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.

[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!

[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).

[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!