Sarah."
Indeed, Uke the early Charles, Mike beUeves that he wants a woman and a
world conventionaUzed, made safe, by mles. As the movie condudes, the
astute viewer reaUzes that Mike, too, is in need of a situation to help him
accept the real world: a world fraught with uncertainty and isolation, a world in
need of responsible individuals who refuse to submit to the dictates of
conformity. Reisz, however, is not quite finished. After the "busy," tightly
framed rock-music wrap party, Reisz cuts to his final shot: the screen reveals
the "happily-ever-after" Victorian Sarah and Charles rowing on a tranquil lake.
Thus, the viewer is reminded one last time that this film dramaticaUy contrasts
the plusses and minusses of "the then" with the positives and negatives of "the
174
now." EquaUy important, the viewer is also reminded via Reisz's briUiant
paraUel editing that this film also comments on fiction and reaUty. The
"Victorian" ending is "nice," a typical ending for a typical "movie romance."
This, however, is no typical movie. The existential, wrap-party ending is
obviously the more "real" one.
Karel Reisz contends that an adaptation does not have to be faithful to
the novel. He states: "The new feUow has got to have his freedom" (qtd. in
Kennedy 28). Nevertheless, Reisz was thematicaUy faithful-faithful not only
to Fowles's existential aUegoiy-the novel-but also faithful to the author's
philosophical treatise-The Aristos. Reisz's dnematic adaptation captures
Fowles's primary Aristos prindples: individual freedom is the ultimate concem,
but it must be Umited by mysteiy, guided by "gods," tempered by
responsibiUty. Arriving at aristoi status is a joumey, a joumey of isolation. It
is left up to the individual to choose evolution or stagnation.
John Fowles agrees with Karel Reisz: the novel and dnema are imique,
one caimot dupUcate the other. He explains that there are "visual things the
word can never capture, and word things the camera wiU never photograph nor
actors ever speak" (Fowies F.L.W.: A Screenplay ix). Fowles's wisely gave
Pinter and Reisz free reign: his only dictum regarding the adaptation was that
the screenwriter and director "keep Sarah inexpUcable" (qtd. in Conradi 47).
175
This they did. Fowles claims "that the greatest gift a good screenwriter can
give a director is not so much a version 'faithful' to the book as a version
faithful to the very different production capabiUty of the dnema" (xii). Using
this statement as a standard, The French Lieutenant's Woman is a highly
faithful adaptation. Pinter's screenplay stmcture, contrasting the tensions of
the Victorian Age with the tensions of the twentieth centuiy via the film
within a film constmction, was nothing short of brilUant. Indeed, his abiUty
"to think and recast [a] thing fi-om the bottom up" (viii) was Fowles's primary
reason for insisting on Pinter. Too, Pinter receives the credit for economizing:
for limiting Fowles's lengthy, discursive exploration of his existential
philosophy in the novel to an examination of the aU-too-conventional
Victorian Emestina world contrasted with the all-too-Uberated irresponsible
selfish Anna age. Ukewise, Reisz is due major accolades:
His transitions between the modem and Victorian episodes are
direct and unaffected . . . he resists superfidal styUstic differences
which would dismpt the harmony of the complementaiy stories.
The same muted colors and measured rhythms persist throughout
the work The reaUzation of the Victorian sequences is espedaUy
praiseworthy because of the evident difficulty modem filmmakers
have in telUng Victorian stories. (Lucas 178)
John Fowdes beUeves that one of the primaiy purposes for the artist to
create is to "express his feeUngs about [the] outer world" (Aristos 189), "to
show one's readers w^at one thinks of the world around one . . . " (F.L.W.
176
317). Certainly Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman succeeds in relating
his personal beUefs, his existential philosophy. To Pinter and Reisz's credit,
they use another medium, dnema, to once again communicate Fowles's
philosophic creed. The novel is, indeed, an allegorical reiteration of Fowies's
aristos thoughts. According to Fowdes, the film takes the comparison process
yet one step farther: the film, Fowdes contends, is a "metaphor for the novel"
(F.L.W.: A Screenplay xii). Simmons aptly describes Fowles's concept of
metaphor. He states: "Metaphor involves identifying one object with another
for the purpose of demonstrating that the tenor shares with the vehicle
fundamental similarities that are masked when the two entities appear
separatdy" (17). Indeed, at first glance the dnematic adaptation appears quite
dissimilar to the novel. However, a perceptive viewer comprehends that the
philosophic connotations are not only similar, but identical. They both
accurately convey John Fowles's existential aristos concems.
The French Lieutenant's Woman was nominated for five Academy
Awards; however, it failed to win in any categoiy. The problem, conceivably,
was its veiy faithfulness to the novel's philosophic theme. Boyum relates that
"many viewers find themselves bewildered . . . troubled as to what to make of
[the film] and how to evaluate it" (106). Another critic, Lucas explains:
"Perhaps the artistic achievement of The French Lieutenant's Woman is too
177
subtle for present tastes and wiU be more appredated with the passing of time"
(178). He continues: "Its daring formal approach is deserving of profound
respect." Is the film a faithful adaptation? John Fowles has the final world:
"[Pinter's] genius . . . seems to me to be his truly remarkable gift for redudng
the long and complex without distortion" (F.L.W.: A Screenplay xi).
CHAPTERVI
OLD AGE ROMANTICISM / NEW AGE HUMANISM:
PETER WEIR'S DEAD POETS SQCIETY
N. H. KLEINBAUM'S ADAPTATION
Gary Hentzi is a professor at Bamch CoIIege at the City University of
New York. He is the author of numerous artides on cultural studies and one
scholarly research book on the subject entitled The Columbia Dictionary of
Modem Literacy and Cultural Critidsm. In his perceptive article conceming
Australian director Peter Weir's filmwork, "Peter Weir and the Cinema of New
Age Humanism," Hentzi contends that the explanation for the director's
success is that "Weir's concems are also to an unusual degree the concems of
our culture" (3): these concems, Hentzi effectively argues, are the concems of
New Age Humanism. Hentzi addresses Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975),
The Last Wave (1977), GalUpoli (1981), The Year of Living Dangerously
(1982), Witness (1985), The Mosquito Coast (1986), and Dead Poets Society
(1989). A thorough analysis of the most recent of these films, Dead Poets
Sodety, strengthens Hentzi's contention about Weir's dnematic canon.
Interestingly, such an analysis also proves that the dead Romantic poets ciy
178
179
out from their graves: the twentieth century hears their voices in the
philosophic expression of modem secular New Age humanism.
Analyzing Weir's film expressing humanist philosophy while relying on
Romantic poetry requires a stringent four-part breakdown: (1) a review of the
prindple elements of Uterary Romantidsm, (2) a discussion of the tenets of
modem secular humanism, (3) a description of those concems Hentzi has
previously estabUshed as "Weirian," and (4) an explanation of how all of these
elements coalesce in the film to communicate the director's humanist
philosophy.
The historical roots of Uterary Romantidsm can be traced to Plato. The
Romantics agreed with the andent philosopher that spiritual concepts are the
greater reaUty, that man is immortal-having experienced a prior state of
existence and being destined to retum to that realm at death-that the world of
time and space is a shadowy reflection of Reality and Etemity, and that man is
often deceived by sensory experience; in other words, he must count on the
power of the inteUect to perceive tmth. Romantidsm also encompasses three
precepts set forth by the French revolutionist, Jean-Jacques Rosseau: man is
bom naturally good, man is cormpted by force of custom and by an education
opposed to nature, and man must be aUowed to assert his individualism;
indeed, Rosseau's "I am not made Uke anyone I have seen; I dare beUeve that I
180
am not made Uke anyone in existence. If I am not better, at least I am
different" (1) became the battle-cry of the Romantics. The Romantics
maintained a unique picture of the mind: they divided it into two
parts-Reason (the lesser faculty by which we go about making daily "business"
dedsions) and Imagination (the creative function which aUows man to speak of
a nobler tmth than that of fact and logic~i.e., sdence~of the here and now).
Who were the Romantics? Generally speaking, the term "Romantic"
appUes to the years 1798-1836, and is indicative of an anti-neoclassical
position. However,
as a critical term it tends to equivocate between the Romantic
considered as a recurring type of personaUty and as a paiticular
historical era. Moreover, even as the name of a cultural epoch the
term constantly shifts meaning. Romantidsm was not the same
phenomenon in Uterature, fine arts, music, philosophy,
historiography, and sdence. . . . (Perkins 2)
In this study, the focus is on "the supreme achievement of the age" (Perkins
8)~Uterature, more spedfically, poetry: "a sublime expression of the human
spirit" (Bold 10). The most notable of these subUme Romantic "expressors"
were WilUam Blake, WilUam Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, George
Gordon, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe SheUy, and John Keats. Also present is a
high degree of concem with the Romantic as "a recurring type of personaUty;"
in this analysis the personaUty under consideration is that of the Byronic hero.
181
Wordsworth characterized poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of
powerful feeUngs, arising from emotions recoUected in tranquiUty" (260). Too,
Wordsworth explained that "the feeUng gives importance to the action" (242).
Indeed, Romantic poetiy is not as concemed with the extemal event as it is
with the author's imaginative awakening. The focus is clearly on the individual
and upon individual emotion and expression. Perhaps WilUam Blake best
described the Romantics' thoughts regarding the imagination. He claimed that
a root cause of humankind's warped dviUzation can be directly attributed to "a
failure of the imagination" (Perkins 37) and that the creative process that
allows man to reach beyond the sdentific and material is the only hope for
transforming sodety. The creative process, the imagination, Blake contended,
is the only means by which we can identify ourselves with other people,
"making of aU one Man" (qtd. in Perkins 43).
The Romantics freely expressed their thoughts regarding an education
confined to books. Wordsworth's "The Tables Tumed" accurately summarizes
these sentiments:
Books! 'tis a duU and endless strife:
Come, hear the woodland Unnet,
How sweet his music! on my Ufe,
There's more of wisdom in it.
And hark! how bUthe the throstle sings!
He, too, is no mean preacher:
182
Come forth into the Ught of things,
Let Nature be your Teacher. (9-16)
In addition to an admonition to leam via Nature, an emphasis on the
individual, a p>ositive evaluation of the emotional, and an insistence on
imagination above reason, Romantic poetry is concemed with the primitive
and/or medieval, with the mystical, with the Uberal or Ubertine position, and
with the experimental. They very much saw art as a Ufe-impulse: in the words
of Byron, "'Tis to create, and in creating Uve . . . " (Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
III.VI.46-54).
The "personaUty" most readily assodated with the Romantic poets and
with Weir's Dead Poets Sodety is that of the Byronic rebel. Byron, Bold
notes, "became mythical in his own Ufetime and immortal after it" (8). Lady
CaroUne Lamb described Byron as "[m]ad, bad, and dangerous to know" (qtd.
in Perkins 779). Byron was estranged from his parents: his father had been a
"notorious Ubertine who had married twice and squandered the fortunes of
both wives" (780). He died when Byron was only three, leaving behind a son
who long wondered if he had inherited "bad blood." His mother was an
embittered woman, given to "unpredictable rages" (780). In 1809-11, Byron
began his travels, writing Cantos I and II of Childe Harold: after their
pubUcation he "awoke one moming and found [himjself famous" (780). In
1815 he married AnnabeUe Milbanke, but a scandalous separation soon
183
foUowed. The year 1816 found Byron in Switzerland, writing letters to friends
describing a Ufestyle which, even by Regency standards, was notorious. He
Uved with Countess GuicdoU from 1819-1823, leaving her to join the fight for
Greek independence.
Byron's "immortaUty" is a result of the combination of his decadent
Ufestyle and his artistic philosophy. What has outUved Byron are biographical
sketches such as Walter Kempthome's who writes that Byron
was sexually initiated at the age of nine by the family nurse, May
Gray. The devout, Bible-quoting Scottish girl seized every
chance to creep into the child's bed and 'play tricks with his
person.' Arousing the boy physicaUy by every variation she could
think of, May also aUowed him to watch while she made love
with her uninhibited lovers. Thus primed, Byron-eager for
continued stimulation-moved with ease into sexual activities
during his four years at Harrow, one of England's prestigious
boarding schools. There he preferred the company of young boys.
. . . In July 1813, Byron broke the ultimate sexual
taboO"incest-by sedudng his married half-sister, Augusta Leigh.
(486- 87)
Byron himself did not avoid recklessly disdosing such auto-biographical tidbits.
In Canto I of Don luan he relates that
His dassic studies made a Uttle puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earUer ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices. (XLI. 321-24)
Of equal, if not greater significance to Byron's "immortaUty," was his
commitment to art. Bold explains that "[Byron] beUeved that the act of
184
creation enabled him to transcend his physical Umitations as a person . . . " (8).
Bold continues, claiming that Byron "define[d] art as an impulse that is larger
than Ufe . . . " (8). Perhaps this idea is best clarified by the poet himself:
'Tis to create, and in creating Uve
A being more intense that we endow
With form our fancy, gaining as we give
The Ufe we image, even as I do now.
What am I? Nothing: but not so art thou,
Soul of my thought! with whom I traverse earth,
Invisible, but gazing, as I glow
Mixed with thy spirit, blended with thy birth,
And feeling stiU with thee in my cmshed feeUngs'
dearth. (Childe Harold's Pilgrimmage: Canto III. VI.
46-54)
Obviously, Byron, the most romantic of the Romantics, beUeved that Ufe
without the freedom of artistic self-expression amounted to nothing.
In Byron: Wrath and Rhyme. Bold outUnes the key characteristics of the
Byronic Romantic hero: victimization, passion, sensitivity and sensuaUty,
energy-a carpe diem approach to Ufe, aUenation, hiding tme feeUngs behind a
mask of indifference, being affiUated with nature, rebelUng, sacrifidng self, and
insisting on freedom from oppression, convention, and hypocrisy.
