Cognition, Emotion, and Identity from Novel to Film

ADAPTING AFFECT:

COGNITION, EMOTION, AND IDENTITY FROM NOVEL TO FILM

Shu Feng

APPROVED BY SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

______Adrienne L. McLean, Chair

______Pamela Gossin

______Patricia Michaelson

______Shilyh Warren

Shu Feng

To Haris

ADAPTING AFFECT:

COGNITION, EMOTION, AND IDENTITY FROM NOVEL TO FILM

SHU FENG, BA, MA

DISSERTATION

Presented to the Faculty of

The University of Texas at Dallas

in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN

HUMANITIES–STUDIES IN LITERATURE

THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT DALLAS

May 2018

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Working on this project the past few years has been a blessing. I have enjoyed the time as well as the writing process because of the great people I have met in my life. My whole idea for this dissertation originated in the courses that I took as a graduate student in the School of Arts and

Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas. The interdisciplinary approach of the PhD program allowed me to experience an eye-opening learning opportunity for the past six years and to work with some of the best minds in the school. I am listing their names here in alphabetical order simply to express my gratitude for their inspiration, support, and mentorship: Professors

John Gooch, Pamela Gossin, Pia Jakobsson, Patricia Michaelson, Rainer Schulte, Shilyh Warren, and Michael Wilson. But, I want to give my special thanks to my Chair, Dr. Adrienne L.

McLean. It has been a great privilege to work with her; she has continuously offered me her scholarship, full support, and deep understanding. Her encouragement and guidance have made this project possible; her sense of humor has led me through the dark days in the writing process.

It is from the bottom of my heart that I wish to say that one could not dream for a better mentor.

Last but not least, I am indebted to my family. As a mother, I am indebted to my son Haris; as a wife, I am indebted to my husband Hassan; as a daughter, I am indebted to my parents who supported me throughout these years, during the days and nights, helping me take care of my child. It is your unconditional love and acceptance that motivated me to accomplish what seemed impossible. My award belongs to all these wonderful human beings.

March 2018

ADAPTING AFFECT:

COGNITION, EMOTION, AND IDENTITY FROM NOVEL TO FILM

Shu Feng, PhD The University of Texas at Dallas, 2018

ABSTRACT

Supervising Professor: Adrienne L. McLean

Affect and emotion are modes of human communication that help us convey and receive meaning. Literature and film are two of the essential art forms that allow such communication as each medium is composed of formal choices and possibilities that express, evoke, and negotiate emotions that appeal to the cognitive and affective faculties of the human mind, body, and brain.

One of the greatest capacities of film is its ability to adapt other media, but the relationship between film and literature has been ambivalent and confrontational as well as mutually enriching.

Each medium has unique conventions and possibilities, and yet both are able to create and manage deeply affective experiences. My study aims to show the practical potential of affect and cognitive theory in their application to literary and film studies—in particular, how a study of adaptation from novels to film via affect helps to shift the debate away from adaptation studies’ usual concerns with originality and fidelity, style, and narration by refocusing on the formal construction and power of art works in their unique capacities to engage our feeling brains and aesthetic minds.

By bridging science and the humanities, this project adapts key ideas from related fields such as biology, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology in conjunction with traditional theories from and studies in the humanities. By joining the on-going conversations exploring the approaches we take when evaluating the relationship between literature and film, I expect to inform our understanding of how scientific research on emotion and affect can shine light on and provide a valuable framework for rethinking issues of adaptation from literature to film.

Through comparative discussion and evaluation of five nineteenth-century British novels—

Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818), Jane Eyre (1847), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde (1886), and Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1892)—and their selected film adaptations, I investigate how films manage a translation of affect by exploring the full potential of cinematic techniques that are inspired by original literary sources. In the final chapter of my project, I inquire into how my proposed framework might spark interest in studying other forms of adaptation such as the biopic. I use Ron Howard’s film A Beautiful Mind (2001)—an adaptation of the biography A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar 1998)—as a case study. I conclude that an interdisciplinary approach is key to investigating the core factors in each art form (literature and film) that shape our narrative reading and viewing as well as how such aesthetic experiences might, in turn, affect our understanding of the self and our relationship with others, socially, culturally, and historically.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………………v

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………….vi

LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………………………………. ix

INTRODUCTION. READING, WATCHING, AND FEELING: NEUROSCIENCE AND AESTHETICS IN LITERATURE AND FILM…………………………………………………1

CHAPTER 1. MIND-READING AND AFFECTIVITY IN JANE AUSTEN’S EMMA AND PERSUASION……………………………………………………………………………………44

CHAPTER 2. REFRAMING AUSTEN’S HEROINES FROM NOVEL TO SCREEN……….77

CHAPTER 3. AFFECTIVE SENSE-MAKING: JANE EYRE AND ITS ADAPTATIONS….124

CHAPTER 4. TRANSFORMING THE MONSTROUS HUMAN INVENTION: DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ACROSS TIME……………………………………………………………...172

CHAPTER 5. AFFECTIVE NARRATIVITY AND THE AESTHETIC ON THE PAGE AND ON THE SCREEN: TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES………………………………….….…228

CHAPTER 6. BEYOND LITERATURE: COGNITION, EMOTION, AND IDENTITY IN THE BIOPIC………………………………………………………………………………………....288

WORKS CITED ...... ……………………………………………………….318

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………...332

CURRICULUM VITAE

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1. (left) Cher coming out the shopping mall looking excited; (right) Cher partying with her friends and having fun. Clueless, directed by Amy Heckerling (Paramount Pictures, 1995; DVD frame enlargement)………………………………………………………………………………83

Fig. 2. (left) Image of surprise, in John Sudol Acting Face to Face 2: How to Create Genuine Emotion for TV and Film (2015); (right) Cher and her classmates looking surprised when seeing their grades changed. Clueless, directed by Amy Heckerling (Paramount Pictures, 1995; DVD frame enlargement)………………………………………………………………………………84

Fig. 4. (left) Cher’s father looking at her grade report; (right) Cher and her father hugging each other and feeling excited for Cher’s persuasion skills…………………………………………...87

Fig. 5. (left) Travis looking embarrassed due to Tai’s rude remarks; (right) Cher looking confused when seeing Tai’s change of attitude and behavior……………………………………89

Fig. 7. (left) Cher looking troubled by her deep thoughts while walking about on the street; (right) Cher looking enlightened when realizing her love for Josh………………………91

Fig. 8. (left) Cher taking out her expensive sports gear for donation; (right) Cher volunteering as a staff member for the disaster relief program at school……………………………….………..92

Fig. 9. (left) Emma as well as other guests at the wedding looking excited for the happy occasion; (right) Emma looking sad when hugging her best friend and mentor—the bride Mrs. Weston…………………………………………………………………………………………...93

Fig. 10. (left) Emma looking sad when remembering her old days with Miss. Taylor at Hartfield; (right) Emma in high spirit when seeing an unexpected visitor—Mr. Knightley…… 94

Fig. 14. (left and right) Flashbacks showing Harriet reflecting back what she was doing when visiting the poor family with Emma……………………………………………………………100

Fig. 15. (left) Emma writing in her diary to reveal her true emotions towards Knightley; (right) Emma praying in the church looking concerned about her future with Knightley………………………………………………………………………………………..101

Fig. 17. (left) Anne looking at an old love letter from Wentworth; (right) Anne looking depressed when losing and leaving her family home……………………………………………………..107

Fig. 18. (left) Anne looking surprised when meeting Wentworth for the first time since she broke the engagement; (right) Anne’s right hand fingers grabbing the chair behind her to remain strong in front of him………………………………………………………………………………….108

Fig. 19. (left) Hinds’s version of Frederick Wentworth; (right) A visit to Lyme………………110

Fig. 20. (left) Anne pretending not looking at Wentworth when he is the only person on her mind at the moment; (right) Anne looking at him secretly while he is writing her a letter secretly…111

Fig. 21. (left) Anne looking hopeless when discussing her opinion of love with Harville; (right) Wentworth seemingly moved by Anne’s talk………………………………...112

Fig. 22. (left) Wentworth’s hand signaling Anne about the hidden letter; (right) Wentworth looking worried when anticipating Anne’s response to his confession letter…………………..113

Fig. 24. (left) Anne looking through the window of the ship at the sea; (right) The newlyweds looking satisfied and happy for their life journey together ahead……………………………...115

Fig. 27. (left) Anne looking calm at Wentworth when meeting him at Mary’s; (right) The crying Anne dropping her tear on her diary while the voice-over narration tells viewers what she is writing about…………………………………………………………………………………....119

Fig. 28. (left) Anne bursting into tears when assuming Wentworth is marrying Louisa; (right) Penry-Jones’s Wentworth looking glamorous………………………….………120

Fig. 29. (left) Anne running through the town to find Wentworth; (right) The brave Anne ready to kiss her fiancée passionately…………………………………………………………...…….121

Fig. 30. (left) Anne writing her diary again while a voice-over narrator telling viewers what she is writing; (right) Hawkins looking directly at the camera to show Anne’s happiness………...122

Fig. 32. (left) The Reeds’s children bullying the child Jane; (right) Jane looking frightened in the red room. Jane Eyre, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Miramax Films, 1996; DVD frame enlargement)……………...... ………………………………………….149

Fig. 33. (left) Mr. Brocklehurst looking shocked by the child Jane’s remarks; (right) Jane looking fierce when answering Mr. Brocklehurst’s question...... 150

Fig. 34. (left) Jane telling Mrs. Reed that she is not deceitful; (right) Mrs. Reed being speechless when Jane delivers her last remarks on her childhood at the Reeds...... 151

Fig. 35. (left) Mr. Brocklehurst humiliating Jane in front of her peers at Lowood; (right) Jane holding pride to herself...... 152

Fig. 36. (left) Jane picking out a piece of ice from the frozen water; (right) Miss Scatcherd punishing Helen in front of fellow children at the orphan school…………………………..….153

Fig. 37. (left) Jane looking painful in reaction to Helen’s punishment; (right) Helen looking emotionless when Miss Scatcherd whipping her hands…………………………………..…....154

Fig. 38. (left) Helen siting peacefully next to the window while Jane paints her portrait; (right) Mr. Brocklehurst checks with Miss Scatcherd about Helen………………………………..….155

Fig. 39. (left) Jane arguing against Mr. Brocklehurst’s humiliating remarks on Helen; (right) The girls protesting against their punishment with silent gestures…………………………………155

Fig. 40. (left) Jane meeting Bertha for the first time in her wedding dress; (right) Bertha looking frightened trying to hide herself from the strangers…………………………………………...156

Fig. 41. (left) Image of an insane woman, in Charles Darwin The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872); (right) Maria Schneider as the mad woman Bertha in Zeffirelli’s film……………………………………………………………………………………………...157

Fig. 42. (left) Jane pulling back her veil to clear her sight and thoughts on her mind; (right) Jane changing her outfit and coming out of her room in full black gowns………………………….158

Fig. 43. (left) Poole falling on the floor and lying dead; (right) Bertha jumping off the stairs and committing suicide……………………………………………………………………………...159

Fig. 44. (left) Rochester in deep sorrow for the loss of lives—Poole and Bertha; (right) Image of sorrow and grief, in Charles Darwin The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)…………………………………………………………………………………………...160

Fig. 45. (left) The adult Jane wandering and navigating the moors; (right) Jane lying on the ground sobbing. Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga (Focus Features, 2011; DVD frame enlargement)……………………………………………………………………………………161

Fig. 46. (left) John holding a sward searching for the child Jane; (right) Jane hiding herself from John standing behind the curtain holding a book tightly towards her chest……………………162

Fig. 47. (left) John showing that he is about to attack Jane with the book; (right) Jane turning her head to the right while keeping her eyes on John and her hands in front of her face to protect herself…………………………………………………………………………………….……..163

Fig. 48. (left) Jane staring back at John after his attack on her head; (right) Jane beating John up on the floor for revenge…………………………………………………………………………163

Fig. 49. (left) An extreme close-up of the child Jane’s neck while getting punished at the orphan school; (right) The adult Jane looking calm while recounting her childhood traumatic experience………………………………………………………………………………………164

Fig. 50. (left) Mr. Rochester interviewing Jane—the new governess of his daughter; (right) Jane calmly replying his questions…………………………………………………………………..166

xii

Fig. 51. (left and right) Two medium close-ups capturing and highlighting Wasikowska’s and Fassbender’s subtle performances in portraying the characters roles they play…………….….167

Fig. 52. (left) Jane looking further away through the door while reflecting upon her newly developed relationship with Rochester; (right) Jane smiling shyly to depict her inner happiness…………………………………………………………………………………….…168

Fig. 53. (left) Fairfax warning Jane about her marriage with Rochester; (right) Jane walking down a path reflecting upon what Mrs. Fairfax’s advice………………………………………169

Fig. 54. (left) Jane meets Bertha for the first time; (right) Jane breaking the laces on the back of her wedding dress trying to take it down as soon as she could…………………………………169

Fig. 55. (left) Jane finding Rochester sitting alone at the tree with his loyal pet dog; (right) Jane holding Rochester’s hands with a promise of future life together……………………………...170

Fig. 56. (left) Jekyll playing Bach’s Toccata on the keyboard; (right) Jekyll’s shadow on the music notes. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Rouben Mamoulian (Paramount Pictures, 1931; DVD frame enlargement)………………………………………………………………..195

Fig. 57. (left) Jekyll dressed in all black looking at his reflection in the mirror; (right) Jekyll giving his theory on the duality of human nature in the lecture hall…………………………...196

Fig. 58. (left) A human skeleton in Jekyll’s lab; (right) Jekyll holding the potion while looking at the skeleton……………………………………………………………………………………..197

Fig. 59. (left) Jekyll staring at the drinking glass; (right) Jekyll hesitates while searching for courage in his own reflection in the mirror…………………………………………………….198

Fig. 60. (left) Image of fear, in John Sudol Acting Face to Face 2: How to Create Genuine Emotion for TV and Film (2015); (right) Jekyll’s fearful facial expression after taking the potion. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Rouben Mamoulian (Paramount Pictures, 1931)………199

Fig. 61. (left) Hyde checking his own reflection in the mirror and crying “Free at last!”; (right) Jekyll looking towards the door of his lab with a serious facial expression……………201

Fig. 62. (left) Ivy looking terrified by Hyde’s appearance; (right) Ivy looking desperate while singing songs for Hyde…………………………………………………………………………202

Fig. 63. (left) Hyde holding the glass of potion before drinking it in front of Lanyon; (right) Lanyon looking astonished by the transformation from Hyde to Jekyll………………..203

Fig. 64. (left) Emotion of anger in Sudol’s book; (right) March’s performance in showing Jekyll’s anger towards himself…………………………………………………………………204

xiii

Fig. 65. (left) A split-screen shot showing the emotion and motion of each female character; (right) Jekyll repents for his damned life………………………………………………………205

Fig. 66. (left) Jekyll looking desperate when confronted by Lanyon; (right) Hyde in pain and agony before his life ends………………………………………………………………………205

Fig. 67. (left) An establishing shot of the church tower; (right) the inner design of the church building with the bishop giving a sermon. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Victor Fleming (MGM, 1941; DVD frame enlargement)……………………………………………………….206

Fig. 68. (left) Jekyll turning his head to check out the man who interrupts the sermon; (right) Sam Higgins challenging Jekyll on his view of good vs. evil in human nature………………..207

Fig. 69. (left) Ivy (Ingrid Bergman) getting emotional when seeing Jekyll is leaving after they have kissed; (right) Jekyll seemingly moved by Ivy’s reaction………………………………..209

Fig. 70. (left) Beatrix Emery (Lana Turner) waking up from a nightmare that Jekyll might be in danger; (right) Hyde’s first appearance after the transformation………………………………210

Fig. 71. (left) Hyde offering help to Ivy after she gets fired; (right) Hyde torturing Ivy after making her sing…………………………………………………………………………………211

Fig. 72. (left) Ivy’s face when thinking of Dr. Jekyll’s letter as one of Hyde’s tricks to test her loyalty; (right) Ivy meeting Dr. Jekyll in a formal setting for the first time……………………212

Fig. 73. (left) Ivy celebrates her freedom when thinking Hyde is gone forever; (right) Ivy in deep despair when hearing Hyde repeating her conversation with Jekyll……………………………213

Fig. 74. (left) Dr. Warfield and people in the conference room reacting to the explosion caused by Professor Kelp’s failed experiment; (right) Kelp lying beneath the classroom door that is destroyed in the explosion. The Nutty Professor, directed by Jerry Lewis (Paramount Pictures, 1963; DVD frame enlargement)………………………………………………………………..215

Fig. 75. (left) Dr. Warfield yelling at Kelp; (right) Kelp lying among chemical bottles on the shelf…………………………………………………………………………………………….216

Fig. 76. (left) A hairy hand of Kelp after the first stage of the transformation; (right) The full look of Kelp after the first stage of the transformation………………………………………..217

Fig. 77. (left) Buddy Love making his entrance to the club; (right) Stella Purdy (Stella Stevens) looking astonished by Buddy Love’s appearance……………………………………………..218

Fig. 78. (left) Kelp’s voice reverting back to Buddy Love’s when the chemical wears off in front of the class; (right) Buddy Love’s voice reverting back to Kelp’s in front of audiences……..219

xiv

Fig. 79. (left) Klump’s oversized upper body; (right) Klump’s oversized pants hanging on the closet door. The Nutty Professor, directed by Tom Shadyac (Imagine Entertainment, 1996; DVD frame enlargements)…………………………………………………………………………...220

Fig. 80. (left) Klump’s oversized belly erasing his previously written notes as he moves; (right) Klump staring at candy in the hidden layer of the drawer……………………………..221

Fig. 81. (left) Klump lifting Snickers in the gym; (right) Klump in an acupuncture therapy session………………………………………………………………………………………….222

Fig. 82. (left) Klump suffocating and drowning Carla in the sand at the beach in his nightmare; (right) Klump’s enlarged face looking at Carla from outside her apartment………………….223

Fig. 83. (left) A bird’s eye view of Klump lying on the floor of the lab after the transformation; (right) Buddy Love’s left hand grabbing the lab counter as he rises from the floor…………..224

Fig. 84. (left) Buddy fighting hard to stop himself transforming back to Klump; (right) Klump’s parents looking astonished by the transformation scene……………………………………….225

Fig. 85. (left) Mr. Durbeyfield showing his chin to the Parson; (right) Mr. Durbeyfield as a “gentleman” gesturing to the bartender and willing to pay for the table. Tess, directed by Roman Polanski (Columbia Pictures, 1979; DVD frame enlargement)……………………………….261 . Fig. 86. (left) Alec feeding Tess a strawberry by hand; (right) Alec watching Tess eating lunch……………………………………………………………………………………………262

Fig. 87. (left) Alec and Tess “enjoying” boating on a sunny day; (right) Tess in anguish while posing for Alec……………………………………………………………………………..…..264

Fig. 88. (left) Tess staring at the door; (right) Tess covering her ears to block Alec’s voice.....265

Fig. 89. (left) Tess working in the field with farmers from her village; (right) Tess holding her baby walking on the field on her way home……………………....…………………………...266

Fig. 90. (left) Tess writing Angel her confession letter; (right) Tess destroying the letter…….268

Fig. 91. (left) Tess in shame telling Angel about her past with Alec; (right) Angel sitting in the back saying nothing…………………………………………………….……………………....269

Fig. 92. (left) Angel is back to get his wife; (right) Tess refusing to go with him and telling him “it’s too late,” repeatedly……………………………………………….………………………270

Fig. 93. (left) The landlady peeping through the keyhole of her master’s chamber; (right) The landlady staring at the red spot on the ceiling……………………………………………….…272

Fig. 94. (left) The landlady looking shocked when discovering the blood on the ceiling; (right) The blood stain on the edge of Tess’s clothes…………………………….……273

Fig. 96. (left) Image of a sad face, in John Sudol Acting Face to Face 2: How to Create Genuine Emotion for TV and Film (2015); (middle) Tess’s sad face; (right) Abraham’s sad face……...276

Fig. 97. (left) Alec biting into the strawberry in a flirty look; (right) The d’Urbervilles discussing about Tess’s beauty……………………………………………………………………………..276

Fig. 98. (left) Tess looking desperate holding her dying son in her arms; (middle) Tess’s son dies; (right) Tess looking distressed with sorrow in her eyes……………………………………..…278

Fig. 100. (left) Tess crying like a baby in front of her mother; (right) Tess staying strong working in the harsh condition on the field……………………………………………………………...281

Fig. 101. (left) Alec looking satisfied with his tricks on Tess; (right) Tess in anguish writing her husband another letter…………………………………………………………………………..282

Fig. 102. (left) Alec looking desperate in offering “help” while Tess rejecting it with anguish and disgust; (right) Tess writing her final letter to Angel…………………………………………..283

Fig. 103. (left) Alec making fun of Tess’s “unrealistic” loyalty to her “husband”; (right) Tess in shock when knowing Alex has been lying all along about his true identity…………………...284

Fig. 104. (left) Tess grabbing the dining knife out of desperation; (right) Alec lying dead on the floor……………………………………………………………………………………………..285

Fig. 106. (left) Nash playing with a crystal glass and looking amazed by the shape and pattern it creates on the lemon slices under the sun; (right) A 3-D projected image of the sunbeam mixed with shapes of moon and stars that matches the print on the tie……………………………….298

xvi

Fig. 107. (left) Nash drawing on the window pane to divide the team players who are playing rugby downstairs; (right) Nash overwhelmed by the large amount of information he found in “decoding the Soviet code”………………………………………………………………..…...301

Fig. 108. (left and right) Film visually showing Nash’s strategy while he verbally explaining how to get the girls for the night……………………………………………………………..……...303

Fig. 109. (left and right) Nash sitting in his dorm in front of the window working on his dissertation………………………..……………………………………………………...……..305

Fig. 110. (left) Dr. Rosen disclosing Nash’s condition to Alicia; (right) Alicia confronting her husband about his disease……………………………………………………………………....307

Fig. 111. (left) Nash going through the insulin treatment; (right) Alicia supporting her husband by showing her gestures………………………………………………………………...……....308

Fig. 112. (left) Nash passing out during the treatment; (right) Alicia turning back and feeling painful to watch the full procedure……………………………………………………….…….309

Fig. 113. (left) Nash tutoring students in the library at Princeton; (right) Nash receiving honor— the pen ceremony—from his fellow faculty members...... 311

Fig. 114. (left) Nash kissing the same handkerchief that Alicia gave him on their first date; (right) Alicia responding with hands crossing in a heart shape placing on her heart…….313

xvii

INTRODUCTION

READING, WATCHING, AND FEELING:

NEUROSCIENCE AND AESTHETICS IN LITERATURE AND FILM

Both the sciences and the humanities have contributed to the study of literature and film.

The quest to understand the association of arts with the human mind and brain dates back to 300

BC when Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle highlighted the “transformative power of literature” as well as “its didactic function” in their works (e.g., Republic and Poetics) (Jaen and

Simon 1-2). In his book Feeling Smart: Why Our Emotions Are More Rational Than We Think

(2014), Eyal Winter, a scholar in behavioral economics study and former director of the Center for the Study of Rationality at Hebrew University, points out that “artistic creativity”—one of the earliest evidences of human cognitive development—and art works bring us pleasure and satisfy our emotional need to connect with each other (162). Art forms, such as literature and film, are essential media for the communication of our imaginative minds, cognition, and emotion.

One of the greatest capacities of film is its ability to adapt other media, but the relationship between film and literature has been ambivalent and confrontational as well as mutually enriching. In her book A Theory of Adaptation (2013), Linda Hutcheon defines adaptation as “an extended, deliberate, and announced revisitation of a particular work of art”

(170). In the adaptation process, both literary texts and the affect they may evoke in audiences are important to consider. Carl Plantinga states in his Moving Viewers: American Film and the

Spectator’s Experience (2009) that “films are rhetorical constructs, persuasive in their effects on audiences,” and proposes that their success is dependent on “the emotional and affective qualities of the film text and the experience it affords” (200). My project combines traditional theories

from and studies in the humanities with advances in the “hard” sciences (e.g., biology, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience) to study two narrative art forms. By focusing on the formal construction of affect in each medium, this new methodological approach values the relationship between literature and film based on one of the most difficult, interesting, and challenging aspects of the adaptation process by investigating how films manage a translation of affect through exploration of the full potential of cinematic techniques that are inspired by original literary sources. I revisit the debates about the power of art works to engage our feeling brains and bodies aesthetically and practically, and to join ongoing conversations in Film Studies that explore the approaches we take when evaluating adapted works. The goal is to highlight how recent scientific research on cognition and affect provides a useful framework that can help us rethink issues of adaptation from novel to film.

Why We Care about the Arts: Body, Mind, and Brain

Self-knowledge, insight into all phases of life and mind, springs from artistic

imagination. (S. K. Langer 1962: 82)

In the history of Western thought and aesthetics, philosophers and scholars define arts through their association with the human mind and emotion. Since Ancient times, Greek philosophers had great insights in understanding “the connection between form, person, and emotions” as they believed good communication should create “a relation between ethos

(personal credibility), logos (the power of arguments) and pathos (the power of emotions)” (in

Bondebjerg 15). For instance, in his book The Republic (380 BCE), Plato encouraged artists to create literature with good morals, ethics, values and characters so that literary narratives serve their roles in society as sources of positive inspiration that provide proper guidance for the

reading public—particularly the young (Plato 66). Aristotle, however, advocates for the emotive power of art works as he believes in art forms such as tragedy as a source of “arousing beneficial and pleasurable emotions” (in Plantinga and Smith 4). He further presents in Poetics (c. 335

BCE)—one of his first philosophical treatises on literary theory—a model of composition that comprises elements such as “plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, song” with a structure that contains “a beginning, a middle, and an end” (115, 155). Although primarily referring to tragedy, his framework is also applicable to other literary genres in providing guidance for writers in the construction of texts that engage readers and elicit emotional responses.

While the ancient Greeks illustrated the cognitive value of art works to individuals in their society, new developments in science in the nineteenth century started to explore how and why arts appeal to us in the way they do. One of the fundamental texts that investigated emotion in relation to human behaviors is Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and

Animals (1872), in which he offers valuable insights and detailed scientific illustrations in explaining the shared qualities of emotion and relevant bodily actions. In his evolutionary theories, Darwin (1859, 1871, and 1872) argues that living beings’ emotional expressions largely remain the same throughout their lifespan, during which emotional responses become a part of habitual behaviors. He considers such emotive reactions as mental products that can be related to reflex actions (in Nathanson 41). For instance, he proposes that emotions such as “fear, anger, disgust, pain, surprise, and joy … have been conserved during the course of evolution due to their original adaptive utility” and further points out that these responses are mostly shared in terms of form among species and across human cultures (in Rizzolatti 174).

Artistic imagination has also served an important role in the evolutionary development of human culture and civilization. American philosopher Denis Dutton demonstrates in his work

The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (2010) that as one of the “most complex and diverse human achievements,” artistic creations reflect “free human will and conscious execution” (1). Different art forms require different artistic talents. For instance, sculpture requires mastery in carving or molding of materials; painting requires the technique of brushwork and strategy in application of the pigment; literature necessitates the command of linguistic skills; film calls for collaborative work by the whole crew (e.g., the director, performers, cinematographers, art directors, makeup artists, et al.). Arts function in a variety of roles in our daily activities and socialization. They are knowledge-sharing platforms for social cognition, apparatuses to preserve history, and serve other educational purposes that boost our learning and emotional intelligence development. Emotions, “formed, shaped, and developed” in the course of evolution, are mental mechanisms that assist us in making decisions for ourselves and communicating with others, which in return, “amplify our chances of survival” in the world we reside in (Winter 4). Our interactions with art works like literature and film provide valuable productivity in the human body, mind, and brain.

Cognitivism and the Affective Turn: Reading, Watching, and Sense-Making

A mind is so closely shaped by the body and destined to serve it that only one

mind could possibly arise in it. No body, never mind. (Antonio Damasio

1999:143)

Ideas of reception have been hotly debated in both film studies and literature studies (e.g.,

Munsterberg, Barthes, Williams, Mulvey); although many of them center on the structures

relating to the maintenance of ideology, some scholars in the two fields have considered the spectator as well as reader as an embodied site of reception that includes both the mind and body

(e.g., Sobchack, Marks, Johnson). Only relatively recently, however, have literary and film scholars (e.g., Oatley, Miall, Plantinga) begun to apply insights from cognitive psychology, affective neuroscience, and other branches of the sciences to the study of reader response and film spectatorship. These studies embrace new discoveries from across disciplines to help understand the working of the human mind and body in relation to emotion as well as their roles in shaping human behaviors when interacting with arts.

Initially, cognitivism, influenced by the Cartesian division between mind and body, focused on human functions that are easily modeled in terms of the computer’s rational and linear processing, and therefore, leaves emotion out of reason in the sense-making process.

However, this approach was challenged by discoveries made in the field of neurobiology. For instance, Antonio Damasio—a neuroscientist and the director of the USC Brain and Creativity

Institute—is the founding father of embodied cognitive theory (1994, 1999) whose research studies suggest emotion’s essential role in social cognition and decision-making. According to

Damasio (1994), “emotional capacities are extremely central for our cognitive and rational activities and arguments” (qtd. in Bondebierg 14). In his view, thinking and feeling are both parts of the same brain that conducts mental activities in forming thoughts, ideas, and reason. The human body and mind work interactively and simultaneously in processing emotion and constructing meaning.

Damasio’s embodied framework has influenced scholarship in both literary and film studies (e.g., Turner, Pinker, Bordwell, Carroll) who explore readers’ and viewers’ artistic

experiences via a cognitive approach that is formed as a byproduct of integrated and interdisciplinary contributions. As Leslie Brothers (1997: xxi-xii) proposes, contemporary cognitive theory works “as a biological phenomenon” that bridges “the ‘gulf between biology and culture’” in relation to the body, mind, and brain (qtd. in Bondebjerg 13). In the study of literary criticism, Jacques Derrida, who became extremely influential in the humanities and social science theoretical studies in the 1960s, defines fiction as “flawed description” that merely presents texts via “imitation or copying”; however, Stephen Halliwell (2002: 22), a scholar and expert in classical studies, points out that such interpretation comes from a misconception of the

Greek term “mimesis” (in Poetics) because it has a second translation (often neglected) as

“model building, and with imagination” (in Jaen and Simon 236).

The metaphorical world that narrative arts like fiction and film create thus contains meaning, and the experience they offer affects the understanding of our own existence in the world. As George Lakoff and Mark Johnson point out in their ground-breaking work Metaphors

We Live By (1980), the modern metaphor is simulation. Cognitive literary scholar Keith Oatley

(1999, 2002) explains processes in novel-reading such as imaginatively projecting ourselves into the shoes of character(s) which, in turn, can evoke responses such as sympathy, empathy, and identification with fictional others. Similarly, in film studies, David Bordwell (1985), a pioneer in cognitive film theory, proposes an interdisciplinary approach to understanding aesthetics in film in relation to narratology and film spectatorship. He argues that an important function of film as a narrative art form is to promote acts of feeling while watching—particularly the

“‘cognitive’ emotions of curiosity, suspense and surprise” (qtd. in Livingstone and Plantinga

363). Therefore, the cognitive approach (both in literary and film studies) “channels

interdisciplinary efforts to delve into human narratives, [and] proves an inspiring and practical avenue” (Jaen and Simon 5).

The emotive quality of a literary or film text as well as the emotional responses elicited are essential to the artistic experience. In his book Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A

Guide for Humanists (2003), Patrick Hogan points out that narrative arts such as literature and film are composed with “cognition friendly” techniques that promote mental activities of

“encoding and variation mapping” (28). As Raymond Mar and Oatley (2008: 174) demonstrate, the imaginative and metaphorical world that fiction (and by extension film) creates resembles mathematical complexity in its attempt to clarify “certain generalizable principles that underlie an important aspect of human experience” (qtd. in Jaen and Simon 236). The information presented in art might be abstract, but it can be generalized to a variety of different real-life circumstances. According to Oatley (2002), the act of reading [and watching] is an “enactment” that allows us to prioritize “personal truth” rather than simply imitating how characters feel, the experience of which can lead us to “potentially becoming different from our habitual selves”

(Oatley 50-1). Thus, his framework highlights the roles readers and viewers can play in the sense-making process compared to the more passive models of reception theory. Our engaged experiences with novels and films affect our understanding of ourselves as well as the world we live in.

In addition to cognitivism, there has been a rising interest in affect science that emphasizes the important role the body plays in making sense of arts as well as their impact on our subsequent behaviors. In his influential book The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human

Understanding (2007), Mark Johnson proposes a theory that the mind and the body are not two

separate entities but “aspects of one organic process” in forming thoughts and ideas (1).

Character-engagement in the reading as well as viewing experience is a complex process that requires attention, concentration, and commitment, mentally and physically. By responding to arts such as literature or film, we, as readers or viewers, establish an intense interaction that exercises our mentalities and trains our sense-making capabilities, both of which can promote self-evaluation and self-reflection.

Silvan Tomkins, a psychologist, is the founding father of affect theory and presents in his book—Affect Imagery Consciousness (1962)—his fundamental understanding of emotion and its relation to bodily actions. Prior to his work, “most people neglected the biology of affect in favor of the historical path along which that affect had traveled” (Nathanson 50). In the 1960s and

1970s, post-structuralism rose to popularity; led by the works of Derrida, Michel Foucault and

Jacques Lacan, it opened new lines of thinking in cultural studies but its application to aesthetics—particularly subjects’ interactions with artistic creations—has been problematic. For instance, Clare Hemmings (2005) points out that the meaning-making theory drawn from a post- structuralist framework takes the human body out of the equation, and therefore, cultural theorists offered a flawed approach based on social structures rather than interactive relationships among subjects in conveying and receiving ideas that help form self-hood and identities

(Hemmings 548). Hence, she argues, there is a need in contemporary cultural theory to embrace affect as a critical bodily phenomenon and to utilize affect science to study the self and its relation to the social world.

In this dissertation, I will use the term affect to refer to the natural, perceptual, and autonomic bodily responses and emotions that have evolved in human beings over time in

adapting to a variety of social, cultural, historical and environmental conditions. Inspired by

Tomkins’s theory, Gilles Deleuze (1997), Brian Massumi (2002), and Eve Sedgwick (2003) joined the conversation about the affective turn. For instance, Sedgwick presents her notion of affect as a “desire”—a similar concept to what Freudian theorists call “libido”—to explain what drives human behavior as a response to thought processes (Sedgwick 18). However, such a definition of affect offers a limited view for understanding the working of human body. As

Tomkins’s theory (1962) suggests, affect can be easily observed (on the face) in babies who display it naturally with little to no cognitive processing during stages of infancy (in Nathanson

60).

Affect is central to daily life as we continuously appraise our personal and inter-personal relationships within the environment and respond with appropriate actions. In his book Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self (1994), Donald Nathanson lays out components in Tomkins’s affect system in describing the formation process of affective bodily responses

(54). I reproduce the table as the following:

• Site of action: Any part of the body where affect can be felt (e.g., skin, hair).

• Effectors: Nerves that transport messages from the location where affect is felt.

• Mediators: They produce stimulating chemicals on-site and balance moods.

• Receptors: They detect further affect-related information in the body-system (e.g., eyes,

ears).

• Organizers: Predetermined biological structures that respond to stimuli and maintain

balance.

Based on this framework, the flow of the affect system starts from the location where a part of the body senses or recognizes a stimulus that springs effectors and mediators into action.

While effectors deliver the message to the closest body part that is capable of motor reaction, mediators prepare the mind and body in adapting to additional affective responses. The brain kicks receptors into action by searching for further information from external stimuli while organizers coordinate reflex actions.

After decades of study and observations of affect in human beings, animals, and plants,

Tomkins identifies nine inherent affects that are hardwired into our biological structure via the course of evolution. Nathanson (1994) categorizes these innate affects into three groups to explain “a pattern of expression, a specific package of information triggered in response to a particular type of stimulus,” which further leads to relative emotive reactions (59):

• Positive affects: interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy (and pride)

• Neutral affects: surprise-startle

• Negative affects: Fear-terror, distress-anguish, anger-rage, dissmell [Tomkins uses the

term in referring to a “recurrent pattern of activity, present from birth and visible on the

face of the adult throughout life” to emphasize “the sense of some interference with the

act of smelling”], disgust, and shame-humiliation.

Such clarification of the notion of affect in defining and categorizing human bodily responses provides an important framework in understanding why we care about the arts as well as how human emotions serve as a template for thinking and behavior. For instance, in its application to aesthetics studies, philosopher Noël Carroll (1990) introduces an “appraisal theory” to explain the role of affect and emotion in film spectatorship. Since most films are

geared to elicit certain combinations of emotions based on genres, he proposes the idea of

“garden-variety emotions” as essential goals to keep audiences engaged with the artistic experience—for example, fear and disgust in horror films, or suspense and surprise in thrillers

(in Plantinga and Smith 31). With many modern movies blurring the boundaries of the traditional genres, it is common nowadays to have comic and melodramatic elements incorporated with action films (e.g., the Fast and Furious series of the early 2000s).

Both film and literature are embedded with formal affective cues that are unique to their respective medium. Carroll’s appraisal framework in explaining how film narrative is composed with affect-friendly techniques based on genre type is equally applicable to the study of reader response in literary theory. Plantinga refers to cognitive scientist Merlin Donald (2006: 5) in explaining the key role that arts like literature and film play in human society as “a collective vehicle for self-reflection and as a shared source of cultural identity”; reading novels and watching films offer aesthetic experiences that help “to synchronize our cognitive systems and facilitate learning and socialization” (in Plantinga 226). Thus, both film and literature can be examined similarly from the perspective of affect theory.

Affect theory—particularly its implications for how the human body plays an essential role in appraising our interactions with others as well as the environment we live in—helps us to explain and understand our engaged experiences with art forms. In his book Parables for the

Virtual (2003), Brian Massumi points out that a living body does two things simultaneously—“it moves” and “it feels” (1). Therefore, the human body is an active agent that constantly processes and responds to information learned in our interaction with arts. In her work Feeling Cinema:

Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies (2011), Tarja Laine proposes an integrated model that

combines cognitive and embodiment theories in understanding the ways we experience film. She argues that “the process of emotional engagement with the film is a dynamic event of interaction” between spectators and the screen, as well as an on-going process that cues viewers to actively respond with “affective appraisals and emotional evaluations” (2, 11).

In explaining film’s formal construction of affect, Laine further demonstrates that cinematic emotions are “strategic and operational processes within the film,” which makes us pay attention to the “salient techniques” (as she refers to terms used by David Bordwell and

Kristin Thompson) employed by filmmakers in prioritizing “semantic meaning” and “affectivity” within the viewing experience (Laine 4). Hence, the emotive nature of the cinematic event requires spectators to make sense with rather than make sense of film(s) (Laine 11). Similarly, literary scholar and an expert in the study of reader response David S. Miall also suggests that the literary reading experience enhances “the productive powers of feeling”; he defines readers’ interaction with texts as “a process” that promotes “feeling evocative of resonance, bodily implications, and incipient action plans” (in Schellekens and Goldie 287). Borrowing from

Hemming’s (2005: 564) model of the affective cycle (_/ body_/affect_/emotion_/affect_/body _/) in explaining the close relationship between the body and mind, we can imagine a similar

“ongoing, incrementally altering” chain-reaction of stimulus (-> body-> affect-> cognitive emotion-> affect->bodily action) to help explain the engaged experience when reading literature and watching films.

In my proposed model, emotion is a mental mechanism that holds a central position, linking affect in both directions during the chain reaction. As Carroll states, “emotions require cognitions as causes and bodily states as effects” (qtd. in Plantinga and Smith 27). Stimulus for

the affect system can be caused by both internal and external events. As Sedgwick (who follows and extends on Tomkins’s concept of affect) argues, “affects can be, and are, attached to things, people, ideas, sensations, relations, activities, ambitions, institutions, and any number of other things, including other affects” (Sedgwick 19). Furthermore, according to Edmund T. Rolls, a psychologist and neuroscientist, one of the key functions of emotion is to elicit “autonomic responses (e.g., a change in heart rate) and endocrine responses (e.g., the release of adrenaline),” both of which prepare us for bodily actions (qtd. in Schellekens and Goldie 112). To understand how such an affective cycle works, we can borrow a real-life example described by Winter in his book Feeling Smart (2010):

IN THE AUTUMN OF 2008, ... I took some time off in the cliffs overlooking the

Pacific Ocean north of San Francisco. As I peered out at the ocean at twilight, the

exquisite natural vista I saw filled me with a deep sense of longing. A small

wedding was taking place facing the sea at the foot of the cliff on which I stood...

My thoughts began to wander...to my wife and child, whom I had not seen in a

fortnight. The sense of longing within me was accompanied by an odd

combination of joy at having been privileged to have a warm and loving family,

mixed with self-directed anger at the fact that I was so far from home. Striving to

amplify these feelings, I held tightly to the railing along the edge of the cliff while

leaning forward to get a better glimpse of the bay and the emotion-filled wedding

taking place below. Suddenly I felt the thin railing, the only object that was

preventing me from plunging directly into the abyss below, shaking. Within a

fraction of a second my sentimental feelings were replaced by a powerful sense of

dread that quickly propelled me away from the railing. In all likelihood that sense

of dread saved my life, but it is also likely that the sense of longing that preceded

it was responsible for a choice I made later: to travel less often for the sake of

improving my marriage. (3)

For Winter, the external stimulus—the shaking railing—triggers his bodily form of thinking and subsequent affective cycle. As his body leaning forward towards the fragile, and only, material preventing him from falling, the shaking railing triggers fear affect that leads him into a dreadful realization of the dangerous situation he is in. As the fear-terror affect pulls him away from the railing, it saves him from the life-threatening event. Furthermore, since he has been watching the newly-wedded couple who happily celebrate the memorable moment with families and friends, the romantic scene touches his heart and serves as an external stimulus that reminds him of his own loving family whom he has been away from due to frequent business trips.

To put it simply, affect is the bodily form of thinking that often influences cognition as well as neural processing in the brain and an action-engine that drives our corresponding behaviors (Nathanson 60). According to Carroll, emotion is a “feedback mechanism” (in

Plantinga and Smith 28). Winter’s complex emotional experience at the moment gives him feedback as a “performance review” of his own roles as a husband and father. His fear of losing his family triggers a sense of guilt and further pushes him to reassess his responsibilities in life, which results in a decision to travel less in the future and be fully committed to his loved ones for the sake of a happier marriage. As Damasio’s embodied cognitive theory suggests, “the human body, and the way it structures human experience, also shapes the human experience of

self, and perhaps the very possibility of developing a sense of self” (qtd. in Gallagher 3). Affect and emotion are vital in Winter’s renewed understanding towards himself and his relationship with his wife and child. His example shines light on our understanding of how the emotive quality of a literary or film text helps to define the affective experience it affords.

The Feeling Brain: Neuroscience and the Narrative Arts

A man is known by the books he reads…by the stories he tells. (Emerson 69)

In her book Telling Lives: Exploring Dimensions of Narratives (2012), Marianne Horsdal demonstrates how individuals and human society have benefited from narrative acts such as story-telling. She further refers to linguist and English scholar Rukmini B. Nair (2001) in explaining how narratives have offered us “a remarkable evolutionary advantage” by providing unique opportunities of learning via “vicarious experience” acquired from “a large narrative repertoire of lived,” or imagined, lives (in Horsdal 27). These stimulate emotional and cognitive responses which might, in turn, produce significant changes in people’s lives by shaping their selfhood and identities.

The results of neurobiological studies (e.g., with EGG and fMRI) continue to shed light on the mysteries of the human mind and its relation to human behaviors. For instance, we have become more familiar with “the neural underpinnings” of the cognitive processing of acts of reading and viewing, and particularly, “the neural correlates of imitation, mirror neurons,” as one of the key elements in forming empathy (Jaen and Simon 17-18). According to neurophysiologists Giacomo Rizzolatti and Luigi Cattaneo (2009), mirror neurons, originally found in “the premotor cortex of monkeys,” are a network of mirroring neural mechanisms charged with motor properties; for human beings, they are part of a developed system that

“underlies mechanisms of observational learning” within mental structures that assist us in making sense of the actions of others as well as the logics behind their behaviors (Rizzolatti and

Cattaneo 557). In our aesthetic experiences with narrative arts, such observational learning takes place by activating the emotive, cognitive, and affective faculties in our imaginative minds.

Since insights from cognitive neuroscience help to clarify the cerebral processing of the artistic experience, these findings suggest that there may be a quasi-biological explanation for why we care about the arts and why fictional narratives appeal to us. For instance, in literary studies, Ellen Spolsky cites neuro-scientific studies (Gallese and Goldman 1998, Iacoboni et al.

1999) in her work to explain the role mirror neurons play in reading fictional narratives; she points out that it has been proved that the mirror neuron systems start working in the brain within

“hours of birth” and they boost learning and knowledge-sharing “by analogizing between one’s own body and the body of another,” which is “fundamental to human development” (in Aldama

47). With empirical data collected from various research studies, literary theorist Miall (2011) claims that emotional responses are proved to be the very first step registered in human minds as soon as reading starts (Miall 331). He argues that as we read, mirror-neuron processing is

“immediate,” activating both emotional and affective faculties in the body system in response to characters; when engaged with the reading process, such experience “tends to complicate our response, introducing conflicts, ambiguities, and the like, which serve to modify our understanding” and further triggers “bodily responses such as kinesthetic functioning, muscle tension, heart rate, and breathing” (in Schellekens and Goldie 296). Based on the complex relationship between our imaginative minds and “mnemonic and affective elements” in the brain,

Miall believes that it is reasonable to suggest that “a rich experiential matrix must be implicated

in the early phases of literary reading, i.e., in the first 300–500 msec” (in Schellekens and Goldie

296). Miall’s findings may also shed light on how film’s formal choices allow a similar “rich experiential matrix” as soon as viewing starts.

In explaining our feelings towards fictional characters, Clay and Lacoboni point out that reading about how fictional characters “perform and experience” actions and emotions enables us to “empathize with them through a simulation-based form of empathy that is enabled by neural mechanisms of mirroring,” the process of which satisfies our emotional needs to be connected with “fictional others” in the literary-reading experience (in Schellekens and Goldie

317). In her book Why We Read Fiction (2007), Lisa Zunshine advances and explores “a series of hypotheses about cognitive cravings that are satisfied—and created!—when we read fiction”

(4). She offers an inspiring framework to help us understand the emotive quality of a fictional text and its appealing power to the Theory of Mind (ToM). She points out that our brains’ neurological circuits have developed and evolved to be very responsive when observing the

“presence, behavior, and emotional display” of other people, and sometimes the engaging experience is so intense that we may find it difficult to distinguish actions of ourselves and those being observed (277). Winter (2014) also agrees with the cognitive function of ToM and its essential role in social cognition. He further explains that the amygdala, “located in the most interior and primal part of the human brain,” is responsible for the neuro-processing of ToM and is “part of the limbic (emotional) system of the brain” (Winter 22).

When reading novels and watching films, then, our responses to fictional characters are substantially created by the affective quality of the texts. According to Jerome Bruner (1991: 4), narratives function as “tool kits” and “operate as an instrument of mind in the construction of

reality” (in Aldama 37). In her book Brain, Attachment, Personality: An Introduction to

Neuroaffective Development (2008), Susan Hart points out that “like the different emotional systems, the different memory systems are located in different brain regions” (373). For instance, studies have shown that the hippocampus consolidates, arranges, structures, and stores past experiences and related memories in narrative form. Hart quotes Daniel Schacter (1996:6) that

“what has happened to us in the past determines what we take out of our daily encounters in life; memories are records of how we have experienced events, not replicas of the events themselves”

(in Hart 373). To understand the point, let us look at an example taken from Winter’s book

Feeling Smart (2014), in which he describes an artistic experience in his life to illustrate how affect and emotion correlate with his memory and thought processes. He composes a poem to honor his late father in memory of his love for him:

MY FATHER, WHO PASSED AWAY SEVERAL YEARS AGO, SOMETIMES

VISITS me in my dreams in the middle of the night. One day, musing over the

memory of such a dream from the previous night, I grabbed a pencil and paper

and composed a poem to my father that I later set to music. As I was writing, the

words flowed onto the page with an ease I had never previously experienced. My

writing is usually hesitant and I tend to make endless corrections and changes to

the words. That wasn’t the case here. The tune also came to me very easily, but

when the composition was complete and I cradled my guitar in my hands to play

it, my eyes welled with tears. I was so overcome with emotion that I simply could

not sing the words. (160)

During this experience, Winter himself is overwhelmed by the intensity of emotion in response to the poem. It is clear that the narrative, or “the accurate way the words of the song” he composes in memorizing his father, does the trick (Winter 161). It is also clear that his longing for his father makes him constantly dream about him, which further motivates him to turn his passion into a poem as a narrated memory of his beloved father. When he plays the song out with his guitar and is ready to sing the lyrics as dedication to his father, he becomes deeply affected.

Memory is an embodied phenomenon that highlights the affect and emotion associated with past events. As Winter points out, what defines his experience is “an intense dialogue” that takes place between the cognitive and emotional systems, which usually happens “in the prefrontal cortex, which is located at the front of the brain, protected by the forehead”; he further demonstrates that every artistic experience “involves such a dialogue” whenever we intend to

“arrive at an insight or to identify an aesthetic structure in the work of art” (Winter 161).

Emotion is a shared property among human beings. Memory plays an important role in defining our aesthetic experiences as well as generating shared emotions with others—particularly in our empathic responses to fictional characters.

In film studies, Bondebjerg argues that “humans are genetically, biologically and socially storytelling animals”; our minds can be strongly influenced by society and culture, but our interactions and communications with narrative arts provide us the essential ways to experience, explore, and think about reality (Bondebjerg 21). Hugo Munsterberg, in The Photoplay (1916), reminded us that the advent of cinema gave us a whole new way of perceiving the world, as he believed that the unique feature of “cinematic storytelling was its ability to mimic not only the content of the real world but also the processes by which we conceive it” (qtd. in Livingstone

and Plantinga 356). As Berys Gaut argues in his influential work Identification and Emotion in

Narrative Film (1999), such a unique functionality of cinema gives it power “in its ability to re- enact this basic process of identification” that shapes both the intensity and quality of our emotional responses to film (qtd. in Plantinga and Smith 200). Gaut further explains that such viewing experiences can promote various modes of identification such as “perceptual,”

“affective,” “motivational,” “epistemic,” and so on, all of which may teach us “how to respond emotionally to fictionally delineated situations” (in Plantinga and Smith 205). For instance, since

“the act of identification is aspectual,” we might “grow emotionally together” with the hero/heroine, or even proceed with “deeper” emotive and cognitive gains while the character remains much the same, and as a result, learning takes place (in Plantinga and Smith 205, 213).

Reading novels and watching films thus can shape our cognition. But as narrative art forms, both literature and film have their own unique conventions and possibilities. In his book

On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (2009), Brian Boyd points out that narrative arts fascinate us because they are crafted with “agents and actions” that appeal to our emotion and imagination; our interactions with literature and film prepare and train our brains

“to reflect freely beyond the immediate and to revolve things in our minds within a vast and vividly populated world of the possible” (199). With new discoveries in neurobiology, we can now detect the exact locations of “electrical stimulations” related to different emotional reactions, and according to Winter (2014), “these distinctions are discernible under both physical sensations and emotional feelings” (Winter xviii). The formal structure of literary or film narrative, and the choices made by authors in what to show or tell us and how, defines our engaged experiences, which allow us to respond cognitively and emotionally in the form of

empathy, sympathy, and identification—particularly that we tend to share a physiological way of response to “cues” in each text. Artists create art works to reimagine the world, and “in turn, this transformed world shapes us and our subsequent activities” (Aldama 2).

Why We Need Affect in the Study of Novels Adapted to Film

Under the light of neurobiological science, it is reasonable to suggest a new methodological approach in studying film adaptation by exploring how novels and films engage our feeling brains and aesthetic minds in making sense of the artistic experience. According to

Rolls, talented artists utilize salient elements to “idealize beauty, and enhance it,” and thus, the final products reflect their decisions in selecting objects that emphasize “some properties of the real world” while ignoring others that “distract” from their goals in the creation process (in

Schellekens and Goldie 145). When defining the aesthetic value of good art, Rolls argues that we may find ourselves more easily engaged with an art work embedded with “a biological foundation” that becomes “figurative” in the sense-making process (in Schellekens and Goldie

144). Affects and emotions play a key role in providing such a biological foundation as they

“make ideas and images salient and memorable” and can transform artistic experiences into

“templates for thinking and behavior” (Plantinga 6).

A study of adaptation from novels to film via the affective responses that might be mobilized in each form, together and separately, helps to shift the debate away from adaptation studies’ usual concerns with originality and fidelity, style, and narration. As Plantinga (2009) demonstrates, affectivity and emotive quality are vital components that make film (and literature)

“artistically successful, rhetorically powerful, and culturally influential” (Plantinga 5). Thus, this new approach highlights film’s aesthetic value in its capacity to construct affect that helps to

keep audiences engaged mentally and physically when adapting a literary text to screen. In this dissertation, however, I imagine spectators and readers primarily as “hypothetical persons,” in

Plantinga’s words; my focus is on how literary and film texts create and are imbedded with affective and emotional cues to which “real” readers and spectators will respond in ways that are inflected by their own personal, social, and historical contexts (Plantinga 2009: 17).

The History of Literary Adaptation

Adaptation theory, as the methodical study of films based on literary narratives, was first systematically put forth by George Bluestone in his book Novels into Film (1957). Upon cinema’s invention, filmmakers turned toward literary works for cues to success and used well- known narratives to reduce their dependence on dialogue as well as to “elevate the status of film”

(Cartmell 2). As Patricia Holt points out, thirty percent of commercial movies are based on novels, and eighty percent of bestselling books have become sources for film adaptations (in

Corrigan 1). Thierry Groensteen shows that eighty-five percent of the films that have won the

Oscar for Best Picture were literary adaptations (in Hutcheon 492).

In general, scholars of adaptation studies initially viewed novels as texts and films as

“intertexts” and spent time debating issues such as “fidelity” and “transformation.” Newer adaptation theories have made progress in moving past these commonly debated issues. In his book Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone With the Wind to The Passion of the

Christ (2007), Thomas Leitch argues that scholars have formulated adaptation theories within the context of literary studies and assumed that a film adaptation had to remain faithful to its inherently “superior” literary source to be successful; but such an approach fails to take note of a

film’s potential for artistic creativity as well as its commercial, collaborative, and multi-medium nature (Leitch 4).

Literal fidelity to the source is neither easy to achieve nor practical in reality because each media has its own formal possibilities in the construction of meaning as well as the experience each offers. Bluestone admits that there will be inevitable differences between the two as soon as the medium changes from linguistic to visual (in Leitch 3). Therefore, an adaptive approach that focuses on issues such as fidelity limits filmmakers’ formal choices and selections of innovative and creative techniques. André Bazin was the first theorist to propose a “harmonic approach” by concluding that film and literature are two forms of art that make the understanding of narratives complete, and they are not “reducible to the sum of [their] parts”

(qtd. in MacCabe et al. 5). He defines the relationship between film and its literary source as germane and beneficial to each other and sees the role of a filmmaker as “equal” to that of the writer in creating a visual and verbal work of art (in MacCabe et al. 43). Hence, such a framework promotes a productive as well as mutually enriching relationship between literature and film as independent art forms.

In his book Novel to Film (1996), Brian McFarlane points out that in order to provide valuable and fairly-weighted insights for adaptation theorists, scholars such as George Wagner

(1975), Dudley Andrew (1980), and Michael Klein and Gillian Parker (1981) develop classifications that help to shift us away from judgmental criteria (e.g., fidelity, authorship) in categorizing an adapted work by focusing on the adaptive approach and level of creativity involved in the innovative process: for instance, the range of processes from minimal modifications, balanced (a mix of original or new) alterations, to a considerable transformative

departure from an original work (11). McFarlane further refers to the original concept proposed in Wagner’s The Novel and the Cinema (1975: 28-30) in identifying three kinds of film adaptations as “transposition,” “commentary,” and “analogy” (in McFarlane 10). I reproduce the framework as the following:

• Transposition: An adaptation that aims to achieve maximum similarity by adopting the

literary narrative structure and only making subtle changes when necessary to adjust for

media differences. Such adaptation usually requires fewer creative and innovative

designs in the adaptation process.

• Commentary: An adaptation that reflects a mild degree of alteration done by the

filmmaker who holds “a different intention … rather than infidelity or outright violation.”

This style usually presents a balanced adaptive approach that has a good mixture of

literary originality and filmic creativity in narrative construction—for instance, a mise-

en-scène in a film that is designed to appeal to modern audiences rather than that of the

original historical context.

• Analogy: An adaptation that showcases a significant cinematic reconstruction of a

literary original. The final product usually signifies by itself as an inventive cinematic art

form, in which its filmmaker takes considerable liberty in the creation process that can

either enhance or reduce the aesthetic value of the source.

Due to the complex nature of the adaptation process, too often films based on literary sources receive reviews and comments that are not positive ones. One of the reasons that this happens is that we tend to forget that film as well as literature—each an independent art form—is composed of different formal possibilities. A literary work, intentionally composed by a writer,

requires readers to extract the “visual information from a piece of written text and [make] sense of it” (Pettersson 41). Film, on the other hand, is a multi-media, technologically advanced, and collaborative art form when compared to traditional arts like literature and painting. A cinematic product is both “synesthetic” and “synthetic” in nature, reflecting in its capacities “to engage various senses” as well as “to absorb and synthesize antecedent arts” (Stam 61).

The importance of the complex relationship of film and literature, and their impact on audiences, thus requires research from an “unprecedented variety of angles” (Corrigan 2). In The

Photoplay (1916), Munsterberg pioneered the path for scholars in recognizing film as “an independent art form” and emphasized the medium’s aesthetic potential in the construction of emotions that shape the viewing experience; for him, “the visual and visuality” defines the beauty of film as well as the artistic merit of the filmmaker (10). As Bazin demonstrates in his book What Is Cinema? (Part I, 1972), cinema as well as photography is an important discovery in the humanities that satisfies our needs for artistic experiences to understand the world around us in the most realistic terms as it is embedded with a capacity to exceed traditional arts in the creative possibilities opened up by motion picture photography (12).

In the adaptation process, besides characters and narration, each decision a filmmaker makes in selecting cinematic tools affects the overall affective experience a film offers. Film utilizes mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound to characterize its style and signify its aesthetic value (Bordwell and Thompson 4). For instance, in a comparative study of two film adaptations of the same novel Psycho (1959) by Robert Bloch—Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960) and Psycho (Gus Van Sant 1998)—McDonald and Carnicke illustrate how minute differences in the “gesture and expression” of a selected performing actor/actress can affect character-

engagement as well as the sense-making process of the film (in Baron et al. 3). In addition, as a multi-sensory medium, the cinematic sound track, especially “mood music,” attributes to the affectivity of the film as it may promote or discourage emotional responses among audiences.

For instance, in Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock 1954), the film starts with suspenseful nondiegetic mood music that immediately intrigues viewers’ interest and curiosity about what happens next. These examples give us a general idea of a film’s formal construction of affect and emotion as well as its effect on audiences. It is again important to acknowledge that based on individual differences, spectators might respond with varying degrees of sympathy, empathy, and identification, or in some cases none at all.

Sergei Eisenstein—a Soviet film director and film theorist and a pioneer in the theory and practice of montage—clarifies the nature of film as an art form as well as the responsibilities of a good artist in his or her creative working process. In his book Film Form: Essays in Film Theory

(1949), Eisenstein defines the role of a filmmaker as “to learn his [or her] principles from a profound investigation of all arts and all levels of life, to measure these principles against an unfaltering understanding of himself [or herself], and if he [or she] then did anything less than create—with bold, living works that moved their audiences to excitement and understanding— he [or she] was neither good artist nor positive member of society” (Introduction).

But an art work does not stand alone. Whether reading a novel or watching a film, as readers and viewers we co-construct meanings through the experience of engaging with these two art forms. Each medium has unique conventions, and yet both are able to create and manage deeply affective experiences. According to Bluestone, the adapted film does not replace or compete with its literary source, but rather “metamorphoses” it into a different medium that

possesses its own “formal or narratological possibilities” (qtd. in Naremore 38). Therefore, in the adaptation process, it is interesting and valuable to investigate how skillful filmmakers tend to shift their attention from decoding the messages in the verbal art to exploring aesthetic possibilities in the audio-visual form in creating a structure that constructs affective viewing experiences among spectators.

