The most dramatic and succinct definition of Dr. Jaquith’s philosophy comes late in the novel, when Charlotte visits the doctor in New York City after she has experienced a recurrence of the symptoms that led to her initial breakdown. The timing of this encounter is quite interesting, for Charlotte fantasizes about calling Jerry before her appointment with Dr. Jaquith, and when she does call Jerry’s office, she discovers that he has just left. Charlotte goes to the train station, hoping for a chance encounter. Jerry does indeed appear, with his family in tow, and Charlotte observes them from a distance; the scene embodies Charlotte’s own perception of herself as a complete outsider to this scene of family life (if not wedded bliss).
How appropriate, then, that when Charlotte meets the doctor—the other man in her life—he challenges her assumptions about family and marriage, in what is one of the most remarkable feminist statements in the novel: “You say you’ll never marry, therefore will never have a home of your own, a child of your own, or a man of your own. Good Lord! What are you going to do with all that money of yours? Why, you can have a home of your own, which all your brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews, and friends, and friends’ friends will flock to in hordes, if you want to. No man is necessary for that in your case” (198). Dr. Jaquith continues to enumerate the ways in which a man is just not necessary in Charlotte’s life. But, he says, “some satisfactory substitute” must be found for the single woman’s “sex instinct” (198). Charlotte contemptuously refers to “sublimation” as repulsive, as “something false and artificial instead of the real thing” (198). For Dr. Jaquith, such an assumption about sublimation is as ridiculous as Charlotte’s notions about the importance of a man in her life, and he proceeds to tell her that he actually prefers his single life, and his attendant devotion to his work. To follow the novel’s own conclusion, the stars are not necessarily a (poor) substitute for the moon; they may well be desirable in their own right.
It is tempting, perhaps, to dismiss Dr. Jaquith and his sound, proto-feminist advice, as pure fantasy. Here it is useful to look at the connection between the novel and the life of its author. Autobiography may only go so far in “explaining” a novel, but in the case of Dr. Jaquith and Cascade, there is a direct correlation between Olive Higgins Prouty’s experiences and those of Charlotte. Prouty gave birth to four children, two of whom died at young ages, and eventually, in the late 1920s, Prouty had what she herself calls a “nervous breakdown,” her second (as a young child she was also diagnosed as having had a “nervous breakdown”). As she describes in her memoir, Pencil Shavings, Prouty spent time at an institution similar to Cascade, under the care of a psychiatrist, Dr. Riggs, who evokes Dr. Jaquith.
Interestingly, Prouty had to contend with the conflicting opinions of two psychiatrists. One, recommended by her family doctor, insisted that the cause of the “breakdown” was the deaths of the two children at very young ages (even though, as Prouty herself pointed out, nearly two years had passed since the death of the second child when she had her breakdown [179]). This psychiatrist advised Prouty to regard her writing as a pastime, and suggested that she stop writing for a period of time (180). In other words, this man’s solution for Prouty confirms the worst stereotypes of psychiatric care: be a wife and a mother, not a writer.
In contrast, Dr. Riggs told Prouty to get back into writing immediately, and to find the proverbial “room of her own”—a rented room away from the family home where she could write five days a week, three or four hours a day (181). Now it will come as no surprise that a psychiatrist in early twentieth-century America would downplay Prouty’s writing career for the sake of what was presumably her first responsibility, her home. What is surprising is the advice of Dr. Riggs—not to mention the fact that despite her feelings of guilt about her writing, Prouty took his advice. After describing a number of the rooms in which she pursued her writing, from a hotel room to a clubhouse to a beachside inn, Prouty says that after an hour or so, “there would steal over me that feeling of detachment from my own personality and my own problems, so conducive to writing about another’s personality and problems” (183).
