The scene that Catherine’s slim figure fades out silently in the dim light accompanied by Morris’ violent screams and knocks indicates the sadness of the story in William Wyler’s 1949 The Heiress, adapted from Henry James’s 1880 Washington Square. We would never know whether Catherine (Olivia de Havilland) would lead a happy life or not, but the hurts that Morris (Montgomery Clift) brings to her would definitely gloom Catherine’s hope for life. For years, Morris has been blamed by the readers for committing deception and depriving Catherine’s innocent, and the readers take it for granted that Morris should be responsible for Catherine’s tragedy. It seems that Morris deserves the criticism, for his money-worship value touches the nerves of the moral standard and evokes the anger; however, the readers fail to dig up the deep-rooted factor leading to the Catherine’s inability to figure out between the truth and the false, which turns out to be the deep reason that results in the life-long pain. Furthermore, Catherine’s poor skill of defining something is derived from the improper educational pattern which dues to Dr. Sloper’s (Ralph Richardson) parenting pattern.
The thinking pattern and the way to deal with things are two most crucial parts that determine where are some incidents moving toward. Since these two components are deeply shaped by parenting pattern, it is obvious that parenting pattern has great influence in the formation of one’s emotion quotient which includes self-consciousness, expression manner, and personality. The setting in which Catherine grows up is a single parent family where she cannot find many joys. Except for being taught to behave elegantly and being given a physical cozy life, she does not get more from his father. Mr. Sloper would not tell her the proper way to express love, the way to distinguish between love and passion, or the way to deal with the relationship between other men, which play crucial roles leading to Catherine’s wrong decision-making. Therefore, she paid for the choice, staying alone in the sorrow and desperation all lifelong. It can be inferred that Catherine does not obtain a good development in emotion quotient, which means that she does not understand that there is a difference between the true love and the fake ones; neither does she know what will be the consequence she must undertake if she makes the false decision.
Where is the “special” parenting pattern derived from? The answer is Dr. Sloper. Mrs. Sloper’s death gave strong impacts to Dr. Sloper, who later failed to establish a good relationship between him and his daughter, which prevent him from realizing the value of his daughter and her individuality. Therefore, the emotion of despising is another murder. Catherine never complains about her father about anything until she realizes that her father despises her, and it is the most unforgivable and the cruelest treatment to a person. And it is the father who despises his daughter, which makes the fact are unacceptable.
In brief, Catherine’s happiness is killed by her father’s false parenting pattern. Dr. Sloper should take a great portion of responsibility of Catherine’s sadness. The sorrow brought to Catherine is not only a matter of her loss of the love with Morris, but her lack of the capacity to deal with the relationship with people.