Sunday, November 30, 2014

Bridging Austen and Brontë: Elizabeth Gaskell


This year my reading list included novels by Jane Austen's influences such as Fanny Burney (Cecilia), Maria Edgeworth (Belinda), and Charlotte Lennox (The Female Quixote). This was also the year I first read Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Villette. But perhaps the books I've most enjoyed over the past twelve months are by a writer who bridges the disparate worlds and sensibilities of Austen and Brontë: Elizabeth Gaskell.

In 1849 Gaskell—whose first novel Mary Barton had been published the year before—wrote a fan letter to the author of Jane Eyre. That letter initiated a correspondence and friendship that continued for the rest of Brontë's short life. The two writers met in person for the first time the next year; afterwards Gaskell wrote to a acquaintance, "She and I quarrelled and differed about almost every thing,—…but we like each other heartily I think & I hope we shall ripen into friends…" [1]

Perhaps one of the things that drew them together was the similarity of their experiences. Both Gaskell and Brontë had lost their mothers at an early age; Gaskell was a year old when her mother died, while Brontë was five. Both were primarily raised by their mother's sisters in the north of England: Gaskell was sent to Knutsford, a small town near Manchester, to live with her mother's relatives, while Brontë's aunt came to Haworth, a village near Leeds, to live with the Brontë family. Both were sent to boarding schools as young girls. Both of their fathers were ministers, although Gaskell's father resigned from the church before she was born, and both were deeply religious. And both married clergymen themselves, although Brontë was unmarried when she and Gaskell first met. Perhaps these affinities are what moved Charlotte's father Patrick to ask Gaskell to write an account of Charlotte's life shortly after she died (see "I am not like you": Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Brontë).

That Brontë and her novels deeply impressed Gaskell is evident from novels Gaskell wrote after their friendship was established. Jessie Brown in Cranford (1851-1853), Margaret Hale in North and South (1855), and Molly Gibson in Wives and Daughters (1865) are all young women caring for widowed fathers (Gaskell's father remarried when she was four; Brontë's father never did). All of these heroines defy convention, as did Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe (in Villette), and Brontë herself. Jessie Brown insists on walking behind her father's casket to his burial, though this action is viewed by some as "against...propriety" [2]; Margaret Hale involves herself in the lives of the immiserated working class of Manchester; and Molly Gibson is interested in the scientific developments of her day, and risks her own reputation to help her stepsister out of a romantic dilemma.


North and South
North and South is the Gaskell novel that perhaps most clearly brings together the influences of both Brontë and Austen. Margaret Hale is the most Brontë-like heroine in Gaskell's fiction. Like Caroline Helstone, heroine of Brontë's Shirley (1849), she falls in love with a textile mill owner at a time of labor unrest, and sympathizes with both the workers and the owner. This is a connection that Gaskell clearly intended the reader to make: the bucolic village in which Margaret and her family are living at the beginning of the novel is called Helstone. There's also an Austen connection: the fictional village of Helstone is located in Hampshire, the rural county in the south of England where Austen was born and raised.

Margaret is portrayed in terms that Gaskell might have used to describe Charlotte Brontë herself:
...her quick perceptions and over-lively imagination made her hasty, and her early isolation from sympathy had made her proud; but she had an indescribable childlike sweetness of heart, which made her manners, even in her rarely wilful moods, irresistible... [3]
Margaret's life also closely parallels of that of her author. Her father is a clergyman who leaves the church because of a crisis of conscience; Gaskell's father did the same before she was born. At age 19, Margaret must move with her family to the industrial city of Milton; on her marriage at age 22, Gaskell moved with her husband to the industrial city of Manchester. Margaret has a brother, Frederick, who joins the Navy; Gaskell's brother John sailed with the East India Company's merchant fleet.

