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"Something Else Besides a Mother":
Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama
by Linda Williams
Oh, God!I'll never forget that last scene, when her daughteris being married
inside the big house with the high iron fence aroundit and she's standingout
there-I can't even rememberwho it was, I saw it when I was still a girl, and
I may not even be rememberingit right. But I am rememberingit-it made
a tremendousimpressionon me-anyway, maybe it was BarbaraStanwyck.
She's standingthere and it's cold and rainingand she's wearinga thin little
coat and shivering, and the rain is coming down on her poor head and
streamingdown her face with the tears, and she stands there watching the
lights and hearing the music and then she just drifts away. How they got us
to consentto our owneradication!I didn'tjust feel pity for her; I felt that shock
of recognition-you know, when you see what you sense is your own destiny
up there on the screen or on the stage. You might say I've spent my whole
life trying to arrange a differentdestiny!'
These wordsof warning,horror,and fascinationare spoken by Val, a
character who is a mother herself, in Marilyn French's 1977 novel The
Women's Room. They are especially interesting for their insight into the
response of a woman viewer to the image of her "eradication." The scene
in question is from the end of Stella Dallas, King Vidor's 1937 remake of
the 1925 film by Henry King. The scene depicts the resolution of the film:
that moment when the good hearted, ambitious, working class floozy, Stella,
sacrifices her only connection to her daughter in order to propel her into an
upper-class world of surrogate family unity. Such are the mixed messages--of
joy in pain, of pleasure in sacrifice-that typically resolve the melodramatic
conflicts of "the woman's film."
It is not surprising, then, that Marilyn French's mother character, in
attempting to resist such a sacrificial model of motherhood, should have so
selective a memory of the conflict of emotions that conclude the film. Val only
remembers the tears, the cold, the mother's pathetic alienation from her
daughter's triumph inside the "big house with the high iron fence," the abject
loneliness of the woman who cannot belong to that place and so "just drifts
away." Val's own history, her own choices, have caused her to forget the
perverse triumph of the scene: Stella's lingering for a last look even when a
LindaWilliamsis associate professorof Englishat the University of Illinoisat Chicago and
the co-editor of Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism(American Film Institute
Series,1983).
Monograph
2
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
policemanurges her to move on; her joy as the bride and groom kiss; the
swellingmusicas Stelladoes not simply"driftaway"but marchestriumphantly towardthe camera and into a close-up that reveals a fiercely proud and
happy mother clenching a handkerchiefbetween her teeth.
It is as if the task of the narrativehas been to find a "happy"ending
that willexalt an abstractideal of motherhoodeven whilestrippingthe actual
motherof the humanconnectionon whichthat ideal is based. Hereinlies the
"shock of recognition"of which French's mother-spectatorspeaks.
The device of devaluingand debasingthe actual figure of the mother
while sanctifying the institutionof motherhoodis typical of "the woman's
film" in generaland the sub-genreof the maternalmelodramain particular.2
In these filmsit is quite remarkablehow frequentlythe self-sacrificingmother
must make her sacrifice that of the connectionto her children-either for
her or their own good.
With respect to the mother-daughteraspect of this relation,Simonede
Beauvoirnotedlong ago that becauseof the patriarchaldevaluationof women
in general, a mother frequentlyattemptsto use her daughterto compensate
for her own supposedinferiorityby making "a superiorcreatureout of one
whom she regards as her double."3Clearly, the unparalleledcloseness and
similarityof mother to daughtersets up a situationof significantmirroring
that is most apparent in these films. One effect of this mirroringis that
althoughthe mothergains a kind of vicarioussuperiorityby associationwith
a superiordaughter,she inevitablybegins to feel inadequateto so superior
a being and thus, in the end, to feel inferior.Embroiledin a relationshipthat
is so close, mother and daughter nevertheless seem destined to lose one
another throughthis very closeness.
Much recent writingon women'sliteratureand psychologyhas focused
on the problematicof the mother-daughterrelationshipas a paradigmof a
woman's ambivalentrelationshipto herself.4In Of WomanBorn Adrienne
Rich writes,"The loss of the daughterto the mother,motherto the daughter,
is the essentialfemale tragedy. We acknowledgeLear(father-daughtersplit),
Hamlet(son andmother),and Oedipus(son and mother)as greatembodiments
of the human tragedy, but there is no presently enduring recognitionof
mother-daughterpassion and rapture." No tragic, high culture equivalent
perhaps.But Rich is not entirely correct when she goes on to say that "this
cathexes betweenmotherand daughter-essential, distorted,misused-is the
great unwrittenstory."5
If this tragic story remainsunwritten,it is because tragedyhas always
been assumed to be universal;speaking for and to a supposedlyuniversal
"mankind,"it has not been able to speak for and to womankind.But melodrama is a formthat does not pretendto speak universally.It is clearlyaddressed
to a particularbourgeoisclass and often-in works as diverse as Pamela,
Uncle Tom's Cabin, or the "woman's film"-to the particulargender of
woman.
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
3
In TheMelodramaticImagination Peter Brooksarguesthat late eighteenth and nineteenth century melodramaarose to fill the vacuum of a
worldwheretraditionalimperativesof truthand ethics had
post-revolutionary
been violentlyquestionedand yet in whichthere was still a need for truthand
ethics. The aestheticand culturalform of melodramathus attemptsto assert
the ethical imperativesof a class that has lost the transcendentmyth of a
divinelyordainedhierarchicalcommunityof commongoals and values.6
Becausethe universehad lost its basic religiousand moralorderand its
tragicallydividedbut powerfulrulerprotagonists,the aestheticform of melodramatook on the burdenof rewardingthe virtue and punishingthe vice of
undividedand comparativelypowerlesscharacters.The melodramaticmode
thus took on an intense quality of wish-fulfillment,acting out the narrative
resolutionof conflictsderivedfromthe economic,social, and politicalspheres
in the private,emotionallyprimalsphereof home and family.MarthaVicinus
notes, for example, that in much nineteenth century stage melodramathe
home is the scene of this "reconciliationof the irreconcilable."7
The domestic
where
women
and
children
as
sphere
predominate protagonistswhose only
from
derives
virtuous
sufferingthus emerges as an importantsource
power
of specificallyfemale wish-fulfillment.But if women audiencesand readers
have long identifiedwith the virtuoussufferersof melodrama,the liberatory
or oppressivemeaningof such identificationhas not always been clear.
Muchrecentfeministfilmcriticismhas dividedfilmicnarrativeinto male
and female forms: "male" linear, action-packednarrativesthat encourage
identificationwith predominantlymale characterswho "master"their environment;and "female"less linear narrativesencouragingidentificationwith
passive, suffering heroines.8No doubt part of the enormouspopularityof
Mildred Pierce amongfeministfilm critics lies with the fact that it illustrates
the failureof the female subject(the film's misguided,long-sufferingmotherhero who is overly infatuatedwith her daughter)to articulateher own point
of view, even when her own voice-over introducessubjective flashbacks.9
Mildred Pierce has been an importantfilm for feministsprecisely because
its "male" film noir style offers such a blatant subversionof the mother's
attempt to tell the story of her relationshipto her daughter.
The failure of Mildred Pierce to offer either its female subject or its
female viewer her own understandingof the film's narrativehas made it a
fascinating example of the way films can construct patriarchalsubjectpositionsthat subverttheir ostensiblesubjectmatter.Moreto the pointof the
mother-daughterrelation, however, is a film like Stella Dallas, which has
recentlybegunto receive attentionas a centralworkin the growingcriticism
of melodramain general and maternalmelodramain particular.10Certainly
the popularityof the originalnovel, of the 1925 (HenryKing)and 1937 (King
Vidor)film versions, and finally of the later long-runningradio soap opera,
love storyacrossthree
suggeststhe specialenduranceof this mother-daughter
4
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
decades of female audiences. But it is in its film versions in particular,
especiallythe King VidorversionstarringBarbaraStanwyck,that we encounter an interestingtest case for many recent theoriesof the cinematicpresentation of female subjectivityand the female spectator.
Since so much of what has come to be called the classical narrative
cinemaconcernsmale subjectswhosevisiondefinesand circumscribesfemale
objects, the mere existence in Stella Dallas of a female "look" as a central
feature of the narrativeis worthy of special scrutiny. Just what is different
about the visual economy of such a film? What happenswhen a motherand
daughter, who are so closely identifiedthat the usual distinctionsbetween
subject and object do not apply, take one another as their primaryobjects
of desire? What happens,in other words,when the look of desire articulates
a ratherdifferentvisualeconomy of mother-daughterpossessionand dispossession? What happens,finally, when the significantviewer of such a drama
is also a woman? To fully answer these questionswe must make a detour
throughsome recent psychoanalyticthoughton femalesubjectformationand
its relation to feminist film theory. We will then be in a better positionto
knot of this particularfilm. So for the time being
unravelthe mother-daughter
we will abandonStella Dallas to her forlornplace in the rain, gazingat her
daughterthroughthe big picturewindow-the enigmaof the female look at,
and in, the movies.
