"Damnable feminization"?: The Merchant Ivory film adaptation of Henry James's The Bostonians

Sue Sorensen

A novelist as difficult and lavish as Henry James promises mixed blessings and prodigal impossibilities for the screen adaptor. An exceedingly visual and dramatic stylist who delighted in complex imagery and uncertain point of view, James might appear to be an ideal source only for expressionist, indeterminate dreamscapes. More likely, he might frighten away film directors by the sheer pyrotechnic literariness of his work. Yet director James Ivory, with his longtime partners producer Ismail Merchant and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, has twice filmed James novels, in versions which are relatively straightforward and realist. They may sacrifice some of James's brilliance and abundance in the process of compression and clarification, but they fairly represent James's dialogue and intention.

As Neil Sinyard emphasizes in his book Filming Literature, a film adaptation is essentially an act of literary criticism. Both Merchant Ivory films elucidate James's themes but provide for the filmmakers' views of their source texts and their subjects. The results are satisfying and intelligent. Necessarily less sunny, charming, and ironic than their E.M. Forster adaptations, the films The Europeans (1979) and The Bostonians (1984) are earnest works. Those who see Merchant Ivory's literary films as "costume pieces" (Lane 121) or as reverent and accurate embalmments (Lorsch 144)1 are surely not reading these films with sufficient care. The film of The Bostonians in particular is not only a viable realization of a formidable text, but is also a much-needed response to a century of critical readings which have seen the novel as an attack on women and lesbians.

Along with the opening title and credits of The Bostonians, an organist plays "America," or "My Country 'Tis of Thee." The particular version is by Charles Ives, and it is a set of increasingly bizarre variations on the tune, a mad showpiece for organ. Variations are precisely what we will confront in this story of several personalities vying for the love of one young woman. This organ, with four keyboards, is perfectly suited for counterpoint, and signals the fact that simultaneous stories and characterizations will unfold and intertwine. Furthermore, the organ is an appropriate symbol for Verena Tarrant, who is a voice played upon by other people who manipulate her just as the organist "pulls out the stops." The shots of the organist's bouncing feet provide a slightly ludicrous tone for the credits sequence, raising the possibility that the story is satirical. Some critics have seen Henry James's novel as a satire, but in Ivory's film the serious and dramatic qualities of the story overshadow the satire.

In his 1884 essay "The Art of Fiction," Henry James put forward an artistic creed of openness, flexibility, and liberality. "Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints," he writes (187). Dismissing critics whose narrow Victorian maxims were stifling the growth of the novel, James took as his watchwords freedom and sincerity. The artist's primary duty is to make the subject interesting; any other prescription is open to debate. "Humanity is immense, and reality has a myriad forms," wrote James (194), and "art derives a considerable part of its beneficial exercise from flying in the face of presumptions" (198).

While "The Art of Fiction" certainly has as its prime subject a theory of artistic creation rather than any thematic or social message, it is tempting to apply James's daring and generous tone to the specific human situations of his novels. In all of James's fiction, characters find themselves with difficult moral choices to make, or they are compelled or controlled by others. The apparent topic of The Bostonians-feminist politics particularly and sexual relations more generally-is an especially sensitive one. Interpretations of the author's position on these matters have differed vastly since the novel was first serialized in The Century in 1885. As questions of personal freedom and bondage are extremely pressing in the novel, James's heady declaration in "The Art of Fiction" that "all life belongs to you" (205) may serve as a dictum for his characters as well as for his fellow artists.

If we accept that Henry James's aesthetic radicalism has at least some parallel in his personal and political views, then we must read The Bostonians as a tragedy. The abduction of the beautiful young inspirational speaker Verena Tarrant by the southern conservative Basil Ransom is a clear incident of suppression, of the muffling of a human voice. And this is not just any voice: Verena is, at least potentially, an artist. Even if Verena were not an artist figure, a type sacred to Henry James, it is hard to believe that James, with his obsessive need to understand individual consciousness and to articulate that knowledge, could approve of Verena's fate. Under the spell of Basil Ransom's very male sexuality and forcefulness, "she appeared not even to wish to hear the sound of her own voice" (400). Surely this is a corollary to what one critic calls "the cardinal sin" in James's world view: the "exploitation of others, the desire to possess and use them" (Anderson 27).

