When a director decides to adapt a literary work into film, there are many things for them to consider: structure, character, setting, plot, and the audience. One of the most important aspects of turning a literary work into a film is attracting a wide audience. The attraction to film adaptations of literature is because people like to see books visualized or see famous actors play recognizable characters. However, because of the limitations of film, the director must make decisions on what aspects of the original work stay or are cut, resulting in adaptations that can be categorized by least to most faithful: loose, intermediate, and close. In the case of “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square, the changes between the literary source and the film adaptation were made by the directors, writers, and all the other film crew were chosen in order to broaden the appeal of the adaptation to not only the original fan base of the literary work, but to a wider audience.
“Enoch Arden” is a poem written by Alfred Tennyson in the 1860’s and was adapted into a short film by the same name in 1911, directed by D.W. Griffith. The does film keep the overall plot and the principle character of Enoch Arden (Wilfred Lucas), the husband lost at sea who returns years later to find his wife, Annie (Linda Griffith), married to his rival Philip (Francis J. Grandon). The poem is structured in such a way that the beginning is solely about Annie and her hardships at home while Enoch Arden is presumably lost at sea, shifting later to Enoch’s situation while stranded on the deserted island until he comes home and dies. The film changes this structure by cutting back and forth between Annie at home and Enoch on the island in order to keep audiences invested in the situation. The director had to make this change because since the film was silent, the actors could only tell the story through their emotive acting and the film was limited to only 24 minutes, so every second had to be important. The audience could have become confused if the film stuck with the original structure and half of the movie became just about Annie and then switched to Enoch with no indication of his situation beforehand, including the shipwreck and the death of his boat mates. Also, by cutting back and forth between the two, the audience can stay more closely engaged with all the characters, keeping that needed emotion to make a movie work. Even though the structure does change and parts of the ending are completely left out, the film adaptation of Enoch Arden does keep the same basic plot of the poem, which would be popular among original fans of the poem.
The popular gothic horror poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1845, was adapted into a The Simpsons (Matt Groening) episode in 1990, marking the first of the Halloween specials titled “Treehouse of Horror.” The poem was considered “horror” during the time that it was written due to its supernatural elements and motifs of madness and death. But to modern audiences, the fear is lost since the shock factor of the poem is diminished due to its exposure and many more frightening books and films have been produced since then, so audiences are not as easily frightened. This is why it is appropriate that “The Raven” scene in the “Treehouse of Horror” episode takes the poem and makes it comical. Homer Simpson, the show’s protagonist, plays the role of the Scholar who is slowly slipping into madness after losing his love, Eleanor, and his son Bart Simpson voices the raven, who torments the Scholar by repeating the word “nevermore” as the Scholar pleads for answers. The writer’s choice to have Homer speak in the original language of the poem, with the occasional outburst of “D’oh!” and Bart’s interjection of “Eat my shorts!” in the place of “Nevermore!” adds in the comical elements that provide the audience with the typical Simpsons humor and helps to keep younger children and other, less literary, audiences still engaged. The writers of this show are quite aware of what the audience expects when watching The Simpsons which is why they turned the adaptation into a parody, paying homage to Poe through comical satire.
