Legacy of Ibsen's Nora in Cavell's Film Theory
Stanley Cavell’s works Pursuits of Happiness and Contesting Tears define two film genres: remarriage comedy and melodrama of unknown woman. First usually depicts a couple of protagonists that divorce, getting in relationships with strangers and then get back together. Second concentrates around a woman protagonist, who’s relationships with a spouse are hopeless and she goes through the dramatic experience of metamorphosing. Cavell argues that these films, made between 1934 and 1949, have great philosophical, moral, and indeed political significance. Having previously used Emerson to define the concept of genres, these books suggest ways we might want to understand philosophy, literature, and film as preoccupied with features of “moral perfectionism”.
Both genres have the wide range of characteristics; according to Cavell, Nora’s character from A Doll House, a play written by Henrik Ibsen, has both remarriage comedy and melodrama’s traits and suggests that female characters of a number of movies that he analyzes are her descendants.
Remarriage comedy genre can be characterized by following themes: shared past, adventuress, luck to find a “right” man, strong father’s figure, absence of mother and children and following abandonment to “the man world”, divorce, transformation by conversation, becoming created, women’s education, materialization – the new women – the human, unending task of overcoming the villainy in marriage, happiness in marriage, spiritually equal women – progeny of Nora, intimacy of connection between man and woman, examination and transformation of needs, satisfaction of which leads to happiness.
Tragedy of unknown women, on the other side, often develops themes of abandoned women, mother’s authority, the taint of villainy of man, suffering in “the world of men”, marriage as a route to creation, ability to judge the world, authorization of desire, the new creation, negation of marriage, education happens elsewhere, i.e. “a function of something within the melodrama genre… the world of women,” unknown, social scandal and loneliness.
It is important to remember that there is no such thing as “all features” of the genre. All members can add new features and lack old ones, as there is no such thing as “all its features”. “The idea is that the members of a genre share the inheritance of certain conditions, procedures, and subjects and goals of composition and that in primary art each member of such a genre represents a study of these conditions, something I think of as bearing the responsibility of inheritance,” writes Cavell [PH, 28].
Ibsen’s Nora can appear as a precursor of both, women of remarriage comedy and melodrama, because her character and story are uniquely broad, successfully created and explained main traits of both genres. Play’s ending also gives an advantage of viewing heroine as the mother of both genres; she breaks out of suffocating marriage, i.e. divorces her husband and leaving the family to educate herself, but it isn’t quite clear whether she is coming back or if she will find education or better man outside of this setting. Ibsen makes stop at the place that is crucial for Cavell, a place where two genres disperse and build two different faiths for the heroine.
In the beginning of the play Nora seems to be happy, she enjoys her family, but as the play progresses, Nora reveals that she is not just a “silly girl,” as Torvald calls her. That she understands the business details related to the debt she incurred taking out a loan to preserve Torvald’s health indicates that she is intelligent and possesses capacities beyond mere wifehood. Her description of her years of secret labor undertaken to pay off her debt shows her fierce determination and ambition to sacrifice for her family. Krogstad’s blackmail and trauma that follows don’t change Nora’s nature; they open her eyes to her unfulfilled and underappreciated potential and she prepares for a real sacrifice to save husband’s reputation. The final catalyst for Nora’s metamorphose was Torvald’s ugly and selfish reaction to Nora’s help. Seeing him as a protector and keeper, Nora deeply disappoints in her marriage and realizes that she has lived with the stranger. At the end, Nora decides to leave the house, husband, and children, and find herself on her own.
A Doll House and remarriage comedy genre overlap recognized by Cavell within the context of next concepts: “forgiveness, inhabitation, conversation, happiness, playtime, becoming human, fathers and husbands, brother and sister, education, scandal, fitness for teaching, honor, becoming strangers, the miracle of change, and the metaphysics of marriage. The argument of a comedy of remarriage requires, with others, each of these concepts” [PH, 22]. Nora finds herself dishonored, just like many other heroines of remarriage comedies, after she gains understanding that her legal marriage is not comprehensible as marriage. Her education is incomplete, she says: “I believe that I’m first and foremost a human being, like you – or anyway, that I must try to become one.” These conceptions aren’t as obvious or pronounced as in A Doll House but trained viewer always can find them after reading the play.