The central narrative in North and South is Margaret's slow recognition of the depth and nature of her feelings for Mr. Thornton, the (relatively) young and (relatively) progressive owner of a textile mill in Milton. Mr. Thornton is brought to recognize his love for Margaret much more quickly. In the midst of a near-riot at his mill during a strike she stands next to him to try to protect him from the crowd's wrath, and is injured. Shortly afterwards, he declares his feelings to her, but she rejects him abruptly:
'You seem to fancy that my conduct of yesterday'—again the deep carnation blush, but this time with eyes kindling in indignation rather than shame—'was a personal act between you and me; and that you may come and thank me for it, instead of perceiving, as a gentleman would—yes! a gentleman...that any woman, worthy of the name of woman, would come forward to shield, with her reverenced helplessness, a man in danger from the violence of numbers....You seem to have imagined, that I was not merely guided by womanly instinct, but'—and here the passionate tears (kept down for long—struggled with vehemently) came up into her eyes, and choked her voice—'but that I was prompted by some particular feeling for you—you! Why, there was not a man—not a poor desperate man in all that crowd—for whom I had not more sympathy—for whom I should not have done what little I could more heartily.' [4]
This is perhaps reminiscent of another independent-minded young woman's rejection of another prideful suitor:
Elizabeth felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said:
'You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner....I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.' [5]
Neither Mr. Thornton nor Mr. Darcy can forswear their love; and both continue to work, without perhaps a full consciousness of their own motivations, to be worthy of the heroine's affection.

Good as North and South is, it's not without flaws: Nicholas Higgins, the representative of the "deserving poor," seems a bit too virtuous to be true (he gives up drinking entirely under Margaret's influence, for example). And Mr. Thornton, who is brusque and business-oriented, does not excite this reader's sympathies to anywhere near the same degree as the heroine. We come to feel that Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy are meant for each other; but the potential union of Mr. Thornton and Margaret does not seem to have the same sense of emotional inevitability.


Cranford
Perhaps Gaskell's most delightful and charming work, Cranford was based on her experiences living with her aunt in Knutsford, a small town in Cheshire near Manchester. Cranford, located near the manufacturing town of Drumble, is governed (at least socially) by spinsters and widows. The interconnected stories that make up the novel (and which were originally published separately in Dickens' magazine Household Words) are narrated by a younger woman, Mary Smith, and describe the responses of the Cranford ladies to the rapidly changing mores and modes of life of the Victorian era.

The tone is warm and affectionate; the foibles and eccentricities of each of the Cranford ladies are acknowledged, but their underlying generosity and good-heartedness (particularly that of Miss Matty Jenkyns, who becomes the novel's central character) shine through. But not all is sweetness and light in Cranford. Gaskell's novels do not shy away from the fact of death, and several of the characters in Cranford, major and minor, pass away over the course of its 150 or so pages.

Gaskell herself wrote to John Ruskin that "It is the only one of my books that I can read again;—but whenever I am ailing or ill, I take 'Cranford' and—I was going to say, enjoy it! (but that would not be pretty!) laugh over it afresh!'" [6] The deep sympathy and tender fondness with which Cranford is written indeed inspire laughter and (even if Gaskell isn't willing to say so herself) profound enjoyment. If you have never read Gaskell it is the perfect place to start.


Wives and Daughters
If North and South is Gaskell's most Brontë-like novel, Wives and Daughters is her most Austen-esque—and her greatest achievement. It takes place entirely in the village of Hollingford (another version of Knutsford) and follows the fortunes of Molly Gibson, a young woman who lives with her widowed father, the town's surgeon. There's also a Brontë connection: Molly's governess is named Miss Eyre.