Feminist Film Theory and Theories of Motherhood. Much recent
feminist film theory and criticismhas been devoted to the descriptionand
analysisof Oedipalscenariosin which, as LauraMulveyhas written,woman
is a passiveimage and man the active bearerof the look." The majorimpetus
of these formsof feministcriticismhas been less concernedwiththe existence
of female stereotypesthan with their ideological,psychological,and textual
meansof production.To ClaireJohnston,the very fact of the iconic representationof the cinematicimageguaranteesthat womenwillbe reducedto objects
of an erotic male gaze. Johnstonconcludesthat "womanas woman"cannot
be represented at all within the dominant representationaleconomy.12A
primaryreasonfor this conclusionis the hypothesisthat the visualencounter
with the female body producesin the male spectatora constantneed to be
reassuredof his own bodilyunity.
It is as if the male image producerand consumercan never get past
the disturbingfact of sexual difference and so constantly produces and
consumes images of women designed to reassure himself of his threatened
unity. In this and other ways, feministfilm theory has appropriatedsome key
concepts from Lacanianpsychoanalysisin order to explain why subjectivity
always seems to be the provinceof the male.
Accordingto Lacan, throughthe recognitionof the sexual differenceof
a female "other" who lacks the phallus that is the symbol of patriarchal
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
5
privilege,the childgains entry into the symbolicorderof humanculture.This
culture then producesnarrativeswhich repress the figure of lack that the
mother-former figure of plenitude-has become. Given this situation,the
question for woman becomes, as ChristineGledhillputs it: "Can women
speak, and can images of women speak for women?"'3Laura Mulvey's
answer,and the answerof muchfeministcriticism,wouldseem to be negative:
Woman's desire is subjectedto her image as bearer of the bleedingwound,
she can exist only in relationto castrationand cannot transcendit. She turns
her child into the signifierof her own desire to possess a penis (the condition,
she imagines,of entry into the symbolic).Eithershe must gracefullygive way
to the word,the Name of the Fatherand the Law, or else struggleto keep her
child downwith her in the half-lightof the imaginary.Woman then stands in
patriarchalculture as signifierfor the male other, boundby a symbolicorder
in which man can live out his phantasies and obsessions through linguistic
commandby imposingthem on the silentimage of womanstilltied to her place
as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning.14
This descriptionof the "visualpleasureof narrativecinema"delineates
two avenuesof escape whichfunctionto relieve the male viewerof the threat
of the woman's image. Mulvey's now-familiar sketch of these two primary
forms of masteryby whichthe male unconsciousovercomesthe threat of an
encounterwith the female body is alignedwith two perversepleasuresassoci-
ated with the male-the sadistic mastery of voyeurism and the more benign
disavowal of fetishism. Both are ways of not-seeing, of either keeping a safe
distance from, or misrecognizing what there is to see of, the woman's difference.
The purpose of Mulvey's analysis is to get "nearer to the roots" of
women's oppression in order to break with those codes that cannot produce
female subjectivity. Her ultimate goal is thus an avant-garde filmmaking
practice that will break with the voyeurism and fetishism of the narrative
cinema so as to "free the look of the camera into its materiality in space and
time," and the "look of the audience into dialectics, passionate detachment."'5 To Mulvey, only the radical destruction of the major forms of
narrative pleasure so bound up in looking at women as objects can offer hope
for a cinema that will be able to represent not woman as difference but the
differences of women.
It has often been remarked that what is missing from Mulvey's influential analysis of visual pleasure in cinematic narrative is any discussion of the
position of the female viewing subject. Although many feminist works of film
criticism have pointed to this absence, very few have ventured to fill it.16 It
is an understandably easier task to reject "dominant" or "institutional" modes
of representation altogether than to discover within these existing modes
glimpses of a more "authentic" (the term itself is indeed problematic) female
subjectivity. And yet I believe that this latter is a more fruitful avenue of
6
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
approach,not only as a meansof identifyingwhatpleasurethere is for women
spectators within the classical narrative cinema, but also as a means of
developingnew representationalstrategiesthat willmorefullyspeakto women
audiences. For such speech must begin in a languagethat, howevercircumscribed within patriarchalideology, will be recognized and understoodby
women. In this way, new feministfilms can learn to buildupon the pleasures
of recognitionthat exist withinfilmic modes alreadyfamiliarto women.
Instead of destroyingthe cinematic codes that have placed women as
objects of spectacle at their center, what is needed, and has already begun
to occur, is a theoreticaland practicalrecognitionof the ways in whichwomen
actually do speak to one another within patriarchy.ChristineGledhill,for
example,makesa convincingcase againstthe tendencyof much semioticand
psyochoanalyticfeministfilm criticismto blame realist representationfor an
ideologicalcomplicitywith the suppressionof semiotic difference.Such reasoning tends to believe that the simple rejection of the forms of realist
representationwillperformthe revolutionaryact of makingthe vieweraware
of how imagesare produced.Gledhillarguesthat this awarenessis not enough:
the social constructionof reality and of women cannot be defined in terms
of signifyingpractice alone. "If a radicalideologysuch as feminismis to be
defined as a means of providinga frameworkfor politicalaction, one must
finally put one's finger on the scales, enter some kind of realist epistemology."17
But what kind?Any attemptto constructheroinesas strongand powerful leaves us vulnerable,as Gledhillnotes, to the chargeof male identification:
Howeverwe try to cast our potentialfeminineidentifications,
all available
are
constructed
from
the
of
the
otherso as
positions already
place
patriarchal
to repressour'real'difference.Thusthe unspokenremainsunknown,andthe
reality.'8
speakablereproduceswhatwe know,patriarchal
One way out of the dilemmais "the location of those spaces in which
women, out of their socially constructeddifferencesas women, can and do
resist."19These includediscoursesproducedprimarilyfor and (often, but not
always)by womenand which addressthe contradictionsthat womenencounter underpatriarchy:women'sadvice columns,magazinefiction,soap operas,
and melodramatic"women'sfilms."All are places wherewomenspeak to one
anotherin languagesthat growout of their specific social roles-as mothers,
housekeepers,caretakersof all sorts.20
Gledhill'sassertionthat discoursesaboutthe social, economic,and emotional concerns of women are consumedby predominantlyfemale audiences
couldbe complementedby the furtherassertionthat some of these discourses
are also differentlyinscribedto necessitate a very different,female reading.
This is whatI hope to showwithrespectto Stella Dallas. My argument,then,
is not only that some maternalmelodramashave historicallyaddressedfemale audiences about issues of primaryconcern to women, but that these
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
7
melodramasalso have readingpositionsstructuredinto their texts that demanda femalereadingcompetence.This competencederivesfromthe different way womentake on their identitiesunderpatriarchyand is a directresult
of the social fact of female mothering.It is thus with a view to applyingthe
significanceof the socialconstructionof femaleidentityto the femalepositions
constructedby the maternalmelodramathat I offer the followingcursory
summaryof recent feministtheories of female identity and motherhood.
While Freudwas forced,at least in his laterwriting,to abandona theory
of parallel male and female developmentand to acknowledgethe greater
importanceof the girl'spre-Oedipalconnectionto her mother,he could only
view such a situationas a deviationfrom the path of "normal"(e.g., male
The resultwas a theory that left
heterosexual)separationand individuation.21
women in an apparentstate of regressiveconnectionto their mothers.
What Freud viewed as a regrettablelack in a girl's self development,
feministtheoristsnow view with less disparagement.Howeverelse they may
differ over the consequencesof female mothering,most agree that it allows
women not only to remain in conection with their first love objects but to
extend the modelof this connectednessto all other relationswith the world.22
In The Reproduction of Mothering the AmericansociologistNancy
Chodorowattemptsto accountfor the fact that "women,as mothers,produce
daughterswith motheringcapacitiesand the desire to mother."23She shows
that neitherbiologynor intentionalrole trainingcan explainthe social organizationof genderroles that consignwomento the privatesphere of home and
family,and men to the publicspherethat has permittedthem dominance.The
desireand abilityto motheris produced,along with masculinityand femininity, withina divisionof labor that has already placed women in the position
of primary caretakers. Superimposedon this division of labor are the two
that Freudacknowledged:that girls enter the trian"oedipalasymmetries"24
relation
later
than boys; that girls have a greater continuityof
gular Oedipal
to the mother.
connection
pre-Oedipalsymbiotic
In other words,girlsnever entirelybreakwith their originalrelationship
to theirmothers,becausetheirsexualidentitiesas womendo not dependupon
such a break.Boys, however,mustbreakwiththeirprimaryidentificationwith
theirmothersin orderto becomemale identified.This means that boys define
themselvesas malesnegatively,by differentiationfromtheirprimarycaretaker who (in a culture that has traditionallyvalued women as mothers first,
workerssecond) is female.
