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What is marriage? Can a relationship dedicated to equality, friendship, and mutual education flower in an atmosphere of romance? What are the paths between loving another and knowing another? Stanley Cavell identified a genre of classic American films that engaged these questions in his study of comedies of remarriage, Pursuits of Happiness.
With Contesting Tears, Cavell demonstrates that a contrasting genre, which he calls "the melodrama of the unknown woman," shares a surprising number and weave of concerns with those comedies.
Cavell provides close readings of four melodramas he finds definitive of the genre: Letter from an Unknown Woman; Gaslight; Now, Voyager; and Stella Dallas. The women in these melodramas, like the women in the comedies, demand equality, shared education, and transfiguration, exemplifying for Cavell a moral perfectionism he identifies as Emersonian.
But unlike the comedies, which portray a quest for a shared existence of expressiveness and joy, the melodramas trace instead the woman's recognition that in this quest she is isolated. Part of the melodrama concerns the various ways the men in the films (and the audiences of the films) interpret and desire to force the woman's consequent inaccessibility.
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Edition | Availability |
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1
Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman
February 1, 1997, University Of Chicago Press
in English
0226098168 9780226098166
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2
Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman
February 15, 1997, University Of Chicago Press
in English
0226098141 9780226098142
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3
Contesting tears: the Hollywood melodrama of the unknown woman
1996, University of Chicago Press
in English
0226098141 9780226098142
|
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Libraries near you:
WorldCat
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4
Contesting tears: the Hollywood melodrama of the unknown woman
1996, University of Chicago Press
in English
0226098141 9780226098142
|
zzzz
Libraries near you:
WorldCat
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Book Details
First Sentence
"SOMETHING IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE unknown woman melodrama must bear, as I was saying, the weight borne by the weight of conversation in the case of remarriage comedy."
ID Numbers
First Sentence
"SOMETHING IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE unknown woman melodrama must bear, as I was saying, the weight borne by the weight of conversation in the case of remarriage comedy."
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- Created April 29, 2008
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August 5, 2010 | Edited by IdentifierBot | added LibraryThing ID |
April 24, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Fixed duplicate goodreads IDs. |
April 16, 2010 | Edited by bgimpertBot | Added goodreads ID. |
April 14, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the edition. |
April 29, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |