The 1948 film Portrait of Jennie is not really about a portrait or about Jennie; it is either a) a film about the search for inspiration in a creatively dry landscape or b) a film about love transcending time, depending on whether the viewer believes Jennie is real or not. For the purposes of this blog, we’re going to assume she is, because the character of Jennie is one that is deserving of further inspection and not mere dismissal as the figment of an artistic imagination. Although the film follows Eben’s journey from blocked and unremarkable artist to a creatively stimulated “master” of his muse, creator of work that will “one day hang in a museum,” Jennie too undergoes a journey that is largely ignored by the film. Molly Haskell on page 620 of her essay “From Reverence to Rape: Female Stars of the 1940s” justifies the omission thus: “The preoccupation of most movies of the forties is with the man’s soul and salvation rather than the woman’s.” Portrait of Jennie is Eben’s story, not Jennie’s. In fact, I’d imagine that most people if asked would say that Jennie remains a largely static character throughout, aside from the basic age-related changes that take place as she grows up (changes that must occur for her to eventually enter a relationship with Eben). However, Jennie is a much more complex character, her dynamic aspects ignored in favor of Eben’s artistic turmoil. She undergoes a transformation that is in fact a mirror of the theory set down by Haskell in her essay, and that I think is especially interesting considering she is not the protagonist of the film.
In her essay, Haskell puts forth the idea that in 1940s cinema, when female characters were overly intelligent and ambitious but forced by society into stereotypical roles, they developed in one of two ways: either using their femininity to manipulate (labeled the superfemale) or joining the “boys” by developing masculine characteristics (labeled the superwoman). With Bette Davis on one end demonstrating the perfect superfemale and Katharine Hepburn on the other representing the perfect superwoman, Jennifer Jones (the actress who played Jennie) falls somewhere in the uncertain middle. Not possessing the strength herself to keep Jennie definitively a superfemale or a superwoman, Jones’ portrayal of Jennie results in the character shifting between the two over the course of the film. This actually results in her being a much more dynamic character than Eben, who comes to no great realizations and has no epiphanies over the course of the film; he in essence is overtaken by his own talent when his Muse, Jennie, enters his life. Jennie, on the other hand, ends the film a different person than when she began it. To say she matures from a girl to a woman is not enough: she matures from a superfemale to a superwoman, a much more difficult and noteworthy task.
A superfemale, states Haskell, is “exceedingly feminine and flirtatious, [and] is too ambitious and intelligent for the docile role society has decreed she play” (624) Trapped in stifling gender roles (usually those of wife and mother), the superfemale unleashes her energy on those around her, usually by manipulating men with her feminine wiles. “Romantically attractive, even magnetic, she is not sexual,” and therefore promises without delivering, so to speak, enticing those around her without ever actually giving up anything of herself (624). Used to manipulating as she is, “The superfemale is an actress by nature,” able to twist her own emotions for the sake of twisting other’s emotions even further (624). While she is nowhere near pure superfemale (Jennie is certainly no Scarlett O’Hara), she does contain certain aspects of the superfemale in her early encounters with Eben. The first few times they meet, of course, Jennie is only a child and hardly capable of anything other than childish joy at Eben’s presence (changing into infatuation as she grows a bit older). However, as she grows she begins to demonstrate qualities generally associated with the superfemale.
In fact, it may be stated that without Jennie’s superfemale qualities, there would be no portrait, no inspiration, and no movie. Without these qualities Jennie would simply be a child Eben met in the park and then never saw again. Even if Eben feels some thrill of recognization of the soulmate bond with Jennie like she clearly feels with him, he does not express or act on these feelings until late in the film. Jennie, on the other hand, actively pursues Eben, subtly at first but with increasing boldness. As she loses her childlike innocence, her superfemale qualities emerge, marking the point at which she becomes bold in her pursuit of Eben. In fact, her very pursuit itself is evidence of the superfemale within: in seeking not just a relationship but the eternal bond of a soulmate with Eben, Jennie is defying time itself. Too determined to remain in her own time without Eben, she repeatedly crosses over into his, even “hurrying” to accelerate the time until they can be together. Evading time itself to get what she wants? Scarlett certainly never had such ambition.
