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

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.

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.

Holland also seems to draw explicitly from the Goetz text at the conclusion of the scene in which Morris tells Catherine his plans for their elopement. The stage direction indicates, "Her arms reach out to him after he has left, then she recovers herself. She goes to the mirror over the mantel and is pleased and even a little vain at what she sees" (132). Holland echoes this gesture twice: once during the scene in which Catherine, having just run into Morris on the street, returns to the house and, coming inside, checks her complexion in the mirror in the foyer, and again, more explicitly, during the scene in which Catherine thinks she hears Morris call her from the street, runs to the window, and finds he is not there. She then turns passionately toward the mirror, throws herself against it, and kisses her reflection.

Given the many similarities among Holland's, Wyler's, and Goetz's texts, it seems strange that Holland would name only James as a source for her film. One explanation might be that, of her many sources, James's would be the most familiar to the general public and, as such, the most likely to draw a large audience; and in yoking her text explicitly to James's, Holland is able to draw from the cultural cachet of the Henry James Adaptation. But, in naming James, Holland's text becomes subject to a very specific mode of evaluation. That is, it may be evaluated as a Holland film, a period piece, or a romantic drama, but it is evaluated primarily according to how well it compares or contrasts to other James adaptations. Not only were The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of a Dove released in a proximity that makes comparisons convenient, these comparisons are regarded as "natural" in the literary sphere to which these film adaptations become tangentially associated. For example, according to Brian Lee, "Washington Square is often taken to represent the final essay of James's apprenticeship; the last sketch, as it were, in preparation for his first full-scale masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady" (7).2 While it is perhaps "natural" to consider authors' later works in the context of their earlier works, this is not what is going on in the film reviews. Instead of considering Holland's film in the context of other Holland films, they consider it in the context of other James adaptations. In this way the reviews vainly attempt to apply a literary interpretive model onto film adaptations and, in doing so, further expose the assumption that the novel is the superior medium.

Two recent essays on adaptations of Washington Square, Julie H. Rivkin's "Prospects of Entertainment" and Karen Michele Chandler's "Her Ancient Faculty of Silence," acknowledge the adaptation history of James's text but, because they are invested in asserting the individuality of these adaptations, neglect to examine the complex intertextual relationship among James, Goetz, Wyler, and Holland. Both do, however, point toward some different codes operating within the films, such as the code of the director's other works and the code of the star, as well as various literary and generic codes. Chandler, for example, observes thematic parallels between The Heiress and The Little Foxes and between Holland's Washington Square and Europa, Europa and Total Eclipse (171-72). In examining the codes that inflect these adaptations Chandler and Rivkin begin to break down source/adaptation dualism and challenge the accompanying assumption that adaptations only adapt their nominal source text. Neither essay, however, presses this line of inquiry further to consider that James's text might also have multiple sources. Just as it seems naive to approach film adaptations as single-sourced, it would be equally short-sighted to approach novels in this way, for, as Robert Stam has observed, "both novel and film have consistently cannibalized other genres and media" (61).

In a discussion of Henry James's artistic development. Lee argues that "the marks of Jane Austen and George Eliot can be traced in individual novels certainly, but a more pervasive influence was that of Balzac and his successors: Flaubert, Daudet, Zola, Turgenev and Maupassant" (9). Obviously writers write within or against a larger tradition and traces of that tradition are commonly found in writers' writing. Comparative studies often establish direct links between one text and another; rarely, however, is this relationship labeled adaptation, regardless of the degree of correspondences between the two texts. Rather, if the writers in question are considered "major," or if the texts being compared fall into the category of "classic literature," the relationship between them will be labeled "intertextual" or "influential." If one of the writers is less major than the other, the relationship between the two will generally be taken to be less intertextual than imitative. There are, of course, definite differences among the categories of intertextuality, influence, imitation, and adaptation. In some cases, however, the nature of the activity appears to be defined by the purposes of the institution responsible for the defining. Whereas novelists are often negatively labeled imitators if they draw too heavily from another novelist or work, film adaptations are criticized for being too original. Hoffman's Washington Square review laments that "screen versions of the great novelist's work," such as Campion's Portrait of a Lady, "often fly straight in the face of-and indeed, presume to improve on-what he actually wrote." By contrast, Cornelia Pulsifer Kelley, in a discussion of Balzac's influence on James, defends James: "James is not just an imitator, for he adapts and even improves upon the materials and treatment of his predecessor" (280). Whereas James, as a novelist, is praised for his dexterity in reworking, renegotiating, and adapting the work of his predecessor. Campion, as filmmaker, is criticized for her presumption and unwillingness to remain "just an imitator." The principal difference between these two situations is that one purports to be, and is consumed as, an original work, while the other purports to be, and is consumed as, an adaptation of an original work. The two situations are similar in that both profess to be original works according to the codes by which they define themselves, but both are influenced also by texts they neglect to mention.

