THB UUMANISII Of HBNRY JAMES: A STUDY 07 THB RELATION

BBTWESN THSliS AND IMAGERY IN THE UITSR HOVELS

by

ROTH TAYLOR TODASCO, B.A. , M.A.

A DISSERTATION

IN

ENGLISH

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Technological College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved

August , 1^ C TEXAS TECHNOLOGICAL COkkf^GP LUBBOCK. TEXAS HBRARY ^: : I i jssm ri ^01 73

Copyright loy RUTH TAILOR TODASGO 1963 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply indebted to Professor John C. Guilds for his direction of this dissertation and to the other members of my committee. Professors Joseph T. McCullen, Jr.,

Harold L. Simpson, Alan Lang Strout, and Everett A. Gillis, for their helpful criticism.

11 TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART ONE

INTRODOCTION 1

PART TWO

HUMANISM: THE FIGURE IN THE CARPET 12

Chapter I William James and the Ethics of Creativeness 12

Chapter II Humanist Tradition and "the Full Life" ... 27

PART THREE

THEME AND IMAGERY IN THE LATER NOVELS 33

Chapter I The Spoils of Poynton . • 33

Chapter II What Maisie Knew 44

Chapter XII The Awkward Age 54

Chapter IV The Sacred Fount 64

Chapter V The Wings of the Pove 75

Chapter VI The Ambassadors 94

Chapter VII The Golden Bowl 113

Chapter VIII The Ivory Tower 141

Chapter IX The Sense of the Past 150

PART FOUR

CONCLUSION 156

BIBLIOGRAPHY 164

ill PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

American literature was approaching the spring tide of the naturalistic interpretation of human nature when Henry James spoke out with a fully articulated philosophy of humanism, attributing to man the intellectual, moral, and aesthetic power to shape cre­ atively the elmsente of experience. It is the purpose of this study to show that the novels of James's later period reflect clearly the varied aspects of his oonc<^tion of life as a purely human, but dar­ ing, enterprise, and further to show the relationship between this conception and the novelist's thematic use of imagery. His humanism

^ The tern "humanism" is used here in a recognizable philo­ sophic sense, explained fully in Part Two, Chapter II. However, the numerous special meanings which the word has acquired would seem to Indicate that an early clarification is necessary. James's humanism consists, briefly, in the recognition that man, as an intel­ lectual, moral, and aesthetic being, is "the measure of all things." The novelist's appeal is to the purely human possibilities of experi­ ence as opposed to the supernatural or the merely natural. His view of life, as it is revealed in his later works, subscribes to the complete autonomy of the Individual, who finds in this world and in no other all the Ingredients for a fulfilling existence. Though divorced from otherworldly sentiments, James maintains, on the other hand, that the individual is no n^re puppet in a deterministic universe. Concerning the varioua meanings which "humanism" has taken on in the course of history, Edward P. Cheney describes them as mani­ festations of the impulse to emphasize that which is characteristi­ cally human: "[Humanism] may be the reasonable balance of life that the early hoBanists discovered in the Greeks; it may be merely the study of the htoMtnities or polite letters; it may be the freedom from religioaity and the vivid interest in all sides of life of a Shakespeare or a Goethe; or it may be a philosophy of which man is the center and sanction. It is in the last sense, elusive as it la, that Humanism has had perhaps its greatest significance since the sixteenth century" (Encyclopedia of the Soci •! Sciences [1937], VII, 541), is seen as the controlling idea of the novels, giving them a conso­ nance of meaning that is unappreciated when they are considered in

isolation of each other. His pervasive use of imagery is seen as the

medium through which his vision becomes objective.

It is generally recognised that James's mature writing began

after his excursion into the theatre. The years 1892 to 1897 mark

a kind of germination which proved fatal to his success in that medium

but which provided an experience in composition that was to have radi­

cal results in his later fiction. Not only did he come to a better

understanding of the dramatic presentation of character, but even

more importantly for this investigation, he realized as never before

the value of imagery as a means of projecting his inner vision. Since

complete coverage of James's later works is not feasible, this study

has been limited to the novels of his mature period beginning in

1897, novels i^ich sufficiently demonstrate the harmony between his

humanistic point of view and his advanced conception of the function

of imagery: The Spoils of Poynton, What Maisie Knew, The Awkward

Age, The Sacred Fount, The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, The

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Golden Bowl, The Ivory Tower, The Sense of the Past.

Studies of James's use of imagery (which have mushroomed in the

past decade) are in unanimous agreement about his profound awakening

to the possibilities of metaphor in the projection of consciousness.

Alexander Holder-Barell writes: "The change from the use of coounon to

more significant metaphors comes between The Portrait and The Old Things

[The Spoils of Poynton], and it is very likely that James's experiments ^^

with the drama had a decisive influence on his more careful choice of »«2 hia metaphors. Examinations of James's late revisions for the New

York Edition show him especially preoccupied with imagery. His revi­ sions, saya F. O. Matthiessen, "meant for him literally re-eeeing, as a few Instances of The Portrait may amply attest. He was determined that no abstractions should be inertly on his pages." Increasing interest in James's use of pictorial art as a fictional device has led to numerous suggestive studies. Matthiessen focusses on the com- 4 positional value of art allusions, Austin Warren on imagery as an 5 instrument of myth. The limitations of these views are pointed out by Adeline Tintner, who maintains with some fortunate reservations that art objects in James "give out a meaning proper to themiselves."

"In James* fiction art . . . has become a collection of idols in a a religion satisfying all human needs." One of the most exhaustive studies of the novelist's use of art has recently been offered by

Viola Hopkins, who examines the "pictorial effects and art allusions permeating his fiction, both early and late." All of these plunges

2 The Development of Imagery and its Functional Significance in Henry James * s Novels (Basel, Switzerland, 1959), p. 21. ^ "James and the Plastic Arts," Kenyon Review, V (Autumn 1943), 538.

^ tt>id., pp. 533-550.

"Myth and Dialectic in the Later Novels," Kenyon Review, V (Autumn 1943), 551-568.

^ "The Spoils of Henry James," PMLA, LXI (March 1946), 239-240.

"Visual Art Devices and Parallels in Fiction of Henry James/' PMLA, LXXVI (December 1961), 561. :* iT

into James's artistic resources are confronted and occasionally con­ founded by the problem of achieving the proper balance between mean­ ing and teehniftue* Too often the balance la upset in favor of the latter, the device itself becoming the weightiest element in the dis­ cussion at the sacrifice of its relation to meaning. The present inveatigatlon has aought not only to avoid this unfortunate dichot­ omy, but has also encompassed the full range of James's allusions.

"Image," as it is used in this paper, includes the artistic reference

along with any figure which communicates with immediacy the feel of

experience in a way idiich discursive language cannot. It is any com­

parison that pictorially reveals a character's state of consciousness

or his essential attitude toward another. Austin Warren has divided

JaoMs's images into two types: the conventionally beautiful meta­

phor, valuable for the momentary "pretty" effect it achieves, and the

"emblematic perception," an image that reflects "a total feeling of .«8 the nature of the world, or the nature of a person. The distinction

is sound, although the implications of the latter type in relation to

James's humanistic values have not been explored. That is the task

undertaken here. Since a piece of literature dies when meaning is

divorced from form, the aim has been to guard the rapport between

James's philosophical assiM^ptions and his technique. It is maintained

that he relies on imagery as the most profound device available to

give concrete embodiment to his humanism, and that his achievement as

a novelist can be properly evaluated only through an understanding of

this rapport between technique and idea.

® Warren, p. 556. To elucidate the idea, it will be ahown that the philosophy of the novelist's brother, William James, is particularly relevant to an understanding of the dynamic humanism espoused by Henry. Leav­ ing aside the question of direct lines of influence, the present approach will Juxtapose the a«ture views of these two sensitive and communicative brothers, in the belief that no two bodies of thought, one couched in the terms of philosophy, the other in the language of fiction, could express the same major premise without offering valuable complementary inaights. In order further to clarify the idea of humanism as it has emerged from the novels, a brief account will be given of the historical backgrounds of the humanistic atti­ tude. It is perhaps not too much to say that Henry James marks the expression par excellence of the humanistic point of view in itaaerican literature.

Criticism in general has recognized the subtlety and diffi­ culty of Henry James's later phase, with controversial opinion rang­ ing from the thesis of Van Wyck Brooks that James sacrificed tradition and "the living sense of objective reality" when he became an expa- 10 triate, to F. O. Matthiessen's theme that James's hitherto unplumbed

^ Oliver Wendell Holmes, friend of both William and Henry James, once remarked that "philosophy is the inarticulate major premise of every man's life." His definition suggested the present usage of the phrase "major premise," which refers, of course, in this case, to the expressions of highly articulate men.

^^ Van Wyck Brooks and Otto L. Bettman, Pur Literary Heritage (New York, 1956), p. 170. 6 powers were realized to the fullest In hia three crowning works.^^

Those critics who have appreciated James's development as a literary artiat have dealt principally with intricacies of style and tech­ nique. Joseph Warren Beach's The Method of Henry James^^ and Percy

Lubbock's The Craft of Fiction are early valuable contributions to

an understanding of the novelist's mature style. James's American heritage as manifested in his later novels has been perceptively

Interpreted by Philip Rahv and Quentln Anderson, both of whom, along

with Matthiessen, recog^ilze James's humanistic orientation. Matthiessen

especially appears to appreciate James's humanism in his chapter "The 13 Religion of Consciousness"; he touches for an instant the fact that

James profited from the heritage of both his father and brother, but

he does not explore in any way the rich framework of reference to be

drawn from the philosophy of William James, a framework needed to

understand the aubtleties of the younger James's art.

The novelist's heritage from his father has been dealt with

extensively by Quentln Anderson in The ^<^^ican Henry James, the chief

work to approach James in the light of a coa^rehensive philosophy.

Although, as Lionel Trilling says, Anderson's book is "jammed full of

^^ Hanry James: The Major Kiase (New York, 1944), p. xiii.

12 Philadelphia, 1954. Although the content of the 1954 edi­ tion is essentially the same as the first edition of 1918, Beach includes in the later edition a history of the criticism of James. His introduction serves as a valuable annotated bibliography. Many of the works dealing with James will be found to have helpful bibli­ ographies; the Literary History of the United States, III, ed. Robert E. Spiller et al. (New York, 1948), has, of course, the most complete listing.

13 Matthiessen, The Major Phase, pp. 131-151. insight," its thesis of the strict emblematic connection between the symbols of the later nowols and the theology of Henry James, Sr. seems to belie the novelist's expressed reaction to his parent's system of thought. In "Motes of a Son and Brother" the younger James speaks of his youthful rebellion to "father's ideas" insofar as he understood them: "l couldn't have framed stories that would have succeeded in involving the least of the relations that seemed most present to him; while those most present to myself, that is more complementary to what­ ever it was I thought of as humanly most Interesting, attaching, invit­ ing, were the ones his schemes of Importances seemed virtually to do ,^14 without." It would be naive, of course, and imnecessary, to attempt a repudiation of influence from father to son, as far as the latter's works are concerned. That a basically humanistic attitude filters through the elaborate theological expressions of the elder James is a valid and ii^>ortant point fully recognized by Quentln Anderson. "Neither the elder nor the younger Henry James," he writes, "believed that any .,15 power transcended the power of man's own mind and spirit. But in view of the son's disinterest in theological trappings, as seen in his statement to William James that he could not enter much into any system 16 of religion, it appears that Anderson improbably stretches his symbols

^* Henry James Autobiography, ed. F. W. Dupee (New York, 1956), p. 339.

^^ "^^^ American Henry James (New Brunswick, 1957), p. xii.

16 F. 0. Matthiessen, Tne James Family (New York, 1947), p. 140. > >

8

When he shows them representing the elder James's "Jewish" church,

1 T the Christian church, and the new Jerusalem announced by Swedenborg.

On the other hand, in spite of the enthusiasm with which Henry

James responded to the philosopher's publications, no definitive study

has yet been made of the possible relationship between the novelist's

views and those of his brother. Critical excursions into the philo­

sophical relationship between the brothers have been made with vary­

ing degrees of success. One of the earliest is that of Eliseo Vivas,

who concludes that "the contrast between Henry's moral vision and

William's moral theory is sharp and shocking. For to the beauty of

character, faithfulness to the pledged word, and scrupulous sensi­

bility for the feelings and rights of others, which we have seen to

be implicit in Henry's vision of life, we must now substitute an

attenuated version of Darwinism in the moral life, which hardly con- .fl8 ceals the doctrine that successful force is right. One agrees with Mr. Vivas' interpretation of the novelist's vision, but can hardly

accept his reading of William as definitive. It Is the purpose of

this study to show in fact that there is no conflict in the ethical

attitudes of Henry and William. Henry Bamford Parkes has made the

pertinent observation that the novelist's use of a "point of view"

as opposed to authorial omniscience was the artistic counterpart of

the pragmatic theory that truths vary according to the individual

17 Anderson, p. 230.

IS "Henry and William (Two Notes)," Kenyon Review, V (Autumn 1943), 586. r > ¥

9 19 observer and have no absolute reality. The common Interest of the brothers in the pragmatic theory of truth has also been suggested by Joseph Flrebaugh in his treatment of The Awkward Age: "Henry

James expressed fictionally in 'The Awkward Age' what his brother

William James was expressing in the pragmatic philosophy: the dis­ covery of truth in the market place of huaan life: truth as process rather than truth as absolute: truth for men, not Truth for Man."

That the latter two views have some validity is undoubted, but it appears to this writer that the full implications of William's philo­ sophy for an understanding of Henry's novels have not been thoroughly investigated.

In regard to Pragmatism Henry wrote to William:

Why the devil I dicbi't write to you after reading your Prag­ matism—how I kept from it—I can't now explain save by the v%xy fact of the spell itself (of interest and enthral- ment) that the book cast upon me; I simply sank down, under it, into such depths of submission and assimilation that any reaction, very nearly, even that of acknowledgement, would have had almost the taint of dissent or escape. Then I was lost in the wonder of the extent to which all my life I have (like M. Jourdain) unconsciously pragmatised. You are immenaely and universally right, and I have been absorbing a number more of your followings-up. ... I feel the read­ ing of the book, at all events to have been really the event of my summer,21

Henry's reaction is probably more exuberant than it might have been had

19 "The James Brothers," Sewanee Review, LVI (1948), 323-328.

20 "The Pragmatism of Henry James," Virginia Quarterly Review, XXVII (Summer 1951), 434.

21 Matthiessen, The James Family, p. 343. 10

a stranger written the work, but there is no reason to question his

sincerity, especially after noting that when the brothers disagree,

their letters bristle with outspoken differences. Of A Pluralistic

Universe the novelist writes: "I read it, while in town, with a more

thrilled interest than I can say, with enchantment, with pride, and

almost with comprehension. It may sustain and inspire you to know

that I'm with you, all along the line—and can conceive of no sense

in any philosophy that is not yours I As an artist and a 'creator'

I can catch on, hold on, to pragmatism and can work in the light of

it and apply it; finding, in comparison, everything else • . . utterly 22 irrelevant and useless—vainly and coldly parallel." Significantly,

he says to his brother regarding The Meaning of Truth: "All you write

plays into my poor 'creative' consciousness and artistic vision and

pretension with the most extraordinary suggestiveness and force of 23

application and inspiration." Since Henry is never explicit about

what he understands by "pragmatism" in particular, the issue is open

as to the general suggestiveness of William James's writings insofar

as they provide a valuable key to the novelist's artistic vision in

his mature period. The present study purports to draw no strict par­

allel between their views, but rather to show how the novelist's philo­

sophy of humanism takes on new dimensions through an explicit comparison

with his brother's philosophy. The results of such an investigation.