There have been numerous adaptations of the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, but a notable adaptation is the 1931 film version, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Robert Mamoulian and starring Fredric March as both Jekyll, the overreaching scientist, and Hyde, Jekyll’s evil side manifested. An key change in the adaptation is the cut of the third person limited view that follows the character of Mr. Utterson, Jekyll’s lawyer, who is also dropped from the film. The loss of the limited view of Utterson allows the film to follow the character of Jekyll more closely and allows the audience to enter the psyche of Jekyll more easily, which in turn makes him a much more sympathetic character than his novella counterpart. In the film, Hyde is killed by a gunshot wound rather than a mysterious suicide, which was not only a directors choice that gave the audience more closure, but death by suicide was not, and still is not, a largely accepted means of death. However, the most prominent change in the adaptation is the inclusion of female roles. In the film, Jekyll is engaged to be married to Muriel Carew (Rose Hobart) and Hyde takes Ivy Pearson (Miriam Hopkins) as his mistress/slave, while the novella has no female characters of notice. Since the film drops the third person limited view, both Muriel and Ivy play vital roles in the film by being ways to show the audience the huge differences, and similarities, between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. They also cause the change in Jekyll’s motivation to become Hyde, for in the novel he wants to split his mind in order to do bad things in general, but in the film, there are many suggestions that sexual repression is the main motivating factor, including Jekyll’s obsessive thoughts about Ivy and that the first thing he does as Hyde is track her down and try and seduce her. By including the female roles in the film, the director was able to satisfy the general audience’s popular demand for romance in film while at the same time adding a new dynamic that gave new and deeper meaning to the classic story of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Washington Square is a novel by Henry James written in 1880 and was adapted into a 1949 film titled The Heiress, directed by William Wyler. Both the film and the novel focus around four main characters: Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), the plain, shy daughter of Dr. Sloper (Ralph Richardson), who falls for the cunning Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift) after the persistent intervening of her Aunt Penniman (Miriam Hopkins). However, the characters are made to be much more likable in the film, whereas in the book, almost every character is detestable, save Catherine. In the film, Dr. Sloper is portrayed as less cruel and less prideful. His despise of Catherine is deeply wound in the loss of his aptly described beautiful, charismatic wife, made clear by his comparisons of the two and the photo of her on his desk. His motivations for keeping Catherine and Morris apart also changes within the film, changing from acts of pride and greed to actual fear for his daughter’s well-being, displayed by the act of not disinheriting her. Morris’ greediness and rudeness are also diminished within the film and Aunt Penniman’s foolishness is tamed, giving her more awareness to Morris’ true motivations. Even Catherine is changed, for in the end she is no longer a sad spinster left alone with her needlework, but she becomes a hardened woman, a parallel of the cruelty imposed upon her by her father. These changes in The Heiress are made specifically for the attraction of the audience because a film revolving around characters everyone generally hates would not do well with wide audiences.
Within all of these works, each literary work and film adaptation all have their own theme, influenced by the change of elements in the adaption process. In the poem “Enoch Arden,” the theme is that a working class person, represented by Enoch, can be just as heroic as someone of a higher class, represented by Philip. However, since the film adaptation leaves out the moment in the poem that describes Enoch’s funeral and his dying moments where he sees his lost son, the theme is changed to the concept that a “good father” will do whatever they have to do to do what is right for their family, even if it kills the father to do so, literally and figuratively. The new theme offers a bigger ability to be relatable than the first, which someone isolates different social classes instead of bringing together the collective idea of the “father.” The overall theme of Poe’s “The Raven” is hard to pin down, especially with all of the different motifs of the supernatural, love, madness, and religion, but a possible theme could include man’s lack of control over the natural world can cause one to become insane. In The Simpsons segment of “The Raven, the theme is less serious and is brought up in an argument between Bart and his sister Lisa: can classic horror stand up against the terrifying world of modern horror? The question is left ambiguous for the audience to answer themselves, which helps to avoid the pretentiousness of a “yes” answer and the seemingly uneducated air of a “no” answer. The theme of the novella The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is stated by Stevenson himself, saying that the worst evil portrayed is “hypocrisy.” The film adaptation does take a different stance criticizing society for repressing its citizens, but like “The Raven,” the ending is left ambiguous. The film does not tell the audience how they should feel about the repression of society, which can lead to multiple interpretations of the film, which ultimately attracts a larger audience. And finally, in Washington Square, the theme revolves around a critique of the upper class people who are portrayed to only care about money, specifically men who are in competition with each other and will do whatever it takes to win, even if it means hurting those who are closest to them. The way the film adaptation changes the ending also changes the theme, giving more of a feminist twist on the story with two contradicting elements: a critique of the mistreatment of women and it questions the belief that if women do not marry, they will turn into monsters. This film was released post WWII and most women would have really enjoyed to see a movie aimed at women, but the ultimate themes would drive men to see it as well. Even though all of the works, “Enoch Arden,” “The Raven,” The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Washington Square, all include big changes when it comes to their film adaptations, all of the films are able to hold their own weight against demanding audiences.
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