THE CASE OF
THE MISSING MOTHER

MATERNAL ISSUES IN
VIDOR’S STELLA DALLAS

E. Ann Kaplan

For complex reasons, feminists have focused on the Mother largely from the daughter position.¹ When I first joined a consciousness-raising group in 1969, we dealt with Mothering only in terms of our own relationships to our mothers, and this despite the fact that a few of us in the group already had children. As a graduate student and mother of a one-year-old girl, I badly needed to talk about issues of career versus Motherhood, about how having the child affected my marriage, about the conflict between my needs and the baby’s needs; but for some reason, I felt that these were unacceptable issues.

I think this was because at that time feminism was very much a movement of daughters. The very attractiveness of feminism was that it provided an arena for separation from oppressive closeness with the Mother; feminism was in part a reaction against our mothers, who had tried to inculcate the patriarchal “feminine” in us, much to our anger. This made it difficult for us to identify with Mothering and to look from the position of the Mother.

Unwittingly, then, we repeated the patriarchal omission of the Mother. From a psychoanalytic point of view, we remained locked in ambivalence toward the Mother, at once still deeply tied to her while striving for an apparently unattainable autonomy. Paradoxically, our complex oedipal struggles prevented us from seeing the Mother’s oppression (although we had no such problems in other areas), and resulted in our assigning the Mother, in her heterosexual, familial setting, to an absence and silence analogous to the male relegation of her to the periphery.

Traditional psychoanalysis, as an extension of patriarchy, has omitted the Mother, except when she is considered from the child’s point of view. Since patriarchy is constructed according to the male unconscious, feminists grew up in a society that repressed the Mother. Patriarchy chose, rather, to foreground woman’s status as castrated, as lacking, since this construction benefits patriarchy. If the phallus defines everything, legitimacy is granted to the subordination of women. Feminists have been rebellious about this second construction of ourselves as castrated, but have only recently begun to react strongly against the construction of the Mother as marginal.

This reaction began in the mid-seventies with the ground-breaking books about motherhood by Adrienne Rich, Dorothy Dinnerstein, and Jane La-zarre.² Rich and Dinnerstein exposed the repression of the Mother, and analyzed the reasons for it, showing both psychoanalytic and socio-economic causes. Building on Melanie Klein’s and Simone de Beauvoir’s ideas, Dinnerstein described the early childhood experience as one of total dependency on a Mother who is not distinguished from the self (she is “good” when present, “bad” when absent). This, together with the Mother’s assimilation to natural processes through her reproductive function, results in her split cultural designation and representation.

Rich shows in numerous ways how the Mother is either idealized, as in the myths of the nurturing, ever-present but self-abnegating figure, or disparaged, as in the corollary myth of the sadistic, neglectful Mother who puts her needs first. The Mother as a complex person in her own right, with multiple roles to fill and conflicting needs and desires, is absent from patriarchal representations. Silenced by patriarchal structures that have no room for her, the Mother-figure, despite her actual psychological importance, has been allotted to the symbolic margins, put in a position limited to that of spectator.

These constructions contributed to feminists’ negative attitude toward mothering in the early days of the movement. We were afraid not only of becoming like our own mothers, but also of falling into one or the other of the mythic paradigms, should we have children. Put on the defensive, feminists rationalized their fears and anger, focusing on the destructiveness of the nuclear family as an institution, and seeing the Mother as an agent of the patriarchal establishment. We were unable then to see that the Mother was as much a victim of patriarchy as ourselves, constructed as she is by a whole series of discourses—psychoanalytic, political, and economic.

