Stella Dallas - Olive Higgins Prouty

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Résumé :
Stella Dallas a pretty working class girl decides she wants more out of life than drudgery and work. She sets her sights on marry rich and she manages it. But she soon finds that marrying a rich man and keeping him are not the same things. Course and vulgar by upper class standards she is unable to bridge the cultural divide that separates them. When Stella and her husband inevitably divorce she shifts her ambitions to her daughter. But can she be any more successful at helping her daughter fit into that world than she was herself? Stella Dallas has captivated audiences since it first appeared. It has been successfully adapted three times for the screen and once as a radio play and is credited with creating the modern soap opera. Barbara Stanwyck garnered an Oscar nomination for playing the title role.

Biographie:
Olive Higgins Prouty (1882-1974) was an American novelist and philanthropist whose fiction explored the emotional lives of women within the social frameworks of the early twentieth century. Best known for Stella Dallas, Prouty combined commercial success with serious psychological inquiry, addressing themes of marriage, ambition, sacrifice, and independence. Her work frequently examined the pressures placed upon women by class, convention, and family duty. Beyond her literary career, she was a noted supporter of psychoanalysis and mental health advocacy, interests that informed the psychological depth of her novels....

Sommaire:
A powerful early twentieth-century novel of maternal devotion, social aspiration, and the cost of self-sacrifice. In Stella Dallas, Olive Higgins Prouty presents the moving story of a woman determined that her daughter shall have advantages she herself never possessed. Stella, spirited and ambitious, marries into a more refined social world but never entirely belongs within it. As the years pass, her love for her daughter becomes both her defining strength and her quiet tragedy. Prouty examines class aspiration, emotional vulnerability, and the subtle cruelties of social distinction with steady restraint. Stella's efforts to secure her daughter's future demand increasing personal sacrifice, culminating in one of the most poignant conclusions in American domestic fiction. The novel's enduring power lies in its refusal to sentimentalise either ambition or devotion...