When Molly's blossoming beauty attracts the ardent attention of one of his apprentices, Mr. Gibson resolves to marry again to provide Molly with a stepmother. The woman he chooses is Mrs. Kirkpatrick, the widowed former governess to the children of the local lord:
Her voice was so soft, her accent so pleasant, that it struck him as particularly agreeable after the broad country accent he was perpetually hearing. Then the harmonious colours of her dress, and her slow and graceful movements, had something of the same soothing effect upon his nerves that a cat's purring has upon some people's. He began to think that he should be fortunate if he could win her, for his own sake. Yesterday he had looked upon her more as a possible stepmother for Molly; to-day he thought more of her as a wife for himself. [7]
Mrs. Kirkpatrick, for whom life has been a struggle since her husband's death, has her own reasons for accepting Mr. Gibson's offer:
She was looking out of the window...thinking how pleasant it would be to have a husband once more;—some one who would work while she sat at her elegant ease in a prettily-furnished drawing-room. [8]
We may be reminded of another man who chose his wife for her superficial attractions, but discovered too late how unsuited they were to one another:
Had Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family, she could not have formed a very pleasing picture of conjugal felicity or domestic comfort. Her father captivated by youth and beauty, and that appearance of good humour, which youth and beauty generally give, had married a woman whose weak understanding and illiberal mind, had very early in their marriage put an end to all real affection for her. Respect, esteem, and confidence, had vanished for ever; and all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown. [9]
If Mr. Gibson's situation echoes that of Mr. Bennet, Molly's echoes that of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (1814). Fanny, a demure young woman, has grown up in the household of the widowed Sir Thomas Bertram, and has fallen in love with his second son Edmund. Edmund, however, becomes infatuated with the worldly Mary Crawford, and Fanny must watch their growing attachment with dismay. Molly has grown up admiring the second son of the local squire, Roger Hamley, but he is captivated by the sparkling Cynthia, Mrs. Kirkpatrick's daughter. Roger is interested in the latest scientific theories, and embarks on a lengthy African expedition. Cynthia could not be less interested in science; she only cares about gowns, jewels, and making a brilliant impression in society. The quiet Molly understands and shares Roger's interests, but he has eyes only for Cynthia's beauty. Will Roger come to his senses and recognize Molly's true worth before it's too late?

The stage is set for a fairy-tale struggle between the evil stepmother and -daughter and the virtuous heroine. Fortunately Gaskell subverts our expectations: Mrs. Kirkpatrick is not evil, only shallow; and Cynthia and Molly, despite their differences, become close. And when a figure from Cynthia's troubling past threatens her with exposure and disgrace, Molly risks her own reputation in order to save Cynthia's.

Wives and Daughters was the last work Gaskell wrote, and she left it unfinished—she died unexpectedly before completing the final chapter. But with its close observation of the social world of a small English village and its touching portrait of the shy, sensitive and steadfast Molly Gibson, Wives and Daughters bears comparison to the work of Austen, Brontë, and to George Eliot's Middlemarch—that is to say, to some of the greatest novels ever written.

Judi Dench as Miss Matty Jenkyns in Cranford
BBC adaptations
All three of the Gaskell novels discussed here were adapted for BBC television. I wrote briefly about two of them, Cranford (2007) and Wives and Daughters (1999), in my post on Favorites of 2011: Television. North and South (2004) features Brendan Coyle, later of Lark Rise to Candleford and Downton Abbey, and Anna Maxwell Martin, later of Bleak House (2005) and South Riding (2011). All three Gaskell adaptations are excellent. But give yourself a treat and, if you haven't already done so, read the novels first.

Update 24 December 2014: On looking back today at my Favorites of 2010: Books I realized that Bollyviewer had left a percipient comment recommending Elizabeth Gaskell's novels. It only took me four years to follow her excellent suggestion. Many thanks, Bollyviewer, and apologies for my obtuseness in not following your advice immediately.

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1. Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Penguin Classics, 1985, Appendix B, p. 561.
2. Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford, Oxford World's Classics, 1980, Ch. II, p. 18.
3. Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Penguin English Library, 1970, Ch. 49, p. 508.
4. Gaskell, North and South, Ch. 24, pp. 253-254.
5. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Pantheon Books, 1949, Ch. XXXIV, p. 191.
6. Quoted in Gaskell, Cranford, Introduction, p. v.
7. Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters: An Every-Day Story. Penguin Classics, 2001, Ch. 10, p.105.
8. Gaskell, Wives and Daughters, Ch. 10, p. 104.
9. Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Ch. XLII, p. 233.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Prince, composer, murderer, madman: Carlo Gesualdo


The murders. On October 26, 1590, Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, let it be known to his household that he was going hunting (as he often did) and would be absent from his Naples palazzo for two days. He returned secretly that evening, however, and sometime after midnight burst into his wife's bedroom with three armed servants.

