Bedelia (novel) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bedelia is a novel by Vera Caspary

Vera Caspary

Vera Caspary was an American writer of novels, plays, screenplays, and short stories. Her best-known novel Laura was made into a highly successful movie. Though she claimed she was not a "real" mystery writer, her novels effectively merged women's quest for identity and love with murder plots...

first published in 1945

1945 in literature

The year 1945 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*November 1 - The magazine Ebony is published for the first time.*Noel Coward's short play, Still Life, is adapted to become the film, Brief Encounter....

about a couple of newlyweds where the initially blissfully happy husband finds out during the first months of their marriage that his wife may have a criminal past. His growing suspicion and seemingly corroborating evidence

Corroborating evidence

Corroborating evidence is evidence that tends to support a proposition that is already supported by some evidence, therefore confirming the proposition. For example, W, a witness, testifies that she saw X drive his automobile into a green car...

lead him to think that she might even be a serial killer

Serial killer

A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...

, and that he could be her next victim.

Set in small-town Connecticut

Connecticut

Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...

in the winter of 1913-14, Bedelia, whose eponymous heroine was called "the wickedest woman who ever loved" on the cover of an early edition of the book, is usually subsumed under the genre of pulp fiction. However, a 2005 annotated edition published by The Feminist Press

The Feminist Press

The Feminist Press is an independent nonprofit literary publisher that promotes freedom of expression and social justice. It publishes exciting writing by women and men who share an activist spirit and a belief in choice and equality...

at the City University of New York

City University of New York

The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

shows that Caspary's novel can be seen as a contribution to feminist thought

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

in that it raised the level of awareness amongst its readers of the unequal, if not desperate, position of freedom-loving women in pre-World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

Western society.

Bedelia is dedicated to film producer Isadore "Igee" Goldsmith, then Caspary's husband.

Plot summary

33 year-old Charlie Horst comes from an old Puritan

Puritan

The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...

family which for centuries has been one of the pillars of society in an unnamed small town in Connecticut. Educated at Yale

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

and now working as an architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

, he has lived in a grand old house—his parental home—all his life. At the beginning of the novel his domineering mother has been dead for less than a year, and since her death Charlie has gone on a summer holiday to Colorado Springs

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Colorado Springs is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and most populous city of El Paso County, Colorado, United States. Colorado Springs is located in South-Central Colorado, in the southern portion of the state. It is situated on Fountain Creek and is located south of the Colorado...

, has met Bedelia Cochran there, a young childless widow of great beauty, has immediately fallen in love with her, brought her back home and married her.

Married life becomes Charlie Horst, so much so that on Christmas Day, 1913, he considers himself "the luckiest man in the world." Bedelia has turned out to be the perfect wife: exceedingly capable of running the household, a brilliant hostess, an obedient and submissive companion in need of protection by a strong man, imaginative, attractive, always well-dressed and well made-up, sexy, and good in bed. At their little Christmas party some of the town dignitaries are present, and everyone enjoys her ladylike ways. On top of it all, Bedelia is several months pregnant, turning Charlie into a proud father-to-be.

Among the guests at the Christmas party are his cousin Abbie Hoffman, a divorcee from New York; her friend Ellen Walker, a young journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

employed at the local paper who is still in love with Charlie although she has been rejected by him in favour of Bedelia; and Ben Chaney, a young painter who has recently arrived from nowhere and rented a cottage in the woods for the winter and who is increasingly regarded by Charlie as an intruder into his well-established circle of friends and acquaintances.

Then Charlie suddenly comes down with stomachache

Abdominal pain

Abdominal pain can be one of the symptoms associated with transient disorders or serious disease. Making a definitive diagnosis of the cause of abdominal pain can be difficult, because many diseases can result in this symptom. Abdominal pain is a common problem...

, and old Doctor Meyers, the Horsts' family physician, diagnoses a severe case of food poisoning

Foodborne illness

Foodborne illness is any illness resulting from the consumption of contaminated food, pathogenic bacteria, viruses, or parasites that contaminate food, as well as chemical or natural toxins such as poisonous mushrooms.-Causes:Foodborne illness usually arises from improper handling, preparation, or...

. Charlie himself attributes his illness to overwork and brushes aside Doctor Meyers's suspicion that he may have been deliberately given poison as the ramblings of a senile quack who should have retired a long time ago. However, Doctor Meyers insists on a professional nurse being installed in the Horsts' home, and before her arrival at the house Chaney is seen meeting her at the railway station and talking agitatedly with her. Charlie is given strict orders not to eat or drink anything unless the nurse is present, and he gradually recovers.