The Toolbox

Art is a communicative system able to relay ideas in ways not afforded in

language alone. (Dahlia W. Zaidel 2014: 44)

Literature and film appeal to our feeling brains and aesthetic minds via different formal choices that mediate the way they achieve affective outcomes and their effects on audiences. A novel is created by an author who, comparatively speaking, has more luxury of flexibility in making decisions regarding the techniques employed in tapping readers’ imaginative minds in their interactions with the art work. In The Cambridge History of the English Novel (2012),

Robert L. Caserio and Clement Hawes point out that “the novel belongs to a virtual, what-if space in which ‘messages’ themselves are put into play,” and “every decision that a novelist makes is formally mediated” (1). Although limited by being in a single medium, literary writers have learned and gained the necessary skills from their great predecessors and peers in composing narratives that are essential to affective reading experiences—for instance, the creation of a various kinds of characters (e.g., Machiavellian characters), the choice of rhetorical tools (e.g., metaphor), and narrative styles (e.g., first-person narration, third-person narration).

With insights from narratological research and findings from cognitive and neurobiological studies, literary scholars can obtain a deeper understanding of the roles formal structures and

effective techniques, such as FID (free indirect discourse) and psycho-narration, play during “the processes involved in our making and consuming” of fictional narratives—particularly that of

“how we produce language, feel empathy, interpret and understand” fictional others (Aldama 7).

On the other hand, a film is a collaborative project that requires budgetary planning that affects the choices of cinematic tools in the adaptation process. According to Robert Stam, film

“‘inherits’ all art forms” in its expressive capacities such as “the visuals of photography and painting, the movement of dance, the decor of the architecture, and the performance of theater”

(Stam 61). As Merleau-Ponty (1964: 50, 58) argues, film as an art form signifies via “these elements’ meaningful totality” in creating a structure that shapes “our perception of lived conduct and behavior in the world (both the camera’s and the actors’)” and manifests “the union of mind and body, mind and world, and the expression of one in the other” (qtd. in Livingstone and Plantinga 439). For instance, Gaut (1999) discusses how film elements (e.g., charming character traits, fine performances, POV shots, expressive reaction shots) might motivate viewers to sympathize and empathize with film characters and enhance certain kind(s) of identification by using a scene from The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme 1991). He considers the construction of interest, fear, disgust, and distress affects when Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) meets with the FBI agents in the autopsy room to examine the body of one of Buffalo Bill’s victims. He particularly points out how the reaction shot of Clarice, along with her expressive acting skills (e.g., her facial expression and body language) in the scene, works affectively in promoting character-engagement. Therefore, it is meaningful to pay close attention to “cues” in film in its construction of affect and emotion and to explore how each formal choice contributes to the overall affective narrativity.

Film Performance

With insights from neuroscience, it is safe to suggest that among all cinematic techniques, mise-en-scène—particularly film performance—helps to achieves the most immediate effect in engaging viewers and promoting affective responses. As Plantinga (2009) argues, “body language, including the use of facial expression, posture, and gesture, is one of the primary means of communicating emotion both in social reality and in the motion pictures”

(122). Performers, as theatrical director Peter Brook points out, “overcome all linguistic and cultural barriers to encompass the spectators in a shared experience of actions and emotions” (in

Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia xiii). However, the actor’s journey in gaining scholarly recognition and aesthetic appreciation as contributors to the filmic experience has been troublesome. Actors’ essential roles in enhancing (or not) character-engagement via sympathy, empathy, and identification need to be acknowledged and properly studied.1

Acting itself is an “elusive art”; an actor’s effort is often discounted due to the way other filmic elements mediate it (Krämer and Lovell 5). For instance, in the silent era, due to technological limitations, actors’ voices were excluded, which forced them to rely on “gestural style” by focusing entirely on facial expressions and body movements—a technique adopted from previously established traditions of theatrical acting (Springer 1). But actors face

“technological, physical, intellectual and emotional” challenges that demand more than just talents and skills but energy, determination, and dedication in order to successfully deliver their

1 I will use the word “actor” as a gender-neutral term in my discussion of performances, and when it is necessary, will break it down into “actor” and “actress” for individual case study, as suggested by Lovell and Krämer in their edited collection Screen Acting (1999).

performing tasks (Krämer and Lovell 8). Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock’s remark on actors as “cattle” sums up the low status actors have exemplified in the history of film industry (Krämer and

Lovell 2).

In her influential article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975), film theorist

Laura Mulvey presents her psychoanalytic framework for understanding film’s formal choices in construction of meaning in the viewing process. However, such an approach underestimates cinema’s potential by defining it as a visual medium that exists to satisfy the male gaze and his need for voyeurism and that is not interested in the credibility or individuality of performers— particularly actresses. Richard Dyer’s Stars (1979) later elevated the status of the acting profession and led to further attention being paid by film scholars to studying performers as a key factor that affects our cinematic experiences (Krämer and Lovell 4).

In More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance

(2004), Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo propose that the best way to understand film acting is to take it as a form of “mediated performance that lies at the intersection of art, technology, and culture” (1). This account acknowledges actors’ contributions to the filmic experience and promotes appreciation of their valuable input. Actors bring fictional characters to life with their artistic intelligence, charming personalities, and physical attributes.

Good actors leave strong imprints on the audience with regards to the roles they portray—so much so that audiences may remember their performance long after the film ends. For instance, probably one of the most iconic villainous characters in American film history is Anthony

Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme 1991), an adaptation of Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel of the same name. Hopkins’s performance has

certainly played an essential role in engaging audiences. Such a formal choice is one of the contributive factors in film’s construction of affect and emotion in the adaptation process.

Daniel Day Lewis, a multiple award-winner—three Academy awards for Best Actor in the films My Left Foot (Jim Sheridan 1989), There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson 2007), and Lincoln (Steven Spielberg 2012) as well as four BAFTA awards for Best Actor—was named as the “World’s Greatest Actor” in Time magazine in 2012 and received a knighthood in 2014.

Charles McGrath in a New York Times article tells readers that Lewis lived in the forest, trapped and skinned animals, and learned to build a canoe to prepare for his role in the film The last of the Mohicans (Michael Mann 1992); he also stayed in a wheelchair for some time to experience physically handicapped life more personally before shooting the film My left Foot (1989); he even learned to practice professional boxing for his role in The Boxer (Jim Sheridan 1997) (New

York Times 4 November 2012 n.p.). From Lewis’s example, we get an idea that seemingly effortless acting and performance is instead an art and craft of mental, physical, and emotional construction that sometimes takes high commitment and requires sacrifice in the creative process. Therefore, it is important to recognize film performance and its important role as a part of film’s formal structure in creating deeply affective experiences.

Face to Face and Eye to Eye

Developments in science help us to understand the nature of human emotion as well as shed light on how films engage spectators via formal affective “cues”—facial expressions, in this case—in the audio-visual art form. Neuroscientific discoveries have informed us that the

fusiform gyrus2 in the brain structure controls facial recognitions; human faces are the primary sites for emotion exhibition of our feelings to selves, others, and the environment (Winter 22).

According to cognitive psychologist Mariska E. Kret, facial expressions (e.g., blushing, blinking eyes) have become “adaptive to not only perceive and be aware of emotions in oneself, but also to process emotions including these implicit cues of others” during our evolutionary development and progression (Kret 7). Facial expressions are also embedded with signs that affect social cognition. Subtle details on the face—for instance, “implicit sources such as gaze and tears and autonomic responses such as pupil-dilation” provide “important ‘veridical’ information” in conveying meanings and expressing emotions (Kret 1). We may not notice their significance and affective functions in shaping our emotional responses and cognition unless they become “absent from a ‘conversation’” (Kret 1). Such findings in brain science and cognitive psychology provide valuable insights to the study of film spectatorship—particularly, how acting and its quality filters our interpretation of characters.

As Kret points out, facial expressions are “dynamic by nature, with varying intensity and ambiguous”; since they are “highly contagious,” they function as key contributors in communicating affect and emotion (Kret 3). When in an intensified emotional state, we may sweat, blush, cry, and even respond with pupil-dilation. These bodily responses are “expressive signals” that enhance communication by providing “a context” for interpretation (Kret 3).

According to Calvo et al. (2012), “categorical processing can be based on features”; for instance, when we are happy, we tend to express ourselves with “the salient mouth curvature feature”

2A large region in the inferior temporal cortex.

whereas when we are scared or afraid, we tend to display it with eyes open wide (in Kret 2). In the viewing process, when we observe such clues on the face of an actor, with the help of neuro- mirroring mechanisms, we can stay engaged with the film character.

Crying is one of the most significant emotional phenomena both in real life and on screen. According to Stella Botelho (1964), such an act is controlled by the “sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system, the latter being responsible for the tears” (in Kret 5). Biological studies have investigated how tears may have functioned as a critical role that is “adaptive” for survival purposes over the course of evolution as they not only help to relieve tension and anxiety during the “recovery of psychological and physiological homeostasis” but most importantly, help with the effective “communication” of emotion in social cognition (Kret 5).

It is fascinating to see how scientific discoveries offer explanations for understanding human emotions and actions. Several studies (Bradshaw 1967, Demos et al. 2008, Amemiya and

Ohtomo 2012) have discovered how pupil-size affects observers’ emotions and cognition in their neurological processes as they claim that “pupillary changes … influence assessments: partners with large pupils are judged positive and attractive, and those with small pupils cold and distant”

(in Kret 6). In film character-creation, it is common to find Disney feature films and Japanese manga both tend to characterize “good and bad cartoon characters” based on “large and small pupils respectively” (qtd. in Kret 6). As Paul J. Whalen and Robert E. Kleck (2008) conclude in their work on “The Shape of Faces,” we have gained a better understanding of the expressive power of different faces that index “not only our own state of happiness, contentment, peace or even embarrassment, but also ... that can embody what we want to say to others, in terms of acceptance, warmth or desire” (740). Affective performance—particularly facial expressions and

body language—enhances the aesthetic quality of film as well as promotes communication from the screen to the viewers.

Film Form: Cinematography and Editing

Behind the lens is a creative brain directing its steady and often ruthless vision.

(Bluestone 16)

The camera presents to its audiences the motions and emotions of film characters via a variety of “framing and point-of-view structures” in order to capture and highlight skillful performances that are highly affective and “communitive” (Plantinga 122). The choice of cinematographic techniques can control viewers’ perspectives and limit the flow of information such as low/high-angle shot, zoom-in/out, close-up, etc. As V. I. Pudovkin (1935) famously pointed out, “the lens of the camera replaces the eye of the observer”; the standard two-inch lens functions as human eye-sight and with optical zooms or other camera angles such as close-ups that restrict our views of subjects or elements, it alters our perception of the film narrative (qtd. in Bluestone 16). Our attentions are directed by attractions designed by the film crew.

In his book A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films (2014), Robert Spadoni explains how different choices of camera angle affect the sense-making process; for instance, a low-angle shot that “towers over us” can add strength and power to a figure whereas a high-angle shot can make it seem “diminutive and vulnerable,” depending on the context of the scene (106). According to

Brunick et al., one of the reasons that film functions as a unique art form is its ability to mimic lifelike experience via the camera’s depiction of movements (in Shimamura 138). To synchronize sound with the projection of image on the screen, the standard rate of projection is

set at twenty-four frames a second for viewers to perceive “an illusion of normal movement” in a realistic portrayal of actions and events (Bluestone 14).

Brunick et al. further point out that there are two kinds of on-screen activities that attract attention—motion in the mise-en-scène and that of the camera (e.g., how it is positioned, the length of the lens, how it moves—such as to pan, tilt, and zoom); most camera shots involve movement while “almost all shots contain motion” (qtd. in Shimamura 138). Plantinga demonstrates that such movements have been well identified by film scholars for their critical roles in engaging “the physicality of the spectator”; the motions in the picture and camera framing not only assist the development of film narrative, but also contribute to evoking “marked visceral, physiological, and emotive effects” among spectators (qtd. in Plantinga 119). Therefore, they are effective film techniques that help to construct affective viewing experiences.

With the latest developments in digital technology, cameras provide greater convenience and functionality in opening up new paths for shooting scenes with better visual effects. For instance, the lightweight digital camera is easy to operate to follow the motion of characters in capturing their actions and subtle emotions, which in turn, enhances and promotes viewers’ responses towards them. There are other types of camera techniques that contribute to the construction of affective filmic experience. I will introduce and examine how other elements in cinematography (e.g., color and special effects) work in eliciting affect and emotion in audiences in my detailed discussions of film case studies in the following chapters.

Film editing is the technique of joining one shot with another in forming scenes (Spadoni

116). It functions to convey “a sense of time” in film narrative and works well in accentuating the “temporal qualities of the shots” (Spadoni 130). Similar to the process that our eyes use to

gather visual information for the mind to filter and process in forming ideas and logic beneficial for survival purposes, film editing employs devices such as ellipsis, flashbacks, and flashforwards in directing spectators’ attention to materials and information that keep us mentally and emotionally engaged while making sense of the narrative. Cinema as the presentation of moving pictures creates images for our eyes to store and our brains to extract information from.

Under the supervision of the director, it is the film editor’s job to control the flow of information and continuity of shots; other technicians also incorporate filmic components to develop the narrative such as adding a soundtrack (dialogue, noise or sound effects, and music), and special effects. Spadoni argues that being an effective “storytelling” technique, editing especially intends to bring “disruption” to the narrative as “to cut is to break the visual flow”

(Spadoni 141). However, film practice typically involves the choice between two major editing techniques: Sergei Eisenstein’s “montage of attractions” versus Hollywood’s continuity editing.

Eisenstein, a major figure among film theorists and movie-makers in the Soviet Montage school of the 1920s, believes in editing’s potential to attract audiences’ attention and stir their emotions and minds by creating “maximum contrast, conflict, and collision” between shots, which he sees as foundational blocks of a cinematic product—“molecular” entities that can be joined and

“recombined” in ways that maximize their visual and ideological power (in Spadoni 141-2). Lev

Kuleshov (1935/1974) once said that “apart from montage, nothing exists in cinema, that the work of the actor is absolutely irrelevant, that with good montage it is immaterial how he works”

(Kuleshov 192). For sure, he has greatly insulted the talents of acting professionals.

Hollywood, as a narrative-generating system, generally takes a different approach toward editing; many if not most filmmakers try to avoid the mental disruption Eisensteinian montage causes in spectators by applying an “invisible” technique. Continuity editing is a process by which film editors combine elements and components in constructing a sequence that keeps viewers’ attention focused on the narrative by matching shots invisibly so that the effect of discontinuity is minimized (Spadoni 133). For example, in the film Gladiator (Ridley Scott

2000), the scenes where the gladiator fights in the arena and coliseum are heavily edited and intercut to keep viewers focused on the battle in understanding the survival instinct for life versus brutal death, but the editing itself does not seek to stand out.

According to V. I. Pudovkin, editing signifies as a strategic method because it works more than by just combining and piecing together shots, but functions as means of controlling

“the psychological guidance” of the audience (in Talbot 194). For instance, flashback and flash- forward work effectively in serving such purposes. In the well-known film Memento

(Christopher Nolan 2000), the frequent use of flashbacks in the narrative helps to depict the psychological distress Leonard (Guy Pearce) experiences after the death of his wife due to short- term memory loss, and challenges spectators’ cognition and emotion in discovery of the real murderer while making sense of the film. Such formal choices play an essential role in film’s construction of affect and the engaged viewing experience it offers.

Film Form: Music

Music is an essential tool for communication both in real life and film. Good film music creates a neurological pattern in the brain that deepens our understanding of the narrative structure and intensifies our emotional responses towards it. In Feeling Smart (2015), Winter

cites neurobiological studies in explaining how music affects memory and shapes one’s experience with arts:

Neurobiologists have been trying to understand why the brain reacts so

emotionally to music, to the point that it can raise goose bumps on the skin. In one

study, a few years ago subjects were asked to select their favorite musical

passages (from purely symphonic works with no accompanying words). Those

musical passages were then played for them while fMRI scans of their brains

were conducted. The brain region revealing the greatest activity in those scans

was the striatum, a subcortical brain region that is responsible for the secretion of

dopamine— a hormone that is involved in giving us pleasurable feelings in a wide

range of contexts, including sexual activity and the temporary highs brought about

by some addictive drugs. (162-163)

In film, music functions as an auditory component that may “supplement, enhance, and expand upon the meaning of a film’s narrative,” establishing an actively and dynamically evolving relationship with visual components that progresses with the narrative in construction of affect and emotion in the viewing experience (Lipscomb and Tolchinsky 383). It is an artistic creation of “sonic fabric” that comprises elements such as the “musical score, ambient sound, dialogue, sound effects, and silence,” all of which are compiled and synchronized to work together in forming “a harmonious counterpoint” to the visual cues displayed on screen

(Lipscomb and Tolchinsky 383).

In his book Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies (2013), Arthur P.

Shimamura refers to the work of film scholar Carl Plantinga and several other psychologists and

neuropsychologists in explaining the affective power of film music. Shimamura states that it has a “frequency following effect” that keeps viewers engaged via the “physiological functions of the body,” and therefore, film music composed with different choices of elements (e.g., notes, beats, rhythms, etc.) is believed to produce different “emotional impact and thematic meaning”

(in Shimamura 102-3). Plantinga (2009) also argues that film music is usually “program music” that is designed to work collaboratively with other film techniques in the construction of affect and emotion (Plantinga 132). He further refers to film scholar Jeff Smith’s theory that film music is “emotively” pre-focused because empirical studies have found that its expressive quality signifies in “two processes: polarization and affective congruence”; while the former approach embodies entities in elicitation of emotional responses absent from the scene, the later transpires in heightening and intensifying the “existing” emotive quality of it (in Plantinga 134).

Film music not only provides assistance to character-engagement, but also helps to build up climaxes as the narrative progresses in ways that are, like acting and performance and other image-based techniques, denied to literary texts. As Lipscomb (1989) sums up, film music’s significance lies in its role to communicate “the underlying psychological drama of the narrative at a subconscious level” (qtd. in Lipscomb and Tolchinsky 383). In other words, the meaning it conveys and the experience it offers partially define the affective power of the film.

In conclusion, science has proved how strongly bonded and deeply connected we are in relating to others. Therefore, narrative arts such as literature and film create that valuable and productive imaginary space for readers and viewers to communicate with fictional others, the experience of which affects perceptions of our own existence as individuals and relationships with others in the world—because “how bizarre it would be to conceive of an I without an us”

(Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia xiii). According to Clay and Iacoboni, classic novels attract readers across time and space because their narratives are embedded with plots and characters that

“touch on deeper themes that flow through many people’s lives” (in Schellekens and Goldie

319). Among all literary works, nineteenth-century British novels have been the most popular sources for film adaptation ever since (Bloom and Pollock 8). My framework for studying adaptation via affect is applicable to literature to film adaptations in general; but in this project, I take five nineteenth-century British novels and several of their film adaptations as case studies.

Through close viewing and reading of the texts, I expect to inform our understanding of the two art forms as well as their relationship with one another.

Organization

Literary theorist Alan Richardson claims in his book British Romanticism and the Science of the Mind (2010) that Jane Austen qualifies as one of the first ToM theorists whose understanding of the relation between arts and human minds is “in tune with and in some ways ahead of the brain science of her time” (94). In Chapter One, I examine two of Jane Austen’s novels, Emma (1816) and Persuasion (1818), both of which share a theme less of romance than minding-reading capacity, seen in her critiques of the decision-making process and the ways her characters handle crisis. In both novels, Austen utilizes a selection of literary devices in the construction of affectivity that shapes readers’ understanding of her protagonists and their journey—sometimes successful, sometimes not—in the pursuit of happiness. This chapter will discuss Austen’s formal choices and her craft in each novel that may help to enhance the affective reading experience. In Chapter Two, I turn to four film adaptations of the same two novels—Clueless (Amy Heckerling 1995) and Emma (Douglas McGrath 1996), and Persuasion

(Roger Michell 1995) and Persuasion (Adrian Shergold 2007). Since character development drives the emotive power of the novels Emma and Persuasion, I will explore how each film, composed of different formal possibilities, succeeds or fails in restructuring narratives that adapt the resonant affect(s) associated with Austen’s heroines when reframing them from the page to the screen.

Built upon modes of bildungsroman, romance, and the gothic, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane

Eyre (1847) is one of the most celebrated classic novels of the Victorian era. Chapter Three studies how each chosen screen version—Jane Eyre (Franco Zeffirelli 1996) and Jane Eyre

(Cary Fukunaga 2011)—of Brontë’s protagonist employs cinematic tools that work affectively, in a similar fashion compared to the novel, in promoting sympathy, empathy, and identification with the title character who negotiates her survival out of social, psychological, and emotional restraints in making sense of herself and her place in the world.

In Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)—a gothic science fiction novel—Robert Louis

Stevenson constructs a detective-like narrative that traces the origin of the monstrous iconic creature, Edward Hyde, as well as its relation to the reputed doctor, Henry Jekyll, against the backdrop of the late nineteenth century. To reassess the legacy of the piece across time, Chapter

Four looks at four adaptations of Stevenson’s text. The goal is to examine how filmmakers create their own “diverse transformations” of the source text in translating the affectivity and rhetoric as well as philosophical ideals (e.g., cultural anxieties, duality in the nature of humankind) through the “cipher” of the Jekyll-Hyde character-creation.

Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (Thomas Hardy 1892) is one of the best-known tragic novels of nineteenth-century British literature. Themed on socio-

moral deliberations of its time, the novel presents essential changes in the notions of gender, class, and identity. Chapter Five discusses Hardy’s narrative and its formal construction of affect via characters and events in creating tension in the plot and character psychology. I will compare and contrast two film adaptations of his novel—Tess (Roman Polanski 1979) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Ian Sharp 1998)—to see how different adaptive approaches as well might enhance or weaken character-engagement, which in turn would affect viewers’ emotional responses and aesthetic experiences. In Chapter Six, I inquire into how my proposed framework might spark interest in studying other forms of adaptation, such as the biopic. The goal is to investigate how biopic filmmakers create affective narrative structures with cinematic techniques that can help (or not) to generate cognitive and emotional responses among audiences who might then be touched or inspired to more fully explore the original figure through biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, and so forth. I use the biopic A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard 2001), a film adaptation of the biography A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar 1998), as a case study.

The acts of reading, watching, and feeling in our experiences with the arts are central to our sense-making abilities. Our interactions with the arts provide “heightened, intensified, and highly integrative experiences” that train our minds and bodies in our perception of selves and others (Johnson xiii). A good work of art demands “rational choice, intuitive talent, and the highest levels of learned, not innate, skills” from its creator (Dutton 1). Using insights drawn from cognitive and neurobiological science, studying the relationship between literature and film via affect and emotion allows us to see how they interact with the cognitive, emotive, and affective faculties of the human mind, body, and brain. Miall refers to Oatley and Mitra

Gholamain (1997: 280) in demonstrating how “the formal structure” of a literary work (and, I argue, a film) empowers simulation; he further points out that it is the “incompleteness that challenges the reader [and viewer] to engage in creative, and imaginative, construction,” and therefore gives the narrative affective power (in Schellekens and Goldie 287-8). In the following chapters, I will discuss in detail that based on concrete cues and formal choices in a writer’s words, films adapt affect and emotion via cinematic techniques similarly to, but also often differently from, the methods employed in literature.

CHAPTER 1

MIND-READING AND AFFECTIVITY IN JANE AUSTEN’S

EMMA AND PERSUASION

In this chapter, I consider the nineteenth-century British writer Jane Austen, and provide examples of how her linguistic skills and unique narrative style function in refining the affective quality of her novels. I use Emma (1816) and Persuasion (1818) as case studies in examining how formal techniques such as FID (Free-Indirect Discourse), a form of narration that mixes third-person with first-person direct speech and thought, signify in creating appealing characters as well as how she challenges readers’ emotions and cognition by incorporating multiple embedded states of mind and deep inter-subjectivity in her narratives, all of which help to promote an affective reading experience.

Historical Background

In nineteenth-century British society, the population was divided based on class and status. Gender roles were clearly divided; hence, women’s lives were heavily dependent on their male counterparts (e.g., father, husband, and son) socially, economically, and psychologically.

Based on such a social setting, family nobility and wealth gave privilege to people from higher classes while common folks were neglected regardless of their hard work and family traditions.

Class boundaries put restrictions on socialization and interpersonal relationships. Marriage was primarily an arranged or economic relationship rather than the culmination of a couple’s quest for happiness. Women, particularly, had very little control over their lives in the strongly patriarchal society as their roles were defined since birth, the rules of which limited their rights

and their life paths in terms of education and socialization. For instance, women were not allowed to inherit property and they had few to no opportunities to work professionally.

Against the backdrop of such cultural phenomena, Austen created Emma and Persuasion.

She provides models of how her heroines learn and mature, reflected in aspects of their self- awareness, self-evaluation, and self-reflection upon their judgments and decisions. Austen’s novels achieved popularity among readers and scholars. Literary critic F.R. Leavis, in his book

The Great Tradition (1948), praises Austen as one of the greatest English writers alongside

George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad; he claims that she displays “intense moral preoccupation,” the achievement of which has inspired generations of writers in the English tradition (in O’Gorman 171). Austen’s works have been commonly received as romance novels due to their focus on marriage as a theme; however, they reveal deeper social and cultural issues in pre-Victorian society. Austen’s characters explore their feelings and desires in a way that mimics the rapid change in the social structure around them; such formal design may enhance the affectivity of her texts and their effect on readers.

In Austen’s novels, the emotive quality of her characters is usually defined by their decision-making approach. Eyal Winter in his book Feeling Smart (2015) points out how positive character traits of an individual can bring evolutionary benefit to the self and the society she or he resides in. He argues that “individuals who possess good characteristics are better at surviving than those who lack them, ensuring that they have more offspring. We usually think of evolutionary forces as shaping the characteristics of individuals (or genes), but mutation and selection also influence the evolution of societies. Societies with positive characteristics (such as social structures and values that preserve cohesion) will survive better than societies that lack

them” (98). For Austen, the acquisition of proper skills at conversation and good manners are high arts. Her design of an ideal marriage is built upon true companionship; her characters’ paths to the pursuit of happiness are possible when they put in real effort to adjust their attitudes while also developing their own self-hood in making better decisions. Winter’s demonstration of the evolutionary benefits of strong social structures offers a new angle in understanding Austen’s significance as a British writer whose contribution to the English canon and the society her novels mirror has been exceptional.

Besides charming characters, the formal structure of her narratives also help to enhance the emotive quality of the texts. According to Ariane Hudelet, Austen’s narratives usually offer

“a neat, fairy-tale-like, three-part structure” with “a crisp and ironical third-person” point of view

(in Cartmell 256). Linguistically speaking, her crafting of orthodox conversations provides cognitive relief via ironic and witty remarks, and therefore attracts both general readers who might be drawn to compelling love stories and intellectuals who enjoy reading her novels for their appealing characters, her satire of social customs, and her plots’ ironic turns of events.

Linda Bree refers to George Henry (1859) in praising Austen for “her art of selection, her ear for natural human speech and her skill in dramatic representation”; however, as Bree points out, he fails to identify in Austen’s works of “forms and features” that are commonly found in other popular novels in her time as sometimes her narrative techniques are veiled, and thus, his bitter complaint about Austen’s compositions as being “without grace or felicity” is biased (in Sabor

88). With insights from affect and cognitive studies, scholarship in literary studies has made great progress in offering explanations to address such concerns, as well as recognizing Austen’s

unique literary style that sets her apart from her peers in attracting readers throughout generations.

Theory of Mind (ToM) and Free Indirect Discourse (FID)

Austen experiments with various formal possibilities in treating fictional characters’ consciousness, which as a result implements complex affectivity in her narrative structure that may enhance character-engagement in the readership. In her book Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel (2006), Lisa Zunshine argues that fiction “engages, teases, and pushes” the brain’s limits in mind-reading as our imaginative minds have evolved to prepare us for cognitive challenges such as “metarepresentationality” (Zunshine 4). In her work on how cognitive science provides valuable insights in understanding the form and structure of literary narratives, she demonstrates that Austen’s works challenge readers’ emotions and cognition by incorporating multiple embedded states of mind and “deep intersubjectivity” into her narratives

(Zunshine 276).

Austen’s design and her innovative literary techniques are contributive to the affective reading experience her stories afford. In his work I Know That You Know That I Know:

Narrating Subjects from Moll Flanders to Marnie (2004: 25), George Butte defines deep intersubjectivity as “a multiply-layered and mutually-reflecting subjectivity” that brings “subtle and fundamental” changes that challenge our cognition; he further points out that Austen adopts her style by “having a character perceive the reaction of another character to the first character’s mental state,” the design of which demands “multiple negotiations and perceptions” and creates a new approach in shaping the art and craft of narrative structures (qtd. in Zunshine 276). Such

practice further inspired writers such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf, who push readers’ mental productivities to the “sixth level of recursive embedment” (Zunshine 279).

Besides ToM, Free Indirect Discourse (FID) is another core factor that is important to

Austen’s construction of affective narratives. FID is a third-person omniscient narrator who inserts free-indirect speech that gives insights to the inner thoughts of a character. It is particularly effective in engaging readers in the sense-making process of the novel. According to

Daniel P. Gunn (2004), Emma provides especially explicit examples in understanding Austen’s use of FID. For instance, FID functions as “an imitation of figural speech or thought,” which permits the narrator to mimic or echo “the idiom of the character” and promotes reader- engagement (37). Therefore, characters’ choice of words and linguistic skills are embedded with multi-layered implications that boost interest in the reading experience.

While some scholars may find FID a disruptive technique that is abstract or less effective to plot development, others may see it as a valuable affective literary tool that trains our minds and aids learning. Mikhail Bakhtin (1941: 262) argues in “Discourse in the Novel” that each component in the narrative structure “supports the accent of the whole and participates in the process whereby the unified meaning of the whole is structured and revealed” (qtd. in Gunn 42).

For instance, according to Casey Finch and Peter Bowen, “the development in Austen’s hands of free indirect style marks a crucial moment in the history of novelistic technique in which narrative authority is seemingly elided, ostensibly giving way to what Flaubert called a transparent style in which the author is ‘everywhere felt, but never seen’” (qtd. in Gunn 43).

Hence, FID allows Austen to exercise “control through the narrator, whose intonations and inflections shape our response to the represented figural speech and thought” (Gunn 42). With

such formal choices, Austen’s novels keep readers engaged mentally and emotionally as they promote us to ask questions of Why and How besides the commonly raised ones such as What,

Who, When, and Where in literary narratives.

Emma (1816)

According to Jan Fergus, Austen was undoubtedly at the “height of her genius” by the time she wrote Emma as it took her only fourteen months to complete such a complex novel (in

Copeland and McMaster 12). In his book A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family

Recollections (1869), James Edward Austen-Leigh (Austen’s nephew) reported that Austen had very high expectations for this particular work as she once famously commented: “I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like.” According to Fergus, Emma was well received in her time, and the novel was reviewed ten times; and the first and also most remarkable in-depth review was written by Sir Walter Scott, published in John Murray’s

Quarterly Review (1816), whose critique marked the beginning of “the nineteenth-century canonization of Austen as a novelist” (qtd. in Sabor 13).

Robert McCrum, an English writer and editor, ranks Emma at number seven among the list of “The 100 best novels of all time” (The Guardian 4 November 2013 n.p.). He is among the few whose interpretive account of Austen’s work reflects its affectivity in terms of narrative construction, as he notes:

Emma … to whom the reader returns again and again for the seductive intimacy

of her thoughts, a secret communion that’s braided with the lesson that self-

knowledge is a mystery, vanity the source of the worst pain, and the subconscious

a treacherous and imperfect instrument in the management of the psyche ...

Emma … is supremely English – in character, landscape, sensibility and wit. It’s

provincial, opaque, sparkling and wonderfully optimistic while being at the same

time tinged with intimations of sorrow and mortality. (2013 n.p.)

In his book Emma Adapted: Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film (2007), Marc Di

Paolo points out that most scholars have considered Emma as either a “domestic bildungsroman” or a “social critique” (21). Bildungsroman (a German word) is a narrative form that focuses on the “maturation and education” of a principal protagonist who comes of age as a result of a long, laborious journey from one stage of life to another; it is a popular literary genre of the “formation novel” among nineteenth-century British novelists (Di Paolo 22). Emma resembles such a form but also differs from the typical kind as Emma hardly leaves the comfort of her home and has too much free time on her hands. Some critics believed that Austen took risks in Emma by setting it in “a Country Village” of Highbury with a storyline focusing on “3 or 4 Families,” but to Austen it was “the delight” of her life (qtd. in Sabor 1). Some scholars focus on Emma’s personal growth and maturity over the course of the novel as she overcomes her arrogance and overly feverish imagination through experience. Others focus on Austen’s social critique of issues of class, gender, and status in nineteenth-century England. They see the confined world of

Highbury as a metaphorical site of the repressive British society of Austen’s time and consider

Emma’s decision to marry Mr. Knightley as a solution to both getting out of the “domestic imprisonment” by the “hypochondriac” father as well as to satisfy the “societal expectations” of the community she resides in (Di Paolo 22).

It is commonly believed that the plot of Emma revolves around courtship; however,

Jonathan Sachs points out that within the novel’s structure, there is a great amount of emphasis

on the daily interactions among Highbury’s residents, seen in “the manners, the judgment, the subtlety”—all of which are important factors in the decision-making process of an individual

(qtd. in Sabor 44). According to Robert D. Hume, Austen forces her readers to share the naïve and erroneous consciousness of her heroine and provides an engaged reading experience which promotes close observation of Emma’s progression from “self-deception and vanity to perception and humility” (in Sabor 61). Such a journey challenges Emma as she must constantly appraise her social interactions with others, make proper decisions, and take effective actions based on a variety of circumstances.

In her book Imagining Minds: The Neuro-Aesthetics of Austen, Eliot, and Hardy (2010),

Kay Young argues that Emma is a narcissist who “fancies the world to be a reflection” of how her mind imagines it, and therefore her self-deception of thinking “a little too well of herself” and misconception towards the world due to “having rather too much her own way” play major roles in forming her decisions (34-5). She further demonstrates that Austen purposefully embeds

“dramatized consciousness” in her narrative structure as out of fifty-five chapters in the novel,

Austen designs fourteen of them to start with “the presence of Emma’s consciousness” (Young

41). Jillian Heydt-Stevenson explains this phenomenon and praises Austen for providing “a way to exercise one out of mental sluggishness and to examine the difficulty of knowing another” (in

Sabor 151). As readers may recall, towards the end of the novel, Austen reminds us that “seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure…” (E 407). Thus, the novel- reading promotes cognitive processing in making sense of the narrative—to decide what is true and what is not—which also mirrors the real-world challenge in acquiring necessary survival skills to make proper judgment, reasonable decisions, and take effective actions. As mentioned

earlier, Emma is constructed with a “sparkling and wonderfully optimistic” tone and paired with

“intimations of sorrow and mortality” (McCrum 2013 n.p). In the following pages, I will explore how Austen manages to engage readers by maintaining the level of interest, evoking surprise, and eliciting distress and sometimes shame, all of which help to achieve the novel’s humorous as well as ironic effect that appeals to the mind, body, and brain of readers.

Decision-Making: Intersubjectivity and the Construction of Interest and Surprise

Emma3 sets the tone from the very beginning: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her” (E 1). Word choices such as “clever,” “seemed,” and “vex” construct affects such as interest, joy, surprise, and distress. As Linda Bree argues, it is very easy to miss the tone as we tend to believe that the novel is about “an unusually independent heroine,” and therefore, readers may be allowing Emma to “effortlessly dominates the sentence in syntax as well as in content” (qtd. in Sabor 96). Bree further adds that “the positives associated with her (‘best blessings of existence’) are impressive, and the negatives relatively trivial—the word ‘vex’ conveys a very precise impression of the level of likely difficulties to come” (qtd. in Sabor 96).

Thus, such a technique signifies in managing affective reading experience.

Austen employs language and rhetoric devices in constructing intersubjectivity in her portrayal of characters to enhance the affective dimensions of the novel such as interest and surprise affect. According to Winter (2014), one of the basic mechanisms that motivate learning

3 All in-text citations of the novel are from the Kindle Edition of Jane Austen, Emma (Dover Thrift Editions).

and cognition is “curiosity,” an emotional feedback driven by the interest-excitement affect

(164). In the following passages, we see how language has been used to achieve this outcome. In response to her father who is concerned about her interest in match-making, Emma says:

Only one more, papa; only for Mr. Elton. Poor Mr. Elton! You like Mr. Elton,

papa, - I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in Highbury who

deserves him - and he's been here a whole year, and has fitted up his vicarage so

comfortably, that it would be a shame to have him single any longer - and I

thought when he was joining their hands today, he looked so very much as if he

would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr.

Elton, and this is the only way I have of doing him a service. (E 9) (Italics mine)

The words in italic lead readers to wonder what makes it so special about this character as

“only” he gets Emma’s attention and demands an immediate arrangement for his marriage.

Readers may be aroused with great interest and curiosity to know why Emma makes such a judgement as well as how the story will end for Mr. Elton. In the episode when Jane Fairfax receives the gift of a piano from Frank Churchill, Emma once again judges such an act and makes it a secret exchange between Jane and Mr. Dixon. Churchill states that “now I can see it in no other light than as an offering of love” (E 203). According to John Wiltshire, this plot is

“triple voiced” because Mr. Churchill is actually “duplicitous” and yet wholeheartedly telling the truth by admitting his love to Jane Fairfax (qtd. in Sabor 109). While intersubjectivity works as a diversion to distract Emma as well as readers from guessing the truth, it also prepares readers for the revelation of an important plot point coming up later in the novel.

Both of the above events enhance the emotive quality of the text as we learn that the reality turns out to be quite surprising for Emma. For instance, later in the novel, Emma is surprised to find that Mr. Elton likes her while she misinterprets his love and tries to make a match between him and Harriet Smith. Emma also further discovers that Mr. Churchill and Jane are, in fact, secretly engaged. Readers gain great pleasure from surprising and shocking experiences when reading novels. According to Winter, surprising experience not only provides us opportunity to “recognize our physical and social environments” and “implants important knowledge in our brains,” which might help with making better decisions, but more importantly, the pleasure we gain from such affective experience incentivizes us “to seek them and to be alert to their existence, thus improving our learning and our chances for survival” (Winter 164).

Austen’s character-creation of Emma construct surprise affect and promote mental activities in readers while making sense her actions.

Austen designs Mr. Elton as a character full of surprises. During the Christmas Eve dinner, he pays unusually high attention to Emma and even volunteers to drop her home. On their ride back, he shocks Emma in the carriage with an unexpected proposal. Upon refusal, he surprises Emma again with a new engagement and a marriage soon follows. In both episodes, deep intersubjectivity is present to challenge readers’ emotion and cognition. For instance, in

Elton’s proposal to Emma in the carriage, we read:

To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was immediately

preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of the weather and the

night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate and

joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cut up—her hand seized—her

attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her: availing

himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already

well known, hoping—fearing—adoring—ready to die if she refused him; but

flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled

passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short, very much resolved on

being seriously accepted as soon as possible. (E 122-3) (Italics mine)

The excessive use of rhetoric at work seems almost as aggressive as Mr. Elton’s offensive proposal—enhancing the emotive quality of the character in construction of affect such as surprise, distress, and shame. The formal choices of verbs and adverbs phrases provide clues to how Emma and Elton each feels in response to such a proposal. Emma could not believe what

Mr. Elton has just done. When he continues without considering Emma’s reactions and feelings,

Emma appears to suffer from frustration as such unexpected acts from Mr. Elton may lead to further embarrassment in their social interaction. As Austen’s technique might construct surprise and shame affect, such reading experience may also promote empathic identification with Emma as we can imagine how awkward it might feel to refuse a marriage proposal and its negative effect on a friendship. Thus, readers are motivated to ask, why there is such a surprising turn?

And how might Elton respond to a refusal?

Later, when we read about Mr. Elton’s engagement news with another, readers are likely to form a complex affective appraisal towards the character-creation—particularly in regards to his decision-making process. As the narrator speaks: “Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of” (E 168). The narrator further tells readers: “Mr. Elton returned, a very

happy man. He had gone away rejected and mortified— mortified— disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He had gone away deeply offended— he came back engaged to another— and to another as superior, of course, to the first, as under such circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost” (E 168).

Here, Austen utilizes intersubjectivity in her portrayal of Emma and her perception of

Elton’s reaction and mental states before versus after his engagement, to challenge readers’ emotion and cognition. Questions to ponder are, for instance, how an important decision about the lifelong commitment of marriage is made here, and in such a short period of time; thereafter, learning takes place. A similar event that adds to the surprise affective dimension of the novel is when Emma learns that Harriet is actually thinking of Mr. Knightley as a potential future husband rather than Frank Churchill. In this case, Emma responds with astonishment:

Mr. Knightley and Harriet Smith! — Such an elevation on her side! Such a

debasement on his! It was horrible to Emma to think how it must sink him in the

general opinion, to foresee the smiles, the sneers, the merriment it would prompt

at his expense; the mortification and disdain of his brother, the thousand

inconveniences to himself. — Could it be? — No; it was impossible. And yet it

was far, very far, from impossible. — Was it a new circumstance for a man of

first-rate abilities to be captivated by very inferior powers? Was it new for one,

perhaps too busy to seek, to be the prize of a girl who would seek him? — Was it

new for anything in this world to be unequal, inconsistent, incongruous— or for

chance and circumstance (as second causes) to direct the human fate? (E 390)

In this passage, Austen puts language and rhetoric (e.g., irony) to use with both intersubjectivity and FID to engage readers as the narrator jumps in and out of the minds of different characters. As a result, these formal choices work to engage, tease, and push readers’ mind-reading capacity in forming “metarepresentationality”; they promote mental activities in tracking “who thought, wanted, and felt what and when” (Zunshine 4). Emma seems to find it hard to believe or accept the fact that Harriet thinks of herself as a reasonable partner for Mr.

Knight in the face of the difference in their social status. Such a surprising turn of events enhances the emotive quality of the text and its effect on readers as we see how it challenges

Emma’s confidence in her usual manipulative habits of the “match-making business,” which further leads her to a moment of vexation.

Gunn points out that it is impressive to see “the tremendous flexibility of Austen’s narrative language, which moves in and out of the figural languages effortlessly, evoking them by the sheer exactness of her ear”; he praises Austen for her “sensitivity to diction and the rhythms of speech, and the human presence, the orchestrating voice behind it all,” and he adds,

“passages like these are highly rhetorical—often featuring question marks, exclamations, and subjunctive transformations,” all of which help to enhance the affectivity and ironic effect (Gunn

48-9). These devices also serve as a vehicle for modes of identification with the character, which may promote cognitive gains in readers.

Austen also embeds arguments into her narratives. She wittily hides her tone between those of her characters and the narrator and leaves it to readers to explore the possibilities and search for evidence, both of which shapes the narrative reading of her text. Interest and surprise affect leads to emotional reactions of curiosity and shock. In the neurological process, surprise

affect promotes brain activities to perceive the newly learned information; as we digest what happened (e.g., when, where, who), our minds are engaged in reflecting upon why and how what has happened happened as well as directing our further actions in response to such experiences.

Austen’s character creation allows such affective reading experiences.

The Pursuit of Happiness: FID and the Construction of Shame and Distress

The pursuit of happiness is not a new theme in the literary tradition. In Emma, it is presented through Emma’s self-discovery in learning from her experiences. Her reflection upon the process of decision-making and forming judgments puts her on the path to happiness, but she also faces disappointment and distress when she is surprised. According to John Gibson, literary works convey ethical and moral lessons by invoking emotions such as shame, guilt, or pride (in

Carroll and Gibson 86), and FID is one of the most effective techniques that help to achieve these affective outcomes. Gunn argues that FID serves the purposes of “comedic relief,” “moral instruction,” “double vision,” and creating tension (Gunn 41). He further cites Kathy Mezei to state that whenever FID is present (e.g., in Austen’s novels), readers observe that “a struggle is being waged between narrators and character-focalizers for control of the word, the text, and the reader’s sympathy” (in Gunn 43).

Austen uses such literary technique to achieve a comic effect as she “mimics the subjectivity of a wide range of characters for our amusement, drawing their voices into the rich texture of her narration”; readers are motivated to search for cues via “linguistic traces” in making sense of her characters (e.g., Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates) (Gunn 41). For instance, in the “Box Hill” episode, an outdoor activity and picnic is planned at Mr. Knightley’s estate.

The party mood is dull and Frank tries to lighten it up by suggesting that everyone should tell

three things they are thinking about. Miss Bates immediately chimes in and says she will have no difficulty in playing this game; however, Emma insults her by remarking:

“Ah! Ma’am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me— but you will be limited

as to number— only three at once.” Miss Bates, deceived by the mock ceremony

of her manner, did not immediately catch her meaning; but, when it burst on her,

it could not anger, though a slight blush showed that it could pain her. (E 349)

Austen’s vivid portrayal of the scene in which Emma mocks Miss Bates and causes embarrassment in both of them might promote affective identification towards the characters in the reading experience. Austen’s use of FID helps to alter readers’ interpretations, and the irony achieved works to enhance the affectivity of the narrative. After the picnic is over, Knightley tries to give a lesson to Emma and to warn her against her behavior—he is angry and disappointed. Emma seems troubled by her acts. In the following emotively charged passage, we observe Austen’s mastery in her literary style and expressive skills to describe Emma’s mental and emotional states. Emma reflects:

She was vexed beyond what could have been expressed— almost beyond what

she could conceal. Never had she felt so agitated, mortified, grieved, at any

circumstance in her life. She was most forcibly struck. The truth of this

representation there was no denying. She felt it at her heart. How could she have

been so brutal, so cruel to Miss Bates! How could she have exposed herself to

such ill opinion in any one she valued! And how suffer him to leave her without

saying one word of gratitude, of concurrence, of common kindness! ... As she

reflected more, she seemed but to feel it more. She never had been so depressed.

(E 355)

Cues such as a series of how questions, and the repeated use of exclamation marks, indicate mental as well as emotional struggles are being waged between the narrator and the character-focalizer, all of which help to construct shame and distress affect. It is time for Emma to change. According to Winter, shame is an interesting affect as it can evoke guilty feelings which occur most frequently in “life-changing crises that provoke us to conduct major reviews of our lives and the directions they are taking”; it allows us to modify the process or approach by which our decisions are made and can “bring about significant changes in our habits that last long after the crises that sparked them have abated” (Winter 221). Emma’s guilt and regret further lead to her mental distress. Hence, Austen’s use of FID in construction of shame affect serves such evolutionary purpose and may promote empathic identification readers.

Austen enhances the affective quality of her novel and the experience it offers with her character-design of Mr. Knightley. Anger, a bodily and an emotional form of thinking, is highly affective in communicating with others. Austen embeds this mechanism in her character-creation of Knightley to deepen the affective dimension of her narrative. Within the same episode, we also observe that Mr. Knightley is angry. Emma, “a dear friend” to him, has brought shame on herself by insulting a “very old friend” who is much inferior to the position of herself in all aspects of life, and that makes him angry and disappointed. According to Winter, anger serves as

“a mechanism for creating credible commitment, enabling us to improve our strategic positions in interactions with others” (219). He further refers to Aristotle’s Politics in describing the importance of this emotional mechanism: “anybody can become angry—that is easy, but to be

angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy” (in Winter 219).

Hence, the nature of anger affect is highly intelligent and strategic; its effect on social cognition is thought-provoking.

This is the case with Mr. Knightley. The “Box Hill” episode is the only time we observe his temper. In a study Winter coauthored, he points out that we incline to become angry “in situations in which we can benefit from anger” (Winter x). Mr. Knightley’s angry emotional response forces Emma to adjust her approaches in dealing with herself and others. For instance, when Emma figures out that Harriet is thinking of Mr. Knightley as a good match rather than Mr.

Churchill, she enters into a complex emotional state. At first, Emma is angry as she finds it unrealistic for Harriet to make such a judgment, but she soon finds shame in herself as she realizes that it is partially her own fault, too. Emma is seen in frustration as she blames herself for misleading Harriet on important life decisions such as marriage. Emma reflects:

Oh! Had she never brought Harriet forward! Had she left her where she ought,

and where he had told her she ought! — Had she not, with a folly which no

tongue could express, prevented her marrying the unexceptionable young man

who would have made her happy and respectable in the line of life to which she

ought to belong— all would have been safe; none of this dreadful sequel would

have been. (E 390-1)

Austen utilizes FID in the above passage to construct a combination of negative affects

(shame, anger, and distress). She particularly presents how the character feels and thinks in subjunctive mood (e.g. “had…had…”) which indicates that all might be too late as what has

been done cannot be undone. This enhances the affectivity of the scene and promotes reader response as we are engaged with Emma’s apprehension towards the possible outcomes and consequences which may lead to cognitive gains. The narrator tells readers:

With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every body’s

feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every body’s destiny.

She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and she had not quite done

nothing—for she had done mischief. She had brought evil on Harriet, on herself,

and she too much feared, on Mr. Knightley…. (E 390)

Austen’s unique literary style and narrative technique encourage readers to respond affectively in making sense of Emma and her behaviors. It becomes clear that only when Emma matures mentally and psychologically that she can bring a change to her life and then to others’.

In the end, she walks through her journey of self-discovery and gets married to the man whom she loves and who loves her— a union of “perfect happiness” (E 456). The status change from

Miss Woodhouse to Mrs. Knightly marks her progress in the formation of the self-hood as a renewed Emma. She is a bride whose choice of wedding dress has “very little white satin, very few lace veils”—which suggests the beginning of a pleased, satisfied, and successful marriage rather than “a most pitiful business” as Mrs. Elton complains (E 456).

Persuasion (1818)

Through the lens of cognitive and affect approaches to literary studies, one may suggest that if the argument Austen embedded within Emma is to generate discussion among readers regarding their decision-making processes, Persuasion can be considered as a primer about how to manage emotions and cope with unfortunate life situations and circumstances with restricted

resources. Austen crafts Persuasion with ToM as well as rhetorical tools in constructing a complex affective reading experience. An individual matures both physically and psychologically; the first is usually achieved naturally while the latter usually takes much more effort. For sure, most lessons in life are learned from experience. In Emma, Austen’s heroine learns via self-discovery and taking the right approach in passing judgment and making decisions; in Persuasion, the fictional world Austen creates tends to show us that things are not always pretty in life, and therefore, those unexpected crises serve instructional purposes in guiding her characters as well as her readers in acquiring skill sets that are beneficial for the purpose of survival.

Persuasion4 is Austen’s last completed novel, written in 1818. Penny Gay considers it

“the most poetic” of all novels by Austen as she offers a persuasive structure in portraying her heroine Anne Elliot’s “inner life, her memories and consciousness of loss” (in Copeland and

McMaster, 66). According to Laura Carroll et al., the novel is quite “demanding” as its narrative offers neither “immediate pleasures and grabs” nor the young or “glamorous” heroine commonly seen in Austen’s other popular works; therefore, it poses challenges to the emotional and cognitive capacity of the readership (in Bloom and Pollock 227-9). It is further argued that in

Persuasion, Austen utilizes realism as “an expressive technique” that demands close attention to cues in her “language and setting” rather than larger and more dramatic incidents seen in other popular fictions; her literary style challenges readers’ abilities to identify with the big picture of deep “motifs and structures” (in Bloom and Pollock 229).

4 All in-text citations of the novel are from the Kindle Edition of Jane Austen, Persuasion (Dover Thrift Editions).

In commenting on the affectivity of the novel, John Wiltshire argues in The Hidden Jane

Austen (2014), “Persuasion carries a freight of unspoken emotion and memories that remain unrevisited or unrecalled”; though comprised of “accidents and missed opportunities,” the novel has a “strong, consistent and deliberate” structure that hides behind the “obvious” narrative

(147). Hence, readers are encouraged to find hints and clues behind the linguistic and literary techniques (e.g., FID) in making sense of the plot and the portrayal of characters. The novel is embedded with sharp contrasts of distress and joy affects, with enhanced negative affective dimension (e.g., fear and shame) to engage readers in their mind-reading capacities. Let us take a look at how Austen applies tools to maximize the affective qualities of the novel and intensify its interaction with readers emotionally and cognitively.

The Autumn Tone: Distress and Sympathy

Persuasion does not share the charm, wit and comic effect of Emma in which failed relationships are taken lightly; it is serious, and readers may find cues from its much darker tone and some of the major events around the protagonist Anne. For instance, affectivities of distress and fear evoked among various events (e.g., on individual, family, social, and even national levels) are persistent as we observe some of the characters living under shadows, getting seriously injured, badly adjusting to changes, and carrying emotional scars from traumatic life experiences. The navy profession, in particular, has paid a huge price for what they fight for, and the distress from which they suffer is long-lasting and contagious as we see in cases such as

Anne and Wentworth’s separation, the death of Richard (Mustgrove’s son) during the war, the death of Phoebe (Benwick’s fiancé and Harville’s sister) while waiting for her fiancé and brother to return from war, and so on.

Anne Elliot drives the emotive power of the narrative. According to Wiltshire, the portrayal of Anne indicates that she is in the condition of suffering that “we might now call chronic depression,” caused by “unresolved grief”; we are shown that she is more “‘self- occupied’ without sufficient psychological energy to address or fully register the outside world”

(Wiltshire 147). His critique might be a little harsh, but it is clear that Anne suffers from her relationship with her family. For instance, as we see from the beginning of the novel: “Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way—she was only Anne” (P 2). Austen’s choice of words—particularly her use of adjectives and adverbs—construct shame and pride affect. Anne herself seems mysterious to most of readers; as Ann Gaylin points out, in most of the first part of the novel, “the narrative style conspires with the fact that Anne has no listener or confidante except herself (and the reader)” (in Wiltshire 148). Anne is a victim of psychological abuse by her family and suffers the emotional distress of their neglect.

Besides her disturbing family life, what strikes Anne more is the loss of her relationship with Captain Wentworth—her first love. Austen’s linguistic skills in narrating Anne’s awkward state enhances the distress dimension of the novel. It seems that the broken engagement came directly from Lady Russell’s persuasion years ago when she convinced Anne not to marry

Wentworth due to her concerns about his instability to provide a secure and worry-free life style for Anne. However, the narrator reveals Anne’s logic in her decision as more of a self-sacrificial act:

She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper,

hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was not a merely selfish

caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it. Had she not imagined

herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given

him up. (P 18)

Austen’s language provides affective cues to readers in understanding Anne’s emotional frustration in trying to balance between her heart and mind in doing what she believes was

“right” years ago. If everything seems fine, Anne should be free of tension in her mind as she has managed to get rid of the “wrong thing.” However, what we find is the emotional core of an intense sorrow as the narrator describes Anne’s mourning state for her loss of love: “A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance; but not with a few months ended Anne’s share of suffering from it. Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect” (P

18). In this emotionally charged passage, Austen utilizes her linguistic skills to construct distress affect and promote readers to respond with empathic identification towards Anne’s unease due to her loss of love. We may not know exactly how Anne’s regrets and self-blame have damaged her beauty, but we know what broken relationships feel like, and therefore, we can share her pain.

Austen further enhances such emotive quality in her character-creation of Anne via an event at Mary Mustgrove’s home. There, Anne meets with Wentworth eight years after their initial breakup. Again, Austen utilizes her expressive linguistic skills to highlight the affective quality of the narrative and promote reader response. The encounter was short but Austen manages to fill the scene with complex affectivity:

Mary, very much gratified by this attention, was delighted to receive him, while a

thousand feelings rushed on Anne, of which this was the most consoling, that it

would soon be over. And it was soon over. In two minutes after Charles’

preparation, the others appeared; they were in the drawing-room. Her eye half met

Captain Wentworth’s, a bow, a curtsey passed; she heard his voice; he talked to

Mary, said all that was right, said something to the Miss Musgroves, enough to

mark an easy footing; the room seemed full, full of persons and voices, but a few

minutes ended it. (P 39)

In this passage, we observe Austen’s mastery in her literary style through her sentence structure and rhetorical tools, both of which help to provide an intensified affective reading experience. Within two minutes, a series of acts have taken place, and during such a short amount of time, all is done and then, everyone is gone. The chosen adjectives and adverbs highlight the tension of the scene. Austen’s vivid portrayal of what Anne sees, how she feels and reacts, constructs distress affect and might invite readers to respond with empathic identification with her. Anne seems to be in deep thoughts of confusion and anxiety, and probably a mixture of excitement and guilt as well. The overflow of “a thousand feelings” comprises her emotional reaction towards her ex-fiancé; with the fear of losing control and an emotional break-down, she meets Wentworth with half an eye and resorts to only hearing about his actions. To what extent can strong emotions lead to troubled senses? These precise descriptions of human emotion and acts evoke deeply affective experience.

Crisis Management: Irony and the Construction of Shame-Pride

Persuasion can also be seen as a satire on human flaws. Austen utilizes rhetorical tools such as irony in her craft of characters (Sir Walter Elliot, Anne, Mary, and Capt. Wentworth) to construct shame and pride affect—mainly seen in the ways that each character copes with their unfortunate life events. As discussed in the introduction of this dissertation, shame and anger are emotional mechanisms that work affectively for the survival and evolution of humankind. In the fictional accounts of literary works, those who learn from mistakes, face challenges with a proper attitude, and handle crisis effectively are usually rewarded in the end as better survivors.

Austen’s portrayal of the troubling characteristics of Sir Walter Elliot reflects such ideals and construct shame affect in achieving the ironic effect. We are told: “Sir Walter Elliot, of

Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there he could read his own history with an interest which never failed” (P 1).

The narrator further describes him: “Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Walter Elliot’s character; vanity of person and of situation” (P 1). Particularly, Sir Walter’s false pride and his way of coping with his economic crisis and status change mirrors one of the typical irrational economic behaviors.

According to Winter (2014), this type of behavior originates in the emotional mechanisms in the brain, as “many of them are related to dopamine, the ‘incentive hormone,’ and to the absorption rate of that hormone in the brain…involved in the feelings of satisfaction and pleasure we get from success and that can influence our attitudes toward risk”; he further explains “our need for the feelings of satisfaction and pleasure that dopamine gives us can cause

to act in ways that are inimical to our material interests and in some cases, can even be the source of mental disturbances,” which can be observed “in the behavior of auction participants” (Winter

223). This discovery from neuroscience might help to explain the psychological distress

Englishmen such as Sir Walter experience against the backdrop of the British society in Austen’s time, who fail to adapt to the evolving social and economic conditions and lose control in their obsession with external materialism. Therefore, such character-design enhances the shame-pride and distress affective dimensions of the narrative and Sir Walter can be seen as one of the main subjects of Austen’s satire and ironic take on the socio-cultural issues of her time.

Austen’s crafting of Anne, in contrast, serves as the emotion core of the novel. Her design of Anne’s constant self-sacrifice as well as her abilities in managing her emotions and handling crisis enhances the shame-pride affectivity of the narrative. For instance, we are told that before Mrs. Elliot passes away, the affairs of Kellynch Hall (the family estate) are in order; she is an “excellent, sensible and amiable” person. Things have turned in a different direction since then, which forces Anne to take responsibility on her shoulders in keeping family together.

The narrator informs us: “How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! How eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning” (P 19).

Austen utilizes the rhetorical tool of irony in constructing pride in Anne for her devotion to the family. Anne, though neglected by the family and in sorrow of the loss of her mother as well as a marriage engagement, has been staying strong and coping with life’s challenges.

According to Winter, in a real-life case, “when the balance of power is especially unfavorable for us, our emotional mechanism cooperates with our cognitive mechanism to moderate our feelings of insult and anger”; he highly values this negative-affect-driven “rational emotional behavior, which in proper dosage can boost our chances of survival” (Winter 14). Winter’s argument with insights from neuroscientific studies helps to recognize Austen’s thorough understanding of human nature—particularly her portrayal of how Anne deals with her unfortunate circumstances by adjusting her attitude and strategy. Such design of the character is likely to elicit empathic identification in responding to what Anne has been through as we all know the importance of a mother to her child.

Austen further enhances the emotive quality of the character-creation of Anne via plot design of two accidents. For instance, after her father loses the family estate, Anne follows his order to visit and take care of her sister, Mary. During her visit, Anne’s nephew (Mary’s son)

Little Charles accidentally falls from a tree and gets seriously injured. In describing the terrifying event and its emotional impact on family members, the narrator tells us:

His collar-bone was found to be dislocated, and such injury received in the back,

as roused the most alarming ideas. It was an afternoon of distress, and Anne had

every thing to do at once; the apothecary to send for, the father to have pursued

and informed, the mother to support and keep from hysterics, the servants to

control, the youngest child to banish, and the poor suffering one to attend and

soothe; besides sending, as soon as she recollected it, proper notice to the other

house, which brought her an accession rather of frightened, enquiring

companions, than of very useful assistants. (P 35)

Austen utilizes rhetorical tools in her choices of infinitive phrases to construct shame- pride affect. It is natural for the family to be frightened by the poor little boy’s dreadful condition, but we observe that Anne, when encountering such an unfortunate and unexpected event, is running around—busy with arranging and managing all at hand to help and keep everything under control. She puts aside her own fear and concentrates on finding solutions.