The Hollywood cinema is as responsible as anything for perpetuating the oppressive patriarchal myths. Relatively few Hollywood films make the Mother central, relegating her, rather, to the periphery of a narrative focused on a husband, son, or daughter. The dominant paradigms are similar to those found in literature and mythology throughout Western culture, and may be outlined quite simply:

1. The Good Mother, who is all-nurturing and self-abnegating—the “Angel in the House.” Totally invested in husband and children, she lives only through them, and is marginal to the narrative.³

2. The Bad Mother or Witch—the underside to the first myth. Sadistic, hurtful, and jealous, she refuses the self-abnegating role, demanding her own life. Because of her “evil” behavior, this mother often takes control of the narrative, but she is punished for her violation of the desired patriarchal ideal, the Good Mother.⁴

3. The Heroic Mother, who suffers and endures for the sake of husband and children. A development of the first Mother, she shares her saintly qualities, but is more central to the action. Yet, unlike the second Mother, she acts not to satisfy herself but for the good of the family.⁵

4. The Silly, Weak, or Vain Mother. Found most often in comedies, she is ridiculed by husband and children alike, and generally scorned and disparaged.⁶

As these limited paradigms show, Hollywood has failed to address the complex issues that surround mothering in capitalism. Each paradigm is assigned a moral position in a hierarchy that facilitates the smooth functioning of the system. The desirable paradigm purposely presents the Mother from the position of child or husband, since to place the camera in the Mother’s position would raise the possibility of her having needs and desires of her own. If the Mother reveals her desire, she is characterized as the Bad Mother (sadistic, monstrous), much as the single woman who expresses sexual desire is seen as destructive.

It is significant that Hollywood Mothers are rarely single and rarely combine mothering with work.⁷ Stahl’s and Sirk’s versions of Imitation of Life are exceptions (although in other ways the Mother figures reflect the myths). Often, as in Mildred Pierce, the Mother is punished for trying to combine work and mothering. Narratives that do focus on the Mother usually take that focus because she resists her proper place. The work of the film is to reinscribe the Mother in the position patriarchy desires for her and, in so doing, teach the female audience the dangers of stepping out of the given position. Stella Dallas is a clear example: the film “teaches” Stella her “correct” position, bringing her from resistance to conformity with the dominant, desired myth.⁸

How could she—oh how could she have become a part of the picture on the screen, while her mother was still in the audience, out there, in the dark, looking on?

This quotation is taken from the 1923 novel Stella Dallas, by Olive Higgins. It shows how the cinema had already, by 1923, become a metaphor for the oppositions of reality and illusion, poverty and wealth. Within the film Stella Dallas, we find the poor on the outside (Laurel’s mother, Stella) and the rich on the inside (Laurel and the Morrisons). This mimics, as it were, the situation of the cinema spectator, who is increasingly subjected to a screen filled with rich people in luxurious studio sets.

But it is not simply that the 1937 version of Stella Dallas makes Stella the working-class spectator, looking in on the upper-class world of Stephen Dallas and the Morrison family. She is excluded not only as a working-class woman, but also as the Mother. Ben Brewster notes that the 1923 novel moves Laurel “decisively into the world of Helen Morrison, shifting its point of identification to Laurel’s mother, Stella Dallas, who abolishes herself as visible to her daughter so as to be able to contemplate her in that world.”⁹ It is the process by which Stella Dallas makes herself literally Mother-as-spectator that interests me, for it symbolizes the position that the Mother is most often given in patriarchal culture, regardless of which paradigm is used.

Stella is actually a complex mixture of a number of the Mother paradigms. She tries to resist the position as Mother that patriarchal marriage, within the film, seeks to put her in—thus, for a moment, exposing that position. First, she literally objects to mothering because of the personal sacrifices involved; then, she protests by expressing herself freely in her eccentric style of dress. The film punishes her for both forms of resistance by turning her into a “spectacle” produced by the upper class’s disapproving gaze, a gaze the audience is made to share through the camera work and editing.

The process by which Stella is brought from resistance to passive observer highlights the way the Mother is constructed as marginal or absent in patriarchy. As the film opens, we see Stella carefully preparing herself to be the object of Stephen Dallas’s gaze; she self-consciously creates the image of the sweet, innocent but serious girl as she stands in the garden of her humble dwelling pretending to read a book. Despite all her efforts to be visible, her would-be lover fails to notice her. The cinema spectator, seeing that Stephen is as much someone with class as Stella is without it, realizes that Stella is overlooked because she is working class.

