The character trait of goodness can be defined as “the deliberate preference of right to wrong, the firm and persistent resistance of all moral evil, and the choosing and following of all moral good.”
In Anatole Litvak’s All This, and Heaven Too (1940), Henriette Deluzy-Desportes (Bette Davis) embodies goodness as the governess to four children.
Henriette always does what is morally right. When the boy Reynald (Richard Nichols) suffers from diphtheria, she attends to him throughout the night and cares for him with a mother’s love.
Henriette loves the children, and she also loves their father, the Duc de Praslin (Charles Boyer). However, although he loves her in return, she resists the temptation to have an affair and run away with him.
It is ironic that when a person is good, they can often be accused of being bad. The Duchesse de Praslin (Barbara O’Neil) accuses Henriette of stealing the love of her husband and her children. But Henriette has stolen nothing. The Duc and the children love her because she is so good. The Duchesse hates Henriette because jealousy has poisoned her heart.
One of the most universal moral principles is to do no harm to another person. This is what sets Henriette apart from the Duc and the Duchesse. She causes no harm to anyone and only seeks their good.
Henriette does not repay evil with evil. The Duchess is cruel to Henriette, yet she is still respectful toward her and honors her in the presence of the children. Henriette repays cruelty with kindness.
In contrast, the Duchesse punishes Henriette, forcing her to resign her position, and the Duc commits the greatest harm of all, murdering the Duchesse because of her mistreatment of Henriette. Because of the harm they cause, the Duc and Duchesse are both lacking in goodness. They feel no regret or remorse for doing wrong.
When a person is truly good, they will not hate those who wrong them. The Duchesse breaks her promise to give Henriette a letter of recommendation, making it impossible for her to find another position as a governess. However, despite being wronged, Henriette has no ill will toward the Duchess.
Good people will often suffer injustices. In the climax of the film, Henriette is charged with conspiring with the Duc to murder the Duchesse, and she is sent to prison. Although the charges are eventually dropped, she is left with a tarnished reputation, and the scandal follows her when she accepts a teaching position in the United States. In the court of public opinion, a good person can be judged guilty, even when there is no proof of wrongdoing.
The film suggests that although good people must suffer injustices, they will be rewarded in the end. The children in Henriette’s class initially judge her as guilty, but after telling her story, she wins their affection. Finally, Rev. Henry Field (Jeffrey Lynn), falls in love with her, and we can assume that they will marry and live happily ever after. Henriette finds heaven on Earth, but she must go through hell to get there.
I wrote the screenplay for this short film on YouTube:
Many years ago, in a forest in British Columbia, a Sasquatch lived alone in a cave. He was nine feet tall, covered from head to toe with long black hair, and because he ate too many berries, he weighed 500 pounds.
To try and lose weight, the Sasquatch stomped through the forest all day, and the more he stomped, the more paths he made.
The rabbits often left their droppings on the paths, and this made the Sasquatch mad. When he wasn’t looking, he would stomp on the droppings, and they got stuck in his hairy feet.
One morning, the Sasquatch was stomping through the forest when he saw a rabbit about to poop on the path. He stretched out his hand and yelled, “Stop! Don’t do that!”
“What’s your problem?!” the rabbit answered angrily. “I’m doing my business.”
The Sasquatch frowned. “You rabbits always poop on my paths. When I go to sleep at night, my feet stink.”
The rabbit turned up his nose. “You don’t own this forest. I can poop anywhere I want to.”
“Why can’t you do it under a tree?”
“Because when I gotta go, I go,” the rabbit said with sass. “And I gotta go right now!”
The Sasquatch walked closer to the rabbit and pointed his finger. “Go poop behind that tree, you inconsiderate animal!”
“Please step back,” the rabbit said assertively. “You’re making me feel unsafe.”
The Sasquatch, realizing that he had been rude, immediately stepped back. Then the rabbit pooped on the path and hopped away.
After his conflict with the rabbit, the Sasquatch felt stressed, and he needed a drink. So he walked further, and took another path that led to a stream. But when he reached the end, the stream was gone. It was now a beaver pond.
Seeing a beaver working on a new dam, he walked across the dam to speak to him. He decided to take a friendly approach.
“Hello there!” the Sasquatch said with a smile.
The beaver had a scowl on his face. “What do you want?”
“I was here a week ago, and this was a stream with fresh water.”
“It was,” the beaver said, returning to his work. “But not anymore.” He packed mud on the dam and laid down more branches.
The Sasquatch took a deep breath and tried to stay calm. “This creates a problem for me. When you build a dam, the water becomes stale, and I can’t drink it.”
“That’s your problem, not mine,” the beaver said abruptly. Then he slapped his tail in the mud and splattered the Sasquatch’s hairy chest. “Go further downstream. You can drink all the fresh water you want.”