Matthiessen, The James Family, p. 344,

22 Ibid., p. 345. 11 to prove of literary value, should lead to a more perceptive reading of the novels themselves. An extended interpretation of Henry James's

later works in terms of the relation between theme and imagery is

offered in the hope of raxing the barriers which hinder an apprecia­

tion of his mature period. As David Daiches writes: "James has been

unfortunate in that few critics have discovered how to read him. But

by now we have had enough experience of the tradition in which, broadly

speaking, James was writing, to make a re-eatimate of his work both

desirable and possible. For full Justice has not yet been done to

James as a writer whose technical skill enabled him to make convincing

and inevitable a personal moral interpretation of human behavior—in

other worda, as a novelist of sensibility. M24 Altho«igh twenty years

have passed since this statement was made, and enthusiastic re-estimates

of James's work have been numerous, at least one more word, to do James

Justice, must here be added to the established body of criticism.

"Sensibility and Technique (Preface to a Critique)," Kenyon Review, V (Autumn 1943), 579. PART TWO

HUMANISM: THB FIGURE IN THE CARPET

Chapter I

William James and the Ethics of Creativeness

In an interesting work called "The Figure in the Carpet," Henry

James has given his reading audience a tantalizing clue to the idea which he says, through Hugh Vereker, a master novelist, underlies and motivates his writing. We are told» actually, to put it more cor­ rectly, that there i£ an idea, rather than given an intimation of what it is. There is an idea, Hugh Vereker saya, "without which I wouldn't have given a straw for the whole Job. ... It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else comparatively plays over the surface of it. The order, the form, the texture of my books will perhapa constitute for the initiated a complete repreaenta- tion of it. So it's naturally the thing for the critic to look for.II2 5

Not surprisingly, critics have looked for and found many answers. The effect of so many answers, providing valuable insights into this diffi­ cult author, seems to indicate, fortunately, that there is no simple, conclusive approach to his writings. On the other hand, it is sur­ prising that James's philosophy of humanism has not been adequately rocognized as an idea in the woof and warp of his carpet which would make all other answers more meaningful. James's ethics of creativeness and his enthusiaatic embrace of "the full life" give vivid form and

2^ Embarrassments (London, 1896), p. 16.

12 13 color to the figure in the carpet, the figure, as he says, that stretches from book to book.

One of the bright lights needed to illumine the complexities of

James's literary carpet is found in the writings of his brother. A 26 wide reading of William James's lectures suggests a consistent premise which is especially helpful in placing the novelist's mature works in proper perspective. Behind the philosopher's pragmatic theory of mean­ ing, which has, of course, the most important consequences for his con­ clusions in the areas of morality and religion, there is what mi|^t be called his world view. Particularly suggestive in approaching the later novels of Henry James, his world view will be considered first and per­ hapa more extensively than any other aspect of his philosophy.

Probably the most definitive characterization of William James's

Weltanschauung is his vital awareness of the changing face of reality.

It is, in fact, one of his most frequently reiterated principles that human beings do not confront a ready-made, permanently constituted reality which requires of them the task of becoming acquainted with its true nature. Far from being static and unchanging and beyond the vicissitudes of men, the very nature of reality takes its tone and color from the generating thought and action of the individual. Al­ though speaking directly to the epistemological problem of truth in the following passage, William James reveals, as in all of his lectures, a

2® In order that there will be no confusion as to which of the James brothers is under discussion, William Jaioes will be referred to by his first or full name. Any reference to the last name only should be taken to mean Henry James, 14 fundamental antipathy to any fixed and final pronouncements on the nature of reality: "Humanism is willing to let finite experience be self-supporting. Soaiewhere being must immediately breast nonentity.

Why may not the advancing front of experience, carrying its immanent satisfactions and dissatisfactions, cut against the black inane as the luminous orb of the moon cuts the caerulean abyss? Why should anywhere the world be absolutely fixed and finished? And if reality genuinely grows, why may it not grow in these very determinations .|27 which here and now are made?" How much more humanistically biased could he be than to place on the individual, as he does, the crushing responsibility of deciding the course of the tiniverse? As Paul Henle writes regarding the philosopher's position: "It is impossible to rest complacently in the belief that everything in the world will turn out for the best. The issue may hang in balance and, for this reason, human efforts acquire an importance that they might not have on another view. . . . Since the whole outcome of the universe is un- 28 decided, human decisions take on a cosmic importance." It follows, in view of the above, that William James takes seriously the problem of evil and that he must assume the human will is free to choose be­ tween what is better or worse in spite of all hereditary and environ­ mental influences. If he allows the purely human element makes a critical difference to the luiiverse, he assumes that man is potentially

27 The Meaning of Truth (New York, 1932), p. 92.

28 "William James: Introduction," in Classic American Philosophers, ed. Max H. Fisch (New York, 1951), p. 123. 15 capable of handling his responsibility.

Nowhere is there a better key to an understanding of Henry

James's characters than in William's account of reality. Milly Theale,

Lambert Strether, and Maggie Verver, for example, are all portrayed

In that strenuous mood which would inevitably be required of the indi­ vidual who realizes that reality or truth is in the making, that he is.

In fact, intellectually, aesthetically, and morally equipped "to change the character of future reality."II2 9 The vigor of the undertaking of each of these characters has led sevex'al critics to conclude that as mortals they are improbable. R. P. Blackmur calls thim "poetic

ti30 shades, a beautiful appellation but untrue to the impression that they have come to grips with life in the full, almost fierce, realiza­ tion of ita possibilities. Such a Judgment as Vernon Louis Parrington pronounces in one of the early derogatory criticiams of James's later work—that the artist's expatriation led him to "a lifelong pursuit of intangible realities that existed only in his iiaagination" —seems especially inaensltive in the light of the present interpretation.

Neither shades nor shadows of the imagination, Milly, Strether, and

Maggie emerge as lifelike figures, aware that experience only waits to be shaped by them.

2® William James, Meaning of Truth, p. 94.

30 "Introduction," in Henry James, The Golden Bowl (New York, 1932), p. xxi.

2^ "Henry James and the Nostalgia of Culture,' Main Currents in American Thought (New York, 1930), III, 240. 16

The humanistic orientation of Willism James's world view comes through his formulations In every area of philosophical investigation he undertook. It is he who speaks of philosophy as the expression of 32 a man's temperament, and perhaps no other philosopher is so totally guided by native appreciations. His devotion to the variety and rich­ ness of experience, to "the great unpent and unstayed wilderness of truth" leads him to condemn "all noble, clean-cut, fixed, eternal, rational, temple-like systems of philosophy." For William James,

"who loved life with all its multiplicity, complexity and challenging poaaibilities as few philosophers have loved it," any block-view of 34 the universe seems stultifying, blasphemous. His cosmology, explained in A Pluralistic Ifaiverse, is shot through with a sense of loyalty to the facts of human life. Speaking against the absolutist's position throughout the history of philosophy, William characteristically appeals to the testimony of experience:

As absolute, then . . . the world repels our sympathy because it has no history. As such, the absolute neither acts nor suffers, nor loves, nor hates; it has no needs, desires, or aspirations, no failures or successes, friends or eneHd.es, victories or defeats. All such things pertain to the world qua relative, in which our finite experiences lie, and whose vicissitudes alone have power to arouse our Interest. What boots it to tell me that the absolute way is the true way, and to exhort me, as Emerson says, to lift mine eye up to its

^^ t Pluralistic Universe (New York, 1909), p. 20.

^^ Mganlng £i Truth, p. 77.

2^ Hunter Mead, Types and Problems of Philosophy (New York, 1953), p. 236. 17

style, and manners of the sky, if the feat is impossible by definition. I am finite once for all, and all the categories of my sympathy are knit up with the finite world as such, and with things that have a history.

Devotion to the richness of human experience causes William James the philosopher to decry any appeal to an eternal, unchanging entity. His own philosophy, he says, exorcises the absolute, "exorcises the great de-realizer of the only life we are at home in, and thus redeems the nature of reality from essential foreignneaa. Every end, reason, motive, object of desire or aversion, ground of sorrow or Joy that we feel is in the world of finite multifariousness, for only in that world 36 does anything really happen, only there do events come to pass."

If, as he says, "a man's vision is the great fact about him," it is not difficult to discern the suggestiveness his vision must have had for his younger brother. In the novels of Henry James, we see his total commitment as an artist to the possibilities of himan life and his aversion to any attitude which might cut our sympathies from them.

Significantly, William James's philosophy of religion also revolves on his fidelity to the facts of human experience. His work as a psychologist brought him forcibly up against the phenomena of religious life—prayer, conversion, mystical experiences—and as a philosopher he could not easily dismiss their meaning. It is important to note here that his entire selection of religious phenomena, given

2^ Pluralistic Universe, p. 48,

2® Ibid., pp. 49-60.

3*^ Ibid., p. 20. 18 in The Varietiea of Religioua Experience, is baaed on the validity of the experience insofar as human life, here and now, is enriched by it.

There is no possible trace of "otherworldly" wistfulness to be found in his conclusions. On the contrary, he ahows his sympathy with the

following view of Professor Leuba, who vindicates religion on purely

subjective, hiuaanistic grounds: "Does God really exist? How does he exist? What is he? are so miany irrelevant queationa. Not God, but

life, more life, a larger, richer, more satisfying life, la, in the

last analysis, the tmd of religion. The love of life, at any and

every level of development, is the religious isqmlse." Although

William James goes on to incpreas his own personal belief in "an alto­

gether other dimenaion of exist«nce from the sensible and merely 'under- 39 standable* world," he hastens to explain that, if anything, he is a

"piecemeal supernaturalist," who is willing to admit of "aomething

higher" but not necessarily "infinite." His conclusion in this res­

pect, though not his basically anthropocentric reasons for his conclu­

sion, differs from the novelist's insofar as the understandable world

is the only world we see in the novels under discussion. There, Andre

Gide writes, "everything is delineated, nothing is left in the shadow,

intelligence always explains what makes the characters vibrate.• I 41

38 William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York, 1902), p. 497.

2® Ibid., p. 506.

40 Ibid., pp. 514-515.

^1 "Henry James," in The Question of Henry James, ed. F. W. Dupoe (New York, 1945), pp. 251-252. 19

If both William and Henry emerge as humanists, William at least is ready to concede, in the face of experience, that there is an unintel­ ligible element which can be reckoned as a force by which some men live more meaningfully. For Henry, the hua«n potential is realized totally in conscious intelligible awareness of life's possibilities.

The orientation of both views is clearly the same: the enrichment of human life. But the penetration of consciousness, alwtys and every­ where in the novelist's mature works has led such a critic as Gide

to remark that IIal l the weight of the flesh is absent, and all the

It 43 shaggy, tangled unctorgrowth, all the wild darkness. Nevertheless,

in the most intelligible way possible, James's characters come to

grips with life, snd if intelligence takea the spotlight from "the

flesh," it does so simply because of Jaafta's conviction that ultimate

human values can be realized only by intellectually, morally, and

aesthetically sensitive individuals.

The moral sensitivity found in the novelist's principal char­

acters leads to possibly the most suggestive area of agreement between

the brothers. In William James's ethics, complementary to his world

view, there are innumerable insights not only into Henry's own inter­

pretation of the moral life, but into his technique as well. The fol­

lowing extract from "The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life," although not explained in its full context, represents the position most

^* Anderson, American Henry James, p. 10.

43 oide, p. 251. 20

eonsistently maintained by William James in his later writings.

Written in the straightforward manner of the philoaopher, it throwa

considerable light upon the subtle, indirect expression of the moral

life found in Henry James's novels:

In point of fact, there are no absolute evils, and there are no non-moral gooda; and the highest ethical life—however few may be called upon to bear its burdens—consists at all times in the breaking of rules which have grown too narr>>w for the actual case. There is but one unconditional command­ ment, which is that we should seek inceasantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact coBUt>i- nation of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates la always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists.^^

If, indeed, every real dileima is unique and must be met with fresh,

vital insight, then obviously conventional morality can never be defini­

tive of the moral life. Convention itself means the established rules

readily available as a guide to conduct in any given situation. The

passage, however, has more noteworthy iiiiq;»lications. William James

somewhat counters the traditionally accepted view that ethically speak­

ing one must have a consistent standard by which he Judges the rightness

or wrongness of his actions, that the moral life presupposes a standard

by which the distinction can be made. He maintains that the rule grows

out of the situation, that the standard depends on what the aituation

44 Eaaays on Faith and Morals (New York, 1943), p. 209. 21 is. There is, nevertheless, a standard implicit in his assertion of

"piercing intuitions," since they presuppose a moral sense. But the moral sense, to achieve its finest flowering, must apparently operate through the individual "on whom nothing is lost."

The superiority of Henry James's characters in this regard is arresting. That his leading characters are intensely perceptive ii^lies more than the fact that in this way Jaa»8 is able to preaent through each of these "centers of consciousness" his particular type of realistic impressionism. He might very eaaily have chosen com­ paratively "dull" centera, and as long as he remained true to the way in which a less sensitive individual responds to a situation, he would have maintained hia essential realism. He auiy be compared to Faulkner, who has created aa a center of conadousness in The Sound and the Fury a thirty-three year old idiot. As far as technique is concerned, both authors achieve the same realistic effect. It becomes clear from this consideration that the great sensitivity and the more than average intelligence of James's characters are not necessary to realism. Rather, his interpretation of the moral life dictates absolutely the degree of sensitivity required for his characters. The degree required for the moral life is tremendous because the individual has no precedent to guide him: "every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situ­ ation." In The Spoils of Poynton, Fleda Vetch, faced with a precarious walking of the moral tight-rope, chooses to save her integrity and that of Owen Oereth. With the flowering of her moral sense, Maisie makes pronouncements in What Maisie Knew which would appall the conventional 22 mind. She appeals, in the tenderest way, to the Captain not to deaert her promiscuous mother, for she senses that his devotion to Ida is her only means of salvation from the murky labyrinth of facile, ravished affections. Nanda, the heroine of The Awkward Age, emerges in the end as a person who can appreciate the innate worth of the individuals of her mother's circle in spite of their selfish behavior. Original per­ ception and a profound realization of the ultimate value of the human personality are invariably present in James's view of a superior morality. Facing her particular ordeal in The Golden Bowl, Maggie sees that "preparation and practice had come but a short way; her part opened out, and she invented from moment to moment what to aay and to do." "she too might have been, for the hour, some far-off haraased heroine—only with a part to play for which she knew, exactly, no inapir- ing precedent" (XXIV, 307). In The Ambassadors, from the first impact of Paris on Strether, with "his sense of moving in a maze of myatic closed allusions" (XXI, 279), it is clear that the gathering force of his perceptions is bringing about a total change in his laoral point of view, without the benefit of precedent. The same idea is expressed through Merton Densher in his relation to Milly Theale, the heroine of

The Wings of the Dove. Caught in his crucial choice of allegiance to

Kate Croy or Milly, he suddenly perceives that Milly's very life depends upon his conduct. "It wasn't a case for pedantry," he sees. 'When

45 Henry James, The Novels and Tales of Henry James, (New York, 1907-1917, 1922), XXIV, 33. Unless otherwise indicated, all references to the novels and prefaces are from the New York Edition and hereafter will be cited in the text by volume and page number only. 23 people were at her pass everything was allowed. . . . What had come out for him had come out, with this first intensity, as a terror; so that action itaelf, of any sort, the right as well as the wrong—if the difference even survived—had heard in it a vivid 'Hush!' the in­ junction, from that moment, to keep intensely still" (XX, 251-252).