Other superfemale qualities reveal themselves as Jennie grows. The two most pronounced are manipulation and flirtation, which in Jennie’s case are often combined. Knowing that Eben’s initial attraction to her was as a Muse figure, she uses his fascination with her beauty to help him reach the same conclusion she already has: that they are soulmates, meant for each other. This behavior is most marked in the scene when Jennie visits Eben in his loft, during her first year of college at the convent. Now fully a young woman, she seems to have come to the understanding of the importance of her own appearance: she is dressed in her “Sunday dress” with her hair pulled back, and almost seems to be a young girl playing dress-up as a woman. Eben’s first reaction upon seeing her is just what a superfemale yearns for: “It can’t be you!” followed by “You’re beautiful!” Clearly bewitched by her, Eben begins to view Jennie with more than paternal and artistic love–he is attracted to her, but not in a sexual manner. It is also in this scene that Jennie becomes more bold in her hints for their future. By constantly reminding Eben that she is hurrying, by pointing out the rate at which she’s aging, by reminding him that one day soon they will “be together,” Jennie never lets either of them forget that their relationship is meant to be. However, in the aforementioned scene her hints become more obvious than stock phrases dropped in conversation. On the roof, she asks coyly, “Do you know what Emily wants to know? When you’re going to marry me.” Clearly this question comes from Jennie herself, but it is the first time she’s mentioned a mature, consenting-adult relationship as opposed to the very vague “be together always.” Clearly it also means something to her, for when Eben laughs tolerantly she seems hurt and reminds him that although it may seem ridiculous to him now, she will be old enough soon.
Thus by the time she visits Eben in his loft, Jennie has developed from a naive child to a mild but still noticeable superfemale, using her “feminine wiles” and her status as Eben’s Muse to manipulate him into her planned eventuality: their life together. Whether or not they are soulmates does not have an impact on what Jennie is doing. However, by her next visit, a tremendous change has begun to take place in her character: she begins to change from a superfemale to a superwoman.
Haskell defines a superwoman as a woman who “has a high degree of imagination or ambition” and “adapts male characteristics in order to enjoy male prerogatives” (624). A superwoman “pulls her own weight in a man’s world,” both aided and hindered by “her angular personality and acute, even abrasive intelligence” (624, 632). Once again, Jennie is too mild to qualify as a full superwoman–she’s not independent enough, just as she was not bitchy enough to qualify as a full superfemale. But in her last meeting with Eben, she shows the beginnings of a transition to superwoman that is never fully explored in the film, but might have revealed a stunningly beautiful and strong character from the shadow of a young, manipulative one.
The transition from superfemale begins during Jennie and Eben’s last meeting, as Eben finishes Jennie’s portrait. As she sits for him, Jennie says something quite different from her usual lovestruck conversation. Instead of mentioning how they will “be together always” Jennie muses, “You know how you feel sad sometimes? About things that have never happened? Perhaps they’re the things that are going to happen to us. Perhaps we know it…and are just too afraid to admit it to ourselves.” In this moment, Jennie moves past her infatuation/love for Eben and transcends what she wants to ponder a deeper truth: that there is a limit to what a mere person can achieve, a limit to how far manipulation will get you. She admits that she is just as capable of being manipulated as she is capable of manipulating others–manipulated in this case by time itself. Also for the first time, Jennie admits that she is just as much a victim of time’s inconsistencies as Eben is: no matter how persuasively she plans their life together, time can sweep them apart just as easily as it brought them together, and she has no control over it, no warning but a vague sense of sadness. This moment of reflection is integral because in it Jennie accepts her own limits and, equally important, her fate as a victim of time. Thus she fulfills Haskell’s definition of the transition from superfemale to superwoman: “by taking life into her own hands, her own way.” However, to take her life into her hands, Jennie must let it go. Her transition to being a superwoman is reliant upon her realization that, in the end, her situation is beyond her control.
Unfortunately, in terms of Jennie’s transition, the film is incomplete. Her realization becomes a prediction, as she and Eben are swept apart from each other, both literally and figuratively. For the film, this is the end. However, for the character of Jennie, it was barely a beginning. Having succeeded in becoming a superwoman through acceptance of her situation, Jennie becomes free to love without manipulation, to engage in the equal-fulfillment relationship Haskell describes at the end of her essay. Unfortunately, the film ends with her still caught in the fledgling stage of superwoman-hood, demonstrating again that the focus of the film is not on her but on Eben, who not only survives the film but does it in full fulfillment of his artistic potential. Jennie never gets to fulfill her full potential; she is trapped in the role of Muse, and never receives the opportunity to understand her full identity outside of that role. Thus an already dynamic character is both ignored and repressed.
And the portrait of Jennie, beautiful but flat, becomes symbolic of her treatment as a character.