Such a device highlights the multiple roles that Anne is playing all at once. Austen’s description of Anne’s calm and cool-minded attitude under such circumstances reflects her virtues of love, responsibility, and self-sacrifice in managing emotions, making decisions and taking effective actions.

Such character-engagement with Anne gets stronger as the plot progresses. We read that

Mary, regardless of her son’s condition, gets upset because her husband insists on going to the planned dinner party at her in-laws’ without her. She complains to Anne, “So you and I are to be left to shift by ourselves, with this poor sick child; and not a creature coming near us all the evening! I knew how it would be. This is always my luck” (P 36). Anne, who cares about her sister’s happiness, volunteers to take responsibility in looking after her nephew, so that Mary could happily join her husband and have some fun at the party. The character design of Anne versus Mary creates a sharp contrast in its affectivity, and therefore achieves ironic effect.

In the other accidental event of the novel, where Mary’s sister-in-law Louisa falls in her visit to Lyme (a sea-side tourism spot), Austen utilizes infinitive phrases to enhance the affective quality of the scene. We are shown how Anne, once again, behaves bravely in handling traumatic events. Austen describes her reactions as well as her admirable manners: “Anne, attending with all the strength and zeal, and thought, which instinct supplied, to Henrietta, still tried, at

intervals, to suggest comfort to the others, tried to quiet Mary, to animate Charles, to assuage the feelings of Captain Wentworth. Both seemed to look to her for directions” (P 72). A repeated pattern of short verb phrases indicates the emergent mode of the event and highlights Anne’s role in coping with such dreadful situation. Austen’s choices of rhetoric tools construct pride affect and promote reader response in appraising Anne’s emotional intelligence and management capabilities.

According to Wiltshire, Austen treats Anne differently from heroines in her other novels, such as Emma; “Anne’s point of view is … veiled, held at a distance from the reader by the narrator’s own sympathetic mediation” (Wiltshire 148). In dealing with her own psychological tensions due to her loss of the love of Wentworth, as well as her problematic family who seem to care little about her happiness, we hardly find any outrageous moments in the character-creation of Anne nor see her complaining about the crises in her life. She keeps things to herself and appears to accept things as they are; she focuses on prioritized family matters but neglects her own emotional needs. As Penny Gay argues, one important factor that helps with Anne’s maturity is “self-irony” (in Copeland and McMaster 66). For instance, during her visit to Lyme, she meets Benwick, a navy officer who injured himself in the war and loses his fiancée. Anne talks him to try to ease his distress and sorrow, but she soon becomes alert: “Anne could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination” (P 66). After giving advice to Benwick who is in the mourning state for the loss of love in life, we see Anne falling into a state of reflection. Winter

points out that “we use a similar mechanism to make commitments to ourselves. We often undertake actions in the present because of their effects on how we will behave in the future”

(Winter 9). Anne’s flexibility in admitting her flaws as well as her constant self-warning against over-confidence, which is in sharp contrast to Emma, assists her in self-growth.

The character-creation of Capt. Wentworth also adds to the pride-shame affective dimension of the novel. For him, the stressor was Louisa’s fall at the seaside. He is troubled by his self-guilt and shame towards Louisa’s injury and Anne. According to Winter, studies led by

Georgio Coricelli and his colleagues have found that brain activities associated with shame elicit regretful emotional responses “spread out among several parts of the brain, from those related to cognition and analytic thought such as the orbitofrontal cortex and the inner sections of the cortex, to parts of the limbic system such as the hypocampus, which regulates emotions and memories” (in Winter 222). These insights provide a biological explanation of why the fictional account of Wentworth’s actions—particularly his reunion with Anne—appeals to us. Not only that we would like to see a happy ending, but also Wentworth’s change of action makes sense.

His shame and guilt feelings force him to order his emotions and further serve as a motivation to readjust himself by claiming his love for Anne.

Wentworth is impressed by Anne’s confidence in dealing with the crisis, which further enhances their emotional bond with each other. Austen utilizes intersubjectivity and rhetorical devices (e.g., irony) to portray the inner thoughts of Anne upon receiving Wentworth’s confession love letter, which works to promote an affective reading experience. The narrator tells readers:

She had not mistaken him. Jealousy of Mr. Elliot had been the retarding weight,

the doubt, the torment. Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or

qualified. He persisted in having loved none but her. She had never been

supplanted. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry;

and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them.

Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the

loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness; but he was obliged to acknowledge

that only at Uppercross had he learnt to do her justice, and only at Lyme had he

begun to understand himself. (P 158)

Shame and fear drive Wentworth to make a commitment. The “multiply-layered” representation of both Anne’s and her perception of Wentworth’s mental and emotional states works effectively to enhance the irony as well as to engage readers cognitively. Austen’s precise understanding of human nature as well as her expressive linguistic skills help to enhance the emotive quality of her text.

Persuasion is unique in the sense that Austen wrote “two versions of the denouement,” the final decision of which, as Gay points out, provides a distinct insight in understanding

Austen’s “creative imagination at its peak” (in Copeland and McMaster 67). The happy ending of Anne and Wentworth’s marriage enhances the positive affective dimension of the novel.

After Anne learns about Louisa and Cap. Benwick’s engagement, she is in pure joy:

The conclusion of the whole was, that if the woman who had been sensible of

Captain Wentworth’s merits could be allowed to prefer another man, there was

nothing in the engagement to excite lasting wonder; and if Captain Wentworth

lost no friend by it, certainly nothing to be regretted. No, it was not regret which

made Anne’s heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks

when she thought of Captain Wentworth unshackled and free. She had some

feelings which she was ashamed to investigate. They were too much like joy,

senseless joy! (P 110)

According to Gay, in the original draft, Austen centralizes the “traditional male courtship” as she portrays Anne as a passive listener in Wentworth’s proposal; however, she soon changed her approach as she considered it as “timid and flat” and turned Wentworth into the silent one who overhears the debate between Capt. Harville and Anne on the topic of gender difference in regards to faithfulness and loyalty in love. He drops his pen as the “pen is no longer in his hands, nor, Austen implicitly claims, in those of male novelists” (in Copeland and

McMaster 68). Such adjustments in her narrative design helps to maximize the affectivity of the novel.

Wiltshire argues that the “balance and harmony” is constructed in the proposal scene via

“narrative means” (Wiltshire 166). Readers are motivated to identify with Anne for her joy as the novel reaches its most intimate moment. As Wentworth picks up his pen, we read one of the most romantic and passionate proposals in Austen’s oeuvre:

I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within

my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am

too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again

with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a

half ago…. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among

men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W. (P 155)

Anne is portrayed as “mild, kind, sympathetic, attentive” in her discussion with Capt.

Harville; she speaks rhetorically while Wentworth responds sentimentally—the exchange of which reflects Austen’s artistic vision that “is prepared for and underwritten by the novel’s structure,” and therefore appeals to the emotion and cognition of attentive readers who demand such a resolution (Wiltshire 166).

Austen carefully designs her narratives to highlight the affectivity of each novel. In his appraisal of Austen’s continuous popularity and the commonly discussed theme of “happily- ever-after” in her works, Wiltshire argues that all of her works are “distinct, and equally serious” and further demonstrates that “the love [she] eventually celebrates turns … on mutual familiarity and respect… Austen’s genius was to turn this romantic narrative into a vindication of the right to self-expression... [I]t is this unromantic intelligence that leads her readers to re-read, again and again” (Wiltshire 167-168). Emotion has taught us to be humble. Austen understood the role of art in the evolution of our imaginative minds. She crafts her novels with unique literary styles and conventions that affect her readers across time. In the next chapter, I examine how filmmakers adapt affect from Emma and Persuasion with cinematic tools that bring Austen’s two heroines to life on the screen.

CHAPTER 2

REFRAMING AUSTEN’S HEROINES FROM NOVEL TO SCREEN

The previous chapter discussed the characteristics of Austen’s literary style. That style, so effective on the page, sets up high standards and poses tough challenges to filmmakers. In the following pages, I discuss the film adaptation process and primarily focus on how the chosen films adopt “raw materials” of their own construction such as performance, camerawork, editing, and music to translate the particular and resonant affect that Austen’s novels construct so as to maintain or maximize the affective outcomes from text to screen, particularly character- engagement. For my case studies, I compare and contrast Clueless (Amy Heckerling 1995) with

Emma (Douglas McGrath 1996), and Persuasion (Roger Michell 1995) with Persuasion (Adrian

Shergold 2007), to highlight the adaptive approach taken by each filmmaker—a decision that shapes our narrative viewing experiences.

Historical Background

Austen has been one of the most popular writers for filmmakers. IMDb.com records show that since the first film adaptation of her novels—Pride and Prejudice (Robert Z. Leonard) in 1940—there have been over fifty theatrical, television, and film adaptations of Austen’s works. Although the first big screen adaptation of Austen was well received at the box office, her novels were neglected by the Hollywood filmmakers until the 1990s. One of the reasons has to do with the “subtlety, complexity, and intertextuality” of Austen’s works since the traditional adaptive approach mainly focuses on the literary translation of the source text (Mcdonald and

Mcdonald 3).

In her work on Austen films and their significance, Ariane Hudelet points out that in1995, there appeared a booming culture of cinematic “Austenmania,” which further triggered a widespread interest in literary adaptations of classic novels; she further argues that such widespread effect makes “Austen films” a “subgenre” within the field of film adaptation (in

Cartmell 256). For instance, the success of Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility (1995) initiated a trend, and together with the commercial hit of Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995), they started a spree of Austen adaptations among filmmakers toward the end of the twentieth century.

Besides the profits that Austen’s novels have brought to the film industry, Sue Parrill explains the rationale behind Austen’s growing and continuous popularity in her book Jane

Austen On Film and Television (2012). For her, it makes sense because Austen is such a good storyteller and her narratives appeal to a wide scale of readers and spectators who are attracted by her “interesting characters, strong motivation and plausible endings” (Parrill 3). Kim Master also remarks in The Washington Post (1995) that although “Hollywood, which is still resting up after the rape of The Scarlet Letter (Roland Joffé 1995),” is usually blamed for considering commercial success over aesthetic value in producing adaptation of classic novels, history has proven that filmmakers “have shown respect, if not reverence, for the author and her intentions”

(The Washington Post 10 December 1995).

However, the seemingly easy raw materials of Austen’s works do not secure a promising success or smooth transition in the adaptation process as filmmakers face challenges and are subject to criticisms commonly raised by literary and film scholars. For instance, Ang Lee, the director of Sense and Sensibility (1995) (whose star, Emma Thompson, wrote the screenplay and won the film’s only Oscar—for “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously

Produced or Published”), claims that filmmakers may feel frustrated in translating “Austen’s delicate balance of humor and warmth” for the big screen. He further explains the challenge is comparable to the difficulty of walking on a tightrope as he remarks that you have to know

“when to generate the humor and when to put a cap on it. You want sweetness and you don’t want it sappy. You want the satire. You want a knife but you don’t want to hurt anyone” (The

Washington Post 10 December 1995). In other words, the adaptation process demands strategic planning and skillful arrangement of the cinematic tools. Filmmakers not only need to focus on the original characteristics of the source text, but also give considerably weight to how each formal choice may affect the filmic experience.

Adapting Emma to the Screen

As discussed in the introduction, based on Wagner’s notion of three types of film adaptations, Clueless is an analogy adaptation whereas Emma belongs to the transposition category. Clueless (1995), directed by Amy Heckerling, is primarily a comedy that loosely follows the 1816 novel regarding Emma’s path to maturity and self-discovery. Heckerling keeps major characters but sets the story against the backdrop of a twentieth-century high school in

Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. The film stars Alicia Silverstone as Cher, a modern-day Emma, and

Paul Rudd as Josh (Knightley). Emma (1996), directed by Douglas McGrath (also the screenwriter), stars Gwyneth Paltrow (Emma) and Jeremy Northam (Mr. Knightley). The film was nominated for two Academy Awards and won for Best Original Score (Rachel Portman). It closely follows the original plot, only omitting a few episodes such as Mr. Churchill’s and Ms.

Fairfax’s romance, and was shot on location in England with beautiful settings of blooming

flowers and green pastures. In general, critics have seen Clueless as an “updated” version of the novel while considering Emma a more “traditional” style of adaptation.

According to Heckerling, when she first discussed her idea of adapting Austen’s Emma for a film at Fox, she was rejected and was further disappointed when they told her that although they liked her, they did not like her idea. They wanted teenage girls and boys “in bathing suits,” which led her to offer the project to Paramount, which accepted it (The Washington Post 10

December 1995). The film received praise for its balanced tone in maintaining both commercial value and aesthetic merit as an adaptation. Marc DiPaolo argues in his book Emma Adapted:

Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film (2007) that Clueless functions as a “reading of the novel” and a “satire of the social values” of contemporary American society (4). Just like Emma,

Cher also learns lessons and matures gradually by adjusting the “direction” (in her father’s words) of her life and her approach in making good decisions.

Heckerling explained her adaptive approach in bringing Emma to the screen. She said that it was a decision based on her admiration for Austen’s treatment of the “sense of class and social dynamics”; therefore, in making Clueless, she focused on maintaining the “structural tree” of the 1816 novel in a narrative that functions as a modern-day bildungsroman (in DiPaolo 127).

However, as an adaptation of a classic novel, critics have more demands and higher expectations.

For instance, Geoff Brown was very dismissive of the film and called it “lightweight” and

“disposable trash”; David Manoghan, who liked its wit and “superficial humor,” said that

Clueless puts too much attention on its portrayal of young people who use rude slang with reference to pop culture (in McDonald and McDonald 215). John Mosier criticizes it for its overhaul of characters such as its exclusion of Jane Fairfax and turning Christian (Frank

Churchill) into a homosexual; he also complains that Rudd (Mr. Knightley) and Silverstone

(Emma) do not have enough age difference compared to the original design of the novel (in Di

Paolo 129).

Adapting Emma to screen can be a challenge to filmmakers. As Master demonstrates,

Austen’s novel is a well-crafted “comedy of manners,” in which she exercises her “arch humor” in the voice of the narrator; therefore, filmmakers need to find ways to convey Austen’s “subtle insights” that appeal to the audience (Master 1995). In her review of the 1996 film Emma, Hilary

Schor praises it for capturing the “complexity of subjectivity and realism” in its choice of voice- over narration (in McDonald and McDonald 4). Some critics argue that a filmmaker’s choice of such techniques weakens the aesthetic value in adapting the novel to screen, but overall it works in transitioning scenes when the narrator switches perspectives—especially in the “ironic commentary and epistolary confession” of Emma (in McDonald and McDonald 145). For instance, Anthony Lane (a New Yorker reviewer) complains that the adaptation fails in translating the ambiguity of the original text as its narrative design demands much less work in the sense-making process. He points out that it is less of an “artful construction” than “easy, do- it-yourself” (in Macdonald and Macdonald 144). David Monaghan explains in his work Emma and the Art of Adaptation that McGrath’s adaptive approach suggests that he aimed for a broader scale of spectatorship—including “middle-aged, mid-brow”—than Clueless’s targeted high school and college age-group audiences (in McDonald and McDonald 224). It was further criticized for succumbing to Hollywood’s preference in popularizing the romantic genre “with a tone sweetened to make it more palatable for a mass audience” (DiPaolo 92).

The adaptation process is complex as the final product is the result of a series of formal choices and decisions regarding all aspects of film as an art form. As DiPaolo puts it (2007), the literary source serves as “raw material” that embodies the beauty of “crystal,” which, when held under the light, projects different but “equally beautiful readings” (21). Therefore, I argue, with reference to the novel, both Clueless and Emma are able to engage viewers via interest and joy affect elicited by the comic and romantic elements in the plot; however, based on different choices of camerawork, mise-en-scène, and editing, Clueless succeeds in promoting enhanced character-engagement with the heroine in its construction of shame-pride and distress affect, whereas Emma manages to adapt the overall charm and wit of Austen’s text by maintaining the affectivity of surprise in the narrative.

Clueless (1995)

As an analogy adaptation, Heckerling’s film serves as a good example of how a filmmaker takes liberty in the cinematic restructuring of a literary original, yet makes a film that signifies on its own terms as an inventive audio-visual art form that reinforces the affective quality of the source novel. For instance, the opening montage of Clueless takes audiences directly to experience what life is like to its heroine Cher (Silverstone) (and the social class she represents) whose daily schedule and routines are comprised of activities such as shopping and partying. Such a formal choice offers insights into the affective possibilities created by the camerawork in its presentation of the motions and emotions of film characters. For instance, a variety of framing and point-of view structures are applied in the montage’s construction of shame-pride affect. A medium shot of Cher (see fig. 1) from the waist up highlights her excitement as she walks out of a department store with hands full of shopping bags. Later, a low-

angle shot (fig. 1) shows her partying around as an exemplification of how rich kids in Beverly

Hills live a privileged and carefree life style.

Besides cinematographic techniques, the film utilizes diegetic and nondiegetic mood music to help translate Austen’s omniscient narration style. These serve as affective cues in controlling viewers’ perspectives when making sense of the protagonist. For example, a background musical track—“Kids in America” (by The Muffs)—is playing in the scene as a satire on the socio-cultural trends of 1990s America to enhance the ironic tone of the film. This opening sequence serves an essential role in defining the film’s construction of affect as well as preparing viewers “to detect the existence of a counter-perspective to that of the character,” as

Berys Gaut (1999: 216) illustrates, in responding to the character-creation.

Cinematography, Editing, Music, and Affectivity

Like Emma in the novel, Cher drives the emotive power of the narrative. Viewers’ attentions are directed by attractions set by the formal structure of the film such as the arrangement of cinematography, editing, and film music. As a good-looking teenager and daughter of a rich lawyer, Cher is a popular figure at school. She successfully manages to have her and the rest of her class’s grades changed as well as receive a reduced load of homework by

manipulating her teachers—particularly Mr. Wendell Hall (Wallace Shawn) and Miss Toby

Geist (Twink Caplan)—in their love affairs. However, as Cher celebrates her success and feels proud for these accomplishments, viewers, though engaged with her character-development in identifying with her on some level, may not share her joy. It is more likely that we establish a critical view towards her distorted fantasy in her perception of her true situation. Such effect, as

Deidre Shauna Lynch argues, is achieved via “the discrepancy between Cher’s verbal representations and the camera’s visual representations,” thus translating the irony constructed in

Austen’s Emma (in Sabor 200).

For example, in portraying how Cher and her class fellows respond and react to the changed grades for the first time, the scene uses a medium shot to capture their emotional reactions. They are surprised and find it almost unbelievable to receive such successful outcome from Cher’s transformative project of match-making. In his book Acting Face to Face 2: How to

Create Genuine Emotion for TV and Film (2015), John Sudol describes that surprise encompasses three muscle groups on the face (see fig. 2): “the brows are raised, the upper eyelids are raised, and the mouth drops open or parts in a relaxed manner” (Sudol 401-402).

The placement of the camera angle and framing (fig. 2) showing students siting in a row passing along their exam papers—as well as Silverstone’s and Stacey Dash’s (Dionne—Cher’s

“bestie”) facial expressions adds to the affectivity of the scene. As discussed earlier, film music plays an important role in communicating with the audience. It enriches and helps to expend upon film narrative by establishing an actively evolving relationship with visual components in the construction of emotion and affect. For example, the film also depicts how Cher feels and thinks via the voice-over narration as the camera cuts to a close-up of Cher who confesses her astonishment at getting a C in the debate class (which she believes she is particularly good at). In this sequence, both diegetic and nondiegetic music are used to enable the motion picture to deepen viewers’ cinematic experiences.

To enhance the ironic effect, the film continues to show how Cher enjoys her fame at school as Mr. Hall continues to give satisfying grades and Ms. Geist starts to give no assignments for the weekend and tells them just to “have fun.” In a medium shot (see fig. 3), and later, a medium long shot (fig. 3), the camera shows the happy faces of students in getting higher grades in class and how Cher enjoys being the center of the attention while the entire student body applauds her magic in making their school life easier in an outdoor cafeteria area.

Showing happiness (see fig. 3), according to Sudol (2015), “involves raising the lip corners and cheeks and narrowing of the eyes, which produces the crow’s feet wrinkles” (Sudol

885). The camera angles in focusing on students’ facial expressions and body language as well as actors’ performances are effective in communicating emotions. However, the film utilizes the affective power of music and its nature as “sonic fabric” (as discussed in the introduction) in forming “a harmonious counterpoint” to the visual cues displayed on the screen to imply an

ironic take on the characters. We might feel happy for the union between Mr. Hall and Ms. Geist, but the scene seems to project a point of view that is different from Cher’s as the nondiegetic musical soundtrack (“Change” by Lightning Seeds) plays in the background:

The world is full of fools, never get it right;

You don’t know what to do, just do anything you like…

Fig. 3. (left) Image of a happy face, in Acting Face to Face 2 (2015); (middle) Cher and her classmates looking happy and excited when receiving better grades; (right) Cher enjoying the center of the attention at school because of her success in manipulating teachers. Clueless, directed by Amy Heckerling (Paramount Pictures, 1995; DVD frame enlargement). The lyrics of the song mirror the ironic tone of the narrative and enhance the filmic experience and its effect on audiences. Such a formal choice and its role in film’s construction of shame-pride affect further engage viewers mentally. As we reflect upon Cher’s character- creation, of her values, attitudes, and actions, we might not laugh together with her but rather laugh at her for her failed mind-reading and sense-making capacities in recognizing what is appropriate to feel and how to react to fame and publicity gained through dishonorable means.

One of the most significant scenes indicating the film’s satire is when Cher’s father receives her updated grades on her report-card. The camera starts with a POV shot of Cher’s father (Dan Hedaya) looking at her grades and teachers’ comments on her performance in class.

Viewers are shown that among six courses she takes, Cher manages to have three of her grades

moved up by at least two letters. Mel, as a lawyer, can easily detect the trick behind this

“outstanding” report; however, as a parent, instead of disciplining her daughter for her manipulative behavior and ill attitude towards studying and hard work, he finds it “fabulous” that

Cher has argued her way up from a C+ to an A.

Fig. 4. (left) Cher’s father looking at her grade report; (right) Cher and her father hugging each other and feeling excited for Cher’s persuasion skills. According to Deidre Shauna Lynch, some of the screen versions of Emma are able to construct an aesthetic experience similar to what Austen’s narrative discourse offers—for instance, by allowing viewers to move “fluidly in and out of the heroine’s mind” via “the most minimal means—a slight movement of the camera, a particular placement of emphasis in the sentence” (in Sabor 201). The specific choices of camera angle (see fig. 4)—such as a close-up on the report card, a medium long shot that highlights Silverstone’s and Hedaya’s performances in depicting Cher’s excitement as well as Mel’s satisfying reaction towards his daughter’s power in negotiation and persuasion—are highly affective and communicative. These restrict our views of film elements and subjects; they also further alter our perception of the film narrative. Thus, this scene in Clueless represents an affective vehicle for promoting identification in spectators with “the possibility of a real, lived change in their basic commitments,” as put forth by Gaut

(1999: 216).

Voice-over Narration, Performance, Costume, and Affective Transformation

Like Austen’s Emma, Clueless’s narrative is also embedded with elements that construct surprise affect in its portrayal of Cher’s transformed point of view towards “self” and her relation with others. The film’s formal choices such as voice-over narration, costume design, and actors’ performances enhance its affective narrativity. These can be seen in the film’s portrayal of

Cher’s friendship with Tai (Brittany Murphy), the modern-day Harriet Smith, and Josh, both of whom help to shape Cher’s path toward self-discovery.

Tai, a new transfer student in the school, immediately becomes Cher’s newest project of make-over. Cher helps her to dress better, talk better, and think more logically in making choices and decisions. Cher gains satisfaction when she sees Tai become less clueless; however, Tai starts to gain too much confidence and act like a drama queen. In her near-death incident in the mall, she flirts around with two male strangers she just met. She is scared to death when these men jokingly flip her over and pretend to let her drop to the ground floor. But, to Cher’s surprise, instead of feeling thankful to Christian (Justin Walker) for saving her life from the traumatic experience at the mall, she tells a totally different story the next day when she gets to school.

Tai’s invented scenario about her mall incident wins her popularity, which increases her confidence in abandoning Cher and making rude remarks about Travis (Breckin Meyer) whom she first likes but later rejects due to Cher’s disapproval of him as a reasonable match.

Comparing the change in Tai from the naïve new girl to the now-center of attention of the school, Cher is surprised to see such a dramatic change in Tai. When Tai tells Travis to go back to his own social group—slackers who usually hang out on the grass area—Cher can hardly believe Tai is talking in such a tone of voice that sounds so much like her “old self.” We are

shown in reaction shots (see fig. 5) how Travis and Cher respond to Tai’s fantasized, foolish, and self-deluded views and behaviors. In two medium close-ups, we see that Travis seems hurt by

Tai’s humiliating remarks in front of a group of other friends, and Cher looks confused in observing their conversation. These facial acting designs might also help to promote modes of identification with the characters as Cher starts to grow emotionally (as audiences have done when observing the “old” Cher) while Tai remains the same.

Fig. 5. (left) Travis looking embarrassed due to Tai’s rude remarks; (right) Cher looking confused when seeing Tai’s change of attitude and behavior. In the event of Cher’s failed driving test, the film’s costume design plays an important role in constructing affective viewing experience. Bothered by Tai’s change in the previous scene, Cher is stressed as she tries to find the most appropriate outfit for her driving test. The camera captures Cher’s inner struggle via a high-angle long shot (see fig. 6) showing her sitting among her scattered clothes on the floor. Such cinematographic choices makes the heroine seem

“diminutive and vulnerable” (as discussed in the introduction) (Spadoni 106). The scene works affectively in depicting Cher’s loss of power and control over her own life and others. In contrast to the beginning of the film, where everything in her wardrobe is organized and cataloged in her computer, her wardrobe is now in disarray. Silverstone is shown sitting distressed and clueless, searching for what she wants to wear, indicating the emotional turmoil of Cher’s heart, and thus,

promoting character-engagement. When Cher fails the test and is unable to persuade the DMV officer to change his decision in a serious life event like getting a driver’s license, Cher returns home feeling lost. The camera shows us her long shadow on the ground (fig. 6) before she walks in the frame towards the entrance door, the choice of which maximizes the emotive quality of the scene.

Fig. 6. (left) Cher looking frustrated trying to find the “perfect” outfit to wear for her driving test; (right) Cher’s shadow on the road while walking towards home after failing the test. Clueless reflects Heckerling’s creativity in her innovative restructuring of the narrative and choice of voice-over narration. As Cher learns that Tai wants her help to get Josh, she is surprised and rejects the proposal. However, she gets a sarcastic comment from Tai who says she does not need advice from someone who is “a virgin” and “can’t drive.” Tai’s ridicule in a villainous tone deeply hurts Cher and shatters her self-esteem. In her voice-over narration, Cher shares her thoughts about having “created a monster,” the design of which reinforces the counter-perspective in depicting her somewhat disastrous self-delusional beliefs and helping to enhance the shame-pride affectivity of the narrative.

In the concluding scenes, Silverstone’s performance and film’s costume design signify in promoting character-engagement, and thus enrich the affective viewing experience. Toward the end of the film, Cher strolls out for a walk and tries to come to terms with what is going on with

her life—particularly her friendship with Tai and Josh. Silverstone’s facial expressions and body language (see fig. 7) are effective in making her seem lost in deep thoughts—an activity she seldom experienced before. The voice-over narration comes into play, which enhances the emotive quality of the character as she comments “I have been totally clueless.”

Fig. 7. (left) Cher looking troubled by her deep thoughts while walking about on the street; (right) Cher looking enlightened when realizing her love for Josh. The film interjects scenes that happened earlier in the film, which recap all the sweet memories between Cher and Josh. Such scenes are replayed without their original sound to remind the audience that these are flashbacks going on in Cher’s mind. As she continues her walk, she comes to a realization that her frustration towards Tai’s new crush is because of Josh who has been very important to her. The scene utilizes lighting and nondiegetic mood music to supplement and enhance Silverstone’s performance in the construction of joy. As she finds out that she loves Josh (and always has), the rainbow-colored lighting from the fountain as well as the climax of the music (fig. 7) enhances character-engagement and may also help to promote affective identification with Cher. Such a response is possible if we know what it feels like to find a true love.

Fig. 8. (left) Cher taking out her expensive sports gear for donation; (right) Cher volunteering as a staff member for the disaster relief program at school. Love is powerful. The film utilizes costume design to reflect such an ideal and to promote character-engagement. Cher starts to pay more attention to important things in life rather than her appearance. She is seen in plain teenager clothes without make-up, which is a stark contrast from her glamorous days. These scenes also use a variety of choices of camerawork to capture her changes in the actions and activities, such as taking out her favorite expensive sports equipment for donation, and volunteering to help with disaster-relief. Heckerling does a fine job in exploring the affective possibilities for reframing Austen’s heroine as well as creating a narrative structure that enhances the emotive quality of the original text.

Emma (1996)

The very first scene of the film indicates its merry tone. The use of camerawork, editing, and a non-character voice-over narrator work effectively to keep audiences engaged via affects such as interest and joy. We are shown the blue-colored globe of the earth in the universe at first, and then, the camera zooms in on the land of London and Highbury. As we follow the camera in an establishing shot that shows the simple world of Emma and her family home, Hartfield, the scene cuts from the spinning globe to the reality of the film setting—the wedding party of the new couple-Mr. Weston (James Cosmo) and Mrs. Weston (Greta Scacchiand). Mise-en-scène in

this sequence defines the affectivity of the film narrative. Emma (Gwyneth Paltrow) gives the newly wedded couple a gift—a hand-made blue globe ornament, the same one shown in the opening credits. Emma paints on it the daily life of Highbury, where Miss Taylor (Emma’s friend and a governess) has shared memories with her for the past sixteen years. As the camera gradually tracks out to include other characters of the story (see fig. 9), we see that everyone is enjoying the happy occasion and the scene is filled with joy.

Fig. 9. (left) Emma as well as other guests at the wedding looking excited for the happy occasion; (right) Emma looking sad when hugging her best friend and mentor—the bride Mrs. Weston. While the crowd goes to have some wedding cake, the camera slowly zooms in with a close-up focusing on Emma ((fig. 9), who is hugging Miss Taylor but looks sad to let her go.

Paltrow’s change of facial expression—especially how she holds back her tears so that she does not make the bride sad on a happy occasion—indicates her sweet personality and good nature, and at the same time, enhances the affectivity of the scene. The camera tracks down Emma’s shoulder showing Mrs. Weston’s hand as she hugs Emma and then it fixes on the globe ornament—zooming in on the image of Hartfield, which indicates the setting where the next scene starts. Soft jolly nondiegetic mood music plays in the background; the slow pace and rhythm of the score enhances the harmonious and peaceful tone of the film.

Performance, Camerawork, and the Construction of Interest and Joy

Socialization is an important aspect of the daily interactions at Highbury. Emma, a young daughter with a good family and wealth, has nothing else to worry about, but she needs a social life to keep her from boredom. Inside the Hartfield family estate, we see that Emma and Mr.

Woodhouse (Denys Hawthorne) are having a conversation regarding Miss Taylor’s marriage.

Emma, though she feels happy for her, misses her presence in the family badly as she cherishes their friendship and her mentorship deeply. Paltrow utilizes her body language as well as facial expressions to show that Emma’s parting from Miss Taylor is weighing on her shoulders. In a high-angle medium shot (see fig. 10), we see that her back is arched, shoulders dropped, hands loosely placed on her lap, and head tilted (presumably) looking at the chair where Miss Taylor used to sit, all of which indicate Emma’s distressed state and low spirit. The film utilizes lighting to enhance the emotive quality of the scene as the candle light only brightens Mr. Woodhouse’s face rather than Emma’s and the color contrast is dull (dark and yellow).

Fig. 10. (left) Emma looking sad when remembering her old days with Miss. Taylor at Hartfield; (right) Emma in high spirit when seeing an unexpected visitor—Mr. Knightley. Along with the use of lighting and camerawork, Paltrow’s performance highlights the role of socialization in Emma’s life and defines the affectivity of the scene. We are shown that one unexpected visitor walks in and his voice takes Emma’s breath away. As a close family

friend, the visit of Mr. Knightley (Jeremy Northam) brings a big smile to Emma’s face and brightens her evening. As he stands tall at the doorway, the whole rooms turns more bright with cheerful spirit (and with increased illumination in the mise-en-scène). Paltrow, again, fully engages her body to reveal her joy and happiness (fig. 10). Her change of body posture mirrors the changed emotional states in Emma. Now, she sits upright, with straight shoulders, hands on the table, and smiling.

Hosting or going to parties is one of the major activities for Emma and women in her class to socialize with residents at Highbury. Therefore, as in any film, formal choices in costume design, make-up and hair, and performance are contributive factors that shape our viewing experience. At parties, social gossiping is an activity that gives local residents a great sense of pleasure and satisfies their curiosities. Both men and women converse about new developments in different families who live in the community. One of the major parties in the film takes place at the Westons’ on Christmas Eve. Everybody is invited to celebrate the evening together. Before the dinner starts, Mr. Weston mentions that his son Frank has been writing flattering letters to convey his well wishes to him and his wife, which satify the couple greatly.

Emma, as curious as the other ladies, would like to know more about the details in the letter.

The scene is built up with a humorous tone. With its choices of framing and point of view structures, the camerawork highlights actors’ roles in construction of affect by presenting the motions and emotions of the characters—particularly those of Mr. Elton (Alan Cumming) and

Emma. While Emma shows great interest in the conversation, she constantly gets distracted by

Mr. Elton who tries to get her attention and finds excuses to show care to and to please Emma.

McGrath utilizes a master shot to record the entire dramatized scene with controlled framing and

audible diegetic sound in the background. The camera is fixed in a medium shot (see fig. 11) so that viewers are able to observe the gesture and body-language of Emma and Mr. Elton. The scene starts with the camera focusing on Mr. Weston and the ladies in the same frame while he tells them about the contents of the letter; then, the camera pans left to include Mr. Elton and

Emma only in the frame, after he interrupts her by patting on her shoulder. The same sequence is repeated two more times (fig. 11) until we see that Emma finally gets annoyed by Mr. Elton’s seemingly nonsensical actions.

Fig. 11. (left) Emma maintaining polite when Mr. Elton keeps finding excuse to interrupt her; (right) Emma looking upset when finding out Mr. Weston’s story of the letter already finished. As viewers, we observe both Emma’s annoyance and Mr. Elton’s keenness towards her; the portrayal of their different emotional states works affectively in keeping audiences engaged via interest and curiosity. After being interrupted for the third time, Emma tries to hold her temper and behave politely towards Mr. Elton, so she sends him away by saying if he could help her to get a glass of punch, she would feel most delightful. But, by the time Emma gets rid of Mr.

Elton, she has missed the most important piece of information in the whole story about Frank’s letter. She takes a deep sigh with eyes closed as if she is very disappointed to not know what is

going on. Paltrow’s performance—especially her use of body language and facial expressions— provides affective cues in making sense of the narrative.

Editing, Flashbacks, and Affective Narrativity

Like Austen’s novel, the film also highlights the role of match-making in Emma’s daily activies and her social interaction with others to enhance the affectivity of the narrative. McGrath adapts an archery scene from Robert Z. Leonard’s Pride and Prejudice (1940) in the narrative design—though it is not present in the original novel—to enhance character-engagement. Emma takes her duty of match-making seriously as she considers it helpful to other people in the community. However, she learns her lesson repeatedly when things do not happen as she expected—for instance, her project to make a match between Mr. Elton and Harriet Smith (Toni

Collette). The film utilizes performance and camerawork, especially close-ups and reaction shots, to enhance the emotive quality of the scenes. Emma learns her first lesson when she visits

Mr. Knightley at Donwell Abbey. The scene starts with the camera focusing on the image of the residence on the globe ornament wedding gift Emma painted for Mrs. Weston to tell viewers where the next party is about to take place. Such plot design evokes meta-emotions by adding dimensions of sportsmanship and competition.

Here, the film utilizes editing and its affective possibilities in constructing shame-pride affect in the scene to maximize its visual and ideological power. The scene starts with Emma and

Knightley happily practicing archery and ends on a note of violence as Emma almost shoots

Knightley’s dog in a state of frustration.The conversation starts roughly on equal grounds as Mr.

Knightley tells Emma about the news of Mr. Martin’s (Edward Woodall) marriage proposal to

Harriet. Emma responds with an attitude of contempt by stating that Mr. Martin’s proposal has

already been refused. Meanwhile, both Knightley and Emma shoot the arrows a little off from the bullseye. The camera engages us with point-of-view cutting between where they stand and the bullseye; it further cuts to close-ups of their faces (see fig. 12) and the locations where their arrows hit. This is used as a visual metaphor to provide an enhanced cinematic expereince.

Fig. 12. (left) Mr. Knightley aiming for the bullseye while giving his perspective on Harriet and Mr. Martin; (right) Emma aiming for the bullseye while giving her perspective on these two’s marriage proposal. However, as the practice of archery continues, their arguments get heated. In the second round, after Knightley is surprised to learn that Emma played a part in rejecting Mr. Martin’s proposal, his archery keeps getting better while Emma’s gets worse when she explains her rationale not to approve Martin as a reasonable choice for Harriet. We are shown an extreme long shot of Knightley’s estate where they are practicing archery and then cut to close-up reaction shot of Knightley’s face (see fig. 13) who is angry and frustrated at Emma’s interference with other people’s marriage decisions, and followed by a close-up that he has hit a bullseye, indicating that his argument is as accurate as his aim.

The camerawork, along with Paltrow’s and Northam’s performances, deepens the affective dimension of the narrative via interest, surprise, shame-pride, and anger. For instance,

Emma is stressed out by Mr. Knightley’s remarks (fig. 13): “Vanity working on a fragile mind

produces every kind of mischief.” Emma’s troubled mind makes her lose her focus and concentration. She makes a wild shot; in a shot/reverse shot, while the camera does not show where exactly the arrow goes, we hear the dogs whimpering and see them slouching away.

Emma has disturbed the peacefully sitting dogs (a visual metaphor for the social order), as Mr.

Knightley urges Emma to “try to not kill my dogs.” This is the first time that the film directly shows a counter-perspective to that of Emma. Such cinematic design helps to translate Austen’s irony and social satire and adapts the affective dimension of the novel.

Fig. 13. (left) Emma looking angry because of Mr. Knightley’s remarks on her manipulative behaviors to interfere with Martin’s proposal to Harriet; (right) Mr. Knightley aiming for the bullseye in a second round while disciplining Emma. Besides editing, the film also engages viewers via the use of flashbacks in its narrative design. In the scene where Emma brings Harriet to help a poor family, McGrath makes creative use of flashbacks to construct shame-pride and distress affect. We see Emma, who not only brings food, cooks for them and feeds a sick old woman, too, while Harriet just stands there, watching and looking confused. Paltrow’s performance in showing Emma’s good nature of generosity and kindness enhances the character-engagement. In the following scenes, we are shown that they run into Mr. Elton who offers to walk the ladies back to their residence. Emma, sensing an opportunity, pushes Harriet to tell Mr. Elton about their earlier visit to the poor and

acts of charity. Harriet, caught completely offguard, has no idea how to narrate the story and looks confused and embarrassed (see fig. 14). Collette’s subtle performance is effective in communicating Harriet’s mental and emotional states with viewers.

Fig. 14. (left and right) Flashbacks showing Harriet reflecting back what she was doing when visiting the poor family with Emma. The use of flashbacks helps to depict the psychological distress Harriet expereinces and challenges viewers in making sense of the character. The film projects scenes in Harriet’s head while she recounts what really happened in their visit to the poor family. As we see the fragmentary scenes in her memory, the scene shows us how out of place and clumsily Harriet actually behaved compared to Emma. She stood alone in the corner, making a mess of things; when Emma asked her to help take something out of the bag, she ended up dropping more things. In a medium close-up (fig. 14), the camera captures Collette’s facial expressions in reflecting Harriet’s frustration and confusion, which helps to achieve the ironic effect of the scene.

Generally, the camera supports and amplifies the actors’ performances, but a creative filmmaker can fully explore its cinematic potential in creating scenes that enhance the emotive quality of the film. For example, after Harriet confesses to Emma her love for Mr. Knightley,

Emma is in deep distress. McGrath’s camera peeks into the intimate moment of Emma’s

100

thoughts as the camera focuses on her (from outside the window) (see fig. 15) writing in a diary and narrating her inner thoughts. The use of lighting and voice-over narration affect how we make sense of Emma and the film as a whole. Now, Emma shares with us from a third-person perspective but also in the first-person as we hear her feelings for Mr. Knightley via her voice- over narration. While the narration explains how she tries to come to terms with her understanding of herself and the world she lives in, the scene injects flashbacks to recount her activities of the day, in which she struggles not to think of him, but fails to do so.

Fig. 15. (left) Emma writing in her diary to reveal her true emotions towards Knightley; (right) Emma praying in the church looking concerned about her future with Knightley. Makeup, hair, and costume design all contribute to the formal construction of affectivity in the concluding scenes. In Emma’s final step of self-discovery, she realizes how important Mr.

Knightley is to her and her family. She prays to God in the church asking for forgiveness and the blessing of keeping Mr. Knightley in her life. Paltrow’s performance in revealing the mental stress and anxiety in Emma enhances the emotive quality of the character. Her facial expressions and body language (fig. 15), especially her hands and gestures, provide affective cues in making sense of Emma’s emotions and her actions. Compared to Clueless, Emma’s transformation in

Emma seems less significant as the character-creation of Cher is embedded with more complex

101

affectivity. As a transposition adaptation, Emma takes a more traditional approach by following closely to the original narrative, in the process of which it limits its cinematic potential in translating the affect and ambiguity constructed in Austen’s text. On the other hand, in Clueless, viewers are provided with more explicit clues in the formal structure of the film, and hence may find it easier to be engaged with the heroine.

From Anne on the Page to Anne on the Screen

The adaptation history of Persuasion is considerably “shorter and less varied” compared to Austen’s other novels (especially Pride and Prejudice) (Parrill 150). All four adaptations of

Persuasion (1960, 1971, 1995, 2007) were made for television by British companies (e.g., BBC and ITV1) with only Roger Michell’s 1995 film receiving a limited theatrical release in the

United States through Sony Pictures Classics. The novel has not yet received a Hollywood adaptation. Kim Master links Persuasion’s unpopularity for big-screen adaptation to the fact that

“it is autumnal in tone and the action is mostly internal” (Master 1995). Therefore, it places a challenge for directors in adapting the text to screen—particularly in translating Anne’s

“transformation” from the “plain and passive” spinster to the “blooming,” radiant, and confident woman whose natural beauty and good nature wins her true admirer (Parrill 168).

Along with the previously discussed adaptations of Austen’s Emma (1995 and 1996),

Persuasion (1995) is also part of the cinematic “Austenmania” of the 1990s. It stars Amanda

Root as Anne Elliot and Ciarán Hinds as Captain Frederick Wentworth. It was a critical and commercial success, winning numerous BAFTA awards including Best Drama, Best Costume

Design, Best Photography and Lighting, and Best Original Television Music. In Caryn James’s film review in the New York Times (27 September 1995), he applauded Michell’s direction and

102

called the film “profoundly truthful in many ways: in its sense of emotional longing; in its natural, un-glamorized visual beauty, ranging from drawing rooms to the sea; in its fidelity to the delicate tone of Austen’s satire and romance” (James 1995).

Director Michell tells that his motivation to adapt Austen’s novel to screen came from the exceptional emotional qualities in the literary narrative; he considers Persuasion as the most

“poignant of Austen’s novels,” the admiration of which drove him to reframe Austen’s heroine,

Anne Elliot, as he believes that “if the emotional world is strong enough, then I don’t think it matters that [the drama] is internal” (in Master 1995). Under Michell’s direction, the film takes advantage of cinematic techniques available at the time. The film’s “choice of aesthetic strategies” helps to convey “a great sense of confidence,” persuasive in engaging the audience while making sense of the film; the use of only “natural” lighting (e.g., candles and sunlight) also works well in constructing a “complex aesthetic” that appeals to a global audience (in Bignell,

Lacey and Macmurraugh-Kavanagh 91).

The 2007 version of Persuasion was directed by Adrian Shergold, with Sally Hawkins as

Anne Elliot and Rupert Penry-Jones as Frederick Wentworth. The critical reception of this version was ambivalent. For instance, Matthew Gilbert sees the film as “pale in comparison with the extraordinary 1995 version” and criticizes its plot development as “too fast and, by the end, choppy” (Gilbert 2008 n.p.). According to Sarah Cardwell, the filmmaker was told to cast the

“young” and the “absolute cream” of the talented British actors and take advantage of the wide screen (in Bignell, Lacey and Macmurraugh-Kavanagh 92). David Wiegand complains in the

San Francisco Chronicle (11 January 2008) that the film has flaws in both its narrative structure and casting choices, the decisions of which make the adaptation “laughably bad” due to its

103

“losses of nuance, character development and emotional complexity” (Wiegand 2008). As Sarah

Cardwell points out, the film tries too hard to please a larger audience; therefore, it resorts to techniques and style that result in somewhat disoriented and unimpressive scenes (in Bignell,

Lacey and Macmurraugh-Kavanagh 91). I argue that although both films have managed to adapt the particular and resonant affects from the novel to the screen, the 1995 version creates more appealing characters via pride affect than the 2007 version.

Persuasion (1995)

The opening sequence, which lasts about two and half minutes, drives viewers directly to the emotional core of the film via a variety of cinematic conventions and possibilities. There are rapid cuts between establishing, long, medium, close-up, and POV shots of navy men at sea who just won the war and are ready to come back to their homeland and the fast-moving carriage taking Mr. Shepherd (David Collings) and his daughter Mrs. Clay (Felicity Dean) to Kellynch

Hall to discuss the critical financial situation of Sir Walter Elliot (Corin Redgrave). The crosscutting (see fig. 16) creates sharp contrasting affects of pride in the navy and distress in the declining aristocrat, respectively. The diegetic sound of oars rowing through the sea, the fast pace of the moving horses’ hooves, and the nondiegetic piano in the background all help to enhance the engaged viewing experience. In the introduction to the film’s published screenplay, screenwriter Nick Dear writes that Austen’s novel portrays an “organically evolving society” that is set in a moment of the “turning point” between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The opening sequence reflects this backdrop of the historical context in constructing fear and distress affect.

104

Fig. 16. (left) The navy men who have won the war are on their way home; (right) The aristocrat family The Elliots are losing their family estate. Persuasion, directed by Roger Michell (Sony Pictures Classics, 1995; DVD frame enlargement). Through editing, sound, and camerawork, we see two contrasting worlds, one on water and one on land. On one hand, the film is celebrating the British victory in the Napoleonic wars, and on the other hand, it is showcasing the rapidly changing landscape of the British social order as Sir Elliot, a baronet, has to let go of his precious family heritage, Kellynch Hall, to a navy admiral due to his uncontrolled luxurious life expenses. The film further enhances the contrasting affectivity of shame-pride by showing naval officers toasting their victories. Admiral Croft (John

Woodvine) announces that Napoleon has surrendered and will be exiled to the island of Elba, so they are going home.

The Plain Anne and the Construction of Distress and Shame

Anne is a character who may look simple on the page but is hard to play on the screen.

So, the task of selecting a suitable actress for the leading role is decisive in the film’s construction of emotion and affect. As mentioned before, one of the major challenges in adapting

Persuasion is to recreate the transformative quality in the character-creation of Anne. Some of

Austen’s fans were expecting a star actress to play Anne, but Michell preferred someone who possesses an “innocent quality” rather than glamour—especially someone who blushes—to translate the affective power of Austen’s heroine (in Parrill 152). According to cognitive

105

psychologist Mariska Kret (2015), we observe “facial redness” when someone is blushing, the behavioral reaction of which can be a sign of a good health, or, an emotional display of shyness

(Kret 4). Therefore, Michell’s approach and his choice of Root to play Anne makes sense in reframing Anne to the screen.

Since there is not much dialogue for her role in the first half of the film, Root expresses

Anne’s feelings and emotional states via restricted but subtle acting. With the help of the make- up artists, Root balances her performance in portraying a passive Anne via distress as a mistreated daughter and sister with socially appropriate practicality. Anne is often seen sitting alone, staring at herself in the mirror, or looking outside. Anne appears at the fourth minute of the film. She is rather plain looking and lacks the glamour of her father and sister in her clothing.

She quickly walks in and moves quietly to sit in the back of the room. We are further shown medium close-up reaction shots of her and Lady Russell when their ideas about cutting daily expenses get rejected by the other two Elliots. Root’s body posture, the weight of submissiveness on her shoulders as well as the bending back, are cues in preparing us to understand her position in the family. Decisions about Anne’s whereabouts and what to do are always made on her behalf. She is treated more like a servant or an old spinster instead of a family member. For instance, when Sir Elliot finally agrees to move to Bath to as a way of retrenchment, without any warning Anne is told that she will be sent to Uppercross where her younger sister Mary and her family lives. She is ordered to pack, clean, and visit every house in the parish before Elizabeth gets ready to leave Kellynch Hall. While cleaning up her things in the storeroom, Anne finds an old letter folded in the form of a boat (a symbol for freedom at the sea). It is from Captain

106

Frederick Wentworth—her ex-fiancé. The close-up of the old love letter (see fig. 17) as well as a reaction shot of her face reveals Anne’s mourning state towards her past romance.

Fig. 17. (left) Anne looking at an old love letter from Wentworth; (right) Anne looking depressed when losing and leaving her family home. When Anne leaves Kellynch Hall, the film again highlights the distress affect via performance and camerawork. We are shown first that she is transported to Uppercross in a farmer’s carriage with a pig and a duck in a cage as her company, in contrast to the expensive carriage when her father and sister leave for Bath. The scene develops by cutting back and forth from three tracking shots of her carriage and three reaction shots as well as four POV shots of

Anne while she watches the servants maintaining the lawn and smoke rising in the foreground as well as the scattered sheep in the background, a horse galloping on the barren road ahead, and the crimson sky as the sun sets and she turns back to take one last look at Kellynch Hall as it disappears behind the trees. Anne is seen sitting in the carriage with an expression of dullness in her eyes on her sad face. The camerawork (fig. 17) in showing what Anne sees and Root’s performance in depicting how Anne might feel help to enhance the emotive quality of the heroine.

One of the major scenes that constructs distress affect is where Anne and Capt.

Wentworth meet again at the home of Mary Musgrove (Sophie Thompson) for the first time after

107

they broke up almost eight years ago. Master argues that “naturally, no one notices Anne’s anguish” when she comes across Wentworth after almost eight years (Master 1995). However,

Root’s performance as well as cinematographic techniques help to enhance affectivity in the character-creation. Neither the heroine nor the hero is talkative in the film narrative; therefore, the character-creation is highly dependent on Root’s and Hinds’ body language and facial expressions.

Their encounter is short. The scene utilizes a series of back and forth POV shots and reaction shots to construct emotion and affect. We are shown, first, a medium close-up reaction shot of Anne (see fig. 18) as Wentworth walks in. As Mary greets him, the camera zooms in to a close-up of Anne’s facial expression—particularly her eyes—to depict her emotional state of surprise at Wentworth’s unexpected visit. As he asks about Mary’s son’s situation (he has fallen from a tree), the camera then again cuts back to him with a low angle POV shot by Anne. When

Mary introduces to Wentworth her sister Anne—who has been quiet during the whole conservation— he responses in a confident and calm manner that they have met once.

Fig. 18. (left) Anne looking surprised when meeting Wentworth for the first time since she broke the engagement; (right) Anne’s right hand fingers grabbing the chair behind her to remain strong in front of him. As we hardly hear Anne call his name in greeting, the camera cuts from a medium POV shot of Wentworth to a close-up of Anne’s right hand (fig. 18) that she is using to grab the chair

108

behind her for support. These repeated patterns of camerawork and editing enhance our engaged experience with the main characters and help with making sense of their emotions and actions.

Besides cinematographic techniques, this scene also signifies in its construction of affect via

Root’s performance. According to N.J. Emery (2000), “the eyes are richly informative and important for understanding emotion and communicative intention of other individuals”; they are the most important parts of the face that can convey meanings and feelings without verbal assistance (in Kret 4). Close-ups are used to capture Anne’s behavioral reactions towards

Wentworth. The zooming-in of the camera on Root’s face (eyes, eyebrows, lips) and body language—in particular, how she puts extra force to her fingers to grip the arm of the chair— depicts her inner turmoil of distress and anxious emotional states and can engage viewers affectively.

The Blooming Anne and the Construction of Pride and Joy

Wiltshire argues that Anne is “mild, kind, sympathetic, attentive” and her character has a

“balance and harmony achieved not by explicit, characterological means, but through narrative means” (Wiltshire 166). Michell creates a formal structure to reframe such qualities and that allows Anne to glow and complete her transformation. Wentworth plays an important role in

Anne’s transformation. Therefore, the choice of actor defines the affective quality of the character-creation. Hinds’s version of Frederick Wentworth is a confident and proud naval captain who is always dressed in naval uniform. The choice of costume and use of make-up on him (see fig. 19) works affectively to remind viewers of the hardship of war, the tough life at sea, the sacrifice of the navy profession, and the achievements of a self-made man. Wentworth’s pride blinds his heart and hides his true feelings, as we see earlier when he behaves coldly to

109

Anne upon their first meeting since the breaking of their engagement. Both he and Anne keep their emotions contained, as in the novel; Hinds’s and Root’s portrayal of these characters force viewers to look for hints and details in their performance in making sense of how they feel and think of each other.

Fig. 19. (left) Hinds’s version of Frederick Wentworth; (right) A visit to Lyme. In the 1995 film, besides make-up and character-creation, music also plays an essential role in communicating with audiences. In their article “The Role of Music Communication in

Cinema,” S.D. Lipscomb and D.E. Tolchinsky point out that both “auditory and visual” media affect our sense-making process when watching film; they further argue that sound and image hold an “active and dynamic” relationship that contributes equally to the development of the narrative (Lipscomb and Tolchinsky 383). Every time that characters come to the seaside, the scenes are supplemented with lively nondiegetic music in a cheerful tone the combined efforts of soundtrack and camerawork enhance the joy-affective dimension of the film.

And when Wentworth takes the Musgroves and Anne to visit Lyme, the scene opens with a vibrant music score, which accompanies a long shot of the sea and a close-up of the stones on the seashore. We are then shown a series of shots that cut back and force from extreme long shot to long shot of these visitors standing in front of the ocean (fig. 19); as well as medium to medium close-up reaction shots of each character. The sea, the stones, and the brightness of the

110

sunlight all provide affective cues in understanding how characters may feel. As the natural beauty of the site and the open view of seeing seagulls flying seem to bring much ease to the characters, they also help balance the tone of the film.

Generally speaking, Michell follows the original plot, but he also creatively designs the ending scenes of marriage proposal to enhance the affectivity in the narrative. Anne comes to

Bath after Louisa’s accident. Louisa decides to marry Capt. Benwick, so the whole family has come to Bath to prepare for the wedding. Wentworth follows to join everyone in Bath as well. In the proposal scenes, Anne comes to visit the Musgroves when the girls are out shopping. We see that in the room, Mrs. Croft (Fiona Shaw) and Mrs. Musgrove (Judy Cornwell) are chatting with each other, Capt. Harville (Robert Glenister) stands by the window lost in deep thought, and

Wentworth is busy writing instructions at the desk, sitting with his back facing Anne.

Fig. 20. (left) Anne pretending not looking at Wentworth when he is the only person on her mind at the moment; (right) Anne looking at him secretly while he is writing her a letter secretly. The camera cuts to a medium close-up reaction shot of Anne (see fig. 20) from the angle where Wentworth sits, and then, the camera pulls back and cuts to another medium long reaction shot of Anne (fig. 20) showing her looking towards Wentworth’s back. Root engages her body language and gives a subtle performance to reveal Anne’s mental struggle in revealing her heart

111

towards her love. The compositions in depth allow us to see her yearning and Wentworth’s obliviousness in the same shot.

Michell goes with simple and plain costume designs as well as natural make-up on Anne to highlight her good nature, wisdom, and natural beauty. He utilizes camerawork and editing to engage viewers in responding to the indirect communication between Anne and Wentworth via their actions and reactions when Harville discusses the meaning of true love with Anne. She wins the heart of the audience via her character rather than the glamour of star or an artificial beauty.

Anne performs her position as a woman and her understanding of love; the scene evokes strong pride and joy affect in the portrayal of the character via Root’s vivid acting. In commenting on her own gender’s love as the longest and most faithful, her facial expression, her body language, and her tone of voice construct distress affect in her own love experience, but also evoke strong pride in viewers because of the power of her reasoning in the intellectual debates. She looks sad, hopelessly in love, and her situation feels helpless; Root’s eyes do the best job in conveying her thoughts as well as her emotional states (see fig. 21), which enhances the emotive quality of her character.

Fig. 21. (left) Anne looking hopeless when discussing her opinion of love with Harville; (right) Wentworth seemingly moved by Anne’s talk.

112

Wentworth overhears their conversation in which Anne has the last word that women love longest even when there is no hope; we see his facial expression of hesitation and his body gesture in the deep-focus shot (fig. 21). Wentworth leaves the room with his sister but comes back soon again. The first shot focuses on Wentworth’s hands (see fig. 22) as he indicates the position of the letter to Anne, but his head is not in the frame as the camera focuses on Anne and her reaction upon his action. The scene cuts back to Wentworth with a close-up (fig. 22) showing him with a silent stare—an expression almost like he is pleading with her to read the letter as he honestly opens his heart to her but uncertain of how she may react.

Fig. 22. (left) Wentworth’s hand signaling Anne about the hidden letter; (right) Wentworth looking worried when anticipating Anne’s response to his confession letter. In contrast to the previously seen pride and confidence in the character, Hinds does a good job in portraying Wentworth’s restrained emotions. The camera is primarily fixed behind the writing table and cuts to show the reaction shots of the hero and heroine. After Wentworth leaves, we see Anne sitting on the chair in long shot (see fig. 23), looking confused; as she goes to pick up Wentworth’s letter and starts reading it, the camera cuts to a medium close-up shot highlighting her shocked emotional reactions (fig. 23).

As she reads the letter, we hear Wentworth’s whispering voice-over narration which is soon overlapped by Anne’s when he writes that he is offering himself and his heart again to her,

113

after more than eight years ago when she broke it; along with diegetic sound from the city clock ringing and raining outside, the scene constructs a strong affective viewing experience. The camera slowly moves in and cuts from medium close-up reaction shot to close-up reaction shot of Anne as she reads towards the end of the letter.

Fig. 23. (left) Anne looking at the letter from her seat hesitating whether she should get up to get it; (right) Anne’s astonished facial expression when reading Wentworth’s proposal letter. Root gives a compelling performance in the scene as she first sits when she starts reading the letter, and then stands up when she is most excited and happy when she learns that it is her and her only that brought Wentworth to Bath, but she constantly looks back at Mrs. Musgrove to make sure her emotional reaction is not exposed; she then sits back again, when Wentworth makes his promise that he will visit her father’s house the same evening to make a formal proposal and get approval from her family. The camera fixes on Root’s complex facial expressions when the Musgrove daughters come back from shopping. These contribute to film’s construction of affective experience as we are emotionally engaged with the heroine. The overlapping voices enhance the joy affect. Michell’s artistic talents in designing the proposal scene as well as his choices of cinematic tools bring the film to its climax and enhance the affective quality of the narrative.

114

Fig. 24. (left) Anne looking through the window of the ship at the sea; (right) The newlyweds looking satisfied and happy for their life journey together ahead. The ending of the film completes Anne’s emotional growth. We are shown a medium close-up of her writing in her journal and then cut quickly to a long shot as she looks outside the window (see fig. 24); we hear nondiegetic cheerful music accompanied by diegetic sound of waves in the sea. In the next scene, as she walks out and makes her way to the starboard, we see sailors working on the ship in a long shot. Then, the camera cuts to close-up reaction shots of

Wentworth—looking happy and satisfied towards Anne—and Anne who looks beautiful and gazes peacefully towards the sea. The film ends with the couple happily enjoying their voyage with a low medium shot (fig. 24) and the ship sailing in the sunset with a long shot and then an extreme long shot. These formal choices enhance character-engagement and its effect on audiences.

Persuasion (2007)

This screen version of the 1818 novel opens with a distressed tone as we see in a medium close-up (see fig. 25) a servant in Kellynch Hall preparing the house for the arrival of the Crofts.

We are shown a piece of furniture in a POV shot. The camera is fixed as we see the servant pull up a white sheet and cover the furniture; as he looks directly into the camera, the scene might be seen as reminiscent of a funeral. Anne is introduced in an extreme close-up; she is standing still

115

and staring into the camera as well. The camera then turns 180 degrees around her as we see her gazing outside the door. When it returns to her (fig. 25), she starts a walkthrough of the house to check the property and the number of furnishings covered in white sheets.

