Novel and its film adaptations: Henry Jamess Washington Square and its movies

It is now commonplace that reading the movies has a legitimate place in university curriculum. Apart from the fact that film studies has established itself as an independent academic discipline, comparing and contrasting original novel and its screenings has become one of the most favorite subjects in literary as well as film studies. While literary intellectuals antipathy against cinema is deep-rooted, movie as a visual text can be brought into play in education of critical sensibility and value judgment. Much more can be true of film adaptation of novel. It can be even argued that studies of film versions of literary works in class is one of the most accessible forms of current literary studies to both students and teachers. Comparing and contrasting novels with their film adaptations would be a challenging task; reader, say, of Henry Jamess Washington Square(1880) and viewer of its cinematic versions should be integrated in his/her critical response. William Wyler and Agnieszka Holland, the two directors who turned the original novel into sharply antithetical film texts, The Heiress (1949) and Washington Square(1997) heavily draw on the popular themes of revenge and love. Readers,to say nothing of audience will be attracted much more easily to the story of revenge and love primarily because of their inclination for wish-fulfillment. Revenge and love is one of the most easily consumable themes of melodrama; whether screenings as a visual interpretation succeed in transcoding their source novels creative tensions into self-sufficient cinematic texts depends on directors artistic command of visual language. In case of Henry Jamess Washington Square, we still find the novel outdoing its film adaptations