Word: sloper
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...more broadly embraceable than James's work, the reason may be that its authors, Ruth and Augustus Goetz, have streamlined and softened a brittle, merciless story into something like exquisite melodrama. The characters, for whom James himself had little affection, have more obvious motivations (the extreme foregrounding of Dr. Sloper's grief for his wife, for example) and higher tides of emotional exclamation ("He must love me, someone must want me," Catherine yells. "I have never had that!"). Moreover, the authors don't ignore that dictum of audience-pleasing, "Let the underdog have her day." In fact, though, this issue...
Jaws drop in shock as Morris begins paying romantic attentions to Catherine. Both of Catherine's aunts, Lavinia and Elizabeth (Sheila Ferrini), delight in her unexpected good fortune. Dr. Sloper is predictably skeptical, for two specific reasons. One, he cannot fathom that anyone would be interested in "such a dull girl." More to the point, he has not forgotten that Catherine does have one obviously pleasing attribute: an annual inheritance of $30,000. As the program helpfully imparts, Catherine's annuity compares to about half a million Big Ones...
...when Catherine asks, "Are you sure that you love me," he answers only, "Can you doubt it?" Still, he seems to harbor genuine affection for her, and as Elizabeth and Lavinia suggest, if a caring husband can be attracted by the prospect of wealth, who loses? Dr. Sloper, however, refuses to see his fortune so brazenly pursued or so cannily procured. To the aunts' protests, he thunders with casually cruel frankness, "She must not love people who don't deserve to be loved...
...what cost? Catherine's behavior in the second act proclaims a cleverness and a sharp pragmatic bent which she has signally lacked beforehand. The Heiress seems to allow Catherine redemption on the condition that she acquire intelligence and agency; like Dr. Sloper himself, the playwrights will do nothing for Catherine so long as she is plain and retiring...
...object of scorn. Simply in retitling the work The Heiress, the Goetzes define Catherine's character through her financial prospects. Nor do we delight in witnessing Catherine exchange her youthful naivete for such a bitter, scaly adulthood. This sour apple doesn't fall far from Dr. Sloper's withered tree...