The boy separatesfrom his motherto identifywith his father and take
on a masculineidentity of greater autonomy. The girl, on the other hand,
takes on her identityas a womanin a positiveprocess of becominglike, not
differentthan, her mother.Althoughshe must ultimatelytransferher primary
objectchoice to her fatherfirst and then to men in generalif she is to become
8
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
a heterosexualwoman, she still never breaks with the originalbond to her
motherin the same way the boy does. She merelyadds her love for her father,
and finally her love for a man (if she becomes heterosexual)to her original
relationto her mother.This means that a boy developshis masculinegender
identificationin the absence of a continuousand ongoingrelationshipwith his
father, while a girl developsher femininegender identityin the presence of
an ongoing relationshipwith the specific person of her mother.
In other words, the masculinesubject positionis based on a rejection
of a connectionto the motherand the adoptionof a genderrole identifiedwith
a culturalstereotype,whilethe femalesubjectpositionidentifieswitha specific
mother. Women's relatednessand men's denial of relatednessare in turn
appropriateto the social divisionof their roles in our culture:to the man's
role as produceroutsidethe home and the woman'srole as reproducerinside
it.25
Chodorow'sanalysisof the connectednessof the mother-daughterbond
has pointed the way to a new value placed on the multipleand continuous
female identitycapableof fluidlyshiftingbetweenthe identityof motherand
daughter.26Unlike Freud, she does not assume that the separation and
autonomy of the male identificationprocess is a norm from which women
deviate.She assumes,rather,that the currentsocialarrangementof exclusive
femalemotheringhas preparedmen to participatein a worldof often alienated
work, with a limitedabilityto achieve intimacy.27
ThusChodorowandothers28have questionedthe very standardsof unity
and autonomyby which human identity has typically been measured.And
they have done so withoutrecourse to a biologicallydeterminedessence of
femaleness.29
LikeNancy Chodorow,the FrenchfeministpsychoanalystLuce Irigaray
turns to the problemsof Freud's originalattempt to sketch identicalstages
of developmentfor both male and female. In Speculum de l'autre femme
Irigarayechoes Chodorow'sconcern with "Oedipalasymmetries."But what
Irigarayemphasizesis the visual nature of Freud's scenario-the fact that
sexual differenceis originallyperceived as an absence of the male genitalia
ratherthan the presenceof femalegenitalia.In a chapterentitled"BlindSpot
for an Old Dream of Symmetry,"the "blindspot" consists of a male vision
trappedin an "Oedipaldestiny" that cannot see woman'ssex and can thus
only representit in terms of the masculinesubject'sown originalcomplementary other: the mother.30
"Woman" is representedwithinthis system as either the all-powerful
(phallic)motherof the child'spre-Oedipalimaginaryor as the unempowered
(castrated)mother of its post-Oedipalsymbolic. What is left out of such a
system of representationis the whole of woman'spleasure-a pleasurethat
cannot be measuredin phallic terms.
But whatFreuddevaluedand repressedin the femalebody, Irigarayand
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
9
other French feministsengaged in "writingthe female body" in an ecriture
feminine,31are determinedto emphasize.In Ce sexe qui n'en est pas un (This
sex which is not one) Irigaraycelebratesthe multipleand diffuse pleasures
of a female body and a female sex that is not just one thing, but several. But
when forced to enter into the "dominantscopic economy"of visual pleasure
she is immediatelyrelegated,as Mulveyhas also pointedout with respect to
film, to the passive positionof "the beautifulobject."32
Irigaray'sadmittedlyutopian33solutionto the problemof how women
can come to representthemselvesto themselvesis neverthelessimportant.For
if womencannotestablishthe connectionbetweentheir bodiesand language,
they risk either having to forego all speaking of the body-in a familiar
puritanicalrepression of an excessive female sexuality-or they risk an
essentialist celebrationof a purely biologicaldetermination.Irigaray thus
proposes a communityof women relating to and speaking to one another
outsidethe constraintsof a masculinelanguagethat reduceseverythingto its
own need for unity and identity-a "female homosexuality"opposedto the
reigning"male homosexuality"that currentlygoverns the relationsbetween
both men and men, and men and women.34
A "female homosexualeconomy" would thus challenge the dominant
order and make it possiblefor woman to representherself to herself. This
suggestsan argumentsimilarto that of AdrienneRich in her article"Compulsory Heterosexualityand LesbianExistence." Rich argues that lesbianismis
an importantalternativeto the male economyof dominance.Whetheror not
a woman's sexual preferences are actually homosexual, the mere fact of
"lesbianexistence" proves that it is possibleto resist the dominatingvalues
of the male colonizerwitha more nurturingand empathicrelationshipsimilar
to mothering.35The female body is as necessary to Rich as it is to Irigaray
as the place to begin.
AdrienneRich's critiqueof psychoanalysisis based on the notion that
its fundamentalpatriarchalpremisesforclosethe envisioningof relationships
betweenwomenoutsideof patriarchy.Irigaray'srecourseto the female body
ironicallyechoes Rich's own but it is constructedfrom within psychoanalytic
theory. The importanceof both is not simply that they see lesbianismas a
refuge from an oppressivephalliceconomy-although it certainlyis that for
many women-but that it is a theoreticalway out of the bindof the unrepresented, and unrepresentable,female body.
The excitementgeneratedwhen women get together, when they go to
the market together "to profit from their own value, to talk to each other,
to desire each other," is not to be underestimated.36
For only by learningto
and
then
to
a
difference
is
that
not different to other
recognize
represent
women,can womenbeginto see themselves.The trick, however,is not to stop
there; woman'srecognitionof herself in the bodiesof other womenis only a
necessaryfirststep to an understandingof the interactionof bodyand psyche,
and the distance that separatesthem.37
1 0
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
Perhapsthe most valuableattemptto understandthis interactionis Julia
Kristeva'sworkon the maternalbodyandpre-Oedipalsexuality.LikeIrigaray,
Kristevaattemptsto speak the pre-Oedipalrelationsof womanto woman.But
unlike Irigaray, she does so with the knowledgethat such speech is never
entirely authentic, never entirely free of the phallic influence of symbolic
language. In other words,she stresses the necessity of positinga place from
whichwomencan speakthemselves,all the whilerecognizingthat such places
do not exist. That is, it cannot be conceived or representedoutside of the
symboliclanguagewhich defines women negatively.38
Thus, what Kristevaproposesis a self-consciousdialecticbetween two
imperfect forms of language. The first is what she calls the "emiotic": a
pre-verbal,maternallanguageof rhythm, tone and color linked to the body
contact withthe motherbeforethe childis differentiatedby entranceinto the
symbolic.The second is the "symbolic"proper,characterizedby logic, syntax, and a phallocraticabstraction.39Accordingto Kirsteva, all human sub-
jects articulate themselves through the interaction of these two modes. The
value of this conception is that we no longer find ourselves locked into an
investigation of different sexual identities, but are freed rather into an
investigation of sexual differentiations-subject positions that are associated
with maternal or paternal functions.
Speaking from the mother's position, Kristeva shows that maternity is
characterized by division. The mother is possessed of an internal heterogeneity
beyond her control:
Cells fuse, split and proliferate;volumesgrow, tissues stretch, and body fluids
change rhythm, speedingup or slowingdown. Within the body, growingas a
graft, indomitable,there is an other. And no one is present, within that
simultaneouslydual and alien space, to signify what is going on. "It happens,
but I'm not here."40
But even as she speaks from this space of the mother, Kristeva notes that
it is vacant, that there is no unified subject present there. Yet she speaks
anyway, consciously recognizing the patriarchal illusion of the all-powerful
and whole phallic mother. For Kristeva it is the dialectic of two inadequate
and incomplete sexually differentiated subject positions that is important. The
dialectic between a maternal body that is too diffuse, contradictory, and
polymorphous to be represented and a paternal body that is channeled and
repressed into a single representable significance makes it possible for woman
to be represented at all.
So, as Jane Gallop notes, women are not so essentially and exclusively
body that they must remain eternally unrepresentable.41 But the dialectic
between that which is pure body and therefore escapes representation and that
which is a finished and fixed representation makes possible a different kind
of representation that escapes the rigidity of fixed identity. With this notion
of a dialectic between the maternal unrepresentable and the paternal already-
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
1 1
representedwe can begin to look for a way out of the theoreticalbindof the
representationof womenin film and at the way female spectatorsare likely
to read Stella Dallas and its ambivalentfinal scene.
"Something else besides a mother." Stella's story begins with her
attempts to attract the attention of the upper-classStephen Dallas (John
Boles),whohas buriedhimselfin the smalltownof Milhamptonafter a scandal
in his familyruinedhis plans for marriage.Like any ambitiousworking-class
girl with looks as her only resource, she attempts to improve herself by
pursuingan upper-classman. To distinguishherself in his eyes, she calculatinglybringsher brotherlunchat the millwhereStephenis the boss, insincerely
playingthe role of motherlycaretaker.The refinementthat she bringsto this
role distinguishesher fromher own drab,overworked,slavishmother(played
by MarjorieMain, withouther usual comic touch).
Duringtheir brief courtship,Stella and Stephen go to the movies. On
the screen they see couples dancing in an elegant milieu followed by a
happy-endingembrace.Stella is absorbedin the story and weeps at the end.