In view of the demand made on the individual's sensibilities, only a few are capable of bearing the burden of the higheat ethical life. As Anderson writes in The American Henry James, "the Jan«sian character is primarily responsible for his use of his experience • . .

He recognizes that no instituted observances, no advices from Mrs.

Grundy, no aisqi>ly inherited loyalty to principle, can Justify his behavior. His values must be re-created from moment to moment through his fidelity to the meanings he finds in his world. His world depends

M46 on this continual re-creation. . , • Seen in the broad context of

William Jaaies's philosophy as it has been explicated here, the novel­ ist's characters actually enrich the universe by the creation of values from the destructive, or negative, influences with which they deal. Out of what has been called "the hideous adultery" of The Golden

Bowl, Maggie forms a atronger, more meaningful bond with her husband, the Prince, Against the terrible onslaught of London morality, where nobody "does anything for nothing" (XIX, 160), Milly Theale, in The

Wings of the Dove, effects the moral regeneration of Merton Densher.

The self-realization of Louis Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors grows with his awareness that there is no final answer to his moral dilemma.

46 Anderson, p. 35. 24 but only the burden of constant decision baaed on the evidence of the moment; if he brings about no positive solution for Mme. de Vionnet or Chad Newsome, he does not himself fall short of developing the moral insight necessary to approach their problem realistically.

Since reality itaelf, according to William James, is dynamic, unfin­

ished, the task of filling it out, so to speak, with "moral value-

tlons and actiona [which] must proceed from the concrete personality,"

is the creative task demanded of hia characters by the novelist.

In contrast to the free and enlightened spirits who XmpoBe

positive order upon the chaotic elements of experience, there is a

wide range of characters in Jamea whose response to life is essentially

destructive. Their menacing influence works under a variety of subtle

guises traceable ultimately to a pernicious egotism. Intelligence

freed from moral commitment becomes an inatrument of self-destruction,

as evidenced in the narrator of The Sacred Fount. Even the aesthetic

sense, so highly valued by James, can, when divorced from the moral

life of the individual, lead to peraonal ravagement. In the later

novels, Mrs. Gereth of The Spoils of Poynton is an excellent instance

of the degenerating effects of a consuming aesthetic interest. Old

Abel Gaw in the unfinished novel The Ivory Tower illustrates most

graphically the withering of being which accompanies the dedication

47 Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destiny of Man (London, 1954), p. 134. Although the dealgnation "ethics of creativeness" is fully applicable to the position held by William James, the phrase itself hr.s been sug­ gested by Berdyaev in The Destiny of Man. The philosophers have cer­ tain ethical views in common, but it should be noted that as used in this paper the phraae is not meant to be indicative of any overall agreement between Berdyaev's religious existentialism and William James's humanism. 25 of one's talents to purely acquisitive pursuits. In every case, the character engages in a form of self-aggrandizement at the expenae of his fellow man. This predatory impulse forms the very locus of evil in James's philosophy. It has been recognized by several critics, but no one has yet adequately emphaaized its pervasive presence in the Jameeian canon. L, C, Knights was one of the first to perceive

Its importance, "From an early period," he writes, "James was inter­ ested in persons whose free and normal development ... is thwarted n48 by the egotism of others. Patrick F. Quinn also pinpoints the nature of evil in James: It is "the desire or need on the part of some human beings to make use of other people, governing them, refash­ ioning their personality. . . . Whatever the mask it wears it is the specific Jamesian villainy." Oddly enough, he casts Fleda Vetch among the villaina, an interpretation which makes his understanding of the theory of evil he propounds rather suspect. It should further be noted that neither of these critics is aware, apparently, of the personal damage to selfhood which the egotistic inevitably suffer re­ gardless of their impact on others. A close reading of James's later novels reveals that the free spirit confronts in every aspect of life the destructive energies of the selfish. The consciousness of the morally sensitive individual must sense the impingement on its borders of the predatory; its eventual triumph over the ercoaching evil repre­ sents James's final statement of the human capacity to shape a 48 "Henry James and the Trapped Spectator," Southern Review, IV (January 1939), 607. ^^ "Morals and Motives in The Spoils £f Poynton." Sewanee Review, LXII (August 1954), 577. 26 constructive destiny. On this point, he is clearly in accord with his brother. Chapter II

Humanist Tradition and "the Full Life'

Such an ethics of creativeness, as it emerges from the novels of

Henry James and the philosophical wrltinga of his brother, is girded by

an intense appreciation of the value and dignity of human personality.

This humanistic point of view, as a general attitude toward man, has a

rich and complex history, traceable from the Ancients to the present

where it has solidified into the very foundations of Western culture.

In the prime of Greek civilization, value was focussed in the achieve­

ment of man during the one life he had to live. So human, in fact, was

classical religion, "it taught the moral that out of the body there was

no salvation, none of the excellence, the achievement, the delight of

this world, nothing but a pale ahadow of what had been." The medieval

inversion of this view, "the view that the body in this sublunary world

is a prison from which it is the whole business of the soul to get out

in order to return to its divine origin,"^^ shows a radical change of

attitude toward the essential worthiness of man, as man. Ultimate value

came to reside solely in the supernatural, and as a result man's ac-

complishments were valuable only inaofar as they brought the soul closer

to salvation. With the Renaissance, the scholarly revival of classical

texts brought with it the inevitable absorption of a more secular point

of view, and we thus find man again being considered as an autonomous,

independent being. Such a "concentration of interest on man and his

50 H. J. Blackham, The Human Tradition (Boston, 1953), p. 4.

^^ l»i<»« 27 28

CO infinite possibilities for self-culture, has consistently gained intensity. The Age of Enlightenment optimistically placed its ultimate faith in man*a rational capacity to tap the laws of nature and progress inevitably to the perfect solution of all social, political, and moral problems. If we have ceased to be quite so optimistic, the basic tenets of Western culture nevertheless remain aolldly ensconced in the concep­ tion of man's essential dignity.

This account of humanism as an attitude is not intended to deline­ ate the aubtle differences which have characterized the numerous inter- 53 pretations of the term. As Gianturco observes in his introduction to Toffanin's History of Humanism: "it has been aptly remarked that the determination of the aignificance of Humanism is not so much a probloa of reaearch, as it la a problem of viewpoints in research." The preaent point of view has been derived from the study of James's novels themselves and has found not only substantial historical support but further development in his brother's philosophy. In Henry Jaows, we have the one outstanding author in American literature who has taken the human personality as the ultimate value and created characters who draw their breath consciously in an atmosphere where this life is all

^^ W, T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy (New York, 1952), II, 566.

CO " The following works are helpful studies representing various interpretations of humanism: Corliss Lament, Humanism As A Wiilosophy; F. C, S. Schiller, Studies in Humanism; Howard Mumford Jones, American Humanism; Humanism and America, ed. Norman Foerster; A Critique of Humanism, ed. C. H. Grattan. ^^ Elio Gianturco, "introduction," in Giuseppe Toffanin, History of Humanism, trans. Elio Gianturco (New York, 1954), p. xx. 29 and enough, Paasing from the attitude of humanism, mixed, in tradition, with elements of supernatural belief, we find in Jamea an articulate philoso;>hy of hiuoaniam in its purest, most abbreviated form: the affirmation of human life, in the here and now, as the highest form of existence open to man. It would be a mistake, however, to undereatimate the height of development James conceives possible for the individual.

The power of choice and a tremendous human potential are eaaential to his humanism and diatinguish him from the aecularism of the naturalists, who share hia "thisworldliness" but deny the human personality any

significant control over the forces of environment and heredity, James

himself is not concerned primarily with development and progress in the

sense of the social and economic welfare of the masses. Nor does he

beat the drums for any sort of Whitmanesque equality. His humanism

rests in the occasional and rare individual who is intellectually,

aesthetically, and morally capable of realizing the multifarious chal­

lenges of life.

At the same time, while James demands that the individual accept

the immense possibilities of experience, he does not, like the romanti-

eiat, advocate luxuriating in experience for the sake of experience

merely. Aa much attention as James gives to the aesthetic life, by

itself it is not enough. "A true morality, a feeling for the life of

others, is the necessary adjunct of taste, and without it only egotism,

sterility, and evil can follow," writes Bowden in his interpretation of 55 the relation between life and art in James's novels. It is true that

55 Edwin T. Bowden, The Themes of Henry James (Now Haven, 1956), p. 60. 30 an individual who is intellectually and aesthetically perceptive is better equipped, according to James, to approach his moral problems creatively, but it is not also true that, as maintained by John J.

Raleigh, the consciousness most sensitive to impressions is Inevitably 56 the most BK>ral. There are in the novels under discussion characters who are highly intelligent and artiatieally perceptive, but who never­ theless lack the "moral sense" to deal generoualy and creatively with life. It should be recalled that the need for such a moral sense is treated in William James's essay on the moral life when he speaks of piordng intuitions and an actual moral vocation. Henry James treats the point both directly and indirectly through such characters as the

Prince and Charlotte Verver in The Golden Bowl and Kate Croy in The

Wings of the Dove. The Prince is keenly aware of his lack of the moral sense and speaks to Mrs. Aasingham of his "real, honest fear of being 'off some day, of being wrong, without knowing it. That's what

I shall always trust you for," he continues, "to tell me when I am.

No—with you people it's a sense. . . . Your moral sense works by steam, it sends you up like a rocket" (XXIII, 30-31). In The Wings of the Dove, Kate Croy is shown to be wretchedly lacking in moral insight, not only in her self-centered plans but in her inability to grasp the potential moral influence of Milly Theale. In the same way, as bril­ liant and talented as Charlotte Verver is, in The Golden Bowl, she is not equal to the morally intense life of her antagonist, Maggie.

^® "Henry James: The Poetics of Empiricism," PMLA, UCVI (March 1951), 111. 31

A frequent charge brought against a thoroughgoing humanism— that without spiritual ideals man's sensual nature drags him inevitably to debasement—is anawered by Jamea sii^ply by his implied repudiation of ao mean a oonoeption of human nature. James's own lofty conception is adequately illustrated in the novels under discussion. The purely sensual is present aa a muted undertone, a remarkable accompliahment in view of the fact that in a number of the novels the central aitu­ ation involves illicit love affairs. In the affair between Kate Croy

and Merton Densher in The Wings of the Dove, between Chad Newsome and

Mme. de Vionnet in The Ambassadors, and between Amerigo and Charlotte

Verver in The Golden Bowl, physical attraction has a relative position

among other values. Even in the case of Milly's love for Densher in

The Wings of the Pove, when the impression is given that the one thing

lacking in her life is the fulfillment of her passion, there is no

question of the merely sensual in her relationship with him. If Kate

Croy's Interpretation is correct, it is simply in the knowledge of

having loved and of having been loved that Milly to some extent realizes

her passion. Sensuality appears to be mitigated by man's appreciation

and awareness of satisfaction at other levels. Thus it is that James's

characters are beings whose interests lie also in the intellectual,

aesthetiCi and moral spheres. In this way, he succeeds in putting his

humanism on a plane idiich cannot easily be equated with a philosophy

of pleasure.

Emerging at a time when American literature was beginning to

reflect a noticeable ebb of faith in human nature, the humanism of 32

Henry James reaffirms the vital and creative power of the individual.

It limits him, assuredly, to the finite world, but at the same time subscribes to the ultimate significance of finite experience. "The full life" and the ethics of creativeness, as complementary parts of

James's humanistic point of view, are given their most characteristic expression in the novelist's later phase. As the major premise of his mature works, humanism may appropriately be called "the figure in the carpet," the background of the order, the form, the texture of his novels. PART THREE

THIMB AND IMAGERY IN THB UlTER NOVELS

Chapter I

The Spoils of Poynton

As in all of James's novels, the "story" of The Spoils of

Poynton unfolds on several levels of interest simultaneoualy. There is the immediate and ostensible interest in the fate of the wonder­ ful "spoils" themselves, comprising as they do, for all practical purposes, one of the principal characters in the novel. "On the face of it," James explains in his Preface, "the 'things* themselves would form the very center . . . These grouped objects, all conacious of their eminence and their price, would enjoy, in any picture of a conflict, the heroic importance" (X, ix). The battle^^ waged by Mrs.

Gereth with her son over their "household gods" has thus its own surface fascination for the reader, while all the time a more profoiind interest playa with the impact of the spoils on the paasions and appe­ tites of those brought within the radius of their influence. They produce effects which reveal both the abyamal and the elevated in the individuala who touch them. Under their spell, Mrs. Gereth loses the capacity to appreciate the immeasurable gulf between human beings

&7 Alan H. Roper gives an excellent interpretation of recurrent battle imagery in "The M> ral and Metaphorical Meaning of The Spoils of Poynton," American Literature, XXXII (May 1960), 182-196. His focus on battle inuiges leads him to the same conclusions offered in this study concerning the moral character of Mrs. Gereth and Fleda Vetch.

33 34 and objects. She "had really no perception of anybody's nature—had only one question about persons: were they clever or stupid? To be clever meant to know the 'marka'" (X, 138). Her fierce dedication to the idea of the beautiful as embodied at Poynton transforms her ex­ quisite good taste into a gross ineptitude for handling the sensibili­ ties of her closest friend Fleda Vetch. The miatress of Poynton plungea rudely about in the chamber of Fleda*s private dignity. Horri­ fied as she ia that philistine Mona Brigstook, her son*s fiancee, will on Inheriting Poynton generally mistreat her precious objects, she is blind to her own careleas mauling of Fleda*s most intimate, cherished feelinga. Mrs. Gereth reveals the sort of weakness of character whose very strength lies in ita inhumanity. Her passion for the aesthetic is her life-blood, but on examination she is seen to have radically over-siiqi>lified the elements which make up the life-giving fluid. She has left out a due regard for the human being. "The truth was siiq;>ly,"

Fleda soon observes, "that all Mrs. Gereth's scruples were on one side and that her ruling passion had in a manner despoiled her of her humanity" (X, 37).

Although Fleda Vetch also feels the tremendous pull of the spoils, her aesthetic sense being as well developed as Mrs. Gereth's, she keeps intensely attuned to the particularly human vibration. Her temptation is in fact even greater than that of her patroness to sacrifice everything and everybody to her own aesthetic and general well-being. She is miserably poor, and as far as the form of her life is concerned, an orphan, since her father does not wish the pleasure of 35

her company at his Vest Kensington habitat. By playing along with

Mra. Gereth she could assure herself of permanent comfort in surround­

ings of beauty. She could also, as she well knows, help poor Owen

out of his precipitate pledge to Mona Brigstock, and thus satisfy,

by his marriage to herself, her own guarded passion for him. Fleda

has, however, scruples which make such a line of action impossible 58 for her. She sees, in the first place, that Owen is, after all,

entitled to Poynton—it is his rightful inheritance—and that ahe

cannot unconditionally side with his mother without sacrificing his

dignity in this regard. "The future was dark to her," she meditates,

"but there was a ailken thread she could clutch in the gloom—she

would never give Owen away" (X, 28). In the second place, and more

importantly, she recognizes that he haa pledged his word to Mona, and

that if he is to retain a scrap of personal honour she cannot in the

Biean way open to her help him to break his word. "He had had no

right to wiah to draw in another girl to help him to run away. . . .