At about the same time Ben Chaney discloses his true identity as a private investigator

Private investigator

A private investigator , private detective or inquiry agent, is a person who can be hired by individuals or groups to undertake investigatory law services. Private detectives/investigators often work for attorneys in civil cases. Many work for insurance companies to investigate suspicious claims...

who has been hired to track down a serial widow whose previous husbands have all died ostensibly of natural causes and who is said to be living in this area under an assumed name. When Chaney announces the impending arrival of a relative of one of the deceased men who he claims will be able to recognize and identify Mrs Horst as that woman, Bedelia goes into the offensive and plans her disappearance—with or without her current husband. The witness's arrival is delayed due to a heavy snowstorm

Winter storm

A winter storm is an event in which the dominant varieties of precipitation are formed that only occur at low temperatures, such as snow or sleet, or a rainstorm where ground temperatures are low enough to allow ice to form...

, which gives Bedelia more time to try and convince Charlie of her innocence and to talk him into leaving for Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

with her, a proposal which is met with utter disbelief and refusal on Charlie's part. In their snowbound house, Charlie's suspicion concerning his wife's past is steadily growing with each new life-story she serves him while he realizes that he still knows absolutely no hard facts about her former life.

During one of those cold and stormy nights Bedelia sneaks out of the house, leaving behind most of her personal belongings. However, being pregnant, she is too weak to make it to the station and is saved from certain death by freezing by Charlie, who finds her lying in the snow-covered road. As a consequence, she has to stay in bed with a severe cold for several days. Eventually the roads are cleared of snow, and the first vehicle to pull up in front of the Horsts' house is a delivery van with the groceries they have ordered by telephone. The delivery boy also leaves behind a large bag of food ordered by Ben Chaney to be fetched by the latter the moment he is no longer snowed in in his cottage. Shortly afterwards, Charlie chances upon Bedelia sprinkling some white powder on a piece of Gorgonzola

Gorgonzola (cheese)

Gorgonzola is a veined Italian blue cheese, made from unskimmed cow's and/or goat's milk. It can be buttery or firm, crumbly and quite salty, with a "bite" from its blue veining.- History :...

taken from Chaney's bag of groceries, and is immediately reminded of a story he was told by Chaney about the death of one of Bedelia's former husbands. But only now that he has caught her in the act is he finally convinced of his wife's guilt and categorically resists all her attempts at making him an accessory after the fact

Accessory (legal term)

An accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal...

She tried, courageously, to smile at Charlie. "You wouldn't let them take me away, would you? I'm your wife, you know, and I'm sick. I'm a very sick woman, your wife. I've never told you, dear, how sick I am. My heart, I might die at any moment. I must never be distressed about anything. [...] I didn't ever tell you, Charlie, because I didn't want you to worry." This she said with a sort of determined gallantry, both sweet and bitter.

Gently Charlie removed her hands. Bedelia submitted humbly, showing that she considered him superior, her lord and master. He was male and strong, she feminine and frail. His strength made him responsible for her; her life was in his hands.

Charlie locks Bedelia in the bedroom and then goes downstairs to greet the first guests to arrive after the snowstorm, among them Ellen Walker. While he is flirting with her, Bedelia is slowly dying upstairs after having obeyed her husband's order to take her own poison.

Major themes

Caspary's central theme is gender role

Gender role

Gender roles refer to the set of social and behavioral norms that are considered to be socially appropriate for individuals of a specific sex in the context of a specific culture, which differ widely between cultures and over time...

s, a social construct she saw slowly dissolve as the 20th century progressed. In this respect, it made sense to her to set the novel at the beginning of the century, in pre-Rosie the Riveter

Rosie the Riveter

Rosie the Riveter is a cultural icon of the United States, representing the American women who worked in factories during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who were in the military...

times when women hardly had any choices in life. Charlie Horst, full of the traditional values

Traditional values

Traditional values refer to those beliefs, moral codes, and mores that are passed down from generation to generation within a culture, subculture or community.-Summary:Since the late 1970s in the U.S., the term "traditional values" has become synonymous...

and double standards of morality inculcated upon him by his family, falls prey to the charms of such a traditionally-minded woman who has outwardly never overstepped the moral border society has imposed on her by having pre- or extramarital sex. Seen in this light, Bedelia just carries to extremes the role women have been ascribed: that of wife and mother. While he is entertaining Ellen Walker in the final scene of the novel, Charlie cannot help reflecting on his dying wife's station in life as a "professional wife":

Bedelia was good at her job as a wife, she knew all the tricks that make a home jolly and keep a husband comfortable. To her life with each husband she brought experience gained with his predecessor. Being a wife was her life's work and she was far more successful at it than those good women who think because they have husbands they are safe and can treat men like servants or household pets. To Bedelia each marriage was a pleasure cruise and she an amiable passenger, always amused and amusing, always happy to share the fun, uninhibited by the fear that any relationship would grow too important, because she knew the cruise would soon be over, the relationship severed, and she would be free to embark on a new journey.

Caspary, who wrote about the lives of career women in many of her other works (for example in her 1943

1943 in literature

The year 1943 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*George Orwell resigns from the BBC to become literary editor of Tribune.*Isaac Bashevis Singer becomes a naturalized citizen of the United States....

novel Laura
Laura (novel)
Laura is a detective novel by Vera Caspary. It is her best known work, and was adapted into a popular film in 1944, with Gene Tierney in the title role.-Publication history:...