Fig. 25. (left) A servant in Kellynch Hall covering the furniture in the living room with a white sheet; (right) Anne walking through the house doing inventory work. Persuasion, directed by Adrian Shergold (Clerkenwell Films, 2007; DVD frame enlargement). The fast pace of the beginning sequence and the use of nondiegetic mood music construct distress affect in the viewing experience. The camera is mobile and fluid in capturing Anne’s footsteps and movements, from various angles such as close-up, medium shot, over the shoulder shot and POV shot. Hawkins’s facial expression and her movement of climbing stairs up and down in the house indicates the freedom and mobility of women in a new era, and therefore constructs different mode of emotive quality of Anne compared to Austen’s heroine.

The Crying Anne and the Construction of Distress

Hawkins’s acting is more dramatic than Root’s. While Root has thin lips but big eyes,

Sally Hawkins has a larger and wider mouth that gives the impression that she is always smiling even in melodramatic situations. She generally uses emotional contagions such as crying as the tool to depict her sorrow and distress. According to Kret, tears can help elicit “positive or negative reactions from the social environment” (Kret 6). However, Hawkins’s version arguably makes too much use of the emotional, psychological, and social functions of crying, and as a

116

result, poses a conflicting image of the character in its construction of affect to the one in the novel.

The film adds scenes where Anne writes her journal and uses her voice-over narration to share her feelings to invite viewers to identify with her emotion. These choices of cinematic techniques are, in a way, too informative as we are never in doubt about what is happening. In these scenes, Hawkins engages her body language and facial expressions such as gazing directly back at the camera to penetrate the fourth wall (which occurs when an on-screen actor acknowledges viewers by looking and/or speaking to them directly), aiming to promote character-engagement. However, since her approach relies heavily on artificial emotions, viewers may find it hard to identify with the character.

For instance, after Anne knows that Capt. Wentworth’s sister and her husband will be the new tenants of Kellynch Hall, she can hardly control her reactions and goes back to her bedroom crying. The camera shows us with a high-angle close-up (see fig. 26) that Anne has kept all letters and correspondence from Wentworth locked in a box, and she wears the key as a charm on her necklace, the point of which shows that she wants to keep him close to her heart and she has never forgotten him. A series of scenes with voice-over narration of her inner thoughts where

Hawkins breaks the fourth wall starts before she leaves Kellynch Hall, wondering about

Wentworth’s marital status in moderate distress with mellow mood music. The first scene starts with a close-up of Anne writing in her diary with the camera focusing on her hands and gradually zooming in towards her face at which point Hawkins turns and looks directly back at the camera and the viewers (fig. 26).

117

Fig. 26. (left) Anne looking at the box where she keeps all letters and correspondence from Wentworth locked; (right) Hawkins looking directly at the camera to show Anne’s emotional states. Hawkins’s version of Anne never lost her ability to blush in the years following her breakup with Wentworth. With its choices of camera angle as well as her performance and make- up, this version fails to translate the affectivity of Austen’s Anne, and thus seems less convincing in generating shared emotion among viewers compared to the 1995 version. She has been feminized to a modern-day Anne Elliot who has a freedom and independence that is not seen in

Austen’s heroine. For example, it is completely her idea to try to cut down on expenses and she manages to persuade her father to lease Kellynch Hall rather than selling it. This choice shifts the narrative focus in constructing distress affect. It makes her more masculine in her character and therefore, makes her transformation seem less apparent. This treatment of the role turns Anne into a more active than passive character, and is less convincing in having the audience share the same level of distress that she appears to be in.

Conversely, at Mary’s house, in Anne’s first meeting with Wentworth since their breakup, Wentworth is composed and seems cold with a hint of contempt while Anne behaves calmly though her voice stumbles to indicate her controlled emotions. In this scene, something is missing. Both the actors do not show any emotion and there are hardly any hints in the film’s formal choices that capture their non-verbal communication (see fig. 27). The film uses Anne’s

118

voice-over narration in the following sequence to expose all her feelings—and thus, is less effective in engaging viewers to identify with her emotions. This scene transitions as we hear

Anne’s voice while writing the diary; the camera cuts to a close-up of a single tear drop (fig. 27) as it falls followed by an extreme close-up of Hawkins looking at the camera.

Fig. 27. (left) Anne looking calm at Wentworth when meeting him at Mary’s; (right) The crying Anne dropping her tear on her diary while the voice-over narration tells viewers what she is writing about. For actors, sometimes, restrained emotive performance enhances the affectivity in the roles they play. Hawkins, in this case, takes freedom in exercising her empathetic acting skills.

She cries too often and reacts too much. In her moment of low spirits, she sobs while staring at the camera directly, the act of which might cause confusion in the viewing experience rather than distress. In contrast, Root’s eyes speak to the audience and her acting alone communicates emotion. Here, Hawkins’s performance as well as the choice of camera techniques weakens the possibility of empathic identification. She tries a little too hard, as tears are never a solution for

Austen’s heroine in coping with her distress and handling obstacles in the novel.

As the narrative unfolds, Anne’s distress increases and sinks into anguish by the time she reads Charles’s letter and assumes that Wentworth is marrying Louisa. In the scene where she thinks that she is losing Wentworth for the second time, she bursts into tears. She is shown sitting alone in a dark room (see fig. 28), lit by a few candles, in a high-angle shot. The camera

119

gradually zooms in to give a close-up as she looks up and cries directly towards the camera to stir emotions. Although the use of lighting helps to enhance the affectivity, her communication via tears, again, probably works less affectively in generating empathic emotions in viewers.

Fig. 28. (left) Anne bursting into tears when assuming Wentworth is marrying Louisa; (right) Penry-Jones’s Wentworth looking glamorous. Besides Hawkins’s acting approach, Rupert Penry-Jones as Wentworth to some extent also weakens the affectivity of the narrative. He is portrayed as fresh and glamorous (fig. 28), the qualities of which are contrary to the image of the navy officer presented in the novel. He has a boyish look; the make-up as well as costume design do not enhance the distress affect in a

“weather-beaten” naval captain who just returned after spending seven years at sea.

The Brave and Overjoyed Anne

The 2007 film creates its own subsequent scenes in the ending, apart from the novel.

Hawkins’s performance makes Anne seem more direct and brave. After Anne receives

Wentworth’s letter, we are shown a highly mobile tracking shot in which she is running fast back and forth on the streets of Bath as she desperately tries to find Wentworth. According to Brunick et al., there are two kinds of on-screen activities that attract attention—motion in the mise-en- scène and that of the camera (in Shimamura 138). As discussed in introduction, Lisa Fehsenfeld argues that the motions in the picture and camera framing can assist plot development as well as

120

elicit “marked visceral, physiological, and emotive effects” in viewers (in Plantinga 119). In this scene, the running motion of the camera does help to make viewers feel Anne’s tension as she desperately tries to find Wentworth (see fig. 29). But, at the same time, such a formal choice can be overwhelming in depicting Anne’s emotional and mental states. A series of close-ups, medium shots, and aerial shots with varying angles are utilized to capture her movement; nondiegetic mood music is also present to enhance the suspenseful tone in the scene. However, these cinematic techniques work against the formal construction of emotion and affect in

Austen’s design of Anne in the novel.

Fig. 29. (left) Anne running through the town to find Wentworth; (right) The brave Anne ready to kiss her fiancée passionately. If the camera movement disturbs the affective flow of the narrative, the final kiss between the lovers destroys the balance in the character-creation even more. When she finally finds Wentworth, Anne accepts Wentworth’s proposal and cries again. The scene is captured in a close-up (fig. 29) showing Anne and Wentworth kiss; as Wentworth only bends his face and waits for Anne to come up and kiss him, Hawkins’s Anne loses the reserved and calm Anne as

Austen portrays. She passionately and impatiently kisses her fiancé.

Anne writes again to share her emotion with her audience; while a single tear flows down from her left eye, she looks at the camera with a big smile showing her joy and satisfaction in

121

achieving the happy reunion. The camera starts with close-up of her hands (see fig. 30) and moves up to show her joyful facial expressions. There has been repeated use of these techniques in the film such as close-ups of Anne’s diary-writing in translating Austen’s epistolary style, and how Anne emotionally respond to her relationship with Wentworth. Both, of course, may help evoke some level of sympathy in viewers to share her distress or happiness at the beginning, but when used excessively, they weaken the possibility of empathic identification as such design is in opposition to Austen’s craft of the character who acts more rather than reacts.

Fig. 30. (left) Anne writing her diary again while a voice-over narrator telling viewers what she is writing; (right) Hawkins looking directly at the camera to show Anne’s happiness. In the last scenes, we are shown an establishing shot from a high angle (see fig. 31), showing their carriage entering the Kellynch Hall estate. Anne is blindfolded in the carriage as

Wentworth gives her a surprising wedding present—the former family estate of the Elliots. Anne is shown overjoyed as her dream has come true—she has expressed in the beginning of the film that she hopes to “one day return” to her family home. Compared to the 1995 version’s ending in which Wentworth takes Anne for a sea voyage, the experience of which gives Anne knowledge and adventurous experiences, the 2007 film version values the importance of her home estate as

Anne absolutely enjoys getting it back. Hawkins’s performances highlight the overjoyed mood

122

of the Anne. The camera revolves around Anne and Wentworth in 360 degrees (fig. 31), showing the couple’s happiness but also over-loading the affectivity of the scene.

Fig. 31. (left) The camera showing the newlyweds riding a carriage approaching the Kellynch Hall estate; (right) Anne dumping to Wentworth and hugging him for show her excitement towards his surprise wedding gift. In my close examination of four adaptations of Austen’s novels Emma and Persuasion, it is clear that different choices of cinematic techniques, especially cinematography, music, actors and actresses as well as their performances, play a major role in shaping audiences’ experiences.

The adaptive approach each filmmaker takes affects the construction of the narratives and the experiences they offer. As Rita Felski states, a literary work has its “own agency” and the meaning it creates is not standalone in the text itself, but through its dealings with other

“phenomena, the reactions and emotions” (in Sabor 49). Hence, in the adaptation process, the source text and its effect on the audience are both vital factors. In the next chapter, I consider

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, a signature bildungsroman in nineteenth-century British literature, and its two film adaptations to explore how innovative cinematic techniques help to translate the novel’s resonant affectivity into film.

123

CHAPTER 3

AFFECTIVE SENSE-MAKING: JANE EYRE AND ITS ADAPTATIONS

Unlike Austen, whose heroines generally live a respectable life in terms of social and economic status as well as educational opportunities, Charlotte Brontë creates an imaginative world in Jane Eyre (1847) in which her protagonist struggles against all kinds of adversity— particularly during the childhood—and must strive for her survival, the success of which relies highly on her sense-making capability and adaptability. In this chapter, I look at the novel—one of the most influential bildungsromans of all time—as well as two of its cinematic adaptations,

Jane Eyre (Franco Zeffirelli 1996) and Jane Eyre (Cary Fukunaga 2011). I conduct detailed analyses of both the literary and film texts, my goal being to explore the ways that films and their original fictional sources signify through narrative, narration, and character development in promoting affective sense-making in the artistic experience.

Historical Background

The Victorian reign in the British history was a period of rapid growth that blurred the borders of social class and gender difference—in particular, the rising middle-class population fueled by the industrial revolution and colonization. The period also marked the social, political, military, and scientific developments that led to the expansion of the British Empire across the globe. In his work “Education, Literacy, and the Victorian Reader,” Jonathan Rose (2008) points out since the mid-eighteenth-century, the literate population remained the same in the British society, and it was not until the beginning of the Victorian era that the number grew significantly.

By the time that Jane Eyre was written, about seventy percent of men and fifty percent of women were literate, the ratio of which was comparable with “that of France and somewhat lower than

124

that of Germany, Scandinavia, and the United States” (qtd. in Brantlinger and Thesing 33).

Despite booming literary genres and the rise of literacy, Victorian literature has received mixed reviews. In his influential work The Victorian Novel: A Guide to Criticism (2002), Francis

O’Gorman praises the artistic dimension of the Victorian novel and its effect on readers. He claims it as one of the “undisputed forms of literary greatness in English literature” whose original readership “formed a sizeable portion of the middle class in a massively enlarged population with ever-increasing levels of literacy” (O’Gorman 1). However, literary scholars and writers in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth century (e.g., Henry James) criticized Victorian novels on the grounds of their lack of realism and further accused Victorian novelists of simplifying life’s choices and overstating the sociopolitical issues without giving practical suggestions or resolutions. Contemporary literary theorists disagree with such bitter commentary—for instance, George Levine defends Victorian fiction by emphasizing its contributions to the development of the English novel as “a more highly aesthetic literary tradition” that owns “primary allegiance” to Victorian novelists (qtd. in O’Gorman 102).

To understand the formal construction of literary realism, Ian Watt in his highly influential book The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding (1957) proposes the concept of formal realism. He explains it as a narrative technique that allows a fictional work to embody the “circumstantial view of life”; he further defines the notion of formal as “a set of narrative procedures which are so commonly found together in the novel, and so rarely in other literary genres, that they may be regarded as typical of the form itself” (Watt

32). Literary realism is not a fixed term as its interpretation changes and evolves alongside the progression of the society and human civilization. Watt further points out that novels embedded

125

with such techniques create “temporal and spatial” environments that allow readers across generations to be able to communicate with the texts and respond to the characters that they feature; such artistic experience may result in personal satisfaction as well as a desire for a “close correspondence between life and art” (Watt 32). Therefore, as O’Gorman summarizes, while it started out as “a historical impulse,” realism is practiced by many novelists as a method of exploring human truth rather than defining it (O’Gorman 107).

J. Hillis Miller defines the formal structure of Victorian literature in his book The Form of Victorian Fiction (1968). As he states—based on its narrative unity and aesthetic quality—

Victorian fiction is “finally, a structure in which the elements (characters, scenes, images) are not detachable pieces, each with a given nature and meaning, each adding its part to the meaning of the whole. Every element draws its meaning from the others, so that the novel must be described as a self-generating and self-sustained system, like the society it mirrors” (qtd. in O’Gorman

218). Within such a system, every formal choice contributes to the narrative structure as a whole and thus, defines the affectivity of a literary text. Furthermore, the fictional worlds that Victorian novelists created allow readers to explore, question, and reinforce “values and beliefs” in their own lives regarding “gender, role and identity” (Mallet xi). The acts of reading as well as our engaged experiences with fictional others affect our understanding of the self and our relations to others.

Charlotte Brontë, the eldest of the three sisters, published her first novel Jane Eyre in

1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell. In his contemporary reading of Jane Eyre and Wuthering

Heights (Emily Brontë 1847), Edward Mendelson distinguishes between the two by stating:

“Charlotte Brontë sees clearly everything that Emily Brontë neglects to notice. Wuthering

126

Heights is the more finely crafted book, but Jane Eyre is the greater one” (Mendelson 77).

However, according to Elizabeth Langland, Brontë5—“one of the most significant writers of the

Victorian age and a major canonical figure among novelists”—was not well-received in her time, and her status as one of the classic novelists in the Victorian era was neglected by literary criticism such as F.R. Leavis’s important work The Great Tradition (1963) (in Brantlinger and

Thesing 395). Moreover, early twentieth century novelists (e.g., Henry James and Virginia

Woolf) criticized Brontë for failing to separate herself from her heroine in her choice of first person narration. But, such an account was rejected by literary scholars in the late twentieth century, for example Terry Eagleton, who find Brontë’s novels display “great artistry in her handling of narrative technique” (qtd. in Brantlinger and Thesing 394).

In explaining the social, cultural, and historical significance of Brontë’s works, Jenni

Calder (1976:9) argues that, like Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, Brontë also interrogates institutional “moral and psychological adequacy” as well as “publicized domestic ideology,” by exposing the conflicts between the politically debated as well as controversial crumbling British social and family system and the quest and desire to become one’s own self (qtd. in Lamonica 5-6). Patrick Brantlinger in his book The Spirit of Reform:

British Literature and Politics, 1832-1867 (2014) also suggests the importance of studying a literary work within its historical and political context; for instance, we observe the effects and consequences of wars in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848), industrialization in Gaskell’s North and South (1855), and the French Revolution in Dickens’s A tale of Two Cities (1859) (in

5 Brontë’s last name throughout this chapter refers to Charlotte except where noted.

127

O’Gorman 161). In Brontë’s time, women’s suffrage started in 1840s. The rise of the industrial revolution and colonization opened means for women’s education, to learn artisan skills, and to get proper jobs. However, the transition of social and gender roles was met with resistance and moved at a sluggish pace. Women continued to suffer from restraints on status and mobility; hence, marriage was still considered as a secure solution for a stable future, and women’s rights in filing for divorce and owning property were not granted until 1857 and 1882, respectively.

As a popular Victorian bildungsroman, Jane Eyre’s uniqueness lies in the development of the title character, especially her “resistance to society’s coercive power” (Nemesvari 20).

According to Patsy Stoneman, the novel has been translated into twenty four different languages and has twenty three different editions available to purchase in the U.K. alone (in Rubik and

Schartmann 9). Jane Eyre is a story of an orphaned girl, Jane Eyre, whose growth into a mature and respectable individual results from her quest for survival and her strong will in obtaining a proper place in society. Her mental strength and faith keep her going when facing the dilemmas that many women confronted in her time. In pursuit of “self-realization and self-determination,”

Jane goes through different stages of self-perception that happen as she moves from one place to another (Lamonica 8). She spends her abusive childhood at Gateshead, completes her education at Lowood School, becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall, gains fortune from her late uncle at

Moor House, and finally, ties her marital knot with Rochester at Ferndean. Each of these developments brings new obstacles to her life and challenges her sense-making capacity. The novel details the mental, physical, and emotional transformation of its heroine whose experiences appeal to and inspire her readers in making sense of her stories.

128

In explaining its long-lasting effect on the readership across time and space, Barbara

Schaff (2007) demonstrates that the brilliance and multivalence of Brontë’s masterpiece lies in its presentation of abstruse socio-cultural conflicts and the text’s transformative quality on issues which are still discussion-generative in the modern era:

Jane Eyre … reaches beyond the historical limitations of its context and touches

on archetypal human conditions. In terms of its narrative and ideological form,

Jane Eyre is an ideal example of what Umberto Eco has called the Poetics of the

Open Work… Seen from this perspective, the self-assertive protagonist Jane

becomes a liminal figure, negotiating a series of positions between different

class-, race-, and gender-related imperatives… Perhaps even more importantly,

Jane Eyre is read today for the simple reason that it continues to give pleasure. By

this I mean not only the comforting pleasure of the romance plot, but a more

fundamental “plaisir du texte” as defined by Roland Barthes. (qtd. in Rubik and

Mettinger-Schartmann 34-5)

With a theme of romance, Brontë exhibits “the flexibility of the form” in Jane Eyre as she skillfully combines gothic elements into the bildungsroman narrative (Regis 85). Early reviewers of the novel focused on the aesthetic qualities of the text that employs a commanding language to captivate readers and illustrate “masculine hardness, coarseness, and freedom of expression”

(Nemesvari 17). Moreover, as Schaff argues, “it is the courage and resilience of the insubordinate heroine and above all the romantic love story, made all the more fascinating by the Gothic melodrama in which it is embedded, that have exerted the most enduring popular appeal” (in

Rubik and Mettinger-Schartmann 10). In the following section, I discuss how Brontë utilizes her

129

linguistic skills and narrative techniques to create a multi-dimensional affective structure that builds upon bildungsroman, gothic, and romance genre elements in promoting character- engagement among readers. In particular, I examine how her use of first person narration and rhetorical tools enhance that interaction via affects such as distress, interest, and shame-pride constructed in her text. These might also enable readers to communicate with the protagonist

Jane Eyre—through her development from childhood to adulthood—via sympathy, empathy, and identification.

Jane Eyre as a Bildungsroman: First Person Narration and Affectivity

The codes and conventions of the bildungsroman genre allow Brontë to explore the emotion and affect in her construction of the title character. In her work “Victorian Psychology,” literary scholar Athena Vrettos explains that the bildungsroman serves as evidence of Victorian novelists’ beliefs in how past experiences and memory can function in forming one’s personal identity. Adapting key concepts from the cognitive science, Vrettos emphasizes the role of emotion in literary studies; she demonstrates that in the history of Victorian literature, there have been fictional accounts of how negative emotional memories (e.g., distress and anger) of childhood may affect an individual’s growth and psychological development in the formation of the self-hood—for instance, Jane Eyre in Brontë’s novel:

Victorian writers provided complex renderings of the emotional life and

psychological development of children by tracing the growth of their characters

from childhood into adulthood… Jane Eyre … and numerous other Victorian

novels, offer compelling accounts of the relationship between past and present,

and the emotional intensity of childhood affections, resentments, desires, and

130

fears... Jane Eyre’s angry rebellion against her uncaring relatives … render

accounts of childhood that are notable for their emphasis on emotional intensity

and psychological pain. (in Brantlinger and Thesing 72)

In her book The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science and

Medicine, 1840–1900 (2010), Sally Shuttleworth also points out that Brontë’s novel—in particular, its portrayal of Jane Eyre’s childhood experiences with the Reeds and her time at

Lowood School—offers a valuable framework to rethink scientific theories on the emotions and minds of children in the Victorian age. She further argues that Brontë had inspired novelists such as George Eliot and Charles Dickens in opening up “new territory both for the novel and for the sciences of mind” (Shuttleworth 227). However, in her review of Shuttleworth’s book, literary scholar Gabrielle Owen—a specialist in children’s literature and culture as well as science and medicine—warns that “what we see when we bring literary, scientific, and medical writings together is not evidence of scientific progress or new discoveries about children, but rather rhetorical reformulations of existing fears and assumptions about childhood” (Owen 328). Thus, insights from scientific research and medical studies offer a unique angle to look through the rhetorical constructions of literary texts; in the case of bildungsroman literature, they provide a biological base in understanding a novelist’s character-creation and its development of individuality from the childhood into adulthood, cognitively and affectively.

Brontë’s choice of first-person narration is a communitive tool in generating responses.

Such a formal design appeals to readers as it allows the narrator to speak directly to the audience on matters of memory, voice, and affect embedded in the character-creation of the protagonist. In

Jane Eyre, the mature Jane is the narrator of the novel, documenting her past by recounting

131

events that happened to her years ago. Readers are introduced to Jane’s life experience via her point of view. The ten-year-old Jane is the subject of the beginning of the novel, with whom readers embark on the journey that shapes her subsequent beliefs and forms her inner self. In the opening paragraph, there is a clear resistance and negativity in the voice of the narrator as she describes her opinion on the weather that provides “no possibility” for outdoor walking and further tells readers what she sees and feels—“the leafless shrubbery,” “the cold winter wind” with “clouds so somber” and “a rain so penetrating” (JE6 1). To enhance the character- engagement, Brontë introduces the norms of young Jane’s daily life in a first-person narration:

I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful

to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and

a heart saddened by the chidings of Bessie, the nurse, and humbled by the

consciousness of my physical inferiority to Eliza, John, and Georgiana Reed. (JE

We learn that Mrs. Reed was responsible for the orphan Jane’s care and upbringing after her uncle Reed’s death. However, instead of getting sympathy from the Reeds, she receives their spite—the “proud indifference” of the sisters, the “aversion” of Mrs. Reed, and John Reed’s

“violent tyrannies” (JE 5). In this above passage, a series of emotionally charged words such as

“never,” “chilly,” “dreadful,” “raw,” “nipped,” “saddened,” and “humbled” help readers to make sense of Jane’s mentality and her inferior situation in the family (JE 1). We are further told that she is treated worse than a pet as she is called a “bad animal,” a “rat,” and a “mad cat” (JE 2-3).

6 All in-text citations are taken from the unabridged Kindle edition of Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (London, U.K.: transcribed from Service and Paton 1897).

132

A healthy childhood should be filled with fond memories; however, Brontë’s narration style and expressive language help to promote reader response in the form of affective identification. Such identification is possible because the undertone of the word choices such as “bad,” “mad,” and

“animal” allow readers to access the traumatic experience an orphan child experiences and therefore, we are able to share Jane’s pain.

To further expose how such negative emotional memory might affect Jane’s psychological development, Brontë gives explicit descriptions of how other characters respond to

Jane as well as how she reacts to their discrimination. For instance, in the following passage, readers are introduced to John Reed from whom the child Jane suffers the most due to his violent acts—verbal and physical—and his mother’s protection:

John had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me.

He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice

in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of

flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was

bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against

either his menaces or his inflictions. (JE 2-3)

There is clear evidence in the language that reveals its emphasis on the emotional intensity of fear and psychological pain in the child Jane. The description of the frequency that

Jane suffers from these negative emotional memories engages readers affectively in reading such a passage. As we sense her distress toward her own helpless situation via verbs choices such as bully, punish, fear, and shrink, the narrator further describes how Jane’s emotional states progress to anguish out of desperation: “All John Reed’s violent tyrannies, all his sisters’ proud

133

indifference, all his mother’s aversion, all the servants’ partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well. Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for-ever condemned? Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win any one’s favour?” (JE 5). As Jane poses a series of questions of WHYs to herself, the use of first- person narration appeals to readers mentally and emotionally in searching for answers and hoping for a solution to a despair situation.

Jane responds with resentments. Her angry rebellion does not benefit her in surviving her abused relatives. In fact, she suffers more from her “unregulated emotions” as she is locked in the “red room” where her deceased uncle Reed took his last breath; her wild imagination causes her to fall ill. Here, Brontë utilizes her expressive linguistic skills to construct a complex affectivity in the narrative such as fear, shame, and distress in framing the structures of Jane’s thoughts and feelings:

Mrs. Reed surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me:

since my illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever

between me and her own children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by

myself, condemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the

nursery, while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room… I felt an

instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof with

her; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me, expressed an

insuperable and rooted aversion. (JE 14) (italics mine)

Brontë’s word choices—especially verbs in italic—to describe Mrs. Reed’s commends and orders as well as Jane’s interpretation of her aunt’s attitudes towards her seem designed to

134

evoke sympathy and empathic emotions in the reading experience. After the physical punishment of being locked in the red room, Jane continues to suffer mentally and psychologically from Mrs.

Reed’s silence and isolation. For an orphaned child who has already lost parents and her uncle, such treatment further abandons Jane’s emotional needs for communication.

The autobiographical nature of the text restricts readers’ knowledge as we only know what Jane knows or what she thinks is the truth. Jane has a strong command of the language and she is a “remarkably confident autobiographer” (Tsomando 77). Brontë hides her view in between the voice of herself and that of the narrator to deepen the psychological depth of her character-creation. Therefore, such formal choices challenge readers in making sense of the protagonist. For instance, after Jane gets ill in the red room, the apothecary (who usually is called in when servants get ill while the Reeds have their own physician) asks her about what things frighten or upset her. In an autobiographical voice, Jane describes her response:

How much I wished to reply fully to this question! How difficult it was to frame

any answer! Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings; and if the

analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of

the process in words. Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity of

relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a

meagre, though, as far as it went, true response. (JE 11) (italics mine)

Since the answer to the apothecary’s question was “difficult” and Jane only “wished” that she could know how to reply, Brontë steps in and addresses readers in a philosophical tone by describing the emotional trauma that children like Jane may experience. By telling us what a child can and cannot do—in particular, the inability to express, analyze, and sometimes even

135

understand their own feelings—Brontë employs language and rhetorical tools to construct distress-anguish in her portrayal of the character. Shuttleworth (2016) explains the significance of Brontë’s construction of the emotional life of children and its effect on the literary tradition as she points out:

From the late 1840s onward, medical writers started to focus seriously on the

development of the child mind and to view the child as capable of the same

complex array of emotions as an adult. Given our general conceptions of the

harshness of Victorian child-rearing, it was illuminating to discover numerous

accounts warning of the dangers and, indeed, cruelty of leaving children in the

dark or of scaring them unduly. Jane’s experience when locked in the Red Room

became an iconic image of the lasting damage that could be inflicted on the child

mind. (Shuttleworth 227)

Brontë’s design in depicting how the child Jane thinks and feels gives affective cues in understanding the emotional and mental frustration a child might go through in such a situation, and thus, helps to elicit emotional responses such as sympathy, empathy, and identification with

Jane. The autobiographical stream of consciousness shifts between Jane and Brontë effortlessly.

Jane’s accounts of how her cousins took advantage of her dependence and orphan status to bully her beyond reason, as well as of how her aunt’s silence has encouraged their abusive behaviors, promote character-engagement. Brontë’s construction of how Jane recollects her past emotional experiences, memories, and affect helps to enhance the engaged reading experience in making sense of her identity.

136

Making Sense of Sounds and Signs: The Gothic and Affect

In Jane Eyre, Brontë adopts and exercises narrative techniques by following the footsteps of earlier novelists in the nineteenth century who experimented with gothic elements in their works (e.g., Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey [1803/1818], Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein [1818]) to enhance the emotive quality of her text. To explore the affective possibilities of the gothic genre, Brontë gives weight to action-based and/or auditory phrases in describing what Jane sees and hears as well as how she feels in some of the “supernatural” events (as she imagines) to engage readers.

According to Clay and Iacoboni, the scientific discovery of “auditory mirror neurons” helps us to understand the formal construction of emotion and affect in a literary text. They further argue that “the use of sound-based phrases” is an effective tool for novelists to enhance character-engagement; they find it quite fascinating that earlier writers, without the scientific knowledge of how mirror mechanisms might shape the sense-making process, “presumably had the intuition” that auditory as well as action-based descriptions work to “paint a vivid scene” in portraying characters’ motions and emotions (qtd. in Schellekens and Goldie 317-8). For instance, after Mrs. Reed locks her inside the red room, Jane is terrified by her “imaginary” thoughts that the room is haunted by her deceased uncle Reed. The narrator describes her emotional and physical reactions from a first person perspective:

My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed

the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated:

endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.

Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Bessie and Abbot

137

entered. (JE 7) (Italics mine)

A series of sound-based as well as action-based verb-phrases are effective in conveying the emotional intensity and psychological fear of the child Jane to readers. These vivid descriptions such as the thickened heart-beat, the blood-flow to the head, and the immediate reactions of rushing to the door and shaking the door lock desperately tend to evoke shared emotions. However, such a seemingly supernatural event is also embedded with ambiguity that challenges readers’ cognition as the narrative gives hints in construction of interest and curiosity in the reading experience. By blending the real with the surreal, events like this keep readers mentally and emotionally engaged in exploring what is really going on versus whether they are flights of Jane’s imagination.

Another major event where Brontë uses action-based and auditory descriptions to construct fear and interest affect is when Jane finds something suspicious about Thornfield Hall when she works there as a governess. Again, Brontë highlights the negative affectivity that associated with “locked doors” in her narrative. Since her arrival at the residence, Jane notices that there is a mysterious locked door on the third floor, from which she sometimes hears a

“curious laugh; distinct, formal, mirthless”—the most “tragic” and “preternatural” laugh she has ever heard (JE 67). Even though Mrs. Fairfax (the house-keeper) says that it comes from one of the servants, Grace Pool, Jane has doubts. We read that one night Mr. Rochester’s room is on fire. Jane gives her account of the accident; she is woken up by something very strange, which brought her a great sense of horror:

This was a demoniac laugh—low, suppressed, and deep—uttered, as it seemed, at

the very keyhole of my chamber door. The head of my bed was near the door, and

138

I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my bedside—or rather, crouched by

my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed,

the unnatural sound was reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels.

My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, “Who is

there?” (JE 94) (Italics mine)

The description of how the laugh sounds as well as the location where the laugh comes from paints a vivid picture of the scene. These provide linguistic traces in helping readers make sense of the situation, which may further elicit emotional responses such as interest, curiosity, and fear. According to Clay and Iacoboni, in a literary text, the descriptions of characters’ actions and activities—in particular, “gaze following”—allow an intense interaction between readers and fictional characters; such formal choices stimulate “the mirroring process required for relating to fictional others” (in Schellekens and Goldie 317-8). As Jane gazes at her surroundings to find out if she is in danger, our interactions with the text provide “heightened, intensified, and highly integrative experiences” (as discussed in the introduction) that train our mentality and deepens our connection with the heroine (Johnson xiii).

Theory of Mind: Shame-Pride and Empathy

As discussed in Chapter One, we know that Austen experiments with theory of mind in her narrative construction of emotion and affect to keep readers engaged. This literary tool plays an important role in making sense of the cognitive embedding of actions and intentions of characters, both of which are critical for character engagement in eliciting empathy. According to

Sara Lodge, besides images and scenes, Brontë’s designs of characters and events make Jane

Eyre a symbolic rich text as these “can be interpreted as outward manifestations of the mind’s

139

inner life” (in Henson 31). Through a simulation-based empathy—an embodiment and imaginary experience of projecting oneself into another’s situation—readers connect with Jane through her growth, mentally and emotionally. Each character Jane meets in the novel contributes to her transformation; each major event plays a role in her formation of the selfhood and identity. She benefits from her socialization with others such as Bessie and her young friend Helen, and she completes her maturation in making sense of her emotional experiences with Mr. Rochester.

Bessie Lee is one of the key figures in the novel that shapes Jane’s understanding of her childhood at the Reeds. She is the only person Jane talks with at Gateshead Hall. As Jane’s nurse, she often reminds Jane to be grateful for being adopted and raised in a wealthy family by the Reeds. Jane is told that being an orphan makes herself “less than a servant” because she does nothing for her keep (JE 4). Jane fails to perceive these linguistic signs and their benefits for her survival in the family. Bessie teaches the child Jane that she “ought to be aware” that she is

“under obligations to Mrs. Reed” as well as her children; being “humble,” “agreeable,” “useful,” and “pleasant” are ways to secure her position in the Reed family—otherwise, she could end up in a worse place and situation (JE 4). However, Jane chooses to take such warnings as “a vague sing-song” that pains and crushes her ears; she does not consider these “reproaches” of her lack of status and “hints” of her being fully dependent as an indication that being an orphan, she is not entitled to full ownership of her identity and self-esteem, and therefore, her self-pride blocks her mind from full comprehension of Bessie’s guidance that are “only half intelligible” to Jane (JE

4).

Helen Burns is another character that affects Jane in her reformed understanding of the importance of adaptability. As Jane’s best friend at Lowood school, she is the one who warns

140

Jane against her impaired social cognition. Earlier in the novel, before being sent away, we see

Jane’s strong self-pride via her passionate speech to her aunt Mrs. Reed. She calls her “deceitful” in front of Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster at Lowood; she remarks her feelings with anguish:

“I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if anyone asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty” (JE 20). Brontë’s choice of first-person narration gives readers direct access to how Jane reacts emotionally to her aunt. However, when Jane recounts her heart-breaking past with the Reeds to her new friend Helen in hoping to gain her sympathy toward her suffering,

Helen calms her down and offers her advice in making sense of Jane’s emotional experiences:

“She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as

Miss Scatcherd does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you!

What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart!” (JE 34).

The character-design of Helen serves an indirect role in enhancing the emotive quality of

Jane’s character-creation; it also offers readers insights in understanding how these negative emotional memories have affected Jane’s formation of selfhood and identity. Furthermore, at

Lowood, when Mr. Brocklehurst warns the fellow teachers and students that they need to raise their guards when dealing with Jane because she is “a liar” and deceitful as told by her aunt, Jane is upset and feels shame (JE 40). Again, Helen provides a different point of view in making sense of such situation of Jane. She reminds Jane how such seemingly damaging remarks can benefit her socially in a new environment; as she puts it, “had he treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater

141

number would offer you sympathy if they dared” (JE 42). Helen helps Jane to realize the temporary isolation as a long-term gain for her successful transition in surviving at the orphan school.

Brontë skillfully designs events in Jane’s life to embed meanings and enhance the shame- pride affect in her construction of the protagonist. In Jane Eyre, the narrator speaks in a strong autobiographical tone by pointing out how presentiment, sympathy, and signs boost interest and demand explanations: “Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three-combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key…

Sympathies, I believe, exist … whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man” (JE 141). As previously mentioned, the growth and development of Jane is also seen in her “resistance to society’s coercive power,” which adds to her sense of pride (Nemesvari 20). In this following passage,

Brontë as Jane gives her interpretation of society’s imposed gender roles, which enhances the affectivity of the narrative:

Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel;

they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their

brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation,

precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged

fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings

and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is

thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn

more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. (69-70) (Italics mine)

142

Similar to her warning against the cruel treatment of young children as well as its dangerous and negative effects on their emotional and mental development, Brontë utilizes her linguistic skills and narration style to construct shame-pride affect by projecting her view of the inequity that women in her time suffered. In particular, her choices of verbs (in italics) in narrating women’s obligations of what they can and cannot do, or feel, under a patriarchy social structure help to engage readers and promote emotional responses. When Jane completes her education and training at Lowood, she moves to Thornfield Hall and becomes a governess. In addition to excel in the professional work life that earns her praise as a teacher, Jane equips herself with artistic skills and talents as she draws and paints in her leisure time. This above statement reflects the philosophical ideal in perceiving the social restraints on her sex, the design of which enhances the emotive quality of the character and may promote empathic identification.

Jane as a true survivor of unfortunate origins is also seen in the choices and decisions she makes regarding marriage. In the two marriage proposals presented in the novel, Brontë describes the inner struggle of Jane as she is tempted by both of her suitors—Mr. Rochester and

St. John—though on different grounds. Rochester’s initial proposal indulges her romantic desires whereas St. John’s call to join him as a missionary companion appeals to her religious beliefs.

Jane rejects both of their offers as her moral standards and self-esteem hold her back from stepping into a marriage for reasons based on short-term goals or pleasures that may eventually ruin her pursuit of happiness. In her rejection of Rochester’s proposal, Brontë’s expressive language allows a heightened and intensified reading experience. As Jane believes that Mr.

Rochester intends to marry Blanche Ingram and only considers her as a mistress, she reacts passionately:

143

“I tell you I must go!” I retorted, roused to something like passion. “Do you think

I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? —a

machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched

from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup? Do you think,

because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You

think wrong! —I have as much soul as you, —and full as much heart! And if God

had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard

for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you. I am not talking to you now

through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh; —it is

my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave,

and we stood at God’s feet, equal, —as we are!” (JE 161)

The emotive speech marks the affective possibilities that narrative style and rhetorical tools can create in a literary text. In The Cambridge History of the English Novel (2012), Robert

L. Caserio and Clement Hawes argue that “every decision that a novelist makes is formally mediated, and retracing those decisions provides access to the history of the novel” (1). Jane

Eyre provides such an example in studying how cognitive and affect theories help us to see through the artistic creation via a bigger lens in understanding how each form convention shapes our narrative reading of the novel—particularly how we are “drawn to identify with and support

Jane in her struggles and desires” (Nemesvari 47).

Adapting Jane Eyre for the Screen

Brontë’s popularity is on a par with Jane Austen’s for filmmakers. With over twenty screen versions—the first in 1910 and Robert Stevenson’s 1943 version being one of the most

144

popular—Jane Eyre is among the most adapted of all Victorian novels. As a staple heroine with characteristics that even a male protagonist may sometimes lack, Jane Eyre and her uniqueness mark her popularity in the readership as well as spectatorship across time and space. Geoffrey

Macnab points out in his article on adaptations of the novel that “a fundamental challenge … is doing justice to Charlotte Brontë’s first-person narration. There is a rawness and intensity in

Jane’s own account of her life that can’t help but be muted when her story becomes the stuff of a standard 19th-century costume drama” (Macnab 68). Besides such intensity in our interactions with the text, another challenge filmmakers may face is to translate the emotional complexity of the title character and her biographical point of view. Therefore, the adaptation process demands a filmmaker’s full exploration of cinematic elements to visualize Jane’s emotional states on the screen without the voice-over narration (Felperin 44).

Franco Zeffirelli joined the 1990s’ adaptation craze of classic novels by making a

“commentary” version of Jane Eyre (1996) featuring Anna Paquin (Young Jane Eyre), Charlotte

Gainsbourg (adult Jane Eyre), and William Hurt (Mr. Rochester). In her book Screening the

Gothic (2005), Lisa Hopkins points out that Zeffirelli’s film follows the same adaptive approach that Stevenson’s 1943 version took—an “extreme of actual rewriting” to ensure commercial success (Hopkins 89). She praises the film for its capacity in controlling “both its retelling and its audience’s response through a strongly developed visual pattern which substitutes well for the novel’s manipulative tools of tone and pace” (Hopkins 104).

However, Ace Pilkington complains that Zeffirelli’s film significantly cuts gothic elements and downplays their effect by opting to show schematic details; as a result, its narrative structure is crafted “firmly in the realm of the social rather than the psychoanalytic” (in Hopkins

145

91). Pilkington further criticizes Zeffirelli’s film for the publicity stunt of casting actresses and actors from the 1995 version of Persuasion to meet his desire to create an “accumulated aura of

‘classic’ prestige”; she points out that “Amanda Root [Anne Elliot in Persuasion] resurfaces as kind but powerless Miss Temple; Fiona Shaw [Mrs. Croft in Persuasion] is now widowed, unloved, embittered Mrs. Reed, suffering from her late husband’s fondness for Jane … and

Samuel West [Mr. Elliot in Persuasion] has metamorphosed into St. John Rivers” (Hopkins 91).

New York Times reviewer Charles McGrath also complains about the casting of William Hurt for the role of Rochester in that he is only mildly “eccentric” rather than the “brooding, Byronic type” (McGrath AR1). Moreover, Leslie Felperin thinks that Gainsbourg’s Jane fails in translating the character’s introspective feelings and as a result, the lack of depth in her performance makes the romantic episode with Rochester unconvincing and the emotional subtext of the novel “a bit thin” (Felperin 44). Besides the casting choices, critics also find Zeffirelli’s treatment of narrative structure in adapting the literary text to the screen unsatisfactory. As

Hopkins argues, the narrative of the film seems to be disjointed at some key moments as certain events have been “telescoped”—for instance, Rochester’s sudden love interest and proposal to

Jane—and thus, the last two hundred pages of the novel are crammed into the last ten minutes of the film, the rearrangement of which causes narrative discontinuity (Hopkins 91).

Cary Fukunaga’s 2011 film is the most recent Hollywood version of the novel, featuring

Mia Wasikowska (Jane Eyre), Amelia Clarkson (Young Jane), and Michael Fassbender (Mr.

Rochester). Like Zeffirelli’s film, Fukunaga’s version of Jane Eyre is a commentary adaptation.

Fukunaga boldly changes the original narrative structure of the novel by incorporating flashback sequences, highlighting the gothic tone, and focusing solely on events as experienced by Jane.

146

Claire Monk praises Wasikowska’s Jane as an “uncannily self-possessed heroine” who projects strong inner-selfhood and ethical values (Monk 45). She is frequently seen in the film to pause, think, and reflect via her subtle performance—particularly in her interactions with Rochester. In sharp contrast to Hurst’s Rochester, Fassbender’s Rochester possesses the necessary confidence of a man who travels across the oceans, courageous and masculine. He is usually seen engaged in activities such as shooting and performing labor around the house (e.g., cutting out the roots of a tree).

Charles McGrath praises Fukunaga’s formal decision to rearrange the chronological order of the novel and for being able to capture the “spiritual journey” of Jane at Moor House; hence,

Jane’s alternative options after leaving Thornfield and Rochester comes down to either a

“loveless marriage or spinsterhood” (McGrath AR1). With the flashback sequences and associated editing, the film enables viewers to make sense of the emotional and psychological growth of Brontë’s heroine affectively. However, Macnab criticizes Fukunaga for losing focus in his adaptive approach as he finds it confusing to identify whether Fukunaga wants to incorporate

“psychological realism or full-blown gothic melodrama” in restructuring the narrative (Macnab

69).

In the following pages, I compare and contrast how the 1996 and 2011 screen versions of the novel experiment with cinematic conventions to reframe Brontë’s heroine to screen. I pay close attention to how each film, with its own adaptive approach and formal design, translates the affective narrativity constructed in the original source text. I further show that how, through the choices of actors and actresses, the 1996 version manages to offer deeply affective viewing experiences in its portrayal of the child Jane, whereas the 2011 version seems to be able to

147

promote enhanced character-engagement in its narrative construction of shame-pride affect in tracing the protagonist’s transformation into adulthood and her achievement of agency.

Jane Eyre (1996)

Zeffirelli utilizes a variety of cinematographic techniques to engage viewers in the first one minutes of the film. The camera directs audiences’ attention from an outlook of the residence to an interior presentation of what life is like for the young Jane. The scene opens with a fade-in to a black and white portrait of Gateshead Hall, which gradually turns to a colored image and ends in an establishing shot of the Reeds’ residence. This may also be seen as a visual metaphor to mirror the emotional turbulence Jane experiences under the roof of the seemingly quiet and peaceful Gateshead Hall. With a voice-over narration, the adult Jane speaks to viewers as she recollects her negative emotional experiences with the Reeds in a period of ten years since her parents’ death. In the next scene, the camera tracks in to the second-floor window and cuts to a medium shot of Jane being bullied by her cousins (Nicola Howard as Eliza Reed and Nic Knight as John Reed).

The camera angle is fixed in framing characters from waist up (see fig. 32) to capture and highlight their actions and expressions. We are shown how Jane is dragged and thrown into the red room upon Mrs. Reed’s order. When she tries to escape, Mrs. Reed (Fiona Shaw) forcefully pushes her inside the room and locks the door from outside. To depict the psychological fear and horror in Jane’s mind, Zeffirelli employs music and mise en scène to enhance the distress affectivity of the scene. As the nondiegetic music plays in a melancholic tone (as an indication of what Jane hears in her imagination), the camera rapidly cutting between POV shots and reaction shots of the crying Jane (fig. 32) to show audiences what Jane sees. These help to promote

148

character-engagement with the poor child and viewers might respond with empathic identification with the child Jane.

Fig. 32. (left) The Reeds’s children bullying the child Jane; (right) Jane looking frightened in the red room. Jane Eyre, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Miramax Films, 1996; DVD frame enlargement).

The choices of makeup, hair style, and costume on Anna Paquin—in contrast to those of the Reeds—as well as her performance are communicative in providing affective cues for viewers. The set’s standing mirror further provides a visual effect that makes the room seem bigger than its actual size; it also allows us to observe Jane’s facial expression in a reaction shot.

The choice of prop highlights Jane’s emotional state, and along with the use of expressionistic lighting in the scene, such cinematic design enhances the fear-horror affect in portrayal of the character who is locked in the red room and translates the gothic tone created by “sound-based phrases” and descriptions of “gaze-following” in the source novel. As film credits appear, the opening sequence ends with nondiegetic mood music played by cello and piano.

Jane as A Child: Performance and Affective Identification

The 1996 film highlights the tormented childhood of Jane at both Gateshead and Lowood in construction of distress and shame-pride affect. Oscar-winner Anna Paquin gives an expressive performance as the young Jane; her acting talents contribute to the emotive quality of the title character. As discussed in the introduction, “body language, including the use of facial

149

expression, posture, and gesture, is one of the primary means of communicating emotion”

(Plantinga 122). Paquin’s use of facial expressions (e.g., her chin and lips), eye movements

(especially her direct gaze), and body language (e.g., standing tall with her head up, etc.) add vivid color to her performance and give life to the character she presents. Thus, these help viewers to understand the role she plays and enhance the filmic experiences.

For instance, in Jane’s first meeting with Mr. Brocklehurst (John Wood), Paquin explores the affective possibilities created by her acting skills to engage audiences. When Mr.

Brocklehurst gives her an interview, and she is asked what she must do to avoid going to hell,

Jane replies that she must stay healthy and not die. Paquin’s firm and fierce facial expression

(see fig. 33) enhances the shame-pride affecivity in the character-creation of the young Jane and help viewers in making sense of her keen desire for survival.

Fig. 33. (left) Mr. Brocklehurst looking shocked by the child Jane’s remarks; (right) Jane looking fierce when answering Mr. Brocklehurst’s question.

The camera angle focusing on the emotional expressions of the actors enhances character-engagement. In a medium close-up (fig. 33), we see that Mr. Brocklehurst, a supposed

“expert” with years of experience in dealing with orphans and “troubled” children, responds with a shocked face. Furthermore, when Mrs. Reed comments on Jane as dangerous and deceitful,

Paquin stares back at her with a look that almost speaks Jane’s mental anguish. Paquin engages

150

her gaze and changes it (either softens or sharpens) based on how Jane feels while she bears her aunt’s humiliating remarks.

Fig. 34. (left) Jane telling Mrs. Reed that she is not deceitful; (right) Mrs. Reed being speechless when Jane delivers her last remarks on her childhood at the Reeds.

The film further enhances the character-engagement with the child Jane via cinematographic techniques in construction of shame-pride affect. Jane is sent immediately to the orphan school. Before leaving the Reeds, Jane cannot hold her anger any longer, as she turns back and defends her character in front of Mrs. Reed. The camera highlights Paquin’s performance in rack-focus shot (see fig. 34) as we see a startled Wood standing behind her out of focus. Besides camerawork, the make-up and costume design also add to affective quality of the character-creation as Jane’s monotone plain and simple clothes (like Mr. Brocklehurst’s) are in sharp contrast with her cousins’ and her aunt’s (Fiona Shaw) colorful and good-looking dresses

(fig. 34).

Upon arrival at Lowood, Jane gets humiliated in front of the whole school. The choice of camera techniques directs our attention and alters our perception of the narrative. Jane is punished based on false accusation and required to stand on top of a stool as a bad example. It is not what she expected, but she copes with it with pride and dignity. In a rack focus (see fig. 35), we are shown that Wood as Mr. Brocklehurst, appearing in the same frame with Paquin, points

151

his finger towards Jane disposing her “deceitful” cast of character to her fellow classmates.

Despite being challenged, Paquin’s Jane remains standing tall and strong (though her facial expression is blurred in the background). The camera then cuts to a close-up of her face in shallow focus (fig. 35), contrasting with the shadows in the background. These formal choices control our perspectives and keep our eyes on attractions designed by the film crew in construction of shame-pride affect. Paquin’s performance—particularly her facial expressions

(e.g., her gaze and chin) and body gesture—enhances the emotive quality of her character.

Fig. 35. (left) Mr. Brocklehurst humiliating Jane in front of her peers at Lowood; (right) Jane holding pride to herself.

The film continues to enrich our cinematic experiences with its narrative design to promote affective identification with Jane as well as other orphans living at Lowood. As discussed in the introduction, film as a narrative art form promotes acts of feeling. According to

Nair, our interactions with the film text offer “a remarkable evolutionary advantage” and learning opportunities via “vicarious experience” gained in the process (in Horsdal). The poor living conditions of the deprived students calls for sympathy from the audience as we observe the suffering of the children from cruelty and heartless treatment.

In the next scene, we are shown that the children are required to get up early in the morning and clean themselves up with freezing cold water. A medium high-angle shot of Jane

152

(see fig. 36) indicates that she is overwhelmed by her circumstances; as she picks up a large piece of ice from the water, she reacts with a shocked look on her face, wondering about how to possibly use this ice-cold water to wash her face and what kind of life awaits her at Lowood. The camera framing in presenting the confused emotion of Jane as well as the fast-paced movement of other children is highly communitive. Jane, who just arrived at Lowood, is not accustomed to this kind of training and schedule; however, other orphans seem to consider these as norms of their daily routines.

Fig. 36. (left) Jane picking out a piece of ice from the frozen water; (right) Miss Scatcherd punishing Helen in front of fellow children at the orphan school.

The film further deepens the distress dimension of the narrative via actors’ performances.

In the next scene, we see that while Miss Scatcherd (Geraldine Chaplin) is doing her daily inspection of the girls, and she finds out Helen Burns’s (Leanne Rowe) fingernails are not clean, she starts to discipline and punish her. There are multiple close-ups of Miss Scatcherd repeatedly whipping Helen’s hands. With the performers standing in line appearing in the same frame (fig.

36), we are shown that no one is reacting to Miss Scatcherd’s anger and rage. Since we are aware from the previous scene that Jane, as well as everyone else, knows that it is because the water is frozen, the choice of camera framing as well as performers’ acting shapes our understanding of the narrative.

153

Fig. 37. (left) Jane looking painful in reaction to Helen’s punishment; (right) Helen looking emotionless when Miss Scatcherd whipping her hands.

To elicit affective identification with the girls, the film utilizes camerawork and performance to show how “the new member” of the school—Jane—responds with anguish toward such merciless acts and how these negative emotional experiences at Lowood might have affected old members like Helen. We observe a series of reaction shots (see fig. 37) as the camera switches between these two characters. Paquin’s facial expressions reveal her pain; however, Leanne Rowe’s performance as Helen, particularly her stoic gaze, presents calm and a lack of emotion. These formal conventions construct strong negative affects in portrayal of the characters.

The film continues to stir viewers’ emotions with its narrative design. In a moment of rare peace and quiet, Jane and Helen are sitting and reading. Jane asks Helen to open her bonnet so she can draw her beautiful curly red hair. Mr. Brocklehurst suddenly walks in and sees Helen without her bonnet (which is against the rules of the school) making him furious. In fact, he looks astonished by the natural beauty of Helen, but he refuses to either admit or accept it; instead he accuses Helen of being rebellious and full of vanity and orders to cut her hair to correct her nature. The choice of lighting (see fig. 38) in the scene enhances the emotive qualities of the characters.

154

Fig. 38. (left) Helen siting peacefully next to the window while Jane paints her portrait; (right) Mr. Brocklehurst checks with Miss Scatcherd about Helen.

Jane stands up for her friend by defending Helen’s natural hair; as she fails to reason with

Mr. Brocklehurst, she opens up her bonnet, too, as a rebellious act to support her friend and preserve her pride. She calmly walks towards the scissors with a fearless attitude. Paquin’s as well as Rowe’s gestures and facial expressions (see fig. 39)—particularly their gazes—help to communicate the mental and emotional states of their characters to the audiences. The scene creatively infuses the moment “with a vigor and sensuality” as Jane and Helen first look towards each other and then “provocatively toss their luxuriant locks” and bend down with hair falling over their heads to awaits Mr. Brocklehurst’s scissors (Hopkins 90).

Fig. 39. (left) Jane arguing against Mr. Brocklehurst’s humiliating remarks on Helen; (right) The girls protesting against their punishment with silent gestures.

The music complements the visual components and changes from a soft to an intensified tone. No one dares to challenge Mr. Brocklehurst in the way Jane did, and no one looks as

155

fearless as Jane. Wood’s gestures and facial expression show that Mr. Brocklehurst is in a great shock when hearing someone saying “NO!” to his commands. The use of lighting (e.g., the sunlight coming into the room) falling on the faces of the two girls reinforces their innocence as well as purity and adds to the shame-pride affective dimension of the narrative. While watching the haircutting scene and observing the acts that are forced upon the girls, viewers might experience emotional disturbance in making sense of the life at Lowood. It is likely that we establish affective identification with these orphans and question the moral value of this supposedly “charitable” institution.

Affect and Gothic Romance: The Adult Jane

Although the 1996 film narrative does little or nothing to prepare us for the two main characters’ passionate relationship, the second half of the film also utilizes a variety of formal choices such as make-up, hair, costume design and special effects in the construction of distress affect. The major scenes that evoke such affectivity are those portray Mr. Rochester’s (William

Hurt) two women—Jane (Gainsbourg) and Bertha (Maria Schneider). After knowing Mr.

Rochester’s secret marriage, Jane comes home in her wedding dress.

Fig. 40. (left) Jane meeting Bertha for the first time in her wedding dress; (right) Bertha looking frightened trying to hide herself from the strangers.

156

The camera captures the expressions of two women in Rochester’s life in medium close- ups and reaction shots (see fig. 40) as their eyes meet in the room where Bertha is kept locked up. While Jane is standing at the doorway with a heartbroken look in her wedding dress, Bertha retreats to the corner, trying to stay away from the unknown visitors. Both of them are in white dresses; while Jane looks elegant with her hair tied up and her head covered by the veil, Bertha looks disturbed and confused. These cinematic techniques enhance the distress and fear affective dimension of the scene. The body language of both the actresses reflect their characters’ respective personalities; in such an awkward situation, Gainsbourg’s Jane is shown with kindness and sympathy towards Bertha whereas Schneider is looking down with shoulders hunched to show her fear, anguish, and hate.

Fig. 41. (left) Image of an insane woman, in Charles Darwin The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872); (right) Maria Schneider as the mad woman Bertha in Zeffirelli’s film.

Though Jane Eyre was written in the pre-Darwinian era, the 1996 film adaptation refers to Charles Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)—in particular, its illustration of madness (see fig. 41) in the film’s portrayal of the character Bertha and the emotional display of sorrow in Rochester after Bertha’s death. In his book, Darwin’s theories on emotion and behavior inspired what is now called affective neuroscience (Davidson

316). As a landmark in the history of photographically based illustration too, the book contains

157

images showing common emotions and six main states such as anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, and sadness (Ekman 296). The choices of make-up and hair on Schneider (Bertha)

(fig. 41) create an image of a madwoman that parallels the illustration in Darwin’s work.

Schneider’s facial expressions, especially how she engages her muscles around her eyes and lips, communicate emotions such as fear, anger, and distress with viewers.

Fig. 42. (left) Jane pulling back her veil to clear her sight and thoughts on her mind; (right) Jane changing her outfit and coming out of her room in full black gowns.

The camera zooms in to Jane and cuts from a medium shot to a medium close-up and then a close-up to capture Jane’s reaction on her face (see fig. 42). Her small gesture of pulling over her veil heightens and intensifies our emotional responses to the scene. Later, as she changes from the white wedding dress to a completely black gown (fig. 42), the scene works as a visual metaphor in depicting her transformed view towards herself from a newly-wedded “wife” to a woman in a mourning state who just lost her “husband.” The use of nondiegetic mood music accompanies the scene to enhance the distressful tone of the event.

Jane leaves Thornfield Hall and catches a carriage passing by. While Rochester tries to stop her by getting on his horse and chasing the carriage, we are shown that Grace Poole (Billie

Whitelaw) gets distracted and Bertha takes the opportunity to sneak out and set Jane’s wedding dress on fire and it burns quickly out of control. As Rochester returns to Thornfield Hall to save

158

Bertha and other people inside the estate, he is trapped by fire on the staircase. We see that Poole attempts to subdue and bring Bertha down safely but falls to her death over the railings. The choice of bird’s eye view (see fig. 43) and use of special effect construct horror affect in the cinematic experience.

Fig. 43. (left) Poole falling on the floor and lying dead; (right) Bertha jumping off the stairs and committing suicide.

In the next shot, we see Bertha standing and looking at Rochester with hollowed eyes. As he desperately pleads for her to give him her hand so that he can save her, Bertha refuses and instead jumps from the broken railing. The choice of low-angle shot (fig. 43) towering over us depicts the strength and uncontrolled emotion in Bertha’s character-creation, which further indicates Rochester’s failure in saving her life. The shadows from the fire and the expressionistic lighting enhance the emotive quality of the scene.

Hurt gives a nuanced performance in portraying Rochester’s emotional states when trying to persuade Bertha with reason from hurting herself as well as how devastated he feels following the deaths of Bertha and Poole. Like the film’s portrayal of Bertha, his facial expression in constructing distress resembles the photographic illustrations of the emotion of grieving (fig. 44) in Darwin’s book The Expression of the Emotions (1872).

159

Fig. 44. (left) Rochester in deep sorrow for the loss of lives—Poole and Bertha; (right) Image of sorrow and grief, in Charles Darwin The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872).

The rest of the film narrative ends on an abrupt note; as mentioned earlier, Hopkins argues that the last two hundred pages of the novel are crammed into the last ten minutes of the film (Hopkins). Such an adaptive approach weakens its affective narrativity in promoting character-engagement with the heroine.

Jane Eyre (2011)

The 2011 version utilizes flashback narration to reframe the otherwise linear but subjective novel. The film’s opening shot is still and dark, accompanied by melancholic mood music to enhance the gothic tone. The scene is suddenly broken by noise from the action of unlatching a door; the diegetic sound of a woman’s heavy breathing enhances the distressful affect as she says a silent goodbye to a place she loves. The camera pulls back while keeping the woman’s face in focus as we see her painfully sobbing. With a large estate in the background, the camera frames the woman in a black dress, running along a foggy path, hinting about the uncertainty of her destination.

In long aerial shots (see fig. 45), we see the woman wandering and navigating the moors.

The next scene shows her standing at the crossroads in the middle of nowhere, an image which enhances the distressful tone of the film. On a cold rainy night, she arrives at a strange and

160

isolated house where she is pitied and taken in, lest she die of exposure. There has been no dialogue up to this point and yet the filmmaker uses the power of acting, setting, camerawork, sound effects, and editing to engage viewers while making sense of the narrative and the character. The film’s dramatic opening design aims to capture the attention of audiences via interest and curiosity; the filmmaker’s appetite for gothic elements evokes fear and distress towards the mysterious woman, who turns out to be the adult Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska).

