Abstract
"Something else besides a mother" this was Stella Dallas' excuse to her daughter in order to alienate her bond with her daughter and secure the latter's marriage into the upper class society.
Discussing the key-scenes of the film that reveal the two contradictory roles Stella has undertaken for herself, womanly desire on one hand and motherly duty on the other, and especially concentrating on the last scene of the "happy ending" that actually underlines the fact that such a reconciliation of the two contradictory roles is impossible.
Stella Dallas is a film which has been categorized as a family melodrama, and more precisely a mother-daughter melodrama addressed to bourgeois women audiences, made in 1937 by King Vidor. It is the story of a woman, who becomes a mother; this woman encounters several difficulties in her role as a mother. As a woman, she wants to climb the social ladder, to belong to the upper class and to have fun; she has to be protective, to take care of her daughter.