There he found his wife Maria in bed with her lover, Fabrizio Carafa, Duke of Andria. A witness heard Gesualdo order his men to kill the couple, and then the firing of two shots. As he was leaving the room with his hands "covered with blood," Gesualdo was heard to say "I do not believe she is dead!" and turned back to stab his wife's body several more times.

Gesualdo and his men then fled Naples, leaving behind a scene of carnage. Carafa had been shot in the chest and in the head at close range, and stabbed so savagely the points of the weapons gouged the floor beneath his body. Maria had "many wounds" in the head and body, and her throat was cut; her nightdress was "bathed with blood." The lovers had not just been murdered, but butchered. Immediately after the killings Gesualdo and his accomplices probably escaped to the relative safety of his family castle in the town of Gesualdo, about 60 miles east of the city. [1]

"The Pardon." As an act of penitence Gesualdo ordered the building of a Capuchin monastery near the castle, which was completed over the next few years. Behind the altar of monastery's chapel, Santa Maria delle Grazie, hangs a large painting now known as "Il pardon" (The Pardon). The upper part of the canvas depicts Christ, surrounded by the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, archangels and saints. In the lower part of the canvas Gesualdo himself is shown kneeling next to a fiery pit, from which angels and cherubim are helping a naked man and woman to emerge. All the figures (except Mary Magdalene, who looks at Gesualdo) are gazing imploringly at Christ, who raises his right hand in a gesture of blessing. Is Gesualdo asking for pardon? Or is he pleading for the pardon of the souls of the two lovers, who, surrounded by other sinners, had been trapped in eternal fire?


The second marriage and the first books of madrigals. In 1593 negotiations were concluded for a marriage between Gesualdo and the 32-year-old Eleonora d'Este, a cousin of Duke Alfonso II d'Este of Ferrara. That a powerful family would seek a marriage with Gesualdo just a few years after he killed his first wife demonstrates the degree to which adultery was seen as legitimate grounds for spousal violence. The alliance was advantageous to both families. Duke Alfonso was hoping for greater influence with the Pope through Carlo's uncle Alfonso, who was Dean of the College of Cardinals in Rome. Gesualdo, a self-made widower with only one son, needed more potential heirs. 

When Gesualdo arrived at Ferrara, about 70 miles southwest of Venice, for the marriage festivities in February 1594, he carried the manuscripts of his first two books of madrigals with him. These were published in May and June of that year by the printer for the house of d'Este, Vittorio Baldini. These works are highly accomplished examples of the madrigal form, as shown by the piece that opens the First Book, "Baci soave e cari" (Sweet and tender kisses):




The performers are the Czech Soloist Consort; the words are by Giovanni Battista Guarini: "Baci soavi e cari,/ cibi della mia vita/ c'hor m'involate hor mi rendete il core,/ per voi convien ch'impari/ come un'alma rapita/ non sente il duol di mort'e pur si more." (Sweet and tender kisses, sustenance of my life, first you steal, then you give back my heart: you want me to learn how a soul in rapture feels not the agony of death, yet dies.) A characteristic Gesualdo touch is the dissonance on the word "morte" (death) that occurs at around 1:50 in this performance; in his later books, the dissonance and chromaticism would become ever more extreme.

