Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman

by Stanley Cavell

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 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.

"Film is an interest of mine," Stanley Cavell has written, "or say a love, not separate from my interest in, or love of, philosophy." In Contesting Tears Cavell once again brilliantly unites his two loves, using detailed and perceptive musings on melodrama to reflect on philosophical problems of skepticism, psychoanalysis, and perfectionism. As he shows, the fascination and intelligence of such great stars as
Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck illuminate, as they are illuminated by, the topics and events of these beloved and enduring films.

Genres: Philosophy, Film, Nonfiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Stanley Cavell was an American philosopher. He was the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. He worked in the fields of ethics, aesthetics, and ordinary language philosophy. As an interpreter, he produced influential works on Wittgenstein, Austin, Emerson, Thoreau, and Heidegger. His work is characterized by its conversational tone and frequent literary references.

Reviews

[Dávid Pieš · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to learn more about Cavell's ideas, I don't recommend starting with this book. It's not easy to follow and in some places, it's quite obscure. It definitely takes a while to get used to Cavell's writing style - it's painful at first but very rewarding in the end. I think it's worth starting with ‘Pursuit of Happiness’ first instead. As an introduction to Cavell, it certainly serves better. Not only is it more readable as a book, but it also provides the basic background for the ‘Contesting Tears’. Alternatively, ‘The World Viewed’ works very well too.

In terms of content, If you are an enemy of psychoanalysis, this book will take you in two possible directions. Either its sometimes extensive application will put you off or you will grow more fond of it thanks to Cavell's refreshing use of it. For me, it was the latter.

It was also nice to see that Cavell apparently deems the genre of the melodrama of the unknown woman as a space in which the focus shifts from male to female protagonists and that its cinematographic design gives women in the film a stronger voice (paradoxically) and a central significance within the narrative. And yet, it could be postulated that for Cavell, this entire genre is merely a subject of the irony of human identity as such. To put it obscurely in Cavell's tradition.

All in all, it was one of the most interesting readings I've come across in philosophy lately. A highly insightful and especially interesting reflection on the film. Certainly controversial in places, but for me personally probably the most informative piece of writing on film so far.

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I assume that movies have played a role in American culture different from their role in other cultures, and more particularly that this difference is a function of the absence in America of the European edifice of philosophy. And since I assume further that American culture has been no less ambitious, craved no less to think about itself, than the most ambitious European culture, I assume further still that the difference everyone recognizes as existing between American and European literature is a function of the brunt of thought that American literature, in its foundings in, for instance, Emerson and Whitman and Poe, had to bear in that absence of given philosophical founding and edifice, lifting the fragments that the literature found, so to speak, handy and portable. Finally, I assume that American film at its best participates in this Western cultural ambition of self-thought or self-invention that presents itself in the absence of the Western edifice of philosophy, so that on these shores film has the following peculiar economy: it has the space, and the cultural pressure, to satisfy the craving for thought, the ambition of a talented culture to examine itself publicly; but its public lacks the means to grasp this thought as such for the very reason that it naturally or historically lacks that edfice of philosophy within which to grasp it." (72)

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a real falling-off from "Pursuits of Happiness." I recommend watching the melodramas, but you're good to skip Cavell's tortured, self-referring prose, which in this case yields very few insights. I don't say this as a mindless opponent... I like plenty of Cavell's other books. It's just that something has to justify the time spent working through his neurotically arhythmic style. Here, very little does.

[Paul Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has taken me a long time to appreciate Cavell's interesting and sophisticated approach to philosophy and to film, but this book does illustrate how well he does what he does. It is still not really my taste, but I can see why people might love it and I agree that he is always interesting and very thought-provoking. This book certainly brings out depths in the films he discusses which I have never expected. I imagine that if you like Cavell, you will love this book. If you don't know or like Cavell, this might not be the best one to start with, since even the writing style is something that takes a bit of getting to understand and getting used to. Overall, though definitely a man with a very interesting perspective.