Peter Weir's Dead Poets Sodety not only reUes on the British Romantic
poets, it also firequently references the verse of their American "cousins." As
explained by Perkins, there was a merging between Romantidsm and
Transcendentalism:
185
Romantic transcendentalism arose as a direct reaction against the
empirical tradition. In the philosophy of Kant, "transcendental"
refers to a priori element in experience-that is the way the mind
determines and orders its own contents through its own laws-and
the term "transcendent" refers to ideas, such as freedom of the
wiU, God, and immortality that cannot become objects of
knowledge. More generaUy, transcendentaUsm is the beUef in the
existence of a timeless realm of being beyond the shifting, sensory
world of common experience. It was nourished in the Romantic
period. . . . (14)
What has come to be known as Uteraiy transcendentaUsm-expression of a
philosophy based on a search for reality through spiritual intuition, arriving at
tmth by "read[ing] God directly" via nature-found its strongest voice in the
declarations of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Walt
Whitman gave elements of Romantic transcendentalism fresh vigor in his
Personalism, clearly asserting the individual as the prime organizer of his own
perceptions, insisting on selfhood, and contending that only the self-actualized
man can fuse men into soUdarity (Schmidt 182). Whitman's PersonaUsm
places trust in leaming acquired via the interior consdousness, as exempUfied
in his poem "The Leam'd Astronomer." Whitman's PersonaUstic philosophy
"makes much of the need for a flexible environment for the personaUty to
develop and sees any form of tyranny as wrong" (Schmidt 186). Furthermore,
Whitman's assessment of poetry and of the poet's role iUustrates his close
kinship to the British Romantics. Whitman wrote:
186
It [poetry] is not a labor of clothing or putting on or describing-it
is a labor of dearing away and redudng-for everything is
beautiful in itself and perfect-and the office of the poet is to
remove what stands in the way of one perceiving the beauty and
perfection. (qtd. in Fumess 66)
Moving from the topic of Romantidsm to the topic of Modem
Humanism requires Uttie inteUectual shifting. Morris B. Storer, Professor
Emeritus of humanities and philosophy at the University of Florida and the
editor of Humanist Ethics; A Dialogue in Basics (1980), sets forth the purpose
of modem secular humanism: "to protect the freedom to work for the freedom
of man" and "to create a more humane sodety, state, and intemational order"
(8). It is worth noting that he ends his introduction to humanism by quoting
Walt Whitman's chaUenge: "'My spirit to yours, dear brothers, We walk
unheld, free, the whole earth over tiU we make our mark'" . . . (qtd. in Storer
8). Storer very carefuUy outlines the prindples of himianism: Uving a Ufe
wtdch improves both one's condition as weU as that of others, insisting on
freedom from constraint or restraint, working toward the estabUshment of the
state as a service agency, encouraging responsible sodal protest, supporting
world-wide democratic thought, insisting on Uberty above materiaUty,
developing the arts, Umiting sdence, focusing on the individual, beUeving in
the supersensory, the mystical, and committing to improving education. The
187
similarities between the prindples of Romantidsm and the prindples of
Humanism are self-evident.
Of greater importance to this analysis is the "fiixed set of concems" that
constitute Peter Weir's humanism. According to Gary Hentzi, Weir is
fasdnated with much that is reflective of "New Age" himnanist thinking. Weir
confirms an interest in areas of contemporary spiritual inquiiy, reading Jung,
Casteneda, and Velikovsky. Hentzi notes that "the New Age sensibiUty is
typically given to a thoroughgoing distmst of politics and poUtical programs"
(5) and that this distmst is obvious in Weir's dnema. Hentzi explains that
Weir's films consistently reflect a subverted interest in homosexuaUty, a focus
on artistic endeavors, a strong anti-materiaUstic stance, a distmst of state, an
insistence on individual experience, a cherishing of self, a desire for the
individual to celebrate community, a concem regarding contemporary
education, a rebellion against the status quo, and a strong interest in the
primitive and mystical. Hentzi analyzes only the first issue-Weir's interest in
homosexuaUty-relative to Dead Poets Sodety: I contend, however, that the
maxims that reverberate throughout the film-Byron's seize the day,
Wordsworth's leam from nature, Thoreau's march to a different drummer,
Whitman's sing your own song, Rousseau's make your Ufe extraordinarv-the
language spoken by the dead poets-provides the perfect thematic backdrop for
188
Weir addressing all of his humanist concems. These concems are conveyed
dnematically via plot, dialogue, character, and symbol.
A brief summation of the fiUn is in order. The stoiy is set at Welton
Academy, an ever-so-traditional New England upper-class preparatory school
for boys. The year is 1959, the last of the stable Eisenhower era. The film
opens with the conventional students Ustening to the conventional headmaster,
Mr. Nolan (Norman Lloyd), extol the school's motto: tradition, honor,
disdpUne, and exceUence. Various young men are called upon to define these
terms. Tradition at Welton is "the love of school, countiy and family"; Honor
is "dignity and the fulfiUment of duty"; DisdpUne is "respect for parents,
teachers, and headmaster"; and Excellence is "the result of hard work." The
opening day ceremony continues with the introduction of Welton's oldest
Uving graduate: Mr. Alexander Charmichael, Class of 1886. One other
introduction takes place. Mr. Nolan informs the dads, moms, and dutiful sons
that a former Welton graduate, Mr. John Keating (Robin WiUiams)-the name
most obviously aUuding to the Romantic poet, John Keats-is the new EngUsh
teacher, repladng the "beloved" Mr. Portius. Mr. Keating is an anomaly,
because he is convinced that great Uterature can open minds and transform
ordinary boys into extraordinaiy men. With Keating's encouragement, seven
of "Welton's best" do attempt to "suck out all the marrow of Ufe," reviving the
189
secret Dead Poets Sodety. However, as George WiU notes, "[c]reativity can
have painful costs . . ." (74); Weir's condusion proves the validity of this
claim.
Further discussion of the historical setting of this somewhat
melodramatic tale of woe is in order. Indeed, the 1950's was a decade of
prosperity and economic growth, of a united America against Communism, of
submissive June Cleaver moms and "father knows best" Jim Anderson dads.
On the surface, it appeared to be the happiest of days. However, all was not
apple-pie perfect. EUmination of radal segregation was a hot issue; in 1957,
Eisenhower had to send federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to stop the
rioting that foUowed the admission of nine Afro-American children to formerlv
all-white schools. McCarthyism eventually led many to question the role of
govemment. Fringe elements, such as the Beat Generation, a group of writers
and their aitistic disdples, reacted to the uncertainties of a post-Holocaust
world by emotionally disengaging with the teachings of Zen Buddhism. The
Age of Aquarius~the not-at-all-stable sixties-was about to dawn. R. A. Blake
describes the traditional waUs of Welton Academy "as an academic Pompeii
waiting to be buried in the ash of change" (40). His description of John
Keating as "the John The Baptist of the hippie movement" is somewhat
190
extreme, but does accurately capture the teacher's charismatic personaUty and
fervent commitment to reform.
A careful examination of two of Keating's students, the artistic Neil
Perry (Robert Sean Leonard) and the pragmatic Richard Cameron (Dylan
Kussman) reveals how intensely the movie reflects "dead poet" philosophy.
Neil Perry evinces Rousseau's three claims. He is naturally good:
good-natured, obedient, respectful, a leader, a strong student, and kind to
newcomer, Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke). He is veiy much cormpted,
tuming to blatant lying, because of the force of custom and an education
opposed to nature: the young artist is trapped in a stifUng world that worships
tradition and punishes free expression. Neil attempts to claim Rousseau's "I
am different" credo as his own; he does march to a different drummer, one
beating out "act, act, act" not "be a doctor, be a doctor, be a doctor."
Much of Neil's fmstration can be traced to an inteUectual dash between
his Reason (the lower-faculty per Romantic thinking) and his Imagination (the
higher, creative faculty). Neil has long been dominated by his tyrannical father
(Kurtwood Smith); his Reason teUs him that he must obey. As the boys find
their rooms for the new term, CharUe pokes his head into Neil and Todd's
room. He says, "Hey, Perry, rumor has it that you did summer school." Neil
repUes: "Yeah, chemistry. My father thought I should get ahead." Medical
191
school, too, is Mr. Perry's idea. He commands Neil not to question him on
this issue: "When you've finished medical school and you're on vour own, you
can do as you please. Until then, you wiU listen to ME!" Neil meekly submits
and obeys. CharUe teUs Neil to stand up to his father. Neil clarifies that this
is not-and never has been-an option. He repUes: "I have no choice."
