“You don’t seem to understand 19th century, Victorian England and its moral codes.”

I would argue that disagreement doesn’t equal a lack of education or understanding on Markgraf’s part. This film and its source material are set in the late Victorian era; they’re not from it, though, and either way though I don’t entirely share the exasperation with the trope that he does, missing parents and lost children *are* key tropes for ghost stories that go back further than that.

It can be argued equally strongly that what this film adaptation does with its final scene in my view is weirdly reinforcing of a bizarre dark-but-still-fairytaleish happy ending idea that certainly sends Kipps back to a secure, “correct” family unit in death. That’s the image that prevails, almost in defiance of death.

No, many biological mothers did not want to give up their children, but in some cases it’s all a woman can do. If she can’t provide for the person she brought into this world, wouldn’t she want what would be best for them? So no, it’s not wrong. In this case anyway, with the WiB, the Drablows were not being called child thieves by anyone besides the mother of Nathaniel, Jennet Humfrye. That’s only because she never wanted to give her son up in the first place. But she had no choice, but only because she wasn’t married to the man who fathered the boy. Again, it’s more strict moral code. Not at all saying the Drablows were terrible for giving the boy a better life, even though it was tragically cut short.

I think today, maybe bio-parents have visitation rights, which is a far cry from what went on back in the day. So, really I didn’t understand that portion of your review.

Sounds interesting – could you re-link? I think you forgot the link text :)

I don’t think I could stand to see this film (might give the stage adaptation a go sometime), but on the point about adoption, I don’t think society is as comfortable with adoption as we like to think and it’s interesting to see these underlying anxieties about adoption coming out in horror films. I was talking about this with a friend who was adopted the other day and we were thinking of the quite recent horror film Orphan as an example.

“It can be limiting – but I think considering the whole narrative is also a big part of feminist interaction with pop culture. For example, Who Bella Chooses (or what life she chooses?) or How Katniss Finishes The Narrative will have a big impact on how we might view them.”

Indeed! Since focusing on feminist issues is what you do here and what I presume people come here to read, reviewing films and books without spoilers on some level sounds impossible to do. I’m not very nitpicky about spoilers because if I’m reading a review, I’m yet to be convinced I want to see the film/read the book/and so on based on the plot summary alone. On a general level, I find spoiler-free reviews that aren’t in-depth in at least some way (whether it’s about the music, or the cinematography, or the acting) not very interesting.

“the Woman’s malign power comes from the fact that the sexual politics of the age she is living in condemn her as unfit to be a parent.”

As someone who doesn’t want children of her own (I’m tokophobic), it’s incredibly frustrating to see Women Do Things Because Of Childrun~ (parenting) – or, alternatively, Mens~ (marriage) – and for no other reason in popular culture. I do enjoy the occasional no-brainer romantic comedy for entertainment, but it’s when that’s all that is available that it gets irritating; parenting is not something I want to do, and I feel a bit iffy about marriage, so what’s out there for me? Where are the films about women who become vengeful ghosts because they can’t be lawyers?

Mostly unrelated: we recently read The Taming of the Shrew for proseminar class, and I have issues the size of elephants with the play because of the domestic abuse. We had to write an essay arguing either for or against an article* which argues that while his “methods” are “extreme”, Kate benefits from being tamed by Petruchio. Well, yes, in a contemporary societal context, but what about on an individual level?

I’m bringing this up because the situation is similar to WiB in that while the woman in the story might benefit on a societal level, on an individual level she suffers. At least in the play and a great amount of non-feminist articles about it, this is mostly seen as a good thing; it’s that “Oh, that’s how they did things back then” way of thinking at work. I should probably read WiB to see how, and if, they really compare as much as I think.

I will always and forever believe that Shakespeare was secretly a feminist because, come on. Or maybe I have too much faith in people. (Sorry if this unrelated got a bit long, I’ve had this whole ranty mcrant brewing about Shrew for a while.)

* “Marriage, the Violent Traverse from Two to One in The Taming of the Shrew and Othello” by Unhae Langis

I added the underline and asterisks after receiving the first comment, just to make it a bit clearer! (I’m the ed, not the author.) We’ve had asterisks on previous ones, though :). It was in bold, though, and it did have its own line… we do try. We also try not to spoiler, but it’s… it’s hard once we get frothing! THE FROTH CANNOT BE TAMED

… there’s a spoiler warning.

… it’s underlined. It has asterisks.

Although, that said, I think any social “rar!” in the story is faint and subtle if it’s there at all; it’s not written as a feminist tract per se ;) – the main point is it uses existing gendered tropes that are tried and tested for “scary” in this culture to tell a rip-roaring ghost story.

I think it can get hard to avoid spoilers when you’re not just “straight reviewing”, but are having a go at highlighting, for example, one set of issues – like gendery ones. Because How It Ends For The Women (or other groups) does play a role, which it’s hard to excise, in how many of us form a feminist perspective on a film. It can be limiting – but I think considering the whole narrative is also a big part of feminist interaction with pop culture. For example, Who Bella Chooses (or what life she chooses?) or How Katniss Finishes The Narrative will have a big impact on how we might view them.

For us, anyway. (An extreme example is when we wrote about The Skin I Live In – that film has a huge feminism-relevant twist which we felt we couldn’t avoid talking about in some detail…)

Talking on the point of How It Ends For The Women, though, I think WiB is intended to be another story in a tradition of ghosts that manifest when women are displaced from their roles? It’s a female-hysteria thing, I think – the Woman’s malign power comes from the fact that the sexual politics of the age she is living in condemn her as unfit to be a parent. That’s why the adoption happens – she is deemed unfit to be a mother because the child is born out of wedlock, so she loses her child because of a cultural neurosis around policing female sexuality. And that indictment of the society around her, which creates her, kind of sits behind the story…

The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins) doesn’t have ghosts in, but does also have the social issue of illegitimate children and resultant drama/suffering in its plotting.