The Bishop’s Wife is a magical, romantic comedy that on the surface is a harmless holiday diversion. Viewers are transported into an imaginary world where prayers are answered and angels visit the earth to intervene for good in human affairs. In truth, it is an insightful presentation of the dynamics of mimetic relationships and an excellent analysis of the power of unconditional love.


In the 1947 version of this story, debonair Cary Grant stars as an angel named Dudley who comes to earth in answer to the Bishop’s prayer for guidance. The Bishop is determined to build a glorious cathedral to honor God, and his obsessive fundraising has strained his marriage. Not only does his wife Julia feel neglected but his primary fundraiser, Mrs. Hamilton, is refusing to donate her millions of dollars unless a chapel dedicated to her husband’s memory is erected near the cathedral’s front door. Insisting that the cathedral give glory to God and not to a human being, the Bishop refuses to give in to idolatry but his principled stances alienates Mrs. Hamilton’s and she withdraws her pledge. The Bishop is also at risk of losing his wife’s love, for she feels that her husband’s pursuit of the cathedral has changed him from the caring pastor he was into a driven, cold man. In despair, he has prayed to God and God sends Dudley.


Dudley’s angelic presence is felt by everyone he meets. Not only the principle characters, but each minor character, even extras, are affected by encounters with Dudley. What Cary Grant does to perfection is portray the love freely offered by the angel. He greets each and every person in the movie with the same honest look of love and the miracle is not only in his giving of that love but in the receiving of it. We see how the Bishop’s housekeeper, cook and secretary are each transformed by that look. Not that they were bad or sinful people, but in the presence of Dudley’s love for them, they feel lighter, more joyful. Being loved, they become more loving of themselves and others. This is an illustration of the mimetic dynamic, that before we can love ourselves we must have self-love modeled for us. Dudley is that model and because he is the embodiment of the ultimate source of unconditional love in God, his power to transform is miraculous.


Dudley heals the rift in the Bishop’s marriage through the same process of modeling. He allows the Bishop to choose to attend his fundraising meetings while Dudley tends to Julia, taking her to visit an old friend, to the restaurant where the Bishop proposed to her, to the park for ice skating, and a choir rehearsal at their old parish. Dudley models a loving, attentive relationship with Julia and slowly the Bishop begins to envy what Dudley and Julia have together. There is never a hint that Julia’s love for her husband is wavering and the movie goes out of its way to assure us that she is never tempted to betray the Bishop. But Dudley has fallen prey to his own ruse. By acting the part of the loving husband, he has reignited the Bishop’s desire but has fallen in love with Julia himself. Possessing the wisdom of an angel, he realizes that he cannot act on his human feelings and he departs having healed the marriage.


The movie ends with the Bishop regaining his lost sense of purpose, turning from pursuit of the cathedral to a mission of caring for the poor. It involves the transformation of Mrs. Hamilton as both she and the Bishop reject the worship of their idols. As Dudley has warned from the beginning, when his work is complete he will leave and no one will remember that they have been visited by an angel. While this seems to be the most fantastical plot element, it is actually the most truthful from the point of view of mimetic theory. All of us are influenced by another, in much the same way that the characters in the movie are influenced by Dudley. Dudley says that angels appear all the time to mankind giving them wonderful ideas which human beings then take credit for ourselves, refusing to acknowledge the existence of angels. In the same way we refuse to acknowledge the existence of models of any kind, insisting that if we love ourselves that love arose from within, if we have an idea to pursue this or that goal it arose from within is, if we love or hate someone that too arose from inside. As The Bishop’s Wife demonstrates, we may forget the angel was among us or deny the presence of models, but forgetting and denying do not change the reality of their existence and influence upon us. This incredible movie reveals both the presence of models and our denial of them using one marvelous image, an angel named Dudley. Far from a harmless diversion, this movie reveals the startlingly ways we all influence one another and offers a model for how that influence can be used for good. Dudley’s example challenges us all to gaze upon one another with open, unconditional love and in the process become angels ourselves.

View Suzanne's use of The Bishop's Wife to illustrate mimetic desire in the Mimetic Theory 101 blog.