However, his Imagination-the creative process he excels at using (he can
act!)-begins to assert its position. When Mr. Perry disallows Neil's
partidpation on the school annual, Neil realizes that this creative writing
endeavor is the only extracurricular activity he enjoys. Too, he asserts his
imaginative prowess by inventing the permission letter and submitting it to the
play's director as if it were from his father and Mr. Nolan; during the writing of
this letter Neil is giggUng, clearly enjoying the creative experience. And, as
Neil memorizes his Shakespearean Unes, losing himsdf in the wonder of words,
he evinces the passion for Ufe Mr. Keating proclaims. Reason and Imagination
vie for first place throughout the film; much of the conflict is found in Neil's
intemal stmggle between these two forces.
Neil Perry also affords viewers a first-hand look at a twentieth-century
Byronic hero. The mysteries revealed in John Keating's old Dead Poets Sodety
notebook-a joumal of the secret meetings of a select few in Mr. Keating's
graduating Welton class committed to an Imaginative pursuit of Ufe-instantiy
192
cast a speU on Neil; he leads the group in sneaking out of the dormitory at
night to go to nature to leam about Ufe, reviving the meetings in the primitive
setting of the dark and mystical cave. He brings the lamp (minus the
lamp-shade) to the cave to serve as cave-god; he opens the meetings with the
sacred reading of Thoreau; and he ends the meeting with a dramatic rendition
of Tennyson's "Not to Yield!" Ulysses' oy. Neil is the most inteUectual of the
group; he absorbs the Romantics, obviously embradng Byron's "Tis to create,
and in creating Uve."
The traditional opening message dramatically read by Neil is an excerpt
from Thoreau's Walden chapter, "Where I Lived, and What I Lived for."
Thoreau explains:
I went to the woods because I wished to Uve deliberately, to front
only the essential facts of Ufe, and see if I could not leam what it
had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not
Uved. . . . I wanted to Uve deep and suck out all the marrow of
Ufe. (1306)
Tliis passage summarizes what Neil longs to do and what Weir so strongly
advocates: to aUow primitive and natural forces and experiences to serve as
guide.
Mr. Keating teUs the boys that aU poetiy was acceptable at the "old"
meetings and that the name of the secret dub referred to the fact that to join
the orgnization, you had to be dead. To clarify, members of the organization
193
had to die to a Ufe dictated by reason and Uve a Ufe dedicated to imaginative
possibilities. Clearly Tennyson's "Ulysses" embodies this message. Ulysses,
despite advanced years, "cannot rest from travel" and insists on continuing to
"drink [l]ife to the lees" (6-7). Reason suggests that Ulysses quietly submit to
"retirement" and Uve on past glories. However, Tennyson's hero contends that
"[s]ome work of noble note, may yet be done / Not unbecoming men that
strove with Gods" (52-53). His cry, "Come, / my friends. / 'Tis not too late to
seek a newer world" (56-57) conveys his interest in imaginative possibilities
that Ue far beyond the boundaries of reason.
Hentzi proposes that Neil Perry's "desire to act in a play (as a fairy!)"
and the final scenes suggestive of a "teenager coming out of the closet" are
examples of Weir's "subverted" but "persistent interest in homosexuaUty" (3).
Hentzi contends that this "subverted interest" is a "key part of the mysteiy in
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1976) when one of the school girls who is shortly to
disappear without a trace raises eyebrows by calling her companion 'a Botticelli
an Venus'" (3). He argues that the relationship between the protagonist and
his friend in GalUpoli is also suggestive of homosexuaUty-''the camera Unger[s]
over the extreme beauty of the actors" (3). And, Hentzi continues, The Year
of Living Dangerously is highly suggestive of ambiguous sexual roles: he notes
that the dwarfish male photographer is played by the actress, Linda Hunt.
194
Hentzi explains that "it is not gayness as a way of Ufe that interests [Weir]. . . .
[r]ather, it is the fact that 'the love that dare not speak its name' is a taboo
s u b j e c t . . . " (4). To darify, Weir's interest in homosexuaUty Ues in the fact
that it is forbidden: an "invisible and irrational force that cannot be
accommodated within poUte discourse" (4). Weir, Hentzi suggests, is most
interested in freeing this subject from sodal repression. Like Byron, Weir
attempts to "express his vision of human race emandpated from what he
regards as antisodal mles and regulations" (Bold 13).
Neil is alienated from his father; in fact, he becomes completely
inarticulate in his presence. The father/son "conversation" conceming Neil's
partidpation in the play is noteworthy. Weir uses rack focus to convey that
communication is nil. When Mr. Perry (Kurtwood Smith) teUs Neil that he
wiU not allow him to be the school paper's editor, Neil begins to protest his
father's dedsion. Neil's face-particularly his woeful eyes-reveal his hurt and
disappointment. His voice breaks; he nearly cries. However, he teUs Charlie
(Gale Hansen) that he does not give a damn. This masked indifference is
revealed early in the film when Neil is asked to define one of the school
motto's precepts-exceUence. He defines the words in a roteUke, robotUke
monotone. His face indicates no emotion; his mind is obviously detached from
195
the words he utters but does not beUeve. Neil has mastered the art of hiding
his tme feeUngs behind a mask of indifference.
Neil, the sensitive Byronic youth, intuitively feels Todd's insecurity and
loneUness, befriendingthe"stutterer." In Todd, Neil finds a souUnate. Both
are aUenated from family, Uving prescribed "un-real" roles: Neil Uves in the
shadow of his father's projection of him as a prestigious doctor; Todd Uves in
the shadow of a perfect older brother. Their mothers make Donna Reed look
Uke Gloria Steinham; their fathers certainly do not know best. When Todd
receives, for the second year in a row, a professional-Iooking deskset as his
birthday gift from his family, he and Neil join together, exalting in sending it
flying through the night sky to its death. SymboUcalIy, this act "flies in the
face" of aU they've been taught. They are rejecting the estabUshment.
Neil is victimized by a father and a sodety that negate any deviation
from the norm. Weir does an exceUent job of communicating via film language
just how important conformity is at Welton. As the film opens, the students
are marching in to Welton's chapel "in one accord" in perfectly coordinated,
ever-so-conseivative uniforms. Voices cry out as one the school's motto:
tradition, honor, disdpUne, exceUence. Weir also devotes time to a shot of the
conventional, tyrannical headmaster's extracurricular activity: coaching the
boys perfectly synchronized rowing team. The boys' successful fathers, too, are
196
portrayed as mirror images of one another: they are aU concemed first and
foremost with making money and molding sons who wiU follow their footsteps
through Harvard and into the worthy arenas of medidne, banking, and law.
Ironically, Neil is not only victimized by aU of those around him who
disaUow freedom, he is also at least somewdiat victimized by the one individual
he knows who applauds individualism: Mr. Keating. Neil thoroughly enjoys
tearing out Mr. J. Evans Pritchard's New Critical Introduction to poetiy; he is
the first to foUow Mr. Keating, stepping up onto the teacher's desk for a
"different" look; he is the one who reads Mr. Keating's Dead Poets Sodety
joumal; he is the one who enthusiastically informs the others that Keating was
voted the "most Ukely to do anything" in his high school yearbook. Indeed,
Neil looks up to Keating as his "Captain." Mr. Keating comprehends Neil's
passion for acting; he fails, however, to comprehend just how sensitive this
young artist is. Kael notes that Neil is very much his "hysterical, helpless
mother's child" (71). UnUke the Romantics, Neil has not found the strength
to confront the extemals that thwart his individuaUty; his poetic voice is
undeveloped, incapable of articulating his need for free artistic expression; he,
therefore, cannot maintain "his own walk" In the end, Neil is a self-sacrifidal
hero, dying because he cannot "in creating Uve," tragicaUy sacrifidng his Ufe
rather than Uving it by someone else's rules.