Outsidethe theater she tells Stephen of her desire to "be like all the people
in the moviesdoingeverythingwell-bredand refined."She imagineshis whole
worldto be like this glamorousscene. Her story will become, in a sense, the
unsuccessfulattemptto place herselfin the scene of the movie withoutlosing
that originalspectatorialpleasureof lookingon from afar.
Once marriedto Stephen, Stella seems about to realizethis dream. In
the small town that once ignoredher she can now go the "River Club"and
associate with the smart set. But motherhoodintervenes, forcing her to
cloister herself unhappilyduringthe long months of pregnancy.Finallyout
of the hospital,she insists on a night at the country club with the smart set
that has so far eludedher. (Actuallymanyof them are a vulgarnouveau-riche
lot of whomStephen,upper-classsnobthat he is, heartilydisapproves.)In her
strenuousefforts to join in the fun of the wealthy, Stella makes a spectacle
of herselfin Stephen'seyes. He sees her for the first time as the working-class
womanthat she is andjudgesher harshly,remindingher that she once wanted
to be somethingmore than what she is. She, in turn, criticizeshis stiffness
and asks him to do some of the adaptingfor a change.
When Stephenasks Stellato come withhimto New YorkCityfor a fresh
start as the properlyupper-classMrs. Dallas, she refuses to leave the only
worldshe knows. Part of her reason must be that to leave this worldwould
also be to leave the only identityshe has ever achieved, to become nobody
all over again. In the little mill town where Stephen had come to forget
himself, Stella can find herself by measuringthe distance traveled between
her working-classgirlhoodand upper-classwifehood.It is as if she needs to
be able to measure this distance in order to possess her new self from the
vantage point of the young girl she once was with Stephen at the movies.
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Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
Withoutthe memoryof this formerself that the town provides,she loses the
already precariouspossessionof her own identity.
As Stephen drifts away from her, Stella plungesinto anotheraspect of
her identity: motherhood.After her initial resistance, it is a role she finds
surprisinglycompelling.But she never resignsherselfto being only a mother.
In Stephen'sabsenceshe continuesto seek an innocentbutlivelypleasure-in
particularwith the raucous Ed Munn. As her daughterLaurelgrows up, we
observe a series of scenes that compromiseStella in the eyes of Stephen
(during those rare moments he comes home) and the more straight-laced
membersof the community.In each case Stella is merely guilty of seeking
a little fun-whether by playing music and drinkingwith Ed or playing a
practicaljoke with itching powderon a train. Each time we are assuredof
Stella's primarycommitmentto motherhoodand of her many good qualities
as a mother. (She even says to Ed Munn, in responseto his crude proposal:
"I don't think there's a man livin' who could get me going anymore.")But
each time the repercussionsof the incident are the isolationof mother and
daughterfrom the upper-classworldto which they aspire to belong but into
which only Laurelfits. A particularlypoignantmoment is Laurel'sbirthday
party where mother and daughter receive, one by one, the regrets of the
guests. Thus the innocent daughtersuffers for the "sins" of taste and class
of the mother. The end result, however, is a greater bond between the two
as each sadly but nobly puts on a good face for the other and marches into
the diningroom to celebratethe birthdayalone.
In each of the incidents of Stella's transgressionof proper behavior,
there is a momentwhen we first see Stella's innocentpoint of view and then
the point of view of the communityor estrangedhusbandthat judges her a
bad mother.42Their judgmentrests on the fact that Stella insists on making
her motherhooda pleasurableexperience by sharing center stage with her
daughter.The one thing she will not do, at least until the end, is retire to the
background.
One basicconflictof the film thus comes to revolvearoundthe excessive
presence of Stella'sbodyand dress. She increasinglyflauntsan exaggeratedly
femininepresence that the offendedcommunityprefersnot to see. (Barbara
Stanwyck'sown excessive performancecontributesto this effect. I can think
of no other film star of the periodso willingto exceed both the boundsof good
taste and sex appealin a single performance.)But the more ruffles,feathers,
furs, and clanking jewelry that Stella dons, the more she emphasizesher
pathetic inadequacy.
Her strategy can only backfirein the eyes of an upper-classrestraint
that values a streamlinedand sleek ideal of feminity.To these eyes Stella is
a travesty, an overdonemasqueradeof what it means to be a woman.At the
fancy hotel to whichStella and Laurelrepairfor their one fling at upper-class
life together,a young college man exclaimsat the sight of Stella, "That'snot
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
13
a woman, that's a Christmas tree!" Stella, however, could never understand
such a backward economy, just as she cannot understand her upper-class
husband's attempts to lessen the abrasive impact of her presence by correcting
her English and toning down her dress. She counters his efforts with the
defiant claim, "I've always been known to have stacks of style!"
"Style" is the war paint she applies more thickly with each new assault
on her legitimacy as a woman and a mother. One particularly affecting scene
shows her sitting before the mirror of her dressing table as Laurel tells her
of the "natural" elegance and beauty of Helen Morrison, the woman who has
replaced Stella in Stephen's affections. Stella's only response is to apply more
cold cream. When she accidentally gets cold cream on Laurel's photo of the
ideal Mrs. Morrison, Laurel becomes upset and runs off to clean it. What is
most moving in the scene is the emotional complicity of Laurel, who soon
realizes the extent to which her description has hurt her mother, and silently
turns to the task of applying more peroxide to Stella's hair. The scene ends
with mother and daughter before the mirror tacitly relating to one another
through the medium of the feminine mask-each putting on a good face for
the other, just as they did at the birthday party.
"Stacks of style," layers of make-up, clothes, and jewelry-these are,
of course, the typical accouterments of the fetishized woman. Yet such
fetishization seems out of place in a "woman's film" addressed to a predominantly female audience. More typically, the woman's film's preoccupation
with a victimized and suffering womanhood has tended, as Mary Ann Doane
has shown, to repress and hystericize women's bodies in a medical discourse
of the afflicted or in the paranoia of the uncanny.43
We might ask, then, what effect a fetishized female image has in the
context of a film "addressed" and "possessed by" women? Certainly this is
one situation in which the woman's body does not seem likely to pose the
threat of castration-since the significant viewers of (and within) the film are
all female. In psychoanalytic terms, the fetish is that which disavows or
compensates for the woman's lack of a penis. As we have seen above, for the
male viewer the successful fetish deflects attention away from what is "really"
lacking by calling attention to (over-valuing) other aspects of woman's difference. But at the same time it also inscribes the woman in a "masquerade of
femininity"44that forever revolves around her "lack." Thus, at the extreme,
the entire female body becomes a fetish substitute for the phallus she doesn't
possess. The beautiful (successfully fetishized) woman thus represents an
eternal essence of biologically determined femininity constructed from the
point of view, so to speak, of the phallus.
In Stella Dallas, however, the fetishization of Stanwyck's Stella is
unsuccessful; the masquerade of femininity is all too obvious; and the significant point of view on all this is female. For example, at the fancy hotel where
Stella makes a "Christmas Tree" spectacle of herself she is as oblivious as
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Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
ever to the shocking effect of her appearance.But Laurelexperiencesthe
shameof her friends'scorn. The scene in whichLaurelexperiencesthis shame
is a grotesqueparodyof Stella'sfondestdreamof beinglike all the glamorous
people in the movies. Stella has put all of her energy and resources into
becomingthis glamorousimage. But incapacitatedby a cold, as she once was
by pregnancy,she must remainoff-sceneas Laurelmakesa favorableimpression. When she finallymakes her grandentranceon the scene, Stella is spied
by Laureland her friendsin a large mirrorover a soda fountain.The mirror
functions as the framed screen that reflects the parody of the image of
glamourto whichStellaonce aspired.Unwillingto acknowledgetheirrelation,
Laurelruns out. Later, she insists that they leave. On the train home, Stella
overhearsLaurel'sfriendsjokingaboutthe vulgarMrs. Dallas.It is then that
she decidesto send Laurelto live with Stephenand Mrs. Morrisonand to give
Laurel up for her own good. What is significant, however, is that Stella
overhearsthe conversationat the same time Laureldoes-they are in upper
and lower berths of the train, each hoping that the other is asleep, each
pretendingto be asleep to the other. So Stella does not just experienceher
own humiliation;she sees for the first time the travesty she has become by
sharingin her daughter'shumiliation.
By seeingherselfthroughher daughter'seyes, Stellaalso sees something
more. For the first time Stella sees the realityof her social situationfrom the
vantage point of her daughter'sunderstanding,but increasinglyupper-class,
system of values: that she is a struggling,uneducatedwomandoing the best
she can with the resourcesat her disposal.And it is this vision, throughher
daughter's sympathetic, mothering eyes-eyes that perceive, understand,
and forgivethe socialgraces Stellalacks-that determinesher to performthe
masqueradethat will alienate Laurel forever by proving to her what the
patriarchyhas claimed to know all along: that it is not possibleto combine
womanlydesire with motherlyduty.
