Reading Pleasures of 2023 / The Bishop's Wife

[gwynnega]

At Aqueduct Press's blog, I talk about some of my favorite reads of the year.

One book that didn't make it onto my list is Robert Nathan's novel The Bishop's Wife (1928), which I finished reading (well, listening to on audiobook) this morning. The 1947 film is a favorite of mine, and it was one of the inspirations for my novel Thank You for Sending Me an Angel (which I'm nearly done revising!), but I had never read the novel before. In many ways it is a more sophisticated and philosophical story than the film, though neither version has what I would call a satisfying ending.

The novel makes it clear that the bishop is sexually repressed and that his wife Julia has been disappointed about this since their wedding night, though she enjoys being a mother to their daughter. The marriage between the bishop and Julia is one of mutual respect but, unlike in the movie, there doesn't seem to be much love there. The angel (Michael in the novel) is more earnest and less suave than Cary Grant's Dudley. (He's also fair-haired, and I understood for the first time why they originally thought to cast David Niven as the angel instead of the bishop.) Unlike Dudley, Michael actually kisses and embraces Julia and declares himself to be in love with her. For awhile, I was starting to wonder if Michael and Julia might actually hit the sheets. (Alas, they don't. Julia won't commit adultery, and apparently angels can't actually get carnal, even though Michael is clearly a great kisser.)

The novel is much more explicitly critical of organized religion than the film, and it also brings up antisemitism and racism. I got a little uneasy when the book introduced the wealthy Mr. Cohen, until Cohen told Michael about his grandparents who were killed in a Ukraine pogrom. Wait, I thought, was Robert Nathan Jewish? Sure enough, he was Sephardic. (Side note: he was also the husband of Anna Lee, of Val Lewton and General Hospital fame!)

As much as I like the movie, I can't help but wonder what a Pre-Code adaptation would have done with the book. The novel ends with Julia resigning herself to her unsatisfying marriage, though she has chosen to get pregnant again by the bishop. (At least in the novel, no one gets their memories angelically erased at the end.)

Comments

[sartorias]

Robert Nathan! I remember reading A Portrait of Jennie>/I> when I was twelve or thirteen. It was a bit too melancholy for me at the time, but it did seem to transcend those male-written novels about super idealized women that were common back then. Seems to me I saw the movie during my babysitting days, and found the ending profoundly dissatisfying.

[gwynnega]

I remember having a paperback of Portrait of Jennie when I was a kid, but I don't recall if I read the whole thing or just skimmed it. I saw the film several years back and liked it, though the whole "guy falling in love with a woman he first meets when she's a child" thing squicked me a bit.

[sartorias]

Yeah--that's why I never reread it. Reading it as a kid, with only the haziest idea of what "falling in love" meant, it all whizzed over my head.

[kore]

Portrait of Jennie is one of those books like Door Into Summer and Time Traveller's Wife, where the male writer seems way too entranced by the idea of his hero meeting the love of his life as a kid, and I think young girls with daddy issues (who me??) read them when young and often reread them later and go "Oh no, really?" Or maybe that was just me. (I was too old for TTW but I saw the same phenomenon in younger friends.)

[gwynnega]

Yeah, TTW worked for me (maybe because it wasn't sequential, or because a woman wrote it), but I wonder if I would react to it differently now. Another one that worked for me is Fire and Hemlock. But it seems like the older I get, the less I like that trope!

[kore]

Ohghod, Fire & Hemlock, in my teens I would have eaten that up with ten silver spoons, but I discovered DWJ rather late in life (at least later than all my friends) and all I could think was "POLLY, THIS GUY IS NO GOOD FOR YOU." He was so mean and nasty to her! Which is totally not what I am supposed to get from that book, I know.

(I do love the reversal in HMC, where Sophie is old and Howl is young and heartless. Old women protagonists are still so rare, it feels like.)

[sovay]

For awhile, I was starting to wonder if Michael and Julia might actually hit the sheets. (Alas, they don't. Julia won't commit adultery, and apparently angels can't actually get carnal, even though Michael is clearly a great kisser.)

This sounds fascinating. I saw the film decades ago and my parents have the novel in the house (my grandparents had a lot of Robert Nathan), but I can't ever remember reading it. I will check it out the next time I am at my parents'. Do you have a fix-it for the ending?

(Side note: he was also the husband of Anna Lee, of Val Lewton and General Hospital fame!)

I knew about his Jewishness, but I had no idea about Anna Lee!

[gwynnega]

I'm curious about Nathan's other books besides this one and Jennie. The Bishop's Wife is beautifully written and displays a lot of erudition, handled with a light touch--by turns poetic and satiric.

Do you have a fix-it for the ending?

In the novel, the bishop makes a point of the fact that adultery is the only grounds he would consider acceptable for a divorce, so I guess I hope he gets killed off so Julia can find a more attentive and less repressed mate!

[sovay]

In the novel, the bishop makes a point of the fact that adultery is the only grounds he would consider acceptable for a divorce, so I guess I hope he gets killed off so Julia can find a more attentive and less repressed mate!

I'm so sorry she couldn't actually cheat on him with the angel.

[gwynnega]

Me too. (My regret that she didn't cheat with the angel in the movie was a big part of how I came up with my novel idea!)

[sovay]

(My regret that she didn't cheat with the angel in the movie was a big part of how I came up with my novel idea!)

I look forward to your novel so much.

[gwynnega]

Thank you!

[oracne]

I immediately started thinking of how to write erotica about an angel with no genitals but an interest in physicality. ...not pruriently, more in a technical curiosity way, lol.

[gwynnega]

That is an excellent concept! (It isn't spelled out, but I think Michael the angel has genitals, though he's incapable of physical passion because of his angelic nature.)

[kore]

Robert Nathan! Portrait of Jennie, yes, but One More Spring (which Peter S. Beagle credits as inspiration for Fine and Private Place) and I think the most haunting kids' book I've ever read, but I've never been able to remember enough about it to find it again (a very old man wants his youth back, and sees himself as a young boy playing with a hoop, and there's something about a window and a deal with Death? IDK).

[gwynnega]

Oh, interesting. I'll have to try and find that one.

[kore]

I don't even remember if it's by him, but it sounds like a book he would write. Sometimes I think I made it up except I can still see the very blocky drawn black-and-white illustrations, especially of the little boy in the sailor suit with his hoop. (I was v confused as a kid when I read this. Playing with a hoop? But apparently you made it go in front of you with a stick or something.)

[gwynnega]

Yes, it's him! There's even a Kindle edition (though I wonder if that has the illustrations).

[kore]

YOU ARE KIDDING ME

SERIOUSLY? WHAT'S IT CALLED??

[gwynnega]

Oh, I thought you were talking about One More Spring! I'll try and figure out if that other one is his.

[kore]

Oh dear I was SO excited there for a minute, lolsob.

[sovay]

I don't even remember if it's by him, but it sounds like a book he would write.

Road of Ages (1935) is not the novel you describe, but I am dropping it here both for reasons of general interest and because the blogger is doing a Robert Nathan readthrough which you could keep an eye on, in case the haunting children's book really is his.

[usedtobeljs]

Wow, that novel sounds interesting. I think I read Robert Nathan's novel Portrait of Jennie at some point, but I don't remember much about it....

Hugs!

[gwynnega]

As fond as I am of the movie The Bishop's Wife, the novel really wasn't what I was expecting (in a good way!). ::hugs::