Cavell describes the genre of remarriage as “undertaking to show how the miracle of change may be brought about and hence life together between a pair seeking divorce become a marriage”. The Philadelphia Story, a movie of 1940, features the main couple, Dexter, and Tracy, who divorce in a very first scene of the movie, that for a moment, creates taint of villainy. Tracy, central female character, is about to marry George Kittredge, a guy, who clearly lacks the ability to give her education, due to the blurriness of his character and lack of understanding. The third guy Mike is immature, he needs to learn a lot himself, as his spouse Elizabeth claimed. But why Dexter is somebody who’s Tracy desires? Cavell explains, that Cary Grant’s protagonist is the powerful and honest figure (at least when it comes to his feelings and attitude toward Hepburn’s character). The writer even suggests that “the magic invoked by the genre seems localized in this figure” [PH, 137]. He is also a figure of paternal authority (that Tracy’s father lacks), his charisma and authoritativeness give him power to “let events happen” [PH, 139], he is the one who knows Tracy and shares with her this knowledge trough conversation that launches the process of transformation. From stone-clod goddess, she develops into “the human being”. She leaves George and Mike only to be with a man who is able to provide education heroine demands. Miracle of change made their marriage possible again.
On the other hand, the melodrama of unknown women features themes of A Doll House as well as remarriage comedy does. After Nora’s secret disclosed, Torvalds’ reaction completely wrecks her world and she left exposed to the ugly reality. She doesn’t see Torvald as a man that can provide her with education, not only because her idea of him is destroyed, but also because she never recognized before (or there wasn’t a chance to recognize) that he isn’t living according to his own standards, but only judging others by those standards, which disclosed his hypocritical nature. Torvald “neither think or talk like the man I could share my life with,” says Nora. Last words of play suggest that miracle should happen for Torvald and Nora to marry again, and by miracle, Nora means great changes, metamorphoses, which suggests that she knows Torvald isn’t a right man for her. “To pass the claim of his legitimacy, he must show that he is not attempting to command but he is able to wish, and consequently to make fool of himself” [PH, 32].
“The power of the drama lies in the feeling of forming of Nora’s moral conscience, her acceptance of unprotected identity, and recognizing the concepts of her newly created and creating consciousness, accordingly, as unanswerable” [PH, 23-24]. This sudden collapse with reality impacts Nora’s decision to divorce her husband similar to Paula from Gaslight. In Nora and Paula’s case metamorphose will happen outside of marriage, as suggested by genre of melodrama. Both Torvald and Gregory negate conversations with their wives, which leads to isolation almost from everyone else around them, highlighting unknown of abandoned women, which often followed by loneliness. These are only a few of many reasons why women of melodrama won’t find themselves (or educate) in what the comedies tech our marriage is.
On the other scale of melodrama, man locates Jeremiah Durrance from Now, Voyager and Stephen Dallas from Stella Dallas. Both protagonists aren’t as cruel as Gregory, who has the obsession and uses Paula merely as means to achieve his goal. Jeremiah and Stephen showing their compassion, love and certain understanding of unknown women they with, they also provide education to the extend. As melodrama male candidates for villainy, they aren’t villain enough. But if they aren’t villains, why marriage doesn’t work? These two films illustrate another kind of male characters, man that don’t have certain knowledge of unknown women and of the world to help heroines find themselves and their place in the world. Mike from The Philadelphia Story somewhat fits this description; Elizabeth’s happiness and outcome of their story depend on whether Mike will or will not learn and become someone who can guide her trough life. Upon this matter, their story will turn into another remarriage comedy or melodrama of another unknown woman. “When I notice that the male’s explicit limitation in Stella is manifested as perceptual incompetence, in one man’s dulled conventionality… and in Now, Voyager as his courteous but advising irrelevance, and in Gaslight old-fashioned, fixated menace” [CT, 198].
Jerry, for instance, teaches Charlotte to love herself and accept who she is, as much as Stephen treats Stella with care and gives her education that she asking for. In both cases, education ends after it reaches certain limits. Another feature of A Doll House resembling is Torvald’s likeness with those two. They all seem to care about their “wives”, but ignoring their desires. They all don’t quite treat their women as equals but rather as a plaything or doll to be teased and admired, also embracing the belief that a man’s role in marriage is to protect and dominate the wife, instead of supporting and guiding her.
Reader hardly can draw the exact conclusion whether Nora’s story is a comedy of remarriage or a melodrama of unknown women; Ibsen ends a play with an open question. All that reader knows for sure is that it will take a miracle for Nora and Torvald to marry again.