Stella’s plan to escape from her background is understandable, given the place her mother occupies within the family. This gaunt and haggard figure slaves away at sink and stove in the rear of the frame, all but invisible on a first viewing. She only moves into the frame to berate Stella for refusing to give her brother the lunch he wants. “What do you want to upset him for? What would I do without him?” she asks, betraying her economic and psychological dependence on this young man, not yet ground down (as is her husband) by toil at the mill. As Stella narcissistically appraises her own fresh beauty in the kitchen’s dismal mirror, she is inspired to take her brother his lunch after all, hoping to meet Stephen Dallas, whom she now knows is a runaway millionaire.

Stella’s “performance” at the mill office, where Stephen has settled down to a lonely lunch, is again self-conscious. But this time her flawless acting wins her what she wants. Dressed as a virginal young lady, she gazes adoringly up at Stephen instead of following the directions he is giving her—an attention that surprises but flatters the heart-sick man.

Shortly after this, we find Stephen and Stella at the movies. A shot of upper-class men and women dancing on a screen, filmed from the perspective of the theater audience, is followed by a front shot of Stella and Stephen. He munches disinterestedly on popcorn while she snuggles up to him, intensely involved in the film. This scene confirms that Stella has been acting “as if in the movies,” performing with Stephen according to codes learned through watching films. We see how films indeed do “teach” us about the life we should desire and about how to respond to movies. As the film ends, Stella is weeping; and as women watching Stella watching the screen, we are both offered a model of how we should respond to films and given insight into the mechanisms of cinematic voyeurism and identification. Stella, the working-class spectator, is outside the rich world on the screen, offered as spectacle for her emulation and envy. “I want to be like the women in the movies,” Stella says to Stephen on their way home.

Meanwhile, Stella and Stephen themselves become objects of the envious, voyeuristic gaze of some passersby when they embrace outside the cinema. The women watching are now “on the outside,” while Stella is beginning her brief sojourn “inside” the rich world she envied on screen. Thus, to the basic audience-screen situation of the Stella Dallas film itself, Vidor has added two levels: Stella and Stephen in the movie house, and Stella and Stephen as “spectacle” for the street “audience.” Stella will herself create yet another spectator-screen experience (one that is indeed foreshadowed in the movie scene here), when she becomes “spectator” to the screen/scene of her daughter’s luxurious wedding in the Morrison household at the end of the film. Stella has made her daughter into a “movie star” through whom she can live vicariously.

This is only possible through Motherhood as constructed in patriarchy, and thus Stella’s own mothering is central to her trajectory. It is fitting that the movie scene cuts directly to Stella’s haggard mother laboring in her kitchen the following morning. Her victimization is underscored by her total fear of Stella’s father, who is yelling loudly. Both the mother and son are terrified that the father will discover that Stella has not come home. Indeed, the father angrily ejects his daughter from his house—until her smiling arrival, already wed to Stephen Dallas, mitigates all sins.

This is the last we see of Stella’s family. For all intents and purposes the working-class family is eliminated on Stella’s entrance into Stephen Dallas’s upper-class world—it is made as invisible in filmic terms as it is culturally. What Stella has to contend with are her remaining working-class desires, attitudes, and behaviors, which the film sees ambiguously as either ineradicable (which would involve an uncharacteristic class determinism), or as deliberately retained by Stella. Women are socialized to be flexible precisely so that they can marry into a higher class, taking their family up a notch as they do so. We have seen that Stella is aware of how she should behave. (“I want to be with you,” she tells Stephen after seeing the movie, “I want to be like you. I want to be like all the people you’ve been around.”) But Stella resists this change once she has won her upper-class man, which makes her at once a more interesting and a more tragic heroine. Given the structures that bind her, she has more sense of self than is ultimately good for her.

