I have seen this film many times and each time draw a new facet from the Catherine - Dr Austin Sloper - Moris Townsend non-love triangle. But it is my opinion after all these years that everybody underrates Catherine. Many children grow up in the shadow of an esteemed parent whose legend reaches near mythical proportions. Certainly that's Catherine's misfortune. While her mother was not a world famous starlet, she was worshiped by Dr Austin Sloper and even rambling air-headed Aunt Pennyman cautions Dr Austin that he has elevated Catherine's mother to near Goddess stature to which no woman dare compare.

Yet in spite of his open wound constantly gnawing at him whenever Catherine cannot ascend to her mother's level, Dr Austin sees himself as a pure rationalist, one who even contrives to control his own death and the security of Catherine's fortune thereafter.

But here's how everyone underrates Catherine: everyone looks at the hard lesson she's dealt without excusing her youthful inexperience and almost no one sees how she's able in the ante-bellum period to be an independent woman, to run a household, give commands to subordinates including the interfering Aunt Pennyman and interact with Maid Moriah (called Maria in the credits but consistently pronounced Moriah in the film) taking charge without talking down to her. Her true voice comes out in the foiled elopement but it is her father's voice: rationality and command.

Her father was waiting in vain for her mother reincarnate.

She is her father's daughter, without the musical talent of her mother or her mother's sociability (then called gaiety in times spoken of.) Catherine even inherited her surgeon father's talent for stitch-work which is put to embroidery.

The costuming and music is fantastic. The love song though composed for this film sounds like a tune from the ante-bellum era.