That Basil's silencing-by-seduction is deliberate there is no doubt. His rival for Verena, Olive Chancellor, recognizes at once that he is one of the men "who would be glad to stop your mouth by kissing you" (151)! There is also a disturbing suggestion of violence in his thoughts of silencing her. The novel tells us that "if he should become her husband he should know a way to strike her dumb" (315). If we wonder whose point of view this is, elsewhere we plainly have from Basil's point of view that he "was slightly conscious of a man's brutality-of being pushed by an impulse to test her good-nature, which seemed to have no limit" (248).

Most damning of all is Basil's realization that he feels "as he could imagine a young man to feel who, waiting in a public place, has made up his mind, for reasons of his own, to discharge a pistol at the king or the president" (414). So soon after the Civil War, it is difficult to see how James could have any sympathy for Basil Ransom. By the novel's end, Basil is quite unambiguous.

"Olive, Olive!" Verena suddenly shrieked; and her piercing cry might have reached the front. But Ransom had already, by muscular force, wrenched her away, and was hurrying her out.... "Ah, now I am glad!" said Verena, when they reached the street. But though she was glad, he presently discovered that, beneath her hood, she was in tears. It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter, these were not the last she was destined to shed. (432-33)

These unhappy final lines amazingly prompted the following response from Richard Grenier in Commentary in 1984: "I think it would be a mistake to read tragedy into these lines" (65).

There is a considerable heritage of critical opinion which blithely accepts that Basil Ransom is the novel's hero; that Olive Chancellor is harsh and abnormal; and that by untangling Verena Tarrant from the probably lesbian, certainly vampirish grip of Olive, the handsome and chivalrous Ransom performs an act of liberation. For example, to Louis Auchincloss, Olive's "sexual drive has been converted into a hatred of men and a lust for power" (in Grenier 62), and F.W. Dupee is reported as believing that James "feels not the slightest sympathy for her" (Grenier 64). In a recent biography of James, Fred Kaplan claims that The Bostonians was written as a tribute to Henry James Sr., who had recently died, and whose view of women (despite radical views on a variety of other subjects) was that the home was their sacred place (281).

It cannot be denied that the novel questions the influence of women in public life. However it is a disservice to James to treat The Bostonians as if it were simply a tribute, an allegory, or a satire (whether on reactionary masculinity or radical feminism). James Ivory's film adaptation thoughtfully stakes out a position which runs counter to the conservative mainstream view of the novel. "In addition to being one of the most brilliant novels in the language it is also one of the most anti-feminist" (64) writes Richard Grenier. Little wonder that Grenier found the Merchant Ivory film "one of the most singularly perverse adaptations of a classic I have ever encountered" (60). After claiming that the film turns the novel on its head, Grenier, with palpable horror, states that "feminism today stalks the land" (64) and that Ivory obviously responded to the feminist gun trained at his temple.

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:

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.

Those critics who have seen Olive's and Verena's statements about equality and oppression merely as comic fodder for James are reading their own contempt for the women's movement into the novel. They also miss the fact that James equates Basil's and Olive's political sensibilities: they are both very conservative. When Basil rails at the "damnable feminization" of his age, with its "reign of mediocrity" (327), he sounds amazingly like Olive when she wishes for the age to become more feminized, "to make it feel and speak more sharply" after an epoch of laxity and demoralization (141). The core of The Bostonians is the epic struggle between two strong wills, two opposing sets of beliefs, but the opposition of Basil and Olive can be read as a case of extremes nearly meeting. The defining categories of masculinity and femininity are called into question: each character protests the same moral looseness in society but assigns the blame to the opposite gender.

Ivory provides us with several clues which aid in the simultaneous identification and opposition of Basil and Olive. In casting Vanessa Redgrave and Christopher Reeve, he surely took into account the considerable physical height of each, Redgrave's regal grandeur and Reeve's masculine power. The first scene of the film, showing Basil's and Olive's heads in stark outline against a black background in a carriage, sets the scene for a classic struggle of two large personalities. In casting Madeleine Potter, who appears in this film to be neither particularly beautiful nor brilliant, as Verena Tarrant, Ivory downplays the romantic impetus of the story. This coheres with James's presentation of Verena as somewhat vulgar and insipid. The polemical bent would have been quite different had someone like Helena Bonham-Carter, who has served Merchant Ivory so gorgeously in their E.M. Forster adaptations, been cast as Verena. Vanessa Redgrave's persona is the decisive factor in Ivory's adaptation. Her own revolutionary fervor informs her role as Olive Chancellor, and in allowing the film to climax so dramatically on her quivering and moving public address, the filmmakers ultimately affirm a feminist message, even though they have earlier retained some of James's criticisms of Bostonian feminism.