Nobody had a right to get off easily from pledges so deep and sacred"

(X, 106). Fleda is remorseless in her vision of Owen's weakness:

58 Criticism of The Spoils of Poynton generally begins with the "fineness** of Fleda's scruples. Some critics are repelled by her idealism which they claim sacrifices everything and everyone to absolute principle. Patrick F. Quinn (Sewanee Review, LXII, 563-577) has given classic expression to this point of view. More recently, however, other critics suggest the complexity of Fleda's decision which makes an 'all-for-love" aolution to her problem seem sentimental. Roper (p. 196) and James W, Gargano ("The Spoils of Poynton: Action and Responsibility," Sewanee Review, UCIX [Autumn-Winter 1961], 650-660) defend Fleda'a moral sensitivity. She is the only character in a milieu permeated with egotiam who ia willing to sacrifice no one but herself. James himself applauds the fineness of his heroine: "if I want beauty for her—beauty of action and poetry of effect, I can only, I think, find it Just there; find it in making her heroic" (The Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F. 0. Matthieasen and Kenneth B. Murdoch [New York, 1947], p. 217). 36

"She could easily see how wrong everything must be when a man so made to be manly was wanting in courage" (X, 105). It is for Owen that Fleda acts, to save for him, if he €»nnot do it for himself, his personal in­ tegrity. Her terms seem at times impossibly hard, but she manages in a milieu saturated with bright and ahining material values to keep a tight grip on the auperior value of human dignity. James's heroine has "the rare ability to achieve a total vision and to understand and respond to the force of all claims that define the moral conflict in idiich she is implicated. In spite of her own desires, she must be objective and even painfully honest; she must have the imagination and courage to do Justice to points of view which mere self-interest would 59 urge her to disregard."

The burning of the spoils, which invariably inflames critical interpretation, represents a symbolic purification of the passions which the wonderful Things have elicited. Fleda's sacrifice is complete;

Mrs. Oereth*s paasion is seen in desolate isolation without even the physical existence of the spoils to gird her aesthetic ideal; and weak but well-meaning Owen deserves, out of the whole affair, only Mona.

Although the concluaion of the novel is frequently regarded as a melo­ dramatic gesture, the burning is included in James*s earliest notes, and is in fact plausibly prepared for. Mrs. Gereth*s great concern has been, after all, for the treatment her treasures will receive at the hands of the vulgar Mona and the equally unappreciative Owen. The accident occurs because the young couple, on their honeymoon, have left the keeping of

^^ Gargano, Sewanee Review, IXIX, 651. 37

Poynton to "clumsy servanta" who have no better idea than they of the sacredneas of their charge. The symbolic meaning of the conflagration varies according to the critic's interpretation of the moral import of the story. For Quinn, it represents Fleda's unfortunate willing­ ness to give up all to a deluded, neurotic sense of principle,^^

One has already taken issue with this approach to the heroine's scru­ ples. In a aomewhat oversimplified view, Bradford A. Booth sees the fire as an ironic comment on "the folly of placing too high a value on

it61 material possesaiona. Aa in this study, the fire is a symbol of purification for F. W, Dupee, who also considers Fleda one of James's

Bioral light a.

The conflict comprising the dramatic interest in The Spoils of

Poynton develops then on two levels: the battle between mother and son over the spoils themselves, and the deeper antagonism between material, aeathetic, and moral values. It is to press the meaning of the latter that James utilizes throughout the novel the art of image- making. Especially numerous are the images depicting the consciousness of Fleda and Mrs. Gereth as they react to each other and to Owen from their embattled poaitions in the fight for the apoils. The images serve as impressive vehicles for James's humaniatic views.

60 Sewanee Review, LXII, 563.

^1 "Henry James and the Economic Motif,' Nineteenth Century Fiction, VIII (September 1953), 141-150.

®2 Henry James (New York, 1951), pp. 188-191. 38

A victim of a fierce appreciation of "things," Mrs. Gereth's shrunken humanity takes palpable form in a variety of figures. The aesthetic rule is her only measure: "The piety most real to her was to be on one's knees before one's high standard" (X, 30), Bxpreasing her dedication in religioua terms, she says to Owen: "'The best things here, aa you know, are the things your father and I collected, things all that we worked for and waited for and suffered for. Yea . . . there are thinga in the house that we almost atarved for! They were our religion, they were our life, they were us! And now they're only me. . . .'" (X, 30-31) When she haa removed the spoils to Ricks, she stands by her move against Owen's proprietorship with all the devotion of a martyr: "'When I know I'm right I go to the stake.

Oh he may bum me alive!'" (X, 114) Mrs, Gereth's identification with the spoils carries the most profound implications. Her very identity is so wrapped up with her things that the two become indis­

tinguishable. On taking her objects of art from Poynton to Ricks,

she writes to Fleda that "the amputation, as she called it, had been

performed. Her leg had come off—she had now begun to stump along

with the lovely wooden substitute; she would stump for life" (X, 69).

The light tone of the letter only lightly dissipates the sense that

she has suffered a diminishment of her being. In spite of the up­

rooting from their natural aurroundings, however, the spoils are still

there to furnish in more modest Ricks a shining environment lor their

mistress. Later, when Fleda ruminates on the consequences for Mrs.

Oereth should she take the things back to Poynton, she sees that lady 39 aa all too identified with them:

The chill struck deep aa Fleda thought of the miatress of Ricks also reduced, in vulgar parlance, to what she had on her back: there was nothing to which she could compare such an image but her idea of Marie Antoinette in the Conciergerie, or perhapa the viaion of some tropical bird, the creature of hot denae foreata, dropped on a frozen moor to pick up a living. The mind's eye could indeed see Mrs. Gereth only in her thick, coloured air; it took all the light of her treasures to make her concrete and distinct. She loomed for a moment, in any mere house of compartments and angles, gaunt and unnatural; then she vanished as if she had sud­ denly sunk into quicksand. (X, 146)

Were James's emphaais on Mrs, Gereth's attachment to her treasures any less strong, the images portraying her final defeat would suggest humorous hyperbole. Her plight is too bound up, however, with all that it means to be human to be taken lightly. Fleda sees her "like some great moaning wounded bird, [making] her way with winga of anguish" back to empty Ricka (X, 246). "She had had a vision of her . . . pacing a bare floor as a lioneas deprived of her cubs.

There had been moments when her mind'a ear was strained tn listen for some sound of grief wild enough to be wafted from afar" (X, 247).

One may take Mrs. Gereth's condition seriously without a spontaneous rush of sympathy. She has too consciously engaged to use to the hilt the individual who shares most intimately her love of

Poynton. Throughout the novel Fleda Vetch persistently senses that her person is being prostitutoa to serve the aesthetic needs of her patroness. She haa "a sore scared perception that her own value in the houae was a mere value, as one might say, of a good agent." It strikes her that Mra. Gereth is "secretly surprised at her not being as happy 40 to be sacrificed to the supremacy of a high standard aa she was happy to sacrifice her" (X, 37), That formidable lady thrusts her young

friend forward, to the aatoaishment of both Fleda and Owen, as the only

proper mistress of Poynton, the only one trho can properly appreciate

its treaaures. With candid diaregard of Fleda's feelings, she puts

her on the block, so to speak, for the consideration of her son,

"Drawn into the eddy of this outpouring the girl, scared and embar-

raaaed, laughed off her exposure; but only to feel herself more pas­

sionately caught up and, as It seemed to her, thrust down the fine

open BK)uth , , . with which poor Owen*s slow cerebration gaped" (X, 32),

Mrs, Gereth is inordinately pleased to discover at last Fleda*s care­

fully guarded secret of her love for Owen, sensing immediately the

wonderful value i>r her of such an affection. James uses an image that

suggests perfectly the quality of rapacious invasion of an individual's

inner sanctum:

There were ways in irtiich she could sharply incommode ... a person, and not only with the best conscience in the world but with a high brutality of good intentiona. One of the atraightest of these strokes, Fleda saw, would be the dance of delight over the mystery she, terrible woman, had pro­ faned; the loud lawful tactless Joy of the explorer leaping upon the strand. Like any other lucky discoverer she would take possession of the fortunate island. She was nothing if not practical: the only thing she took account of in her young friend's soft secret was the excellent use she could make of it—a use so much to her taste that she refused to feel a hindrance in the quality of the material. (X, 131)

Fleda sees herself as reduced to something of an object in her

relations with Mrs. Gereth. "She had the impression ... of being 41 advertiaed and offered" (X, 140). Later, she is simply a bribable quantity. When Mrs. Gereth precipitately ooneludes that the engage­ ment of Owen and Mona Is off and returns the apoils to Poynton in anticipation of the union between Fleda and her son, the young woman sees the action as part of the general bribe: "It was a cal­ culated, it was a cruahing bribe; it looked her in the eyes and said awfully: *That*s what I do for you!*" (X, 212) In a final outburst against the invasion of her being ao mercilessly carried out by Mra.

Gereth, Fleda gasps: "'You simplify far too much. You alwaya did and you alwaya will. The tangle of life is much more intricate than you*ve ever, I think, felt it to be. You slash into it , • , with a great pair of shears; you nip at it as if you were one of the

Fatea!'" (X, 224)

Struggling with her "little gagged and blinded desire" for

Owen, Fleda*s most pressing need is to remain "straight," a feat which requires that she save his honor, even at the possible sacri­ fice of her own caged passion. She refuses, as Mrs. Gereth does not, to profit by his weakness. Her image of Owen's dishonor in being deprived of his Inheritance is fused with her vision of the spoliation of Poynton:

In the watches of the night she saw Poynton dishonoured; she had cherished it as a happy whole, she reasoned, and the parts of it now around her seemed to suffer like chopped limbs. To lie there in the stillness was partly to listen for some soft low plaint from them . • , In the effort to focus the old combinations she saw again nothing but gapa and scars, a vacancy that gathered at moments into something worse. This concrete image was her greatest 42

trouble, for it was Owen Gereth's face, hia sad strange eyea, fixed upon her now as they had never been. They stared at her out of the darkness and their expression was more than she could bear: it seemed to say that he was ia pain and that it was somehow her fault. (X, 78-79)

Her temptation to uae Owen's weakness as a means to her own advance­ ment is intensified with each new development. He pleads with her silently to do the one thing that will relieve him of his pledge to

Mona, She has only to tell his mother that Mona will break atreight off if the apoila are not returned to Poynton. Fleda is well aware that nothing could more satisfy her own paasion or be more pleasing to Mrs. Gereth, but she will not be the mean instmment of such an easy out for Owen. "She was . , , so remarkably constituted that while she refused to profit by Owen's mistake, even while she Judged it and hastened to cover it up, she could drink a sweetness from it that conaorted little with her wishing it mightn't have been made. . . .

Their protected error . . . was like some dangerous lovely living thing that she had caught and could keep—keep vivid and helpleaa in the cage of her own passion and look at and talk to all day long" (X, 108-109).

Fleda Vetch's greatest need is not to despise both herself and Owen, an ever present possibility should she succumb to the temptation to interfere with his affairs with Mona. "'I hate myself,'" she says to him as ahe confesses her love, "'for having anything to say about her: it*s like waiting for dead men's shoes!'" (X, 190) Owen betrays his need of sanction and support, a betrayal "that made her retreat, harden herself in the effort to save what might remain of all she had 43 given, given probably for nothing. The very vision of him as he thus morally clung to her was the viaion of a weakness somewhere at the core of his bloom, a blessed manly weaknesa which, had she only the valid right, it would be all easy and sweet to take care of. She faintly aickened, however, with the sense that there was as yet no valid right poor Owen could give" (X, 195-196).

The question of valid rights is paramoiint for Fleda; it is meaningless for Mrs. Gereth. The two approachea to human relations represent in this first novel of James's mature years a clear hierarchy of values. The personal havoc to the himan spirit that results from an excessive indulgence of the aesthetic sense is por­ trayed in the character of the miatress of Poynton; the elevation of the spirit as it seeks to achieve total viaion in order to remain

•orally free is embodied in Fleda. James says in his Preface:

"The free spirit, always much tormented, and by no means alwaya triumphant, is heroic, ironic, pathetic or whatever, and, as exem­ plified in the record of Fleda Vetch, for inatance, 'successful,' only through having remained free" (X, xv). Chapter II

What Maisie Knew

What Maisie Knew ia James's most ambitious attempt to tell his story through the eyes of a child. The difficulty of interpreting experience by means of a limited reflector had its special faacina- tion for the novelist, and though the book has frequently been con­ sidered one of the least typical of his works, he conveys with extra­ ordinary finesse the humanistic note already sounded with such clarity

1^ '^^^ Spoila of Poynton. The finesse lies all in the fact that Maisie is an "ironic center"; that is, she understanda less of what is going on about her than her companions do, than the reader does, yet what she does perceive in her childlike way haa the most imx>rtant ramifica­ tions for her elders* What the reader sees from the beginning ia that

Maisie is an excellent pretext for immoral behavior: she is used by her mother and her father, by Miss Overmore, and even by Sir Claude and

Mrs. Wix to further their personal needs. All her relations seem at bottom to be determined, not by love essentially, but by the value she represents as a means to self-aggrandizement. The predatory instinct is again at work, the difference between the victims being that Fleda in The Spoils is old enough to understand at once the danger to her being while Maisie at first in childlike simplicity interprets pure selfishness as genuine affection. Maisie*s development consists in her gradual realization that a human being is more than an instrument.

Early in the story she realizes that she is being used as a messenger

44 45 of hatefuluess between her parents, and cultivates a studied imbecil­ ity to avoid such a function (XI, 15), In the final climactic scene, she refuses to be used by Mrs. Beale and Sir Claude as a show for respectability in an illicit relationship; her deciaion to give up

Mrs. Wix if Sir Claude will give up Mrs. Beale represents the full flowering of her moral sense. What Maisie knows^^ is precisely that she is more than a means to an end, that anyone naturally is. Her ultimatum to Sir Claude is a simple declaration of faith in the capa­ city of worldly wise adults to take a new look at the human personality for what it is in itself, apart from the services it can render. Sir

Claude alone recognizes the beauty of her stand: "*I don't know what to call it,*" he says; "'I haven't even known how decently to deal with

^^ The question of what Maisie actually knows seemjs to be one of the hobgoblins of criticiam. Joseph Warren Beach, who is generally perceptive in his interpretations of James's charactera, surprisingly maintains that the child knows nothing; she is only "the cleverest of little parrots, much concerned to maintain her professional reputation for knowingneas" (The Method of Henry James, p. 239). Almost as un­ believable is Harris W. Wilson's contention that "Maisie ia the inevit­ able product of her sordid, irresponsible upbringing" whose final ap­ peal to Sir Claude is sexual in nature: "Her greatest asset opposed to Mrs. Beale*s lush worldliness is her virginity, and that she is prepared to offer" ("What WLA Maisie Know?" College English, XVII [February 1956], 281-282). Action, dialogue, imagery, tone invalidate this interpreta­ tion, A more sensitive study is James W. Gargano*s "What Maisie Knew: The Evolution of a Moral Sense," Nineteenth Century Fiction, XVI (June 1961), 45: "... Maisie reaches maturity when, by requiring her idol to satisfy her most strenuous spiritual demands, she refuses to accept life as a compromise. She has learned that Sir Claude*s self-deceptive hopes to * square people*—to work out with them convenient arrangements involving no moral decision—never actualize." The view of Maisie*s expanding moral vision is also held by Dupee (Henry James, p. 192): "What Maisie knows at last is that she is being used by her elders for their own disreputable ends; that she is in fact an instrument of bad­ ness among them and a not unwilling one so long as she goes along with them in her desire for support and affection." 46

It, to approach it{ but, whatever it is, lt*s the most beautiful thing

I've ever met—it's exquisite, it's sacred'" (XI, 354).

