Olive Higgins Prouty


Olive Higgins Prouty was an American novelist and poet, best known for her 1922 novel Stella Dallas and her pioneering consideration of psychotherapy in her 1941 novel Now, Voyager.

Life and influence

Olive Higgins, who was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, was a 1904 graduate of Smith College and married Louis Prouty in 1907, at which time the couple moved to Brookline, Massachusetts in 1908.
In 1894 Prouty was reported to have suffered from a nervous breakdown that lasted nearly two years according to the Clark University Archives and Special Collections. After the death of her daughter Olivia in 1923 Prouty suffered from another nervous breakdown in 1925.
Her poetry collection was published posthumously by Friends of the Goddard Library, Clark University, Worcester, MA as
in 1997 after it was released for publication by her children Richard and Jane. In 1961, Prouty wrote her memoirs but, as her public profile had diminished, could not find a publisher; she had them printed at her own expense.
Prouty is also known for her philanthropic works, and for her resulting association with the writer Sylvia Plath, whom she encountered as a result of endowing a Smith College scholarship for "promising young writers". She supported Plath financially in the wake of Plath's unsuccessful 1953 suicide attempt: Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, would later refer in Birthday Letters to how “Prouty was there, tender and buoyant moon”. Many, including Plath's mother Aurelia, have held the view that Plath employed her memories of Prouty as the basis of the character of "Philomena Guinea" in her 1963 novel, The Bell Jar, a figure who is described as supporting the protagonist because "at the peak of her career, she had been in an asylum as well", and who arguably represents a role model to be ultimately rejected by the protagonist.
Guidestar.Org lists an Olive Higgins Prouty Foundation, Inc.
Stella Dallas was adapted into a stage play in 1924, movies in 1925 and most notably 1937 as a melodrama of the same title that starred Barbara Stanwyck and was nominated for two Academy Awards. It was remade in 1990 starring Bette Midler, and a radio serial which was broadcast daily for 18 years, despite Prouty's legal efforts. Now, Voyager was made into a film of the same name in 1942, directed by Irving Rapper and starring Bette Davis - - as well as into a radio drama, starring Ida Lupino and produced by Cecil B. de Mille on the Lux Radio Theater.

Family

Olive married Lewis Prouty in 1907; they had four children, two of whom predeceased their mother. Her children included Olivia, Richard, Jane and Alice.

The Vale Novels

Prouty's best-remembered writings are the five Vale novels, particularly the third in the series, Now, Voyager. Now, Voyager delves into the psychology of a woman, Charlotte Vale, who has lived too long under the thumb of an overbearing mother. An important character in the novel is Charlotte's psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith, based on the fictionalization of Prouty's own therapy. He urges her to live her life to the fullest, taking to heart the words of Walt Whitman, "Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find." Thanks in part to the help of Dr. Jaquith, by the end of the book Charlotte is very much enjoying her life as a Vale of Boston.

Retirement and death

Prouty wrote her last novel in 1951, the year of her husband's death. For the rest of her life she lived quietly in the house in Brookline, Massachusetts, where she had moved in 1913. In old age she found comfort in her friendships, her charitable work, and the Unitarian church, First Parish in Brookline, which the Proutys had joined in the early 1920s.
She died in Brookline.

Memorials

In 1956 Prouty provided the funding for the Prouty Memorial Garden and Terrace at Children's Hospital in Boston, created by the Olmstead Brothers landscape architecture firm. The garden, in memory of her two deceased children, is a registered site with the National Association for Olmsted Parks, and was honored with a gold medal by the Massachusetts Horticulture Society. The garden may be undergoing changes as the hospital is considering replacing the garden with more buildings in the area currently occupied by the garden.

Novels

Memoirs

Belknap: "Stella Dallas : Book by Gertrude Purcell and Harry Wagstaff Gribble. Produced by the Selwyns in New Haven starring Mrs. Leslie Carter, Edward G. Robinson, Kay Harrison, Albert Marsh, Philip Earle, Clara Moores, Ruth Darby, Beatrice Moreland, Almeda Fowler, Guy Milham, etc. Directed by Priestly Morrison."