197
The character of Neil Perry is obviously essential to the film. Not so
obvious is the essentiaUty of his counterpoint, Cameron. Cameron epitomizes
Reason. Mr. Keating's first "class lecture" consists of taking his students down
the hall, stopping in front of the Welton trophy case. While the students look
at photographs of "long-ago Weltonites," one student reads Robert Herrick's
"To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time:"
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is stiU a flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow wiU be dying. (1-4)
Keating rather dramaticaUy reminds liis students that the boys in the trophy
case staring at them from the past are very Ukely presently fertiUzing daffodils.
He introduces the carpe diem sentiment, reminding them to seize the day
"because we're food for worms, lads! We're only going to experience a Umited
number of springs, summers, and faUs!" He ends his lecture with a question:
"Did most of those boys wait until it was too late before making their Uves into
even one iota of what they were capable?" He then instmcts the boys to move
in closer, to be ever-so-quiet, and to Usten. Keating whispers "carpe diem,"
"carpe diem," as the camera tracks with him moving slowly through the group
of boys. He ends his dass time with these words: "Make your Ufe
extraordinary." After this emotional carpe diem experience, the pragmatic
Cameron asks: "is [Mr. Keating] 'gonna test us on that stuff?" Mr. Keating
198
teUs his students to rip out the Pritchard introduction, announdng "We will
not be armies of academics going foreword, measuring poetry-no, we wiU not
have that here!" Cameron, watching the others, hesitates, making sure he is
not alone in this rebelUous act. When Neil gets the group committed to
sneaking off to the cave, it is Cameron wiio questions the reasonableness of
this adventure. He reminds them that they could get caught, even dismissed!
However, the others are enthusiastic, and Cameron, the foUower, goes along
with the group. Cameron continuaUy looks at Mr. Keating as if he thinks the
"Captain" is from another planet: he is-Keating is from the planet of
Imagination and leaming for its own sake, wdiereas Cameron is from the planet
of Reason and leaming for the sake of material success. At one point in the
film, CharUe says, "Cameron, you just don't get it-do you? Nothing Keating
says means anything to you!" Indeed, Cameron does not get it. Keating teUs
the boys in very Keatsian terms: "I have a secret for you. We don't read and
write poetiy because it's cute; we read and write poetry because we are
members of the human race. Poetiy, beauty, romance, love-these are what we
stay aUve for!" Not Cameron. Cameron stays aUve for Cameron and
"success."
After Neil's death, the perceptive CharUe (early in the film describing
Cameron's spedalty as "boot-Ucking") foresees just what wiU happen. Unlike
199
Cameron, CharUe is his own man. He refuses to help Welton Academy use
Keating as a scapegoat. He accepts expulsion. Cameron takes a more practical
approach: "We're," he claims, "the victims. You can't save Keating, but you
can save yourself." Cameron proceeds to save himself by portraying Keating as
the guilty party. He ever-so-calmly makes his pact with the devil, signing his
name to papers damning Mr. Keating. It is, after aU, the most reasonable thing
to do.
As noted earUer, the film not only gives voice to the dead poets, it also
aUows Weir to address his spedfic (albeit overlapping) humanist concems.
The Romantics and the modem Humanists clearly agree on the importance of
the arts; both agree with John Keats's concept of art and an appredation of the
beautiful as aiding himnankind in its search for meaning, for tmth. Film critic
R. A. Blake claims that "Peter Weir's direction [in Dead Poets Sodety] is aU
but invisible" (40); PauUne Kael states that "Peter Weir works the way some of
the major HoUywood directors (WilUam Wyler, George Stevens, John Ford)
did as they got middle-aged. [Dead Poets Sodety] draws out the obvious and
tums itself into a classic" (71). Weir is an artist concemed with produdng
great art. How fitting that this film extols one of the oldest of art forms:
poetry. The film does something even grander-it portrays leaming itself as an
200
artistic endeavor; in Dead Poets Sodety "the business of education is not to
gather facts but to find a ruling passion . . . " (Schickel 78).
The film is blatantly anti-estabUshment. Predsely chosen dialogue
effectively uses puns to convey this thematic. The school's motto: tradition,
honor, disdpUne, exceUence becomes "tradition, honor, disdpUne"-pause"excrement" behind the closed doors of Neil and Todd's dormitoiy room.
Welton is derisively referred to as HeUton throughout the film. Too, Weir's
talent for visual symboUsm enhances the anti-estabUshment message: the
camera pans the rowing team capturing them uniformly striking the water; the
long shot of a boy on his bicycle riding into a flock of birds, stirring them up,
sending them freely soaring upward beautifuUy iUustrates what Mr. Keating
hopes to do with his students; Neil ceremoniaUy taking off Puck's Christ-Uke
wreath, laying it on the window ledge subtly communicates his hopelessness,
foreshadows his final sacrifidal act.
But the most interesting symbol is Weir's often focused-upon deskset.
As Todd unpacks his things, the camera Ungers over, not a picture of his
family, but of his setting up his deskset. Later in the film, when he receives yet
another identical deskset, the camera tracks with the deskset as Todd sends it
flying to pieces. Neil's death scene is almost film noirish: the quiet is eerie;
Neil's shadow looms large as he creeps down the dimly-Ut stairs; chiaroscuro
201
Ughting intensifies the ghouUsh mood; the gun shot reverberates; slow motion
elongates Mr. Perry's horror as he sees his dead son. The setting of this
nightmarish scene is significant-NeiI commits suidde in his father's study,
sitting at his father's desk, behind his father's deskset. The camera slowly,
dramatically zooms in on Neil staring at the gun lying on the deskpad, slowly
picking it up. After Cameron's Iscariot-Uke betrayal, the other boys are
taken-one by one-into Mr. Nolan's office. A close-up focuses on the
headmaster handing Todd his pen taken from his deskset. It is the boys'
signature with this pen that damns Mr. Keating. The deskset clearly
symbolizes the establishment; the pen is, indeed, a mighty instmment.
Hentzi notes that Weir's continual "insistence on individual experience
is telling" (5). Indeed, Dead Poets Sodety is nothing if not a ciy for individual
experience. Keating tells the boys: "Be tme to yourself." "Tmst your feeUngs."
"Contribute your own verse." Much to Todd's dismay, he does insist that each
boy compose and redte his own poem. He fuither insists that each boy quite
Uterally "step to the music which he hears" (Thoreau 1420). In one of the
film's most memorable scenes, Keating takes his dass outside-beyond the
concrete, inhibiting waUs of Welton. He orders three students to begin
walking around the courtyard: "No grade here, one, two, three, go!" Keating
cries. A few seconds pass . . . the three boys have established a John Sousa
202
march cadence. The other students begin clapping to the uniform beat.
Keating stops the parade, caUing attention to how quickly the students began
to "keep pace with [their] companions" (Thoreau 126). He then asks each boy
to "hear a different drunrmier," and walk accordingly.