Although critics generally acknowledge that James developed Washington Square from Fanny Kemble's account of her brother's engagement, the theoretical possibilities in this method of conveying information and inspiration have not been fully explored, despite the fact that James seems often to have been inspired in this way. According to F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, "[James's] ideas often came to him [... ] through a chance anecdote communicated by the lady to whom he sat next at some dinner." As Matthiessen and Murdock see it, this method "would hardly seem a promising source for anything but the most superficial society fiction" (xii), but the combination of chatty female dinner companions and James's genius transformed dinnertime gossip into canonical fiction. Their assessment raises crucial questions concerning what sorts of information and what sources of information are institutionally valuable.

Instead of becoming valued oral source texts against which James's written adaptation is then evaluated, the stories these women tell acquire significance, or become valuable, only through the activity of telling them to James and his decision to adapt them into a Jamesian narrative frame. This peculiar appointment of value challenges the conventional paradigm associated with textual influence or adaptation. These oral stories become sources only after the adaptation has succeeded. Because they are consulted only after the fact, they are not really considered sources at all. Or, rather, they are considered throwaway sources with or without which James's text would still exist. James, of course, accepts this situation as natural and believes that, in appropriating this information, he makes it his own and severs ties with his source.

In the Preface to "The Spoils of Poynton" James discusses moments of inspiration:

[...] the germ, wherever gathered, has ever been for me the germ of a "story," and most of the stones straining to shape under my hand have sprung from a small seed [...] dropped unwittingly by my neighbour, a mere floating particle in the stream of talk. [...] at touch of which the novelist's imagination winces as at the prick of some sharp point [...]. This fineness it is that communicates the virus of suggestion, anything more than the minimum of which spoils the operation. (James, Art of the Novel 119)

According to James's reasoning, it is perfectly acceptable for writers to receive ideas and later mold them into narratives, but it is not acceptable to develop stories from stories or to write stories based on something someone has said might "make a good story," as in both instances "one is sure to be given too much" suggestion (119). James, however, appears to violate his condition on several occasions. His notebook contains detailed transcriptions of Kemble's story, later translated into Washington Square, and two narratives by George du Maurier-one that James later adapts into "The Real Thing" and one that du Maurier takes back to adapt into Trilby as James's "want of musical knowledge would hinder [him] somewhat in handling it" himself (Matthiessen 97). Importantly, it is a "want of musical knowledge," not the fact that du Maurier gave James the idea "designedly," that keeps James from adapting du Maurier's story. James's distinction between the stray suggestion and too much suggestion, therefore, seems idiosyncratically situation-specific.

James's 21 February 1879 notebook entry outlines the story of Kemble's brother's engagement:

H. K. was a young ensign in a marching regiment, very handsome ("beautiful") said Mrs. K., but very luxurious and selfish, and without a penny to his name. Miss T. was a dull, plain, common-place girl, only daughter of the Master of King's Coll., Cambridge, who had a handsome private fortune [...]. She was very much in love with H. K., and was of that slow, sober, dutiful nature that an impression once made upon her, was made for ever. Her father disapproved strongly (and justly) of the engagement and informed her that if she married young K. he would not leave her a penny of his money. [...] Miss T. reflected a while; and [...] determined to disobey her father [...]. Meanwhile H. K., however, had come to the conclusion that [...] if they should marry, he would never see the money [...]. He went off, shook himself free [...]. She was deeply wounded [...]. Some few years elapsed-her father died and she came into his fortune. [...] she always cared in secret for Henry K.-but she was determined to remain unmarried. K. lived about the world in different military stations, and at last, at the end of 10 years (or more), came back [...]. One of his other sisters (Mrs. S.) then attempted to bring on the engagement again [...] K. again, on his own responsibility, paid his addresses to Miss. T. She refused him. (Matthiessen 12)

