Washington Square's "virus of suggestion": Source Texts, Intertexts, and Adaptations

Literature Film Quarterly, 2006 by Newell, Kate

Because the nature of film adaptations implies a clear relationship between a nominal source text and a visualization, most studies focus solely on the correspondences between the image text and the written text to which it explicitly refers and rarely consider the ways in which film adaptations are influenced implicitly by multiple artistic and literary conventions. This sentiment is echoed in film reviews, which also tend to evaluate films solely in terms of the novels they adapt. Even when a novel has been adapted more than once, writers who are aware of this adaptation history still discuss the recent adaptation as if it were in dialogue solely with the nominal source text and not other adaptations and other films. Admittedly, adaptations encourage this approach. An adaptation gains relevance in the cultural market from its association with a particular text and will exploit that alliance which promises the greatest cultural cachet, despite the fact that the adaptation may have less in common with the acknowledged source text than some other text. These practices suggest misleadingly that adaptations are inflected only by their nominal source texts and not by any number of generic and cinematic precursors. Additionally, in privileging unduly the originality of the novel, such methods fail to consider seriously that the novel itself is an adapting text.

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Agnieszka Holland's 1997 Washington Square credits Henry James's novel as its source text and reviewers of the film, although aware of William Wyler's 1949 The Heiress, itself an adaptation of both James's Washington Square and Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1945 play, The Heiress, approach the film primarily as if its only salient precursor were James's novel. Although many reviews mention both films, they do not approach Holland's film as an adaptation of both James's novel and Wyler's film. Adina Hoffman's Jerusalem Post review, for example, suggests that the text works as an adaptation because it is one of James's shorter, comparatively manageable texts and because it already had a working screenplay (for example, The Heiress). It does not, however, indicate that Holland's film draws from this screenplay. Eleanor Ringel's Atlanta Constitution review more explicitly juxtaposes Holland's and Wyler's films, but she too approaches them almost as mutually exclusive works. Despite her feeling that Holland's film is more Jamesian than Wyler's, she considers Holland's film primarily in the context of Wyler's. Ringel explains, for example, "throughout Holland's version, there is less emphasis on Catherine's eventual revenge, which provided the stunning climax of the de Havilland film, and more on her slow but sure ascension into selfhood" (Ringel). Ringel's assessment is remarkable because it implies that James's novel also emphasizes Catherine's revenge, which it does not, rather than her "ascension into selfhood," which it does. Catherine's "revenge" is an invention of the Goetz play that Ringel seems to have read back into James's text.

These reviewers exhibit an awareness of Washington Square's adaptation history, yet none makes the necessary jump to see Holland's film as an adaptation of both James's text and Wyler's movie and, indeed, at times, Goetz's play. Given the benefit of several Washington Square texts. Holland draws freely from each of them, revising some and developing others. Although her debt to Wyler is evident throughout the film, it is particularly visible in her rendition of the engagement party. In both Holland and Wyler Dr. Sloper comments on Catherine's dress before leaving Washington Square and attends the party with Catherine and Lavinia, although in James he joins them "later in the evening" (42).1 Like Wyler, Holland situates the engagement party outside, though James sets it inside the Almonds' home. Additionally, though James makes no mention of Catherine's awkwardness on the dance floor, both Holland and Wyler depict Catherine as an unconfident, clumsy dancer. Holland also draws directly from Wyler when she includes an exchange between Morris and Catherine regarding their dance cards, and Morris's temporary leave of Catherine to go get "refreshments" recalls the moment in Wyler in which first Quintus and then Morris leave Catherine to get claret cup.

Although most aspects of Holland's film find their origins in James and Wyler, certain elements appear to be drawn specifically from Goetz's play rather than Wyler's film or James's novel. For example, Holland includes a scene, not in James, of Marian's wedding reception. Over the course of the scene, Catherine finds the wedding band in the cake. This discovery connects Holland's text to Goetz's in a very subtle way. In the Goetz play, the Almonds come to Washington Square for dinner. During this scene, Marian informs Morris that Catherine is to be her maid of honor. Lavina adds, "Perhaps Catherine will catch the bride's bouquet," to which Mrs. Almond responds, "Of course she will. Marian will aim it at Catherine. They can practice with a bean bag" (Goetz 23). Holland's film appears to have drawn its inspiration for the ring in the cake from this scene. Both instances signify Catherine's potential marriageability more overtly than analogue scenes in James.

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Washington Square's "virus of suggestion": Source Texts, Intertexts, and Adaptations

Literature Film Quarterly, 2006 by Newell, Kate

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