In “Stella Dallas” (1937), Stella is transitioned from Spectator to Spectacle back again to Spectator. While Stella plays a role in each of these transitions, she cannot be held ultimately responsible, as society also has a hand in the casting of these roles.
By nature, Stella is a spectator. She has created an idealized future for herself based on books, magazines and movies that spotlight the high life. During her courtship with Steve Dallas, she romanticizes about a life like she sees on the movies and remarks to him that she is capable of fulfilling that role with a little coaching. Stella’s story becomes the unsuccessful attempt to place herself in the scene of the future she has idealized for herself.
Stella gives indication of her abilities when she manipulates her first meeting with Dallas at the mill. In her best costume, Stella arrives with a deli sandwich she claims to be delivering to her brother. This maternal concern is contrary to who Stella is (contrast her interest in the type of meat unavailable in her household with her ambiguity over preparing her brother’s lunch in the first place) and sets her up to be miscast as Domestic Goddess.
It’s not until she is married to Dallas that Stella’s idealized life has opportunity to collide with his actualized life. It seems Stella is about to take center stage as the leading lady in her dream but motherhood gets in the way. Now, placed in the scene, Stella is forced to reconcile her reality with what she idealized as her future.
Stella objects to motherhood by putting on a show when she goes out with her husband. She deliberately embarrasses him by wearing the wrong earrings, donning a loud costume and socializing with the nouveau riche. Perhaps Stella is aware of being under Dallas and society’s scrutinizing gaze and puts herself on show in effort to take command of the situation. Regardless, her behavior causes conflict for Stella, conflict for which there is no escape and conflict that casts her as a Spectacle.
Stella’s punishment for not subordinating her desires to her daughter Lauren’s needs place her in the sacrifice position, practically guaranteeing that Lauren will be liberated as the viewer watches Stella’s downfall.
Within the context of the film, Lauren is unable to obtain the nurturing, care and material advancement, to which she is entitled as a result of her biological lineage, without being liberated from Stella. Two reasons support this way of thinking: 1) close relations between men are threatening to men because the men are not in control and 2) Stella is not entitled to the same lifestyle as Lauren because she married Dallas only to advance her social standing.
The means by which the film and society bring this premise to fruition is by casting Stella as Unfit Mother. Stella makes attempts to overcome this by dressing Lauren appropriately, throwing her a birthday party and arranging for a first class vacation. However Stella fails in each instance. The clothes are handmade, the guests fail to show as a result of Stella’s association with Ed Munn and the vacation is a disaster when Stella repeats the show she put on earlier in the film.
The vacation is especially damaging to Stella as not only does she experience the humiliation herself, Lauren does as well. Now Stella sees the reality of her social situation and knows the best choice for her daughter is to send her to live with her father and his family. This is incredibly painful for Stella for unlike her maternal caretaker rouse at the mill, this is not an act. Stella has grown into motherhood and loves her daughter.
What Stella has failed to observe are the many instances in which bourgeois stereotypes were reinforced in her books, magazines and movies and in the world around her. While it could be argued that Stella is entitled to her dreams, the reality is that her dreams, created merely from her perspective as a Spectator, lacked any sort of reality from which they could be fully actualized.
Within the context of the rules set forth by the society around her, Stella’s primary responsibility was to insure her own success by guarding against any threat of change. Stella however, dreamed of a way of life which as a spectator, she wished to see portrayed in real life (or acted out in real life). Forced to confront aspects of this life which she did not understand, she not only found her dreams fulfilled, but saw them criticized to a point she was forced to perceive herself as object, rather than subject, thus pulling her away from the opportunity to participate in her dreams and returning her to her appropriate role of Spectator.
References
“Mothering, Feminism and Representation…” by Ann E. Kaplan
“Something Else Besides a Mother: Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama” by Williams
“Toward an Analysis of the Sirkian System” by Paul Willemen
“Stella Dallas” (1937)
“Stella” (1990)