At the beginning of the novel Jamea bears down on Maisie's servlcible role through a series of images coming from the author him- aelf rather than through the agency of his center. The lack of adult sensibility in regard to Maisie*s fate is noted at once in the divorce suit of her parents: "The little girl [was] disposed of in a manner worthy of the Judgement-aeat of Solomon. She was divided in two and the portions tosaed impartially to the disputants" (XI, 4). "What waa clear to any spectator was that the only link binding her to either parent was this lamentable fact of her being a ready vessel for bitter­ ness, a deep little porcelain cup in which biting acids could be mixed.

They had wanted her not for any good they could do her, but for the harm they could, with her unconscious aid, do each other" (XI, 5).

"... She was the little feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely

keep flying between them. The evil they had the gift of thinking or

pretending to think of each other they poured into her little gravely-

gazing soul as into a boundless receptacle, and each of them had doubt­

less the best conscience in the world as to the duty of teaching her

the stem truth that ahould be her safeguard against the other" (XI, 14).

It is chiefly through images used in dialogue and through Maisie's

own vision that James conveys the attitudes of the other characters to­

ward tha child. For Miss Overmore, who later becomes the wife of Mr.

Farange, Maiaie is always viewed as the 'little duenna" who helps to

keep her illicit relationships proper, first her affair with Beale Farange 47 and then with Sir Claude. For the latter, Maiaie is alao a pretext, but hia regard for her is blessed with genuine affection. On firat coming to see Maisie after his marijage to her mother. Sir Claude says to Mrs, Beale: "'I'm not an angel—I'm an old grandmother, . , . I like babies—I always did. If we go to smash I shall look for a place as responsible nurse*" (XI, 63). It is Mrs. Wix who appears at firat to cling to Maisie with all the signs of pure devotion. But even her attachment becomes progressively suspect as one realizes the extent to which the child is her last desperate means of livelihood. Her re­ peated ejaculation "What will become of me!" elicita Maisie*s compas­ sion from the beginning, but the girl finally senses that her governess is too dearly bribable. Though Mrs. Wix insists on the impropriety of any further contact between Sir Claude and Mrs. Beale, she succumbs to the bribe offered by that gentleman to keep her quiet. He has pro­ vided so richly for their comfort in France while he is absent that

Mrs. Wix gives way to anticipated pleasures. There floats to Maisie*s sense "a faint fragrance of depraved concession" (XX, 259), The girl sees that Mrs, Wix had "arrears of dinner to make up, and it was touch­ ing that in a dinnerless state her moral passion should have burned so clear. . . . The affair was in short a combat, in which the baser element triumphed, between her refusal to be bought off and her con­ sent to be clothed and fed" (XI, 266). Later, when Mrs. Beale arrives to usurp the guardianship of Maisie, Mrs. Wix reveals herself again

34 The number of critics that accept Mrs. Wix as the moral norm of the novel ia astonishing. They ignore the evidence, as Gargano correctly notes, "that she is often actuated by materialistic considerations" ("Evolution," Nineteenth Century Fiction, XVI, 42). 48 deeply vulnerable to the bribe. Maiaie watchea with interest while

Mrs. Beale "makes lova to her** to see what has become of her governess*s flatuted moral sense. Mrs. Wix could indeed adjuat to the idea of Mrs,

Beale as Maiaie*a guardian rather than Sir Claude, She aaya to her pupil, **'She has treated me to-day as if I weren't after all quite such a worm, . . . But of course ... I shouldn't like her as the one nearly so well as him.*

"*Nearly so well!* Maiaie echoed. 'I should hope indeed not.*

She spoke with a firmness under which she was herself the first to quiver. *I thought you "adored" him.'

"'I do,' Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed.

**'Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?'" (XI, 308)

This passage between pupil and governess shows the former rising above

her teacher in moral sensibility, for all that Mrs. Wix prides herself

on her precious "decency." Her Sunday School morality is no match for

her pupil's insight.

It is a tribute to James's genius that, in spite of his enor­

mous repertory of allusions, the images used by Maisie have an \mfail­

ing childlike authenticity. If she does not refer to some figure in

a familiar story to make her compariaons, she invariably falls back

on some natural occurrence in her own experience. Though her percep­

tions might seem thereby naive, they are always keen. Inniimerable

examples may be quoted of James's felicity in this regard. Adjusting

to her change of reaidence every six months, Maisie comes to see that 49

"the natural way for a child to have her parents was separate and successive, like her mutton and her pudding or her bath and her nap"

(XI, 17). Her papa's laugh, however prepared ahe is, seems "alwaya, like some trick in a frightening game, to leap forth and make her

Jump" (XI, 31). Her mother looks at her with "the stare of some gor­ geous idol described in a story-book" (XI, 69). Sir Claude makes a kinder impreaaion: "He looked . . . quite as Mrs. Wix, in the long stories she told her pupil, always described the lovers of her dia- treaaed beautiea—*the perfect gentleman and strikingly handaome*"

(XI, 61). Maisie learns in her own way that her mother no longer loves Sir Claude and that her father no longer loves Mrs. Beale: "It aounded, as this young lady thought it over, very much like puaa-in- the-eomer, and she could only wonder if the distribution of partiea would lead to a ruahing to and fro and a changing of places" (XI, 95).

Mrs. Wix becomes less and less a character to sympathize with becauae of Maisie*s innocent comparisons. For instance, her appearance re­ minds her pupil "of the polished shell or corslet of a horrid beetle"

(XI, 25), and her queer laugh soimds to Maiaie like "an unsuccessful imitation of a neigh" (XI, 46). The young girl usually thinks of her mother's many gentleman callers in terms reflecting her acquaintance with the story-book. Of Mr. Perriam she observes "that if he had only had a turban he would have been quite her idea of a heathen Turk"

(XI, 91). The Captain, on the other hand, "struck her as the way that at balls, by delightful partners, young ladiea must be spoken to in the intervale of dances; and she tried to think of something that would meet it at the same high point" (XI, 148). TE)CAS TECHNOLOGICAL COL^,EQ LUBBOCK. TEXAS LIBRARY 50

The ingenuoua quality of Maiaie'a imagea, aa illustrated here, ia functionally related to the development of her moral sense. Her relation to the sordid conditions surrounding her provided James with a tiokliah problem: how could he, perceptive as he makea her, aaaure that in aueh an environment she could plausibly retain her moral freshness and innocence. In such conditions she could so easily be

"coarsened, blurred, sterilised, by ignorance and pain" (XI, vii).

James solves the problem by giving Maisie an imagistic framework through which to view her experiences, a framework completely in keeping with the way in which a child's mind might function. She sees things aa though they are stories, and is thus once removed, in her mind, at leaat, from immediate contact with all that is painful and cynical in her environment. The storylike relation between Maisie and her ex­ periences is brought in first by James himself and then progressively by Maisie. Referring to her involvement in the nasty divorce suit of her parents, James writes: "Only a drummer-boy in a ballad or a story could have been so in the thick of the fight. She was taken into the confidence of paaaions on which she fixed Just the stare she might have had for imagea bounding across the wall in the slide of a magic-lantern.

Her little world was phantasmagoric—strange shadows dancing on a sheet.

®^ In her article "Some Stray Fragrance of an Ideal: Henry James's Imagery for Youth*s Discovery of Evil," Harvard Library Bulletin, XIV (1960), 109, Lotus Snow perceives the importance of Maisie*£ per­ sonal relation to her knowledge, but ahe does not recognize the crucial role that the story-book image plays in this connection. Robert L. Gale touches very briefly on the function of the image in "Art Imagery in Henry James's Fiction," American Literature, XXIX (March 1957), 51-52: "Fairy tales are used in figures ... to show [among other things] what the world looks like to a child." 51

It was aa if the whole performance had been given for her—a mite of a half-scared infant in a great dim theatre" (XI, 9). Functioning as a vehicle of vituperation between her parents, Maisie at first conveys their vile messages to each other under the protection of believing that ahe conveys merely stories: "She was at the age for which all stories are true and all conceptions are stories" (XI, 14). It is no accident that James makes the sole accompli ahment of Mrs. Wix her abil­ ity to tell stories: "She knew swarms of stories, mostly those of the novels ahe had read, relating them with a memory that never faltered and a wealth of detail that was Maiaie's delight. They were all about love and beauty and countesses and wickedness. Her conversation was practically an endless narrative, a great garden of romance" (XI, 27).

Maisie*s childlike and natural propensity is thus strengthened by the endless hours with her governess spent in the weaving of tales. Her peraonal relation to her experiences, James stresses, is always that of the apectator looking on: "... The sharpened sense of speetator- ahip was the child*s main support, the long habit, from the firat, of seeing herself in discussion and finding in the fury of it. . .a sort of compensation for the doom of a peculiar passivity. It gave her often an odd air of being present at her history in as separate a manner as if she could only get at experience by flattening her nose against a pane of glass" (XI, 107).

Her Btory->book relation to experience is her only armour as she embarks on one of the most sordid experiences a child might be sub­ jected to by a father: Mr. Farange sees fit to take her to the apartment 52 of the woman who keeps him, keeps him because she is so ugly and be­ cauae he ia the aort of man who can be bought. Focuaaing on Maiaie in the cab with her father, Jamea writes: 'The child had been in thouaands of stories—all Mrs. Wix*s and her own, to aay nothing of the ri cheat romances of French Elise—but she had never been in such a atory as this. By the time he had helped her out of the cab, which drove away, and she heard in the door of the houae the prompt little click of his key, the Arabian Nights had quite closed round her" (XI,

175), Impressed by the loveliness of her surroundings but even more by the terrible ugliness of the Countess, who strikes Maisie as more of "an animal than as a *real* lady , . . a clever frizzled poodle in a frill or a dreadful human monkey in a spankled petticoat' (XI, 193),

Maisie comes through the experience more or less imscathed. She is only aware that her father has felt the need to get rid of her forever without sacrificing his sense of honor. She haa even helped him to accomplish this. Her moral vision too haa expanded in this scene with

Beale Farange. She has had to accept him 'as liking some one whom she was sure neither her n^other, nor Mrs. Beale, nor Mrs. Wix, nor Sir

Claude, nor the Captain, nor even Mr. Perriam and Lord Eric could pos­ sibly have liked" (XI, 196). She is not, however, seared by her obser­ vations. The setting in which this remarkable confrontation with her father takes place remains veiled for her with all the wondex of an oriental romance. As the Countess presses upon her a handful ^f sov­ ereigns to pay her cab fare home, Maisie reflects on her experience:

"It was still at any rate the Arabian Nights" (XI, 197). 53

The importance James must have attached to this use of imagery cannot be overemphaaized. It ia a profoundly functional technique for making hia young heroine convincingly "right" as a character in the midst of the most perverting situationa. It is his most successful method for "really keeping the torch of virtue alive in an air tending infinitely to amother it" (XI, viii). The atory-book framework of reference is thus integral to an imderstanding of Maisie*s moral development. Up to the point at irtiich ahe delivers her ultimatum to

Sir Claude, the content of her experience has to some extent at leaat impressed her aa a part of the great world of make-believe. Her full awakening to the sense of her own validity as an individual is simul­ taneous with her awakening from the protective cover of the "story."

With wide-open eyes she sits with Sir Claude over rolls and coffee:

"it was Juat in this make-believe way he had brought her out to imi­ tate the old London playtimes, to imitate indeed a relation that had wholly changed, , , ." (XI, 326) Maisie not only knows that ahe cannot with safety place her fortime with Mrs, Beale and Sir Claude, eager as they are to make use of her; she also knows that she is now face to face with the reality of human relationships. With this realiza­ tion she ceases to be a child. Chapter III

The Awkward Age

^^ ^^^ Awkward Age Henry James once more takes up the relation of innocence to a corrupt society. The central theme deals with the initiation of a young girl into the mysteries of adult preoccupations, with the interest for the reader lying in the quality of her moral character as she emerges from the baptism. Two young ladies are in fact Bubjected to the ritual in The Awkward Age—Nanda. whoae exposure to London life is freely granted by her mother over a considerable period of time, and little Aggie, who haa been reared by her aunt like a French Jeune fille to learn what adulthood means only at the moment of marriage. The question of "bringing down* young ladies to the parlor of adult talk is, in its superficial form, not likely to occur in the Twentieth Century. But fortunately James is spared the label demode. His treatment is universal and timeless, focussing as it does on the meaning of love and friendship in a milieu shot through with selfish interests. In his presentation of the impressionable mind as it broaches the realities of the "iinsubdued Jungle" of life, he remains true to the perennial struggle of the young to bridge the gap between innocence and experience, between ignorance and knowledge. That the scaffolding provided for auch a leap happens to be London of the late Nineteenth Century with ita now outmoded conventions does not deflect one*s interest from the moral drama.

54 55

Jamea deala essentially with two forma of corruption in London society, and it is the response of Nanda and Aggie to both kinda which produces the drama. There ia the obvious corruption involved in the promiscuity of Mrs. Brookenham*s circle. And then there is the more subtle kind of depravity, invariably immoral from James*s point of view, which corrupts the hidden spring of motivation. It is the aelf- aeeking inatinct let loose to forage as it may amidst the human material at hand. Little Aggie succumbs to the loose life after her marriage to

Mitchy, engaging immediately in a BK>nstrous flirtation with the monstrous

Lord Petherton. She is perhapa aimply too simple to realize what the second sort of depravity is all about. Nanda, on the other hand, comes through in full possession of a great deal of knowledge concerning her companions without involving herself in the type of experimentation that seems necessary to Aggie's development of self-awareness. It seems clear enough that she knows of the relationship between Mitchy and Lord

Petherton. Her appeal to Mitchy to marry Aggie is premised on the be­ lief that that innocent will "save" him (IX, 362). If she knows about

Mitchy's homosexuality, there is indeed not much that could have escaped her. Undoubtedly she is aware of other relationships in his mother's circle. She conveys to her mother, in fact, information concerning the marital aberrationa of the Cashmeres. Fanny Cashmore, she must see at last, is in the end being questionably entertained by her own brother

Harold Brookenham. There are also the clearly Intimated attachments be­ tween the Duchess and Lord Petherton, between her mother and Vanderbank.

But in apite of her knowledge, Nanda remains capable of understanding 56 the meaning of love and friendahip in this environment where affections are so freely bandied about. She likes Mitchy, Mr. Longdon, Aggie, for themselves, not what ahe can work them for.

It is her mother, Mrs. Brookenham, who ia the priestess at

Nanda's initiation into the depravity that underlies all others. She

attempts to teach her daughter by example and precept the philoaophy of "use"—the theory that in all relationships there is everything to

be gained for one's peraonal advantage. The view is a familiar one to

James's readera, forming as it does the antithesis to the novelist's

humanistic appraiaal of what relationahipa should be. In The Spoils of

Poynton, Mrs. Oereth bodies forth the philosophy in her own grand style,

Juat as in their meaner, more wretched manner the parents and step-parents

of Maisie do in What Maisie Knew. It is Mrs. Brookenham in The Awkward

Age who takes over the role in new and different circumstances. She is,

of all the creatures, the most consciously and intelligently dedicated

to her course.

The exwaple set by Mrs. Brook is given in a series of ten books,

or Acts, as James calls them in his Preface. Each book deals obliquely

with one of the members of Mrs. Brook's circle or with one of those who

skirt the periphery of the inner sanctum. The form of the novel is

unique, aiming at dramatic structure more completely than in any of

^^ Gerald Levin overlooks a good deal of evidence to reach his concluaion that "Nanda has fallen in with her mother's plan to work Mr. Longdon" ("Why Does Vanderbank Not Propose?" University of Kansas City Review, XXVII [June 1961], 317). 57

67

James's other works. Every book is an occaaion, with character revela­ tion proceeding principally by concentrated doses of dialogue. There is no central vessel of consciouaness (the closest one gets to the interior of a mind is on the appearances of Mr. Longdon), so that one must draw his conclusions mainly from the dialogue, a feat not without difficulties since the conversation of witty people is alow to yield the fundamental bias of character. Nevertheless, in ten books Mrs. Brook is revealed in a variety of lights that are not unperceived by the absorbing mind of her daughter, or the mind of the reader, for that matter. Mrs.