It is at this point that Stella claims, falsely, to want to be "something
else besides a mother." The irony is not only that by now there is really
nothing else she wants to be, but also that in pretendingthis to Laurelshe
must act out a painfulparody of her fetishizedself. She thus resurrectsthe
personaof the "good-times"womanshe used to wantto be (butnever entirely
was) only to convince Laurelthat she is an unworthymother.In other words,
she proves her very worthinessto be a mother(her desire for her daughter's
materialand socialwelfare)by actingout a patentlyfalse scenarioof narcissistic self-absorption she pretendsto ignore Laurelwhile loungingabout in a
negligee, smokinga cigarette,listeningto jazz, and readinga magazinecalled
"Love."
In this scene the conventionalimage of the fetishizedwomanis given
a peculiar, even parodic, twist. For where the conventionalmasqueradeof
femininitycan be readas an attemptto cover up supposedlybiological"lacks"
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
15
with a compensatoryexcess of connotativelyfemininegestures, clothes, and
accouterments,here fetishizationfunctionsas a blatantlypathetic disavowal
of much more pressingsocial lacks-of money, education,and power. The
spectacle Stella stages for Laurel'seyes thus displaces the real social and
economic causes of her presumedinadequacyas a motheronto a pretended
desire for fulfillmentas a woman-to be "somethingelse besidesa mother."
At the beginningof the film Stella pretendeda maternalconcern she
did not really possess (in bringinglunch to her brotherin order to flirt with
Stephen)in orderto find a betterhome. Now she pretendsa lack of the same
concernin orderto send Laurelto a betterhome. Bothrolesare patentlyfalse.
And though neither allows us to view the "authentic"woman beneath the
mask, the sucessionof roles endingin the final transcendentself-effacement
of the windowscene-in which Stella forsakes all her masks in order to
become the anonymousspectatorof her daughter'srole as bride-permits a
glimpse at the social and economic realitiesthat have producedsuch roles.
Stella'sreal offense, in the eyes of the communitythat so ruthlesslyostracizes
her, is to have attemptedto play both roles at once.
Are we to conclude, then, that the film simply punishesher for these
untimelyresistancesto her properrole? E. Ann Kaplanhas arguedthat such
is the case, and that throughoutthe film Stella'spoint of view is undercutby
those of the upper-classcommunity-Stephen, or the snooty townspeoplewho disapproveof her behavior.Kaplannotes, for example,that a scene may
beginfromStella'spointof viewbut shift, as in the case of an impromptuparty
with Ed Munn, to the more judgmentalpoint of view of Stephen halfway
through.45
I wouldcounter, however, that these multiple,often conflicting,points
of view-including Laurel'sfailureto see throughher mother'sact-prevent
such a monolithicview of the female subject. Kaplanargues, for example,
that the film punishesStellafor her resistancesto a properlypatriarchalview
of motherhoodby turningher first into a spectacle for a disapprovingupperclass gaze and then finally into a mere spectator, locked outside the action
in the final window scene that ends the film.46
Certainlythis final scene functionsto efface Stella even as it glorifies
her sacrificialact of motherlylove. Self-exiledfrom the worldinto whichher
daughteris marrying,Stella loses both her daughterand her (formerlyfetishized) self to become an abstract (and absent) ideal of motherlysacrifice.
Significantly,Stella appears in this scene for the first time strippedof the
exaggeratedmarksof feminity-the excessivemake-up,furs, feathers,clanking jewelry, and ruffleddresses-that have been the weaponsof her defiant
assertionsthat a woman can be "somethingelse besides a mother."
It wouldbe possibleto stop here and take this ending as Hollywood's
in any
last wordon the mother,as evidenceof her ultimateunrepresentability
but patriarchalterms. Certainlyif we only rememberStella as she appears
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here at the end of the film, as Val in French'sTheWomen'sRoom remembers
her, then we see her only at the momentwhen she becomesrepresentablein
terms of a "phalliceconomy" that idealizesthe womanas mother and in so
doing, as Irigary argues, represses everythingelse about her. But although
the final momentof the film "resolves"the contradictionof Stella's attempt
to be a woman and a mother by eradicatingboth, the 108 minutesleading
up to this momentpresent the heroic attemptto live out the contradiction.47
It seems likely, then, that a female spectatorwouldbe inclinedto view even
this endingas she has the rest of the film:from a variety of differentsubject
positions.In otherwords,the femalespectatortendsto identifywithcontradiction itself-with contradictionslocatedat the heartof the sociallyconstructed
roles of daughter,wife, and mother-rather than with the single person of
the mother.
In this connectionthe role of Helen Morrison,the upper-classwidowed
motherwhomStephenwillbe free to marrywith Stella out of the way, takes
on special importance.Helen is everything Stella is not: genteel, discreet,
self-effacing,and sympatheticwith everyone's problems-including Stella's.
She is, for example, the only person in the film to see throughStella's ruse
of alienatingLaurel.And it is she who, knowingStella'sfiner instincts,leaves
open the drapes that permit Stella's vision of Laurel'smarriageinside her
elegant home.
In writing about the narrative form of daytime soap operas, Tania
Modleskihas noted that the predominantlyfemale viewers of soaps do not
identifywith a main controllingfigure the way viewersof more classic forms
of narrativeidentify.The very form of soap opera encouragesidentification
with multiplepoints of view. At one moment, female viewersidentifywith a
womanunitedwithher lover, at the next withthe sufferingsof her rival.While
the effect of identifyingwith a single controllingprotagonistis to make the
spectatorfeel empowered,the effect of multipleidentificationin the diffused
soap operais to divest the spectatorof power,but to increaseempathy."The
subject/spectatorof soaps, it could be said, is constitutedas a sort of ideal
mother:a person who possesses greaterwisdomthan all her children,whose
sympathyis large enough to encompassthe conflictingclaims of her family
(she identifieswith them all), and who has no demandsor claims of her own
(she identifieswith no characterexclusively)."48
In Stella Dallas Helen is clearly the representativeof this idealized,
empathicbut powerlessmother. Ann Kaplanhas arguedthat female spectators learn from Helen Morrison'sexamplethat such is the properrole of the
mother;that Stella has up until now illicitlyhogged the screen. By the time
Stellahas madeher sacrificeandbecomethe mere spectatorof her daughter's
apotheosis,her joy in her daughter'ssuccess assures us, in Kaplan'swords,
"of her satisfactionin being reduced to spectator.... While the cinema
spectator feels a certain sadness in Stella's position, we also identify with
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
17
Laureland with her attainmentof what we have all been socializedto desire;
that is, romantic marriage into the upper class. We thus accede to the
necessity for Stella's sacrifice."49
But do we? As Kaplanherself notes, the female spectatoris identified
with a variety of conflictingpoints of view as in the TV soap opera: Stella,
Laurel, Helen, and Stephen cannot resolve their conflicts withoutsomeone
getting hurt. Laurelloses her motherand visiblysuffersfrom this loss; Stella
loses her daughter and her identity; Helen wins Stephen but powerlessly
suffers for everyone includingherself (when Stella had refused to divorce
Stephen).Only Stephen is entirelyfree from sufferingat the end, but this is
preciselybecause he is characteristicallyobliviousto the sufferingof others.
For the film's ending to be perceivedas entirelywithoutproblem,we would
have to identifywiththis least sensitiveand, therefore,least sympatheticpoint
of view.
Instead,we identify,like the ideal motherviewer of soaps, with all the
conflicting points of view. Because Helen is herself such a mother, she
becomes an important,but not an exclusive, focus of spectatorialidentification. She becomes, for example, the significantwitness of Stella's sacrifice.
Her one action in the entire film is to leave open the curtains-an act that
helps put Stella in the same passive and powerlesspositionof spectatingthat
Helen is in herself. But if this relegationto the positionof spectatoroutside
the action resolves the narrative,it is a resolutionnot satisfactoryto any of
its female protagonists.
Thus, where Kaplan sees the ending of Stella Dallas as satisfying
patriarchaldemandsfor the repressionof the active and involvedaspects of
the mother's role, and as teaching female spectatorsto take their dubious
pleasuresfrom this empathicpositionoutsidethe action, I wouldargue that
the ending is too multiplyidentified,too dialecticalin Julia Kristeva'ssense
of the strugglebetweenmaternaland paternalforms of language,to encourage such a response. Certainlythe film has constructedconcludingimages
of motherhood-first the high-tonedHelen and finallya toned-downStellafor the greaterpowerand convenienceof the father. But becausethe father's
own spectatorialempathyis so lacking-Stephen is here much as he was with
Stella at the movies, presentbut not identifiedhimself--we cannotsee it that
way. We see insteadthe contradictionsbetweenwhat the patriarchalresolution of the film asks us to see-the mother "in her place" as spectator,
abdicatingher former position in the scene-and what we as empathic,
identifying female spectators can't help but feel-the loss of mother to
daughterand daughterto mother.