This description of the connections between physical separation, solitude, detachment, and the process of writing, also seems an appropriate description of Charlotte Vale. Of course Charlotte does not become a writer, but she becomes a thoughtful observer of her own life and of those around her. Charlotte’s growing awareness offers a deeply moving portrait of a woman who experiences the various ramifications of socially acceptable femininity from a critical vantage point. Charlotte is defined by her developing perception of the world, by how she “reads” the life going on within and around her. Early in the novel, after her first encounter with Jerry, Charlotte sits at her dressing table and looks at her profile as it is reflected in another mirror across the room: “The profile was looking away from her, which gave her the odd sensation of gazing at someone else. So that was how she looked! For years she had avoided all such painful speculation and shunned mirrors” (13-14). In looking at herself, Charlotte may well see the transformed woman she has become, but Charlotte’s gaze never detaches completely from that sense of stealthy observation that comes from years of watching others. Charlotte is always conscious of herself as playing a part, trying hard to do what she has observed others doing. This is a strategy of fitting in, but it is also a way of calling attention to the fact that appropriately feminine, social behavior is indeed a part one learns to play. Gradually, as per Dr. Jaquith’s instructions, Charlotte not only “performs,” but becomes the stage manager of her own life (late in the novel Dr. Jaquith tells her the she is the stage manager, and he has been the director—and is now the ex-director [197]).
Charlotte is an avid reader. (One of the symptoms of her first nervous breakdown was a lack of interest in reading). When Charlotte hears a knock on her stateroom door on board the ship, we are told that her knowledge of knocks “was confined to the stage, the screen, and the written page” (74). This provides the occasion for a description of Charlotte’s reading habits, which are sophisticated and far-ranging (Flaubert, Boccacio, Bertrand Russell, and Havelock Ellis). But Charlotte’s readerly activities are not always indicative of the gap between handson, experiential knowledge and “book” knowledge. When she awakens after the night spent with Jerry, aware of what a new experience this is for her (while it is obvious that Charlotte and Jerry are lovers, sexual encounters are never directly presented in the novel), we are told: “She lay perfectly still, keenly aware of all the details, but, oddly enough, unamazed, unperturbed, as calmly curious as if she were lying in bed at home reading of this situation in a novel” (94). As with looks and performances, Charlotte’s voracious reading comes to represent not her exclusion from the world, but rather her unique perspective on it as she becomes the narrator of her own life. Indeed, throughout the novel, what is most striking about Charlotte’s journey is her desire—her sexual desire, certainly, but also to tell her story, to see herself clearly, to observe herself and the world around her. Yes, love and romance are catalysts, but ultimately it is Charlotte’s story, and hers alone, that is central.
While Charlotte’s independence and autonomy are remarkable, this is not to say that there are no limitations to this view of liberation. Charlotte is wealthy, a child of privilege, and if both Leslie Trotter and Jerry Durrance are seen as her class inferiors, it is worth pointing out that they are middle class; only in an aristocratic context could they be seen as social pariahs. The risk of making Charlotte’s developing consciousness the center of the novel is that the world created in Now, Voyager is ultimately a very insular one—wealthy and white. Charlotte’s dealings are largely with the members of her family or those of her social class, and during the ship voyage, “locals” are for the most part either invisible or supposedly comic ethnic clichés, like the chauffeur who leaves Charlotte and Jerry stranded in a wrecked car. There is the odd reference to the gathering crisis in Europe (the novel was first published in
1941, and appears to be set just a few years earlier), but these references are peculiar and few and far between. One, which appears in the hardcover edition, when Charlotte and Jerry talk with two Germans in Italy (“Nazis they called themselves” [151]), is excised in the pulp edition.
Because of this insularity, the few occasions when Charlotte does take notice of those who are not a part of her world are notable but fleeting. Yet there is one figure of another class who does function more centrally, and that is Dora Pickford, the nurse hired to take care of Mrs. Vale in Charlotte’s absence. Dora has a quick wit and she treats Mrs. Vale as a specimen she knows all too well. Charlotte comes to respect and admire Dora, and at one point sees her as a model worth emulating: “The family never had seen anyone quite like Dora before. She treated them as if they and she were on exactly the same level. It didn’t seem to occur to Dora that there was any reason for her to feel inferior to anybody in the world. Her good-humor flowed out unobstructed by envy or self-consciousness. To Charlotte Dora was a living example of the kind of nature which Doctor Jaquith had been holding up to her as a desirable pattern” (149). This mention of Dora may well be yet another manifestation of class privilege (an aristocrat’s bemused observation of a competent professional who doesn’t know she is a social inferior).