Brook appeara in aeveral relations which reflect the aelfish twist in her character: her reletionahip to her circle and to her family. She ia admittedly a mother beaet with economic problems, problems created more or less by her own need to move in upper-class society where affluence of a sort is taken for granted. She is also an intelligent woman who finda the life of the mind essential to her well-being. It is her method of satisfying these needs that draws her character into question. Pressed financially, ahe ia not adverse to condoning the rather mean practicea of her son, who "borrows" money on the sly from her friends. Harold sees very clearly how ahe winks, though with the air of the martyr, at hia overtures to Mr. Caahmore, to Mitchy, to who­ ever is available, even Mr. Longdon. Nanda sees too how she winks, and ia confronted with the results of such a policy on Harold when he hopes

®^ Books I through III may be considered equivalent to the expo­ sition of the theatre presented in Act I, Books IV through VI the devel­ opment of Act II, with the climax occurring in Book VII. Books VIII through X mark the denouement of Act III. 58 that "like a good true girl," "like a good true daughter," "like a good true slater," she is working Mr. Longdon for all he is worth

(IX, 391-392). On the subject of what Nanda is to get out of her con­ nection with Mr. Longdon, Mrs. Brook ia quite explicit. When Nanda speaka of her friendahip with the wealthy elderly man, her mother in­ quires about the advantages it might bring, to which Nanda replies,

"'Oh the great advantage, I feel, is doing something for him.'" Mrs.

Brook hesitatea only a moment and then purauea the lesson her daughter

should learn. **'Charity, love, begina at home, and if it's a question

of merely giving you've objects enough for your bounty without going

so far,'" Nanda atares at the import of the lesson: "'Why,'" she

breaka out, "*I thought you wanted me ao to be nice to him!'" With

which Mrs. Brook drives home her point, "'Well, I hope you won't think

me very vulgar , , . if I tell you that I want you still more to have

some idea of what you'll get by it'" (IX, 329).

The question of Mrs. Brookenham's relation to her circle hits

upon a finer aide of her character, or at least a side that has fine

potentiality but which suffers its own form of debasement. Her circle

is of course the creative act of her mental life. "'We're aimply a

collection of natural affinities,'" Mitchy tells Mr. Longdon, "'gov­

erned ... by Mrs. Brook, in our mysterious ebbs and flows, very much

as the tides are governed by the moon'" (IX, 124). The particular

crisis she faces concerns the "bringing down" of her daughter into

the arena of good talk, talk that has not had to take into considera­

tion "the presence of sweet virginal eighteen" (IX, 256). Mrs. Brook 59 explains: "'I happen to be so conatituted that my life has something to do with my mind and my mind something to do with my talk. Good talk: you know—no one, dear Van, ahould better know—what part for me that plays. Therefore idwn one has deliberately to make one's talk bad—!'**

CZX, 284) Ber immorality in this area of good talk or bad is that she

raduces all her friends to '*ideas" and thus loses, as Van points out to

Mr. lioagdoB about the whole group, "the soft human spot" (IX, 34). Her

special Interest in lAdy Fanny, for example, Ilea in the intellectual

titillation ahe feels concerning that splendid pagan's hesitation in

having an affair. "'She's the ornament of our circle,'" Mra, Brook

says to Vanderbank. "'She will, she won't—she won't, she will! It's

the excitement, every day, of plucking the daisy over'" (IX, 178).

This intellectual tendency helpa to alienate both Mitchy and Van, her

two main pillars of support. Mitchy reflects in not altogether favor­

able terms on the wonderfd intellectual grist the circle could make

of Mr. Longdon's country home. "All this would have been a wonderful

theme of discourse in Buckingham Cresent—so happy an exercise for

the votaries of that temple of analyaia that he repeatedly spoke of

their experience of it as crying aloud for Mrs. Brook" (IX, 349). In

a later tete-a-tete with the mistress of Buckingham Crescent, Mitchy

sounds the final note of dissaffeetion: "He passed hia hand hard over

his eyes in weariness and in the nearest approach to coldness he had

ever ahown Mra. Brook. 'It doesn't matter,'" he says to her. "'It's

every one's fate to be in one way or another the subject of ideas'

(IX, 473), Van ia alienated too, of course, because he is repelled by

the deviousness of her method in dealing with Nanda. He knows that she 60 has deliberately exposed her daughter to a aophistication that makes her unacceptable to him as a bride. He confronts her about her calcu­ lated policy in giving Nanda*s exposure a public showing during the famous Tiahy Orendon soiree: "'You did it that night at Mrs. Grendon*s.

. . • It was a wonderful performance. You pulled us down—Just closing with each of the great columns in ita turn—as Samson pulled down the temple. I was, at the time, more or leaa bruised and buried, and I didn't, in the agitation and confuaion, fully understand what had hap­ pened. But I understand now*" (IX, 439), Mrs. Brook is shrewd enough to guess that in his prejudices as to what a maiden might know. Van

ia even more old-fashioned than Mr. Longdon. He should have married

little Aggie. The disruption of the circle is the direct result of

Mrs. Brook*s attitude toward its members. Mitchy at least reacts

against the reduction of htman beings to intellectual fodder, and Van

for all his faults cannot atomach the aelfiah manipulations of his mistress.

The concluaion of the novel haa a twist worthy of James's sense

of the ironic. It is Nanda who is receiving callers in her boudoir

salon, while her mother sits, for all her efforts, alone in intellec­

tual poverty. Nanda has somehow learned in spite of the example and

precept of her mother that all relationships are not diatorted by the

law of supply and demand. Mitchy applauds her genuineness: "'What

doea atretch before me is the happy prospect of my feeling that I've

found in you a friend with whom, so utterly and unreservedly, I can

alwaya go to the bottom of things. This luxury, you see now, of our 61 freedom to look facta in the face is one of which, I promise you, I mean fully to avail myaelf" (IX, 520). Nor has Nanda loat her sense of generosity, even though she has good reaaon to feel vindictive. Her mother haa, after all, ruined her chances to marry Van. She is aware, however, of her nM:>ther's plight, since her circle has become a "fortui­ tous collection of atoms," and begs Van and Mitchy not to desert her.

Nanda has emerged from her initiation, as Harold did not, and as Aggie could not, with an unclouded view of what ia genuinely good and genu­ inely bad in human BK>tivation. Passing successfully through the awk­ ward age, when innocence first copes with experience, the formless duckling becomes the swan.

The study of imagery in The Awkward Age haa difficulties not encoiuitered in other novels by James. The chief one—point of view— has already been touched upon. James has no central reflector. To keep himself out of the story, he frequently brings in the "anonymous observer," calling him by such names as the "unobserved witness," the "initiated spectator." This practice seems to imply James's own

felt loss of a central vessel of consciousness through which to sift

experience. With his heavy reliance on the anonymous observer, mho

appears too often not to be noticed by the reader, he gives the impres­

sion of being slightly ill at ease in the dramatic form. At any rate,

there are fewer opportunities, without the central vessel, to give

immediacy to a state of consciousness through a shaping image. Images

are frequently used in conversation, however, and infrequently in a

character's thought to project forms of consciousness imaginatively. 62

In the preceding discuaaion a number of images have been brought in to illuatrate Mrs. Brook'a basically aelfiah orientation to life.

Imagery is alao used to depict Nanda's awakening consciousness. The contraat between little Aggie and Nanda aa a result of their different backgrounda is captured perfectly by Mr. Longdon as he visualiaea the state of inexperienced youth in its varioua stages of development:

Little Aggie differed from any young peraon he had ever met in that ahe had been deliberately prepared for consimiption and in that furthermore the gentleness of her spirit had immensely helped the preparation. Vanda, beside her, was a northern savage, and the reason was partly that the elements of that young lady's nature were already, were publicly, were almoat indecoroualy, active. They were practically there for good or ill; experience was still to come and what they might work out to still a myatery; but the sum would get itself done with the figures now on the slate. On little Aggie's slate the fig­ ures were yet to be written; which sufficiently accounted for the difference of the two surfaces. Both girls struck him as lambs with the great shambles of life in their future; but while one, with its neck in a pink ribbon, had no conscioua­ ness but that of being fed from the hand with the small aweet biscuit of unobjectionable knowledge, the other struggled with instincts and forebodings, with the suspicion of its doom and the far-borne scent, in the flower fields, of blood. (IX, 238- 239)

The image of Nanda as a lamb who has caught the scent of blood in

flowery fields is one of those terrifying poetic figures which give

James's account of experience auch imaginative depth. The bleasedness

and the misery of the human condition is caught up in this vision of

original innocence that senses an impending slaui^ter. James uses

other imagea too, though perhaps none are quite so profound as this

one, to bring out the threatening quality of the life that confronts 63 the young. Van apeaka in particular of Nanda's chances in London:

"'London doean*t love the latent or the lurking, has neither time nor

taate nor sense for anything lesa diacemible than the red flag in

front of the ateam-roller. It wants caah over the counter and letters

ten feet high*" (IX, 25). Nanda*s lack of beauty and wealth is Just

the red flag ahe can*t wave, and without it, as Van impliea, ahe may

aimply be caught in the crush. There is, in big societies, he explains,

little chance for the existence of friendahip. "*It*s a plant that

takes time and space and air; and London aociety is a hugh "squash,"

as we elegantly call it—an elbowing pushing perapiring chattering

mob*" (IX, 20). Nanda's exposure to the market-place atmoaphere that

pervades her mother's establiahment has come little by little, so that

she has somehow been equipped to handle her doses without turning sour.

"'I get the benefit of the fact,'* she aaya to Mitchy, "'that there was

never a time when I didn't know something or other, and that I became

more and more aware, as I grew older, of a hundred little chinks of

daylight*" (IX, 528). Earlier she has expressed her experience in

rather derogatory terms: "'Doesn't one become,'" she asks, "'a sort

of a little drain-pipe with everything flowing through?'" It is MLtchy

who changes the image to give one the final sense of the way in which

Nanda has reacted to her initiation: "'Why don't you call it more

gracefully,'" he asks in return, "'a little aeolian-harp set in the

drawing-room window and vibrating in the breeze of conversation?''

(IX, 358) Chapter IV

The Sacred Fount

There is a fairy-tale quality about the vampire theme of The

Sacred Fount which has led many critics of the novel to dismiss it, as Leon Edel notes in his Introduction to the 1953 edition, with

"weary bafflement." Over none of James's novels, writes Edel "have the critical waves melted so helpleaaly into their own shlMiering 68 foam." Rebecca West seems especially to have delighted critics who cannot penetrate James's meaning with her witty denouncement: "A week-end gueat apenda more intellectual force than Kant can have used

^^ ^^® Critique of Pure Reaaon in an unsuccessful attempt to discover whether there exists between certain of his fellow-guests a relation­ ship not more interesting among these vacuous people than it is asiong .i69 sparrows. More recently criticism has taken a new look at the novel. Both Edel and Oscar Cargill give it a special place in

James's canon, representing as it does a tour de force in the study of obsession. The tendency among critics upset by the book haa been to regard the narrator as James himself. A better appreciation of what the novelist was attempting to do emerges wh^ci one recognizes that all evidence points to the narrator as a man obsessed, and that one could hardly view James as wishing to be regarded in this light. With its

New York, 1953, p. v. An excellent account of the adverse criticism of the novel is also given by Oscar Cargill in The Novels of Henry Jamea (New York, 1961), pp. 281-284.

69 Henry James (New York, 1951), pp. 107-108.

64 65 fairy-tale elements The Sacred Fount bringa to imaginative climax

James's regard for the sanctity of the human personality and his equal

abhorrence of the spirit which swells its own life-force by feeding

at the "sacred fount" of its fellows.

Returning to the central vessel of consciousness after his ex­

cursion into the objective dramatic form of The Awkward Age, James

launches upon his most concentrated performance of keeping the story

within the confines of a single mind. The reader sees only what

the narrator sees, to the extent that a frequent complaint about the

novel is its total lack of any objective measure of fact. The con­

flicting interpretationa i^ch the famous portrait of the Man with

the Mask elicits symbolizes the problem of appearance and reality.

A brief resume will show that even the most obvious elements in the

story are only presented as they appear to the narrator, so that the

only fact to be incontrovertibly established is the experience of the

narrator. The question of truth or falaity is totally irrelevant

(though it has plagued many a critic); the experience simply takes

place, and it is that that the reader must be at pains to interpret.

Invited for a week-end at Newmarch, a country estate not far

from London, the narrator encounters en route two people whom he has

known previously, Mrs. Brissenden and Gilbert Long. He is astonished

to note that the former looks many years younger than he remembered

her and that the latter has achieved a cleverness in conversation that

was singularly absent during his earlier acquaintance with the man.

He formulates on the spot a theory that such physical and mental 66 regeneration could have come only from the sacred fount of another, and that if he obaerves carefully enough he will undoubtedly find a man who haa aacriflccKl hia youth for Mra. Briaaenden and a woman who haa aacrifioed her Intelligence for Gilbert Long. It is this hypothesis of a vrnptre relationahip that obaeases the narrator for the duration of his week-end at Newmarch, His search ia primarily for the lover who haa supplied the life line of intelligence to Gilbert Long, since it is obvious that Mr. Brissenden, who is only in his late twenties but looks to the narrator at least fifty, is the life line of youth for his wife.

Whether or not the vampire relationahip actually exists is left uncertain. It exista certainly in the adnd of the narrator, but no objective test is ever presented by James, a aign of his great finesse in keeping this fairy-tale theme in the realm of conjecture. It is true that Mra* Briaaenden, captivated by the narrator'a theory, greatly enjoys speculating with him about the possible identity of the unfor­ tunate woman who has been reduced to idiocy by transferring her intel­ ligence to Mr. Long. But her concurrence is no objective test. In

the first place, she is unconscious of any change in heraelf, and in

the second, she repudiates in the end the validity of the whole idea.

In the same way, the concurrence of Obert Ford, the artist, with the narrator*a theory is no valid measure of its truth. The three of them

are finally seen as engaging in a fascinating intellectual game, but

it is the narrator, with his obsessive interest in the game, whose

character deteriorates in the process. It is the dehumanization he 67 auffera through intellectual vam>iri8m that alone la objectively real.

Hia debasement is revealed in action, thought, dialogue, and imagery.

The vampire theme ia given over and over again in a variety of images that leave no doubt as to what the atory is about. The trick, of course, is to aee that with wonderful irony James alma the theme at the narrator himaelf, who is so terribly efficient in tracking that relationahip in othera, but who is completely unconscious that he is a notorioua victim, a victim in a realistic sense that lies outside the realm of the fairy atory. Once Jamea'a intention is known, read­ ing of the atory becomes an exhilerating lesson in appreciation of the ironic. Vampiriam ia, to repeat, pervasive. The narrator is never at a losa to expound his hypothesis. He says to Obert Ford:

One of the pair has to pay for the other. What enaues is a miracle, and miradea are expensive. What's a greater one than to have your youth twice over? It*s a second wind, an­ other "go"—which isn*t the sort of thing life mostly treata us to. Mrs. Brlss has had to get her new blood, her extra allowance of time and bloom, somewhere; and from whom codd she so conveniently extract them as from Guy hia»elf? She haa, by an extraordinary feat of legerdea«in, extracted them; and he, on his side, to supply her, has had to tap the sacred fount. But the sacred fount is like the greedy man*s dea- cription of the turkey as an "awkward" dinner dish. It may be sometiisea too much for a single share, but it*s not enough to go round.