Washington Square's primary incidents, characters, and relationships are all present in James's account of Kemble's story. Matthiessen and Murdock, in an editorial note on the Notebooks, comment on this similarity, but insist that "James took the theme and fitted it to an entirely different background and milieu out of his own experience" ( 13-14). This in-text disclaimer echoes another in the introduction: although "the plot of Washington Square was suggested by Mrs. Kemble's story about her brother's engagement [...] as James transferred the setting from England to New York, his Catherine Sloper took on a dignity of her own" (xv).

The argument that James makes Kemble's story his own by transplanting it from England to America is not substantial enough to dismiss its being an adaptation. Transplanting a story not only from oral to written culture but also from one cultural-geographical circumstance to another would, of course, alter the story's tenor. Many adaptations transport the nominal text out of its initial social, historical, or cultural context into another, but this movement does not result in the adaptation's movement from adaptation to source text. Baz Luhrmann's Romeo+Juliet, for example, transposes Shakespeare's play from Renaissance England to twentieth-century America. This movement certainly gives Romeo and Juliet "a dignity of [their] own" and may influence future adaptations, but in no way replaces Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as the source text for future adaptations.

Balzac's Eugénie Grandet also may have been a source for Washington Square and critics approach this textual relationship with a similar apprehensiveness. Lee considers the relationship, but, like Matthiessen and Murdock, wavers about whether he wants to claim explicitly that James drew from any outside source in writing Washington Square. Lee claims, "James may or may not have consciously borrowed his theme from Eugénie Grandet, but that is hardly significant" (10). He then uses Eugénie Grandet as a barometer for much of his discussion of Washington Square, pointing to the ways in which specific literary and compositional devices used in Eugénie Grandet play out in James's text. At one point he refers to James's "functional" dialogue as "the second specific lesson [James] took from novels such as Eugénie Grandet" ( 11 ). In this way he deliberately unites Eugénie Grandet and Washington Square, while simultaneously appearing to use Eugénie Grandet simply as an example. He does not, however, ever directly state that Eugénie Grandet is a source for Washington Square or that Washington Square is an adaptation of Eugénie Grandet. Given the many narrative differences between Eugénie Grandet and Washington Square it would be difficult to argue that James's tale is an adaptation rather than that it is simply influenced by, inspired by, or loosely based on Balzac's novel. These categories are slippery, however, and, like James's "germ," poorly attempt to categorize a relationship that resists easy categorizations. If, indeed, James consciously "borrowed his theme from Eugénie Grandet" and Fanny Kemble's anecdote, what did he gain by mentioning only one of the sources in his notebooks? One answer to this question might be found in comparing James's entry for Kemble's story and his entry for du Maurier's.

In a 22 February 1891 notebook entry, James writes, "I began yesterday the little story that was suggested to me some time ago by an incident related to me by George du Maurier" (Matthiessen 102). Unlike James's entry for Fanny Kemble, which basically transcribes Kemble's story, the du Maurier entry lays bare the process by which he appropriates and adapts du Maurier's anecdote into "The Real Thing" by adding what he refers to as "contrast and complication." James writes, "I thought of representing the husband as jealous of the wife [...]. But this is vulgar and obviousworth nothing. What I wish to represent is the baffled, ineffectual, incompetent character of their attempt, and how it illustrated once again the everlasting line of amateurishness [...]. It is out of that element that my little action and movement must come; and now I begin to see just how" (102-03). The difference between James's account of Kemble's anecdote and his account of du Maurier's initiates useful questions about the process of adaptation and the institutional codes involved. The differences suggest, for example, that James is, for whatever reason, invested in demonstrating his personalization of du Maurier's anecdote more so than Kemble's. Perhaps the du Maurier idea needed more working through. Or, returning to Matthiessen and Murdock's implications, perhaps women's oral culture is easier to appropriate or contains less of an internal authority that requires more visible acknowledgement in appropriation.

