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"Damnable feminization"?: The Merchant Ivory film adaptation of Henry James's The Bostonians
Literature Film Quarterly, 1997 by Sue Sorensen
The main objection was the addition, at the end of the film, of a speech by Olive Chancellor, who steps forward to take Verena's place at the podium of the Boston Music Hall after Verena's abduction by Basil. The novel ends with the remaining audience falling silent at Olive's ascension; because her most recent line of dialogue has been "I am going to be hissed and hooted and insulted!" (432), literal-minded readers have assumed that she does fail. However, although Olive is harsh, morbidly nervous, and overly attendant to duty and theory, even Basil notes that under her prickly exterior lie passion and intelligence. We may even judge Olive's eloquence for ourselves from her remarks to Basil:
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What women may be, or may not be, to each other, I won't attempt just now to say, but what the truth may be to a human soul, I think perhaps even a woman may faintly suspect! ( 113)
This is superior both to Verena's speeches and to Basil's. Verena's are characterized by sentimental analogies such as "You say it's a very comfortable cosy, convenient box [in which women are placed] .... Good gentlemen, you have never been in the box"(268), while Basil bluntly declares that women "have no business to be reasonable" (223). Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screenplay follows James's dialogue, characterization, and intention with great care. The creation of a credible final speech for Olive in the screenplay is based on the extensive knowledge of her beliefs, which the reader amasses as the long novel progresses; the fact that the majority of the novel's scenes focus on Olive and Verena, giving their beliefs and relations close and intelligent scrutiny, is one of the many stumbling blocks to an anti-feminist reading of the novel. Certainly James does not wholly endorse feminism in its Bostonian guise. The character of Miss Birdseye comes in for some sharp satirical knocks, and Olive's eyes are indeed described as "green ice" (48). But the feminist enterprise could have come in for a much harder drubbing than this. When Verena asks in a speech, "Do you think any state of society can come to good that is based upon an organized wrong?" (267), her style may seem slightly ridiculous, but the principle expressed is surely not one which James dismisses out of hand. Ivory's direction of this scene nicely captures the variables in Verena's speech. He frequently cuts to Basil's sardonic smirk as he watches Verena with fascination, with fewer-but moving-shots of Olive's rapt and grave face. Verena is gauche in her hand gestures, awkward girlish dress, and sentimental delivery, yet she still registers sincerity. The meaning is mixed, as it should be. The message has merit, but the medium may not.
When James says, through Doctor Prance, the independent woman doctor, "that men and women are all the same to me.... I don't see any difference. There is room for improvement in both sexes. Neither of them is up to the standard" (67), we are clearly in the presence of the short answer to James's attitude toward his characters and themes. But this statement is too simple and limited to be a full response to the matter at hand; the real and complicated problem of gender relations remains. Doctor Prance is, after all, a minor character whose "own little revolution was a success" (73) but who is too slight and self-contained to stand as exemplar. The film's casting of Linda Hunt (whose gender here is not so much ambiguous as flattened altogether) in the role underscores the author's doubts about this path of feminism. Ivory has picked up James's note about Prance's "spare, dry, hard" appearance (67) and emphasizes her unsexed character, making it clear that she has adopted a profession at great personal cost.