Mrs. Brlss, he aays, "'Juat quietly, but Just selfishly, profits'" by the miracle of her derived youth, being all unconscious of the process

^^ I^ 8*cr«d Fount, (New York, 1953), p. 29. Since The Sacred Fount doea not appear in the New York Edition, all quotations are taken from the 1953 edition, and hereafter will be cited in the text by page nimber only. 68 by which she haa arrived at it (p. 30). All unconscious of her own miracle, Mrs. Brlss takes up with excited curiosity the vampire theme auggeated by the narrator in connection with Gilbert Long and his myaterious aacred fount:

He would think for her if he weren't selfish. But he i£ self­ ish—too much so to spare her, to be generoua, to realize. . . . It's only an excessive case, a case that in him happens to show as what the doctora call "fine," of what goes on whenever two persons are so much mixed up. One of them always gets more out of it than the other. One of them—you know the saying—gives the lips, the other gives the cheek . . . [which] profits the most. It takes and keeps and uses all the lips give. The cheek, accordingly . . . is Mr. Long*s. The lips are what we began by looking for. We've found them. They're drained—they're dry, the lipa. (pp. 80-81)

The intereating observation in both theae accounts is that the vampire is a aelfiah creature, but is unconscious of the fact. The same ob­ servation may be applied to the narrator, although he is conscious in the beginning that the whole affair ia perhaps none of his busineas.

He is repelled at the realization that he is making Intellectud fodder of the houae-gueats at Newmarch. He is chilled by the evidence of cold arouaed curiosity in Mrs. Brissenden: "Singular perhapa that only then- yet quite certdnly then—the curiosity to which I had so freely sur­ rendered myself began to strike me as wanting in taste" (p. 45). His scruples continue to operate at intervals: "I remember indeed," he reflects, "that on separating from Mrs. Brissenden I took a lively re­ solve to get rid of my ridiculous obsession. It was absurd to have con­ sented to such immerson, intellectually speaking, in the affairs of other people" (p. 89). But his vowed withdrawal seems only to whet his 69 appetite, and he deacribes his predicament unconacioualy to himaelf in terma of the vampire theme: "Diacretion then, I finally felt, played an odd part when it aimply left one more attached, morally, to one's prey" (p. 93). His prey, at the flK>ment, ia poor Mrs. Server, who strikes him more and more as the depleted soul who has given her mind to Gilbert Long. He tracks her with auch a vengeance that the lady seems terrified of him. His analysis of her state becomes for him more and more faacinating, though he has yet a feeling of compunc­ tion in discussing her with Mrs, Brlss or Obert Ford, He ia sensitive enough at thia stage to know that in hia prying he might reveal to the world the poor woman*s involvement in an illicit relationship. The sheer beauty of his theory at length overwhelma him, however, and the rush of the hours at Newmarch finds him progressively given over to sheer delight in his intellectual adventure: "it appeared then that the more thinga I fitted together the larger sense, every way, they made—a remark in which I found an extraordinary elation. It Justified my indiscreet curiosity; it crowned my underhand process with beauty.

The beauty perhaps was only for me—the beauty of having been right; it made at dl events an element in which, while the long day aoftly dropped, I wandered and drifted and securely floated" (p. 128). He swells in the vanity of his mentd perspicacity, thinking of his 'ex­ travagant perceptions" (p. 156), his "transcendent intelligence"

(p. 157), his "preposterous acuteness" (p. 157). The slightest vari­ ation in behavior on the part of his victims threatens to spoil the amusement he takes in making all appearances fit the pattern of his extraordinary hypothesis. He trembles oi seeing Mrs. Server and 70

Gilbert Long seated together at dinner, for on the theory of their vampirleh relation auch an appearancecf proximity must be feverishly avoided, "I was fairly upset by the need to consider at this late hour whether going in for a new theory or bracing myself for new facts would hold out to me the better refuge" (p. 160), He succeeds, however, in adjusting all appearances to the demands of his scheme. He constructs

"a great glittering crystal palace" of thought. "I struck myaelf as knowing again the Joy of the intellectual mastery of things unamenable, that Joy of determining, almost of creating resdts, which I have al­ ready mentioned as an exhilaration attached to some of my plunges of insight" (p. 214). Confronted with the explanations of Obert Ford he secretly gloats over the superiority of his own creation, for the artist*s is no match for the perfection of his. "l was redly dazzled by his image, for it represented his personal work** (p. 222), but the narrator*a own composition has a distinction of form not to be chal­

lenged. He has too consummately illustrated to himaelf the vampirish

connections between the Brissendens and between Long and Mrs. Server.

It is only in confrontation with Mra. Brissenden*s explanation that his

confidence breaks down, breaks down not because her vision seems so

much superior as that the tone of her delivery quite undermines him.

She calls him "crazy" in a manner so forcefd, youthful, beautiful,

that he can only stare at the cleverness of her tone. In their extra­

ordinary midnight conversation (a time when vampires are most in evi­

dence) , he alternately gloats and despaira over his intellectual

feat: 71

I*ve apoken of it (my pdace of thought] ... as a mere heap of diafigured fragments; but that was the extravagance of my vexation, my despair. It*8 in point of fact so beautifully fitted that it comes apart piece by piece—irtiich, so far as that goes, you*ve seen it do in the last quarter of an hour at your own touch, quite handing me the pieces, one by one, yourself and watching me stack them along the ground. They're not even in thia state—see! ... a pile of ruins! . . , I should almoat like, piece by piece, to hand them back to you. . , . I believe that, for the very charm of it, you'd find yourself placing them by your own sense in their order and rear­ ing once more the splendid pile. (pp. 311-312)

In his desperation to meet the brilliant onslaught of Mrs. Brissenden the narrator shows the extent to which he has loat the human touch.

Any concern he might have had for Mrs. Server is thrown to the winds:

"I seemed to myself to know little now of my desire to 'protect'

Mrs. Server" (p. 249). He feels in general the sacrifice of feeling to the satisfaction of curiosity: "I was there to save my priceless pearl of inquiry and to harden, to that end, my heart. I should need indeed all my hardness, as well as my brightness, moreover, to meet

Mrs. Brlss on the high level to ^ich I had at last induced her to 71 mount" (p. 296).

James takes pains to show in subtle ways the relevance of the vampire theme to the narrator, who is himself involved in the process of destruction. It is clear that he feeds upon the affairs of his companions for whatever value they have to meet his need for intel­ lectual excitement. They are his "prey," and there is evidence that they are not unaware of hi? vampirish propensity. It appears that there

An interesting comparison might be made between James's ac­ count of the narrator and Hawthorne's treatment of the dehumanization that results from excessive curiosity in auch characters as Chilling- worth in The Scarlet Letter and Ethan Brand in the short story by that name. 72 is an irrational fear underlying their reactions to him. "'People have such a notion of what you embroider on things,*" Mrs. Brissenden tells him, "*that they're rather afraid to commit themselves or to

lead you on: they*re aometimes in, you know . . . for more than they

bargain for, than they quite know what to do with, or than they care

to have on their hands*'* (p. 298). The extent to which the narrator

requires continual feeding of the Intellectud organ is nowhere more

apparent than in the deprivation he senses as he thinks of leaving so

fertile a field aa Newmarch:

... My consciousness was aware of having performed a fdl revolution. If I was free, that was what I had been only so abort a time before, what I had been as I drove, in London, to the station. Was this now a foreknowledge that, on the morrow, in driving away, I should feel myself restored to that blankness? . . . Yet how I also felt, with it, some­ thing of the threat of a chill to my curiosity! The taste of its bei]l^: all over, that really sublime success of the strdned vision in which I had been living for crowded houra— was this a taste that I was sure I should particularly enjoy? ... I ruefdly reflected on all the more, on the ever so much, I still wanted to know! (p. 193)

His appetite is insatiable, as an authentic vampire's dways is, and

he comes as a result to the distressing end of exulting in the palace

of thought he has constructed at the expense of his capacity to feel,

humanly, for others. Within the man himaelf then, a certain vampirish

activity haa taken place: his intellect, to put it patly, has fed

upon his heart, so that he survives findly as some sort of monster

of depravity, fulfilling in his own being the fdry tale vrtiich for

dl the other characters in the novel remains only and simply that— 73 a fairy tale. The narrator's story is, as Oscar Cargill saya, "a bizarre tragedy of aelf-destruction."^^

^^ I^ Sacred Fount James achieves an imaginatively intenae expreaaion of hia philoaophy of hiuoanism. His concentration in this novel, however, is upon the purely destructive. The narrator ia the

apotheosis of the predatory impdse which haa glimmered through a

number of the characters in the novels diacuased in the preceding

chaptera. Some of these characters have their admirable points—their

pride, their energy, their pecdiar distresses. It is in the narra­

tor of The Sacred Fount that James seems to embody at last the fullest

most startling expression of that preying inatinct which moves about

under many different gdses. In Mrs. Gereth of The Spoils of Poynton

it is attachment to an ided of the beautiful which motivates her

to appropriate the services of Fleda; in the fairly despicable crowd

of What Maisie Knew, it is a coarse need for a vehicle of recrid-

nation or for a pretext of respectability that keeps the vdtures

circling; in The Awkward Age Mrs. Brook demonstrates how intellec­

tual and monetary considerations can corrupt the springs of motiva­

tion. But these three novels also portray the case of the reaction

agdnst the predatory: one has Fleda, Maisie, and Nanda. The Sacred

Fount alone offers no example of the uncorrupted moral sense, and it

is probably this odssion that makes the narrator stand so isolated

in his pecdiar intellectud depravity. There is a lack of "felt

72 The Novels of Henry James, p. 295, 74 w73 characterization. One has a well-rounded narrator, but no other character in appreciable dimensions. For that reason the novel seems not so good as a novel, having as it does the quality of an overgrown

short-atory.

Having written the worst that is possible for human nature out

of hia system, ao to apeak, with dl its nightmarish quditiea of

vampirism, Jamea was agdn to turn his attention fdly upon the poai-

tive aapecta of his humanistic point of view. In The Wings of the Dove,

The Ambasaadors, and The Golden Bowl, he preaents the fine example of

the reaction agdnat the aubtle hypocrisies of the selfish. Milly

Theale, Lambert Strether, and Maggie Verver are his "answer" to the

narrator. In more complex circumatances they bring to fruition the

mord beauty introduced by Fleda Vetch, Maisie, and Nanda.

73 Cargill, p. 295, Chapter V

The Winya of the Dove

In the Preface to The Winga of the Dove James defines the parti­ cular conditions of life his heroine, Milly, is to face. The idea of

the novel, he aays, "reduced to ita essence, is that of a young person

conacious of a great capacity for life, but early stricken and doomed,

condemned to die under short respite, while also enamoured of the world;

aware moreover of the condemnation and passionately desiring to 'put

in* before extinction as many of the finer vibrations as possible, and

so achieve, however briefly and brokenly, the sense of having lived"

(XIX, v). The key phraae here is, of course, "the finer vibrations,"

for it is crucial to a further underatanding of Milly*a experience of

the fdl life. James continues to clarify it himself in his Preface:

"she would . . . wish ... to live for particular things, she would

found her striiggle on particular human interests" (XIX, vii); her very

sense of doom might crown her experience "with a fine intensity,"

dght quicken her "consciousness of all relations" (XIX, vi). One

can interpret the phrase adequately, however, for all of James's ex­

plicit help, only after observing the course of Milly's life. An

innocent like Maggie, Milly comes to know that the experience of liv­

ing involves her in a world not only of beauties but of disillusion-

ments, in relationahipa which demand selflessness and the power of

forgiveness. In a tragically short existence, she coaqprehends the

profound demands which life makes of the hiuaan spirit; she embraces

its fulfillments and triumphs over its treacheries.

75 76

The crux of The Winya £f the Dove involves a tension between

Milly Theale*s oonadousness of a fatal diseaae and the full life pos­ sible with her enormous wedth, youth, and charm. The full life

Idd out for Milly dght without strdn be interpreted hedonisticdly, a "do-as-you-llkm** philoaophy that haa dl the means of fdfillment ednently at hand. Sir Luke Strett, the great doctor, continually impresses upon Milly her right to happiness. During their second interview, he tells her: 'Hard thinga have come to you in youth, but you muatn't tdnk life will be for you dl hard things. You've the right to be happy. You muat accept any form in which happiness may come" (XIX, 248). Maud Lowder makes much of the great marriage poaaible for Milly because of her wealths Milly herself is aware of her complete freedom: "I can do exactly as I like—anything in dl the wide world," ahe aaya. "I haven't a creature to ask—there's not a finger to stop me* I can shake about till I'm black and blue"

(XIX, 243). In view of the seriousneaa with which Henry James haa treated the theme of Milly's tension, it ia aomewhat disappointing if he means no more than that an individual with a short time to live haa the right to indulge himself. It helpa to understand his seriousness if Milly's case is considered to some extent in the light of Strether's in The Ambaaaadors and Maggie's in The Golden Bowl. To have one's life aa full as possible is not simply the prerogative of the invdid; it ia the obligation of any individual. Strether admoniahea little

Bilham: "Live dl you can. It's a dstake not to. It doean't so 77 much matter what you do in partiedar, so long as you have your life.

If you haven*t had that what have you had?" (XIX, 217) Interpreted

from thia point of view, Milly cannot be regarded as a self-indulgent

invalid. It becomes clear, in fact, that Milly is in a unique, an

dmost ironically enviable poaition to experience life with an inten-

aity not open to persons with the relative assurance of long years

ahead of them.

There are aeverd ways in which Milly could have wasted her

opportunity to taate life with unusual poignancy and intensity. These

severd ways are bro\ight out both indirectly and directly by Henry

James and are important in arriving at a "thicker" conception of life

than the merely hedoniatic. The most obvious recourse for an indi­

vidual menaced with a fatal disease is elidnated by James by his simple

procedure of never dlowing it to enter Milly*s consciousness. That

ia, Milly leaves religious solace completely out of the question; at

the moment most propitious for religious reflection her thoughts appar­

ently take an exactly opposite turn. The consequences of her experi­

ence at thia point are important enough to warrant giving the scene

in detail* Milly has climbed to a peak in the Swiss Alps from which

she has "a view of great extent and beauty.'* Her position is some­

what precarious, seated as she is on the "dizzy edge ... of a short

promontory * * . that merely pointed off into gdfs of air" (XIX, 123).

Unobaerved, Mrs. Stringham has silently followed the girl, and it is

through her eyes that Milly*s action and meditation are interpreted. 78

She has the impreaaion '*that if the girl was deeply and recdeasly meditating there, ahe was not medtating a Jump; ahe was on the con­

trary, aa ahe aat, much more in a state of uplifted and unlidted

poaaeaaion that had nothing to gdn from violence. She was looking

dom on the kimgdoma of the earth, and though indeed that of itself

dght well go to the brain, it woddn't be with a view of renouncing

them. Was ahe choosing among them, or did ahe want them dl?"

(XIX, 124) It ia plain here that Milly, as Mrs. Stringham inter­

prets her, plans no escape through sdcide, but neither does renim-

ciation of the world for purely religious vdues enter her dnd.

Jamea strikingly deacribea her experience in terms redniscent of

Chriatii experience whwi he renounced the kingdoma of the earth.

