INTERVIEWS

The Prices We Pay: The Invisible Woman

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“You’re an admirer of my husband’s work, Miss Ellen?” asks a matronly Catherine Dickens to the young actress Nelly Ternan.“You will find that you must share him with the public.” Take it from a woman who’s been there and done that. Of course, Catherine’s husband is none other than literary great Charles Dickens, and in Nelly, Catherine recognizes a groupie when she sees one. Not that she ever predicted Dickens would take the 18 year-old ingénue as his hideaway mistress for 13 years. And not that Nelly—expressively played by Felicity Jones, ever thought she’d give in to her impulse to sneak off with a married man—even one who happens to be her literary hero at the height of his fame. But by settling for a life in shadows–under protest by her own moral compass as much as anyone else’s, the psychic consequences of Nelly’s choices haunt her with a vengeance, in Sony Pictures Classics’ The Invisible Woman.

Felicity Jones and Ralph Fiennes

Felicity Jones and Ralph Fiennes in The Invisible Woman

Based on the Claire Tomalin biography, and adapted for the screen by Britain’s Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady), The Invisible Woman is directed by, and stars Ralph Fiennes, whose electric screen presence perfectly captures Dickens’s volcanic charisma. The legendary playwright, social critic and literary magazine editor thrives on the constant adoration of his admirers, who are helpless to withhold it. Watch the jubilant author hold court at a wrap party for the play in which he first met Nelly and the rest of her acting family—including her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her sister Maria (Perdita Weeks). Whether he’s leading the room in song or quieting the room to literally hypnotize  guests to elicit their deepest thoughts, here’s a man determined to tap into your id and make you like him, and Nelly is smitten. Catherine? Not so much.

Kristin Scott Thomas, Felicity Jones, Perdita Weeks & Ralph Fiennes

Kristin Scott Thomas, Felicity Jones, Perdita Weeks & Ralph Fiennes in The Invisible Woman

“’Tis but a magic trick”, dismisses Catherine, of her husband’s performance. She might be referring to his pathological flirtation as much as his hypnotic parlor games. But then again, Nelly and Dickens’s May-December attraction is obvious to her. It’s plain to see for Mrs. Ternan as well, and when Dickens volunteers to lighten the struggling Ternan family’s fiscal load–simply because he can, Mrs. Ternan laser focuses on the tacit implication of his offer. “I cannot risk Nelly’s reputation,” she warns. The lines have been drawn. If only they weren’t blurred by the fact that Nelly loves Dickens the artist, as much as the man. And by the time she’s admiring Dickens’s literary masterpieces in progress–ink still wet on the parchment, resistance is futile, as the saying goes. Even Mrs. Ternan ultimately looks the other way, recognizing the hardships being an actor—especially one of Nelly’s limited potential.

Further fanning the flames of the affair are Dickens’s fellow playwright and frequent collaborator Wilkie Collins (Tom Hollander), and his devil-may-care mistress Caroline Graves (Michelle Fairley)–both defiantly unapologetic for their distinctly un-Victorian, un-married behavior. Collins is quite the opposite of ashamed, wearing his scandalous arrangement like progressive badge of honor, fancying himself a Pioneer venturing beyond the social boundaries of his time. Nelly’s harsh criticism clearly projects guilt over her own brewing indiscretions.

And when Dickens finally separates from Catherine, he callously communicates his departure in the form of a humiliatingly public letter to the London Times, in which he also sets the record straight about Nelly, insisting: “The lately-whispered rumors touching on my association with a certain young lady are abominably false.” A pretty bold bluff for him to make, just before he whisks said young lady off to his bucolic country retreat.

But staving off the rumor mill is a full-time job, and when Dickens and Nelly are traveling on a train that jumps the tracks, tossing passengers onto the hillside like ragdolls, Nelly is hurt—but not critically enough for Dickens to acknowledge he knows her and risk revealing the true nature of their relationship. Talk about adding insult to injury.

And here in-lies the duality that is Dickens. Because he was likeable, he was charitable, and his talent is beyond reproach. But he could be indefensibly cruel, like when a ring he had custom-made for Nelly is mistakenly delivered to Catherine, and Dickens insists Catherine personally deliver it to its rightful recipient.

For Fiennes, Dickens bleaker notes were part of his attraction to this role. “He had a darkly comic, slightly mad element to him,” Fiennes explains. “He’s like a crazy child who would like to be the center of attention, when you say ‘You have to stop playing now’, he exhibits a defensiveness that he’s never in the wrong. He wasn’t always bouncy and smiley. He was shadowy, violent and conflicted.”

Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes as Charles Dickens

The timeline of The Invisible Woman opens many years after the affair has ended. Dickens has since passed, and Nelly has re-reinvented herself as the wife of school headmaster George Wharton Robinson (Tom Burke), who knows of Nelly’s professional history, but not of her personal one. George has no idea the emotional baggage he’s messing with, when he brags to friends: “Nelly knew Dickens a child!” However it’s not until Nelly begins rehearsing her students for a school production of No Thoroughfare, a play co-written by Dickens and Wilkie Collins, that her demons truly awaken from their slumber to rain psychic torment upon her. Only after confessing her secret past to the local minister Reverend Benham (John Kavanagh), does Nelly achieve some measure of emotional relief.

“Nelly made a huge sacrifice in being with Dickens,” says Jones, of her character. “Dickens was somewhat of a burden for her.  This was not a straightforward airy-fairy love affair.”

In an early scene in The Invisible Woman, a still-innocent Nelly is asked which of Dickens’s work she favors most. She replied that she keeps coming back to Bleak House–ever intrigued with Lady Dedlock—“a woman haunted by her past,” remarks Nelly. If only she had the foresight to see this story as a cautionary tale.

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Andrew Bloomenthal is a seasoned financial journalist, filmmaker and entertainment writer.

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