It is both Stella’s (brief) resistance to mothering and her resistance to adapting to upper-class mores that for a moment expose the construction of Mothering in patriarchy and at the same time necessitate her being taught her proper construction. Stella first violates patriarchal codes when, arriving home with her baby, she manifests not delight but impatience with her new role, demanding that she and Stephen go dancing that very night. Next, she violates the codes by wearing a garish dress and behaving independently at the club, leaving the table to dance with a stranger, Mr. Munn (who is from the wrong set), and going to sit at Munn’s table.

This behavior is immediately “placed” for the spectator when the camera takes Stephen’s point of view on the scene, although it could as easily have stuck with Stella’s perspective and shown the stuffiness of the upper class. Staying with Stephen, who has now collected their coats and is waiting by the dance floor, the camera exposes Stella’s vigorous dancing and loud behavior as “unseemly.” At home, Stephen begs Stella to “see reason,” in other words, to conform to his class. He does not take kindly to Stella’s round reply (“How about you doing some adapting?”), and when he asks her to move to New York because of his business she refuses on account of “just beginning to get into the right things” (which the spectator already knows are the wrong things from Stephen’s perspective).

The following scene shows even more clearly how the film wrenches Stella’s point of view away from the audience, forcing us to look at Stella through Stephen’s eyes. As a Mother, Stella is no longer permitted to control her actions, or to be the camera’s eye (as she was in the scenes before her marriage and Motherhood). The scene with Laurel as a baby opens with the camera still in Stella’s point of view. We see her with her maid, feeding the baby and delighting in her. Munn and his friends drop by, and a spontaneous little party develops. Everyone is having fun, Laurel included. Suddenly Stephen arrives, and the camera shifts to his perspective: The entire scene changes in an instant from a harmless gathering to a distasteful brawl, rendering Stella a neglectful Mother. The camera cuts to the stubbed-out cigarettes in Laurel’s food bowl, to the half-empty liquor glasses, to the half-drunk, unshapely men; we get Stephen’s eye moving around the room. Laurel begins to cry at her father’s shouting, as the friends hurriedly and shamefacedly slip away. Stella has become the “object,” and judged from Stephen’s supposedly superior morality, is found to be lacking in Motherliness.

These scenes initiate a pattern through which Stella is made into a “spectacle” (in a negative sense) both within the film story and for the cinema spectator. It is the first step on the way to her learning her “correct” place as “spectator,” as absent Mother (as she gradually realizes through the upper-class judgments of her that she is an embarrassment to her child). The second step is for both audience and Stella to validate the alternative model of the upper-class Morrison family, set up over and against Stella. The lower-class Stella and the cinema audience thus become the admiring spectators of the Morrison’s perfect lifestyle. Other figures are brought in to provide further negative judgments of Stella as Mother. For example, Stella does not take Laurel to cultural events, so the schoolteacher has to do this; Stella then behaves loudly in public with an ill-mannered man, where she is seen by the teacher. Moreover, Laurel’s peers indicate disapproval of Stella by refusing to attend Laurel’s party, and later on her upper-class friends at a hotel laugh outright at Stella’s appearance. By implicating us—the cinema spectator—in this process of rejection, we are made to accede to the “rightness” of Stella’s renunciation of her daughter, and thus made to agree with Stella’s position as absent Mother.

Once the lacks in Stella’s Mothering have been established from the upper-class perspective (which is synonymous with patriarchy’s construction of the ideal Mother), we are shown this “Ideal” in the concrete form of Helen Morrison. Refined, calm, and decorous, devoted to her home and children, she embodies the all-nurturing, self-effacing Mother. She is a saintly figure, worshipped by Laurel because she gives the child everything she needs and asks nothing in return (she is even tender toward Stella, for whom she shows “pity” without being condescending). Modern viewers may find these scenes embarrassingly crude in their idealization of upper-class life, but within the film’s narrative this is obviously the desired world: the happy realm where all oedipal conflicts are effaced and family members exude perfect harmony. The contrast with Stella’s world could not be more dramatic; it reveals her total lack of refinement.