This double vision seems typical of the experience of most female
spectatorsat the movies. One explanationfor it, we might recall, is Nancy
Chodorow'stheorythat femaleidentityis formedthrougha processof double
identification.The girl identifieswithher primarylove object-her mother
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and then, without ever droppingthe first identification,with her father.
Accordingto Chodorow,the woman'ssense of self is based upon a continuity
of relationshipthat ultimatelypreparesher for the empathic,identifyingrole
of the mother.Unlikethe male who must constantlydifferentiatehimselffrom
his originalobject of identificationin order to take on a male identity, the
woman'sabilityto identifywith a variety of differentsubjectpositionsmakes
her a very differentkind of spectator.
Feministfilm theoristshave tended to view this multipleidentificatory
powerof the femalespectatorwithsome misgiving.In an articleon the female
spectator, Mary Ann Doane has suggested that when the female spectator
looks at the cinematicimage of a woman,she is faced with two main possibilities: she can either over-identify(as in the masochisticdramastypical of the
woman'sfilm)withthe womanon the screen and thus lose herselfin the image
by taking this woman as her own narcissisticobject of desire; or she can
temporarilyidentifywiththe positionof the masculinevoyeurand subjectthis
same womanto a controllinggaze that insists on the distance and difference
betweenthem.50In this case she becomes, as LauraMulveynotes, a temporary transvestite.51Either way, accordingto Doane, she loses herself.
Doanearguesthat the only way a femalespectatorcan keep fromlosing
herself in this over-identificationis by negotiatinga distancefrom the image
of her like-by readingthis image as a sign as opposedto an iconic image
that requiresno reading.When the womanspectatorregardsa female body
envelopedin an exaggeratedmasqueradeof femininity,she encountersa sign
that requiressuch a reading.We have seen that throughouta good part of
Stella Dallas this is whatStelladoes withrespectto her ownbody. For Doane,
with the image
then, one way out of the dilemmaof female over-identification
on the screen is for this image to act out a masqueradeof femininitythat
manufacturesa distancebetweenspectatorand image, to "generatea problematic withinwhich the image is manipulable,producible,and readableby
women. "52
In other words, Doane thinks that female spectators need to borrow
some of the distance and separationfrom the image that male spectators
experience.She suggeststhat numerousavant-gardepracticesof distanciation
can producethis necessarydistance.This puts us back to Mulvey'sargument
that narrativepleasuremust be destroyedby avant-gardepractices. I would
argueinsteadthat this manufacturingof distance,this femalevoyeurism-witha-difference,is an aspect of every female spectator'sgaze at the image of her
like. For ratherthan adoptingeither the distanceand masteryof the masculine voyeur or the over-identificationof Doane's womanwho loses herself in
the image, the female spectatoris in a constantstate of jugglingall positions
at once.
RubyRich has writtenthat womenexperiencefilmsmuch more dialectically than men. "Brechtonce describedthe exile as the ultimatedialectician
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
19
in that the exile lives the tension of two differentcultures. That's precisely
the sense in whichthe womanspectatoris an equallyinevitabledialectician."53
The female spectator'slook is thus a dialecticof two (in themselves)inadequate and incomplete(sexuallyand socially)differentiatedsubject positions.
Just as Julia Kristevahas shown that it is the dialectic of a maternalbody
that is channeledand repressedinto a single, univocalsignificancethat makes
it possiblefor womento be representedat all, so does a similardialecticinform
femalespectatorshipwhena femalepointof view is genuinelyinscribedin the
text.
We have seen in Stella Dallas how the mediationof the mother and
daughter'slook at one another radicallyalters the representationof them
both. We have also seen that the viewer cannot choose a single "main
controlling"point of identificationbut must alternatebetween a numberof
conflictingpointsof view, none of whichcan be satisfactorilyreconciled.But
the windowscene at the end of the filmwouldcertainlyseem to be the moment
when all the above contradictionscollapseinto a single patriarchalvision of
the motheras pure spectator(divestedof her excessive bodilypresence)and
the daughteras the (now properlyfetishized)object of vision. Althoughit is
true that this ending,by separatingmotherand daughter,places each within
a visual economy that defines them from the perspectiveof patriarchy,the
female spectator'sown look at each of them does not acquiesce in such a
phallicvisual economy of voyeurismand fetishism.
For in looking at Stella's own look at her daughterthrougha window
that stronglyresemblesa movie screen,54the female spectatordoes not see
and believethe same way Stelladoes. In this finalscene, Stella is no different
than the naive spectatorshe was when, as a young woman,she went to the
movieswithStephen.In orderto justifyher sacrifice,she must believe in the
realityof the cinematicillusionshe sees: brideand groomkneelingbeforethe
priest,proudfatherlookingon. We, however,knowthe artificeand suffering
behind it-Laurel's disappointmentthat her mother has not attended the
wedding;Helen's manipulationof the scene that affordsStella her glimpse;
Stella's own earliermanipulationof Laurel'sview of her "bad"motherhood.
So when we look at Stella lookingat the glamorousand artificial"movie"of
her daughter'slife, we cannot,like Stella, naivelybelievein the realityof the
happyending,any morethan we believein the realityof the silentmovements
and hackneyedgestures of the glamorousmovie Stella once saw.
Becausethe femalespectatorhas seen the cost to both Laureland Stella
of the daughter'shaving entered the frame, of having become the properly
fetishizedimage of womanhood,she cannot, like Stella, believe in happiness
for either. She knowsbetter because she has seen what each has had to give
up to assume these final roles. But isn't it just such a balance of knowledge
and belief (of the fetishist'scontradictoryphrase "I know very well but just
the same. . .")5 that has characterizedthe sophisticatedjugglingact of the
ideal cinematicspectator?
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Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
The psychoanalyticmodel of cinematicpleasurehas been based on the
phenomenonof fetishisticdisavowal:the contradictorygesture of believing
in an illusion(the cinematicimage, the female penis) and yet knowing that
it is an illusion,an imaginarysignifier.This modelsets up a situationin which
the woman becomes a kind of failed fetishist:lacking a penis she lacks the
biologicalfoundationto engage in the sophisticatedgame of jugglingpresence
and absencein cinematicrepresentation;hence her presumedover-identification, her lack of the knowledgeof illusion56and the resultingone, two, and
three handkerchiefmovies.-Butthe female spectatorof Stella Dallas finds
herselfbalancinga very differentkind of knowledgeand belief than the mere
existence or non-existenceof the female phallus.She knows that womencan
findno genuineformof representationunderpatriarchalstructuresof voyeuristic or fetishisticviewing,becauseshe has seen Stellalose herselfas a woman
and as a mother. But at the same time she believes that womenexist outside
this phallic economy, because she has glimpsed moments of resistance in
which two women have been able to represent themselves to themselves
throughthe mediationof their own gazes.
This is a very differentform of disavowal.It is both a knowing recognition of the limitationsof woman'srepresentationin patriarchallanguageand
a contrary belief in the illusionof a pre-Oedipalspace between women free
of the masteryand controlof the malelook. The contradictionis as compelling
for the womanas for the male fetishist,even more so because it is not based
on the presence or absence of an anatomicalorgan, but on the dialectic of
the woman'ssocially constructedpositionunder patriarchy.
It is in a very differentsense, then, that the psychoanalyticconcepts
of voyeurismand fetishismcan informa feministtheory of cinematicspectatorship-not as inscribingwomantotallyon the side of the passiveobjectwho
is merely seen, as Mulvey and others have so influentiallyargued, but by
examiningthe contradictionsthat animatewomen'svery active and fragmented ways of seeing.
I wouldnot go so far as to argue that these contradictionsoperate for
the femaleviewerin every film aboutrelationsbetweenwomen.But the point
of focusing on a film that both addresses female audiences and contains
importantstructuresof viewingbetweenwomenis to suggest that it does not
take a radical and consciously feminist break with patriarchalideology to
representthe contradictoryaspects of the woman'spositionunderpatriarchy.
It does not even take the ironicdistancingdevices of, for example,the Sirkian
melodramato generatethe kindof active, criticalresponsethat sees the work
of ideology in the film. LauraMulvey has writtenthat the ironic endingsof
Sirkianmelodramaare progressivein their defiance of unity and closure:
It is as thoughthe fact of havinga femalepoint of view dominatingthe
narrativeproducesan excesswhichprecludessatisfaction.If the melodrama
offersa fantasyescapefor the identifying
womenin the audience,the illusion
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
21
is so stronglymarkedby recognisable,real and familiartraps that the escape
is closer to a daydreamthan a fairy story. The few Hollywoodfilms made with
a femaleaudiencein mindevoke contradictionsratherthan reconciliation,with
the alternativeto mute surrenderto society's overt pressureslying in defeat
by its unconsciouslaws.57
Although Mulvey here speaks primarily of the ironic Sirkian melodrama,
her description of the contradictions encountered by the female spectator
apply in a slightly different way to the very un-ironic Stella Dallas. I would
argue that Stella Dallas is a progressive film not because it defies both unity
and closure, but because the definitive closure of its ending produces no
parallel unity in its spectator. And because the film has constructed its
spectator in a female subject position locked into a primary identification with
another female subject, it is possible for this spectator, like Val-the mother
spectator from The Women's Room whose reaction to the film is quoted at
the head of this article-to impose her own radical feminist reading on the
film. Without such female subject positions inscribed within the text, the
stereotypical self-sacrificing mother character would flatten into the mere
maternal essences of so many motherly figures of melodrama.
