<Articles>A Possibility of Mutual Communication: Beyond Agonistic Resignation

Abstract

While we have an impulse to seek mutual understanding, we often encounter something beyond our understanding in others. This essay investigates how we can draw a picture in which both parties are passionately engaged in the conversation. We find crucial factors for it in the film Stella Dallas. The first is motherhood and daughterhood in human nature. The second is the unknowability of the daughter's side, which works as an education for a mother. Finally, those factors are activated by the speaker's seriousness. This seriousness can be a justification for the audience to understand the mother's gaze and be educated.