Fig. 45. (left) The adult Jane wandering and navigating the moors; (right) Jane lying on the ground sobbing. Jane Eyre, directed by Cary Fukunaga (Focus Features, 2011; DVD frame enlargement).

In her near-death condition, Jane starts to hear ghostly wind-like voices as if a supernatural force is following and calling her name. The camera switches between POV shots and close-up reaction shots as we see Jane in distress and fear as she hears the distorted voices.

The choice of camerawork and editing blurs the image to give us a first person perspective of

Jane’s vision. The selection of cinematic techniques reflects the creativity of Fukunaga in adapting the subjective point of view of Jane, which, as a result, builds up a close connection between viewers and the title character via interest, fear, and distress.

Flashbacks, Cinematography, and the Construction of Distress

The first flashback of the film takes us back to Jane’s childhood at Gateshead Hall. We are shown (see fig. 46) that Jane (Amelia Clarkson) hiding behind a curtain holding a book while

161

the vicious John Reed (Craig Roberts) hunts her with a sword in his hand. The film uses the props of sword and book to show the respective nature of the characters of these two children.

The use of nondiegetic sound, editing, and Clarkson’s as well as Robert’s performances engage viewers affectively in response to Jane’s innocence and her distressful situation.

Fig. 46. (left) John holding a sward searching for the child Jane; (right) Jane hiding herself from John standing behind the curtain holding a book tightly towards her chest.

In this adaptation, Clarkson’s young Jane is shown to be more vulnerable, shy, and lacking in self-confidence than in the 1996 version; the emotive quality of her character is in sharp contrast to the proud and fearless young Jane played by Paquin in the other film. As a result, the character-creation of Jane in each film affects how we make sense of the narrative. For instance, as soon as Jane thinks that she has dodged the bullet and sits down, she gets discovered and is accused of reading a book without John’s permission. He strikes her with force on the head with the book; as her head hits the door, a bright red streak of blood flows down the side of her forehead. Amelia Clarkson gives a subtle performance in this scene through her facial expressions and body gesture as we see her scared and involuntarily raising her hands to protect herself against John’s abuse. The low-angle shot of John holding a book in his left hand ready to attack as well as a high-angle shot of Jane revealing her “diminutive and vulnerable” state is effective in constructing distress and fear affect (see fig. 47).

162

In the next shot, the camera continues to show us Jane in a high-angle shot to evoke sympathy. Jane looks dizzy from the blow to her head as if the world is spinning as she looks downwards. The scene uses an over-the-shoulder medium close-up (see fig. 48) to capture and highlight Clarkson’s motions and emotional reactions. She rises with a sudden rush of anger— jumping on John, pushing him back, and then down to the ground—and starts to beat him up. As

John is lying on the ground being beaten up by a girl smaller than he is, the camera switches to a long shot (fig. 48) from ground level to show Jane’s rebellion and rage towards John’s bully and abuse. We are further shown that the ruckus brings Mrs. Reed and the maids rushing to John’s help. As punishment, she is thrown into a room that is reminiscent of the red room in the novel.

Fig. 48. (left) Jane staring back at John after his attack on her head; (right) Jane beating John up on the floor for revenge.

163

Referring to the power of emotional memories and the traumas of childhood in shaping one’s personal identity, Vrettos states “the powerful feelings and experiences of childhood shape the adult character. Furthermore, the haunting power of memory (whether traumatic or pleasurable) provides the link between childhood and adulthood” (in Brantlinger and Thesing

74). The 2011 film reflects such an idea in adapting Brontë’s heroine to screen. The use of flashbacks assists the character-development of Jane Eyre in showing how past negative emotional memories of the childhood affect Jane and her understanding of her self-hood in the film.

For instance, the scene cuts back to St. John (Jamie Bell) asking Jane about what she has been trained for in school. Before Jane can answer, the scene shows through a jump cut to a flashback of Jane’s time at Lowood. We are shown with an extreme close-up of a girl being hit with a stick on her neck (see fig. 49) who softly exclaims with pain. According to Pudovkin (as discussed in the introduction), flashbacks function as means of controlling “the psychological guidance” of spectators in their interaction with the film narrative (in Talbot 194).

Fig. 49. (left) An extreme close-up of the child Jane’s neck while getting punished at the orphan school; (right) The adult Jane looking calm while recounting her childhood traumatic experience.

164

As the camera only shows part of the shoulders of the girl getting hit by the stick, the diegetic sound of the stick striking the girl enhances the affectivity of the scene. Thus, we are more likely to respond with empathic identification in making sense of the character and her experiences. Then, the camera cuts back to St. John who continues with his questioning and asks,

“was it a thorough education?” A brief moment of distress and sadness sweeps across

Wasikowska’s face before Jane’s calm reply; she looks straight into his eyes, smiling a little, and responds, “Most thorough.” A medium close-up (fig. 49) capturing Wasikowska from the chest up highlights her skillful performance in managing her emotions and maintaining her body gestures to depict Jane’s mental strength. Therefore, Wasikowska plays a key role in constructing affective responses in viewers.

Performance, Lighting, and the Construction of Shame-Pride Affect

Since much of the 2011 film is shot from Jane’s subjective point of view, the growth of her character over the course of the film is the source of joyful pride affect. Monk argues that

Jane’s “bildungsroman journey of growth [is] both interior and social.” (Monk 45). We are shown that the young and shy child grows up and becomes a governess who is equal in her companionship with Mr. Rochester but later rejects his proposal as it is against her moral judgement. In terms of the narrative design, she also teaches poor village children to maintain their independence before going back to Rochester after receiving the inheritance from her uncle.

Jane is an introspective character here and Wasikowska’s performance translates the psychological depth of Jane’s character on screen.

As mentioned earlier, Jane’s transition to a confident and independent woman is more apparent in this screen version. There is a marked positive growth in her character, which

165

engages audiences via shame-pride affect in making sense of Jane’s self-hood and identity. As she moves from place to place, Jane becomes more thoughtful, and in the film, we observe her on many occasions pause to think and reflect on a situation before making a choice or decision.

In her first encounter with Mr. Rochester, Jane is visibly nervous but tries hard to control her face. She sits there and quietly observes him. When Rochester asks, “From whence do you hail?

What’s your tale of woe?” in a prideful tone, she recounts her life as if nothing bad ever happened to her; she says that her aunt brought her up in a house “finer” than Thornfield and she received “good” education from Lowood and remarks that she has “no tale of woe.” The choice of lighting in the scene during their conversation (see fig. 50) highlights the roles of these two actors in the construction of emotion and affect and likely helps to make their characters more appealing to viewers.

Fig. 50. (left) Mr. Rochester interviewing Jane—the new governess of his daughter; (right) Jane calmly replying his questions.

In this film, there are six rounds of such established and deep conversations between the two characters. These not only provide the source for the romance, but also allow audiences to relate to Jane in response to her talents and sense of humor during her interactions with Mr.

Rochester. Much of the job is done via two leading actors’ performances, especially their facial expressions and gestures—their gazes, the jutted chin, and body language such as the clasped

166

hands. As the narrative progresses, after a few moments, we see that Jane is able to overcome her discomfort as she starts to communicate with Rochester at a competitive level and he also shows great interest in and enjoys his conversation with her (see fig. 51). When he implies that Jane bewitched his horse while she was waiting for “her people” by which he means “imps and elves and little green men,” she responds seriously and says the “sad truth is that they are gone. Your land is neither wild nor savage enough for them.” Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench) is surprised to hear

Jane’s witty response, and Rochester having no counter, changes the topic. Wasikowska’s Jane keeps her facial expression under check (fig. 51), but her slight trace of a smile shines at viewers in understanding her emotions towards Rochester.

Fig. 51. (left and right) Two medium close-ups capturing and highlighting Wasikowska’s and Fassbender’s subtle performances in portraying the characters roles they play.

In another scene, in which Mason (Harry Lloyd) is injured, these two hold a deep and serious conversation. The strength, stability, and resolve in Jane’s character is visible in her response to Mr. Rochester. He is seen in a medium shot with an ashamed look whereas Jane frowns to indicate her doubts about his explanations and behaviors. It is in this talk that

Rochester reveals his affection to Jane. After their meeting, the camera shows a long shot of

Wasikowska (see fig. 52) looking out the door as if she is wondering about the possibilities of her future life. Then, the camera cuts to a close-up of her face (fig. 52) to show her nervous

167

emotional reaction of half happiness and half confusion. As she breathes quickly, she gazes far away. She takes out the flower Rochester put in her hair and plays with it in a happy mood, smiling shyly. These formal conventions help to enhance the emotive quality of the heorine.

Fig. 52. (left) Jane looking further away through the door while reflecting upon her newly developed relationship with Rochester; (right) Jane smiling shyly to depict her inner happiness.

Besides mental pauses, Wasikowska also utilizes her actions to translate Jane’s emotional states. On mulitple occasions, we are shown that Wasikowska’s Jane walks around to calm herself when her emotions get intense towards Rochester. For instance, Jane goes for a walk after

Rochester’s marriage proposal; she meets Mrs. Fairfax who warns her that it is not common for a gentleman to marry his governess. The scene shows the women talking in a medium shot (see fig. 53). While Mrs. Fairfax is facing Jane and tries to give her sincere advice, Jane gazes far away and settles her eyes on Rochester. Wasikowska’s and Dench’s performances reflect the emotional states of their characters; they both are hiding their emotions and look concerned.

After hearing Mrs. Fairfax’s cautionary advice, Jane goes for a long walk alone in the estate’s maze. The camera shows her walking down an apparently endless path (fig. 53), the sight of which foreshadows the uncertainty and risks in her descision to marry Rochester. This also serves as a visual metaphor in depicting the nature of their relationship.

168

Fig. 53. (left) Fairfax warning Jane about her marriage with Rochester; (right) Jane walking down a path reflecting upon what Mrs. Fairfax’s advice.

In this 2011 film, Fukunaga designs the wedding sequence’s shame-pride affect similarly to other versions. Upon receiving the wedding dress, instead of being overjoyed, the first thing

Jane tells herself is that “there is Jane Eyre no more.” Wasikowska’s facial expression in a medium close-up in shallow focus with Mrs. Fairfax in the background affects our understanding of her character. After finding out the truth about Bertha (Valentina Cervi) (see fig. 54) and meeting her face to face, Jane is devastated.

Fig. 54. (left) Jane meets Bertha for the first time; (right) Jane breaking the laces on the back of her wedding dress trying to take it down as soon as she could.

The camera captures Wasikowska’s emotion and action to enhance the affectivity of the scene. We are shown that she runs back to her room, and while sobbing, quickly tries to take off her wedding dress as if she is disgusted by it. The camera focuses on her hands, and in a close-up

(fig. 54), we see Jane’s fingers quickly working through the laces of her dress with tears flowing

169

from her eyes. Wasikowska’s expressive acting engages viewers affectively as she pauses to look at herself in the mirror, appearing to show that Jane is thinking and reflecting about her past and wondering about her future. Wasikowska plays her role with care and nuance to translate the affectivity constructed in Brontë’s heroine. Jane runs away from Thornfield Hall early the next morning. The physical action of running away captured by a fast-moving handheld camera mimics Jane’s psychological state to show her controlled emotion as if she is afraid that she may give in to her heart if she stops running.

In the concluding scenes, when Jane finally returns to Rochester, we are shown Rochester and his only company—his loyal pet dog—in a long shot (see fig. 55) while Jane approaches him. He was injured in the fire while trying to save Bertha and has become crippled and lost his eyesight. The camera cuts to a close-up of their hands joining together (fig. 55) as Jane offers herself as his supporter and companion. The happy ending of the romance plot seems more satisfying in this film compared with 1996 version, as Fukunaga is able to create a unique structure in adapting the multi-dimensional affectivity of Brontë’s novel to the screen.

Fig. 55. (left) Jane finding Rochester sitting alone at the tree with his loyal pet dog; (right) Jane holding Rochester’s hands with a promise of future life together.

Brontë’s novel is composed with affect-friendly techniques that inspire filmmakers in adapting her text into film. Antoinette M. Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr praise Brontë and her

170

significance in Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire (2014). They argue that she created a

“charismatic” masterpiece that instigated change and out-lived its historical context—an outstanding feat (Burton and Hofmeyr 15). As Schaff summarizes, it is the “very combination of ambiguous and conflicting sites of cultural representation” in the narrative structure which allows for “diverse transformations” of Brontë’s text, the achievement of which probably Brontë never imagined or pictured as possible (qtd. in Rubik and Schartmann 34). In the next chapter, I continue to explore how Victorian novelists such as Robert Louis Stevenson create iconic works, in this case of science-fiction, that allow filmmakers to create their own “diverse transformations” of the source text.

171

CHAPTER 4

TRANSFORMING THE MONSTROUS HUMAN INVENTION:

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE ACROSS TIME

The title character of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre appeals to readers via her ambitious and evolutionary adaptivity in forming her self-hood. Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic science fiction novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), on the other hand, strikes readers via its construction of a wide range of negative affects. Stevenson’s design of the Jekyll-

Hyde dual identity and his literary techniques in revealing the self-destructive destiny of the reputed doctor enable his text to interact with readers through fear, disgust, distress, and shame.

This chapter studies four film adaptations: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian 1931) and its 1941 remake directed by Victor Fleming, and The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis 1963) and its 1996 remake directed by Tom Shadyac. I investigate how each filmmaker explores affective possibilities created by cinematic tools—especially the use of make-up, performance, and cinematography—to reframe the “mad scientist” in a narrative that either enhances or reduces the emotive power of the original novel.

Historical background

The rise of science and technology in the late Victorian era empowered the rise of the

British Empire to its zenith in the nineteenth century. However, the fast-paced progress and global expansion raised questions and concerns among a community of scholars and intellectuals about individuals’ lives under the social structure. According to Judith Walkowitz, with a population of over four million, London in the 1880s was filled with “economic divisions and political tensions” (Walkowitz 141). The innovative ideas in the scientific fields had significant

172

impacts on Victorian culture and literature. For instance, in his study of the medical profession in the Victorian age, Lawrence Rothfield demonstrates their influence on the field of medicine in boosting its “powers and capabilities” as well as the economic benefits brought by these social and cultural changes (in Tucker 176). However, in the history of Victorian literature, surprisingly enough, there had been few narratives that centered on the theme of medicalization. As Rothfield points out, it is interesting to notice the strange absence of novels portraying the professional lives of doctors or physicians—in particular, of their daily interactions with patients, or of their personal lives battling “against diseases, illness, or injury.” It was not until the 1870s that a full account of a Victorian physician who fights against “murky professional politics” appears in

George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872); before that, all earlier literature dealt more with the “social and cultural standing of the apothecary or physician” rather than “doctors at work or in love” (in

Tucker 173-5).

In Stevenson’s time, these vast developments in technology, concepts, and professions, according to Rothfield, led to a “massive medicalization” in viewing and treating human behavior and health condition (in Tucker 176). Books based on medical and biological research such as Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of species (1859) and The Expression of the Emotions in

Man and Animals (1872) gained widespread popularity. Mordecai Roshwald argues in his book

Dreams and Nightmares (2008) that the contemporary scientific discoveries shed light on the understanding of “the nature of humanity” and “affected the creators of literary works” in depicting the lives of the physicians as in Stevenson’s science fiction novel (57-8).

As one of the most translated novels of all time (more than eighty times and into more than thirty languages), Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has inspired

173

generations of readers. As an iconic science fiction novel, it captures the dark side of medical and scientific experimentation carried out by reputed doctor Henry Jekyll that leads to the creation of an evil “other self”—Edward Hyde—in the late Victorian era. It warns the human race that medical exploration and advancement do not serve as the only answer and solution to all dilemmas of humankind, and therefore should be used with caution and restriction. According to Roger Luckhurst, the novel was not well received when it first came out as Stevenson was considered as not as serious as others in terms of artistic dedication and creativity, and therefore he became “the victim of the posthumous management of his literary persona, and the moderns buried him” (Luckhurst x). For instance, Virginia Woolf and other modernists criticized his work as “too unsophisticated for mature considerations,” so Stevenson’s status as a reputed Victorian novelist suffered gravely (in Jones 1).

However, in the twenty-first century, literary scholars and critics reopened a conversation on Stevenson and his works. In his book Robert Louis Stevenson Reconsidered (2003), William

Jones demonstrates that Stevenson is not only “fashionable again” but also “positively threatening to become academically respectable” (1). Jay Bland also defends Stevenson for his contribution to the English tradition in his book The Generation of Edward Hyde the Animal

Within, from Plato to Darwin to Robert Louis Stevenson (2010). He argues that Stevenson

“transcended the shilling shocker genre, and turned Hyde into a cultural icon” (Bland 4). His monster story also inspired generations of novelists (e.g., Oscar Wilde and Joseph Conrad). The continuous return to his work proves readers’ and scholars’ interest in reassessing his legacy and significance in terms of literary invention (Dryden 11).

174

The Monster Story and Affect

The recent booming interest in monster stories promotes dialogue among scholars across disciplines to redefine gothic novels and science fiction (Kitson 163). Initially, the gothic genre was not taken seriously in the literary tradition as it was maligned for its overuse of cheap thrills.

The original form of the gothic genre was seen in eighteenth-century literature, featuring the

“archaic and medieval” due to interest in “pre-Reformation subjects and aesthetic styles”—for instance, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) introducing a gothic narrative that weaves together elements of murder, mystery, ghosts, and supernatural events with victimized female characters in the “labyrinthine Spanish castle” (Kitson 164). It was Ann Radcliffe and her highly influential works The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797) that changed the common reception of the gothic novel and helped the genre regain its critical acclaim in the late eighteenth century. She embedded supernatural events with natural explanations, the innovation of which refined the gothic genre on more realistic terms.

To define the narrative construction of gothic novels, Peter Garrett explains in his book

Gothic Reflections: Narrative Force in Nineteenth-century Fiction (2003) that they are unique literary art forms which are usually embedded with a “clean” signature of “a small set of devices” such as a haunted castle or a menaced maiden, occurring persistently and repetitively in the narrative structure (Garrett 4). In the early nineteenth century, Mary Shelley in her well- known monster story Frankenstein (1818) further pushed the affective possibilities of gothic narratives by experimenting with new gothic elements combined with science fiction. As

Roslynn Haynes (2016) argues, “Shelley’s Frankenstein provided imagery and a vocabulary universally invoked in relation to scientific discoveries and technological innovation” (31). Her

175

decisions to shift the narrative focus from the commonly used supernatural elements of the gothic genre to the unnatural events and characters allowed her novel to signify as an entry to ongoing scientific debates. Thus, the character-creation of Frankenstein becomes a literary model of monstrous human invention that generated heated discussion expressing “anxieties” and concerns toward scientific experimentation (Kitson 165).

Like Shelley, Stevenson follows the tradition of the gothic genre convention, but he adds a psychological twist in his character-design that deepens the affective dimension of his work.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tells a story about a London doctor who experiments with dangerous science to create a double identity in a monstrous form and dies from self-destruction. The novel7 is widely considered as gothic science fiction as the narrative progresses in the voice of a lawyer, Mr. Utterson, who investigates the strange relation between his old friend, Dr. Henry Jekyll, and the mysterious creature, Edward Hyde.

Linda Dryden discusses Stevenson’s contribution to the English tradition in her article

“Robert Louis Stevenson and Popular Culture” (2010). She demonstrates that if Mary Shelley embraced a cultural image of “the mad professor/scientist” 8 in the early nineteenth century in

Frankenstein, “Stevenson combined the prototype with a psychological horror in the form of a transformative duality and transported the action to the heart of London” in the Victorian age

(Dryden19). According to Spencer Weart (2001), “many of the fears about science and technology are actually not fears about science and technology itself—they are concerns about

7 All citations from the novel are from Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales (Oxford World Classics: Oxford University Press, 2006). 8 The mad scientist’s literary ancestor is Dr. Faustus in the play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, set in the late sixteenth century Europe.

176

the social system, expressed by people who feel they do not have control over the decisions being made” (qtd.in Haynes 136). In the Jekyll-Hyde story, for instance, Stevenson uses the dimly lit streets of London as gothic settings and explores the duality of human nature to generate discussions about the strict moral governance and repression of inner desires of

Victorian gentlemen in construction of the fear-distress affectivity.

In his book The Transforming Draught: Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson and the

Victorian Alcohol Debate (2006), Thomas Reed argues that the novel has lost some its most important allegorical references and metaphoric representations over a period of time since the

“most potent topicalities” of the text are compromised due to “inevitable” change, socially, culturally, and historically; therefore, he assumes that modern readers are less fascinated by the story simply because it is “too well-known” (Reed 6). It is true that contemporary readers’ familiarity with the plot reduces the level of suspense. However, like the character-creation of

Frankenstein, the Jekyll-Hyde duo, as well as its “literary descendants,” with whom they share a

“common ancestor the medieval alchemist,” continues to offer a “format” in terms of “the imagined physical appearance, the alleged character traits and much of the scenario for narratives of the mad, evil scientist” within an appealing narrative that elicits “perennially convincing patterns of horror, mystery and evil, along with the allure of its promises” (Haynes 34). Such patterns of “fear and horror” and promises, as Haynes (2016) points out, are constructed through the narrative structure and “symbols of changing technology, if not of that technology itself” rather than traditional focus of the gothic genre on “graveyards and charnel houses, corpses, ghosts and monsters,” all of which “have ceased to frighten us” (Haynes 34).

177

Furthermore, Dryden demonstrates the longevity of Stevenson’s fictional account of the medical profession and its impact on the readership that he created the most iconic image of a mad doctor and his double in J&H as he borrowed “the doppelgänger tradition of the likes of

Edgar Allan Poe and James Hogg and imbued it with a modern sensibility that enables it to function as a cipher for cultural anxieties in any age” (Dryden 15). As discussed in the introduction to this dissertation, affect is the bodily form of thinking as well as an action-engine that drives our corresponding behaviors (Nathanson 60). The “transformative duality” of the

Jekyll-Hyde character-creation and its role in the construction of affectivity (e.g., fear) signify and function as the hub of feeling and critical thinking. Readers enjoy the thought-provoking reading experience while making sense of the affective cues in the narrative structure in response to their own social, cultural, and historical identities. Roshwald gives a nuanced explanation of why Stevenson’s novel continues to affect and inspire readers and writers across cultures:

The significance … is not merely in predicting and simulating inventions and

innovations, but also in depicting human and social scenarios affected by new

scientific discoveries and inventions. Such depictions, whether based on

realizable inventions or far-fetched discoveries, offered a focus of hope or

concern for the future of humankind, and stimulated reflection on the destination

toward which humanity was advancing. (Roshwald 58)

Therefore, the gothic genre has become a “highly self-conscious” form, in which novelists and their readers share “an awareness of its stylized conventions”; gothic narratives are embedded with “affective, rhetorical, and ideological” structures that provide “a dialogical transaction” in promoting effective communication (Garrett ix). Stevenson’s text and the

178

affective possibilities created by his choices of narrative style and rhetorical tools deserve close examination.

The Mysterious Hyde: Narrative Structure and Reader Engagement

A great mystery drives the emotive force of a gothic narrative. According to Haynes

(2016), “myths are the signature of cultures. They express in enduring form the hopes, fears, values, transgressions and punishments that underpin the social fabric” (Haynes 31). J&H is embedded with “cognition friendly” techniques (as discussed in the introduction) that appeal to readers via interest and curiosity in revealing the mysterious identity of Hyde (Hogan 28). As

Nathalie Jaëck argues in her study of the text, J&H is itself an adventure as Stevenson manages to “multiply and scatter” the narrative that “proliferates” beyond the control of narrators; therefore, it challenges readers’ emotion and cognition through a myth of “textual integrity” (in

Ambrosini and Dury xx). Dan Chaon also points out in his afterword to J&H that the genius of

Stevenson lies in his creation of a puzzle-like narrative structure, like a Rorschach test, via

“indirect and elusive” clues that motivate readers to search for pieces of evidence in the story’s

“multiple narrative voices” (e.g., those of eyewitnesses and direct confessions in letters), the design of which serves as an embodied allegorical device that engages readers’ imaginative minds while making sense of the ambiguous text (Chaon 129).

J&H is recounted through an unusual degree of “narrative panache” with Stevenson’s

“fragmented and multiple narrative style”; for instance, the first half of the novel is narrated through a “dramatized” voice who fills in the information about multiple events that relate to

Hyde through Mr. Utterson’s point of view (Kitson 168). This formal choice attracts readers as the novelist E. M. Forster argues that curiosity only keeps the mind wondering what happens

179

next whereas a mystery contains a logic and keeps mind “left behind, brooding” in its search for truth and meaning (Foster 132).

At the beginning of the novel, as Mr. Enfield introduces the oddness in the “Story of the

Door,” he describes a mysterious man who tramples over a child at three o’clock in the morning.

This man bears a look that makes him sweat as well as arouses hate in the crowd who dare to

“kill him” (J&H 51). Stevenson’s vivid description of Mr. Enfield’s response as well as how others react with strong emotions towards the sight of the man engages readers cognitively. We are told that the mysterious man returns to a place with an “odd” door, opens it with a key, and comes out with a cheque—not only with the full amount of what was asked for to satisfy the child’s family, but also with an unexplainable oddness—that belongs to the account of a name unmentionable yet very well-known and often printed (J&H 52). The seemingly normal actions of returning home, opening the door, and coming out of the house are troublesome facts to Mr.

Enfield because of the uncertainty identity of the man and the location of the residence.

The novel continues to enhance the suspense via affective cues in its description of the geographical information of the house and the physical appearance of the outside of the residence in Mr. Enfield’s voice. We read:

It seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or out of

that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure. There are

three windows looking on the court on the first floor; none below; the windows

are always shut but they’re clean. And then there is a chimney which is generally

smoking; so somebody must live there. And yet it’s not so sure; for the buildings

180

are so packed together about that court, that it’s hard to say where one ends and

another begins. (J&H 53) (Italics mine)

The words in italics are communicative in forming a visual presentation of what the house looks like in constructing interest and curiosity. But, the information given only poses more questions. Mr. Enfield asks help from the lawyer Mr. Utterson to make sense of the odd link between his mysterious man and the owner of the house; however, the lawyer finds the location of the house suspicious and warns his kinsman to be very careful. He is then told that, just less than a week ago, this fellow entered the door with a key, again, and his name is Mr.

Hyde (J&H 54).

Stevenson designs his narrative strategically to further push readers’ sense-making capacities. It is human nature to gain knowledge in trying to make sense of things that are unknown; the progress as well as the process of inference gives pleasure to our mentality. Dr.

Jekyll’s name is not mentioned in the first chapter at all even though the back door of his house plays a pivotal role in the first event of the novel. From the second chapter, the novel’s narrative is focalized through Utterson. He finds Hyde’s name listed in the will of his good friend Dr.

Jekyll. As a lawyer by profession, his “legal imagination” is confronted by the new-found information which raises his interest and serves as evidence in making sense of the whole fiasco

(Rothfield 167). According to Simon Petch and Jan-Melissa Schramm, “inference, like induction, is a process of reasoning from effects to causes which underlies many forms of inquiry, but the mind may be baffled by the ambiguous epistemological spaces in which evidence is constituted” (in Rothfield 167). Stevenson utilizes such cognitive benefit from the inference process to engage readers via his character-creation of Utterson and events around him.

181

Fearing that his friend is getting blackmailed and is in great danger, Utterson is determined and swears: “If he be Mr. Hyde, … I shall be Mr. Seek” (J&H 58).

Luckhurst also emphasizes Stevenson’s design of the narrative structure and its role in enhancing the affectivity of the text. He points out that the novel starts out like detective fiction, but then ventures off course and “transmogrifies” into a gothic tale and leaves readers in a state of “unresolved metaphysical confusion” at its culmination (Luckhurst xii). In the chapter “Dr.

Lanyon’s Narrative,” Stevenson uses the referential function of language to maximize the interest as well as disgust affective dimension of the novel. As the narrator defines his first impression of Hyde as a “disgustful curiosity” and describes his experience with and reaction to

“this visitor” (sent upon Dr. Jekyll’s request) on terms such as “strange to relate,” “something abnormal and misbegotten,” and “something seizing, surprising and revolting”, Lanyon’s perspective further engages readers’ curiosities in solving the mystery as we want to know what kind of laughable fashion Hyde is dressed in, where this “creature” comes from, and what the source of “his origin, his life, his fortune and status in the world” is (J&H 98). It is here that the mystery of Hyde reaches its climax, and the truth is revealed in a demonstrative fashion.

The Cipher: Rhetorical Tools and Affect

A monster story signifies in its ability to construct and elicit negative affects such as fear, distress, and disgust. Stevenson as a Victorian novelist experimented with the form through his imaginative creativity and craft of discourse—in particular, his mastery in the use of rhetorical tools to enhance such features of the gothic narrative. In contrast to Charlette Brontë’s design of the mysterious events in the lonely Thornfield Hall as the genre elements in Jane Eyre,

182

Stevenson uses the dark foggy streets of 1880s London in J&H to enhance the affective narrativity of his novel.

Recent findings in cognitive science that explain how music constructs affect and emotion shed light on our understanding of the narrative construction of fiction, especially the gothic genre. In his book Feeling Smart (2014), Eyal Winter points out that skillful musicians compose music scores that contain “brief moments in which surprising sounds emerge in contrast with more familiar and expected notes” to maximize the pleasurable musical experience; he further explains that the secret lies in the “contrast between expectation and surprise” (Winter

163). In his description of the weather and atmosphere, Stevenson creates a sharp contrast between the motionlessness and silence of the street with the striking horrific scenes that follow

Hyde’s monstrous crimes. He utilizes affective cues (e.g., foggy dark nights, full moons, quiet streets) in the text to foreshadow that something terrible is about to take place.

Both of Hyde’s crimes take place in the thick darkness of night; both times his acts are caught by sheer coincidence by witnesses. According to Garrett in his Gothic Reflections (2003), coincidences along with gothic elements “not only serve to accelerate the narrative and make it the masterpiece of concision that [Henry] James admired, they also implement a drive toward an all-inclusive coherence” (105). In the murder case of Sir Danvers Carew, the incident is narrated through the account of a maid who sees the “fog” is rolling “over the city in the small hours”; the sky is cloudless and the street is “brilliantly lit by the full moon”—so peaceful that she falls into a musing dream (J&H 66). Stevenson’s formal technique in crafting the sharp contrast between the full moon in the clear sky and the horrible murder Hyde is about to commit reflects his

183

mastery in achieving concision and coherence, which as a result, enhances the affective power of his narrative.

In his fictional account of the medical profession, Stevenson utilizes a variety of rhetorical techniques to depict human desires towards the myth of science and its possible effect to the human race in terms of cultural anxiety through the Jekyll-Hyde character creation. Bland argues that the ape-like Hyde harbors not just evil but “ancient, primitive, timeless evil; an enduring evil,” which has been residing inside humankind fighting social evolution and progression (Bland 11). In addition, he adds that the novel concretely characterizes “locations,”

“houses,” “individuals,” and even the mysterious powders Jekyll takes “if somewhat vaguely described”; he also claims that “the beast which lurks in Jekyll is the beast which contemporary science gave Stevenson’s readers to expect” (Bland 265). Therefore, the detective-like narrative in tracing the origin of the monstrous creature appeals to the cognitive and affective faculties of readers’ minds, bodies, and brains.

For instance, there are multiple times in the novel that we observe narrators having difficulties describing what Hyde looks like. When Enfield first introduces the physical appearance of Hyde to Utterson, we read:

He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his appearance;

something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw a man I so

disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere; he gives a

strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point. He is an

extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name nothing out of the way. No,

184

sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t describe him. And it’s not want of memory;

for I declare I can see him this moment. (J&H 54)

The unfamiliarity, uncommon, and un-relatable form of Hyde, on the one hand, can evoke interest, but on the other hand, these unknowns may also bring chaos to the sense-making process. As Enfield finds it difficult to describe, define, or relate to, he raises his level of caution and responds negatively. The repetitive use of indefinite pronouns such as “something,”

“somewhere” in the description of the creature conveys a message of foreignness that troubles his mind. As Winter argues, “a world composed entirely of surprises would be one in which we could never learn anything. It would be unfamiliar and strange”; when we find ourselves in difficulty associating new knowledge with learned knowledge, we are more likely to face anxiety, which may explain “why music based on tempos and scales that are unfamiliar to our ears sounds cacophonous” (Winter 164). Stevenson’s discourse in depicting Hyde’s disturbing appearance and its effect on the observer enhances the fear, distress, and disgust affective dimension of the narrative.

In his prologue to Silvan Tomkins’s book Affect Imagery Consciousness (2008), Donald

Nathanson points out that “whereas distress and anger identify steady state overload, fear-terror identifies rapidly increasing overmuch”; he further explains that the state of anxiety often indicates a “milder forms of fear for which we cannot immediately assign a source” (in Tomkins xviii). Stevenson takes a bold step in defining the “intrinsic nature of evil” that resides in the shape and form of Hyde; the two criminal acts “exemplify the irrationality of evil – evil in its quintessential nature” (Roshwald 72). Throughout the novel, Stevenson constantly reinstates the inhuman characteristics of Hyde, which challenges his manhood and personhood. He is defined

185

as a “familiar” of his soul who is “inherently malign and villainous,” selfish, and is “relentless like a man of stone” (J&H 107). For instance, Enfield’s account of Hyde is vague; for some reasons, he could not describe Hyde precisely, but he is quite certain of his negative responses as

“displeasing” and “detestable” (J&H 54).

The evil and villainous characteristics of Hyde, in contrast to that of Jekyll, are the focal point of affectivity in the narrative structure of the novel. According to Colin Davis, an “organic” creature differs from other forms in its ability to “develop and adapt,” the capability of which defines the major difference between the reputed Dr. Jekyll and the monstrous Mr. Hyde (Davis

217). Disabilities studies scholar Sami Schalk argues that Hyde’s revolting appearance is caused by deformity as he is a “visibly disfigured and physically impaired” creature—like a monster— who hostilely roams the streets of London (in Schalk and Powell 2008). Stevenson does not give any “apparent motive” to Hyde’s insane acts and behaviors (Dryden 15). He “deliberately and methodically added layer upon layer” of metaphoric and allegorical meanings in the character- creation of Hyde, whose “ape-like” appearance is in reference to Darwin’s theory of evolution

(Bland 5). Hyde is the physical embodiment of unrestrained and ungoverned evil in its primal form. He enjoys his monstrous acts, but his “virile ugliness,” “mindless brutality,” and “gleeful sadism” evoke fear and disgust in others who may feel repulsed by him (Dryden 15).

Like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, Stevenson utilizes action-based phrases and combines audio and visual effect in his description of Hyde’s insane acts and behavior towards an innocent old man to engage readers affectively. For instance, Enfield describes the first incident where Hyde insults a little girl as a “horrible” event that is “hellish” to watch— especially that after all is over, Hyde resumes his walk like a “damned Juggernaut” without

186

showing any signs of guilt or regret (J&H 51). David Amigoni demonstrates that “the terror of the story derives in part from description of Hyde trampling the body of a child [but] also derives from the uncanny recognition of the sensations of unfettered pleasure and freedom associated with a life” like that of the self-centered and egocentric Hyde (Amigoni 161). In “The Carew

Murder Case,” Stevenson again utilizes these formal choices to enhance the emotive quality of

Jekyll-Hyde character creation. In the unprovoked murder of Sir Danvers Carew, Hyde “came out roaring” to take out his rage on Sir Danvers and beat him to death for no reason (J&H 111).

The horrible event is described as such:

And then all of a sudden he broke out in a great flame of anger, stamping with his

foot, brandishing the cane, and carrying on (as the maid described it) like a

madman. The old gentleman took a step back, with the air of one very much

surprised and a trifle hurt; and at that Mr. Hyde broke out of all bounds and

clubbed him to the earth. And next moment, with ape-like fury, he was trampling

his victim under foot and hailing down a storm of blows, under which the bones

were audibly shattered and the body jumped upon the roadway. At the horror of

these sights and sounds, the maid fainted. (J&H 66)

Stevenson not only describes the “wicked deeds” of Hyde in showing his evil nature but also presents these acts “in a clinical way” (Roshwald 72). Hyde breaks, clubs, tramples, and hails down his victim—these horrible images along with the shattering sound of the bones almost scare the maid to death. Stevenson’s choice of verbs and adjectives in describing Hyde’s acts and their effect on the victim immediately brings the imagery of horror to the minds and eyes of its readers.

187

To embed the vast development of science and technology in the Victorian age and their significance on the cultural identities of individuals—in particular, the medical professions—

Stevenson incorporates modern scientific hypotheses in the novel. According to Haynes (2016), in the history of literary tradition and British literature particularly, “the cluster of myths relating to the pursuit of knowledge has perpetuated the archetype of the alchemist, and his descendant the scientist, as sinister, dangerous, possibly mad … [A]ll represent a hubristic desire for power of knowledge in some form and a challenge to authority, followed by retribution that may affect not only the protagonist but, as in the Genesis story and Pandora’s box, humanity in general”

(Haynes 31). Dr. Jekyll’s scientific research and self-experimentation lead him to the transformation of a monstrous human invention—Hyde. Although the experiment seems to produce “striking, but eventually uncontrollable, results,” it functions as a means to reflect cultural anxieties (Roshwald 71). The potion is a scientific breakthrough, but at the same time has its own limits and restraints against which the experimenter suffers from its subsequent consequences.

In the chapter “Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative,” the narrator describes in detail the transformation process. Stevenson again utilizes the affective power of action-based and auditory phrases to construct disgust and fear affects. We read:

He put the glass to his lips and drank at one gulp. A cry followed; he reeled,

staggered, clutched at the table and held on, staring with injected eyes, gasping

with open mouth; and as I looked there came, I thought, a change— he seemed to

swell— his face became suddenly black and the features seemed to melt and

alter— and the next moment, I had sprung to my feet and leaped back against the

188

wall, my arms raised to shield me from that prodigy, my mind submerged in

terror. “O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my

eyes— pale and shaken, and half fainting, and groping before him with his hands,

like a man restored from death— there stood Henry Jekyll! (J&H 74) (Italics

mine)

In the Principles of Psychology (1855), Herbert Spencer remarks that the expression of extreme fear (or terror) is revealed through “cries” so that the victims can seek refuge in

“palpitations and tremblings” (in Darwin 13). Dr. Lanyon who witnesses the process is extremely terrified as he jumps up and leaps against the wall, screaming “O God!” repeatedly.

The verb phrases in italics indicate the pain and suffering in the transformation process. Hyde cries, reels, staggers and gasps for air while he changes back into a “pale and shaken” Jekyll

(J&H 74).

Insights from affective science help us to understand the Stevenson’s narrative construction of emotion, and in particular, how his vivid portrayal of the human psyche and depiction of the science of mind in his character-creation help to define the affective quality of his work in promoting engaged reading experiences. According to Nathanson (2008), a “cry of terror” is an innate reaction to fear; it serves to elevate the situation preemptively, but there is a toxicity in the “emergency reaction of acute terror” (in Tomkins xiii). For Lanyon, the transformation seems so unbelievable and shocking that even as a man of science, he is terrified to the bone when observing it in person. His soul becomes so “sickened” that he starts to have deadly horrors in his thoughts and belief, which eventually leads him to his demise (J&H 100).

Davis argues that the investigation of how Stevenson employs “the range of language, at times

189

literally physical, at others richly metaphorical,” in the narrative offers a unique aspect in understanding the novel; his embodied “scientific and broader cultural text” opens our mind while making sense of his “exploration of the extremes of selfhood” (Davis 208). According to

Haynes (2016), fictional accounts of scientists are usually portrayed as “obsessive” knowledge seekers; the quest for scientific breakthrough and its “alluring promises” sometimes can “conceal vast destruction” that causes loss of lives (Haynes 32). As seen in Shelley’s monster story,

Frankenstein’s tragedy starts “at the exact moment of his experimental success” as he is terrified and disgusted by his very own monstrous human invention: “I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe? … [N]ow that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and a breathless horror and disgust filled my heart” (1818: 34) (qtd. in Haynes 32).

Roger Luckhurst in his introduction to J&H points out that one of Stevenson’s “narrative innovation[s] in the novel is to delay the knowledge that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person until the penultimate chapter,” the structure of which teases readers while making sense of the true identity of Jekyll (Luckhurst xxiii). While earlier literary criticism focused on the character of Mr. Hyde, there has been a rising interest in analyzing Dr. Jekyll whose identity as successful

Victorian doctor brings out questions such as why a gentleman like him is an epitome of

“hypocrisy and double standards” (Bland 7). After creating the drug which would shake the

“fortress of identity,” Jekyll gave a deep thought if he should drink it or not because it “risked death,” but the “temptation” of discovering such a ground-breaking drug overpowered his feelings of concern (J&H 104). Reflecting back on his decision in creating a monstrous double—

190

Hyde—Jekyll states he has hid himself along with his “greedy gusto” inside Hyde to take part and enjoy the pleasurable experience through its exploits and indifference to himself (J&H 110).

The rest of Stevenson’s text is also embedded with ambiguity. It is said that “science can be a wonderful servant, but a terrifying master” as our curiosities in discovery of the “unknown” can affect our “mind, emotions, and disposition” (in Roshwald 3, 71). Luckhurst points out that it looks like Stevenson creates the interrelated perspectives plot of the novel, only to reveal the

“impossible revelation in the world of the possible” and ends the novel with an “utterly puzzling sentence” (Luckhurst Xiii-Xiv). The closing passages shift between first- and third-person narration to push readers’ mentalities in a state of lingering questions about who represents “I” in these passages—is it Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde who brings the “life of that unhappy Henry Jekyll to an end”? (J&H 118). Stevenson’s popular gothic science fiction is “all shaped to fit together like pieces of a puzzle or mechanism” from one chapter to next with cause and effect (Garrett 105).

By doing so, his text transports readers to the imaginative world of Jekyll and Hyde in the

Victorian era; his formal techniques in construction of affect and emotion also allows it to speak to us via its philosophical ideals that can be related to our own social and cultural identities.

Transformed Doctors and Professors on the Screen

Filmmakers are fascinated by Stevenson’s monster tale and science fictional novel.

Dryden points out that his text is particularly suitable for film adaptation because of its “startling visual impact” and the “bizarre events” that give the monster story “renewed relevance and immediacy” (Dryden13). Initially, theatrical and cinematic adaptations of Stevenson’s novel translated Hyde into a “sexual predator,” whose characteristic was inspired by Jack the Ripper’s murder cases in 1880s London; this interpretive approach enables productions to add female

191

roles with “salacious content (murdered prostitutes)” to “inject glamour” (Dryden 16). Besides the additional female characters, most cinematic adaptations choose to focus on the

“psychological drama of the conflicted desires” when restructuring the tale of the double bodies and identities of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Danahy 37). For instance, the first cinematic adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (John Robertson 1920), starring John Barrymore, presents the duality in human nature by portraying Hyde as the consequence of Jekyll’s sexual frustration.

But in Dryden’s opinion, Mamoulian’s version of J&H remains the “most powerful and frequently imitated visual representation of Jekyll’s doppelgänger” (Dryden 15). Variety at that time called it the “last word in artistic interpretation” and identified March’s Hyde as “a triumph of a realized nightmare”; Mordaunt Hall wrote in the New York Times (1932) calling it a “tense” and “shuddering affair” led by March’s “stellar” performance in a “blood-curdling shadow venture” (Mank DVD commentary). March’s performance earned him the Oscar for Best Actor of the year. Yet some critics objected to Mamoulian’s take on Hyde’s “troglodytic” facial features in terms of the artistic design of the make-up and hair; they complain that the film turns the character into “a hairy monkey man—with long arms, simian features and superhuman agility” (in Dryden 16). However, Dryden defends Mamoulian’s formal choices as suitable for the visual medium’s needs for “sensation and horror” (Dryden 16). It is certainly true that modern audiences may respond with less fear-disgust affect to the 1930s character-creation of

Jekyll-Hyde, but, when the movie first came out as a horror film, Mamoulian’s film and the cinematic design of the monstrous human invention was one of a kind in its historical context, and appeared to satisfy the cognitive imaginitivity of its contemporary audiences.

192

Like the 1931 version, MGM’s 1941 film is also a transposition adaptation. According to

Greg Mank, MGM bought the scripts of the original 1931 film and burnt or locked up the previous circulated copies to avoid comparison; this act was considered as “an immoral sin in movie history” and drew strong criticism towards the film-making industry (Mank DVD commentary). Victor Fleming’s 1941 film adaptation of J&H, though impressive in its own way, was criticized for lack of creativity and its portrayal of Hyde (Spencer Tracy). For instance, it is argued that the use of make-up on Tracy makes him look like “a madman with puffy features and wild eyes” and therefore “unremarkable” compared to the 1931 version (Erickson n.p.). Ingrid

Bergman as the cockney barmaid Ivy Pearson was well reviewed; as the New York Times put it in 1941, Bergman’s performance was “sensational” and “perceptive.” Lana Turner as Beatrix

Emery, however, did not receive the same recognition as Bergman; her role and those of other supporting actors and actresses were seen as “well-behaved puppets around the periphery of Mr.

Tracy’s nightmare” (New York Times 13 August 1941 n.p.).

In contrast to Mamoulian and Fleming’s adaptive approaches, Jerry Lewis and Tom

Shadyac take a comedic turn by transforming the insane doctors to distressed and crazy university professors in their respective adaptations. These two films deal with the social, physical and psychological issues of individuals in the scientific world. The 1963 The Nutty

Professor (starring Jerry Lewis) and its 1996 remake (starring Eddie Murphy) both tell the story of a college professor who unleashes his alter ego with the help of a scientific drug in order to impress the girl he likes and become socially acceptable. Both of the comedies are analogy adaptations as they drift away from the dark and horrific tone of the films to lighter “wish fulfillment fantasies” (King 12). Lewis’s Dr. Jekyll faces issues with his masculinity while

193

Murphy’s version has to deal with obesity as their physical imperfections stand in the way of achieving happiness in their social and personal relationships.

Lewis was praised for his double roles of director and comedic performer. His version of the “myopic, buck-toothed, accident-prone” university professor Julius Kelp who surprisingly transforms into dashing lady’s man Mr. Buddy Love creates a great sense of suspense and comedy in the viewing experience (Gillett 147). Shadyac’s 1996 film skillfully employs special effects and make-up to enhance the emotive quality of the hero, Professor Sherman Klump.

Murphy’s performance is “surprisingly warm and touching”; his success in delivering six more roles as Buddy Love, Lance Perkins, Klump’s father, mother, uncle, and grandmother along with the artistry of the make-up enhances the character-engagement and the aesthetic value of the film

(Kemp 48).

In terms of narration and adaptive approach, the original novel grips readers’ interests until the last pages to reveal the mystery; however, it is not practical to adopt the same style to recreate such affectivity for the screen. As Haynes (2015) demonstrates, the character-creation of the mad professor mocks “the would-be powerful” scientists whose failed experiments

“represent a form of authorial Schadenfreude, retaliation against the pretensions of scientific knowledge” (Haynes 133). Therefore, the comic narratives achieve irony in their construction of shame-pride and distress affect, compared to the emotive core of fear-disgust of the horror films in depicting the insanity of obsessive scientists who work against “human limitations” arrogantly and suffer tremendously for being “impersonal, amoral and ruthless” in achieving their dream results (Haynes 133). Below, I demonstrate that all four adaptations are embedded with multi- dimensional affectivity. While March’s and Bergman’s performances as well as the use of make-

194

up and hairdressing drive the emotive power of the horror films in portraying the threatening monstrous human invention, both The Nutty Professor films’ formal techniques— cinematography, make-up/costume design, special effects, and sound—are designed to promote affective responses in viewers while making sense of the psychological distress both scientists experience. I will use a few scenes as references to show how cinematic conventions in the 1996 film construct enhanced shame-pride affect in the character-creation compared to the lighter tone in Lewis’s screen version of the crazy professor.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Mamoulian’s prior training and experience in theater added to the cinematic strength of the film. His use of the subjective camera in POV shots, along with the mood music, gives immediacy to the opening sequence. It was one of the first times that a film used such a subjective camera technique. Mamoulian considered it as an “extensive stylistic bravado” because it gave “a real a vicarious experience” (in Thomas 660). In the opening scenes, we see that the corners of the screen are darkened and the view from the camera lens gives the illusion that everything we see is from the eyes of a character.

195

The camera shows in a close-up POV shot (fig. 56) a pair of hands exquisitely playing

Bach’s Toccata on the keyboard. The music was a popular choice for horror movies in the 1930s.

As discussed in the Introduction, the formal choice of film music is “emotively” pre-focused as its expressive quality signifies as “affective congruence” that transpires in heightening and intensifying the “existing” emotive quality of the narrative (in Plantinga 134). And together with the use of lighting (e.g., the shadow of the head on the music notes; see fig. 56), the opening scene highlights the affectivity of the narrative and foreshadows an interesting plot.

Poole (Edgar Norton), Dr. Jekyll’s butler, comes in to remind him of his scheduled lecture; viewers are encased in the subjective POV shot of the camera, following the character’s view and movement, until we see that there is the image of a gentleman dressed in all black (fig.

57) as Dr. Henry Jekyll (Fredric March) in the mirror. Mamoulian explained in an interview about his design of the opening scenes that “the audience does not see him—they are him” (in

Thomas 660). When the likeable and charismatic Dr. Jekyll gives a talk at the lecture hall, the camera shows in reaction shots that students greet him with admiration, and faculty members seem interested in what he is about to share.

Fig. 57. (left) Jekyll dressed in all black looking at his reflection in the mirror; (right) Jekyll giving his theory on the duality of human nature in the lecture hall.

196

In a subjective shot, Dr. Jekyll walks into the classroom. As he delivers his speech, the camera cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot to show the whole view of the audience attentively listening to his lecture and then, when he talks about his theory of the duality of human soul, the camera switches to low-angle medium close-up (see fig. 57) to show his larger-than-life innovative ideas and beliefs. Jekyll’s image is captured in a split of light and dark shadows on the junction of the wall behind him. Therefore, Mamoulian’s innovative design of using the subjective camera works effectively to invite audiences to make sense with the film.

The Distorted Hyde: Cinematography, Make-up and Hair, and Affectivity

Karl Struss’s cinematography in the first transformation scene signifies in depicting the emotive context of the Jekyll-Hyde character-creation. As Tunney and Macnab point out, the film’s cinematographic techniques translate the detective style of Stevenson’s novel as Struss’s camerawork is “prowling and investigative” (Tunney and Macnab 67). As we are shown the procedure by which Dr. Jekyll creates the drug, Mamoulian deliberately prolongs the scene to boost curiosity. Before taking the potion, Jekyll is shown holding the vial in his hands for over three minutes. March’s gesture indicates Jekyll’s fear of the consequence as well as engages viewers with interest as we wonder about what will happen next.

Fig. 58. (left) A human skeleton in Jekyll’s lab; (right) Jekyll holding the potion while looking at the skeleton.

197

According to the film critic Michael Sevastaki, Mamoulian’s use of subjective camera help viewers to “intimately” share Jekyll’s experiences; however, Eric A. Thomas believes that such formal choice might challenge viewers “to interpret and question not only the mind of

Jekyll himself but also the cinematic ‘mind’ of the film itself” (in Thomas 660). The film also utilizes various props as motifs to reinforce the philosophical dilemma of the narrative. For example, the image of a full human skeleton is shown in a POV shot (see fig. 58) before Jekyll drinks the potion; it functions as a visual metaphor to remind us of human mortality and to promote identification of learning in viewers via irony. March’s Jekyll is seen hesitating, but as he looks at the skeleton, we are shown in a reaction shot that he bears a sneering expression on his face (fig. 58).

Fig. 59. (left) Jekyll staring at the drinking glass; (right) Jekyll hesitates while searching for courage in his own reflection in the mirror.

In the next scene, in a POV shot (see fig. 59), the camera cuts from a close-up of the glass as Jekyll stares at it to a medium shot as Jekyll holds it while looking at himself in the mirror.

The lighting, camerawork, and editing of the scene depict the inner struggle of Jekyll and serve as affective cues to engage viewers. As Jekyll finally drinks the potion, the scene constructs fear and distress via March’s performance and use of make-up. We observe severe pain in his

198

transformation process. Jekyll is seen immediately reacting to the chemical through his face and body as though he has taken a poison.

In his book Acting Face to Face 2: How to Create Genuine Emotion for TV and Film

(Language of the Face) (2015), John Sudol describes the emotional reaction of fear as raised brows, tensed bottom eyelids, and stretched lips with pulled-back corners and tense muscles (see fig. 60) (Sudol 401-2). According to Darwin, when we eat things with a strange or bad taste, we

“instantly frown” (Darwin 222). We are shown camera cuts from a medium close-up to a close- up of Jekyll’s darkened facial features—he is in agony. March’s actions, shown in a medium close-up (fig. 60), make us believe that it must have tasted awful and disgusting as his face shows great fear and his hands are holding tight on his neck and throat, the gestures of which show immediate regret as if he is trying to stop the potion going down.

With the sound effect of a heavy breath, March’s performance in showing how Jekyll responds to the potion, especially that he reaches out one arm towards the camera desperately as if asking for help, creates a deeply affective viewing experience. The camera then shows a subjective POV from Jekyll and revolves around the laboratory in 360 degrees to present his

199

dazzled state during the transformation. We hear his strong heartbeat and an animal-like growling, which changes to heavy breathing at the end as the camera spins to a stop at the boiling pot.

The scene in which Hyde comes alive intensifies the emotive core of the character- creation of the monstrous human invention. Make-up and hair work in turning the educated, kind hearted, and well-mannered Dr. Jekyll into Hyde, a psychotic, savage, and brutal primate. As

Tom Tunney and Geoffrey Macnab demonstrate, Hyde looks more “simian than sinister, but his metamorphoses are handled with élan” (Tunney and Macnab 67). As Jekyll becomes Hyde, he walks slowly to the mirror. With an animal-like sound of harsh breathing, we see a buck-toothed and fluffy-haired Hyde for the first time. He looks at himself in the mirror through a subjective shot and then goes to hide behind the wall like a frightened young child as he hears noise. As

Hyde comes out again and stretches like a long-caged wild animal, we see the significant moment of the scene in which he walks towards the mirror and says, “Free at last!”

In two medium reaction shots (fig. 61), the camera focuses waist-up to show the gestures and movements of the actor March as well as the motions and emotions of the Jekyll-Hyde duo he portrays. Hyde’s excitement is obvious in his big smile and raised fist; however, when Poole comes down to check on Dr. Jekyll as he hears strange noises, Jekyll looks terrified. By showing us how Jekyll walks to the mirror, checks on his face and teeth, and then turns around combing his hair back, March’s acting talents as well as the use of make-up and hairdressing engage and implicate audiences in making sense of the filmic experiences. As the scene fades out, we ponder as what will happen next.

200

Fig. 61. (left) Hyde checking his own reflection in the mirror and crying “Free at last!”; (right) Jekyll looking towards the door of his lab with a serious facial expression.

The added romance in the plot enhances the affectivity of the narrative—in particular,

Miriam Hopkins’s performance as Ivy Pearson, a bar-singer who was saved by Dr. Jekyll when attacked by a man outside her apartment. The film utilizes make-up and hair, costume design, and sound to construct distress and disgust in its portrayal of Hyde and his inhuman nature, and at the same time cues viewers to respond with sympathy to Ivy who suffers from his abusive and violent acts. Two of the major scenes take place inside the club where Ivy works and inside the apartment where Hyde keeps her as a mistress.

In the club scene, as Hyde requests Ivy to serve his table, the camera frames both actors in a medium shot (see fig. 62) to show viewers how Ivy is paralyzed by Hyde’s disgusting appearance. Hopkins’s performance provides affective cues in depicting Ivy’s emotional states; her terrorized facial expression toward Hyde who is busy pouring wine for them and her hands clasped on her chest are communicative as if saying “Bless my heart! What a creature!” The following scenes continue to engage viewers via a series of close-up reaction shots followed by shot/reverse shots of Ivy and Hyde during the conversation. Hyde’s face hissing like a devilish snake as well as the use of sound enhance the emotive quality of the scene.

201

Fig. 62. (left) Ivy looking terrified by Hyde’s appearance; (right) Ivy looking desperate while singing songs for Hyde.

In the apartment scene, we are shown that Hyde has become more mature and sinister looking as the film and his evil deeds progress. Compared to the fluffy and curled up hair, like that of a puppy, that he has in the first transformation scene, he is shown with a longer and more polished hair style. The hideous progression in Hyde’s physical appearance is apparent as he becomes more monstrous in his acts. In a medium close-up he grabs Ivy’s throat and warns her not do anything against his will or he can show her “what horror means” (fig. 62).

Later in the film, the transformation gets noticeably quicker and less painful and is sometimes involuntary—indicating Hyde’s dominant role in the doubled identity. The film’s editing techniques and special effects play a key role in constructing surprise-startle affect, and therefore, translate the suspense tone of the original source text. For instance, in Hyde’s meeting with Dr. Lanyon (Holmes Herbert) in his home-office, we are shown for the first time that Hyde does a reverse transformation to Jekyll. Hyde now has white hair and his facial skin is wrinkled.

In two medium close-ups (see fig. 63), the camera highlights the big smile on March’s face and his gesture of holding the glass as well as Herbert’s shocked face to reflect the insanity in the

Jekyll-Hyde character creation.

202

Fig. 63. (left) Hyde holding the glass of potion before drinking it in front of Lanyon; (right) Lanyon looking astonished by the transformation from Hyde to Jekyll.

In a series of close-up and shot/reverse shots, we see Hyde transform back to Jekyll.

Herbert’s performance is effective in communicating his surprise and horror in Lanyon’s response to the reverse transformation. According to Darwin, the emotion of surprise and shock involves raising eyebrows and opening the mouth; he claims that “the raising of the eyebrows is necessary in order that the eyes should be opened quickly and widely; and this movement produces transverse wrinkles across the forehead” (Darwin 281). These are evident in the reaction shot of Lanyon, and thus enhance the emotive power of the scene.

Jekyll’s Confessions: Performance and the Construction of Anger and Shame

March enhances the affective narrativity of the film with his “quicksilver performance”

(Tunney and Macnab 67). When Ivy pays a visit to the kind gentleman who sent her money, she is surprised to find out that he is the “celebrated” Dr. Jekyll, who saved her from a drunkard sometime back. Hopkins’s acting in showing that Ivy cries out to her hero and pleads for Dr.

Jekyll’s help in saving her from Hyde—who is not a human but a beast—promotes empathic identification with the character.

During their conversation, the use of shot/reverse shot on the two actors engages viewers via distress, shame, and anger affects. The emotion of anger (see fig. 64) usually involves pulled-

203

together and downward eyebrows, raised upper eyelids, and tightened lips (Sudol 601). March does a fine performance in showing Jekyll’s complex emotional states as he tries to comfort Ivy by patting her head on his lap gently (fig. 64) to offer her some comfort and support that may ease her distress.

Fig. 64. (left) Emotion of anger in Sudol’s book; (right) March’s performance in showing Jekyll’s anger towards himself.

The film utilizes the fade-out and split screen to show the passage of time and increase the tension as we are shown simultaneously what is happening at Ivy’s and Muriel’s residences.

Jekyll transforms involuntarily into Hyde on the night of his engagement with Muriel. As Hyde changes the course of his walk and turns towards Ivy’s home, we are shown in the other location that Muriel and the guests are eagerly awaiting Jekyll’s presence. The split shot of Muriel (Rose

Hobart) and Ivy (see fig. 65) is shown as a contrast in their ways of living life, which also help to translate the philosophical point of view and rhetoric constructed in the novel.

Jekyll decides to make a confession to Muriel that he is too damned to be her future husband. In his visit, as he apologizes to Muriel, the camera frames the actors in a medium long shot from knees up to highlight their body gestures during the conversation (fig. 65). March’s performance—in particular his tightened fists, bent knees, and face looking up to the ceiling— create affective possibilities of shame, anger, and distress in his portrayal of the Jekyll-Hyde dual

204

identities. March’s speech and voice in his confession to God depict his regret and self-hate towards the life path he has chosen.

Fig. 65. (left) A split-screen shot showing the emotion and motion of each female character; (right) Jekyll repents for his damned life.

In the final scenes of the film, we are shown that Jekyll hides in his lab after killing

Muriel’s father. As he gets cornered like a lab rat by the police, Dr. Lanyon, and Poole, March’s performance as well as the use of make-up and hair provide affective cues in revealing the emotional struggles in both Jekyll and Hyde. As Lanyon confronts Jekyll with his secrecy and true identity, in two medium close-ups we are shown Jekyll’s and Hyde’s faces (see fig. 66).

Fig. 66. (left) Jekyll looking desperate when confronted by Lanyon; (right) Hyde in pain and agony before his life ends.