The insistence on individual, first-hand experience continues throughout
the film. The love-stmck Knox (Josh Charles) tells the others that he must act
on his feeUngs for Chris; he must experiment with and actively confront his
passion for the blue-eyed, blond girl of his dreams. And he does just that.
Perhaps the most determined member of the tribe to dare aU is CharUe, a
natural Keating disdple. CharUe sneaks a Playboy centerfold into the cave:
later he brings the "real thing"-girls-to the meeting. He adopts a tribal name,
Nuwanda, and draws primitive, cave-man style markings of viriUty across his
chest. His phone call from God to Mr. Nolan during moming assembly may
have been irresponsible, but it was a "gutsy" expression of individualism,
nonetheless. CharUe refuses to impUcate the other boys in this act, takes his
punishment Uke a man, and remains "tme to self." CharUe accepts dismissal
from Welton rather than "march to Mr. Nolan's drummer."
Who is the protagonist in this story? It could be argued that the
unorthodox-"I always thought education was leaming to think for
yourseir-Mr. Keating is the main character. The boys do cry out, "O
203
Captain! my Captain!" and regard him in much the same manner as Whitman
did Lincoln: "as a beloved fiiend and father-figure" (Marinacd 238). Indeed,
in the microcosmic worid of Welton, Keating is Lincoln-like: he fights for
individual freedom, makes enemies in the process, and is sacrificed in the name
of poUtics. Keating does inspire his foUowers to dream big dreams. He does
bring the dead poets back to Ufe-no smaU achievement. Mary Alice DeUa
contends that "[o]ne of screenwriter Tom Schulman's givens is that the
teacher, macho, unorthodox, and charismatic in the dassroom, is the film's
tme hero" (91). However, Tom O'Brien suggests that EngUsh, not the EngUsh
teacher, is the protagonist:
WilUams puts his manic, musde-mouth energy into low gear,
pladng his verbal acuity entirely at the service of Uterature. The
film isn't a star vehicle; but paradoxicaUy WilUams becomes more
of a star by taking second place to the EngUsh language.
Thoreau, Whitman, Byron-he brings them alive for his students
again by underplaying his own power. (372)
George F. WiU agrees, contending that the film's greatness Ues in its focus on
great literature: "It can spark appredation of the raptures-that is not too
strong a word-[people] can receive from words" (74).
It could be argued that the film's protagonist is the quite literaUy dead
poet/artist, Neil Peny. He does, after aU, have the most Unes; he is, as
described by critic David Ansen, "[t]he key figure" (67). However, if Simon
Loveday is correct in contending that "[i]n the field of Uterature a character
• » ^
204
who develops will always steal the show . . . " (71) then the only acceptable
choice for protagonist becomes Todd Anderson. Todd suffers, truly suffers.
from a severe lack of self-esteem. Weir dramatically uses this character to
iUustrate the Romantic and the Humanist position regarding self.
Todd walks in the shadow of his older brother, the perfect Welton
scholar. His parents see him only as his brother's clone; they want a repeat of
Jeffrey. When Todd's father introduces him to Mr. Nolan, the headmaster
repUes: "You've got some big shoes to fiU." Todd is not sure that he can, or
even desires to, fiU those shoes. Todd stutters, avoiding speaking at all
whenever possible-his voice Ues dormant. Todd only joins the Dead Poets
Sodety because Neil arranges for him to play secretary, busying hiimseU with
note-taking instead of voice-making. As Todd teeters on Mr. Keating's desk,
partidpating in the "look at things from another perspective" exerdse, Mr.
Keating teUs the boys that they must compose their own verse, presenting it to
the class. He teUs Todd that he realizes that this assignment "frightens him to
death" but that it is a necessaiy one. When called on to read his poem, Todd
denies writing it (the audience knows this is untme; it has witnessed him
working on his verse). Mr. Keating tums to the class and very accurately
describes Todd's problem: "Mr. Anderson thinks everything inside him is
worthless." He then tums to Todd, looks him in the eye, and continues:
205
"You're wrong. I think you have something inside you that is worth a great
deal." Almost dragging Todd forward, Mr. Keating mystically becomes
"muse-Uke." He tortures a primitive Whitmanesque YAWP out of Todd,
begins spinning him around with his eyes closed, mysteriously releasing a
highly Wordsworthian "spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion" from the
heretofore self-consdous, stuttering youth. Todd has, for the first time, sung a
song of self.
Todd was Neil's roommate; the two were close. He knows that Mr.
Perry, not Mr. Keating, was primarily responsible for Neil's desperate act. In
Mr. Nolan's office, Todd stmggles to find his voice and articulate what he
knows to be tme; however, his father's harsh words, "I've had enough. Sign
the paper, Todd," his mother's nervous tears, and the five other students'
signatures on the paper before him immobilize his vocal cords.
The movie's final scene is highly emotional. Mr. Keating comes to his
EngUsh class-now being taught by an ever-so-frustrated "What happened to
Mr. Pritchard's introduction?" Mr. Nolan-to gather his personals. Keating
goes to the front of the room into a smaU office/closet. He tums, his sad eyes
meeting Todd's troubled ones. Todd, Peter-Uke, does not deny his master
again. Suddenly finding his voice, he cries out: "Mr. Keating, they made
eveiybody sign it! Mr. Keating, it's tme. You've got to beUeve me." Mr.
206
Nolan shouts at Todd to be quiet, threatening him with dismissal. However,
as Mr. Keating begins his exit, Todd once again asserts his position. CUmbing
upon his desk, standing erect, defying Mr. Nolan, Todd clearly enundates: "O
Captain! My Captain!" Soon the other disdples (minus Cameron) foUow
Todd's lead, paying tribute to the unjustly dismissed teacher. The film
concludes with a medium shot of an assertive Todd Anderson, an individual
capable of leading others to arriving at and expressing tmth, an individual
capable of "making of aU one Man."
Thus, the verse of the dead poets allows Peter Weir to fuUv
communicate his humanist philosophy. There is, it appears, one other
heretofore unmentioned dead poet whose words Weir took to heart. As
explained by Aristotle, "[p]oetiy is the most philosophic of aU writing." Dead
Poets Sodety suggests that Aristotle was correct.
While Peter Weir was busy directing Dead Poets Sodety. Nancy H.
Kleinbaum, former joumaUst, was busy writing it. Bantam PubUshers had
asked Kleinbaum to tackle the project because they had been pleased with her
work before-parricularly pleased with her abiUty to produce quaUty writing in
a short time frame.
Novelizations as a wide-spread commerdal form are a rdatively new
genre. According to Randall D. Larson, they "emerged out of the mass-market
207
paperback phenomenon of the 1960's" (4). They are often referred to as the
"movie tie-in" book (3) and are generaUy considered "substandard pop
Uterature" (3). The reasons for this assessment are varied: first, noveUzations
are "tainted" by their direct connection to two inteUectual "bogies"-money
and HoUywood. Indeed, the process begins as a contracted agreement between
the movie company and the highest-bidding pubUsher. The selected pubUsher
then selects the author. Another reason noveUzations are held in rather low^
regard is that-from a Uterary standpoint-many simply do not measure up.
However, Larson contends that this is not always the case. Some, he argues,
are "[g]ood books. Books which complement, iUuminate, eluddate their
movies" (xii). I beUeve that Kleinbaum's noveUzation of Weir's film supports
Larson's contention, particularly if the book is analyzed in Ught of one targeted
audience.
