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“Two Mothers United”: Interclass Female Friendship in Stella Dallas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2014

KRISTI BRANHAM
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Abstract

Much has been made of Olive Higgins Prouty's character Stella Dallas, who appeared first in serial form in 1922 followed by a best-selling novel in 1923. Like other Prouty novels, Stella Dallas was adapted into film only two years later in 1925 and again in 1937. Directed by King Vidor and starring Barbara Stanwyck, the 1937 adaptation garnered Oscar nominations for Stanwyck, inspired a long-running radio show, and attracted much scholarly attention. In this essay, I argue that the story of Prouty's titular character can be in large part attributed to its overarching narrative of mother love as sacrifice. Yet this narrative includes a subtext of interclass female collusion that drives the plot and has mass appeal. Stella and Helen collude to exploit their class differences both as women and as maternal figures in the making and maintenance of the early twentieth-century status quo of motherhood and of womanhood, but also of interclass white female relations.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 2015 , pp. 125 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2014 

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References

1 Frank Nugent, Review of Stella Dallas, New York Times, 6 Aug. 1937.

2 Prouty published ten novels between 1913 and 1951, yet despite her popularity as an author and the successful film adaptations of her novels Stella Dallas (New York: Perennial-Harper, 1990; first published 1923) and Now, Voyager (New York: The Feminist Press, 2004; first published 1941), her work remains out of print.

3 Prouty's distaste for the film adaptations of Stella Dallas is well documented in both scholarly discussions of the film and in Prouty's own words. In her memoir Pencil Shavings (Worcester: Commonwealth Press, 1985; first published 1961), Prouty bemoaned the adaption of the novel to film as it associated her work with popular writers rather than with the literary status she desired.

4 Nugent.

5 Janet Maslin, “Bette Midler as Selfless Mother in Tear-Inducing Stella,” New York Times, 2 Feb, 1990.

6 Basinger, Jeanine, A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930–1960 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993), 6Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 7.

8 Haskell, Molly, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies, 2nd edn (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987; first published 1974), 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Fischer, Lucy, Cinematernity: Film, Motherhood, Genre (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Much of the success and enduring popularity of the 1937 film adaptation can be attributed to the star power of Barbara Stanwyck, who already had established herself as a powerful actress, having appeared in over 28 films by the time she took the starring role in Vidor's adaptation of Stella Dallas.

11 Williams, Linda, “‘Something Else besides a Mother’: Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama,” Cinema Journal, 24, 1 (Autumn 1984), 2–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaplan, E. Ann, “Ann Kaplan Replies to Linda Williams's ‘“Something Else Besides a Mother”: Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama,’” Cinema Journal, 24, 2 (Winter 1985), 40–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cavell, Stanley, “Stella's Taste: Reading Stella Dallas,” in Cavell, , Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 197–222Google Scholar; Petro, Patrice and Flinn, Carol, “Patrice Petro and Carol Flinn on Feminist Film Theory,” Cinema Journal, 25, 1 (Autumn 1985), 50–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gallagher, Tag, “Tag Gallagher Responds to Tania Modleski's ‘Time and Desire in the Woman's Film’ and Linda Williams's ‘“Something Else Besides a Mother”: Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama,’” Cinema Journal, 25, 2 (Winter 1986), 65–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gledhill, Christine, “Christine Gledhill on Stella Dallas and Feminist Film Theory,” Cinema Journal, 25, 4 (Summer 1986), 44–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Laura Mulvey's classic essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Patricia Ehrens, ed., Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990; first published 1975), 28–40.