While Jekyll’s forehead is covered with cold sweat and his eyes bear a complex look of fear, distress, and shame, Hyde is visibly older as his eye lids are pulled down, with loose facial muscles, deep wrinkles, distorted teeth, and messy long hair. As Jekyll tries to escape, he is shot

205

dead by the police officer. The choice of prop in the ending scene, the human skeleton, reiterates the visual metaphor that appears at the first transformation scene in promoting identification with learning and achieve an ironic effect.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)

Fleming’s film opens with an establishing shot of a church building (see fig. 67); as the camera moves in, the scene fades to the next shot, in which a priest is giving a sermon in a church. The opening sequence directs audiences’ attention immediately to the philosophical debate on duality in the nature of humankind embedded in Stevenson’s novel. As the camera takes us to the inside of the church, the scene cuts to a close-up of the priest and slowly tracks out to show the pedestal with two candles burning on each side and symmetrical stained-glass windows, indicating harmony as well as suggesting that the human soul is in balance in the church. The use of mood music and the imagery of people in the church enhance the emotively pre-focused tone of distress of the film.

This screen version introduces Dr. Jekyll via an incident during the sermon; a fellow church member Sam Higgins (Barton MacLane) who suffers shell-shock interrupts the Bishop

206

(C. Aubrey Smith) and behaves rudely. As the priest preaches the nation’s prosperity under the reign of the great Queen Victoria, the camera cuts to a reaction shot of Sam who gets visibly distressed and bothered by these words. MacLane’s acting of bursting into laughter and mocking the priest when he talks about “wiping the evil” in his sermon creates tension and suspense in the narrative; the film introduces its hero in a reaction shot (see fig. 68) of a church member who seems disturbed and shocked by the troubled man—Dr. Jekyll (Spencer Tracy).

Fig. 68. (left) Jekyll turning his head to check out the man who interrupts the sermon; (right) Sam Higgins challenging Jekyll on his view of good vs. evil in human nature.

There seems to be something malevolent lurking inside the troubled man. The officials come in to ask him to leave so that the sermon can resume, but Jekyll stops them and frees the poor man. After learning Dr. Jekyll’s identity, the man questions Jekyll’s view on what has been said by the priest—if evil can truly be wiped out and if he is the only man who is insane while all others who stay inside the church are pure good human beings. In a medium shot (see fig. 68), the camera keeps these characters in the same frame to capture and highlight the unique emotion and motion of each actor—for instance, MacLane’s disturbing laughter in depicting Sam’s mental state, and Sara Allgood’s confusion and concern on her face in showing Sam’s poor mother looking back at Jekyll searching for the answer. Following a reaction shot of Jekyll who becomes silent, we are shown Tracy as Jekyll looking at the camera, pondering Higgins’s

207

remarks. The camerawork, editing, and performances evoke interest in audiences as we are left with questions without answers. The opening sequence helps to create tension and offers “a rich experiential matrix” (as discussed in the introduction) as soon as the viewing starts (in

Schellekens and Goldie 296).

A “Gentleman” Doctor: Cinematography and Empathy

Tracy’s version of Jekyll is a cold, arrogant, and calculating doctor. According to

Rothfield, the Victorian novel lacked the depiction of doctors and physicians as passionate individuals while lawyers and churchmen were considered more suitable romantic companions

(in Tucker 173). The 1941 film utilizes the theme of romance—in particular, Ingrid Bergman’s performance in portraying Ivy Peterson, a barmaid who is saved by Jekyll from a drunk man at the beginning of the film—to translate the cultural anxiety and psychological distress experienced by medical professionals when reframing the “cipher” of the Jekyll-Hyde character- creation to screen.

As the handsome Dr. Jekyll becomes Ivy’s hero, she is attracted by his gentlemanly manner. The scenes in her apartment create affective viewing experiences via a variety of camera angles to capture the verbal and non-verbal communications between the leading actor and actress in portrayal of their respective roles. Ivy wants Jekyll to stay without explicitly saying so.

She flirts with him first, and when Jekyll insists to leave, she is emotionally hurt and distressed.

In an over-the-shoulder shot (see fig. 69), Bergman is shown from her shoulders up and the camera focuses on her facial expression; with the help of lighting, the scene captures Bergman’s restrained acting as she is holding in tears to depict Ivy’s heart-broken reactions while saying “I ain’t no….”

208

Fig. 69. (left) Ivy (Ingrid Bergman) getting emotional when seeing Jekyll is leaving after they have kissed; (right) Jekyll seemingly moved by Ivy’s reaction.

As they continue with their conversation, the camera cuts back and forth and continues to focus on the actors from the shoulders up (fig. 69) to highlight both Tracy’s and Bergman’s facial expressions and eye contact in showing how Jekyll and Ivy react to each other with controlled emotions and desires. The design of their conversation—especially the restrained body languages of both actors—promotes enhanced character-engagement.

Beatrix Emery (Lana Turner) is the woman that Jekyll is going to marry. Fleming incorporates the social context of Stevenson’s text into his film’s narrative in the formal construction of affectivity. In Jekyll’s first transformation, the film depicts the nature of Jekyll’s experiment as a nightmare for both of his fiancée and himself. In a medium shot of Turner (see fig. 70), we are shown that Bea wakes up from sleep looking worried. At the same time in

Jekyll’s lab, the camera cuts to a close-up of the letter that Jekyll writes her before taking the potion. The low-key and high-contrast lighting also help to create a sense of danger.

209

Fig. 70. (left) Beatrix Emery (Lana Turner) waking up from a nightmare that Jekyll might be in danger; (right) Hyde’s first appearance after the transformation.

The adaptive approach Fleming takes in reframing Stevenson’s mad doctor on screen is different from that of Mamoulian. Compared to the 1931 cinematic design of Hyde, Tracy’s version of Jekyll-Hyde is relatively plain. He turns into a more sinister looking man with wide eyes, hawk-like features, and a hissing voice. The use of make-up and hair on Tracy and his performance do not add much to the emotive quality of the character. However, the use of a fantasy montage sequence is liberating in the first transformation scene. We are shown Jekyll’s repressed inner-self has been freed as he rides a chariot driven by Ivy and Bea, whom he lashes like horses. Such a restructuring of the narrative tends to translate Jekyll’s psychological distress in terms of sexual desires, an adaptive approach that is similar to Robertson’s take in his 1920 film adaptation of the novel. As the transformation completes, the camera shows Hyde’s sneering expression (fig. 70) as he looks forward to an adventure in his new identity.

A Sadist Monster: Performance, Make-up/Costume, and Affective Identification

Tracy’s Hyde seems subtler than March’s version as he has adapted from the ape-like primitive in 1931 film to a sadistic doctor in the 1941 film. Bergman’s performance serves as the emotive core of the film narrative in construction of multi-dimensional affects such as distress, fear, and disgust. The casting of Bergman as Ivy is a good choice. Her portrayal of the character

210

who transforms from a cheerful barmaid to a desperate mistress for Hyde leads viewers through a complex emotional catharsis as the narrative progresses. Instead of a lowly prostitute in the

1931 film, Ivy in the 1941 version is charming and fierce. She has a daring personality and her character-design is embedded with strong shame-pride.

Like the 1931 version, the scenes where Ivy meets Hyde for the first time in the club and in the apartment after Hyde turns her into his mistress are significant in creating affective experiences. In the club scene, Hyde bribes the bartender to fire Ivy after a bar fight hoping to become her hero again and win her heart. During their conversation outside the club, the camera is fixed from chest up with a medium close-up (see fig. 71) of Ivy and Hyde to highlight Tracy’s and Bergman’s actions and facial expressions. Tracy’s smooth-talking dialogue in portraying

Hyde as a manipulative sadist and Bergman’s voice in depicting the self-pride of a barmaid adds to the emotive quality of the characters.

Fig. 71. (left) Hyde offering help to Ivy after she gets fired; (right) Hyde torturing Ivy after making her sing.

In the prison-like apartment where Hyde keeps Ivy as a mistress, Hyde sadistically takes pleasure in playing with her emotions by pretending to be interested in what she likes to do. He cruelly builds up her hope and then shatters it, leaving her in anguish. Tracy’s performance in showing Hyde playing a melodramatic tune on the piano while sneering at Bergman’s Ivy who

211

looks depressed and sobs enriches the distressful viewing experiences. As Hyde forces Ivy to sing her favorite at the club for him, Ivy suffers an emotional break-down. As Hyde angrily asks her to sing with joy, Ivy bursts into tears and starts to cry. In a long-shot we see Hyde hit her face with grapes. Then, the camera cuts to a medium shot (fig. 71) and focuses on both actors from waist up to show the sinful acts of Hyde and despair in Ivy. The scene ends with a fade out, and melancholic nondiegetic mood music synchronizes with the visual effect to enhance the emotive power of the narrative.

The film continues to engage viewers via Ivy’s interaction with Jekyll and Hyde. Jekyll sends money to Ivy through a courier out of conscience and his decision to stop the transformation. Ivy is surprised at first by the gentle act of the doctor, but soon we see her falling into a fragile state of mind in a medium close-up (see fig. 72) as she is afraid that it is just another trick of Hyde to test her loyalty. Bergman sobs and bites her teeth to show the anguished emotional state of Ivy and her hatred towards Hyde.

Fig. 72. (left) Ivy’s face when thinking of Dr. Jekyll’s letter as one of Hyde’s tricks to test her loyalty; (right) Ivy meeting Dr. Jekyll in a formal setting for the first time.

During her visit to Dr. Jekyll to convey her gratitude, the camera focuses on Ivy as she walks through the doors and enters Jekyll’s study room. The use of make-up, hair, and costume design on Bergman enhance the affective quality of the character. We see what an elegant

212

woman Ivy is, which is in sharp contrast to her look as Hyde’s prisoner. The camera turns ninety degrees to slowly include Jekyll in the frame (see fig. 72), which allows the audience to observe their reactions to each other during the conversation. Since viewers know that Jekyll knows the truth while Ivy does not, the scene promotes viewers’ sympathy and affective identification with

Ivy. Bergman’s performance in showing how Ivy looks surprised first, then happy to meet her hero again, and at last depressed when she pleads to stay with Jekyll and calls Hyde a beast and devil, create deeply affective viewing experiences. In a reaction shot, the camera shows Jekyll’s hesitation to reveal his identity.

After Jekyll assures Ivy that Hyde is gone forever, Ivy comes back home to celebrate her freedom. In a medium shot (fig. 73), we are shown that while she is toasting to herself in the mirror, Hyde arrives unexpectedly. The mirror allows us to observe Bergman’s facial expression via reflection; by enhancing the joy affect in Ivy before Hyde returns, it may also further construct disgust and distress when we see that Hyde punishes Ivy for trusting Jekyll.

Fig. 73. (left) Ivy celebrates her freedom when thinking Hyde is gone forever; (right) Ivy in deep despair when hearing Hyde repeating her conversation with Jekyll.

Hyde repeats Ivy’s conversation with Jekyll, which confuses her and puts her in despair.

The camera cuts to a close-up of Ivy’s face (see fig. 73) and shows the extreme distress in her eyes. According to Darwin, after “prolonged suffering the eyes become dull and lack expression,

213

and are often slightly suffused with tears” (Darwin 176). Bergman gives a nuanced performance in depicting Ivy’s fragile states before Hyde kills her. After the second transformation, the film relies on Hyde’s growing confidence in his monstrous acts to construct fear and disgust. In the final scenes, Hyde kills Bea’s father. The murder weapon is Dr. Jekyll’s cane, which leads

Lanyon and police officers to capture him in the lab and eventually kill him when he tries to escape. As throughout the film, the cinematography and framing, and the use of makeup and lighting, all combine effectively to construct affect and emotion as the film approaches its tragic ending.

The Nutty Professor (1963)

The 1963 film opens with professor Kelp (Jerry Lewis) performing a failed medical experiment that suddenly turns chaotic. As the laboratory explodes with a loud bang, the opening sequence sets the tone of the film as a science fiction adaptation and comedy. The explosion rocks the office of Dr. Warfield (Del Moore), in which a meeting is taking place. In a long shot

(see fig. 74), we are shown that everyone is startled to hear the explosion. The actors’ body gestures and the painting that almost falls off the wall enhance the comic effect of the scene; as firemen arrive on site, we see Dr. Warfield ask his assistant Ms. Lemmon (Kathleen Freemon) to find professor Kelp as he knows this explosion must be his fault.

The hero of the film is introduced in a hilarious way. When Ms. Lemmon comes to fetch

Kelp, he is nowhere to be found. She hears a knock beneath her feet and realizes that she is standing on top of the lab’s door. As Freemon’s facial expression shows surprise, the camera cuts to a high-angle POV shot of Kelp (fig. 74) lying under the door, like a dead body in a coffin.

214

The mise-en-scène as well as camerawork enhance the metaphorical comic effect in portraying

Kelp as a “mad” scientist.

Due to his lack of physical attractiveness, Kelp suffers in his social relationship with others. Kelp’s radical research and behavioral awkwardness concern Dr. Warfield. After the explosion scene, we are shown that Dr. Warfield meets Kelp and stares at him in anguish as he has, for a second time, destroyed the college’s lab and put students’ lives in danger. There is an

80-second silence at the beginning of their meeting. This evokes interest as we are curious about what they are going to say to each other. As Kelp sits uncomfortably in the seat waiting for Dr.

Warfield’s criticism, Moore’s and Lewis’s acting (their facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language) enhance the engaged viewing experience. The POV shots between the two characters, as well as a low-angle shot (see fig. 75) framing Warfield yelling at Kelp, help to maximize the affectivity of the narrative.

215

Fig. 75. (left) Dr. Warfield yelling at Kelp; (right) Kelp lying among chemical bottles on the shelf.

Like his relationship with his boss, Kelp gets confronted by his student Worfshefski (Med

Flory) in class as well. When being questioned about skipping classes and going to football practice, Worfshefski walks across the room, stands in front of Kelp, and threatens him by pointing at his nose and speaking in a sarcastic voice, “Naughty, Naughty, Naughty.”

Worfshefski’s tall and strong muscular body-shape is in sharp contrast with that of Kelp’s; the height as well as size difference between the two are comic elements that highlight the ironic take of the scene. He further challenges Kelp’s authority as a professor by lifting him up and placing him on a rack full of chemicals inside the cabinet (fig. 75). The whole class applauds for this student-teacher reversed power game and laughs at Kelp disrespectfully. Kelp is shown uncomfortably lying on the shelf with chemical bottles falling off, in shame before Stella Purdy

(Stella Stevens), Kelp’s student and romance crush. After class, she stays to help get Kelp out and encourages him to stay strong to fight against being bullied by a “big ox” like Worfshefski who just “loves picking on a small man.” Her remarks touch Kelp’s heart; however, after failed attempts at gym, Kelp bets on the science that he knows best to regain his power.

In Kelp’s transformation to Mr. Buddy Love, the film utilizes nondiegetic mood music, camerawork, make-up, and performance to construct interest and surprise affects. Like the earlier

216

horror films, the scene shows that Kelp suffers from chemical burns after drinking the potion. As he transforms into a monster-like man, the process resembles Mamoulian’s film in creating suspense and affectivity. Like March’s Hyde, Lewis’s mad professor takes the form of a hairy body and bulk-toothed monstrous invention. In a close-up (see fig. 76), the camera, first, shows his right hand full of black hair stretching out on the wall, followed by another close-up of his teeth, out of shape and disordered, and then a low-angle medium shot of the monstrous form after the transformation is done (fig. 76). The scene uses a similar prop of a human skull in the laboratory as a visual metaphor to indicate the cost of dangerous science.

Fig. 76. (left) A hairy hand of Kelp after the first stage of the transformation; (right) the full look of Kelp after the first stage of the transformation.

The film creates intense tension and suspense before showing the final look of Buddy

Love. The scene drives viewers’ attention with POV shots of Buddy Love and multiple reaction shots of people outside of the Purple Pit club. Supporting actors’ performance in showing characters’ frozen facial expressions of shock and astonishment in response to Buddy’s appearance enhances the affectivity of the film narrative. The formal choices of the diegetic sound of Buddy walking on the road before entering the club as well as the music playing inside the club stopping once he enters it construct interest and surprise affects.

217

Fig. 77. (left) Buddy Love making his entrance to the club; (right) Stella Purdy (Stella Stevens) looking astonished by Buddy Love’s appearance.

Everyone stops dancing and looks startled as Buddy Love enters. As the camera cuts to a medium shot (see fig. 77) of the center of the attention, we see a handsome, dashing, and well- dressed gentleman who is nothing like Kelp or that monstrous-looking creature we have last seen. In a reaction shot (fig. 77), Stevens’s performance dramatizes the mood of the scene.

In showing the negative effect of the obsessive take on dangerous scientific experiments, the film utilizes make-up, costume design, and sound (the change of voice in Kelp and Buddy) to construct shame and distress affects. The instability of the magical formula leads to an abrupt reverse transformation in Kelp in front of his class and in front of the large audience at the annual function of student dance. The transformation starts from his change of voice, and then, his facial appearance. In two reaction shots (see fig. 78), one a medium close-up and the other a medium shot, we are shown how Kelp suffers mentally and physically from the unexpected reverse process. In the classroom scene, with the help of make-up and sound, Lewis gives a subtle performance in portraying Kelp’s frustration as he clears his throat when the effect of the potion starts to run out. Kelp face is pale as if he suffers from serious sickness. He is having a hangover as his hearing is amplified and even the small sounds of students’ actions seem like loud bangs to him.

218

Fig. 78. (left) Kelp’s voice reverting back to Buddy Love’s when the chemical wears off in front of the class; (right) Buddy Love’s voice reverting back to Kelp’s in front of audiences.

Similarly, at the school party, Kelp is forced to confess in public while his voice, face, and body revert back to Kelp. As he asks for forgiveness for his abuse of scientific knowledge in performing dangerous experiments, the camera switches between medium close-ups of him and reverse shots of his audience—especially Stella. The film has an open ending that elicits suspense and curiosity as we see that Stella has two bottles of the magic potion that Kelp’s father manufactured based on Kelp’s recipe in the back pockets of her jeans when she walks away with

Kelp to start a new life as a couple.

The Nutty Professor (1996)

The 1996 film introduces Sherman Klump (Eddie Murphy) as a university professor and scientist who suffers from obesity which causes him embarrassment and distress in his professional life. As the film’s credits play, the opening sequence directs attention directly towards a TV program featuring Lance Perkins (a parody of Richard Simmons, an American fitness guru who was fat as a kid) and his weight loss program on screen. As the hero walks into the scene, in a close-up (see fig. 79) of his upper and middle torso (down to the hips), the camera

219

frame highlights the over-sized body shape in construction of shame and disgust to project an ironic view in the film narrative.

As Perkins’s encouraging fitness instruction speaks in the background—“Go! Do it!

Come on!”—the camera cuts to a medium shot showing the protagonist walking in his living room, passing his hanging pants covering almost the entire surface of the closet door (fig. 79).

As visual metaphor, the opening scene is embedded with philosophical ideal and creates suspense in revealing the identity of the character. The entire scene does not show his face but only focuses on his bodily movement. The choice of sound and Murphy’s performance depicting

Klump’s goofy actions enhance the character-creation.

Murphy’s version of a nutty professor focuses on the cultural anxieties experienced by scientists/university intellectuals in a society of the 1990s that advocated healthy lifestyles and leaner body types. Professor Klump is portrayed as a kind-hearted man who wants to lose weight but fails to battle against his desire to eat. In his Genetics class, we are shown in a tracking shot

(see fig. 80) that he is writing notes on the blackboard, but his over-sized belly erases his

220

previously written notes as he moves. The camera cuts to a reaction shot of students sitting in the rows, laughing at him.

Fig. 80. (left) Klump’s oversized belly erasing his previously written notes as he moves; (right) Klump staring at candy in the hidden layer of the drawer.

To further enhance the affectivity of the scene, the camera angles provide clues to help the audience make sense of the character-creation. In a series of reaction shots, we are shown that Klump eagerly checks the classroom to make sure no one is watching what he is about to do; then, in a POV shot, the camera directs our attention to Klump’s vision and action (fig. 80). As he opens the top drawer first, and then quickly pulls out the bottom layer that is filled up with candy bars and other sweet treats, Murphy’s performance and the cinematography communicate the emotional and mental states of the hero, and help to translate the cipher of Stevenson’s

Jekyll-Hyde character-creation into one connected to shame and distress about weight and appearance.

The film continues to manipulate narrative expectations by showing audiences what

Klump seems to be doing versus what he truly desires. For instance, in his visits to the gym and a

Chinese acupuncture therapist, Klump is shown trying to establish a healthy exercise routine and to use Asian therapy to manage his diet and digestion system. He makes some improvements to his stamina and becomes able to do aerobics and climb stairs with less difficulty, but the camera

221

cuts to a long shot of him (see fig. 81) lifting and eating Snickers while another gym-goer lifts weights.

Fig. 81. (left) Klump lifting Snickers in the gym; (right) Klump in an acupuncture therapy session.

During his visits to the acupuncture therapist’s, with the help of special effects, the scenes highlight the ironic portrayal of Klump who is shown in wide angle shots (fig. 81) lying naked on the bed. However, regardless of the Chinese acupuncture therapist’s effort in increasing the number of needles pricking into his skin and tissues—hoping to help him adjust to a healthier diet—he fails. Klump resumes eating as soon as he gets home. The mise-en-scène and use of montage work effectively to enhance the disgust and shame affective dimension of the character- creation.

Like the 1963 film, the 1996 version also introduces a leading actress—Carla Purty (Jada

Pinkett Smith)—to add a romance plot that motivates Klump’s character-development in his scientific experiments and transformation. Like the 1941 film, Shadyac uses nightmares of

Klump with formal choices such as special effects and make-up to enhance the suspense tone and affectivity in the transformation scenes. In the first one, he dreams of himself suffocating and drowning Carla in the sand at the beach while he tries to kiss her (see fig. 82). As he wakes

222

up from the nightmare, Murphy’s performance and the use of make-up in showing him in a cold sweat depict his fear towards losing Carla.

Fig. 82. (left) Klump suffocating and drowning Carla in the sand at the beach in his nightmare; (right) Klump’s enlarged face looking at Carla from outside her apartment.

The second nightmare occurs when Klump returns home from his date with Carla at the club, in which he was humiliated by the host for his obesity. He seems stressed out and using junk food and sweets for comfort and then falls asleep. He dreams that he is undergoing an operation as his weight gets out of control and becomes a life-threatening problem. He becomes

“fat-zilla” running around the city and crushing things in search of food; he sees Carla in a high- rise apartment, but his enlarged face (fig. 82) and the size of his body cause great fear and disgust in Carla—she is screaming. Instead of being a superhero to save her, Klump grabs a tiny turkey leg piece from the table in her apartment. The mise-en-scène and use of montage in these scenes achieve a hilarious effect as well as provide an affective viewing experience for the audience.

Klump wakes up from the nightmare with fear and anguish, which motivates him to search for a “solution” for his situation by carrying out dangerous scientific experiments. He takes the DNA restructuring compound he has been experimenting with on hamsters and turns himself into a fitted and muscular man: Buddy Love. The mise-en-scène creates suspenseful

223

effect and evokes curiosity while we make sense of the scenes. Similar to Victor Fleming’s 1941 version, Shadyac prioritizes the suspense tone in the transformation scene via camera work as we see in a bird’s eye view (see fig. 83) Klump lying on the floor of his lab, unconscious.

Fig. 83. (left) A bird’s eye view of Klump lying on the floor of the lab after the transformation; (right) Buddy Love’s left hand grabbing the lab counter as he rises from the floor.

Buddy love is much slimmer and smaller in shape and size than Klump. As suspenseful music plays in the background, the camera focuses on a slim hand in a close-up (fig. 83). As he gets up and walks in the lab, we see his pants being too large for his smaller body frame; the effect of the transformation on him evokes laughter. Klump looks at himself in the mirror and is shocked but also excited to see the new self as a physically fit man.

In the final scenes, Klump fights for his survival against Buddy who has been slowly repressing the “good” side of Klump and permanently making him the “evil” Buddy Love in front of all the guests at the Alumni Ball. In a medium close-up, we see Buddy fighting hard to stop himself transforming back to Klump by pressing his neck with a right hand that has already changed to Klump’s fat one. The struggle between the two is shown in rapid montage and the use of spectacular special effects, alternating close-ups of Klump/Buddy and reverse shots of the

224

guests (see fig. 84), some of whom are also played by Eddie Murphy, reacting with shocked emotions.

Fig. 84. (left) Buddy fighting hard to stop himself transforming back to Klump; (right) Klump’s parents looking astonished by the transformation scene.

The use of make-up and Murphy’s acting talents in performing his roles construct artifact emotion as the film promotes viewers’ admiration and fascination towards the character-design

(Plantinga 69). Here, we see Murphy as Klump, Buddy, and his parents, all of whom have distinct characters and personalities. In reaction shots (fig. 84) of guests at the event, the camera highlights the emotions and gestures of Klump’s parents as we are shown his mother’s sad face and his father startled by the transformation happening to his son. Finally, Klump emerges victoriously and returns to his original form and self again. As Klump regains the full control of his body, he is seen in deep shame, regret, and distress. As he explains the secret behind his transformation, he confesses his wrong decision in choosing a dangerous path to change and rejecting who he really is in order to please others by being as he imagines what they want him to be. The film again,uses a medium close-up of his sad face and a reverse shot of Carla to capture the emotional reaction of leading actors Murphy and Smith in the scene.

To explain the affective power of gothic narratives, Noël Carroll argues that readers and viewers are “repelled and drawn” to horror novels and films because of “cognitive slippage”—a

225

paradoxical process in which audiences are fascinated by the “categorical mismatch” (in Asma

949). Such story-telling appeals to audiences because it satisfies our “desire and fear” in knowing what is beyond our imagination (Haynes 35). But according to Stephen King (1983:30), the affective power of horror novels [and films] is ultimately “reactionary”: “We love and need the concept of monstrosity because it is a reaffirmation of the order we all crave as human beings … [A]fter all, when we discuss monstrosity, we are expressing our faith and belief in the norm and watching for the mutant. The writer of horror fiction is neither more nor less than an agent of the status quo” (qtd. in Haynes 35).

Stevenson’s narrative about a renowned doctor who dies from self-destruction in the post-Darwinian society of the Victorian era “rises above the level of fable, to the level of a true scientific description of the inner nature of man” (Bland 265). As Roshwald demonstrates,

“humanity is not clearly divided into systematic thinkers and dreamers, into scientists and fantasists, into practical people and wishful thinkers… the opposite elements – reason and yearning, realism and dreaming, logic and fantasy – coexist” (Roshwald 1). As we constantly struggle in life searching for solutions to problems and obstacles, the chance of survival depends on the power of the inner-self rather than external makeovers.

Like Austen and Brontë, Stevenson crafts an adaptation-friendly narrative of a mad doctor in J&H that has “transcended the boundaries of literature and infiltrated our popular culture at all levels”; his text lends itself well to appealing cinematic structures that articulate

“contemporary issues and contemporary media appetites” in the adaptation process (Dryden 16).

Whether they are horror films such as Mamoulian’s and Fleming’s screen versions, or comedies like Lewis’s and Shadyac’s cinematic remakes, the “re-tellings, reimaginings, and adaptations”

226

of Stevenson’s iconic gothic science fiction continue to “transcend [the] historical specificity” of the original text and to fascinate readers and viewers throughout generations (Dryden 11-2). In the next chapter, we continue the focus on Victorian literature by using Thomas Hardy’s tragic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) as a case study. Through two of its screen versions, I will compare and contrast how each filmmaker approaches Hardy’s text and translates its affectivity with cinematic techniques.

227

CHAPTER 5

AFFECTIVE NARRATIVITY AND THE AESTHETIC

ON THE PAGE AND ON THE SCREEN: TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES

Eyal Winter believes that an effective art work moves us and makes us care for it; its emotive quality as well as the mental activity it requires in the sense-making process makes us appreciate “the aesthetic qualities of the creation” (Winter 161). As discussed in the Introduction,

Edmond Rolls points out that refined artists utilize salient techniques to “idealize” these qualities of their works and “enhance” them in the creation process (in Schellekens and Goldie 145). This chapter continues to explore how novels and films construct affect and emotion via such processes of idealization and enhancement. I look at Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles

(1891) and two of its film adaptations—Tess (Roman Polanski 1979) and Tess of the

D’Urbervilles (Ian Sharp 1998)—to examine the similarities and differences in how cinematic techniques such as mise-en-scène, editing, and cinematography are used to adapt the shame- pride, fear, and distress affects constructed in Hardy’s novel on the screen.

Historical Background

By the end of the nineteenth century, western society, including Britain and France, had gone through drastic moral, social and cultural changes. These changes and their impact on people in the society are reflected in the late Victorian literature. In the literary tradition, there had been continuous progress and development of genre as well as a gradual and steady growth in the reading population. According to Victorian scholar Nigel Cross (1985:206), the Foster Act in 1870 brought some positive changes to state education in England: for instance, extending the scale of primary education by reaching the commonly neglected population of the urban poor,

228

and by providing equal learning opportunities to both boys and girls; as a result, this movement raised the literacy rate in men by 13% and almost 20% in women, with a very competitive ratio of 93.6% to 92.7%, respectively (in Devine 6).

Besides education, innovations were going on and ideas were being debated in other aspects of life in Victorian society as well, such as enlarging the franchise or changing the laws that dealt with the poor. Victorian novelists took the opportunity to invent plots centering on the life of the working class and those who suffered from poverty. However, as Christine Devine argues in her book Class in Turn-of-the-Century Novels of Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells

(2016), their efforts were somehow compromised and the solutions suggested were “idealized,” because the nature of the earlier Victorian realistic novels was still powerful and fixated on the middle class who addressed their own concerns and needs for their own purposes; for instance, the depiction of lower-class women was biased as they were often regarded as “morally inferior” to middle-class women and men across-class in general (2, 6, 78).

As the dawn of the twentieth century drew close, a widely spread “anxiety and anticipation” occurred among scholars, writers, and artists; a period defined as the fin de siècle was categorized as “degeneration,” the concept of which was formed by biologists, but later

“applied increasingly to racial and sexual theory” by Darwinian theorists (Amigoni 172).

According to Victorian scholar Ruth Livesey, this French term originally was used by artists to express uncertainties towards the end of a century as the passage of time, but it was further applied to “a broader set of concerns, social and political, that often stand in tension with aestheticism”; for Victorian novelists, it served to indicate art works (e.g., fiction writing) that

“challenged the mores and formal conventions of high Victorian ideals,” such as the literary

229

invention of the New Woman novels (Livesey n.p.). In her investigation of late Victorian fiction,

Patricia Murphy argues in her book Time Is of the Essence: Temporality, Gender, and the New

Woman (2001) that these novels reflected the “transitional literary moment, one that both continued the Victorian attentiveness to temporal forces and presaged the modernist disillusionment with an inherited temporal burden” (Murphy 2). Thus, in the formal construction of literary narratives, the New Woman novelists experimented with “new possibilities” in exploring “sexual and gendered identities” (Amigoni 172).

Thomas Hardy (b.1840-d.1928) witnessed rapid changes in the socio-political, and economic landscape of the time and became one of the first novelists who practiced this new form of writing. In his novels, he expressed his viewpoint towards the passing of English rural life and particular the uncertainty towards future modernism. As Penny Boumelha points out,

Hardy, along with other late Victorian novelists, experimented in the form and mode of fiction writing by highlighting themes centered on common issues faced by women, such as

“prostitution, rape, contraception, adultery, divorce, and childbirth,” which makes him one of the pioneers in “feminist utopias” (Boumelha xiv). However, such literary themes became concerns for earlier critics and literary scholars. For instance, he was criticized for being “slightly vulgar” in his exploration of female characters and portrayal of “implicitly sexual themes”; Richard Le

Gallienne, a British writer and poet in Hardy’s time mocked Hardy’s inability to “eradicate” the vulgarity as “temperamental” (qtd. in Boumelha xiv).

Jeannette King defends Hardy’s nobility, stating that such harsh criticisms partially came from the misconception towards fiction-writing in general as even to the present day, novel- reading is still seen by many as “primarily a source of amusement” rather than instructive

230

platform (King 3). Modernists generally liked Hardy. Although T.S. Eliot took a “caustic” approach in considering Hardy’s work as appealing to readers’ emotions and instincts at the basest level, D.H. Lawrence appreciated Hardy’s talent for his craft of “emphasized tensions, contradictions and emotional depths” and felt indebted to Hardy’s inspiration in his own fiction writing; Virginia Woolf further praised Hardy’s contribution to the canon of the English novel as she named him a “poetic genius” and the “greatest tragic writer among English novelists” (in

Watts 68).

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891)— “a cautionary tale for the New Woman”—was widely considered as Hardy’s greatest fiction (Murphy 73). It tells a tragic story of a young and innocent country girl—Tess Durbeyfield—who suffers while turning into a woman due to her “poverty and her sexual attractiveness” and is eventually punished with death after she rebels and, out of desperation, murders the man—Alec d’Urbervilles—who ruins her life (Boumelha xvi). The novel can be viewed as an allegory of the essential changes in the notions of “selfhood, gender and social order” over the passage of nineteenth-century England as its narrative is intimately embedded with the socio-moral deliberations and developments of its time (Lacey xi).

William Watson (b.1917-d.2007)—a leading member in the Royal Academy of Arts in

London—considered Tess to be as remarkable as Shakespeare’s King Lear and Macbeth and defined it as a “tragic masterpiece” (in Watts 66). Jeannette King in her book Tragedy in the

Victorian Novel (2010) also praises the novel for its intense tragic mood, comparable to the ancient Greek dramas. She further demonstrates that, in general, a tragedy means “an extremely sad and unexpected event” while for novelists, the tragic genre is embedded with philosophy and

231

moral codes by projecting “a vision of life” consisting of “continuous and inevitable” events in a repeated pattern of loss and suffering that often leads to death or disasters (King 1-2).

Traditionally speaking, the emotional depth of classic tragedy is defined by “the absence of realism,” as seen in Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Act IV, Scene III)—“the grief that does not speak” (qtd. in King 50). In Tess, as well as the other three novels of his, Hardy explicitly explored different “idea[s] and form[s] of tragedy” by pitting human life against the natural environment and social paradigms with embedded conflicts between “things inherent in the universe, or of human institutions” (King vi, 21). While novelists such as George Eliot and

Charles Dickens also experimented in the form and structure of tragic genre elements in their works by centering on the struggles of common people in adjusting to the challenges posed by the evolution of social, ideological and contemporary ideals, Hardy innovated new possibilities in his novels via “working-class characters” embedded with “aesthetic” qualities (King 69, 44).

Far more impressively than others, Hardy’s portrayal of life’s tragedy allows his “humbler characters” to speak up from their social and personal experiences rather than “mere academic exercise,” which in turn, enhances the affective dimension of his text (King 44).

To convey a vision of life, Hardy invented themes and plots situated “in a context of current debate and evolving opinion,” all of which help to define his artistic merit and his success in maintaining balance between “artistic integrity” and “the mainstream of publication”

(Boumelha xv). Unlike some of the nineteenth-century novelists who abuse the emotive power of fictional works by relying solely on the excessive depiction of pity, Hardy takes a balanced approach and highlights “the tension central to the tragic genre” (King 114). However, the novel was highly censured in Hardy’s time for its depiction of sensitive topics and social issues as it

232

greatly unsettled Victorian readers in the portrayal of its heroine’s sacrificed life and demise

(Dolin 334). Thus, they failed to recognize Hardy’s artistic genius—ahead of his time—in the craft of an attractive protagonist “who is not only noble, altruistic, diligent and conscientious but also sexually alluring and sensually responsive” (Watts 35).

Hardy— “a most humane artist”—had genuine interest in “the particular tokens of human habitation, motivation, desire, passion, or prejudice”; as Victorian sexologist Havelock Ellis remarked in 1883, he was “a psychologist who is also an artist” (qtd. in Keen 2014, 2, 7). To emphasize the affectivity in Hardy’s character-design of Tess, King argues that “the whole truth is not simply that Tess has succumbed, but that, because of her resilience, adaptability and independence, she breaks free of the man who mastered her body, and faces the harsh reality she brings upon herself with dignity and courage, although alone” (King 114). Thus, Tess may also be read as a bildungsroman that advocates for the transformative quality and heroism in its heroine in forms of adaptive capacities and self-sacrifices. As Boumelha summarizes in her introduction to Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the juxtaposing of Tess’s personality and actions with those of Alec and Angel is at the center of the novel’s irony, and its subtitle—“A Pure

Woman”—serves as a reinforcement of her moral virtue (Boumelha xvi).

French novelist and literary scholar Émile Zola (b.1840-d.1902) once said that the role of a novelist is to represent “a form of practical sociology” to complement the contribution of the scientists, with the hope of changing the world “by understanding it” rather than judging it (in

Nelson 8). Influenced by Darwinism, Hardy believed that the events of human life are partially shaped by “long-term evolutionary struggle” and “governed by heredity and environment”

(Watts 51). He particularly rejected and spoke out against the harsh irony in the evolution of

233

human society as “an unfeeling universe” filled with emotional inhabitants (Millgate 153, 227).

As a refined artist, Hardy held an obligation to compose literature in realistic form by aligning his fictional imagination with the dynamic changes in life naturally and gradually; and according to Samuel Hynes (1984b: 324), he firmly believed in the power of arts with respect to the evolutionary demand to “keep moving, becoming” (qtd. in Keen 174).

The affective quality of Hardy’s works and his unique literary persona in the English tradition are partially defined by his diverse background of training. In her book Thomas Hardy:

Imagining Imagination in Hardy’s Poetry and Fiction (2000), Barbara Hardy demonstrates that

Hardy explored his creativity as a writer, poet, and architect; he exercised his expressive skills through years of practice in playing violin, singing, and dancing, all of which prepared him in forming his artistic vision and approaches (5). Like Jane Austen, whose refined linguistic skills helps with her portrayal of the human mind and emotion, Hardy’s discourse is equally affective for character-engagement. As discussed in Chapter One, Austen was critically admired for “her art of selection, her ear for natural human speech, and her skill in dramatic representation” (in

Saber 88). Similarly, Hardy was praised for “a fine ear for talk, in its way, or in its field”; as

Barbara Hardy demonstrates, Hardy’s discourse is as “sharp and delicate” as Austen’s in creating social interactions among his characters within each context, in giving style to each of them, and in projecting their perspectives with embedded underlying metaphors and ironies in the narrative structure (Barbara Hardy 107). She further argues that the conversations in Tess are “more abstract and analytic” as the novel creates a Hardyesque tone through his lyrical prose comprising visual and choric narrative elements (Barbara Hardy 111).

234

In addition to his discourse design, Hardy’s vivid imagination and visualization give his works unique characteristics. In the Preface to the fifth edition of Tess, Hardy argues that novels are in fact “impressions and not arguments.” Hardy fully explores the expressive nature of language in his choice of rhetoric tools (e.g., irony and metaphor). J. B. Bullen points out in his book The Expressive Eye: Fiction and Perception in the Work of Thomas Hardy (1986) that while most of the Hardy scholars mainly focus on his use of pictorialism in the portrayal of landscape, they neglect the essential aspect of the technique that it is “an expressive medium for communication”; for Hardy, as Bullen argues, it is crucial to create “a mode of visual perception” so that his readers could see the bigger picture and penetrate to the “inner essence”

(Bullen viii, 14). To enhance the affectivity of his text, Hardy also utilizes formal techniques such as psycho-narration in the narrative. In her book Thomas Hardy’s Brains: Psychology,

Neurology, and Hardy’s Imagination (2014), Suzanne Keen illustrates that instead of relying on

FID (narrated monologue—a narrative technique used in Austen’s novels; see Chapter One),

Hardy frequently employs “thought report” (also called psycho-narration) to represent the inner mental states of his heroes in construction of affect and emotion (Keen 53).

Hardy once defined the nature of his “composite Muse” in poem Rome: The Vatican:

Sala Delle Muse (1887) as “affective, intellectual, and personal” (qtd. in Barbara Hardy 5). In other words, he believed in the affective quality of literature and its appealing power to the human mind, body, and brain. In Tess, Hardy diligently refines his literary style and narrative designs that actively connect with the readership on aspects of morality, philosophy, and aesthetics (Watts 39). Like Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Hardy embeds a multi-dimensional affective structure in his narrative that builds upon tragic, romance, bildungsroman, and gothic

235

genre elements. In the following pages, I will discuss how his formal choices (e.g., discourse- design, psycho-narration, epistolary style, ellipsis) help to vivify and particularize his character- creation as well as events via affects such as shame, pride, distress, and fear.

Hardy’s Discourse, Rhetorical Techniques, and the Construction of Shame-Pride

Conversation, “dramatic and narrative,” is an essential part of human communication

(Barbara Hardy 106). For novelists, it functions as an imaginary tool to generate aesthetic and psychological inquiries within the fictional narrative. Like Jane Austen, as well as other literary figures who are specialized in creating “the display and dialectic of good talk,” Hardy’s discourse design provides affective cues and offers “social, psychic and linguistic self-analysis” in his portrayal of characters (Barbara Hardy 106). Hardy’s “seriousness, tenderness, and tolerance” allows him to practice it in his writing “to make significant interpretation of experience” (Kramer 9).

Hardy’s lyrical prose gives power and style to his characters and reflects each of their perspectives through drawing contrasts between Tess and those around her (e.g., her families, her suiters)—particularly in the dialogue creation, the complexity of which gives the novel a unique structure. In Tess, Hardy writes that “the world is only a psychological phenomenon” (Tess9 97).

His use of direct dialogue helps to provide immediate insights into characters’ individualities.

Since thoughts and feelings are shared without the intrusion of the narrator, he allows his characters to signify through the way they talk via the language they use, the design of which enhances the affective narrativity of his text.

9 All citations from the novel are from Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Oxford World Classics: Oxford University Press, 2005).

236

King argues, in Tess’s short life, “everything is against her living as herself, for herself”

(King 113). Hardy emphasizes the relation between “evolution and love” and he values the role of sympathy—“a form of sacrifice, generated by our experiencing the pain of others in ourselves”—as a driving force of self-sacrifice in contribution to the greater good of human society (King 34). In the novel, Hardy depicts Tess’s psychological process in making sense of herself and others via her subjective experience, which defines “the meaning of the experience” as well as “its significance” (Kramer 112). Therefore, in the novel, we see a repeated pattern of self-sacrifice in Tess—out of her love for her family in the form of filial-piety, and her love for

Angel in the form of loyalty—both of which, help to enhance the shame-pride affective dimension of the character-creation.

Nathanson argues that the concept of shame-pride depends “inextricably” on the cultural and social ideologies that shape the “interpersonal milieu within which our personalities are formed” (1994, 20). In her relationship with her family, Tess’s selfless love and devotion to them becomes an excuse for their abusive use of her as the “potential savior”; their neglect misleads her towards “a melodramatic view of herself,” and their unsatisfactory ambition promotes “her sense of guilt” which leads to her continual choice of self-sacrifice (King 113). To depict the vulnerable state that Tess, as well as her siblings, might be in, Hardy introduces the family culture of the Durbeyfields as such:

All these young souls were passengers in the Durbeyfield ship—entirely

dependent on the judgment of the two Durbeyfield adults for their pleasures, their

necessities, their health, even their existence. If the heads of the Durbeyfield

household chose to sail into difficulty, disaster, starvation, disease, degradation,

237

death, thither were these half-dozen little captives under hatches compelled to sail

with them—six helpless creatures, who had never been asked if they wished for

life on any terms, much less if they wished for it on such hard conditions as were

involved in being of the shiftless house of Durbeyfield. (Tess 30)

Tess’s good nature plants seeds for her tragic life at the beginning of the novel when she volunteers to go with her little brother instead of her father who is an irresponsible drunkard, to avoid shame on her family name. As the most discussed affect, Nathanson refers to the leading psychoanalyst Léon Wurmser in defining shame as “uncomfortable” experience that comprises

“a family of emotions” varying from “the mildest twinge of embarrassment to the searing pain of mortification, the Latin roots of which imply that shame can strike one dead” (Nathanson 1994,

19). Tess’s virtue of filial piety motivates her to take the role instead of her father in securing family income and preserving the family pride so that they do not have to ask help from others to expose the embarrassment caused by her father’s drunkenness.

Unfortunately, the family horse Prince dies on the way in an accident, which drags Tess into a distressful state due to self-guilt: “Nobody blamed Tess as she blamed herself” (Tess 40).

Tess’s subjective experience of the death of the family horse causes psychological distress in her.

As we see in Tess’s emotional speech, she pleads to her brother, “‘Tis all my doing– all mine!’ the girl cried, gazing at the spectacle. ‘No excuse for me– none’” (Tess 39). Michael Zeitler points out that Tess regards herself “in the light of a murderess” for the death of the family horse—a major source for family profit and economy (Zeitler 105). Burdened by her self- imposed guilt, Tess feels obligated to accept the family duty suggested by her mother—though against her dignity—to claim kin to a far relative of the D’Urbervilles, the newly discovered

238

family origin of the Durbeyfields, hoping to bring financial support to the family for purchasing a new horse and gifts for her young siblings. Such a decision to sacrifice her pride for the sake of the greater good of the family pushes Tess one step further on a path that causes her life-long suffering and regret.

Hardy embeds the affectivity of shame-pride via mother figures in the novel in their roles in affecting the formation of Tess’s self-hood. Nathanson points out that shame as a “dominant negative affect of everyday life” is the basis of the majority of the issues in social life and interpersonal relationships; he further demonstrates that this affect is so significant that it is also closely associated with “self-esteem and the valence of personal identity” (2008, xix). Hardy’s portrayals of Tess’s conversations with her mother as well as the attitudes of Mrs. Durbeyfield and Mrs. D’Urberville toward their parenting roles highlight the ironic tone of the narrative.

At Trantridge, Tess meets Alec and starts to work for this rich relative of hers in support of family financial crisis, but she pays a heavy price in returning the favor. She loses her virginity after Alec’s rape. When Tess finally breaks free of Alec’s power and returns home with a broken heart—she is pregnant with his child—she does not get the understanding and emotional support she needs from her family. She is blamed by her mother for failure to take care of herself and to become a gentleman’s wife and causing the family shame. We observe agony in Tess’s speech to her mother:

“O mother, my mother!” cried the agonized girl, turning passionately upon her

parent as if her poor heart would break. “How could I be expected to know? I was

a child when I left this house four months ago. Why didn’t you tell me there was

danger in men-folk? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to fend hands

239

against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the

chance o’ learning in that way, and you did not help me!” (Tess 94) (Italics mine)

In this emotionally charged direct dialogue, the choice of Tess’s words—seen in Hardy’s use of auxiliary verbs (in italics) and punctuation—reveals how naïve and ill-equipped she is in handling men. These formal choices also help to enrich the reading experience as they present

Tess’s perspective on how helpless she is in her social position to gain proper education and instruction from the family or institutions as protection. The general condition has improved in the society, but women from the lower class still live in poverty and they suffer greatly.

According to Nathanson, pride usually comes from success in proving our ability to stand alone on our own feet, whereas shame is “a measure of incompetence” signifying “failure—at any age” that proves “something about our size, our skill, and our dependence on others” (Nathanson

1994, 180). Thus, Tess’s trapped situation after loss of independence and virginity destroys her self-pride and causes deep shame in regards to her self-esteem.

In Austen’s novels, we usually see the mothers (or women as mother figures) taking the responsibility to provide guidelines on moral conduct to young heroines; in Tess, the mothers are examples of irresponsible parenting. For instance, Mrs. Durbeyfield is “deaf” to Tess’s requests

(against going to claim kin in preserving her virtue and dignity) or complaints (as a victim who suffers from the emotion and physical abuse caused by Alec) while Mrs. D’Urberville is blind to

Alec’s sinful acts. Tess’s mother has seen everything, but she does nothing; on the other hand,

Alec’s mother hears everything, yet she says nothing. Hardy’s portrayals of mother figures raise questions on aspects of gender, social, and moral issues in late nineteenth-century England and enhance the shame-pride affective dimension in his text.

240

Barbara Hardy argues that every novelist has his or her own discursive style—some are brilliant, and some lack flamboyance and concentration—but in Hardy’s dialogue invention, as she argues, readers are offered a mode of “genuine sharing, a duet, a mutual inspiration”

(Barbara Hardy 106-7). This is particularly evident in the conversations between Tess and Angel.

Their dialogues are designed with ambiguity. Barbara Hardy points out that “the argument Hardy invents for them is imaginative, because their speech is directed towards a perceived listener, and they imagine for the self and the other” (Barbara Hardy 112). At Talbothays Dairy, Tess starts a new chapter in her life. There, she works as a farm maid and meets Angel, with whom she falls in love. We are told at the beginning of the novel that Tess, who passed the sixth grade, is able to speak “two languages: the dialect at home, more or less; ordinary English abroad and to persons of quality” (Tess 27). When she talks to Angel, Tess speaks with a “lyrical and inventive” language reflecting her past unspeakable experiences, while Angel, being a former Cambridge

University student who spends “years and years in desultory studies, undertakings, and meditations,” speaks from an ideological perspective (Tess 133). Thus, Hardy embeds irony and metaphorical meanings in his character-designs; as Kramer argues, “Tess’s mental states determine her actions and her attitudes towards life” (Kramer 117). For example, Tess secretly listens to Angel playing his harp; when he finishes, Tess tries to sneak away, but Angel catches her and asks:

“What makes you draw off in that way, Tess? . . . Are you afraid?” “Oh no, sir ...

not of outdoor things; especially just now when the apple-blooth is falling, and

everything so green.” “But you have your indoor fears — eh?” …She maintained

a hesitating silence. “Come, Tess, tell me in confidence.” She thought he meant

241

what were the things to her, and replied shyly — “The trees have inquisitive eyes,

haven’t they? — that is, seem as if they had. And the river says, - “Why do ye

trouble me with your looks?...” (Tess 139)

This conversation reveals both Angel’s and Tess’s perspectives towards life. While Angel finds life too burdensome, Tess is afraid of the bleak and traumatic future due to her tragic past experiences. The shame in Tess towards her past blocks her senses in perceiving what Angel actually means. She is “in tune” with nature more than social. In affect science, Nathanson points out that shame-humiliation affect can cause “a momentary inability” in social cognition, which is defined as “cognitive shock” (2008, xviii). Tess’s broken lyrical speech and hesitation, in turn, causes confusion in Angel who further interprets her words in a different manner. Nathanson’s discussion in his affect theory also demonstrates that sometimes, the experiences that trigger shame-humiliation are “so deeply” and “uniquely” buried in an individual’s memory that he or she may not aware of the impossibilities for others to fully comprehend “what shame means” to him or her (Nathanson 2008, xix). Therefore, such insight helps us to identify Hardy’s rhetorical construction in creating appealing characters.

Angel is interested to know her more while Tess’s speech is limited by her attitude of shyness as well as strong self-pride. Therefore, her answers are not directed towards a mutual communication and cause more confusion in their interactions. According to Nathanson,

“shyness is shame instructed by fear”; he further points out that a person in the state of deep shame has a tendency to avoidance—seen in a low-profile lifestyle that would allow him or her to reduce the possibilities of exposure to more “acute, unexpected shame” (Nathanson 1994,

330). In the novel, Tess’s reaction—both verbally and physically—reflects her mental state of

242

insecurity and serves the purpose of her own self-protection. We observe a similar scenario after

Tess accepts Angel’s marriage proposal. She fails to reveal the truth of her history with Alec to

Angel because of shyness and strong self-pride, and she is in shame and under psychological distress that she bursts into “dry hard sobbing” (Tess 208). Angel is worried and asks:

“Why do you cry, dearest?” “I can't tell— quite!— I am so glad to think— of

being yours, and making you happy!” “But this does not seem very much like

gladness, my Tessy!” “I mean— I cry because I have broken down in my vow! I

said I would die unmarried!” “But, if you love me you would like me to be your

husband?” “Yes, yes, yes! But O, I sometimes wish I had never been born!” (Tess

208)

Tess’s emotional outburst surprises and confuses Angel again as he cannot understand why she cries at a supposedly happy occasion. Nathanson’s reference to Tomkins’s concept of shame may help to explaining paradoxical moments as such in Hardy’s lyrical prose. According to Tomkins, sometimes, shame affect can be “so miserable because it interrupts what feels best in life” (in Nathanson 1994, 73). Tess’s seemingly confused responses show her inner struggle as she is burdened by her shame and guilt to conceal the truth and break her vow; on the other hand, her desire for humanity’s “appetite for joy” is equally strong as she loves Angel and fears to lose him (Tess 208). Hardy’s craft of discourse reflects his deep understanding of the human psyche.

The Tragic Pleasure: Narrative Empathy and Affectivity

As the narrative progresses, Tess drives “the emotion power” of the text through her

“engrossing, fascinating and convincing” characterization (Watts 66). Tess reflects the influence of Aristotelian tragedies in its rhetorical construction and portrayal of complex characters and

243

events. According to King, a great tragedy should evoke emotional responses such as “pity and fear”—especially towards cases “when a man’s destruction is the work of those that wish him [or her] well, or of his [or her] own unwitting hand” (insertions mine) (King 5). Hardy’s vision of tragedy lies in the individuality of Tess because her character “is hard-pressed by her past, the circumstances of her present, and her rejection by the society and Angel” (Kramer 115). Thus,

Tess’s transformation, within which she suffers and learns, defines the emotive quality of her character-creation; affective cues in the text that depict her characterization of “resilience, adaptability and independence” help to define the experience the novel offers.

Much like Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and Robert Louis Stevenson, Hardy also understood the psychology of Victorian society and explored possibilities in creating affective art works that move readers and make us care for his characters. His narrative pushes the emotional depth of his character-design and challenges the cognitive capacities of its readers. Suzanne

Keen refers to English novelist Vernon Lee who claims that the act of reading awakes, intensifies, or maintains the “definite emotional states” of readers and affects them by promoting

“collaborative responsiveness” such as empathy (qtd. in Aldama 64). Based on her findings in her book Empathy and the Novel (2007), Keen points to a widely accepted short list of literary techniques—for instance, “first person narration,” “the interior representation of characters’ consciousness and emotional states”—as effective formal choices in construction of affect and emotion (Keen x). For Keen, narrative empathy is “a process”—both affective and cognitive in our experiences with arts (Keen 213).

Unlike heroes or heroines in his other tragic novels, Hardy gives more liberty to Tess by permitting her to dream a better path of life with “a better self” and challenges the boundaries of

244

individual capabilities as well as “social possibilities” (Barbara Hardy 55). Thus, Tess’s transformative qualities in her character design features bildungsroman genre elements.

Introducing the heroine, Hardy’s narrator says that Tess Durbeyfield is at the age of her life where she is a “mere vessel of emotion untinctured by experience” (Tess 21). Daniel Stern, a prominent psychiatrist and theoretical expert on infant development, points out that since the early stage of life (infancy), an individual’s perception of selfhood is “an experiential integration” rather than a commonly believed “cognitive construct” (in Nathanson 1994, 206).

Tess’s innocent and naïve nature is present in Hardy’s description of her as we are told that since

“phases of her childhood lurked in her aspect still … you could sometimes see her twelfth year in her cheeks or her ninth sparkling from her eyes; and even her fifth would flit over the curves of her mouth now and then,” regardless of her “handsome womanliness” (Tess 21). After her short relationship with Alec, Tess, damaged goods in the eyes of the society, though “physically stained, mentally she has progressed” (King 114). Hardy employs psycho-narration, pictorialism, and epistolary form to provide insights to the “inner feeling states, thoughts, desires, private responses” of Tess (Keen 2014, 55).

Tess’s tragic life experiences shapes her individuality; she starts to mature, begins to learn, and lives through the harsh realities of life. Psycho-narration—a narrative mode for reporting “diffuse feelings, needs, urges”—often uses “imagistic analogies or metaphors” to signify inner experience, which Dorrit Cohn (1978:135) calls psycho-analogies (in Keen 2016,

169). Vanessa Ryan further points out that the use of psycho-narration enables Hardy to

“question the conception of interiority, calling attention to the physiological, reflexive, and automatic aspects of minds and action” (qtd. in Keen 53-4). One of the examples is when Tess

245

finds out that her baby may not survive; she is in deep sorrow and distress, as the narrative reports:

She thought of the child consigned to the nethermost corner of hell, as its double

doom for lack of baptism and lack of legitimacy; saw the arch-fiend tossing it

with his three-pronged fork…. The lurid presentment so powerfully affected her

imagination in the silence of the sleeping house that her nightgown became damp

with perspiration, and the bedstead shook with each throb of her heart. (Tess 106)

(Italics mine).

In this passage, Hardy vividly describes to readers how Tess suffers mental distress and psychological fear when reflecting upon the fact that this pitiful baby boy of hers lacks

“baptism” as well as “legitimacy.” His formal choices enhance the gothic tone of the scene as well as character-engagement. According to Nathanson, negative affects of distress, or fear, or shame, can appear alone or accompanied by one and another; he further points out that when these three negative affects appear together, it usually triggers a series of emotional responses such as “frightened stiff, scared to death, aghast, panic-stricken, terrorized, apprehensive, timorous, or leery” with bodily reactions of quickened pulse, pale cheeks, and sometimes, “an unpleasantly rapid increase in speed of thought and access to memory” (Nathanson 96). In

Hardy’s description of how Tess imagines her son—Sorrow—might continuously suffer in the after-life of hell due to these curses, his use of psycho-narration is embedded with “imagistic analogies or metaphors” to depict Tess’s inner experience. We read that she falls into a deep fear-terror reflective state, to the extent that she responds physiologically as her cold sweat wets

246

her nightgown; the silence of the room elicits further sense of horror in her mind that her heartbeats sound rapid and echo loudly and the “the bedstead shook.”

After a solid isolation of “many months” and mental struggles, Tess comes out to the field “to be useful again”—the resolution of which, though almost to her own surprise, helps her to regain her confidence: “The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand ... The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain …

She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides, Tess was only a passing thought” (Tess 104). In this passage,

Hardy utilizes both psycho-narration and FID to share with readers how Tess has progressed, adapted, and adjusted to her situation as well as how she has now transformed into a mature woman who realizes that sorrow, self-pity, guilt, and fear cannot help with her circumstances but work against her survival in the human world. We are further told that since “most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations,” Tess depends now, on her own “harvest-hands” to achieve independence and carries herself with dignity— particularly that she responds with calm and peace towards people’s prejudice towards her as a single mother and her child born out of wedlock (Tess 104).

The narrative goes on in showing how Tess continues to suffer and learn in her relationship with Angel. According to Boumelha, the tragedy of “unfulfillment, loss, and waste” is present when characters fruitlessly try to cross the social class and gender boundaries established by natural and social law (Boumelha xviii). After Angel’s proposal, Tess feels helpless in the jeopardized situation and hopes for a miracle to happen so that she could undo what is done to make Angel happy as an honorable wife. According to Nathanson, it is very

247

often to observe an individual who is in a deep shameful state suddenly shows a “decrease in self-esteem, a moment in which we are revealed as somewhat less than we want to believe”

(1994, 17). As we see in the novel, after Angel and Tess have set the wedding date, she is trying out her wedding dress; however, she suddenly remembers a song her mother used to sing to her:

That would never become a wife

That had once done amiss. (Tess 225)

Hardy gives only two lines from the song, but it enhances the distress affective dimension of the narrative and foreshadows the tragic ending of Tess’s life. Tess fears that she will always be hunted by the past she tries to escape. The moving power of the song enhances her guilt and regret and evokes shame that leads to her confessions to Angel later on.

The character-design of Angel signifies in creating “tensions” and “contradictions” in the narrative. E. Sorum argues that Angel is the most antipathetic character in the novel as he has willingly committed amoral sexual activity and yet, punishes Tess for being a rape victim; therefore, he becomes “the model of how not to respond to others” (Sorum 193). Empathy as

“the sharing of emotion” can either improve or worsen the “quality of adult interpersonal relationships” (Nathanson 1994, 108). After her honest confession to him on the wedding night,

Tess does not receive a gentle love or expected compassion from Angel; nevertheless, he questions her sarcastically and refuses to accept her as his wife. Due to his lack of sympathy and empathy, he completely disregards the tragic death of Tess’s son. When Tess reminds him that she has forgiven him for his sin and would have “laid down her life” for him (Tess 289), he responds: “O Tess, forgiveness does not apply to the case! You were one person; now you are

248

another. My God— how can forgiveness meet such a grotesque— prestidigitation as that!” (Tess

248).