Craig Shaw Gardner (the novelizer of Batman) describes noveUzations
as "direct[ing] my own version of the movie." He continues:
In a certain sense, that's what you're doing by making a book
You take the bare bones screenplay, which has a certain amount
of motion, direction, and the basic material, but I have to fiU in
what the characters reaUy feel when they say these things. I have
to fiU in what things actuaUy look Uke and where they happen.
It's sort of fasdnating, actuaUy to do that and then go see the
finished film. (qtd. in Larson 14)
208
I recently interviewed Nancy Kleinbaum: her descriprion of noveUzing Weir's
Dead Poets Sodety supports Gardner's words on the subject. Obviously, since
the film was in-progress, she did not see it prior to writing her book. She
worked directly from the script, and related that
[s]ometimes I deviate from the script to a greater extent than at
other times. I Uked this script's storyUne and tried to stay close
to it. However, a script-even a good script-is just a skeleton. I
see my job as fleshing out this stmcture. In order to flesh out the
characters in Dead Poets Sodety. I reUed on dialogue and my
own personal vision. I did know that Robin WiIUams had been
cast as Mr. Keating, but this information was not particularly
helpful. How can you predict what Robin WiIUams is apt to
do-how he might improvise?
Kleinbaum stated that a "plus" for her was having Exeter Academy in her own
personal memory-bank. Exeter is a preparatory academy in New Hampshire
that her children had attended one summer. Conjured-up visions of this
setting allowed her to readily describe Weir's Welton.
The intent in noveUzations it to write prose that communicates the
same information the director presented via film language. Indeed,
noveUzations are a "reverse osmosis" process: the "traditional" adaptation is
from words to film-noveUzations are an effoit to "prose-ize" the visual. Weir
uses the camera and film to "communicate" Welton Academy: the camera pans
the neo-Gothic architecture, Ungers over ivy on exterior waUs, tracks with the
boys as they solemnly march in to the "old world" chapel. Weir's camera-work
209
succeeds in estabUshing Welton as descending from Bvron's prestigious
Harrow. Kleinbaum's initial prose-her first paragraph-does much the same:
Inside the stone chapel of Welton Academy, a private school
nestled in the remote hiUs of Vermont, more than three hundred
boys, all wearing the academy blazer, sat on either side of the
long aisle, surrounded by proud-faced parents, and waited. They
heard the reverberations of the bagpipes as a short, elderly man
swathed in flowing robes Ut a candle and led a procession of
students carrying banners, robed teachers, and alumnae down a
long slate hallway into the venerable chapel. (1)
Dialogue in the novel is equaUy weU-handled and, for the most part, a
repetition of what is heard in Weir's film. However, as Kleinbaum antidpated,
WiUiams's "John Wayne as Macbeth" ad-Ubs were impossible to predict.
Characters are carefuUy sketched: the seven students under scmtiny in the
movie are just as believable in the book Kleinbaum induded one scene
reflecting character from the script, however, that Weir wisely omitted. In the
novelization, Keating spends one class period lecturing the boys on the
challenge that awaits them in coUege of "analyzing books you haven't read"
(111). He explains: "CoUege wiU expose you to aU manner of Uterature-much
of it transcendent works of magic that you must devour, some of it utter dreck
that you must avoid Uke the plague" (111). In the interest of not wasting their
time on such "sewage" (112), Keating advises them to read the book jacket,
throw in a Uttle Freudian theory, and tie the novel's theme to some "obscure"
(113) writer, such as Rahesh Non. One of the students raises his hand and
210
asks: "Captain . . . what if you don't know anything about someone like
Rahesh Non?" (113). Keating repUes:
Rahesh Non never existed, Mr. Meeks. You make him, someone
Uke him, up. No self-important college professor would dare
admit ignorance of such an obviously important figure, and you
wiU probably receive a comment Uke the one I received. Keating
picked up a paper on his desk and read from it to the class: "Your
allusions to Rahesh Non were insightful and weU presented. Glad
to see that someone besides myself appredates this great but
forgotten Eastem master. A-píus." (113)
After completing this lecture, Keating distributes exams to his students. They
are to complete them in twenty minutes. As they begin to work on their
exams, Keating tums on the sUde projector, showing pictures of "women in a
seemingly endless, tantaUzing stream" (115). The "lesson," Keating claims, is
in the interest of concentration; however, the "far-out" teacher is also
encouraging the boys to want more than Welton offers. Quite simply put,
Weir did not want to portray Mr. Keating, Romantidsm, or Humanism as
"far-out." Thus, omitting Keating's negative stereotypical description of
coUege professors and his sUdes of tantaUzing women makes Weir's Keating a
much more stable, "less-hippie," character.
Kleinbaum pays just as much, if not more, attention to the symboUc
desk-set. After Todd receives his second desk-set, Kleinbaum gives readers
some additional insight into Todd Anderson. Todd and Neil sit contemplating
the unwanted, insensitive gift. Kleinbaum's Todd shares:
21
"You know what Dad caUed me when I was growing up? Five
ninety-eight. That's what all the chemicals in the human body
would be worth if you bottled them raw and sold them. He told
me that was all I'd ever be worth unless I worked every day to
improve myself. Five ninety-eight." (84)
Readers, along with Neil, cannot help but react by thinking: "No wonder Todd
is so screwed up" (84).
The noveUzation is thematicaUy faithful. Lines are devoted to excerpts
firom Wordsworth, Byron, Thoreau, and Whitman. The phrases that Unger in
the audience's ears in the film are carefully printed for absorption by the reader
in the text: "let [your] imaginations mn free" (59); "permit [your] own tme
natures to speak" (60); "we must constantly endeavor to find a new point of
view" (60); "Usten to your own voice" (87); "triumph as individuals" (40); "I
always thought education was leaming to think for yourselP (109); and carpe
diem (26). There are some additional poems in the text not mentioned in the
film: one is particularly noteworthy.
In the noveUzation after Neil has been tom away firom the group by his
father, the other six boys go to the cave. They look up and Mr. Keating,
iUuminated by the moonUght, suddenly appears at the cave's entrance. As the
group contemplates Neil's future, the heretofore silent Todd volunteers to read
a poem he has written:
We are dreaming of tomorrow, and tomorrow
isn't coming;
212
We are dreaming of a glory that we
don't really want.
We are dreaming of a new day when the new
day's here already.
We are running from the battie when it's one
that must be
fought.
We are Ustening for the caUing but
never really heeding,
Hoping for the future wdKen the future's only
plans.
Dreaming of the wisdom that we are
dodging daily.
Praying for a savior when salvation's
in our hands.
And stiU we sleep.
And stiU we sleep.
And still we pray.
And stiU we fear . . .
And stiU we sleep. (145-46)
Interestingly, the poem not only addresses the carpe diem thematic-the day is
at hand: seize itl-it also describes Neil's pUght. Neil's tomorrow isn't coming;
his father dreams of glories that Neil doesn't want; Neil must fight-he must
save himself; however, he dodges this wisdom, and sleeps, prays, fears, and
ultimately sleeps forever. This scene also accurately captures Hentzi's
contention that Weir's dnematic canon reflects a need for the communal in
modem Ufe. It further accentuates the director's belief that at times "the best
we can do is to cherish the personal relationships that sustain us . . . " (Hentzi
9). Since the poem and the scene say so much thematicallv and reveal a great
213
deal about Weir's philosophy, it is one that I wish would have been induded in
the film.
As noted earUer, the value of film noveUzations is questionable.
However, it is becoming increasingly obvious that novelizations do serve one
particular audience in a highly positive fashion, consequently serving the
domain of Uterature at large. NoveUzations, it seems, introduce young people
to reading. Isaac Asimov states: "NoveUzations of popular movies are useful
because they lure people into reading. and some of them may find they like the
process and may become regular readers" (qtd. in Larson 44). Ed Naha,
Robocop novelizer, states: "If a young person is stimulated by a movie, great.
If that exdtement leads that person to actually buying a book and reading it,
then I think novelizations can do a lot in terms of stimulating the imagination
of a reader" (qtd. in Larson 45). Craig Gardner agrees: "The primary audience
for these books . . . seems to be kids in the upper grade schools and junior high
schools. I'm veiy happy that the kids are going out and reading these books.
That's a veiy important thing, and they're a way to connect the media with the
reading experience, which seems to be in danger of passing away" (qtd. in
Larson 44). Ed Naha believes that noveUzarions can be used as an initiation
into serious Uterature: noveUzations, he contends, should "inspire kids to look
towards larger, more bountiful fields of Uterature. . . . [NoveUzers] are the Pied
214
Pipers, here. It's up to us to weave a tune that wiU lead them into bigger and
better things" (qtd. in Larson 45).
Nancy Kleinbaum's Dead Poets Sodety experiences validate these
claims. Kleinbaum discusssed with me a letter she had redeved from a
sixteen-year-old boy. He said that he had hated reading, but his teacher had
assigned Kleinbaum's Dead Poets Sodety noveUzation. Much to his surprise,
he found out that reading could be a pleasureable, positive experience. He
thanked her for "opening his eyes to another world." Kleinbaum also related
that her novelization has been translated into French and German. Comelson
(a German pubUshing company) selected a chapter from the noveUzation to
include in an English 11 Uterature anthology (a sophomore level text) in a
chapter entitled: "Expressing Ourselves: Arts & Culture." The young students
thoroughly enjoy it. Thus, Peter Weir's Romantic, New Age Humanist
philosophy is reaching an audience he never envisioned.
Kleinbaum agrees that any avenue that encourages young people to read
"pretty much" justifies the genre. However, she suggests that there is yet
another justification for the noveUzation and yet another audience to consider.
Kleinbaum describes a noveUzation as "another way of percdving a story."
And, she contends, for some people there simply aren't enough ways to
215
perceive a well-loved story. She adds, "for some the 'best' way to perceive a
story is stiU by curling up with book-in-hand."
CHAPTER VII
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In 1915, Vachel Lindsay wrote The Art of the Moving Picture. He
argued that film could legitimately be considered an art form; however, he
cautioned against Uterature to film adaptation, beUeving that the two art forms
were simply too different. Sixty years later, in 1975, the same contentions
were being voiced. Ingmar Bergman stated that "[f]ilm has nothing to do with
Uterature," that "the character and substance of the two art forms are usuallv
in confUct," and blatantly conduded that "we should avoid making films out of
books" (qtd. in Wagner 29). In 1994, Barbara Lupack stated that "as film
adaptations . . . continue to appear, the debate about their merits continues as
weU" (9).
The "aUiance" between Uterature and philosophy is equaUy uneasy.
Thomas V. Morris, philosopher of reUgion at Notre Dame University, states:
Not many good philosophers are great writers. Not many good
writers are great philosophers. But an exceptional writer who
addresses philosophical and reUgious topics with verve and style,
whose books are weU marketed, and w^o succeeds in touching
people's Uves can on occasion be acdaimed a great philosopher by
the appredative reading pubUc. . . .
Some professional philosophers find themselves with anambivalent
attitude toward such an author's success. While grateful for whatever
good he has managed to effect in the Uves of his readers, they regret the
216
217
confusion of rhetoric with philosophy pervading the pubUc reception of
his work. Other professional philosophers find themselves hardly
ambivalent at aU, but are just irked by the situation. (qtd. in Purtill
39-40)
Camus' claim that "[a] novel is never anything but a philosophv expressed in
images," however, argues against the above contentions. Indeed, his statement
suggests that a written story of any merit is inherently philosophical and that
the story's expressed philosophy is best communicated via images. His
statement suggests that there is a natural and healthy aUiance between
Uterature, philosophy, and film. Facts bear out this suggestion. Adaptations of
serious Uterature, particularly the novel, relates Morris Beja
account for "more than three-fourths of the [Academy] awards for
'best picture'. . . . in the last fifty years, about 80 percent of the
best-selUng novels for each year have so far been made into filmsabout twice the figure for the novels that won the PuUtzer Prize
in the same years. (78)
This dissertation vaUdates Camus's claim and questions the anti
Uterature/film, Uterature/philosophy camp. The stoiy-tellers consideredChopin, London, Lewis, Fowles, and Weir-all held philosophy in high regard.
Jack London agonized over working out a philosophy of Ufe; Lewis thought of
his arguments as "more what might be caUed philosophy"; John Fowles
blatantly admits that he would have Uked to have been a great philosopher;
Weir's films project his concem with contemporary philosophies; and, after
receiving negative press, Chopin comforted herself with these words-"he w^ho
218
is content to reach his own group, without ambition to be heard beyond it,
attains, in my opinion, somewhat to the dignity of a philosopher" (Complete
Works 705). Professional philosophers they are not; however, they all
successfuUy managed to express their philosophies-their ideas explaining the
underlying conduct, thought, and nature of our universe-by smuggUng them
into their stories.
The adaptations analyzed in this dissertation also vaUdate the second
portion of Camus's claim: images do powerfully communicate philosophy.
Mary Lambert's carefuUy handled close-up of Edna taking her final breath of
air before drowning brilUantly captures Chopin's tum-of-the-century concem
with female "suffocation." Curtiz's medium shot of Ruth, Leach, and Hump
staring at Johnson's empty spot in the Ufeboat conveys London's support of
Schopenhauer's altmism and expresses the need for individual American
self-sacrifice in the face of Nazi aggression better than could any sermon;
Attenborough's final long shot of Lewis and Douglas walking arm-in-arm
toward "heaven" beautifuUy portrays Lewis's "at peace with God and the
world" re-strengthened faith; Reisz's medium shot of Anna's shaUow glance in
Sarah's mirror says much about Fowles's concem with existential self-awareness
gone so far as to become mere selfishness; Weir's low-angle of Todd standing
219
on his desk, firmly addressing Keating as Captain iUustrates the director's
concem with humanizing the seU in order to be able to "make of aU one man."
Furthermore, the adaptations analyzed in this dissertation prove that
there are numerous successful approaches to the "from-one-medium-toanother" conversion process. Mary Lambert chose Mitry's exacting, step-bystep "iUustration" option to present Kate Chopin's early feminist thought;
Michael Curtiz's approach fits Mitry's second option description-it is an
inspired rethinking of Jack London's "naturaUsm," i.e., Americanism;
Attenborough's attention to biographical detail and use of film technique to
communicate C. S. Lewis's non-fiction writings is a remarkable effort; John
Fowles's description of Karel Reisz's adaptation of his Aristos existentialism via
the French lieutenant's woman's stoiy as a brilliant metaphor for the novel
supports directorial freedom; and N. H. Kleinbaum's adaptation of Peter
Weir's Romantic New Age Humanism provides an example of the most recent
progression in adaptation-the noveUzation.
Albert Camus is not alone in his contention that Uterature, philosophy,
and images make good bedfeUows. I give Jack London the final word. In "The
Message of the Motion Pictures," London wrote: "The greatest minds have
deUvered their messages through the book or play. The motion picture spreads
it on the screen where aU can read and understand-and enjoy."
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