Stanley's Taste

On the Inseperability of Art, Life, and Criticism

Abstract

Stanley Cavell closes Contesting Tears with a chapter titled “Stella’s Taste: Reading Stella Dallas”, devoted to the 1937 movie, directed by King Vidor, which Cavell compares to the other movies he has studied in the book and finds “to be the most harrowing of the four melodramas to view again and again.” Cavell’s reading of this movie is organized against what he calls the generally “accepted view” of the film where there are two key interpretive moments: in one, Stella, the protagonist, on vacation with her teenage daughter, Laurel, at a fancy hotel, tries to impress Laurel’s new friends by dressing up and ends up making a fool of herself, in a spectacle of bad taste; Stella then finds out what people thought of her and realizes she has embarrassed Laurel, eventually deciding to drive her daughter away from her, towards her father (Stella’s now ex-husband); this takes us to the second key moment: the final scene, where Stella anonymously watches her daughter’s wedding from the sidewalk, through a window, and walks away, which is generally seen as confirming Stella’s sacrifice, representing the dissolution of motherhood — hence, of her identity.