Hardy embeds a multi-dimensional affectivity in his heroine Tess. We read that Tess begs

Angel: “Don’t— don’t! It kills me quite, that!” she shrieked. “O have mercy upon me— have mercy!... It frightens me! Having begun to love you, I love you forever— in all changes, in all disgraces, because you are yourself…” (Tess 248). Angel’s rejection of Tess breaks in her what

Nathanson (1994) calls the “shame/pride axis”—a fine line between the “hoped-for personal best” and the “terribly feared personal worst”; when Angel crosses this balance, it triggers “an avalanche of deadly shame” in Tess as she mentally collapses and suffers psychological distress and fear in evaluating her beliefs and life decisions, the damage of which leads to a “fragile and precarious sense of self” (Nathanson 20). In Angel’s remarks towards Tess’s morality and virtue, he regards her as an “unapprehending peasant woman” who is unaware of the “proportions of social things”; his ill-judgement further destroys Tess’s self-pride and arouses agony in Tess, as she shoots back in anguish, “I am only a peasant by position, not by nature!” (252).

Nathanson points out that “one of the central tenets of our society is the balance between sin and repentance”; our life experiences, whether good or bad, all serve instructive purposes, which allows us to bargain and learn by accepting shame with an open heart in achieving maturity (1994, 327). Such insight helps to frame the contradictions in Hardy’s character-design of Angel. For him, his newly-learnt knowledge of Tess’s past changes his opinion and feelings towards her so quickly that Tess suddenly transforms from someone he loves dearly to someone he despises with disgust. Such immediate shift of perspective constructs irony in his character

249

and the social class he presents. His problem of overly idealized expectations leads to surprise and disappointment in himself and causes shame and distress in Tess.

After Angel rejects Tess based on her past “flaws,” they decide to go separate ways.

When they are getting ready to part on their life path, Hardy again employs psycho-narration with FID to report their inner states and “question the conception of interiority” (in Keen 53):

He knew, and she knew, that though the fascination which each had exercised

over the other—on her part independently of accomplishments—would probably

in the first days of their separation be even more potent than ever, time must

attenuate that effect; … Moreover, when two people are once parted—have

abandoned a common domicile and a common environment—new growths

insensibly bud upward to fill each vacated place; unforeseen accidents hinder

intentions, and old plans are forgotten. (Tess 265)

This passage is also an explicit example of double psycho-narration of both Tess’s and

Angel’s thoughts with FID. Such formal choices give insights to both characters’ perspectives, reveal the potential consequences of their decisions, and foreshadow the tragic ending of Tess in her relationship to Angel. She is abandoned by her own husband, and she is once again, forced to return home and left alone in facing all judgement. The hearts ache and the minds suffer, but there is nothing they can do or change. The unspoken thoughts revealed in the narrative maximize the affectivity of the scene.

Besides psycho-narration, Hardy also utilizes pictorial style to enhance the aesthetic qualities of his work. Influenced by philosophers from his time (e.g., John Stuart Mill and

Alexander Bain), Hardy values their suggested “supremacy” in the sense of sight; G.H. Lewes

250

praised it as the “most valued and intellectual” of the human senses and considered metaphors as constructions derived from its “sensations” (qtd. in Bullen 6). For instance, Tess scraps for temporary work till she reaches Flintcomb-Ash; as the name implies, it is a desolate and barren wasteland with harsh weather, set against a barren landscape to heighten the hardships, distress and misery that Tess suffers after Angel abandons her. Hardy’s portrayal of landscapes serves to provide an “intimate connection between figure and scene, the reciprocity between the visual appearance of a landscape and the human being contained within it” (Bullen 193).

On her way to Flintcomb-Ash, Hardy describes Tess’s journey: “Thus Tess walks on; a figure which is part of the landscape; a fieldwoman pure and simple, in winter guise; a gray serge cape, a red woollen cravat, a stuff skirt covered by a whitey-brown rough wrapper, and buff- leather gloves. Every thread of that old attire has become faded and thin under the stroke of raindrops, the burn of sunbeams, and the stress of winds. There is no sign of young passion in her now...” (Tess 299). An omniscient narrator is used here to share a universal knowledge of the past, present and future. The narrator comes to Tess’s defense amid her tragic situation and circumstances to remind readers of her pure nature. He vividly describes the colors and materials of her clothes and how she looks in the natural environment to provide affective cues in inviting readers to make sense with Tess and her experience—mostly sorrow, loss, suffer, and pain.

Hardy believed in the “emotive quality of the symbolism” through his visual narrative technique to convey the “universalities” of his characters’ experiences (King 62). He makes effective use of the pictorial technique in his description of the landscape to set the stage for each phase of Tess’s life. At Flintcomb-Ash, not only is its soil “stubborn” that demands the “roughest kind” of labor, Tess also meets Alec who unexpectedly shows up to seduce and tempt her to give

251

up on Angel and come back to him as a mistress (Tess 301). Tess thrives in all deeds for her survival on her own. She adapts to the harsh environment and transforms into a strong and independent young woman. During her chance encounter with Alec, we are told that he is surprised to find that Tess speaks “so fluently” in “good English,” to which she replies that she learned “things” during her times of “trouble” (Tess 331). Tess’s growth is evident in her strong courage and resilience.

To enhance the affective narrativity, Hardy also switches from third-person to first- person narration in form of epistolary style—a narrative techniques most popular in eighteenth- century and early nineteenth-century novels (such as Samuel Richardson’s Pamela and Jane

Austen’s Lady Susan)—especially in the portrayal of the character Tess. Such formal choice allows Hardy to reveal her states of affairs and emotional reflections via letter-writing. For instance, in Tess’s letters to Angel in quest of saving her from the evil Alec, the epistolary form provides immediate insights to understand her frustration—in particular, how she feels threatened and helpless when men like Alec repeatedly harass her and use her family’s financial status as excuse to seduce her.

In ancient Greek drama, Aristotle defined the “peripeteia” principle (reversal) as a key element for irony, usually set in scenes where a hero or heroine is challenged by the unescapable past and haunted by it in “a cyclical pattern” that puts obstacles in his or her path forward (King

97-8). Tess is trapped and feels “desolate”; she expresses her fear in a desperate attempt—hoping

Angel’s response could save her:

My own husband! Let me call you so— I must— even if it makes you angry to

think of such an unworthy wife as I. I must cry to you in my trouble— I have no

252

one else! I am so exposed to temptation, Angel. … I think I must die if you do not

come soon, or tell me to come to you... I do not mind having to work: but if you

will send me one little line, and say, “I am coming soon,” I will bide on, Angel—

O, so cheerfully! … Think— think how it do hurt my heart not to see you ever—

ever! Ah, if I could only make your dear heart ache one little minute of each day

as mine does every day and all day long, it might lead you to show pity to your

poor lonely one. … Come to me— come to me, and save me from what threatens

me!— Your faithful heartbroken / Tess (Tess 356)

In this long and agonizing letter, Tess tries to explain to Angel her distress, despair, doubts, fear, and uncertainty towards the future under current circumstance. She is also requesting Angel to empathize with her or at least show sympathy to her pitiful situation.

Hardy’s choice of narrative tools as well as his use of language creates tension in the narrative in portraying Tess’s concerns and pushes the emotional depth of his character-creation.

With no words from Angel, Tess writes another letter to him when she comes back home to visit her mother after her father has passed away. Her family is evicted from their home, and

Alec once again comes to offer his help and with Tess as the price in return. Tess rejects his suggestions. After he leaves, Tess’s lashes out in anguish as she realizes that Angel has “dealt hard measure” to her just like others (Tess 376). Tess “passionately” seizes the only piece of paper she could find in the vacated house and “scribble[s]” another letter to Angel:

O why have you treated me so monstrously, Angel! I do not deserve it. I have

thought it all over carefully, and I can never, never forgive you! You know that I

did not intend to wrong you— why have you so wronged me? You are cruel, cruel

253

indeed! I will try to forget you. It is all injustice I have received at your hands!

(Tess 376).

Hardy’s choices of verbs in the second letter construct anger and distress affects. His uses the word “scribble” rather than describes Tess’s fragile state of mind to enhance the emotive quality of the scene. The letter showcases Tess’s anguish and pain; the verbs in the letter depict

Tess’s attitude toward Angel’s cruelty. The significance of her letters indicates the mental progress in Tess as we observe her improvement in narrating her feeling and forming logical thoughts.

T.R. Wright (2005) identifies another one of Hardy’s narrative techniques—ellipsis, “a tendency to omit direct representation of key moments in his stories, which appear only indirectly or in fragmented form in his discourse” that helps to define the aesthetic quality of his text (Wright 3). He chooses to omit some of the most controversial and consequential events in the novel which “occurs silently and invisibly between Phases” (Boumelha xxi). Although this was partially a decision made based on Victorian editors’ complaints towards his discrete allusions, such formal choice teases and challenges readers in the sense-making process.

Hardy wrote in 1865 that “the poetry lies in the minds of the perceiver. Indeed, it does not lie in the scene at all” (qtd. in Bullen 11). For instance, detailed information in Tess’s murder of Alec is purposefully omitted as such event is portrayed from the “active agents’ perspective”

(Keen 2014, 93). Tess’s trust in Angel is deep while her disgust towards Alec is astonishing—so much so that she murders him in the end to discontinue the endless torture, suffer, abuse, and pain from her shameful and distressful experience with him to return to Angel (Gatrell 97).

254

Mark Johnson (2007) argues that all human beings have an “innate desire to make sense of our experience and pursue the meaning and fulfillment of life” (ix). Alec’s murder is introduced through his landlady who gives a perspective that she only hears an “argument,

Tess’s lament, some rustling, and silence” and then retreats to her room downstairs (Keen 2014,

93). Hardy employs both ellipsis and psycho-narration to enhance the gothic tone of the murder event in construction of fear-terror affect:

There were more and sharper words from the man; then a sudden rustle; she had

sprung to her feet. Mrs. Brooks, thinking that the speaker was coming to rush out

of the door, hastily retreated down the stairs. She need not have done so, however,

for the door of the sitting-room was not opened. But Mrs. Brooks felt it unsafe to

watch on the landing again and entered her own parlour below. She could hear

nothing through the floor although she listened intently, and thereupon went to the

kitchen to finish her interrupted breakfast. (Tess 403-4)

In this above passage, by only reporting what the landlady thinks as well as how she feels, such narrative technique intensifies the tension of the event. By highlighting the short period of time within which the crime takes place, the choice of ellipsis might also serves to indicate the nature of the crime more as manslaughter than an intended murder. Hardy further enhances the interest-curiosity and fear-horror affective dimensions of the narrative by combining action-based phrases with pictorial technique, both of which help to direct readers’ attention in following the gaze of the landlady in discovery of the mysterious murder event:

…her eyes glanced casually over the ceiling till they were arrested by a spot in the

middle of its white surface which she had never noticed there before. It was about

255

the size of a wafer when she first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the

palm of her hand, and then she could perceive that it was red. The oblong white

ceiling with this scarlet blot in the midst had the appearance of a gigantic ace of

hearts” (Tess 404).

In Tess, Hardy explores the social, moral, and contemporary elements of Victorian society that work against Tess’s pursuit of happiness, cost her life-long suffering, and lead to the eventual penalty of death. Hardy vividly portrays the murder scene through the eyes of the landlady. His use of visual language agents, together with narrative ellipsis, enhances the suspense tone and evokes curiosity in understanding the unknown nature of the crime.

Ahead of his contemporaries, Hardy recognizes the challenge in creating affective narrative as he refers to the “aesthetic theory, where only a few finely touched spirits could catch the right notes, a musician’s metaphor for attuned perception” (in Keen 2014, 176). Hardy’s unique “dualism of style” in portraying “both attention and inattention, shifting between the language itself and what it describes” (John Bayley 1979, 31), makes his prose resemble the form of poetry, the complexity of which marks his unique Hardyesque style and challenges filmmakers in the adaptation process (in Bullen 1). In the next section, I examine two film versions of Hardy’s text and explore the cinematic possibilities in recreating an affective structure when adapting Hardy’s heroine to screen.

Adapting Tess for the Screen

Hardy, like many of the other nineteenth-century novelists I have discussed, is at once literary and cinematic; however, compared to Austen, Brontë, and Stevenson, Hardy has not been as popular with filmmakers. The existing film adaptations of Tess of the d’Urbervilles have

256

received mixed reviews. Commonly raised criticisms are, for instance, the issue of fidelity and failed attempt in translating the “Hardyesque” tone. The first screen version, a 1913 silent film adaptation of Tess10 (by Asolph Zukor), greatly interested Hardy as he showed “keen” curiosity in exploring the possibilities cinema could offer in promoting sales of his novels (Wright 4).

However, he did not take the adaptation seriously as he found it less relevant to the source novel and called it a “scientific toy” (in Niemeyer 4).

Hardy’s discouraging commentary did not stop filmmakers from attempting to try it on the big screen. According to Pamela Dalziel, there were four silent film versions produced in

Hardy’s lifetime; although there were no film adaptations at all by classical Hollywood cinema,

Polanski’s Tess (1979) brings back filmmakers’ interest in Hardy’s work whose popularity began to inspire “feature film and television producers” into the mid-1990s (Dalziel 774). The lack of film adaptations of Tess in the classical studio era was mainly caused by the motion picture

Production Code (also known as Hays Code) that sought to set moral standards within the

Hollywood film industry.

Established in the early 1930s, the Production Code enforces “the censorship of sexual language and behavior, graphic violence, and other actions that might be deemed immoral or reprehensible” (in Corrigan 22). In particular, it is instructed that “the sympathy of the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrong doing, evil or sin” and unfortunately, the pre- existing cultural image of Hardy in his craft of tragic narrative as well as the portrayal of Tess’s sexual endeavors and her being a murderess became problematic for filmmakers; therefore, Tess

10 This film version was based on Hardy’s novel’s first stage adaptation in 1897—a production by Lorimer Stoddard—who made it into a great Broadway triumph for actress Minnie Maddern Fiske.

257

as a literary source was too sensitive to adapt in classical Hollywood (in McGregor 73). Another factor that boosted filmmakers’ renewed interest in Hardy’s Tess during the 1990s came from the realization that the novel’s theme echoed the “postmodern anxieties and uncertainties” due to

“new versions of feminism and profound shifts in gender roles”; therefore, film adaptations worked “to reassure [their] audience that gender relations have always been problematic, and that bewilderment in the face of such changes is an understandable response” (Wright 4).

Roman Polanski’s 1979 film Tess was nominated for six Academy Awards, of which it won Best Art Direction, Costume Design, and Cinematography. The film was a critical and commercial success, featuring Nastassia Kinsky as Tess Durbeyfield, Leigh Lawson as Alec

D’Urberville, and Peter Firth as Angel Clare. Although Polanski made a few adjustments in adapting the narrative, Paul Niemeyer in his book Seeing Hardy: Film and Television

Adaptations of the Fiction of Thomas Hardy (2003) claims the film “precisely embodied” what

Hardy’s novel would “look like” (Niemeyer 5). John Paul Riquelme also adds that Polanski successfully adapts the “dissonant elements” in the source material (e.g., metaphorical landscapes) and integrates them in to the big-screen transformation in terms of “style and narrative” (in Wright 3, 5).

Some critics complained about the film’s choice in casting Kinsky, a German actress, in the role of a British country girl, and criticized her accent for giving away her European heritage; however, the New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin calls the film a “lovely, lyrical, unexpectedly delicate movie” that captures the essences of the English “geographical and sociological” landscapes, and she particularly praises Kinski’s subtle performance as her version of Tess becomes “an echo of the land and society around her,” naturally blended with the world

258

the film creates (Maslin 1980). Polanski’s film adaptation signifies via its aesthetic quality that resembles the Hardyesque tone of the novel and goes beyond it in gaining “its own” cinematic voice (Wright 6).

London Weekend Television (LWT) produced the 1998 version Tess of the

D’Urbervilles; directed by Ian Sharp, the film was generally received as “faithful” to the source text, with Justine Waddell, Jason Flemyng and Oliver Milburn playing the roles of Tess, Alec, and Angel, respectively. However, T.R. Wright argues in her book Hardy on Screen (2006) that literary fidelity to the source novel is an adaptation fallacy; she further points out that “the most

‘faithful’” film adaptations of Hardy’s novel are usually “the least successful as films” (1).

Nemesvari also criticizes the film for undercutting Hardy’s “mixture of melodrama and the grotesque” as it loses the ambiguity within its narrative structure and becomes unsatisfactory to the viewership of the film; for instance, the alteration of character-creation in changing Alec into a “redeemed rapist” reduces the narrative complexity in the adaptation process (in Wright 6).

Besides, the film is complained about for its failed attempt in imitating the original novel’s

“intrusive third-person narrator through equally intrusive voice-overs that first reveals their discrepancies in effect”; as Wright argues, the film’s choice of voice-over narration subtly advocates that viewers see the film as a “tragedy of fate” (Wright 171-2).

Both the 1979 and 1998 screen versions make attempts in translating the affectivity of the novel by challenging “conventional attitudes and responses” of the audiences (Wright 7).

However, as Niemeyer further points out, Hardy’s novels are not subjects for “faithful” adaptation at the core because they are not driven by plot but rather by “perspectives that are deployed by the characters and sometimes, by the narrator,” the facts of which makes them

259

“multifaceted and generally unstable” for the film form (Niemeyer 5). Therefore, literal translation of Hardy’s text from the page to the screen may not be the best choice for filmmakers.

Among the questions that remain after consideration of Hardy’s Tess and reviews of its film adaptations are whether, and precisely how, Hardy’s spatial and temporal ellipses interact with the narrative “language” of commercial cinema, which is, through continuity editing, based on temporal and spatial ellipsis that expects the film to work in relation to the major effects of

Hardy’s writing and focus on the “important parts” of the narrative. In the following pages, I discuss how Tess (1979), through its leading actress’s and actor’s performances as well as other cinematic techniques such as continuity editing (e.g., shot/reverse-shot sequences and POV editing), close-ups on facial expressions and elements like props and hands, mood music, and lighting, creates a genuine affective experience; whereas Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1998), with a different approach in its design of the narrative and the choice of narrator, though managing to adapt shame, pride, and distress affects at some level, does not help to define its own cinematic voice in the process, which as a result weakens its affective power in engaging viewers to make sense with the film and its heroine’s tragic life experiences.

Tess (1979)

The film’s opening credits roll as the festivities for the May Day Dance is about to begin.

The narrative starts with Parson Tringham (Tony Church), a clergyman, who meets the half- drunk father of Tess—John Durbeyfield (John Collin)—on his way home. During their conversation, the Parson breaks the news to John that he actually belongs to the mighty fallen ancestors of the d’Urbervilles; to confirm his identity, Parson asks John to turn to the side so that he can examine his hereditary facial features—the family inherited nose and chin. The camera

260

cuts from a long shot of the two in one frame to a medium close-up (see fig. 85), focusing on the left side of John’s face.

Fig. 85. (left) Mr. Durbeyfield showing his chin to the Parson; (right) Mr. Durbeyfield as a “gentleman” gesturing to the bartender and willing to pay for the table. Tess, directed by Roman Polanski (Columbia Pictures, 1979; DVD frame enlargement). We are shown that he turns face to the right while keeping his gaze fixed on Parson to make sure he is observing carefully—as if saying “Have you got it? Please look closely as this is serious business…” The choice of POV shot allows viewers to identify with Parson’s point of view towards John Durbeyfield whose laughable gesture and attitude seems ironic as he curiously asks the Parson whether his noble ancestors got any land and property left. Collin gives a subtle performance in portraying John as a lower-class peasant who is too naive to believe that his aristocratic roots would bring any fundamental change to his current social and economic status. The first scene sets the tone of the film.

Inside the club, as John anxiously showing his drinking buddies the supposedly family- inherited tiny little silver spoon as if it would bring a miracle to his life, Tess’s mother eagerly shares with him her hastily formed “grand-project”—sending Tess to the nearby rich Mrs. d’Urberville to claim kin. In a long shot (fig. 85), we are shown that before leaving the bar, John acts like a rich aristocratic gentleman by gesturing to the bartender indicating that he gets the bill for the table—ignoring the fact that he could hardly feed his family. The camera pans right and

261

shows in a reaction shot of the sarcastic facial expressions of his drinking buddies who do not appreciate the arrogant manner but laugh at the Durbeyfield’s foolish fantasy and nonsense. Both

Collin and Martin give nuanced performance in playing the roles of irresponsible parents. The choices of cinematographic techniques in the opening sequence give the film its own voice in translating the affectivity constructed in the source novel.

Tess as a Puppet Doll: Performance, Make-up/Hair/Costume, and Shame-Pride

Tess has been the subject of Alec d’Urberville’s affection and seduction since they first met as he treats her like a pet with rewards of food and material goods. In her initial visit to the d’Urberville estate, Alec accessorizes her with flowers and feeds her strawberries by hand. In a medium close-up, we see that Tess, though she reluctantly accepts it, responds shyly as she is ashamed of Alec’s intimate gestures. The use of make-up/hair and costume on Kinsky (see fig.

86) as well as her performance work collaboratively in enhancing the affectivity of the scene.

Fig. 86. (left) Alec feeding Tess a strawberry by hand; (right) Alec watching Tess eating lunch. Alec continues to put Tess under the spotlight for attention as he enjoys it. He further insists that Tess should eat lunch before departing for home, although he was already told that she is not hungry. The camera repeatedly shows Alec’s subjective perspective and manipulative acts in a series of medium close-ups and shot/reverse shots during their interaction. As he cuts

262

the dry-aged ham and places it on the plate in front of Tess, the camera cuts from a high-angle over-the-shoulder shot behind him—showing Tess, obviously in discomfort—to a low-angle medium shot (fig. 86) that shows Alec who is in full control of their relationship upon first meeting.

Kinsky gives a subtle performance via her bodily stance and gestures to reveal the anxiety and shyness in Tess. We observe that she keeps her head down as she does not know where to look, and lightly taps her left-hand fingers on the table as she hesitates about where to place her hands. She does not show interest rather seems awkward in the situation with herself sitting at the table eating alone while Alec standing tall in the opposite direction, watching her every move. The lunch scene serves an essential role in depicting the irony behind their un-equal status, in aspects of social, gender, and identity. The choice of camerawork and editing technique works effectively in capturing Kinsky’s and Lawson’s subtle performances, and in particular, how Kinsky as Tess bends down her head and avoids direct eye-contact with Alec—to depict

Tess’s innocence and good nature versus Alec’s flirty character and shameless manners.

After Tess becomes his mistress, Alec buys her clothes and accessories to please her and serve his own purposes. We are shown in an extreme long shot (see fig. 87) where she is wearing her new outfit with a delicate hat accessorized with artificial flowers; she is half-lying on a boat while Alec rows it in the middle of a lake. Upon first sight, the scene seems to show lovers hanging out on a date enjoying each other’s company; the scene further includes two swans— one following the other, swimming in the lake—with white water lilies in the background to enhance the romantic atmosphere. However, upon close examination of the subsequent shots, the sequence paints a different picture. In a medium shot, we see how satisfied and pleased Alec

263

reacts when looking at Tess as his possession; however, as the camera cuts to a medium shot followed by a medium close-up of Tess (fig. 87), we observe how anguish and ashamed Tess seems as she bears a look of hate rather than enjoyment on her face. Kinsky engages her body posing against the boat board, with one hand supporting her body weight and the other holding a silk and laced umbrella, in portraying Tess as a puppet doll of Alec.

Fig. 87. (left) Alec and Tess “enjoying” boating on a sunny day; (right) Tess in anguish while posing for Alec. Everything around Tess is bright; everything about her shines, except her face that is dark and shadowed, depicting her inner shame towards herself as a mistress. The film’s make-up, costume design, and use of lighting work collaboratively in enhancing the emotive quality of the character. Kinsky is positioned in such a fixed posture to indicate Tess’s discomfort in her relationship with Alec. Her facial expression is particularly remarkable; she buries her face in deep thoughts, and her gaze, not directed towards her lover but rather downward to the lake, is sharpened—depicting an emotion of hate rather than love.

The next scene that immediately follows heightens the contrasting affectivity between

Tess’s and Alec’s character-creation. In a long shot, we see Tess standing by the window looking at the rain outside. She is dressed in a baby-pink full-body nightgown, and her hair is tied back in a matching silk bow; make-up and hair as well as costume enhance the pure nature in Tess.

264

Then, suddenly, we hear a rapid knock with Alec’s deceiving voice coming under the door. He shamelessly pleads Tess to let him in and whispers that his mother, though blind, has sharp ears.

The camera cuts to a medium shot of Tess (see fig. 88), highlighting her facial expressions as she stares at the door but does not take any actions to open it.

Fig. 88. (left) Tess staring at the door; (right) Tess covering her ears to block Alec’s voice. As Alec does not give up trying, in a wider shot we see Tess who stands facing the door, walks towards it, but then, walks by it and goes to sit on her bed. The camera cuts to a long shot

(fig. 88) once more, to show Tess sitting on the bed with both hands covering her ears—a gesture imitating a child who usually does it when scared by imagined monsters at night. Alec is Tess’s nightmare. There is no dialogue in the sequence, but Polanski utilizes mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound to create affective scenes. The use of lightning and the sound of thunder, the focus of camera on props such as a lonely table lamp and the door, as well as

Kinsky’s flamboyant performance all work together to enhance the contrast between the innocence and simplicity in Tess and the evil and sin in Alec.

Polanski’s Authorial Style and Affect

Compared to Hardy’s use of direct dialogue, psycho-narration, and other literary techniques, Polanski fully explores the cinematic possibilities for constructing affective

265

narrativity. He employs continuity editing and utilizes tools such as diegetic elements to enhance the emotive quality of certain scenes in highlighting Tess’s tragic situation and her transformation such as the death of her child, her confessions to Angel, and the murder of Alec.

His narrative focus is solely on Tess. Polanski frequently amplifies diegetic sounds in the background to complement the near-silent performances of the on-screen actors.

All the scenes in which farmers work in the fields or farms are edited with sound amplification of their labor works—whether operating a farming equipment, tying up the sheaves of wheat, or feeding the wheat to the machine for threshing—to depict the harsh reality of lower- class peasants’ lives. For instance, in the scene where Tess joins people in her village working on the farm after returning from Alec’s estate, the film shows how she adjusts to the routine as a common farm-girl after being Alec’s four-month mistress. The camera focuses on their actions and movements (see fig. 89), switching between tracking shots, extreme long shots, establishing shots, and close-ups of the landscape and farmers working in the field, to emphasize the intensity of the work as well as the duration of time in their daily working schedule.

Fig. 89. (left) Tess working in the field with farmers from her village; (right) Tess holding her baby walking on the field on her way home. There are a lot of walking, bending, and hands-on activities involved, but Tess does the work well; during the lunch break, she sits on the side and hurries to finish her bread. It is the

266

first time in the film that we are introduced to her few-months-old child. She attends to him and nurses him. In a series of medium close-ups on Tess while she nurses the baby, and the reaction shot of her sister as well as other village members, the scene enhances the shame-pride affective dimension of the narrative. Unfortunately, Tess’s poor little boy does not survive the harsh environment. Polanski again utilizes diegetic elements (e.g., dark clouds, a thunderstorm, rain) to enhance the emotive quality of the scene to prepare for the plot development of the death of

Tess’s son. In an extreme long shot (fig. 89), we see Tess, holding the baby in her arms, walking alone outside her parents’ farm house. As the rain falls in the night, Tess’s son passes away. The choice of mise-en-scène, cinematography, editing, and sound work together to construct distress affect in the tragic event.

The film continues to show how Tess struggles as a single woman from the lower class.

Tess goes to work on a milk farm to maintain her independence and provide financial support to her family. She meets Angel (Peter Firth) and falls in love with him. However, after accepting

Angel’s proposal, Tess is trapped by her own complex emotional states as she is hunted by her traumatic past. Once she is determined to write a letter to Angel sharing what troubles her mind,

Polanski skillfully employs cinematic techniques to capture Kinski’s performance—in particular, the ways in which she shows the motion and emotion of Tess under such circumstances. The scene starts with a master shot showing Tess’s reflection in the mirror while she writes the letter, sitting at the table. As Kinski’s voice-over narration shares the content of the letter—“It had failed to pass my lips in your presence. . .”—the camera leads us to a view of the room. We are shown that on the desk, under the half-way-burnt candle, there are two scraps of paper (Tess’s earlier drafts of her confession letter); as the camera slowly pans left, in a high-angle shot (see

267

fig. 90), we see Tess jotting down her reason why she has failed to confess to Angel face-to-face.

The scene ends with rack focus on Tess’s face in a medium close-up while her three roommates are in the blurred background. The technique highlights the important elements in the scene to reveal Tess’s inner struggles.

Fig. 90. (left) Tess writing Angel her confession letter; (right) Tess destroying the letter. Later, in a POV shot, we are shown that Tess finds the letter under Angel’s door mat, realizing that he has not read it yet. In a tracking shot, the camera follows Tess as she steps down the stairs. The scene reflects Polanski’s creativity and artistry as he utilizes camerawork, sunlight, non-diegetic music, and the sound of wind to depict the climax of Tess’s emotional states—a sudden transition from joy as she prepares Angel’s room with wild flowers for their upcoming wedding ceremony the next day to a disturbing emotion of distress when thinking about what kind of unimaginable fate will be waiting for her. The scene ends with a high-angle medium close-up (fig. 90) in showing Tess’s action of clutching the letter in her fist as if it is the best she can do to erase the past.

In her second confession to Angel on their wedding night, Polanski uses racking focus once more to highlight the emotive quality of the scene. Burdened by her own shame and guilt,

Tess acts against the advice of her mother and confesses to Angel about her past face to face.

The scene is captured with racking—switching between first keeping Kinski in focus (see fig.

268

91), who is seen sitting on a chair while narrating Tess’s past, with her back facing Angel who stands, blurred, in the back of the frame, and second, Tess, sitting high, now blurred, waiting for his response and Firth, sitting low in the back, in focus (fig. 91)—to highlight their change of emotion, respectively. The way that Kinski and Firth are positioned, their facial expressions and body gestures, and the use of make-up, lighting, and editing all contribute to the shame-pride affective dimension in the character-creation.

Fig. 91. (left) Tess in shame telling Angel about her past with Alec; (right) Angel sitting in the back saying nothing. Tess is blushing even though she has her back to Angel during her confession. In his book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), Charles Darwin argues that

“shyness, shame, and modesty” are the three basic “mental states” that lead to the emotional reaction of blushing with “the essential element in all being self-attention” directed to either

“appearance” or “moral conduct” (Darwin 328). In other words, in human emotions and behaviors, one might react with blushing when self-blamed or blamed by others on these grounds. In this scene, the choice of make-up on Kinsky and use of camera work help viewers in making sense of Tess as well as making sense with her of her past experiences.

The event of Alec’s death signifies the most in both Tess’s transformation and Polanski’s formal construction of affectivity in establishing and highlighting the film’s own cinematic

269

voice. Polanski creatively employs diegetic elements and continuity editing to maximize the horror effect of the scene. Within ten minutes of the on-screen time, we are shown a range of actions and emotions of the characters such as Angel’s apology to Tess, hoping for forgiveness,

Alec’s mocking comments on Tess’s “morning hysterics,” and Tess and Angel’s reunion at the train station. While Angel waits for Tess to come down, the camera shows us in a tracking shot

Angel stepping into the sunroom, then a POV shot of him looking through the window staring at the gardener who is doing maintenance work in the front yard, and a reaction shot of him concerned about Tess’s reaction towards his sudden appearance. In an over-the-shoulder shot, we see Tess hurriedly running down the stairs but then stopping as Angel raises his arms ready to hug her.

Fig. 92. (left) Angel is back to get his wife; (right) Tess refusing to go with him and telling him “it’s too late,” repeatedly. As Angel makes clear the purpose of his visit, Tess warns him to stay away and rejects his proposal of going home with him. She repeatedly tells him “too late” and reveals that “he” has been good to her and her family and won her back while Angel was away. The camera work engages viewers via a series of medium close-ups and shot/reverse shots (see fig. 92) to capture two actors’ emotional reactions during their interaction. It particularly focuses on Tess’s facial expressions while she confesses her loss of faith in Angel and her decision of going back to Alec.

270

Kinski gives a restrained performance to depict Tess’s pain in rejection of her love as she is seen turning her head away and keeping eyes down to avoid direct eye-contact, biting her lips and tongue, and holding the railing on the stairway, all of which show her inner struggle in controlling her true emotions. The diegetic sound of the gardener cutting branches in the background enhances the affectivity of the scene. Nathanson summarizes Silvan Tomkins’s description of facial changes when one is in shame as “head dips down and to the side, removing our gaze from whatever had been going on only a moment earlier” (2008, xviii). Kinski’s performance reinforces this ideal in construction of affective viewing experience.

The landlady (Patsy Rowlands) plays a key role in the film’s presentation of the murder scene, as seen in the novel. As she finds it strange that Tess’s visitor leaves without notice, she goes upstairs to check on the d’Urbervilles. As she hears Tess weeping, she curiously peeps through the keyhole to find out what is going on inside her master’s chamber. The camera cuts from a tracking shot of her coming close to the door to a POV shot (see fig. 93) of her peeping through the keyhole—seeing Tess weeping on the breakfast table. In the final interaction between Tess and Alec, Polanski skillfully utilizes diegetic sounds of Alec’s actions and contrasts them with Tess’s silent cry or weeping—for instance, his verbal commentary on Tess in response to her distressful state, the disturbing noises of his acts of dropping tea, stirring the cup, flipping the newspaper pages, cutting the aged ham, whipping butter on the toast, and the crunchy sound as he chews it—to highlight Alec’s emotional violence towards Tess.

271

Fig. 93. (left) The landlady peeping through the keyhole of her master’s chamber; (right) The landlady staring at the red spot on the ceiling. All is done within two minutes of on-screen time, but no clue is presented in relation to the actual murder. In fact, we do not know a murder has taken place until the camerawork reveals the information from the perspective of the landlady. Polanski does utilize melodramatic music to foreshadow the disturbing tone of the event. The background non-diegetic orchestral music score is accompanied by the diegetic train whistle sound effect as the scene cuts between

Angel watching the fast-approaching train at the station and Tess who quickly steps down the stairs and leaves the residence. As the music fades, the snipping sound of the gardener hedging the shrubs amplifies as the camera shows in a POV shot from the landlady who observes Tess’s unusual departure, followed by a medium reaction shot of her thinking about all the strangeness that has happened in the morning. We further follow the landlady’s eyes in a series of POV shot and shot/reverse-shot sequence (fig. 93) as her attention gets caught by a strange spot on the ceiling—a small red stain that soon grows into a larger size.

Polanski blends diegetic sounds of a clock ticking and gardening scissors snipping to depict the emotional state of the landlady—we are shown that she slowly approaches the dinner table under the spot, with suspicion and caution. The scene ends with a reaction shot of her (see fig. 94) looking terribly shocked upon discovery of the blood stain on the ceiling. Rowlands

272

gives a nuanced performance as her body-language (e.g., covering her mouth to keep from screaming loudly, eyes wide-open) provide affective cues in enhancing the horror of the murder scene.

Fig. 94. (left) The landlady looking shocked when discovering the blood on the ceiling; (right) The blood stain on the edge of Tess’s clothes. Film can use sight and sound to raise tension in the scene without directly showing the murder. When Tess finds Angel at the train station and tells him that she has killed Alec, the camera shows a reaction shot of Angel at first, and then cuts to a POV shot (fig. 94) as his eyes scrolls down and finds the blood stain on the edge of Tess’s dress. Tess is elegantly dressed and seems surprisingly calm when communicating the murder of Alec to Angel. The costume, make- up/hair, and Kinsky’s subtle performance enhance the emotive quality of the character. When she finally achieves her independence and individuality in one sense—breaking her slavery relationship with Alec—she loses them in another sense as she has broken the law. The film ends on its tragic term with an onscreen epilogue describing that Tess is hanged for her crime.

Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1998)

Sharp’s film opens with a beautiful scene of the countryside in southern England— beautiful sunlight, green trees, with white sheep bleating and birds chirping in the background. In an establishing long shot, we see Jack Durbeyfield (John McEnery) walking into the frame and

273

later meeting Parson Tringham (Trevor Martin); a voice-over narrator tells viewers that it is this day of the May Day dance and a “chance encounter,” during which the parson reveals the knowledge which “would have been better left forgotten,” that shape the fate of the Tess’s life.

Ian Sharp designs the adaptation with a narrative structure different from Polanski’s 1979 version. He invents a character as the narrator (Gerald James) who is unknown at the time the film opens (he later makes his appearance on Angel and Tess’s wedding night) to inform viewers of the context of certain scenes.

Fig. 95. (left) Mr. Durbeyfield fascinated by his “new title” as Sir. John; (right) Tess in anguish when knowing her father is getting drunk at the village bar celebrating his family “fame.” Tess of the D’Urbervilles, directed by Ian Sharp (LWT, 1998; DVD frame enlargement). Sharp utilizes sound throughout the first ten minutes of the opening scenes such as pleasant non-diegetic music, diegetic folk music played by the band, cheerful laughs as girls in the village enjoy the May Day Dance, Tess’s mother (Lesley Dunlop) singing, children giggling to enhance the affectivity of the scene, the design of which almost makes viewers mistake the film as an adaptation of Austen’s happily-ever-after novel Emma (1816). However, as her parents are excited about the newly-discovered family’s link to the ancient noble family—the

D’Urbervilles—Tess (Justine Waddell) reacts calmly and is actually angry at her father who goes to the village bar “to get his strength up” as he needs to take care of family business later that

274

night. The formal choices of cinematographic techniques—for instance, two medium close-up reaction shots (see fig. 95)—as well as McEnery’s and Waddell’s performance highlight the contrasting emotive qualities in Mr. Durbeyfield and Tess. While Mrs. Durbeyfield insists that she go fetch her husband, we are shown in a POV shot of Tess, watching her younger siblings playing and giggling while giving the youngest brother a bath, followed by a reaction shot showing her tender gaze (like a mother to her children) and soft smile as she washes clothes.

Tess as a Victim: Performance, Cinematography, and the Construction of Distress

In the 1998 version, the film narrative highlights the tragic tone in portraying Tess’s suffering as consequence of her class and gender. For instance, it includes the event of loss of family horse as a reflection of the poverty of the Durbeyfield family. We are shown a series of reaction shots of Tess and her little brother Abraham (Luke Graham) (see fig. 96) in deep sorrow and distress for the loss of family horse Prince as it was the primary source of family income.

According to Nathanson, distress facial expression is usually seen as the “corners of the lips pulled down” (1994, 129). John Sudol, in his book Acting Face to Face 2: How to Create

Genuine Emotion for TV and Film (2015), further notes that it may also involves movement of facial muscles such as “raising the inner corners of the eyebrows, drooping the eyelids, and a downturn of the lip corners” (n.p.) (fig. 96). In the film, we repeatedly observe facial expressions as such in Tess and her family. Out of guilt and family responsibility, Tess accepts the family duty and goes to work for the d’Urbervilles.

275

Fig. 96. (left) Image of a sad face, in John Sudol Acting Face to Face 2: How to Create Genuine Emotion for TV and Film (2015); (middle) Tess’s sad face; (right) Abraham’s sad face. Tess is a victim of Alec’s emotional abuse and sexual harassment. Flemyng gives a nuanced performance in portraying Alec as a womanizer who possesses Tess as an object of beauty, which, on the other hand, brings distress to Tess and leads to her tragic life ending. In their first meeting at his family estate, Alec seduces her while visiting the strawberry garden. As he tells her about the “British Queen” of strawberries, the camera cuts to a close-up (see fig. 97), focusing on his facial expression—particularly his eyes and lips—while biting into the strawberry. He sets his gazes directly towards Tess—flirting and teasing, he creates an intimacy in the moment that brings discomfort and shame to Tess.

Fig. 97. (left) Alec biting into the strawberry in a flirty look; (right) The d’Urbervilles discussing about Tess’s beauty. Sharp continues to utilize mise-en-scène, cinematography, and editing to enhance the distress-shame affective dimension of the narrative. After Tess leaves, we see Alec talking to his

276

mother (Rosalind Knight) about Tess, within the conversation of which we are informed that they are not truly d’Urbervilles but have merely bought the aristocratic name to replace the family name of Stokes. The camera engages viewers with a sequence of shot/reverse-shots that lead us to follow Alec’s gaze at his mother in POV shots to check Mrs. d’Urberville’s facial expressions when he talks about Tess, and reveal Alec’s ill-minded intention towards Tess in reaction shots.

Sharp highlights the sound of birds chirping during the conversation to enhance the affective narrativity of the scene. Alec’s mother, though blind, seems to be well aware of her son’s weakness in women as she asks him to face her while he speaks and asks him if Tess is really capable of managing the farm work. As Alec hesitates in his answer, she further asks whether Tess is pretty; the camera cuts from a tracking shot following his movement to a medium close-up of him staring at the caged bird as he replies yes, Tess is not only pretty but also “quite womanly for her years.” The choice of camerawork, sound effects, make-up (Alec’s mother’s blind eyes) and editing reveal these characters’ villainous nature. The expressionistic use of lighting (fig. 97) also enhances the affectivity of the scene as it is broad daylight outside and yet, the room is quite dark with limited sunlight coming through the windows, the design of which foreshadows Tess’s tragic fate with the D’Urbervilles and promotes sympathy towards her helpless situation.

In contrast to Polanski’s approach in omitting some of the important events to adapt the

Hardyesque style, Sharp chooses to include certain events and insert voice-over narration for plot progression such as Tess’s pregnancy, and the act of baptism before her son dies. In the 1979 film, we see directly Tess’s work on the farm after returning from Alec’s estate, and her

277

pregnancy is only uncovered when her sister brings the baby to the site during their lunch break.

In this 1998 version, we are told via voice-over narration that Tess is pregnant. When her son falls really sick, in a reaction shot (see fig. 98), we are shown Tess desperately asking her mother to get help from the Parson to baptize the child. However, Mr. Durbeyfield rejects the suggestion and leaves Tess no choice to do it herself. In sequence of low-angle to high-angle shot/reverse shots, we see Tess holds her son standing tall performing the baptism while her younger siblings sit low on the bed, praying together as witnesses.

Fig. 98. (left) Tess looking desperate holding her dying son in her arms; (middle) Tess’s son dies; (right) Tess looking distressed with sorrow in her eyes. As Sorrow does not survive the night, the scene shows in a POV shot (fig. 98) of Tess’s poor child lying dead on the bed; the camera then cuts to a reaction shot (fig. 98) to show how heartbroken and helpless Tess is as a mother. Waddell’s subtle performance as well as the cinematography enhance the distress tone of the tragic event. As Tess further asks forgiveness from her baby who can no longer hear her—“My precious. What chance had you? No chance at all”—the design of the scene evokes sympathy among viewers towards Tess who serves as an example of women in the lower class whose power is extremely limited.

278

Sharp’s Authorial Style and Affect

The film repeatedly uses voice-over narration, for a total of seventeen times, in certain scenes to give context and especially in the depiction of the inner state of mind of certain characters (Wright 171). It is mostly used to reveal the rationale behind Tess’s decisions and acts to highlight her good nature and virtue. In the scene in which Tess shares her shameful past with

Angel on their wedding night, the narrator makes his physical appearance on-screen. As Tess fails to respond to Angel that all had happened was solely Alec’s fault, Angel walks out to get some free air and cool down his mind.

We are shown in a tracking shot (see fig. 99) that as he walks, Tess quietly follows him, making humble moves on the snow-covered street. The camera is in a fixed position as they walk quietly towards it—indicating that they are coming close to the end of their path as lovers. As an old gentleman walks into the frame, we hear his voice-over narration reporting his observation of the newly-married couple who look nothing like it because of their darkened faces. While some critics complain that the film’s choice of using an unknown character to serve the role of narrator from Hardy’s perspective can be problematic at times, Paul Niemeyer argues “though it may seem that the narrator is a mere gadfly, he actually serves a clear ideological purpose of imposing a text upon the serial” in portraying Tess’s life tragedy in fateful events and incidents

(Niemeyer 236). As the camera cuts to a close-up reaction shot of his face, showing his concerned look in response to Angel and Tess, neither of whom notice his greeting while passing by.

279

Fig. 99. (left) Tess following her newly-wedded husband quietly on the street and neither of them noticing the old gentleman (the on-screen narrator) who greets to them; (right) Angel in distress. Angel finally hold his steps and turns around to look at his wife; in a POV shot, we see that he has been weeping as tears are dropping down his cheeks, and in a sequence of shot/reverse-shots we see that Tess reacts with a shocked look—holding her tears as Angel requests her to go home as he needs a moment. Gloomy nondiegetic music accompanies the scene as Tess quietly follows his order and turns back home without further words. The camera cuts to a medium close-up of Angel’s face (fig. 99) and racks focus, in which we are shown that he bursts into tears looking distressed, while Tess slowly disappears in the background, out of focus. The narrative design, choice of camerawork, Milburn’s and Waddell’s performances, and sound effects enhance the distress affect in the narrative.

Tess returns to her family for a second time out of a failed marriage. In front of Angel,

Tess remains composed, but in front of her mother, she cannot hold her tears any longer and feels deeply depressed upon the separation from her husband. We see in a medium shot that Tess hugs her mother like a little girl, sobbing hard while her mother rocks her like a little baby— sympathizing with her and asking why she did not listen to a mother’s advice. Waddell gives a flamboyant performance (see fig. 100) as she delivers Tess’s speech in agony. Tess hopelessly

280

tells her mother that how much she loves Angel and is “desperate to have him”; she further expresses that she feels “torn” without him loving her, but she tells him the truth with a wish “to be fair to him.” This dialogue is invented for the scene; it works in a way to promote viewers’ sympathy towards Tess and her situation. For almost a year after Angel left her, Tess works as

“field woman” (fig. 100) to support herself and her family. Marian (Debbie Chazen) encourages

Tess to write to Angel and let him know her “plight” to break her cycle of “suffering and silence.”

Fig. 100. (left) Tess crying like a baby in front of her mother; (right) Tess staying strong working in the harsh condition on the field. She writes the first letter off screen, but when she goes to post it, she unexpectedly meets

Alec preaching in town who later tries all efforts to persuade her to move in with him. After a few failed attempts, he manages to hit Tess’s weakness—her love for her family. He tells her that he could be of great help as her mother is unwell and her family lives in poor conditions. Tess rejects him again, but leaves in anguish; in a medium close-up reaction shot (see fig. 101), we see his villainous facial expression—the same reaction when he and his mother held the conversation about deceiving Tess about their family title to possess her beauty.

281

Fig. 101. (left) Alec looking satisfied with his tricks on Tess; (right) Tess in anguish writing her husband another letter. Tess’s distress in losing hope for Angel’s return and her fear of falling back into Alec’s trap motivates her to write another letter to Angel. The film uses Tess’s voice-over narration while she writes it to promote viewers’ identification with Tess. The cinematic tools such as the use of make-up/hair, costume design, color, and lighting (fig. 101) all work together in construction of distress affect. Once again, mood music is used to enhance the tragic effect.

Tess’s father dies suddenly in a visit to the country bar with his wife. Their family farm house is taken back by the authorities as the Durbeyfields could no longer live there without

Tess’s father’s role in the village. Alec appears unexpectedly on the day of evacuation; Sharp creatively uses mise-en-scène (make-up and costume design, the rainy weather, the muddy road)

(see fig. 102) to highlight the shame-pride, distress, and disgust affect in the viewing experience.

While the rest of the on-screen actors are seen in dark colored outfits on a chilly rainy day, Alec is seen dressed in a white coat and a black hat with a stick in his hand as he arrives on a horse— the image of which makes him looks like a magician who is performing on the stage rather than acting as a knight saving Tess and her family in a real-life crisis. As Tess rejects his offer and help again, Alec’s acts and words only seem hilarious in front of Tess’s independence and dignity.

282

Fig. 102. (left) Alec looking desperate in offering “help” while Tess rejecting it with anguish and disgust; (right) Tess writing her final letter to Angel. Tess has lost all hope upon Angel’s return and is in a desperate state in response to all the difficulties and tortures she has faced as a lower-class single woman. The camera cuts from a high-angle shot showing Tess searching for a scrap of paper and pen to write another letter to

Angel but instead only finding a burnt-up piece of wood from the fireplace, to a long shot (fig.

102) showing her sitting at the desk writing with her voice-over narration revealing how furious and angry she feels towards Angel’s injustice and unfair treatment of her. Nondiegetic melodramatic mood music plays in the background to enhance the affectivity of the scene.

By the time Angel finds Tess in Sunborn—a upscale residential area in England—Alec has won her back and become Tess and her family’s supporter and provider. In contrast to

Polanski’s approach of omitting the details of Alec’s murder, Sharp takes a different approach in construction of distress and disgust affect. The film spends a five-minute-on-screen time in portraying Tess and Alec’s heated arguments about Angel’s return, the aggressive physical conflict between them upon Alec’s revelation of the falsehood of his family name that they are actually Stokes rather than D’Urbervilles, the act of Tess stabbing Alec in anguish, and the discovery of Alec’s death by the landlady.

283

Literary critic Richard Nemesvari argues that the portrayal of Alec in the second half of the film and particularly in the murder scene represents him as a sympathetic character; he further points out that there is a “startling reversal of identification” in the moment when Tess is told that he adopted the aristocratic title and only offers her family help because he loves her rather than as a courtesy of a distant family relation, which makes Tess’s love for Angel seems

“unreasonable” (qtd. in Wright 177). However, upon close examination of the cinematic techniques—Sharp’s choice of camerawork and editing and the actors’ facial expressions, body- language and their tone of voice—it is reasonable to suggest that the Alec is not portrayed as a gentleman who has done Tess more damage than good.

Fig. 103. (left) Alec making fun of Tess’s “unrealistic” loyalty to her “husband”; (right) Tess in shock when knowing Alex has been lying all along about his true identity. In a sequence of shot/reverse-shots (see fig. 103), we are shown how hilariously he reacts to Tess’s self-guilt about Angel’s love, how enviously he is when seeing Tess’s heart is still with

Angel, and how villainous he looks as he sees Tess in shock upon learning the truth of their family name, which the audience has known all along. Just as he did when they first met, Alec does not take Tess seriously other than to satisfy his own sexual pleasures and needs for possession. To him, Tess is a beauty he must own; in his eyes, same as the noble family name he adopted, women, property, and social status are all material goods whose value only rise in terms

284

of benefits and profits when serving his own purposes. Both Flemyng and Waddell give vivid performances that enhance the emotive quality of the scene.

Alec offers help to Tess and her family, but takes away her individuality in return, which causes a great sense of shame in Tess’s understanding towards herself and her relation to others.

As he goes on calling Angel a “spineless bastard” and reveals neither sympathy nor a sense of responsibility for Tess’s tragic situation, Tess responds in anguish and kills him. Although Sharp does a good job in creating disgust and somewhat horror by directly showing how Tess goes to grab the dining knife in a close-up (see fig. 104) and stabs Alec in his chest, adding mood music to enhance the drastic effect and utilizing diegetic sounds (the knife touching the plate, the knife stabbing into Alec’s body) to highlight the disturbing tone of the murdering act, his adaptive approach works against Hardy’s original craft of the character Tess. The murder scene reduces its effect in translating the emotive quality of Tess and thus, viewers may not share her emotion or respond with empathic identification with the heroine after she commits the crime. The raw depiction of the violence acts portrays Tess as less of a victim; the final image of Alec lying dead on the floor of the bedroom with eyes wide open, shown in a POV shot (fig. 104) from the landlady who discovers him, is somewhat disturbing as well.

Fig. 104. (left) Tess grabbing the dining knife out of desperation; (right) Alec lying dead on the floor.

285

Hardy’s Tess signifies through its structure and the depiction of human emotion and psychology. Silvan Tomkins believes that affect creates personal bonds, gives new meaning to our social existence, and offers a way to narrate our inner life (in Hemmings 552). By focusing on Hardy’s narrative and its formal construction of affect and emotion, we may understand him better as a significant figure in English literary tradition—especially his crafting of appealing characters. Hardy as a writer is “unconscious” as he observes subtly and intuitively and creates

“a structure of symbols at once refined, complex, and delicate”; he is keen and sharp in his mastery of theatrical devices as well, as he could synchronize salient elements such as “the learned allusion and the felicitous verbal effect” like a “stage manager” (Bullen 1).

The story of Tess continues to affect readers and viewers. Cinematic adaptations of classic novels remain “the most pervasive, most easily understood, and most quickly absorbed means of disseminating cultural images of authors” and the literature they create (Neimeyer 3).

According to Keen (2014), Hardy believed in the affective power of narrative as he claimed that a good story can awaken the universe to “its senses, learn to pity, and evolve into a feeling Prime

Mover” (Keen 210). Kramer argues that “the attraction of Tess of the d’Urbervilles as a tragedy is this absorptive feature, which permits the reader to participate in tragic vision on his own terms” (Kramer 135).

According to David Lodge (1981:249), Hardy’s pen works as the lens of a camera in selecting, highlighting, distorting, and enhancing elements that give “vivid, intense and dramatically charged” impressions that allow for the “aesthetics of astonishment” (qtd. in Dolin

286

329). By tracing how Polanski11 and Sharp each translates the aesthetic quality of astonishment by adapting affect in Tess, we, as readers and viewers, become more aware of the essence of cinematic techniques inspired by the original literary source.

11 It can seem ironic, though, that Polanski makes us “empathize” and “sympathize” with Tess’s plight as the victim of men. Contemporary spectators now are aware of the accusations against Polanski in real life for alleged sexual abuse and molestation of young girls and less powerful women. Polanski’s rumored crimes—which was also the case with Hardy himself; he too faced accusations of sexual misconduct—and the function of his male “gaze” in directing young girls must also be taken into account in any discussion of affective response. For some, if not all, readers and spectators, discomfort or disgust with the publicized actions of a text’s author may override the formal affective cues present in the text itself.

287

CHAPTER 6

BEYOND LITERATURE:

COGNITION, EMOTION, AND IDENTITY IN THE BIOPIC

The relationship between literature and film is complex and interdependent, but in general, mutually enriching. Jack Boozer points out in his book Authorship in Film Adaptation

(2008) that literature and film share a “largely beneficial synergy”; therefore, a film and its original literary source complement each other, and eventually help to preserve and promote the value and power of art works generally (23). According to Suzanne Keen, the aesthetic qualities of literary works define the artistic experiences they offer, and these, in turn, may affect readers’

“disposition, motivations, and attitudes” towards selves and others; she further points out that if fiction reading helps to “extend readers’ sense of shared humanity beyond the predictable limitations” by promoting acts of feeling, it is valuable and useful to investigate formal choices made in the creation process to achieve “such an accomplishment” (qtd. in Aldama 70). I would extend and refine her proposition that if narrative arts such as novels and films can raise readers’ and viewers’ awareness of shared humanity by providing vicarious experiences via acts of reading and viewing, then the study of Film Adaptation must also pay close attention to the inventive formal techniques and affective possibilities they may create in texts when evaluating the relationship between these two art forms.

I hope by now, through comparative discussions and examinations of film adaptations of selected nineteenth-century British novels, that I have demonstrated how cognitive and affect science can provide an unique angle when looking at adapted works—in particular, how the formal construction of affect and emotion in each medium may help literature and film reach a

288

broader audiences in achieving goals such as raising and extending our “sense of shared humanity beyond the predictable limitations,” as Keen suggests. As Mark Johnson demonstrates in his book The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (2007), the aesthetic dimension of combined embodied experiences of mind and body gives rise to language, meanings, thoughts and logic; emotion and affect play an essential role in making sense of arts as

“there is no cognition without emotion” (9).

According to Patrick Hogan, “the human mind appears to understand and imagine complex trajectories of events and conditions—whether fictional, biographical, or national/historical—primarily in terms of narratives,” the structures of which “are organized by emotion” (qtd. in Bruhn and Wehrs 135). Biopics, though a different form of adaptation that translates discourses about real-life events into film narrative and sometimes fictional form, have encountered a similar issue of “literary adaptation” compared to film based on classic novels. In this concluding chapter, I use the film A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard 2001) as an example to demonstrate how studying biopics via affective cinematic techniques inspired by original biographical texts in the adaptation process offers a new framework in understanding the genre.

Such an approach helps to show why making a biopic to bring a well-known figure or public event to the screen can be challenging, and how a filmmaker enhances the narrative structure of biopics by idealizing their affective power of embedding, expressing, and eliciting emotion that appeals to our cognition, impacts our memories and, therefore, may shape or transform who we are.

289

The History of Biopics

In his book Whose Lives Are They Anyway: The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre

(2010), Dennis Bingham defines the biopic (or “biographical picture”), as a “genuine” and

“dynamic” genre of film which aims to “demonstrate, investigate, or question” the subject’s importance to the world, which can lead to “self-identification and self-invention” as well as identification with other people (10, 378). It is also an invitation to “both artist and spectator” in the discovery of “what it would be like to be this person, or to be a certain type of person”

(Bingham 10). In other words, the biopic showcases real-life events and struggles of an individual (past or present) who has transcended difficulty, and/or whose life story has significantly inspired and affected people’s lives.

Despite its rising critical and mainstream popularity, there are comparatively few critical works since the publication of George Custen’s seminal book Bio/Pic: How Hollywood

Constructed Public History in 1992 that have thoroughly examined the form. Some film scholars, such as Giles Hardie (2013), do not consider the biopic as a genre because they believe its literary source (e.g., biography) does not embody a well-established narrative structure like other traditional literature, and hence give little to no credit to filmmakers unless they place their films into well-known subgenres such as thrillers, dramas, or tragedies (in Cheshire 4).

However, Bingham points out that the biopic is clearly “one of the most divisive of genres for audiences and critics” (Bingham 378). According to Rick Altman, to qualify as a genuine genre, its history of development should fit into one of two commonly accepted models:

“a life-cycle model and an evolutionary model” (qtd. in Bingham 18). Like all other traditional film genres, the biopic has developed in stages from the beginning of narrative cinema,

290

“emerging from each of its historical cycles with certain modes that continue to be available to filmmakers working in the form,” seen in a steady progression from the classical to the

“neoclassical” biopic (Bingham 17-8).

Biopics featuring scientists, for example, have progressed since their “heyday of the

1930s,” shifting from a singular focus on laboratory researchers who struggled in making breakthrough discoveries in the “hard sciences” such as The Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle

1936) and Madam Curie (Mervyn LeRoy and Albert Lewin 1943), to a broader coverage of academics who battle not only with scientific but also social and psychological challenges and obstacles in their research professions—particularly the “soft science” disciplines, like studies of sexuality, as in the film Kinsey (Bill Condon 2004) (Cheshire 9). Therefore, the biopic genre is not only “genuine” but also “dynamic,” featuring an evolutionary mode of progression from a single dimension to a multi-dimension in the film culture (Bingham 18).

Directed by David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia (1962) was the first biopic that won

Academy Awards for other than star acting. In the past few decades, we have seen a great number of biopics: The Last Emperor (1987), Schindler’s List (1993), A Beautiful Mind, The

King’s Speech (2010). They all follow a similar direction—featuring heroic real-life figures who have “triumphed over great adversity”; therefore, the on-screen performances of these biopics demand leading actors who can play “a range of ages and emotions” of the subjects so that filmmakers can “capture a range of moods and tones” in the adaptation process (Cheshire 17).

However, Philip Hensher, in an article in the Guardian (24 November 2005) claims that with a reputation for being “sensationalist, distorted, or formulaic,” award-winning biopics suggest that the “easiest” path for an actor to win an Oscar is to play someone who has bravely

291

fought “a physical or mental handicap,” or simply to take the role of “a gifted artist suddenly struck down by a disability” (qtd. in Cheshire 17). Is this really so? Bingham considers such accusations “pejorative,” arguing that the nature of the biopic lies in the “liminal space between fiction and actuality” but mainly functions as an attempt to inspire the audience in searching for the “biographical truth” behind the featured figures rather than simply recounting the events of their lives (Bingham 7, 12). Therefore, the emotive qualities of these film play a key role in the aesthetic experiences they offer.

In her book Bio-pics: A Life in Pictures (2015), Ellen Cheshire points out that it is neither reasonable nor practical to define the biopic with a “specific set of codes or conventions”

(Cheshire 5). Since the mode usually centers on events in the lives of actual people “whose actions and characteristics” are familiar to the audiences, it is natural that as viewers, we would expect some sort of results, outcomes, and/or “accomplishments” of the subjects’ lives to justify the film (Bingham 46). Thus, it is more challenging for filmmakers in selecting actors and production personnel to make the image of the original figure alive or historical events convincing in the adaptation process. Biopics set high standards for filmmakers in the creation process to translate the affectivity constructed in original biographical sources.

Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind (2001) centers on the life story of a distinguished mathematical genius and Nobel Prize winner for economic science—John Forbes Nash Jr., commonly known as John Nash. The film, named after a source book of the same title—a 1998

National Book Critics Circle Award winner and nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in biography, written by Sylvia Nasar—features Russell Crowe (John Nash) as the hero of the story. The film was critically acclaimed and nominated for eight Academy Awards, out of which it won four

292

including Best Adapted Screen Play, Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress

(Jennifer Connelly as Nash’s wife Alicia).