If, indeed, du Maurier's anecdote provided the skeleton for "The Real Thing" and James's attention to "contrast and complication" transformed this "germ" into a story, what of Washington Square] Cornelia Pulsifer Kelley, in The Early Development of Henry James, states that in writing Washington Square, "James did not proceed without guidance" (280). She observes that "when Washington Square and Eugénie Grandet are placed side by side [...] it is evident that [James] had Balzac's novel before him as a model" (281-82). In addition to similarities in plot, character, and dialogue, many of Washington Square's structural cornerstones correspond to Eugénie Grandet's. For example, both texts situate the narrative geographically and in terms of a dominant paternal figure. Balzac's story opens with a lengthy description of the town and Monsieur Grandet, a vine merchant, who, like Dr. Sloper, married a woman whose ample dowry enabled him to establish himself in business. Additionally, both households are immediately disrupted by the presence of a handsome outsider. Charles Grandet's entrance, like that of Morris Townsend, affects everyone in Monsieur Grandet's home. Like Lavinia, whose kindnesses and transgressions are motivated by pity for Morris Townsend, Madame Grandet, Eugénie, and Nanon do special things for Charles because they pity his orphaned, penniless state. Dr. Sloper, like Monsieur Grandet, reacts harshly to Catherine's declaration of love (although his violence is primarily psychological rather than physical and psychological, as Monsieur Grandet's). Finally, both narratives conclude with the daughter's inheritance following the father's death (although this is substantially less for Catherine than for Eugénie) and the return of the lover.

The narratives are also similar in their descriptions of Catherine and Eugénie. Both women are described as robust, sturdy, plain and commonplace. Eugénie, for example, is "tall and sturdy, had nothing of the prettiness which appeals to the masses," and her "features [...] resembled the vague contours of a gentle and distant horizon glimpsed across tranquil lakes" (Balzac 351 ). Catherine, similarly, "was not ugly; she had simply a plain, dull, gentle countenance" (James 34). Despite these similarities, as Kelley sees it, "James's heroine is not a copy; she is the American counterpart" (280-81 ). In attempting to pinpoint James's exact debt to Balzac, Kelley seems to straddle categories of imitation, adaptation, and improvement. What does asserting that Catherine is Eugénie's American counterpart rather than her copy actually do to the relationship between the two texts? Could she be both a counterpart and a copy? Film adaptation theory seems to operate along the assumption that copying (faithful adaptation) and counterparting (less faithful-unfaithful adaptation) are both forms of adaptation. Agnieszka Holland's Catherine would be, for example, a copy of James's Catherine, whereas Amy Heckerling's Cher would be a counterpart of Jane Austen's Emma. Both examples, however, still fall under the category of adaptation.

Arguing that James's Washington Square is an adaptation of Balzac's Eugénie Grandet may falsely represent the relationship between the two texts. Still, the reasons put forth to explain why it is not an adaptation-James transplanted the context from France to America, he centralized the focus-fail to do so. Given the many adaptations that differ in these ways and more from their nominal source texts and still call themselves adaptations, instead of asking whether Washington Square is an adaptation of Eugénie Grandet, it might prove more constructive to ask why it is not. Cultural institutions seem invested in lauding some texts as original and, by association, superior, and others as imitations, adaptations, or copies, and, by association, inferior. What, however, does the institution gain by naming a source "original," and thus structuring its reception and readership as response to an "original?"

The tendency to cling to literary models suggests a fear that, in challenging the priority of the written source, film adaptations challenge the authority of literature as an institution. J. Hillis Miller, commenting on the ability of the image to overpower the word in the illustrated novel, relates Mallarmé's fear that films would eventually usurp novels as vehicles of narrative: "Cinema, in its unrolling along a temporal axis of narration, will to advantage replace both the texts and illustrations of many a volume." For Miller, Mallarmé's fear "is a prophecy, accurate enough, of the power cinema has enjoyed in displacing the illustrated book" (68). One way to prevent film from displacing non-illustrated books as well would be to root the theory that considers relationships between books and films in a literary tradition that reinforces the superiority of the written text.