In addition to the opposition (or intersection) of masculine and feminine, of conservatism and radicalism, in The Bostonians James is concerned with the interplay and/or irreconcilability of a number of other binaries. Primary among these sub-themes is the argument between the personal and the public, particularly as it relates to the appropriate place of women, but more generally referring to the genuinely troubling problem of what role sexuality should play in everyday life. There is also the tension between the North and the South in the aftermath of the Civil War, as well as a consideration of the class issue (Basil is impoverished and bitter; Olive is independently wealthy). Ivory touches on these tensions, but settles on two other sets of binaries which broaden and universalize these debates. The screenplay adds a scene in which Verena's father, a faith healer, instructs a sick woman to chant "I am the child of reason." Here Ivory and Jhabvala emphasize the tension between reason and emotion which underlies Verena's situation. She is a natural, elemental creature who is moulded and manipulated by two camps which each wield, variously, feeling and rationality as weapons.

More importantly, Ivory underlines the related theme of essentialism, or naturalism, versus human construction. This is seen in the careful visual composition of the pivotal New York scenes at the center of the film. While Olive is trapped indoors in an ornate, synthetically floral parlour, Basil woos Verena in a gazebo of natural wood twisted into a tortuous man-made structure. The film cuts between the two settings, emphasizing the various constructions of femininity available for Olive and Verena. Basil tells Verena that she is "made for love, for him." The imagery undercuts the assumed naturalness of Basil's position.

The Bostonians strikes a careful balance between translating James's intentions into terms with which the filmmakers personally agree and allowing some of James's fascinating ambivalence toward his subjects to remain. Christopher Reeve's Basil is charming, manipulative, sexy, villainous; Vanessa Redgrave's Olive is coldly obsessive and tenderly vulnerable, someone who does appear to give Verena more freedom than Basil might, but who nevertheless bought her from her father and closely directs her life.

Regarding the romantic aspect of the plot, it is intriguing that Ismail Merchant has stated that he believes the theme of The Bostonians to be the same as that of Maurice, made three years later-that of homosexual love (Ivory 16). Nonetheless, to Ivory and Jhabvala, The Bostonians is primarily a tale of warring personalities contesting the ownership of a human spirit, and secondarily a tale of feminism and lesbian love. Both films in any case provide a necessary corrective to a canon which has silenced women and homosexuals.

When Olive and Verena embrace, it is as if the women are trying to coin a new language of embrace. They approach each other delicately, almost diagonally. In contrast, Basil and Verena grasp each other conventionally, straight-on. Ivory presents Olive's approach as a necessary revision of the trappings of romantic love, not as a perverse or abnormal version of heterosexual love. The film's addition of Verena singing a verse of Poe's "Annabel Lee" is an interesting accent on James's ambivalent attitude toward the relation between the two women. In hearing Verena sing of the child-like state of "our kingdom by the sea," we wonder if their relation is not somehow half-formed or immature; yet the line "we loved with a love that was more than love" encourages us to see their affection as important and genuine. Finally, the music from Parsifal, which accompanies some of their scenes together, allows for the possibility of seeing them as Grail knights.

Ivory's more explicit conclusion to The Bostonians invites our support for Olive and encourages a tragic reading of Verena's conquest by Basil. James's own dramatic conclusion has been astonishingly ignored or mishandled by several generations of literary critics, and the Merchant/Ivory film is a welcome and intelligent corrective to a traditional misreading of Henry James and provides a long overdue feminist appreciation of The Bostonians.

Sue Sorensen

University of British Columbia

Notes

1 In Lorsch's discussion of Harold Pinter's screenplay for John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman, I take a criticism of James film adaptations to refer, at least partly, to the Merchant Ivory films.

Works Cited

Anderson, Charles. Introduction. The Bostonians. By Henry James. Middlesex: Penguin, 1984. Grenier, Richard. "The Bostonians Inside Out." Commentary (October 1984): 60-65. Ivory, James, and Merchant, Ismail. Interview. American Film (January/February 1987): 13-16. James, Henry. The Bostonians. 1886. Middlesex: Penguin, 1984. "The Art of Fiction." The Critical Muse: Selected Literary Criticism. London: Penguin, 1987.

Kaplan, Fred. Henry James: The Imagination of Genius. New York: William Morrow, 1992. Lane, Anthony. "Gilded Pleasures." The New Yorker (13 September 1993): 121-23. Lorsch, Susan E. "Pinter Fails Fowles." Literature/Film Quarterly 16.3 (1988): 144-54. Sinyard, Neil. Filming Literature: The Art of Screen Adaptation. London: Croom Helm, 1986.

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