But if unmannerliness were the sum of Stella’s faults, patriarchy would not be as threatened by her as it evidently is, nor demand such a drastic restitution as the renunciation of her child. What is behind this demand for such an extreme sacrifice on Stella’s part? What has she really done to violate patriarchy’s conception of the Mother?

The clue to answering these questions lies in her initial resistance to Mothering, for “selfish” reasons, and her subsequent enthusiastic embracing of Motherhood. The refusal and then the avid assumption of the role are linked from a patriarchal point of view through the same “fault,” namely that Stella is interested in pleasing herself. She refuses Mothering when she does not see anything in it for her, when it seems only to stand in the way of fun; but she takes it up avidly once she realizes that it can give her pleasure, and can add more to her life than the stuffy Stephen can! Shortly after Stephen has left, Stella says, “I thought people were crazy to have kids right away. But I’m crazy about her. Who wouldn’t be?” And later on, talking on the train to Munn (who would clearly like a fully sexual relationship with her), Stella remarks, “Laurel uses up all the feelings I have; I don’t have any for anyone else.”

In getting so much pleasure for herself out of Laurel, Stella violates the patriarchal myth of the self-abnegating Mother, who is supposed to be completely devoted and nurturing but not satisfy any of her needs through the relationship with her child. She is somehow supposed to keep herself apart while giving everything to the child; she is certainly not supposed to prefer the child to the husband, since this kind of bonding threatens patriarchy.

That Laurel returns Stella’s passion only compounds the problem: The film portrays Laurel as devoted to her mother to an unhealthy degree, as caring too much, or more than is good for her. In contrast to the worshipful stance that Laurel has to Mrs. Morrison, her love for her own mother is physical, tender, and selfless. For instance, on one occasion Stella’s crassness offends the child deeply (she nearly puts face cream all over Laurel’s lovely picture of Mrs. Morrison), but Laurel forgives her and tenderly brushes her hair. Most remarkable is the train sequence, where Laurel overhears her friends ridiculing her mother. Hurt for her mother (not for herself), she creeps down into Stella’s bunk and kisses her tenderly, snuggling up to her under the covers. Finally, of course, Laurel is almost ready to give up her own chance for the pleasures of the Morrison family and upper-class life when she realizes why Stella wanted to let the Morrisons have her. It takes Stella’s trick to make Laurel stay (and I’ll come back to this “trick” in a moment).

The very mutuality of this mother-daughter relationship makes it even more threatening and in need of disruption than, for example, the onesided dedication to the daughter in Mildred Pierce. That film highlights the dangerous narcissism of a love like Mildred’s (where the investment in the child is tantamount to merging, to abandoning the boundaries altogether). This love must be punished not only because it excludes men (as does Stella’s relationship to Laurel), but also because of the threat that deep female-to-female bonding poses in patriarchy. Veda’s negative bonding (she is tied through hatred) offers a kind of protection for patriarchy; it ensures that Mildred’s love will be destructive and self-defeating.

In contrast, Stella Dallas in the end provides an example of Mother love that is properly curtailed and subordinated to what patriarchy considers best for the child. In renouncing Laurel, Stella is only doing what the Good Mother should do, according to the film’s ideology. By first making Stella into a “spectacle” (i.e., by applying an external standard to her actions and values), the film “educates” Stella into her “correct” position of Mother-as-spectator, Mother as absent.

Stella’s entry into the Morrison household at once summarizes her prior “unfitness” and represents her readiness to succumb to the persistent demands that have been made on her throughout the film. In this amazing scene, shot from the butler’s perspective, she is still a “spectacle” viewed from the upper-class position: She stands, more ridiculously clad than ever, on the threshold of the huge mansion, her figure eclipsed by the luxurious surroundings that overwhelm her with awe and admiration. It is the lower-class stance, as Stella gawks from the outside at the way the rich live.