If nothing else, the James-Balzac example reminds us that even the most "original" artists draw inspiration from other artists and works. This activity is not always best described as adaptation, but is largely adaptive in that it involves one text negotiating and assimilating other texts into a purportedly seamless whole. Importantly, each of these assimilated pieces is, in itself, a source text and each carries with it its own set of interpretive codes that can be processed either as part of the new, nominal source text, or, if readers pick up on the initial context of this source, as part of an old, now detached system that, in its new context, comments upon, emphasizes, enhances, and/or challenges its new textual position.

In examining the relationships between source texts and between various adaptations of a single text categories such as original/adaptation and source/imitation can be reconsidered and reworked. Taking into account a text's multiple sources and influences deconstructs the concept of mastertext and, by shifting boundaries of inclusion to accommodate increasing numbers of potential sources, undermines the relevance of canonical categories and encourages the development of broader interpretive models.

Notes

1 Unless otherwise indicated, the pagination for this essay's textual references corresponds to the 1984 Penguin edition.

2 J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks approach James's works in a similar way: "A reader who is engaged with the drama of James's developing vision of the burdens of the American character as 'heir of all the ages'-a reader who has sampled the urgent beginnings of that theme in Daisy Miller and its rounder amplification in Isabel Archer-will have savored only half the meal should he or she fail to take in its ultimate complication in Milly Theale" (Crowley and Hocks vii-ix).

Works Cited

Balzac, Honoré. Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet. Trans. E. K. Brown, Dorothea Walter, and John Watkins. New York: Modern Library, 1950. 291-496.

Chandler, Karen Michele. "'Her Ancient Faculty of Silence': Catherine Sloper's Ways of Being in James's Washington Square and Two Film Adaptations." Henry James Goes to the Movies. Ed. Susan M. Griffin. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 2002, 170-90.

Crowley, J. Donald, and Richard A. Hocks. Preface. The Wings of the Dove. By Henry James. Ed. J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks. New York: Norton, 2002. vii-ix.

Goetz, Augustus, and Ruth Augustus. The Heiress. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1948.

The Heiress. Dir. William Wyler. Writ. Ruth Goetz and Augustus Goetz. Perf. Olivia de Havilland, Ralph Richardson, Montgomery Clift, and Miriam Hopkins. Paramount, 1949.

Hoffman, Adina. "Plain Girl Becomes Woman of Substance." Rev. of Agnieszka Holland's Washington Square. The Jerusalem Past 16 Nov. 1998: 7. Lexis-Nexis. U of Delaware Library Networked Databases. Online. 19 Apr. 2003. 9 paragraphs.

James, Henry. The Art of the Novel. Boston: Northeastern UP, 1984.

____. Washington Square. New York: Penguin, 1984.

Kelley, Cornelia Pulsifer. The Early Development of Henry James. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1965.

Lee, Brian. Introduction. Washington Square. By Henry James. New York: Penguin, 1984. 7-23.

Matthiessen, F. O., and Kenneth B. Murdock. The Notebooks of Henry James. New York: Oxford UP, 1961.

Miller, J. Hillis. Illustration. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1992.

Ringel, Eleanor. "Washington Square." Rev. of Agnieszka Holland's Washington Square. The Atlanta Constitution. 17 Oct. 1997: 9P. Lexis-Nexis. U of Delaware Library Networked Databases. Online. 19 Apr. 2003. 10 paragraphs.

Rivkin, Julie H. '"Prospects of Entertainment': Film Adaptations of Washington Square." Henry James Goes to the Movies. Ed. Susan M. Griffin. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 2002. 147-69.

Stam, Robert. "Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation." Film Adaptation. Ed. James Naremore. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2000. 54-76.

Washington Square. Dir. Agnieszka Holland. Writ. Carol Doyle. Perf. Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ben Chaplin, Albert Finney, and Maggie Smith. Hollywood Pictures/Caravan Pictures, 1997.

Kate Newell

University of Delaware

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