13 Copjec, Joan, Imagine There's No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

14 Parchesky, Jennifer, “Adapting Stella Dallas: Class Boundaries, Consumerism, and Hierarchies of Taste,” Legacy, 23, 2 (2006), 178–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Kawash, Samira, “New Directions in Motherhood Studies,” Signs, 36, 4 (Summer 2011), 969–1003CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 While much scholarly attention has been paid to the intimate relations among women across racial differences, little attention has been paid to cross-class relationships. See, for example, Branham, Kristi, “‘Thrown on Their Own Resources’: Collaboration as Survival Strategy in Imitation of Life,” Literature and Film Quarterly, 40, 4 (Oct. 2012), 258–73Google Scholar; Smith, Valerie, Not Just Race, Not Just Gender: Black Feminist Readings (New York: Routledge, 1998)Google ScholarPubMed; Van Wormer, Katherine, Jackson, David W. III, and Sudduth, Charletta, The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim Crow South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

17 In the 1990 version starring Bette Midler, Stella and Stephen never marry, perhaps as an effort by the filmmakers to update Prouty's story. In this version, Stella enters the film already jaded by the difficulties of class and gender structures.

18 Williams, 13.

19 Parchesky, 179.

20 McHugh, Kathleen Anne, American Domesticity: From How-To Manual to Hollywood Melodrama (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 135Google Scholar.

21 Williamson, Judith, “Woman Is an Island: Femininity and Colonization,” in Modleski, Tania, ed., Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 99–118Google Scholar.

22 Williamson, 106.

23 Friedan's, BettyFeminine Mystique (New York: Dell, 1983; first published 1963)Google Scholar and Rich's, AdrienneOf Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: Norton, 1976)Google Scholar argue that the cultural ideals of woman as the perfect housewife and the perfect mother are unobtainable, ultimately leaving women isolated, depressed, and dissatisfied.

24 Kawash, 980.

25 Parchesky, 183.

26 Williams, 13.

27 Prouty, Stella Dallas, 70.

28 Ehrenreich, Barbara and English, Deirdre, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of Experts’ Advice to Women (New York: Anchor, 2005; first published 1978), 9Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., 10.

30 For a more detailed discussion of this transition and the changes impressed on domestic life see, for example, Chambers, John Whiteclay II, The Tyranny of Change: America in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Cowan, Ruth Schwartz, A Social History of American Technology (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Strasser, Susan, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Henry Holt, 2000)Google Scholar.

31 Rich, Of Woman Born, 43.

32 Prouty, Stella Dallas, 12.

33 Some of the more popular novels centered on this trope include Susan Warner's The Wide Wide World (1850); Maria Cummins's The Lamplighter (1854); Augusta Evan's Beulah (1859); and E. D. E. N. Southworth's The Hidden Hand (1888).

34 Kaplan, E. Ann, “The Case of the Missing Mother: Maternal Issues in Vidor's Stella Dallas,” in Ehrens, Patricia, ed., Issues in Feminist Film Criticism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 126–36, 129Google Scholar.

35 See, for example, Faderman, Lillian, Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (New York: Penguin, 1994)Google Scholar; Israel, Betsy, Bachelor Girl: The Secret History of Single Women in the Twentieth Century (New York: HarperCollins, 2002)Google Scholar; O'Connor, Pat, Friendships between Women: A Critical Review (New York: The Guilford Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America,” Signs, 1, 1 (Autumn 1975), 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 O'Connor, 15.

37 Ibid., 3.

38 Prouty, Stella Dallas, 20.

39 Ibid., 35.

40 Ibid., 195.

41 Ibid., 195.

42 Ibid., 194.

43 Ibid., 194–95.

44 Ibid., 195.

45 Ibid., 200.

46 Ibid., 236.

47 Ibid., 237.

48 Williams, “Something Else besides a Mother,” 13.

49 Prouty, Stella Dallas, 244.

50 Copjec, Imagine There's No Woman, 117.

51 Williams, 16.

52 Ibid., 16, original emphasis.

53 Cavell, “Stella's Taste,” 216.

54 Haskell, From Reverence to Rape, 159.

55 Williams, 17.

56 McHugh, American Domesticity, 138.

57 Copjec, 127.

58 Cavell, 217.