Ferrara and the third and fourth books of madrigals. With one six-month exception when he travelled back to Gesualdo without his new wife, Carlo Gesualdo stayed in Ferrara for the next two years. During this time he was in contact with musical developments at other northern Italian courts, which were renowned for their musical establishments. His third and fourth books of madrigals, published in Ferrara in 1595 and 1596, were probably composed at this time, and are more harmonically daring than his first compositions. Here is "Sospirava il mio cor" from Book 3:




The performers are Delitiae Musicae; the words are "Sospirava il mio core/ per uscir di dolore/ un sospir che dicea: 'L’anima spiro!'/ Quando la donna mia più d’un sospiro/ anch’ella sospirò che parea dire:/ 'Non morir, non morire!'" (My heart was sighing to escape its pain, a sigh that said "I give up my soul!", when my lady also breathed a sigh that seemed to say, "Do not die, do not die!")

Had Gesualdo stopped publishing music after his Fourth Book was issued, he would still be among the most famous composers of the time. He is mentioned in an essay appended to a 1607 collection of Claudio Monteverdi's music as one of the founders of the "second practice" of madrigal composition, in which the words were paramount and the expressive capabilities of music were intended to convey their meaning: a sighing fall on the word "sospira," agitated fast tempos for battle metaphors, dissonances on words such as "pain," "death," "suffering."

However, in his last two books of madrigals Gesualdo took the conventions of chromaticism and dissonance to new extremes.

Return to Gesualdo and the last compositions. In late 1596 or early 1597 Gesualdo returned, permanently, to the town of Gesualdo, and his wife Leonora and their infant son, Alfonsino, joined him in September. There were dark hints in letters and other documents that Gesualdo physically and psychologically abused his wife, and that he had taken mistresses (not unusual, it must be said, for a Renaissance prince). There were also suggestions that Leonora and her half-brother Alessandro were incestuously involved; Alessandro had also had an affair with the sister of d'Este family friend Marco Pio, who feuded with Alessandro, perhaps over the affair, and was later murdered, probably by Alessandro. Ah, the colorful lives of the Italian aristocracy...

In October 1600 the five-year-old Alfonsino became ill and died. There are accounts that after his son's death, Gesualdo was increasingly subject to dark mood swings ("melancholia," which could mean anything from poetic wistfulness to black depression), and that he asked to be beaten by teams of servants:
he was assailed and afflicted by a vast horde of demons which gave him no peace for many days on end unless ten or twelve young men, whom he kept specially for that purpose, were to beat him violently three times a day, during which operation he was wont to smile joyfully. [2]
This account should be treated skeptically since it dates from two decades after Gesualdo's death. These rumors have been widely repeated, though, and may be the origin of the idea that Gesualdo was gradually driven mad by remorse and sorrow.

In 1611 Gesualdo published his Responsoria for Holy Week as well as the fifth and sixth books of madrigals, whose dissonance and chromaticism can seem amazingly modern. Here is "Moro, lasso" from Book 6:



The performers are the Gesualdo Consort; the words are "Moro, lasso, al mio duolo/ e chi mi può dar vita,/ ahi, che m'ancide e non vuol darmi aita!/ O dolorosa sorte,/ chi dar vita i può,/ ahi, mi dà morte!" (I die, alas, in my suffering, And she who could give me life, alas, kills me and will not help me. O sorrowful fate, she who could give me life, alas, gives me death.)

In August 1613 Gesualdo's son by the murdered Maria d'Avalos, Emmanuele, died in a riding accident without leaving a male heir; and two weeks later Gesualdo himself passed away. After winding up Gesualdo's estate, his wife Leonora moved to the town of Modena to be with her family, and died in 1637 at the age of 76. The ancient family of Gesualdo died with her.

Do the late madrigals reflect Gesualdo's madness? The author of the prefaces to Gesualdo's fifth and sixth book of madrigals claimed that their appearance in print was "fifteen years from the time when they were composed." [3] This would place their composition around 1596, at the time the madrigals of the fourth book were published.

For those who see a stark stylistic disjunction between the earlier and later books of madrigals, and who are tempted to read this disjunction as evidence of Gesualdo's increasing mental affliction, these prefaces present a problem. While it's clear that they may be an attempt on Gesualdo's part to establish false precedence, there's also no reason to assume that the music contained in the fifth and sixth books was composed close to the date of publication in 1611: composers of the time often withheld music from publication for private performances, and printed collections were often "best of" compilations that included music composed over many years. Also, those who espouse the idea that Gesualdo's music reflected his growing madness have to explain how a madman would have been capable of writing the complex counterpoint and shifting harmonies of five-part madrigals.

