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Henry James, Oscar Wilde and Aesthetic Culture (review)

shared the fears of Deutsch and her ilk, but went ahead anyway, or were explicitly challenging her anti-feminist psychological theories (“Damn that Deutsch woman—I say roll ’em!”). The relations between contemporary thought and cultural production are rarely as blatant or as immediately apparent as this. A similar lack of subtlety in reading adaptations as expressions of their time affects later discussions of masculinity in the chapter on “The Jolly Corner.” On the other hand, Raw sometimes refrains from criticism of characters on film in ways that blunt his analysis. An example occurs in his chapter on Jane Campion’s The Portrait of a Lady, when, perhaps in an attempt to be a liberal feminist supporter of the film, he emphasizes the “multiple and/or contradictory perspectives” that cluster about the depiction of Isabel’s reaction to abuse by her husband (164). The impression created here is of a critic reaching for critical clichés, defending Isabel’s “freedom” to enjoy pain in her marriage rather than perhaps querying the negative in her character more intensively. Raw’s concluding chapter reviews in helpful but often workmanlike prose the part played by the Production Code in earlier adaptations of James and the ways in which the growth of “independent film” provided opportunities for the production of more obviously feminist interpretations of James. Still, his conclusion that despite changes in production practices, some filmmakers emphasize the radical elements of the source text while some underline the conservative is an obvious one. We seem to end up with an earnest study of what makes some Jamesian adaptations feminist, and therefore good, and what makes others anti-feminist, and therefore not-so-good. And in most cases, the good films are the most recent ones. The complexity and paradoxes of the studio era, in which the Production Code could spur filmmakers and actors to achieve creative subversions, are overlooked, and the book’s argument is the weaker for it.