On the one hand, appearances of women from other social classes are very brief, and thus they could be seen merely as contrasts that serve ultimately to accentuate the world of privilege of the novel. But on the other hand, the fact that these women appear at all in the novel allows—however briefly—a sense of another world beyond the Vale universe. If I find Dora a magnificent character, it is perhaps largely because she was played in the film by one of the great character actresses in Hollywood, Mary Wickes, in the kind of role for which she was well known—the smart, sassy, “homely” (by Hollywood standards) sidekick, truth-teller, best friend, or school principal. My admiration for Mary Wickes and Dora notwithstanding, I came to the reading of Prouty’s novel through the film adaptation, but this does not mean (to follow a tired cliché) that “the novel (or the film, for that matter) is better.” The morphing of Dora and Mary Wickes may well be a function of the film adaptation, but it may well also be the case that Prouty’s novel and the Hollywood “woman’s film” provide an opportunity to read across media in productive and interesting ways. As I’ve noted, those familiar with the film will perhaps be surprised at how much dialogue was lifted directly from the novel. Although the narrative structure of the novel and the film are different, and there are some other significant changes (Jerry’s business failures and his mental breakdown are erased from the film; the class differences between Charlotte and Jerry are downplayed; the cruise is set in Latin America and not in Europe, which was by then at war), in general, the film follows the novel very closely.
Prouty’s best-known novels, Now, Voyager and Stella Dallas, are those that were adapted to the screen. Prouty was suspicious of adaptation, as are many writers, but she also objected to any kind of publicity, perhaps fearing it might jeopardize the delicate balance she attempted to maintain between work and home. Prouty’s professional writing career began with short stories published in American Magazine, and her first novel, Bobbie, General Manager (1913), was based on a collection of those stories. The publisher planned lavish publicity, including the appearance of the name of the author and the novel in electric lights in New York City. Prouty objected to the tactic. Yet her greatest difficulty was with the many adaptations that were made of her 1923 novel, Stella Dallas (which was serialized in American Magazine). First the novel became a stage play, in which Prouty was actively and not particularly happily involved; then, a silent film, which she disliked, then a sound film (starring Barbara Stanwyck), which she also disliked. Finally, without her permission or her knowledge, the novel became a radio soap opera, and eventually a “sequel” was created for the radio, which she did not write and which she detested. Prouty would have undoubtedly disliked the 1990 adaptation, Stella, starring Bette Midler.
Warner Brothers bought the movie rights to Now, Voyager within a month of its publication (Allen 17–18). Prouty was far more satisfied with the adaptation of Now, Voyager than with the various adaptations of Stella Dallas some years before, though she still declined the offer to go to Hollywood for the premier of the film. Prouty had proposed some of her own ideas as to how the novel should be adapted to the screen, including the use of silent, black-and-white scenes for the flashbacks and Technicolor for the present-tense scenes: “The action of the talking picture would pause, the scene would fade, and Charlotte’s memory would be portrayed by a silent picture scene” (cited in Behlmer 166). Producer Hal Wallis said that Prouty’s suggestions gave him “visions of the entire audience moving quite rapidly into the street” (104). The adaptation was assigned to Casey Robinson and Prouty was invited to comment on his script. Prouty describes covering all available space on the script with comments and suggestions. While most of her suggestions were unheeded, she recalls, in her autobiography, was particularly satisfied with how she aided the portrayal of Claude Rains as Dr. Jacquith, and she noted that the character of Tina “coincided with my conception of the character” (Prouty 198).