Instead, I think we have to recognize Gesualdo as a highly innovative and self-conscious composer who was deliberately pushing the boundaries of the accepted musical practice of the time. He may also have been "assailed and afflicted by a vast horde of demons," but those demons are more likely to have interfered with his ability to compose, rather than to have inspired it.

Gesualdo's harmonic innovations were not always approved by later listeners. Charles Burney (the father of Fanny Burney) wrote in his General History of Music (1789) that Gesualdo's late style involved "harsh, crude, and licentious modulation" that is "offensive...not only repugnant...but extremely shocking and disgusting to the ear." [4] However, by the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Gesualdo's harmonic practices seemed to prefigure modern developments in chromaticism, dissonance and atonality. Stravinsky, in his preface to Glenn Watkin's critical biography of Gesualdo, calls his music "powerful" and "revolutionary" (Stravinsky made two pilgrimages to the town of Gesualdo and one to Gesualdo's tomb in Naples). [5]

The Complete Gesualdo Madrigals. Between 2010 and 2013 the Italian ensemble Delitiae Musicae, under the direction of Marco Longhini, recorded all of Gesualdo's madrigals for the Naxos label. When the project was completed the seven CDs were issued as a boxed set.

As you can hear from the version of "Sospirava il mio core" from Book 3 included above, these are superb performances. The chosen pitch is a step lower than what many ensembles have chosen, but I very much like the lower tessitura: it gives the sound of the ensemble a depth and richness that few other groups in this repertoire can match. Longhini has also chosen to use only male voices, with countertenors taking the highest parts. This also works beautifully—the similarity in timbre allows the voices of Delitiae Musicae to blend in a very pleasing way. It's also historically justifiable: falsettists are known to have sung in sacred and secular ensembles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

A choice that seems less historically justifiable to me is Longhini's decision to add continuo parts to some of the madrigals in Books I - IV. As far as I'm aware Gesualdo gave no indication that his madrigals should be performed with instruments. While the accompaniment is limited to a discreet harpsichord, in my view it's an unnecessary addition.

But the added harpsichord is a minor issue when the vocal performances are this focused and assured. Longhini's tempi are measured, and this makes the dissonances just a bit more apparent without requiring the singers to give them extra emphasis.

Many thanks to the dear friend who gave me this collection recently as a birthday present, thinking (correctly) that I would listen to it obsessively; for the last several weeks there's been at least one disc, and sometimes nothing but Gesualdo, in my CD changer. I recommend it highly.

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1. This account is taken from the depositions of witnesses to the murders quoted in Watkins, Glenn. Gesualdo: The man and his music, Second edition. Oxford University Press, 1991, pp. 15-23.

2. Quoted in Watkins, p. 83.

3. Watkins, p. 166.

4. Burney, Charles. A general history of music from the earliest ages to the present period, Volume the second, with critical and historical notes by Frank Mercer. Dover, 1957, p. 181.

5. Watkins, pp. ix-xi.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Tere Mere Sapne


Tere Mere Sapne (Our Dreams, 1971) offers several unusual twists on a familiar story: a public-spirited reformer discovers how intractable are the world's problems, and how entrenched are the rich and powerful who benefit from them.

Based loosely on the physician A.J. Cronin's novel The Citadel (1937), Tere Mere Sapne features a noble, idealistic doctor who chooses to practice among poor villagers instead of treating the complaints of the rich in the big city (very much like Nirmal in Anuradha (1960)).