), shows the limited range of options available to women who lived before the First World War. They could either conform to traditional gender roles and become a wife and mother or choose the less-travelled road of spinster

Spinster

A spinster, or old maid, is an older, childless woman who has never been married.For a woman to be identified as a spinster, age is critical...

hood. A third option, new at the time, is shown in the character of Ellen Walker, who serves as a foil

Foil (literature)

In fiction, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character in order to highlight particular qualities of another character....

to Bedelia. Ellen is just as attractive as Bedelia but deliberately refrains from stressing her femininity

Femininity

Femininity is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women. Though socially constructed, femininity is made up of both socially defined and biologically created factors...

. What is more, she is an independent young woman who not only earns her own living but also enjoys her work as a journalist. As an outward sign of her independence, she has taken up smoking cigarettes

Tobacco smoking

Tobacco smoking is the practice where tobacco is burned and the resulting smoke is inhaled. The practice may have begun as early as 5000–3000 BCE. Tobacco was introduced to Eurasia in the late 16th century where it followed common trade routes...

in public.

Rather than passing judgement on Bedelia, the third person narrator

Third person limited omniscient

The third-person omniscient is a narrative mode in which the reader is presented the story by a narrator with an overarching point of view, seeing and knowing everything that happens within the world of the story, regardless of the presence of certain characters, including everything all of the...

follows Charlie Horst's increasingly muddled thoughts and feelings without ever detailing Bedelia's motives

Motive (law)

A motive, in law, especially criminal law, is the cause that moves people to induce a certain action. Motive, in itself, is not an element of any given crime; however, the legal system typically allows motive to be proven in order to make plausible the accused's reasons for committing a crime, at...

New edition and references

In 2005, The Feminist Press

The Feminist Press

at the City University of New York

City University of New York

restored Bedelia to print as part of their Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp series. This new edition includes an Afterword, "All My Lives: Vera Caspary's Life, Times, and Fiction", by A. B. Emrys (Barbara Emrys), a faculty member of the Department of English at the University of Nebraska at Kearney

University of Nebraska at Kearney

The University of Nebraska at Kearney , founded in 1905 as the Nebraska State Normal School at Kearney, is the Kearney, Nebraska, United States campus of the University of Nebraska system.-History:...

Film adaptation

Immediately after Bedelia had been published in 1945, Isadore Goldsmith went about to prepare a film adaptation. The screenplay

Screenplay

A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...

was co-written by Herbert Victor and Goldsmith himself, but although Caspary was consulted as well, she could not do anything about Goldsmith's decision to relocate the action to England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

and Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo

Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....

and to update it to the present. In the film, the Carringtons, a British couple, are spending their honeymoon

Honeymoon

-History:One early reference to a honeymoon is in Deuteronomy 24:5 “When a man is newly wed, he need not go out on a military expedition, nor shall any public duty be imposed on him...

in Monte Carlo, where they are pestered by a young detective who poses as a fledgling artist. Caspary pointed out that unless the action of the movie were set before the First World War, the whole point she wanted to make in the novel about women's dependence on men—and Bedelia's deviant ways of circumventing that dependence—would be lost in the film, but Goldsmith was adamant.

The black-and-white

Black-and-white

Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...

movie, which was one of the few independent productions ever made at Ealing Studios

Ealing Studios

Ealing Studios is a television and film production company and facilities provider at Ealing Green in West London. Will Barker bought the White Lodge on Ealing Green in 1902 as a base for film making, and films have been made on the site ever since...

, was released in 1946

1946 in film

The year 1946 in film involved some significant events.-Events:*November 21 - William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives premieres in New York featuring an ensemble cast including Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell.*December 20 - Frank Capra's It's a...

. It starred Margaret Lockwood as Bedelia Carrington ; Ian Hunter

Ian Hunter (actor)

Ian Hunter was a British character actor.Among dozens of film roles, his best-remembered appearances include That Certain Woman with Bette Davis, The Adventures of Robin Hood , The Little Princess and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde...

as Charlie Carrington; Barry K. Barnes

Barry K. Barnes

Barry K. Barnes was a British film actor. He was born in London. He appeared in sixteen films between 1936 and 1947...

as Ben Chaney; and Anne Crawford

Anne Crawford

Anne Crawford , born Imelda Crawford, was a British film actress, in films such as Millions Like Us...

as Ellen. The film was directed by Lance Comfort

Lance Comfort

Lance Comfort was an English film director and producer born in Harrow, London.With a career spanning over 25 years he became one of the most prolific film directors in Britain though never gained critical attention and remained on the fringes of the film industry creating mostly B movies.Comfort...

.

Caspary felt so strongly about the film's distorted message that she later wrote another screenplay based on her novel in the hope that it would be turned into a U.S. film, a project which, however, was never realized.

Plot summary

Major themes

New edition and references

Film adaptation

See also