An odd detail is singled out by Prouty for particular mention as a violation of her novel. The film opens with exterior shots of the Vale home, and we see the name “Vale” on a brass plaque. About this detail, Prouty said: “No such residence with pillars exists on Marlboro Street in Boston, and names on brass plaques are confined chiefly to doctors” (198). Much to her disappointment, the brass plaque remained in the film. This seems a silly detail, but it speaks to the dislike and distrust Prouty had, not only of the “adaptation” of her novels to other media, but also, and perhaps especially, to their popularization. In upper-class society, everyone would have known who the Vales were; there would be no need for such a vulgar display as a name plate. That this is such a small detail—merely a pragmatic device to announce the Vale name to the viewer—is precisely the point; Prouty was suspicious of anything that suggested her work was being “popularized.” Prouty’s anger at the vulgar display of the brass name plate in the film suggests her own snobbery, her annoyance at those so unfamiliar with the world of privilege that they require bold announcements that would never be tolerated among the wealthy. Prouty’s snobbery is further suggested by her description of the sales of Now, Voyager as respectable (though not as strong as for her previous novel, Lisa Vale), until she realized that more than half of the copies sold were the Dell edition—“those paper-covered books sold in drugstores and railroad stations at 25 cents a copy” (199). “No wonder my sails hung limp,” she concludes. This is a curious paradox; Prouty was a bestselling novelist, yet she objects to the popularizing of her work in any form.
However closely the film follows the novel, what the film version brings to the novel is Bette Davis’s incarnation of Charlotte Vale. The film retains the emphasis on Charlotte’s transformation. Paul Henreid, as Jerry, is a romantic lead, but there is no question but that this is Charlotte’s—and Bette Davis’s—film. Our first view of Davis in the film is as a pre-transformation Charlotte, and thus the film engages the spectator in a before and after game, where the heroine not only becomes beautiful, but becomes Bette Davis. The question of beauty is a bit complicated in the film by Davis’s screen persona, for she was never considered a “typical” Hollywood glamour queen. In other words, Davis brought a certain authenticity to the role, emphasized by the parallels between the actress and the character of Charlotte Vale. Producer Hal Wallis noted in his autobiography that “she had been an awkward, shy girl who broke free of a dominating mother and a strait-laced background to become an attractive and appealing woman” (104). In a more general sense, the complex and multifaceted star image of Bette Davis, as constructed through publicity, fan magazines, and biographies, inflects the character of Charlotte Vale. If Bette Davis “is” Charlotte Vale, the connection is created not only through perf
ormance but through the pre-existing star image.
Charlotte’s voyage of self-discovery in the film is shaped by Bette Davis’s reputation as an independent star and an unconventional woman (see Mayne 1993, chapter 6). Now, Voyager is a classic in feminist film studies, and feminist discussions of the film have examined the ways in which female stars can be seen as “authors” of their own images, the capacity for the “woman’s picture” to suggest feminist possibilities, and the various means by which Hollywood cinema speaks to women’s desires in contradictory ways.1 Lea Jacobs speaks eloquently to the appeal of the film for feminist audiences: “Tina, the stars, they all serve as replacements for the man, yet the fact remains that Charlotte refuses the man. In a gloriously perverse gesture the narrative does not bring Charlotte’s desire to fruition and an even more perverse sub-text would lead one to suspect that she likes it that way” (103). At the same time, Bette Davis’s star image, and in particular her activities on behalf of the war effort, can work to deemphasize the themes of autonomy in the film. The film is as removed from the context of World War II as the novel is, but Bette Davis’s activities on behalf of the war effort at the time of the release of Now, Voyager can be seen to underscore the theme of self-sacrifice expected from women at the time. Erin Meyers notes that Davis sponsored a contest for readers of the fan magazine Photoplay-Movie Mirror in which they were asked to submit stories about the sacrifices women make during the war. The winning responses were published in the November 1942 issue, accompanied by a photograph of Davis that appears to be from Now, Voyager. The story contest served as publicity for the film, and “recuperates Davis’s independent woman image into standard modes of femininity” (12).
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