In the first moments of the film the new doctor Anand Kumar (Dev Anand) is unsuccessfully trying to explain his choice to his fellow medical student, Kaul. Kaul has some foreshadowing to convey to Anand, and to us:

One day you'll regretfully return

The coal mining town where Anand travels for his new position is grim: we see a montage of smoke pouring from smokestacks, begrimed faces, men and boys loading coal amid eruptions of black dust. Anand has been hired by the ailing Dr. Prasad (Mahesh Kaul), who holds the lone company license to practice medicine in the village. Anand, who will do the actual work, is designated Dr. Prasad's "assistant" and paid a pittance by his wife (Paro). Thrown into the deal is a cramped room and inadequate food.

The other assistant is London-trained Jagan (Vijay Anand, Dev's brother and the film's director). When we and Anand first see him, lighting a cigarette and with a stiff drink in front of him, it's clear the toll that dealing with black lung, mine injuries, and sick children has taken:

Jagan

During the days, Anand and Jagan are kept busy caring for endless lines of patients. The dedicated and conscientious Anand spends his nights reading the medical journals for which he must pay a huge proportion of his inadequate salary:

Diseases of the Chest

The burned-out Jagan spends his nights in a drunken stupor:


One day Anand goes to visit a child he's treating for smallpox, only to discover that the village schoolteacher has come by and convinced the parents to send him back to class. Anand is furious:

What illiteracy! Even the teachers are ignorant!

He storms into the classroom of Nisha (Mumtaz) to bring the boy back home. Nisha pleads for the recovering child to remain: his family is poor, and he needs the free milk he gets at school. Anand castigates her for placing the other children at risk; Nisha finally yields, but has her own opinion of Anand:

You are a doctor but extremely insolent.

Of course, we realize immediately, even if Nisha and Anand don't, that they are meant to be together. And when Nisha overhears Anand paying for the life-saving injection for the impoverished father of one of her students, she realizes that she's misjudged him.

Nisha's aunt (Leela Mishra) wants to play matchmaker, and pretends to be sick to bring Nisha and Anand together. Her ploy is transparent:

Anand isn't fooled

But it works: Anand asks Nisha to spend her Sunday off with him. He takes her to the village fair, where Bombay Touring Talkies has set up a screen to show the latest movie of the biggest Bollywood star, Maltimala (Hema Malini looking glam and gorgeous):



"Phur ud chala" ("Where is my heart flying off to on the wind?") was composed by S.D. Burman, with lyrics by Neeraj; Hema's playback singer is Asha Bhosle. The contrast between the delirious Bollywood spectacle and the realities of the village is fully apparent—we even see a group of village women dancing at the fair moments before Maltimala bursts onto the screen—but it isn't overstated by director Vijay Anand.

When Dr. Prasad's wife demands the money that grateful parents have offered Anand as a blessing for saving the life of their newborn, Anand angrily resigns his position. Although Prasad's wife is portrayed as miserly and selfish, the film does not demonize her: we see how her financial anxieties arise from the her worries about her husband's fragile health.

But after their confrontation Anand resolves that he cannot remain in the household, and he applies for a job at a union-run hospital in the next village. He's told that he's the leading candidate, but to get the job he needs to get married. He goes to tell Nisha, who isn't flattered by what she thinks are his motivations for asking her. But as the discouraged Anand is leaving, Nisha calls him back:




This song exemplifies how what is symbolized or suggested can be so much sexier than what is shown. After the wedding night, her hair unbraided, Nisha stretches languorously in the morning light, singing "Every pore of my being craves for my beloved" (the playback singer for Mumtaz is Lata Mangeshkar).

Of course, the blissful happiness of the young couple can't continue undisturbed. At the hospital Anand refuses to participate in expected small daily corruptions (such as issuing false certificates of illness to the workers). His quixotic stances at first makes him unpopular:

The rumors are true. You're a puppet of the bosses.

Even his friends, such as the semi-competent dentist Dr. Bhutani (Agha), express disbelief:

He wants to reform society!

A boycott by the workers cuts severely into Anand's already small salary. The uncomplaining Nisha, however, does everything she can to prevent Anand from being aware of how difficult it is for her to maintain the household on what he earns.