Stella Dallas is a classic maternal melodrama played with a very
straight face. Its ambivalences and contradictions are not cultivated with the
intention of revealing the work of patriarchal ideology within it. But like any
melodrama that offers a modicum of realism yet conforms to the "reconciliation of the irreconciliable" proper to the genre,58 it must necessarily produce,
when dealing with conflicts among women, what Val calls a "shock of recognition." This shock is not the pleasurable recognition of a verisimilitude that
generates naive belief, but the shock of seeing, as Val explains, "how they
got us to consent to our own eradication." Val and other female spectators
typically do not consent to such eradicating resolutions. They, and we, resist
the only way we can by struggling with the contradictions inherent in these
images of ourselves and our situation. It is a terrible underestimation of the
female viewer to presume that she is wholly seduced by a naive belief in these
masochistic images, that she has allowed these images to put her in her place
the way the films themselves put their women characters in their place.
It seems, then, that Adrienne Rich's eloquent plea for works that can
embody the "essential female tragedy" of mother-daughter passion, rapture,
and loss is misguided but only with respect to the mode of tragedy. I hope
to have begun to show that this loss finds expression under patriarchy in the
"distorted" and "misused" cathexes of the maternal melodrama. For unlike
tragedy, melodrama does not reconcile its audience to an inevitable suffering.
Rather than raging against a fate that the audience has learned to accept,
the female hero often accepts a fate that the audience at least partially
questions.
The divided female spectator identifies with the woman whose very
22
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
triumphis often in her own victimization,but she also criticizesthe price of
a transcendent"eradication"whichthe victim-heromustpay. Thus, although
melodrama'simpulse towards the just "happy ending" usually places the
woman hero in a final position of subordination,the "lesson" for female
audiencesis certainlynot to become similarlyeradicatedthemselves.For all
its masochism,for all its frequentdevaluationof the individualpersonof the
mother(as opposedto the abstractideal of motherhood),the maternalmelodramapresentsa recognizablepictureof woman'sambivalentpositionunder
patriarchythathas beenan importantsourceof realisticreflectionsof women's
lives. This may be why the most effective feministfilms of recent years have
been those works-like Sally Potter's Thriller, MichelleCitron'sDaughter
Rite, ChantalAkerman'sJeanne Dielman . ., and even Jacques Rivette's
Celine and Julie Go Boating-that work within and against the expectations of female self-sacrificeexperiencedin maternalmelodrama.
Notes.
1. The Women's Room (New York: Summit Books, 1977), 227.
2. An interestingand comprehensiveintroductionto this sub-genrecan be found in Christian
Viviani's "Who is Without Sin? The MaternalMelodramain American Film, 19301939," Wide Angle 4, no. 2 (1980): 4-17. Viviani traces the history of maternal
melodramain Americanfilms back to the originalFrench play Madame X about an
adulterouswomanwho expiates her sin in lifelong separationfrom a son whose social
rise would be jeopardizedby the revelation of her relation to him. Two successful
twentiesscreen versionsof Madame X set a patternof imitators.Within them Viviani
traces two different"veins" of this melodramaticsub-genre:those films with European
settings in which the originallysinningmotherdescends to anonymity,and those films
with American settings where the more "Rooseveltian" mother displays a greater
energy and autonomy before descending to anonymity. Viviani suggests that King
Vidor's Stella Dallas is the "archetype" of this more energetic, American vein of
maternal melodrama. He also adds that although Stella is not actually guilty of
anything,her unwillingnessto overcome completelyher workingclass originsfunctions
as a kind of original sin that makes her seem guilty in her husband'sand finally in
her own eyes.
B. RubyRich and I have also brieflydiscussedthe genre of these sacrificialmaternal
melodramasin our efforts to identify the context of Michelle Citron's avant-garde
feministfilm, Daughter Rite. Citron'sfilm is in many ways the flip side to the maternal
melodrama, articulating the daughter's confused anger and love at the mother's
sacrificialstance. "The Right of Re-Vision:Michelle Citron'sDaughter Rite," Film
Quarterly 35, no. 1 (Fall 1981):17-22.
3. The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York: Bantam, 1961), 488-89.
4. An excellent introductionto this rapidlygrowingarea of study is MarianneHirsch'sreview
essay, "Mothersand Daughters,"Signs: Journal of Womenin Culture and Society
7, no. 1 (1981):200-22. See also Judith Kegan Gardiner,"On Female Identity and
Writing by Women," Critical Inquiry 8, no. 2 (Winter 1981): 347-61.
5. Of Woman Born (New York: Bantam, 1977), 240, 226.
6. The Melodramatic Imagination: Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama and the Mode of
Excess (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
7. MarthaVicinus,writingabout the nineteenthcentury melodrama,suggests that melodra-
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
23
ma's "appropriate"endings offer "a temporaryreconciliationof the irreconcilable."
The concern is typically not with what is possible or actual but what is desirable.
"Helplessand Unfriended:NineteenthCenturyDomestic Melodrama,"New Literary
History 13, no. 1 (Autumn 1981):132. Peter Brooksemphasizesa similarquality of
wish-fulfillmentin melodrama,even arguing that psychoanalysisoffers a systematic
realizationof the basic aesthetics of the genre: "If psychoanalysishas become the
nearest modern equivalent of religion in that it is a vehicle for the cure of souls,
melodrama is a way station toward this status, a first indication of how conflict,
enactment, and cure must be conceived in a secularizedworld"(202).
8. Most prominentamong these are ClaireJohnston's"Women's Cinemaas CounterCinema" in Notes on Women's Cinema, BFI Pamphlet (September 1972); and Laura
Mulvey's "VisualPleasureand NarrativeCinema,"Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn1975):
6-18.
9. The list of feministwork on this film is impressive.It includes:Pam Cook, "Duplicityin
MildredPierce," in Womenin Film Noir, ed. E. Ann Kaplan (London:BFI, 1978),
68-82; Molly Haskell, From Reverence to Rape: The Treatmentof Women in the
Movies (N.Y.: Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1973), 175-80; Annette Kuhn, Women's
Pictures: Feminism and Cinema(London:Routledgeand Kegan Paul, 1982), 28-35;
Joyce Nelson, "Mildred Pierce Reconsidered," Film Reader 2 (January 1977):
65-70; and Janet Walker, "FeministCriticalPractice: Female Discoursein Mildred
Pierce," Film Reader 5(1982): 164-71.
10. Molly Haskellonly gave the film brief mentionin her chapteron "The Woman's Film,"
From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies (N.Y.: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 153-88. Since then the film has been discussed by
ChristianViviani (see note 2); Charles Affron in Cinema and Sentiment (Chicago:
Universityof ChicagoPress, 1983), 74-76; Ben Brewster,"A Scene at the Movies,"
Screen 23, no. 2 (July-August1982): 4-5; and E. Ann Kaplan, "Theoriesof Melodrama: A Feminist Perspective," Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist
Theory 1, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1983): 40-48. Kaplan also has a longer article
on the film, "The Case of the Missing Mother: Maternal Issues in Vidor's Stella
Dallas," Heresies 16 (1983): 81-85. LauraMulvey also mentionsthe film briefly in
her "Afterthoughtson 'VisualPleasureand NarativeCinema'Inspiredby 'Duel in the
Sun' (King Vidor, 1946)," Framework15/16/17 (Summer1981): 12-15-but only
in the context of Vidor's much more male-orientedwestern. Thus, although Stella
Dallas keeps coming up in the context of discussions of melodrama, sentiment,
motherhood, and female spectatorship, it has not been given the full scrutiny it
deserves, except by Kaplan,many of whoseargumentsI challengein the presentwork.
11. Mulvey, 11. See also most of the essays in Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film
Criticism, eds. Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda Williams (Los
Angeles: AFI MonographSeries, 1983).
12. ClaireJohnston,for example, writes, "Despitethe enormousemphasisplaced on women
as spectacle in the cinema, woman as woman is largely absent." "Woman's Cinema
as Counter-Cinema,"Notes on Woman's Cinema, Screen Pamphlet 2, ed. Claire
Johnston, 26.
13. Christine Gledhill, "Developments in Feminist Film Criticism," Revision: Essays in
Feminist Film Criticism, eds. Mary Ann Doane, Patricia Mellencamp, and Linda
Williams(Los Angeles:AmericanFilm Institute MonographSeries, 1983), 31. Originally publishedin Quarterly Review of Film Studies 3, no. 4, (1978): 457-93.
14. Mulvey, 7.
15. Mulvey, 7, 18.
16. The few feminists who have begun this difficult but importantwork are: Mary Ann
24
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
Doane, "Film and the Masquerade:Theorizingthe Female Spectator,"Screen 23, no.
3-4 (Sept.-Oct. 1982): 74-87; GertrudKoch, "Why Women Go to the Movies,"Jump
Cut 27 (July 1982), trans. Marc Silberman:51-53; Judith Mayne, "The Woman at
the Keyhole: Women's Cinemaand FeministCriticism,"Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism, 44-66; and Mulvey herself in "Afterthoughtson 'VisualPleasure
and NarrativeCinema'Inspiredby 'Duel in the Sun' (King Vidor, 1946)," Framework
15/16/17 (Summer 1981): 12-15; B. Ruby Rich, in MichelleCitronet al., "Women
and Film: A Discussion of Feminist Aesthetics," New German Critique 13 (1978):
77-107; and Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengence: Mass Produced Fantasies
for Women (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1982). Since I wrote this article, two
important new books on women and film have appeared. Both take considerable
account of the processes by which the female spectator identifieswith screen images.
They are: E. Ann Kaplan's Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (N.Y.:
Metheun, 1983); and Teresa de Lauretis,Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 1984).
Gledhill,41.
Gledhill,37.
Gledhill,42.
Gledhill,44-45.
Freud begins this shift in the 1925 essay, "Some Psychological Consequencesof the
AnatomicalDistinctionbetween the Sexes," Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works(HogarthPress, 1953-74), vol. XIX. He continues it in the 1931
essay "Female Sexuality," vol. XXI.
MarianneHirsch's review essay, "Mothersand Daughters,"Signs: Journal of Women
in Cultureand Society 7, no. 1, (Autumn1981): 200-22, offers an excellent summary
of the diverse strands of the continuingre-appraisalof the mother-daughterrelation.
Hirsch examines theories of this relation in Anglo-Americanneo-Freudian object
relationspsychology (Chodorow,Miller, Dinnerstein),in Jungianmyth criticism, and
in the French feministtheoriesdevelopingout of structuralism,post-structuralism,and
Lacanianpsychoanalysis.A recent study of how female connectednessaffects female
moraldevelopmentis CarolGilligan'sIn a Different Voice(Cambridge:HarvardUniv.
Press, 1982).
Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of
Gender (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1978), 7.
"Oedipalasymmetries"is Chodorow'sterm, 7.
Chodorow,178.
MarianneHirsch surveys the importanceof this point in her review essay "Mothersand
Daughters," 209. So, too, does Judith Kegan Gardinerin "On Female Identity and
Writing by Women," Critical Inquiry: Writing and Sexual Difference 8, no. 2
(Winter 1981): 347-61.
Chodorow,188.
These others include: Dorothy Dinnerstein, The Mermaid and the Minotaur: Sexual
Arrangements and the Human Malaise (New York: Harper and Row, 1976); Jessie
Bernard, The Future of Motherhood (New York: Dial Press, 1974); and Jean Baker
Miller, Toward a New Psychology of Women(Boston: Beacon Press, 1976).
This is the real advance of Chodorow'stheories over those of an earlier generation of
feministpsychoanalysts.Karen Homey, for example, found it necessary, as both Juliet
Mitchell and Jane Gallop point out, to resort to generalizingstatements of women's
essential, biologicallydeterminednature, thus leaving no possibilityfor change. Horney, "On the Genesis of the CastrationComplexin Women," International Journal
of Psycho-Analysis, V, 1924: 50-65.
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
25
30. Paris: Editionsde Minuit, 1974.
31. Other French feministsinvolvedin this "femininewriting"are Helene Cixous, Monique
Wittig, JuliaKristeva, and Michele Montrelay.A criticalintroductionto these writers
can be found in Ann RosalindJones, "Writing the Body: Towardan Understanding
of L'Ecriturefeminine," and Helene Vivienne Wenzel's "The Text as Body/Politics:
An Appreciationof MoniqueWittig's Writingsin Context," both in Feminist Studies
7, no. 2 (Summer 1981): 247-87.
32. "Ce sex qui n'en est pas un," trans. ClaudiaReeder, New French Feminisms, ed. Elaine
Marksand Isabellede Courtivron(Amherst:Universityof Mass. Press, 1980), 100-1.
33. Anglo-Americanfeminists have thus been critical of the new french feminists for two
differentreasons:Americanfeministshave criticizedan essentialismthat wouldseem
to precludechange (see, for example,the essay by Jonesreferredto in note 31); British
feministshave criticizedtheir apparentfailureto account for the way the female body
is mediatedby language(see, for example, Beverly Brownand Parveen Adams, "The
Feminine Body and Feminist Politics," m/f, no. 3, (1979): 35-50).
34. Irigaray, 106-7.
35. Rich, Signs 5, no. 4 (Summer 1980): 631-60.
36. Irigaray, 110.
37. Mary Ann Doane, "Womans' Stake: Filmingthe Female Body," October 17 (Summer
1981): 30.
38. Kristeva'swork has been translatedin two volumes: Desire in Language: A Semiotic
Approach to Literature and Art, trans. ThomasGora,Alice Jardine,Leon S. Roudiez
(New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1980); and About Chinese Women, trans.
Anita Barrows(New York: HorizonBooks, 1977).
39. Alice Jardine,"Theoriesof the Feminine:Kristeva" enclitic 4, no. 2 (Fall 1980): 13.
40. Kristeva,"MotherhoodAccordingto GiovanniBellini,"in Desire in Language, 237-70.
41. Jane Gallop, "The Phallic Mother:FreudianAnalysis," in The Daughter's Seduction:
Feminism and Psychoanalysis (Ithaca, New York: CornellUniversity Press, 1982),
113-31.
42. Ann Kaplan emphasisesthis "wrenching"of the filmic point of view away from Stella
and towardsthe upper-classvalues and perspectivesof Stephen and the townspeople.
"The Case of the Missing Mother," 83.
43. Doane, "The Woman's Film: Possessionand Address,"in Re-Vision: Essays in Feminist Film Criticism, 67-82.
44. The term-originally used by Joan Riviere-is employed in Mary Ann Doane, "Film
and the Masquerade:Theorizingthe FemaleSpectator,"Screen 23, no. 34 (Sept/Oct.
1982): 74-87.
45. Ann Kaplan, "The Case of the Missing Mother," 83.
46. Ibid.
47. Molly Haskell notes this tendency of women audiences to come away with a memory
of heroicrevolt, ratherthan the defeat with whichso many films end, in her pioneering
study From Reverence to Rape: The Treatmentof Womenin the Movies (New York:
Holt, Rinehartand Winston, 1973), 31.
48. Modleski, "The Search for Tomorrowin Today's Soap Opera: Notes on a Feminine
NarrativeForm," Film Quarterly 33, no. 1, (Fall 1979): 14. A longer versionof this
article can be found in Modleski'sbook Living with a Vengence: Mass Produced
Fantasiesfor Women(Hamden, Connecticut:Archon Books, 1982): 85-109.
49. Kaplan, "Theories of Melodrama,"46.
50. Doane, "Film and the Masquerade,"87.
51. Mulvey, "Afterthoughtson 'Visual Pleasure and NarrativeCinema' Inspiredby 'Duel
in the Sun' (King Vidor, 1946)," 13.
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Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
52. Doane, 87.
53. Ruby Rich, in Michelle Citron et al., "Women and Film: A Discussion of Feminist
Aesthetics," New German Critique 13 (1978): 87. AlthoughRich goes on to suggest
that this dialectic is an either/or choice-"to identify either with MarilynMonroeor
with the man behindme hittingthe back of my seat with his knees"-I think the more
proper sense of the word wouldbe to construe it as a continuousconflict and tension
that informsfemale viewingand which in many cases does not allowthe choice of one
or the other.
54. Ben Brewster has cited the many cinematic references of the original novel as an
indication of just how effective as an appeal to reality the cinematic illusion has
become. "A Scene at the Movies," Screen 23, no. 2 (July-Aug. 1983): 4-5.
55. Freud'stheory is that the little boy believes in the maternalphalluseven after he knows
better because he has seen evidence that it does not exist has been characterizedby
Octave Manonias a contradictorystatementthat both asserts and denies the mother's
castration.In this "Je sais bien mais quandmeme" (I knowvery well but just the same),
the "just the same" is the fetish disavowal.Manoni, Clefs pour l'imaginaire (Paris:
Seuil, 1969), 9-30. ChristianMetz later appliedthis fetishisticstructureof disavowal
to the institutionof the cinema as the creator of believablefictions of perceptuallyreal
human beings who are nevertheless absent from the scene. Thus the cinema aims all
of its technical prowessat the disavowalof the lack on which its "imaginarysignifier"
is based. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. Celia
Britton, AnnwylWilliams, Ben Brewster,and Alfred Guzzetti,(BloomingtonIndiana:
Indiana University Press, 1982), 69-76.
56. Doane, "Film and the Masquerade,"80-81.
57. Mulvey, "Notes on Sirk and Melodrama,"1 Movie 25 (n.d.): 56.
58. Vicinus, 132.
Cinema Journal 24, No. 1, Fall 1984
27