Incongruous within the house, Stella must be literally pushed outside—but of her own volition. The decorous, idealized Morrison family could not be seen depriving Stella of her child (remember: Mrs. Morrison is represented as tender toward Stella), so Stella must do it herself. Paradoxically, the only method she can conceive of, once she realizes Laurel’s unwavering commitment to her, is by pretending to step outside of her Mother role. “A woman wants to be something else besides a mother,” she tells a crestfallen Laurel, who has left the Morrisons to be at home with her. Ironically, through these deceptive words, Stella is binding herself into the prescribed Mother role; her self-sacrificing “trick”—her pretense that she is weary of Mothering—is the only way she can achieve her required place as “spectator,” relinquishing the central place she had illicitly occupied.

Structured as a “screen” within the screen, the final sequence of Laurel’s wedding literalizes Stella’s position as the Mother-spectator. We recall the previous movie scene (Stephen and Stella looking at the romantic upper-class couples on the screen) as Stella stands outside the window of the Morrison house, looking in on her daughter’s wedding, unseen by Laurel. Stella stares from the outside at the upper-class “ideal” world inside. And as spectators in the cinema, identifying with the camera (and thus with Stella’s gaze), we learn what it is to be a Mother in patriarchy—it is to renounce, to be on the outside, and to take pleasure in this positioning. Stella’s triumphant look as she turns away from the window to the camera assures us she is satisfied to be reduced to spectator. Her desires for herself no longer count, merged as they are with those of her daughter. While the cinema spectator feels a certain sadness in Stella’s position, she also identifies with Laurel and with her attainment of what we have all been socialized to desire—romantic marriage into the upper class. We thus accede to the necessity for Stella’s sacrifice.

With Stella Dallas, we begin to see why the Mother has so rarely occupied the center of the narrative: For how can the spectator be subject, at least in the sense of controlling the action? The Mother can only be subject to the degree that she resists her culturally prescribed positioning, as Stella does at first. It is Stella’s resistance that sets the narrative in motion, and provides the opportunity to teach her as well as the spectator the Mother’s “correct” place.

Given the prevalence of the Mother-as spectator myth, it is not surprising that feminists have had trouble dealing with the Mother as subject. An analysis of the psychoanalytic barriers to “seeing” the Mother needs to be accompanied by an analysis of cultural myths that define the Good Mother as absent, and the Bad Mother as present but resisting. We have suppressed too long our anger at our mothers because of the apparently anti-woman stance this leads to. We need to work through our anger so that we can understand how the patriarchal construction of the Mother has made her position an untenable one.

Unfortunately, today’s representations of the Mother are not much better than that in Stella Dallas, made in 1937. Ironically, the mass media response to the recent women’s movement has led to numerous representations of the nurturing Father, as well as a split of the female image into old-style Mothers and new-style efficient career women. Kramer Versus Kramer established the basic model for the 80s: The wife leaves her husband to become a successful career woman, willingly abandoning her child to pursue her own needs. The husband steps into the gap she leaves and develops a close, loving relationship to his son, at some cost to his career—which he willingly shoulders. If the wife, like Stella, is reduced to a “spectator” (she returns to peek in on her child’s doings), it is ultimately because she is also (albeit in a very different way) a Bad Mother. Meanwhile, the husband pals up with a solid, old-style earth Mother who lives in his apartment building, just so that we know how far his wife has strayed. Cold, angular career women, often sexually aggressive, have come to dominate the popular media while Fathers are becoming nurturing. (The World According to Garp is another recent example.) And there are also plenty of sadistic Mothers around (e.g., Mommie Dearest).

Thus, the entire structure of sex-role stereotyping remains intact. The only change is that men can now acquire previously forbidden “feminine” qualities. But career women immediately lose their warm qualities, so that even if they do combine mothering and career, they cannot be Good Mothers. It is depressing that the popular media have only been able to respond to the women’s movement in terms of what it has opened up for men. It is up to feminists to redefine the position of the Mother as participant, initiator of action—as subject in her own right, capable of a life with many dimensions.