Like all the film adaptations I have discussed, Howard faces similar issues in adapting

Nash to the screen, such as the maintenance of fidelity to a literary source. In explaining “fiction film’s relation to history,” Custen argues that “condensation and narratization” are not only necessary but also vital in translating events from a source text into a film narrative featured in its medium in order to be suitable for “the conventions of genres” (Custen 9). Like all biopic writers and directors, Howard also has to contend with historical accuracy. He was particularly criticized for omitting controversial aspects of Nash’s life (his violence, having a child out of wedlock, his homosexuality, etc.). For instance, New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott complains that the film narrative loses its cohesion in the character-creation of Nash as it airbrushes away details that acquaint viewers “with the vicissitudes of Mr. Nash’s real life” and portrays him merely as “a shy, lovable genius”; this decision destroys “the perfect three-act structure of a screenplay: a sparkling career derailed by adversity and redeemed by a triumph of the spirit” developed in the original literary source (New York Times 21 December 2001 n.p.).

However, according to Catherine Parke, in the history of literary biography there has also been a “tug of war” amongst “fiction, biography, and history, ‘with biography in the middle’”

(qtd. in Bingham 8). As historian Hayden White points out in his work “Historiography and

Historiophoty” (1988), “every written history is a product of processes of condensation, displacement, symbolization, and qualification exactly like those used in the production of a filmed representation,” and therefore what differentiates the two is “the medium” rather than “the way in which the messages are produced” (1194). Hence, in making a biopic, it is the job of the

293

filmmaker to decide to what extent the film will be historically accurate as well as to what extent will it add fictionalized elements, the process of which requires rhetorical reformulation and restructuring of the original narrative. As Cheshire summarizes, “the ‘truth’ will always be distorted” (Cheshire 125).

Nasar defines her book as “a story about the mystery of the human mind, in three acts: genius, madness, reawakening” (Nasar 22). During her interview with Lloyd Shapley, a pioneering game theorist, Nasar learned that Nash’s personal triumphs were the direct result of his “keen, logical, beautiful mind,” the idea of which became the inspiration for her to name the biography after Shapley’s fine remarks (Nasar 8). Cheshire praises Nasar’s biography as

“academic in tone” (Cheshire 84). According to Cynthia Rockwell (2002:37), with a journalistic background Nasar’s book reflects an enhanced degree of “authenticity”; her “unbiased” point of view provides “another layer of responsibility for the filmmakers” in constructing a narrative of the life Nash “actually lived” rather than “invented” (qtd. in Cheshire 87).

Like fictional writing, Nasar also organizes the formal structure of her biographical narrative by focusing on the emotional triumphs of Nash’s life. In the biography, Nasar lays out

Nash’s different stages of life, from his birth year in 1928 until 1997 (three years after he received the Nobel Prize). In selecting and arranging materials for narrative development, she consulted Nash’s family, friends, and colleagues via interviews, inquiring about their past correspondence with Nash in the form of letters, emails, or phone conversations; she obtains evidence from public resources, professional opinions, scientific research, and sometimes, confidential sources. These formal choices help to shape her narrative and affect the reading experience her text provides.

294

New York Times reviewer David Goodstein praises Nasar’s book as comparable to a well- structured “fine novel” and for maintaining a good balance of artistic merit and historical accuracy (New York Times 6 November 1998 n.p.). In her foreword to the biography, Nasar says that Nash’s life story appeals to her the most for being “a fairy tale, Greek myth, and

Shakespearean tragedy rolled into one” (Nasar 8). Being “a form of celebrity culture,” biographical narratives (e.g., biography and biopics) serve their generic purpose in searching for

“truth out of invention, recreating the most dramatic and characteristic stretch[es] of a person’s life” rather than telling “what James Welsh called ‘entertaining lies’” (2005: 86) (in Bingham

378). Therefore, in making biopics, filmmakers are challenged in the creation process in selecting formal techniques that enhance and idealize the “celebrity culture” of original sources.

As Bingham argue, as viewers, we demand “legacy, transcendence, justification” in the biopic because the dry retelling of completely factual accounts of the subject will only disappoint us more (Bingham 49).

In the following pages, I select a few scenes to illustrate how Howard’s film takes an approach that highlight Nash’s dramatic transformations (e.g., his struggles with schizophrenia in both his professional and personal life, his discovery of the ground-breaking theory “the Nash equilibrium,” and his winning of the Nobel Prize) while omitting others. I will show how

Howard utilizes salient techniques to recreate a multi-dimensional affective narrative structure that functions well in translating, for instance, the resonant joy, interest, and distress affective possibilities created in adapting Nasar’s book to the screen. I pay particular attention to how actors and their performances as well as the use of make-up and sound enhance the emotive quality of these scenes.

295

Adapting A Beautiful Mind to the Screen

“When John met Russell Crowe…his first words to the Australian actor were,

‘You’re going to have to go through all these transformations!’” (Nasar 390)

Nasar’s book can be challenging for filmmakers in the adaptation process because they need to translate Nash’s mathematical brilliance as well as his controversial behaviors caused by schizophrenia. According to the American National Institute of Mental Health, schizophrenia is

“a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves” with commonly observed symptoms such as “hallucinations, delusions, thought disorders (unusual or dysfunctional ways of thinking), movement disorders (agitated body movements)” (NIH index).

For Nash, it was more of an auditory mental disorder where he often heard delusional voices.

Howard explores the full potential of cinematic techniques such as cinematography, and sound to reframe Nash—his thoughts, feelings, and actions—from page to screen. Through audial and visual affective cues, the film projects Nash’s hallucinational experiences as both a depiction of his mental illness and an exhibition of his mathematical genius.

The film opens with Nash (from age of nineteen onward) as a graduate student studying at Princeton and ends at the time when he becomes a Nobel Laureate in 1994 after returning to

Princeton where he is able to teach again and honored by his students and fellow colleagues. A commonly believed conception about mathematics by the general public is that it is complex, confusing and boring. However, Howard does a fine job of breaking the ice for audiences to be immediately engaged with the subject and his profession with the opening scenes set in the

Mathematics Department of Princeton University. The Dean (Judd Hirsch) is giving newly- admitted graduate students a talk about why mathematic matters and how it has helped solving

296

real-world problems (e.g., breaking Japanese codes and building the atomic bomb, its application to other academic disciplines such as medicine, economics, technology, space) against the backdrop of the postwar era when the Cold War with Soviet Russia was brewing and the

Western world was becoming increasingly fearful of communist influence. Such formal design of the opening sequence enhances the affectivity of the film narrative.

The hero Nash drives the emotive power of the story. He is portrayed as an “odd” and

“eccentric outsider” in his social circles during his school years at Princeton (Howard commentary, DVD). Howard uses two social gatherings—one formal and the other casual—at the beginning of the film to capture the essence of Nash’s character. In the first formal orientation, the camera shows a master shot followed by a sequence of shot/reverse-shots while everyone in the room is diligently listening to the Dean’s passionate speech calling attention from the next generation of future Einsteins, as he says, “to triumphs, we need results— publishable, applicable results.”

Fig. 105. (left) Students diligently listening to the Dean’s passionate speech; (right) Nash losing focus and seemly in deep thoughts. A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard (Universal Pictures, 2001; DVD frame enlargement). Nash is sitting alone in the back of the room, with head down and hands crossed. As the camera cuts from a long shot to a medium close-up of his face (see fig. 105), we are able to observe that Nash seems lost in deep thoughts of his own. The camera angle highlights his eyes,

297

pure and clear, reflect the simplicity of his character. Crowe is able to show Nash’s indifference to who is physically present because he is mentally somewhere else.

The film continues to engage audiences via interest and curiosity with following sequence of a casual outdoor cocktail party. The scenes are built upon applicability of mathematics in which Nash is portrayed as a mysterious West-Virginia “genius” who exhibits absolute brilliance and a sense of “odd” humor that others might find disturbing. Nash’s genius is shown through a simple illustration of how he understands mathematics in fundamental terms via a keen interest in shapes and a sharp observation of patterns that form in common phenomena.

As Ron Howard states in his DVD commentary for the film, mathematicians do not think merely in numbers but rather forms of “shapes,” “relationships,” and “interactions”—just like associated elements in the construction of art.

In an extreme close-up, we see Nash’s hand playing with a crystal glass, and then, as the camera pans and moves up towards his arm and face, we are shown how keenly he is observing the shapes and patterns developed by sunlight’s refraction on the glass. In a shot/reverse-shot sequence, the camera shows that he gets attracted by the patterns on a tie that one of his fellow

298

young scholars, Neilson (Jason Gray-Stanford), wears. The camera focuses first, on the lemon slices on a glass plate and then, shows that Nash, by changing the angle of the glassware under the sunlight, is able to recreate a 3-D projected image of the pattern of the sunbeam mixed with shapes of moon and stars that matches exactly the print on the tie (see fig. 106).

The scene constructs interest and curiosity by matching the camera angle with Nash’s gaze while he performs his trick. As the voices of his colleagues slowly fade away in the ears of

Nash, we hear the sparkling sound made by the lemons in the large crystal container of fruit- punch, and as the diegetic sound of wind-blowing emerges while the sparkling sound fades, it becomes apparent that Nash’s imaginative mind now returns to reality as he has successfully imprinted the reflected image on the tie. Howard’s creative use of image and sound communicates how it may feel like or sound like for Nash when his mind is intensively engaged with forming innovative thoughts and ideas. Such formal choice (e.g., fading external or objective sound that is replaced with more hierarchized “subjective” or internal sound) is used throughout the film whenever Nash’s mathematical mind is at work.

Schizophrenia, The Nash Equilibrium, and Affectivity

Biographical narrative appeals to viewers because it usually humanizes the “larger than life” heroic figures who have struggled in surviving life challenges but achieved greatness.

However, Cheshire argues that most of the time, audiences are not very well aware of “why they are worthy of being giving the bio-pic treatment” because they often recognize heroes’ and heroines’ achievements but are ignorant of the costs and sacrifices made in the process of

“triumphing over adversity” and some of which end in “subsequent disgrace” (Cheshire 7, 84).

In Howard’s film depicts Nash as a victim of schizophrenia—a severe mental disorder that has

299

almost ruined his life, destroyed his career, and most importantly, endangered the genius brain of one of the most distinguished and brilliant mathematicians in American history through now- outmoded attempts at “treatment”—to highlight the emotive quality of the hero character.

In real life, schizophrenia symptoms are mainly expressed visually to observers, but aurally to its sufferers; in the film, Howard provides affective cues via Nash’s own visual hallucinations rather than external “symptoms.” Cheshire points out that Howard turns the film into a thriller with a “Sixth Sense-twist at the end” (Cheshire 84). Howard embeds suspense affectivity in the narrative and utilizes audial and visual techniques to provide audiences subtle hints in making sense of the nature of Nash’s mental illness. For instance, in a POV shot, the camera shows that Nash is looking through the window, watching a group of young men

(students) playing rugby outside. The scene immediately draws viewers’ attention as the camera shows a close-up POV shot of Nash’s hand holding a pencil drawing a vertical dotted-line on the window glass dividing the players downstairs into two teams.

With a rack focus (see fig. 107), we are shown that as Nash starts to work on the window pane, the background image blurs, the design of which also serves to remind viewers that when

Nash is fully engaged with his work, his surrounding fades away from his mind as he only recognizes his own existence. Such cinematic design draws viewers into Nash’s mind while he writes his mathematical equations on the window; as Nash tries to make sense of his innovative ideas with traditional research mythology via observation and analyses, viewers try to make sense with him via his actions and behaviors. Howard uses the clear window glass as a visual metaphor to indicate that everything Nash writes on the window is not in a concrete form. These formal choices enhance the affective viewing experience.

300

According to Nasar’s biography, “delusion is not just fantasy but compulsion. Survival, both self and the world, appears to be at stake. Where once he had ordered his thoughts and modulated them, he was now subject to their peremptory and insistent commands” (Nasar 274).

In the film, the creation of delusional characters, we learn, serves to fill the void in Nash’s life as their personalities are opposite to his own. Howard innovatively designs the scenes in portraying

Nash’s character via his interaction with Parcher—one of his invented characters. For instance, one of the most significant scenes is when Nash works in his apartment obsessively decoding hidden messages from the magazines and newspaper to locate entries on the world map to predict the Soviet Union’s next move for the Department of Defense. In preparing his data for

Parcher, we are shown in a sequence of POV shots and reverse-shots how letters from different words on different pages merge in front of his eyes to form new information as well as how amazed he looks while engaging in this intense mental work. Howard’s use of lighting—letters flashing and low-angle reaction shots of Nash—and a bird’s eye-view shot (fig. 107) directly over his head as he turns in 360 degrees shows how overwhelmed Nash may feel when

301

surrounded by such large amount of information. Nondiegetic mood music also accompanies the scene to enhance the suspenseful tone.

In a demonstration of how mathematics and the application of economic science benefit public policy, Michael Rothschild, the Dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, explained it as an example of showing how “people thinking hard about a problem can make the world work better . . . a triumph of pure thought” (in Nasar 374). In the film, Howard’s design of the scene in which Nash forms the famous “The Nash Equilibrium” deserves attention as it reflects

Rothschild’s words. According to Nasar, “two centuries after the publication of Adam Smith’s

The Wealth of Nations (1776), there were still no principles of economics that could tell one how the parties to a potential bargain would interact, or how they would split up the pie” (Nasar 88).

The Nash Equilibrium provides a seemingly straightforward solution based on a “decentralized decision-making process”; he approached the problematic of economic competition by demonstrating the process can be “coherent,” the analysis of which gives the economic world an

“updated, far more sophisticated version of Adam Smith’s great metaphor of the Invisible Hand”

(Nasar 15).

Without digging too much into mathematical jargon, Howard sets the scene in Nash’s casual hangout bar on campus. He creatively utilizes camera techniques and editing to project

Nash’s theory in simplest way. As discussed earlier, whenever Nash has an innovative idea, the camera works as Nash’s gaze, flashing on targets that are significant in his thought process. In this scene, the narrative design uses a scenario in which Nash and his fellow young men from the mathematics department discuss who gets to pick up the beautiful blond girl for the night who just walks in the bar with four of her girlfriends. Immediately, all the boys want the blond girl;

302

while others discuss a solution by referring to Smith’s theory that “In competition…individual ambition serves the common good,” the camera cuts between Nash and the blond girl. The camera becomes Nash’s eyes again, following his gaze staring at the blond whose facial image is then zoomed in and flashes. Mysterious nondiegetic mood music accompanies the scene while the vocal sound of his friends talking in the background gradually fades, the cinematic design of which works effectively to enhance the engaging experience via interest and suspense.

In explaining Nash’s theory, Howard employs camera techniques and special effects in turning the scenario to a chess game by having human subjects as players on the game board; the purpose is to allow audiences to visualize Nash’s theory in a simpler and accessible manner as well as to promote affective identification with characters on-screen in understanding their situation and Nash’s proposed strategy and decision-making process. Nash explains that the only way that everyone gets a girl is to not go for the pretty blond but her friends; he further demonstrates why and how avoiding everyone’s favorite will help all members in the group succeed in getting the best results. In a bird’s-eye shot (see fig. 108), we are shown that the blond standing on the floor that has a design similar to a chessboard.

Fig. 108. (left and right) Film visually showing Nash’s strategy while he verbally explaining how to get the girls for the night.

303

As Nash explains how they are going to make the move in getting these girls, the scene uses special effects and sounds to showcase how each of them will be checkmated if they all go for the blond. The camera angle then switches from overhead to eye-level as Nash demonstrates how they all going to win and have a fun night by going directly for four of her friends. Once again, the scene utilizes special effects (fig. 108) to project Nash’s fours friends, each of whom dances with one of the blond’s friends, leaving the blond standing in the center as a shadow. He further refers to Smith’s theory in pointing out that these girls might not be their first choice, but will be the best for a greater chance of success for each individual and the group as a whole.

Nash has been struggling to come up with a breakthrough theory, and this scene serves an essential role in showing his brilliance and setting up his doctoral dissertation and future achievement as a Nobel Prize winner.

In addition, Howard uses montage sequences effectively to compress the amount of time that it took Nash to work on his Equilibrium Theory. The scene uses less than a minute of on- screen time to cover a year-long project in his real-life time. The sequence starts with Nash sitting at his desk facing the window while it is snowing outside. Howard uses sound such as the rising volume of fast-paced mood music in the background, the winding blowing, and Nash’s muttering as he draws and writes in his notebook to indicate the intensity and complexity of thought involved in the creation process. As the camera slowly zooms out (see fig. 109) to show the outside of the apartment building, we observe the seasons change via the color changes of plants grown on the exterior wall and the leaves on trees and bushes in front of his dorm window, showing that a whole year has passed while Nash diligently works on his dissertation.

304

Fig. 109. (left and right) Nash sitting in his dorm in front of the window working on his dissertation.

Via graphically matched shots (fig. 109), Nash is seen in the same position sitting in front of the window the whole time, the indication of which serves to demonstrate Nash’s hard work and dedication in completing his influential theory that has benefitted generations upon generations. As viewers, we admire Nash’s devotion to the field of math as well as other disciplines; the cinematic design of the scene promotes character-engagement.

Alicia: Performance and the Construction of Surprise and Distress

The film treats Nash’s schizophrenia as a mysterious disease by allowing audiences to experience it via Nash’s perspective before formally breaking the news via dialogue during the consultation meeting between Alicia Nash (Jennifer Connelly) and Dr. Rosen (Christopher

Plummer). Such narrative design not only creates a tension and suspense that drives plot development but also promote affective identification with the Nashes via surprise and distress affects as they grow in the process of discovering it, accepting it, struggling with it, and surviving it as a couple.

According to Nasar, the most damaging effect of schizophrenia is “the profound feeling of incomprehensibility and inaccessibility that sufferers provoke in other people”—particularly close friends and family members (Nasar 17). Howard highlights Connelly’s role in the biopic to

305

enhance such idea. In an interview for her book, Nasar learned that people were led to perceive

Alicia from her “veiled” appearance as a “gay, charming, unruffled, and compliant” lady, but what she truly possesses are “a keen intelligence, an outsider’s ambition, and …steely determination”; her strength as a character comes from her self-control, reluctance in revealing emotions, and “a legacy of her Latin upbringing” (Nasar 193). Connelly won an Oscar for her role as Alicia Nash.

Two of the most significant scenes for Connelly are Dr. Rosen’s confrontation with

Alicia about accepting the fact that Nash has been suffering from schizophrenia since graduate school at Princeton and that both his “roommate” Charles and “government agent” Parcher are inventions of his delusion, and the scene that exhibits the process of Nash’s insulin treatments.

Howard utilizes camera work to capture how Alicia struggles with the knowledge of Nash’s disease and how stressful it is for her to make decisions about his treatment. Connelly fully explores her acting talents and gives a restrained performance via subtle facial expressions in revealing the inner struggle (a range of emotions) and transformations that Alicia goes through— from doubts, to shocking realization, to painful confirmation, and to finally distressful admission for treatment.

In the first scene, we are shown a POV shot by Alicia looking at Nash locked up in a prisoner-cell-like room with wires on the door window in a mental-health facility where Dr.

Rosen works as a psychiatrist. As we hear Alicia asking, “What’s wrong with him?” the camera zoom out and cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot with rack focus (see fig. 110) that shows she is talking to Dr. Rosen who tells her “John has schizophrenia” as Nash’s image blurs in the background. Connelly’s performance shows Alicia’s trust in her husband as she frowns and

306

looks at the doctor with skepticism and questions him in a doubting tone of voice: “but his work deals with conspiracies….” In the faded background, we see that Nash is sitting on the hospital bed, lost in his own thoughts.

Fig. 110. (left) Dr. Rosen disclosing Nash’s condition to Alicia; (right) Alicia confronting her husband about his disease.

In her confrontation with Nash about the disease, Connelly’s performance enhances the emotive quality of the character. As she tries to explain his delusions to him, the camera shows in a sequence of over-the shoulder shot/reverse-shots (fig. 110) the subtle emotional changes in

Alicia as she hears Nash tell her that he is breaking the protocols by sharing classified information with her but he needs her help to get out. Connelly as Alicia behaves with compassion, sympathy, and confidence at the beginning of the conversation but by the end shows her fragile mental and emotional state because she has realized that her husband is truly

“insane” and needs immediate help. Connelly successfully fulfils the role without using exaggerated facial expressions but only her eyes and eyebrows. She holds her tears the whole time until the moment that she confronts Nash with the fact that Parcher is an invention, his secret job for the Defense Department is a conspiracy, and he is “sick” and needs help.

In 1997, Nasar learned that Alicia was very protective of Nash and concerned deeply about “preserving his genius” as she instructed clearly “no drugs” nor “shock treatment” (in

307

Nasar 250). In the film, after Nash cut his wrist in his observation room, he is taken for insulin treatment. The scene serves a critical role in both narrative development and character-creation as it functions as a visual confrontation for both Nash and Alicia to realize that some of their most precious memories of the past never existed. It utilizes a sequence of shot/reverse-shots to show Nash’s, Alicia’s, and Dr. Rosen’s responses and reactions as the treatment starts. The camera switches between high-angle close-ups of John and low-angle medium close-ups of

Alicia (see fig. 111) to capture their subtle non-verbal communication, particularly eye contact that depicts the mutual support and dependence between the Nashes. Connelly puts her hand on the window glass to depict Alicia’s silent support for Nash.

Fig. 111. (left) Nash going through the insulin treatment; (right) Alicia supporting her husband by showing her gestures. Nasar had been informed that Nash bore this tormenting insulin treatment for “six weeks, five days a week” starting from “very early in the morning” till “late afternoon,” during the time of which he was constantly waken up or put back into unconscious or comatose states by injected chemicals; patients who went through the insulin procedure usually suffered rapid change of body temperature and blood-sugar levels, and sometimes, in severe cases, they were seen “biting tongues,” suffering from “broken bones,” and few even “remained in the coma” and never woke up again after the treatment (in Nasar 292). In the film, Howard focuses the camera

308

on the facial reactions of Nash and particularly Alicia, to indicate the unbearable and inhumane treatment that Nash goes through during his time in the facility.

Crowe’s and Connelly’s performances play a key role in affecting how we perceive the disease and its treatment. In a close-up (see fig. 112), we see that a tear rolls down at the corner of Nash’s eyes just before he falls into coma, implying his fear and despair in such situation; while the non-diegetic mellow music plays in background, the camera cuts to a medium close-up of Alicia who is standing from the upper-level observation room watching the whole process.

Connelly engages body-language (fig. 112) such as biting her fingers, fast blinking, turning her head away, and spinning the wedding ring on her finger, which works as a visual metaphor indicating that how important love, trust, and faith means to them in dealing with their struggles.

As she can’t bear watching any longer, she turns her back and asks in a broken voice that how often this treatment needs to continue for Nash to return to normal. The scene uses the rapid sound of the bed shaking on the floor as Nash slowly and agonizingly wakes up (by a glucose solution administered through his nose) to enhance the distress affective dimension of the narrative.

Fig. 112. (left) Nash passing out during the treatment; (right) Alicia turning back and feeling painful to watch the full procedure.

309

Princeton and the Nobel Prize: Cinematography, Make-up and Hair, and Affect

A Beautiful Mind is shot primarily (about 90%) in sequence. Howard cuts out much of the time of Nash’s recovery after his return from Dr. Rosen’s hospital to highlight his time at

Princeton where he learns to cope with his hallucinations and illusions, moves on with his daily life, and finally returns to an academic career. Princeton is Nash’s second home, particularly from the 1970s to the 1990s. Nasar quotes Nash as saying, “I have been sheltered here and thus avoided homelessness” (in Nasar 340). According to James Glass, the author of Private

Terror/Public Places and Delusion (1990), for Nash, his twenty years at Princeton provided him

“safety, freedom, friends,” and allowed him to become “freer to express himself, without fearing that someone would shut him up or fill him up with medication”; Glass further believes such experience “must have helped pull him out of his disastrous retreat into hermetic linguistic isolation” (in Nasar 335). Howard’s film reflects such significance of the location to enhance the affectivity of the narrative.

The film utilizes cinematic tools such as make-up/hair, costume design, elliptical editing and sound to fast-forward through Nash’s life from 1978 to 1994, when he received the Nobel price. We see how he gradually regains his reputation by engaging with students and receiving respect and recognition from his colleagues at Princeton. One of the important scenes that exhibit

Nash’s transformation is when Alicia anxiously awaits Nash outside the library but gets dragged down to the library by Hansen (Josh Lucas) (the dean of the mathematics department at the time); in a sequence of shot/reverse-shots (see fig. 113), we observe the change of expressions on her face as she surprisingly notices that Nash is keenly engaged with a group of students whom

310

he has volunteered to counsel and tutor in the library, helping these young minds find paths to success in developing original theories and ideas.

Fig. 113. (left) Nash tutoring students in the library at Princeton; (right) Nash receiving honor—the pen ceremony—from his fellow faculty members.

Earlier in the film, Nash is brought by his advisor at Princeton to the faculty dining hall to observe a distinguished professor being honored by his fellow colleagues in a pen ceremony.

Later in the film, Howard returns to a similar scene in honoring Nash for his accomplishments despite suffering from severe schizophrenia for most of his life. In her interview with Jörgen W.

Weibull, an A. O. Wallenberg Professor of Economics at the Stockholm School of Economics,

Nasar learned that when he visited Nash at Princeton before the Nobel Prize committee made its final decision, he asked Nash to join him at the faculty club for some tea; however, he was surprised to find that Nash hesitated before entering it because he was not a faculty member. As a distinguished math scientist, Nash’s genuine gesture touched him deeply and struck him “as an injustice that demanded remedy” (Nasar 361-2). Howard recreates this small but significant event in Nash’s life to enhance the joy-pride affect in the character-creation of Nash.

As the camera shows us in a sequence of shot/reverse-shots while Thomas King (Austin

Pendleton), who serves the role of Weibull in the film, talks to Nash at the lunch table, we see the rest of the faculty inside the faculty dining hall walking one-by-one towards Nash, putting

311

pens on his table in honor of his great achievement as a Nobel Laureate. As the pens line up in front of Nash one after another, the camera cuts to a bird’s eye-view shot (fig. 113) showing how

Nash seems feeling overwhelmed by the sudden welcome and respect he receives from all his colleagues—as he adds, “This was certainly most unexpected.” Crowe gives a subtle performance in revealing Nash’s inner thoughts and hidden emotions as he is seen holding a bag tightly to his chest—siting on the chair like an innocent child with tears in his eyes. Finally, after almost a lifetime, Nash’s work is being acknowledged, but he is not prepared for such an award.

The makeup and hair, costume design, cinematography, editing, nondiegetic music, and performance all work in a collaborative way to create affective viewing experience. The scene serves as a milestone in both his career as a mathematician and as a victor in his recovery against mental illness.

In her interview with the chairman of the Nobel Prize committee, Nasar was told that

“most Laureates were already famous and much honored. The Nobel was only a crowning glory.

But in Nash’s case it was quite different… He had gotten no recognition and was living in real misery. We helped lift him into daylight. We resurrected him in a way. It was emotionally satisfying” (Nasar 366). In the film, Howard adds a scene where Nash gives a speech upon receiving the prize to enhance the pride-joy affect. We are shown that Nash pays an emotional tribute to Alicia for her life-long love, care, trust, support, and understanding in fighting the battle against schizophrenia during his award speech. Nasar says: “It was part of Nash’s genius to choose a woman who would prove so essential to his survival... He saw her determination to have him as a real key to her character, suggesting that she knew what she was getting and

312

expected nothing more. They shared a good deal...There was a coolness, a calculation, that guided their actions” (Nasar 199).

Howard fully explores cinematic possibilities in this final scene to portray Nash, one of the greatest minds in the mathematic world, triumphing over all difficulties in life and transforming into who he has become. After a sequence of shot/reverse-shots showing the diegetic audience’s response while Nash delivers the speech—particularly Alicia’s reaction—we see in an extreme long shot that everyone stands up in the stadium applauding and cheering for

Nash. As he looks around, again, seemingly feeling a little overwhelmed, we are shown in a medium long-shot (see fig. 114) that Nash takes a handkerchief out of his pocket and kisses it— the same one that Alicia gave him on their first date.

Fig. 114. (left) Nash kissing the same handkerchief that Alicia gave him on their first date; (right) Alicia responding with hands crossing in a heart shape placing on her heart.

Nasar writes that as “strong-minded, pragmatic, and independent as she is, Alicia’s girlish infatuation has survived the disillusionments, hardships, and disappointments”; she further points out that Alicia “took Nash’s own assessment of his needs—for safety, free, and friendship—literally” (Nasar 385-40). Without her dedicated love and trust, it can be more challenging for Nash to fight the battle alone, not to mention being able to survive and succeed as a Nobel Prize Laureate. In this concluding scene, Connelly and Crowe both give a restrained

313

performance as many of the Nashs’ communications are non-verbal, and most are done via eye- contact through POV shots—they are both holding tears in their eyes. As Nash kisses the handkerchief, Alicia is shown in a medium close-up (fig. 114) that she has her hands on her heart—a similar pose she did earlier in the film when she tells Nash that she needs to believe that extraordinary things could happen if the heart is full of love. The use of make-up and hair and costume design also enhances the emotive quality of the scene as Alicia is elegantly dressed in a

Chinese traditional dress—Qipao.

Nasar dedicates her biography to Alicia Esther Larde Nash and cites William

Wordsworth’s “Intimations of Immortality”:

Another race hath been, and other palms are won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

In this film as in the others I have explored, affect and emotion play an important part in human communication. Logic exists when it makes sense. Among all mysteries that he has travelled in world of “the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back,” Nash discovers that only “the mysterious equations of love” explain everything. Through salient techniques,

Howard’s film allows us to explore with Nash what it was like for him in living through his disease and life challenges, the sense-making process of which, in turn, may promote aspectual identification with the hero character.

314

Nasar writes in the foreword to her biography that “watching someone get his life back is an incredibly sweet experience”; she further adds that “watching someone get his life back and in the process, touch the lives of millions of people is equally remarkable” (Nasar 9). To know is to open doors for survival; every piece of learned knowledge is an essential “stepping-stone” that prepares us in “acquisition of more precise knowledge today and tomorrow” (Aldama 9). Art works of literature and film are important parts of human lives, and the artistic experience of reading, watching, and feeling satisfies our thirst for aesthetic needs, inspires our imaginative minds, and touches our hearts. These, in turn, help us draw together the roles that affect and emotion, body, and mind play in making sense out of other lives and those of ourselves.

In conclusion, my project enters a multi-voiced conversation in adaptation studies by adding insights on the value of affect, cognitivism, and neurological theorizing. My study of five

Victorian novels and their selected film adaptations provides a useful framework in understanding, first, how Victorian novelists, influenced by scientific, social-economic, technological, and cultural changes at the time, experimented with the form and structure of fictional writing in mapping a repertoire of imagined others in these texts that appeal to readers via affect and emotion; and second, how these works—as “raw materials”—inspire filmmakers to create affective experiences. Since knowledge and techniques evolve across time, each film’s formal construction of affectivity and the cinematic experience it offers varies with different audiences. Viewers may respond differently to the same text due to factors such as familiarity with the story, spectators’ identity politics (e.g., race, class, gender, ethnicity, age), or other

315

extraneous events (such as accusations of sexual abuse against a writer or filmmaker, as in the cases of Hardy and Polanski, respectively).

Studying Film Adaptation via affect helps to train us in paying attention to the essential aspects and nuances of formal techniques in film and literature as well as their expressive nature in promoting human communication. According to Mark Carnes (1996: 9-10), film, like narrative arts in general, teaches us an “important truth about the human condition”; it does not function as a historical or philosophical ideal but rather as “an invitation for further exploration”

(in Cheshire 15). As discussed in the Introduction, literature and film engage audiences via the process of “enactment”; the aesthetic experiences they offer encourage us to prioritize our own

“personal truth” (Oatley 50). Therefore, it would be more productive to carry out a conversation that discusses film through the lens of “invention”—the process of which requires summary of

“vast amounts of data” (Robert Rosenstone 1995: 71)—or complex symbolization from the source material as well as a reconstruction of formulated ideas and arguments that promote a similar interaction and communication from the audiences (in Bingham 10).

As readers and viewers, we make sense with the affective cues embedded in the literary and film texts. By focusing on the formal construction of affect and emotion in film and literature, such an approach promotes “dialogical responses” between writers and filmmakers, especially in the ways that they manage to enhance the engaging experience rather than attempting to “interpret” or judge novels and films (Stam 76). This interdisciplinary approach helps us to gain a better understanding of how science can open minds and shine light, according to Herbert Lindenberger, on “the methods that we choose to exercise our interpretive and evaluative skills” as well as recognize and understand ourselves and the world we live in (qtd. in

316

Aldama 34). Such a theoretical practice, I believe, may also be tried with studies of other forms of adaptation—for instance, film based on comics (e.g., American superhero films produced by

Marvel), animated films (e.g., Disney cartoons, anime based on Japanese Manga), documentary films based on non-fictional elements, and so forth. This framework not only helps to inform our understanding of two major art forms but also demonstrates that studying film and literature in relation to the mind, body, and brain can promote and enhance our capability to think differently, drawing from a different toolbox to produce particular and resonant affective outcomes which may affect readers and viewers as well as their relation to the world—socially, culturally, and historically.

317

WORKS CITED

Aldama, Frederick L, ed. Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Print.

Ambrosini, Richard, and Richard Dury, eds. Robert Louis Stevenson: Writer of Boundaries. Madison, US: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. Print.

Amigoni, David. Edinburgh Critical Guides to Literature: Victorian Literature. Edinburgh, GB: Edinburgh University Press, 2011. ProQuest ebrary.

Aristotle, and Anthony Kenny. Poetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.

Asma, Stephen T. “Monsters on the Brain: An Evolutionary Epistemology of Horror.” Social Research 81.4 (2014): 941-69.

Austen, Jane. Emma. (Dover Thrift Editions). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

Austen, Jane. Persuasion. (Dover Thrift Editions). Dover Publications. Kindle Edition.

Baker, William, Kenneth Womack, eds. Companion to the Victorian Novel. Westport, US: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Baron, Cynthia, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo, eds. More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004. Print.

Bazin, André. What Is Cinema?: Vol. 1. Trans. Hugh Gray. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Print.

Bignell, Jonathan, Stephen Lacey, and Madeleine Macmurraugh-Kavanagh, eds. British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2014. Print.

Bingham, Dennis. Whose Lives Are They Anyway?: The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Print.

Bland, Jay. The Generation of Edward Hyde: The Animal Within, from Plato to Darwin to Robert Louis Stevenson. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. Print.

Bloom, Abigail B., and Mary S. Pollock, eds. Victorian Literature and Film Adaptation. Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2011. Print.

Bluestone, George. Novels into Film. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. Print.

318

Bondebjerg, Ib. “Documentary and Cognitive Theory: Narrative, Emotion and Memory.” Media and Communication, 2.1 (2014): 13-22.

Boozer, Jack. Authorship in Film Adaptation. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008. Print.

Bordwell, David, and Kristin M. Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw- Hill, 2009. Print.

Bordwell, David. “Cognitive Theory.” In Livingston, Paisley, and Carl R. Plantinga, eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. London: Routledge, 2009. Print, pp. 356- 367.

Boumelha, Penny. “Introduction”. In Hardy, Thomas. Oxford World’s Classics: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Oxford, GB: OUP Oxford, 2005. ProQuest ebrary.

Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Print.

Brantlinger, Patrick. The Spirit of Reform: British Literature and Politics, 1832–1867. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014. Print.

Brantlinger, Patrick and William B Thesing, eds. A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2002

Brontë, Charlotte: Jane Eyre. London, U.K. Transcribed from Service & Paton 1897. Kindle Edition.

Bruhn, Mark J, and Donald R. Wehrs, eds. Cognition, Literature and History. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Bullen, J. B. The Expressive Eye: Fiction and Perception in the Work of Thomas Hardy. 1st ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Print.

Burton, Antoinette M. and Isabel Hofmeyr, eds. Ten Books That Shaped the British Empire: Creating an Imperial Commons. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books. 2014.

Carroll, Noël and John Gibson, eds. Narrative, Emotion, and Insight. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011. Print

Carroll, Noël. “Film, Emotion, and Genre.” In Plantinga, Carl and Greg M. Smith, eds. Passionate Views: Film, Cognition and Emotion. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. Print, pp. 21-47.

Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. 1st Ed. New York: Routledge, 1990. Print.

319

Carroll, Noël. Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print.

Cartmell, Deborah, ed. A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation. Chichester: Wiley- Blackwell, 2012. Print.

Caserio, Robert L. and Clement Hawes, eds. The Cambridge History of the English Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.

Chaon, Dan. “Afterword.” In Stevenson, Robert L. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. New York: Signet Classic, 2003 (125-136). Print.

Cheshire, Ellen. Bio-pics: A Life in Pictures. London. US: Wallflower Press, 2015. ProQuest ebrary.

Clark, Mark. Smirk, Sneer, and Scream: Great Acting in Horror Cinema. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004.

Clay, Zanna and Iacoboni, Marco. “Mirroring Fictional Others”. In Schellekens, Elisabeth, and Peter Goldie, eds. The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 317-318.

Cohn, Dorrit. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978. Print.

Copeland, Edward, and Juliet McMaster, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.

Corrigan, Timothy, ed. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. London: Routledge, 2012. Print.

Custen, George F. Bio-pics: How Hollywood Constructed Public History. New Brunswick (New Jersey): Rutgers University Press, 1992. Print.

Dalziel, Pamela. “Victorian Studies.” Victorian Studies, vol. 49, no. 4, 2007, pp. 744–746. Print.

Damasio, Antonio R. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt, 1999. Print.

Damasio, Antonio R. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1994. Print.

Danahy, Martin. “Dr. Jekyll’s Two Bodies.” Nineteenth-Century Contexts, 35.1 (2013): 23-40. Print.

320

Darwin, Charles, and Paul Ekman. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print. Davis, Colin. “From Psychopathology to Diabolical Evil: Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde and Jean Renoir.” Journal of Romance Studies 12.1 (Spring 2012): 10-23. EBSCOhost. Davis, Michael. “Incongruous Compounds: Re-Reading Jekyll and Hyde and Late-Victorian Psychology.” Journal of Victorian Culture 11.2 (Autumn 2006): 207-225. EBSCOhost.

Dear, Nick, and Jane Austen. Persuasion by Jane Austen: A Screenplay. London: Methuen Film, 1996.

Devine, Christine. Class in Turn-of-The-Century Novels of Gissing, James, Hardy and Wells. 1st Ed. New York: Routledge, 2016. Print.

Di Paolo, Marc. Emma Adapted: Jane Austen’s Heroine from Book to Film. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Print.

Dolin, Tim. “Melodrama, Vision, and Modernity: Tess of the d’Urbervilles.” In Keith Wilson, eds. Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture: Companion to Thomas Hardy. Hoboken, GB: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 328-344. ProQuest ebrary.

Drabble, Margaret. The Genius of Thomas Hardy. 1st Ed. New York: Knopf, 1976. Print.

Dryden, Linda. “Robert Louis Stevenson and Popular Culture.” NJES: Nordic Journal of English Studies 9.3 (2010): 11-24. Edinburgh Napier University.

Dutton, Denis. The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. Bloomsbury Press. 2009. Print.

Ekman, Paul. Emotions Inside Out: 130 years after Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York, N.Y.: New York Academy of Sciences, 2003. Print.

Elliott, Peter, Ned Manning, Margaret Saltau, and Elizabeth Surbey. Drama Reloaded. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.

Erickson, Glenn. DVD Savant Review. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Mamoulian and Fleming Double bill. Retrieved from: https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1080hyde.html

Felperin, Leslie. “Jane Eyre.” Sight and Sound 6. 10 (1996): 43-44. Performing Arts Periodicals Database.

Fleming, Victor. Dir. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perf. Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). 1941. DVD.

321

Forster, E. M. Aspects of The Novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1927. Print.

Frus, Phyllis and Christy Williams, eds. Beyond Adaptation: Essays on Radical Transformations of Original Works. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland &, 2010. Print.

Fukunaga, Cary. Dir. Jane Eyre. Perf. Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell. Focus Features (US). 2011. DVD

Gallagher, Shaun. How the Body Shapes the Mind. Oxford: New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.

Gallese, Vittorio and Alvin Goldmann. “Mirror-neurons: In reflection.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2 (1998): 493–501.

Gatrell, Simon. Thomas Hardy and the Proper Study of Mankind. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Print.

Garrett, Peter K. Gothic Reflections: Narrative Force in Nineteenth-century Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Print.

Gaut, Berys. “Identification and Emotion in Narrative Film.” In Plantinga, Carl and G. M. Smith, eds. Passionate Views: Film, Cognition and Emotion. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. 1999. Print, pp. 200-216.

Gillett, John. “The Nutty Professor.” Sight and Sound 33.3 (summer 1964): 147. Periodicals Archive Online; Periodicals Index Online.

Gunn, D. P. “Free Indirect Discourse and Narrative Authority in Emma.” Narrative, 12.1 (2004): 35-54. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/nar.2003.0023

Hardy, Barbara. Thomas Hardy: Imagining Imagination in Hardy’s Poetry and Fiction. London, GB: The Athlone Press, 2000. ProQuest ebrary.

Hardy, Thomas. Oxford World’s Classics: Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Oxford, GB: OUP Oxford, 2005. ProQuest ebrary.

Hart, Susan. Brain, Attachment, Personality: An Introduction to Neuroaffective Development. London, GB: Karmac Books, 2008. Print.

Haynes, Roslynn. “Science and Literature: Are the Knowledge Wars Finally over?” Metode, no. 5, 2015, pp. 131–138.

Haynes, Roslynn D. “Whatever Happened to the ‘Mad, Bad’ Scientist? Overturning the Stereotype.” Public Understanding of Science, vol. 25, no. 1, 2016, pp. 31–44.

322

Heckerling, Amy. Dir. Clueless. Perf. Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy. Paramount Pictures, 1995. DVD.

Hemmings, Clare. “Invoking Affect: Cultural Theory and the Ontological Turn.” Cultural Studies, 19 (5). (2005): 548-567.

Henson, Eithne. Landscape and Gender in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, and Thomas Hardy: The Body of Nature. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2011. Print.

Hogan, Patrick C. Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists. New York: Routledge, 2003. Print

Hopkins, Lisa. Screening the Gothic. Austin, US: University of Texas Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebrary.

Horsdal, Marianne. Telling Lives: Exploring Dimensions of Narratives. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2012. Print.

Howard, Ron. Dir. A Beautiful Mind. Perf. Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly. Universal Pictures, 2001. DVD.

Hudelet, Ariane. “Austen and Sterne: Beyond Heritage”. In Cartmell, Deborah, ed. A Companion to Literature, Film, and Adaptation. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Print, pp. 256-273.

Hutcheon, Linda, and Siobhan O’ Flynn. A Theory of Adaptation. London: Routledge, 2013. Print.

Jaén, Isabel, and Julien J. Simon, eds. Cognitive Literary Studies: Current Themes and New Directions. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2012. Print.

Johnson, Mark. The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Print.

Jones, William B. Robert Louis Stevenson Reconsidered. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2003. Print.

Keen, Suzanne. “A Theory of Narrative Empathy.” Narrative. 14.3 (2006): 207-236. Print.

Keen, Suzanne. Empathy and the Novel. New York, US: Oxford University Press, 2007. ProQuest ebrary.

Keen, Suzanne. Thomas Hardy’s Brains: Psychology, Neurology, and Hardy’s Imagination. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2014. Print.

323

Keen, Suzanne. “Affective Trollope: Marshaling the Feelings in Orley Farm” in Morse, Deborah D., Margaret Markwick, and Mark W. Turner. Eds. Ashgate Research Companion to Anthony Trollope. Routledge, 2016. Print, pp166-77.

Kemp, Philip. “The Nutty Professor.” Sight and Sound, 6.10 (1996): 48-49. Performing Arts Periodicals Database.

King, Charles. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A Filmography.” Journal of Popular Film and Television, 25.1 (1997): 9. Periodicals Archive Online; Periodicals Index.

King, Jeannette. Tragedy in the Victorian Novel. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.

Kitson, Peter J. “The Victorian Gothic”. In Baker, William and Kenneth Womack, eds. Companion to the Victorian Novel. Westport, US: Greenwood Press, 2002. ProQuest ebrary.

Kramer, Dale. Thomas Hardy, The Forms of Tragedy. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 1976. Print.

Kret, Mariska E. “Emotional Expressions Beyond Facial Muscle Actions. A Call for Studying Autonomic Signals and Their Impact on Social Perception.” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (May 2015): 1-10.

Kuleov, L.V, and Ronald Levaco. Kuleshov on Film: Writings by Lev Kuleshov. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1974. Print.

Lacey, Nicola. Women, Crime, and Character: From Moll Flanders to Tess of the D’Urbervilles. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Laine, Tarja. Feeling Cinema: Emotional Dynamics in Film Studies. New York: Continuum, 2011. Print.

Lamonica, Drew. We Are Three Sisters: Self and Family in the Writing of the Brontës. Columbia; London: University of Missouri Press, 2003. Print.

Lange, Robert J. G. Gender Identity and Madness in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1998. Print.

Langer, Susan K. Philosophical Sketches (1962). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 2009 Print.

Law, Jules. “There’s Something about Hyde.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 42.3 (Fall 2009): 504- 510. EBSCOhost.

324

Leitch, Thomas M. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.

Lewis, Jerry. Dir. The Nutty Professor. Paramount Pictures. 1963. DVD.

Lipscomb, S.D. & Tolchinsky, DE. “The Role of Music Communication in Cinema.” In Miell, Dorothy, R. A. R. MacDonald and D. J. Hargreaves, Eds. Musical Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2005): 383-404.

Lovell, Alan, and Peter Krämer, eds. Screen Acting. London: Routledge, 1999.

Luckhurst, Roger. “Introduction.” In Stevenson, Robert L. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Other Tales. Oxford [England]: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp vii-xxxii. ProQuest ebrary.

MacCabe, Colin, Rick Warner, and Kathleen Murray, eds. True to the Spirit: Film Adaptation and the Question of Fidelity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.

Macdonald, Gina and Andrew Macdonald, eds. Jane Austen On Screen. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print

McGrath, Douglas. Dir. Emma. Perf. Gwyneth Paltrow, James Cosmo, Greta Scacchi. Miramax, 1996. DVD.

Macnab, Geoffrey. “Jane Eyre.” Sight & Sound 21.10 (2011): 68-69. Humanities Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 5 Dec. 2016.

Mallett, Phillip. The Victorian Novel and Masculinity. 1st Ed. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Print.

Mamoulian, Rouben. Dir. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Paramount Pictures. 1931. DVD.

Mank, Greg – Audio Commentary. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dir. Rouben Mamoulian (1931), Dir. Victor Fleming (1941). 2004. DVD.

Mar, Raymond A., and Keith Oatley. “The Function of Fiction is the Abstraction and Simulation of Social Experience.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3.3 (2008): 173-192.

Massumi, Brian. Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Print.

Mendelson, Edward. The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say about the Stages of Life. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 2006.

325

Michell, Roger. Dir. Persuasion. Perf. Amanda Root, Ciarán Hinds, Susan Fleetwood. Sony Pictures Classics, 1995. DVD.

Miall, David S. “Emotions and the Structuring of Narrative Responses.” Poetics Today 32.2 (2011): 323-348.

Miall, David S. “Enacting the Other: Towards an Aesthetics of Feeling in Literary Reading”. In Schellekens, Elisabeth, and Peter Goldie, eds. The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 285-298.

Monk, Claire. “Eyre Conditioning.” Sight & Sound 21.10 (2011): 44-45.

Murphy, Patricia. Time Is of the Essence: Temporality, Gender, and the New Woman. Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York, 2001. Print.

Nabokov, Vladimir V. and Fredson Bowers. Lectures on Literature. San Diego, Calif.: Harvest, 1982. Print.

Naremore, James, ed. Film Adaptation. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2000. Print.

Nasar, Sylvia. A Beautiful Mind. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1998. Print.

Nathanson, Donald L. “Prologue”. In Tomkins, Silvan. Affect Imagery Consciousness: The Complete Edition: Two Volumes. New York, US: Springer Publishing Company, 2008, pp. xi-xxvi. ProQuest ebrary.

Nathanson, Donald L. Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex, and the Birth of the Self. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

Nelles, William. “Jane’s Brains: Austen and Cognitive Theory.” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies: A Journal of Criticism and Theory 16.1 (2014): 6-29.

Nemesvari, Richard, ed. “Introduction”. In Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2000. Print. pp 9-49.

Oatley, Keith. “Meetings of Minds: Dialogue, Sympathy, and Identification, in Reading Fiction”. Poetics, 26 (1999): 439–54.

Oatley, Keith. “Emotions and the Story Worlds of Fiction”. In Green, Melanie C., Jeffrey J. Strange, and Timothy Brock, eds. Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002, 39–69.

326

Oatley, Keith and Mitra Gholamain. “Emotions and Identification: Connections between Readers and Fiction”. In Hjort, Mette and Sue Laver, eds. Emotion and the Arts. New York: Oxford University Press, (1997) pp. 263–281.

O’Gorman, Francis. The Victorian Novel. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Pub., 2002. Kindle Edition.

Owen, Gabrielle. “The Mind of the Child: Child Development in Literature, Science, and Medicine, 1840—1900 (review).” The Lion and the Unicorn 35.3 (2011): 327-30. Web.

Parrill, Sue. Jane Austen On Film and Television. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2002. Print.

Penner, Louise, Sparks, Tabitha. Victorian Medicine and Popular Culture, 2015. Print.

Pettersson, Anders. The Concept of Literary Application: Readers’ Analogies from Text to Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print

Plantinga, Carl R, and Greg M. Smith, eds. Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. Print.

Plantinga, Carl. Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009. Print.

Plato. Republic, The Floating Press, 2009. Kindle Edition.

Proulx, Travis, and Michael J. Chandler. “Jekyll and Hyde and Me: Age-Graded Differences in Conceptions of Self-Unity.” Human Development (0018716X) 52.5 (September 2009): 261-286. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

Polanski, Roman. Dir. Tess. Perf. Nastassja Kinski, Peter Firth, Leigh Lawson. Columbia Pictures, 1979. DVD.

Rose, Jonathan. “Education, Literacy, and the Victorian Reader.” In Patrick Brantlinger, and William Thesing eds. A Companion to the Victorian Novel. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2008. Print.

Reed, Thomas L. The Transforming Draught: Jekyll and Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson and the Victorian Alcohol Debate. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland &, 2006. Print.

Regis, Pamela. A Natural History of the Romance Novel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Print.

Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and Corrado Sinigaglia. Mirrors in the Brain: How Our Minds Share Actions and Emotions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

327

Rizzolatti, Giacomo, and L. Craighero. “The Mirror-Neuron System”. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27 (2004): 169–92.

Rolls, Edmond T. “The Origins of Aesthetics: A Neurobiological Basis for Affective Feelings and Aesthetics”. In Schellekens, Elisabeth, and Peter Goldie, eds. The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, pp. 116-165.

Roshwald, Mordecai. Dreams and Nightmares: Science and Technology in Myth and Fiction. Critical Explorations in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland &, Publishers, 2008.

Rothfield, Lawrence. “Medical”. In Tucker, Herbert F., eds. New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Somerset, GB: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014, pp. 172-185. ProQuest ebrary.

Rubik, Margarete, and Schartmann. Elke Mettinger. A Breath of Fresh Eyre: Intertextual and Intermedial Reworkings of Jane Eyre. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007.

Sabor, Peter. The Cambridge Companion to Emma. Cambridge: University Printing House, 2015. Print.

Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory. The Brain, The Mind, and The Past. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Print.

Schalk, Sami, and Kerry Powell. “What Makes Mr. Hyde So Scary? Disability as A Result of Evil and Cause of Fear.” Disability Studies Quarterly 28.4 (2008): MLA International Bibliography, EBSCOhost.

Schellekens, Elisabeth, and Peter Goldie, eds. The Aesthetic Mind: Philosophy and Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Print.

Sedgwick, Eve K. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006. Print.

Shergold, Adrian. Dir. Persuasion. Perf. Sally Hawkins, Alice Kige, Rupert Penry-Jones. Clerkenwell Films, 2007. DVD.

Shimamura, Arthur P, ed. Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.

Sharp, Ian. Dir. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Perf. Justine Waddell, Jason Flemyng, Oliver Milburn. LWT, 1998. DVD.

Shadyac, Tom. Dir. The Nutty Professor. Imagine Entertainment. 1996. DVD.

328

Shuttleworth, Sally. “Mind and Body in Charlotte Brontë's Fiction.” Victorian Review, vol. 42 no. 2, 2016, pp. 222-228. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/vcr.2016.0056

Simon Petch and Jan-Melissa Schramm. “Legal”. In Herbert F. Tucker, ed. A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Somerset, GB: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014, pp. 156-171. ProQuest ebrary.

Singh, Shubh M., and Subho Chakrabarti. “A Study in Dualism: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Indian Journal of Psychiatry 50.3 (July 2008): 221-223. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

Sobchack, Vivian C. The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1992. Print.

Sobchack, Vivian. “Phenomenology.” In Livingston, Paisley, and Carl R. Plantinga, eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. London: Routledge, 2009. Print, pp. 435- 445.

Sorum, E. “Hardy’s Geography of Narrative Empathy.” Studies in the Novel, 43. 2 (2011): 179- 199. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/sdn.2011.0024.

Spacks, Patricia Meyer. Novel Beginnings: Experiments in Eighteenth-Century English Fiction. New Haven, US: Yale University Press, 2006. ProQuest ebrary.

Spadoni, Robert. A Pocket Guide to Analyzing Films. Oakland: University of California Press, 2014. Print.

Stam, Robert. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” In James Naremore, ed. Film Adaptation. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2000: pp54-76.

Springer, Claudia and Julie R Levinson, eds. Acting. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015. Print.

Stevenson, Robert Louis. Oxford World’s Classics: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales. Oxford, GB: OUP Oxford, 2006. ProQuest ebrary.

Sudol, John. Acting Face to Face 2: Emotional Alignment: How to Create Genuine Emotion for TV and Film (Language of the Face). 2015. Kindle Edition.

Talbot, Daniel, ed. Film, An Anthology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959. Print.

Thomas, Eric Austin. “Camera Grammar: First-Person Point of View and the Divided ‘I’ Rouben Mamoulian’s 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 32.7 (October 2015): 660-666. MLA International Bibliography, EBSCOhost.

329

Tomkins, Silvan S. Affect Imagery Consciousness: The Complete Edition. New York, US: Springer Publishing Company, 2008, ProQuest ebrary.

Tsomondo, Thorell Porter. The not so Blank “Blank Page”: The Politics of Narrative and the Woman Narrator in the Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century English Novel. New York: Peter Lang, 2007

Tucker, Herbert F. A New Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture. Hoboken: Wiley, 2014. Print.

Tunney, Tom, and Geoffrey Macnab. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Sight and Sound, 6.8 (1996): 67. Performing Arts Periodicals Database.

Walkowitz, Judith. “London in the 1880s”. Linehan, Katherine. ed. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Norton Critical Edition, 2003, pp. 141-145. Print.

Watt, Ian. The Rise of the Novel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957. Print.

Watts, Cedric. Humanities Insights: Thomas Hardy: Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Penrith, GB: Humanities-Ebooks, LLP, 2007. ProQuest ebrary.

White, Hayden. “Historiography and Historiophoty.” The American Historical Review, vol. 93, no. 5, 1988, pp. 1193–1199.

Whalen, Paul J. and Robert E. Kleck. “The Shape of Faces (To Come).” Nature Neuroscience, 11.7 (July 2008): 739-740.

Whitt, Jan. Dangerous Dreams: Essays on American Film and Television, 2013. Ebrary, Inc.

Williams, Linda, ed. Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Print.

Wiltshire, John. The Hidden Jane Austen. Cambridge University Press, 2014. Print.

Winter, Eyal. Feeling Smart: Why Our Emotions Are More Rational Than We Think. 1st ed. New York: PublicAffairs, 2014. Print.

Wright, T. R. Thomas Hardy on Screen. 1st ed. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.

Young, Kay. Imagining Minds: The Neuro-Aesthetics of Austen, Eliot, and Hardy. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010. Print.

330

Zeffirelli. Franco. Dir. Jane Eyre. Perf. William Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Joan Plowright Anna Paquin Miramax Films. 1996 DVD.

Zeitler, Michael A. Representations of Culture: Thomas Hardy’s Wessex and Victorian Anthropology. 1st Ed. New York: P. Lang, 2007. Print.

Zola, Émile. Oxford World’s Classics: Kill. Oxford, GB: OUP Oxford, 2005. ProQuest ebrary.

Zunshine, Lisa. “Why Jane Austen Was Different, and Why We May Need Cognitive Science to See It.” Style 41.3 (2007): 275-299.

Zunshine, Lisa. Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2006. Print.

331

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Shu Feng was born in Liaoning, China. Prior to joining the PhD program at UT-Dallas, she has held a tenured Assistant Professor position at a four-year research institution in China (2005- present). She first came to the United States in 2007 as an exchange scholar (sponsored by her former employer and the Chinese government) and completed her second Masters degree in

Post-Secondary Education with a concentration area of study in TESOL in Alabama. Within these two years of graduate study, she also served as a teaching fellow and program coordinator of a joint International Education Program, initiated by Troy University and the Troy City Board of Education, and was responsible for Curriculum and Assessment for Student Success. She returned to China after graduation in 2009, and continued her teaching in Liaoning Shihua

University till 2011 before coming back to the States to further her education and pursue a doctoral degree in the Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas.

332

CURRICULUM VITAE

SHU FENG

University of Texas at Dallas School of Arts & Humanities 800 W. Campbell Rd. Richardson, TX 75080

EDUCATION:

Ph.D. The University of Texas at Dallas, Literature and Film Studies, School of Arts and Humanities, Richardson, Texas, May 2018. M.A. Troy University, English, Troy, Alabama, 2009. M.A. Northeast Normal University, English, Changchun, China, 2007. B.A. Bohai University, Liaoning, China, 2005

ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS:

2005-Present Assistant Professor (Tenured), English, School of Foreign Languages, Liaoning Shihua University, China.

GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND AWARDS:

2017-2018 The Robert Plant Armstrong Fellowship, UTD, Texas. 2017-2018 The Graduate Student Travel Grant, UTD, Texas. 2015-2017 The Graduate Studies Scholarship, UTD, Texas. 2015-2017 Graduate Teaching Assistantship, UTD, Texas. 2012-2015 The Robert Plant Armstrong Fellowship, UTD, Texas. 2011-2012 Chi Sigma Iota, Award for Academic Excellence, Troy University, Alabama. 2010-2011 Outstanding Teaching Award, Liaoning Shihua University, China. 2007-2009 Exchange Scholar Fellowship, International Programs, Ministry of Education, Beijing, China. 2007-2009 Travel Grant for New Faculty Members, International Program, Liaoning Shihua University, China.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

2005-Present Assistant Professor, English, Liaoning Shihua University, China. 2015-2017 Teaching Assistant, School of Arts and Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas. 2011-2012 Teaching Fellow, International Education Program, Troy City Board of Education, Troy, Alabama. 2008-2009 English Instructor, ESL Center—International Program, Troy University, Alabama. 2007-2009 Teaching Fellow, Troy City Board of Education, Troy, Alabama.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVIES:

“‘Free at Last!’: Transforming the Monstrous Human Invention—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Across Time.” Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image Annual Conference, Bozeman, Montana. Forthcoming. June 13-17, 2018. “‘Free at Last!’: Transforming the Monstrous Human Invention—Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Across Time.” Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities Annual Conference, Kent, UK. Forthcoming. July 1-4, 2018.

DEPARTMENTAL AND UNIVERISITY SERVICES

2011-2012 Program Coordinator, International Education Program, Curriculum and Assessment for Student Success, Troy University and Troy City Board of Education. 2009-2011 Assistant Director, Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Liaoning Shihua University, China, 2007-2009 Program Coordinator, International Education Program, Curriculum and Assessment for Student Success, Troy University and Troy City Board of Education, Troy, Alabama. 2005-2007 Committee Member, Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, Liaoning Shihua University, China. 2005-2007 Program Coordinator, National Institution of Higher-Education— Accreditation, Assessments, and Evaluation, School of Foreign Languages, Liaoning Shihua University, China.

TRAININGS AND CERTIFICATES:

IRB Research Training Certificate, Institutional Review Board and Office of Graduate Studies, Troy University, Alabama, 2008. Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methodology, Office of Graduate Studies, Troy University, Alabama, 2008. Teaching Certificate: A Permanent Teaching License for University Teachers, Ministry of Education, China, 2005. Teaching Certificate: A Permanent Teaching License for High School Teachers, Ministry of Education, China, 2004.

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS: Modern Language Association The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities The International Society for the Study of Narratives TESOL International Association