“But that’s a long way from my cave,” the Sasquatch said, wiping the mud from his chest. He decided to be firm and direct: “The truth is—you’re destroying the forest. You started with one dam, and now you have 13. You’re a greedy animal.”
The beaver exploded in anger. “Greedy?! I live in a mud house, and I freeze my tail off every winter! You’re rich compared to me. You have a cave and a fire to keep you warm at night.”
“Just because I have a nice cave doesn’t give you the right to flood miles and miles of the stream.”
“And you have no right to make endless trails that zigzag everywhere. You know what you are?”
“What?”
“A hypocrite!” Then the beaver slapped his tail several times in the water and got the Sasquatch all wet.
The Sasquatch was so angry, he wanted to grab the beaver by the throat and strangle him. But he decided it would be better if he went back to his cave and meditated. Meditation helped him control his angry thoughts and violent impulses.
So he returned to his cave, pressed his palms together, crossed his legs, and meditated. An hour later, after all his anger was gone, he fell into a deep sleep.
At midnight, the Sasquatch was woken by a pack of wolves. The wolves were having a party, and when wolves are having a good time, they howl.
“Not again!” the Sasquatch yelled. “I can’t take this anymore!”
He came out of his cave and stomped through the forest until he found the wolves. They were howling and eating fresh meat.
“Shut up!” the Sasquatch shouted. “Shut your big mouths!”
“What’s wrong with you?” the leader of the pack asked.
“You howl every single night and wake me up!”
The wolf grinned. “Some animals sleep in the day, and some sleep at night.” Then he turned to the wolf pack. “We were made for the night, weren’t we, boys?”
The wolf pack howled in agreement.
The Sasquatch paused, took a deep breath and said, “You need to be considerate of animals who sleep at night.”
“And you need to be considerate of animals who sleep in the day,” the leader of the pack replied. “You often wake us up when you go stomping through the forest.”
The Sasquatch scoffed. “That’s ridiculous! I’m not that loud.”
“We can hear you from six miles away,” the wolf said. “Our ears are highly sensitive to noise.”
This conversation is going nowhere, the Sasquatch said to himself. He decided to warn the wolf.
“If you don’t stop howling, I’ll, I’ll…” And he tried to think what he might do.
The wolf said, “Are you threatening us?” He turned to the wolf pack. “He’s threatening us, boys!”
The Sasquatch jumped up and down several times. “If you don’t stop howling, I’ll stomp up and down like this when you’re sleeping.” The Sasquatch had huge feet, the size of snowshoes.
One of the wolves said, “He’s going to murder us when we’re asleep! He’s planning a massacre!”
The Sasquatch pointed his finger at the wolf and yelled, “You lying animal! I never said that.”
Another wolf hollered, “He’s a monster!”
The Sasquatch was so mad, he roared, a roar so loud that all the wolves became quiet and lowered their tails in fear. Some of the wolves were trembling.
Realizing that he had lost control, the Sasquatch turned and stomped back to his cave.He sat down and tried to meditate, but he was too upset. However, the wolves were no longer howling, so he laid down and went to sleep.
The next day, the Sasquatch woke up at noon, and came out of his cave. He was surprised to see a dozen rabbits, six beavers, and the pack of wolves waiting for him.
“Did you come to apologize?” he asked them.
The rabbit that pooped on the path said, “We don’t want you in our forest anymore.”
“What?” the Sasquatch replied, taken aback. “Why?”
“Because you hate us,” the beaver from the dam said.
“I don’t hate you. You animals just do things that make me mad.”
“We’ve decided it is best for everyone if you leave,” the leader of the wolf pack declared.
“No!” the Sasquatch said. “I have just as much right to live here as the rest of you.”
“No one has the right to hate other animals,” the beaver said.
“Hate leads to violence against innocent rabbits,” the rabbit said, and the other rabbits nodded their heads in agreement.
The Sasquatch shook his head. “I never said I hated you! All I did was speak my mind. And everything I said was true.”
“You insulted us and hurt our feelings,” the rabbit cried. “You’re really mean!” Then all the rabbits chomped their teeth at the Sasquatch.
The Sasquatch took a deep breath and sighed. “I know I can be blunt sometimes, but you’re not nice to me either.”
“You don’t belong here,” the beaver said. “You’re not even an animal. You’re a man-animal!” Then all the beavers chomped their teeth at the Sasquatch.
The Sasquatch crossed his arms and stomped his feet. “I’m not leaving!”
The wolf walked up to him and said, “If you don’t leave voluntarily, we will use force.”
The Sasquatch looked at all the animals. “It’s not fair to banish me. Your behavior is just as bad as mine.”
The wolves started growling and howling, and they formed a circle around the Sasquatch. And so, fearing the wolves might make fresh meat out of him, he gathered his things from his cave, and left the forest.
And to this day, the Sasquatch is rarely seen or heard by anyone.