Ultimately, Anand's bravery, skill and dedication win over the workers. Nisha also discovers that she is pregnant, increasing the couple's happiness even further. So we know that tragedy must be looming, and indeed it strikes without warning (be aware that some spoilers follow).

As Nisha is returning from the market one day, she is hit by the speeding car of local landowner Madhochand (Prem Nath). Nisha is badly injured—only an emergency operation by Jagan saves her life—and her baby is killed.

Madhochand comes to see Anand in order to pay restitution for the accident. Anand is deeply offended that Madhochand thinks he can be bought. Madhochand, who owns the house that Anand lives in, the hospital where he works, and the mine that the hospital serves, angrily tells Anand that he would be foolish to oppose the power of his money:

You'll be crushed afoot if you try to confront it.
(I think the subtitler meant underfoot.)

Anand is undeterred:

I will have you sent to jail!

But in court witness after witness, suborned by threats and bribes, lies about the accident. Madhochand is absolved; the power of money has won. Anand makes a bitter vow:

I swear by your love, no longer will we be poor.

Anand and Nisha move to Bombay; Kaul's prediction about Anand's "regretful return" has come true, as Kaul is the first to remind him when they run into one another:

You're back? What had I told you?

Kaul explains to Anand how doctors in the city pad their incomes: they develop a network of cronies who refer their wealthy patients to each other unnecessarily and take a cut of the fees. Eventually Kaul brings Anand into his circle, and life becomes an endless round of appointments during the day and dinner parties at night.

To numb himself to what he is becoming, Anand starts to smoke and drink—he is beginning to turn into a big-city version of Jagan. Meanwhile, Jagan visits from the village, and Nisha is surprised to see that his contact with Anand has influenced Jagan to give up his vices:

The emptiness that liquor filled no longer exists.

Anand's practice starts to bring him into contact with Bombay's fashionable people, including those on the fringe of the film world:

I'm hairdresser to film star, Malti Mala.

Maltimala is beset by headaches and crying jags that cause repeated delays and cancellations in her film shoots. After Anand successfully treats Maltimala's hairdresser, he is brought in to see the star herself. He quickly realizes that her main problem is overwork: she spends her life responding to the demands of her family, her manager and her film producers, and has no time for herself.

I've lost the real me.

Anand's miracle cure is to treat her with sympathy and compassion as a suffering human being, not as a goddess or a money-minting machine. Maltimala, unaware that Anand is married, soon finds her grateful friendship developing into something more. The songs she performs come to echo her new feelings:




"What's the matter with me?" she sings. "My heart sings and my feet dance...my heart is pounding and everyone teases me. I don't know what's wrong with me."

Nisha has some idea, though. When she sees Maltimala tenderly wishing Anand goodnight, her jealousy is instantly aroused. Understatement works greatly to the film's benefit here as well: Maltimala is not portrayed as an evil, sophisticated seductress, but instead as a young woman who is drawn to the first man she's met who isn't seeking to exploit her.

Nisha and Anand now argue constantly; she's bewildered by the changes in him. She tries to remind him of the loyal, idealistic Anand she fell in love with back in the village:

I am the same but where is that Anand?

But Anand does not want to be reminded of his former self—the self that was powerless to protect his wife and child:

Yes, that weak Anand is dead!

Will Anand get what he wants only to lose what he has? Or can he recover his principles and win back Nisha's love?

Tere Mere Sapne has a great cast and classic songs (I've left out an item number featuring Shreyas Talpade's aunt Jayshree, several Lata Mangeshkar / Kishore Kumar duets, and a surprisingly bold song about corruption sung by Manna Dey). And as I've indicated above, the script gives the characters depth and complexity: few have unmixed motives or unconflicted feelings. If the ending doesn't quite resolve all of the difficulties the film has raised, it's no wonder: clearly something more than domestic happiness is necessary to counteract the brutalities visited on its citizens by a corrupt, unjust and venal society.

For another perspective on Tere Mere Sapne, please see Memsaab's excellent review.