That Milly*a intention is, on the contrary, to take possession of the

earth rather than to lose slQ^t of it in any kind of religioua succor

is undstakable in the passage immedately following the one given

above. From her view of Milly, Mrs. Stringham brings away the convic­

tion that "the future was not to exist for her princess in the form of

any aharp or aimple release from the human predcament. It wouldn't

be for her a question of a flying leap and thereby of a quick escape.

It would be a queatlon of taking fdl in the face the whole assault

of life, to the general muster of which indeed her face dght have

been directly preaented as ahe sat there on her rock" (XIX, 125).

In addition to auicide or religion, there is a third way, per­

haps more subtle and insinuating, which wodd have underdned Milly

Theale's resolution to take "fdl in the face the whole assault of 79 life." It ia what dght be cdled the insidious, carefd, aympatds- ing iMuiner of others toward the invdid. If Milly were to show her­ aelf as frankly doomed as she was, ahe would be shut out from the life ahe ao paaalonately dahea to meet by the compassionate, protecting attitude of her friends. How could ahe dream of meeting life's asaaulta if the assaults themselves were dssipated in the dsardng conception of the helpless invalid? It is impossible to appreciate Milly*s abao-

lute suppression of dl reference to her illness without so interpret­

ing her motivation. If tda partiedar motivation ia overlooked, her

continual inaistence tends to become "harping" and she takes on the

unattraetiveness of an exceptiondly touchy person. Certdnly any

tone of triviality belies James*s high seriousness in treating Milly*s

dilemma* To have her life, as Strether put it, she must protect her­

self as much as possible from overt sympathy. Succeeding in that,

ahe is neverthdess plagued by the "kind view" implicitly taken of

her by her associates* She is unaffected by Densher*s taking the same

"kind view** only because of her great regard for him. During their

first meeting after his return to England from America, she saw that

however he had begun, he was now acting from a particular desire, deterdned either by new facts or new fancies, to be like everyone else, siiqitlifylngly "kind" to her. He had caught on dready as to manner—fallen into line dth every­ one else . . . her heart could none the less sink a little on feeling how much his view of her was destined to have in common dth—aa she now sighed over it—the view. She could have dreamed of his not having the view, of his having some­ thing or other, if need be quite viewless, of his own; but he dght have what he could dth least trouble, and the view wouldn't be, after all, a positive bar to her seeing him. The defect of it in generd—if she dght so ungraciously 80

criticize—waa that, by its sweet universality, it made rela­ tions rather prosdcally a matter of course. It anticipated and superceded the—likewise sweet—operation of red affini­ ties. (XIX, 300-301)

Although the challenging operation of red affinities is considerably

softened in spite of Milly's precautions, she nevertheless succeeds in

preventing an inundation of vocal sympathy which would have blurred

her viaion of life*a poaaibilities.

In ds treatment of Milly Theale*a dilemma, then, Henry James

haa sought to elidnate attitudes and situations which would in any

way undermine hia thorougdy humanistic concept of life. Milly, heiress

of the ages, is placed in a dlieu where the dgheat values of human

existence dght be redixed, and there ia no question that James con­

siders the human potential immense: aesthetically, morally, intel-

lectudly. We are unfair to the human capacity, he implies in his

novels, if we attach ourselves to any attitude that deprecates the

richness and co!m>lexity of human life. His humanism is in obvious

agreement dth William James, who embraces pointedly the view that

we are finite once for all, and all the categories of our sympathy 74 are knit up dth the finite world as such. . . ."

The images through which the principal characters in the novel

view themselves and each other suggest that two totally different

waya of Interpreting experience are in play. As Quentln Anderson

writes, "There are two broad ways of taking experience, the way of the flK>rally spontaneous and the way of those circumacribed by institutions,

^^ Pluraliatic Universe, p. 48. 81 by greed, by a variety of life-denying i^ulaes."^^ The latter way ia reflected in the world of Maud Lowder, the world in which Kate Croy and Merton Denaher work to fdfill their peraond ambitions and de-

aires. Their world is an easentially vidoua one; everyone has ds price, and everyone is vduable in the d^ree to irtiich he can be worked.

Tda is the dlieu Jamea bdlda solidly in advance for his heroine,

**8o that it should have for ua as much as possible its odnous air of

awaiting her" (XIX, x). Just how odnous it is becomes clear in the

images used by Kate and Denaher to depict the atmoaphere in which they

move and their relation to it. Neither is unaware of its threatening

character, and both see it in terms of the imposing figure of Aunt

Maud. For Kate, who redizes that she ia a '*sensible value" in the

world of Lancaater Gate where vdues are important to the extent that

they "ahow," or "pay off," Aunt Maud is seen successively in a variety

of vicioua forma: an arouaed lioness, a vulture, a cat, a monster.

From the begindng, Kate sees herself as victimized:

It was perfectly present to Kate that ahe dght be devoured, and she compared heraelf to a trembling kid, kept apart a day or two till her turn ahould come, but sure sooner or later to be introduced into the cage of the lioness. The cage was Aunt Maud*s own room, her office, her count­ ing house, her battlefield, her especial scene, in fine, of action, aituated on the ground-floor, opening from the main hall and figuring rather to our young woman on exit and en­ trance as a guard-house or a toll-gate. The lioness waited— the dd had at least that consciousness; was aware of the neighbourhood of a morsel she had reason to suppose tender. (XIX, 30)

^^ African Henry James, p. 34. 82

But Kate's image, though it captures her feeling about Maud, neverthe­ less slightly exaggeratea the truth about heraelf as a paaaive aacri- fieid victim. For she has indicated earlier that ahe haa '*a dire accessibility** to the dnd of silk and velvet life her aunt offera her.

She is sidlar to Christina Light, who succumbs to the attraction of a great marriage, but suffers ever after from the sense of having aold her integrity for Prince Cassamassima. Kate, a more fully drawn char­ acter than the Princess, is painfully aware from the beginning of the nature of the sacrifice demanded of her. Her Aunt Maud wants her to marry Lord Mark for the socid advantages such a marriage would offer her. But Kate is deterdned to marry for love, to marry, that is,

Merton Densher. She is deterdned dso, however, to have her fortune, and tds leads her into the plan to "work" Milly Theale. While she seeks to save her Integrity from one point of view, she is neverthe­ less finally caught up in the market-place atmoaphere of Lancaster

Gate. In a remarkable passage Kate views her aunt in a series of images ranging from a lioneas, to Britannia of the Market Place, to a besieger of her citadel. The odnous world lying in wait for Milly

Theale ia so forcefully pictured that the passage is worth qiuoting in full:

She [Maud] wodd have been ... a wonderful lioness for a ahow, an extraordinary figure in a cage or anywhere; majestic, magnificent, high-coloured, dl brilliant gloss, perpetud satin, twinkling bugles and flashing gems, dth a lustre of agate eyes, a sheen of raven hdr, a polish of complexion that was like that of well-kept china. . . . Her niece had a quiet name for her . . . She talked to herself of Britannia of the Market Place ... and felt ahe would not be happy till she 83

dght on some occasion add to the rest of the panoply a hel­ met, a shield, a trident and a ledger. It wasn*t in truth, however, that the forces dth which, as Kate felt, she would have to ded were those most suggested by an image ai^;>le and broad; ahe was learning, after all, to know her companion, and what ahe had dready most perceived waa the dstake of trust­ ing to easy aadogiea. There was the whole side of Britannia, the side of her florid pdlistinism . . . the sole contempla­ tion of which would be dangeroualy dsleading. She was a com­ plex and subtle Britannia, as paasionate as she was practicd, dth a reticde for her prejudices as d«iep as that other pocket, the pocket full of coins stamped in her iraage, that the world best knew her by. (XIX, 30-31)

The images take on fearfd overtones for Kate as ahe continues to med- tate on her forddable aunt, who is both her patroness and adversary;

It was in fact as a besieger, we have hinted, that our young lady in the provisioned citadel, had for the present most to think of her, and what made her formidable in this character was that ahe was unscrupulous and iBonoral. So at all events in silent sessions and a youthfd off-hand way Kate conven­ iently pictured her: what this sufficiently represented being that her weight was in the acde of certain dangers—those dangara that, by our showing, made the younger woman linger and lurk above, while the elder, below, both dlitant and dplomatic, covered as much of the ground as poasible. Yet what were the dangers, after all, but Just the dangers of life and of London? Mrs. Lowder was London, was life—the roar of the aiege and the thick of the fray. (XIX, 31-32)

One sympathizes dth Kate insofar as she recognizes the forces dth

which she is dealing and in opposition to Maud attempts to save a bit of

her integrity in her fight to keep Densher. In conversation, Kate and

Densher refer to Maud as a vulture (XIX, 73), and to Milly herself, Kate

describes Mrs. Lowder as a cat obviously affected by the proxidty of so

delicious a aocid morsel as the beautiful young heiress: "The way the

cat would Jump was always, in presence of anything that moved her. 84 interesting to see; visibly enough, moreover, it hadn*t for a long time Jumped anything like so far" (XIX, 180). Engliah aociety, sym­ bolized by Maud, is described as a monster which might "loom large

for those born add forma less developed ... It dght on some sides be a strange and dreadful monster, calculated to devour the unwary,

to abase the proud, to scandalise the good; but if one had to live

with it one muat . . . learn how. ..." (XIX, 277) Kate has learned

her lessons well, for the weapons she uses are precisely those of the

"monster" itself. In her carefully conceived plan to arrange the mar­

riage of Milly to Densher, so that on Milly*s death Densher may come

to her with a fortune, she ahows herself a fit representative of

London life, of life itself, when it haa underdned human values for

a price. Kate is perceptive, but not perceptive enough to see that

her course of action is motivated by a variety of "life-denying im­

pulses." Desire for security, position, fortune, and ironicdly for

love, overahadows her awareness and appreciation of Milly as a human

being, makea her incapable of perceiving the hurt she might inflict

on the doomed girl* In short, Kate succumbs to the odnous world

wdch she understands so thoroughly. The effect of her capitulation

is seen by Densher as he views her entrance during a dinner party at

Lancaater Gate: '*That was the story—that she was always, for her

beneficent dragon, under arms; lidng up, every hour, but especially

at festd hours, to the 'value' Mrs. Lowder had attached to her" (XX,

34). He saw himself for the moment 85

as in his purchased stall at the play; the watchfd manager was in the depths of a box and the poor actress in the glare of the footlights. But ahe paaaed, the poor performer—he codd see how she dways passed; her dg, her pdnt, her Jewels, every mark of her expression impeccable, and her entrance ac- cordngly greeted dth the proper round of applause. . . . It was aa if the drama . , . was between them, them qdte pre­ ponderantly; with Merton Densher relegated to mere spectator- sdp, a playing place in front, and one of the moat expensive. That was why his appreciation had turned for the instant to fear—had Just turned, as we have said, to sickness; and in apite of the fact that the disciplined face did offer him over the footlights, as he believed, the small gleam, fine faint but exqdaite, of a apecial intelligence. (XX, 34-35)

Densher*s extended figure of speech reveals Kate's loss of moral self-awarenesa. She is becodng a being who defines herself and acts wholly in terms of her relations dth others and their value 76 for her. Densher sickens at the sight of her masquerade, for her figurative mask can only represent some sort of persond blight.

Densher himaelf uses images which are very sidlar to Kate's to describe the world of Maud Lowder. The similarity may be expldned in several ways. The most important ia advanced by James, who sees his couple as having, at the beginning at least, an associated conscious­ ness (XIX, xvi). Their attunement is almost perfect, so that one may easily appreciate their comnunity of ideas. In addition, the charac­ ter of London aociety in which they move might naturdly be visualized by perceptive indviduds in sidlar images. At any rate, Densher is aa aware as Kate is of its thrcMttening nature. Aa he staggers under the sheer impact of affluence apparent in the furnishings of Lancaster

7® Tds type of character appears frequently in different stages of degeneration throughout James's fiction. Mrs. Gereth in The Spoils of Poynton and the narrator in The Sacred Fount immediately come to dnd as examplea of the dehumanized condition. Kate's characteriza­ tion ia the most complex of these portraits of moral blight. 86

Gate, he viaudisea himself unarmed in the very cage of the lioness:

"[Maud] waa vulgar with freahneaa, dmost dth beauty, aince there was beauty, to a degree, in the play of so big and bold a tempera­ ment. She waa in fine qdte the largeat possible quantity to deal dth; and he was in the cage of the lioness dthout ds whip—the whip, in a word, of a aupply of proper retort a. He had no retort but that he loved the girl—which in such a houae as that was painfdly cheap"

(XIX, 77). Densher is struck by the "solid forms, the wasted finish, the dagdded coat, the general attestation of morality and money, a good conacience and a big balance. These things findly represented

for dm a portentous negation of hia own world of thought—of which,

for that matter, in the presence of them, he became as for the first time hopelessly aware. They revealed it to him by their mercileas

difference" (XIX, 79).

While Kate ahows herself susceptible to the allure of silk and

velvet, vulgar though Maud's display dght be, Densher is overwhelmed

by the "otherness" of his condtion. From ds "desert of poverty"

he blinks hard at the deceptive oasis before him. Speadng to Kate

later about his first visit to Lancaster Gate, Densher uses perhaps

the most powerful image in the novel to depict Maud's fatal attraction:

"'Oh she's grand,' the young man conceded; 'she's on the scale alto­

gether of the car of Juggernaut—wdch was the kind of image that came

to me yesterday while I waited for her at Lancaster Gate. The things

in your dradng-room there were like the forms of the strange idols,

the mystic excrescences, dth which one may suppose the front of the 87 car to bristle'" (XIX, 90). Here, as in The Golden Bowl, James employs religious imagery to heighten the effect of a secdar experience.

Maud ia equated dth the idol of the **Lord of the world" (Kriahna), an idol annudly drawn on an enormous car under whose wheels devotees throw themaelvea to be cruahed. Her raateridiatic vdues have the same dnd of attraction, and Kate and Densher stand, one dght say, near the wheela of the car. Kate findly cannot withatand the pdl, and the ritual of aacrifice begina when she launches her systematic plan to dupe the American heiress. Densher's relation to "the car of Jugger­ naut" is more difficult to describe, primarily because he is more sus- eeptible than Kate to the influence exerted by Milly Theale, who auc- ceeds in living in Maud's world without sacrificing herself to it. To appreciate Denaher's redemption then, one must first understand Milly

Theale.

When Milly appears on the London acene, James has successfully created tho odnous atmoaphere in wdch ahe is to "learn to live."

Her relation to it is, of course, radically different from Kate's or

Densher's: Milly is rich. But the rich are not immune obviously from the corruption of values. Maud Lowder is the prime example of the

indddud who gives of himself in terms of gold and silver pieces,

for whom no relation ia significant that does not have a "sensible

value." As Susan Stringham aays of her, in coa^arison with Milly:

"Aunt Maud sat somehow in the midst of her money, founded on it and

aurrounded by it, even if dth a maaterful high manner about it, her manner of looking hard and bright, as if it weren't there. Milly, 88 about hers, had no manner at all—which was possibly, from a point of view, a faults ahe was at any rate far away on the edge of it, and you hadn't, as might be said, in order to get at her nature, to tra- veree, by whatever avenue, any piece of her property" (XIX, 196).

Milly'a self-awareneas and her ability to give of herself are not, in other worda, inextricably bound up dth her money. She ia free from the taint of viewing othera as commoditiea to be appropriated accord­ ing to her need and pleasure.

Like Kate and Denaher, Milly is aware from the first of the code of self-aggrandisement. She felt, for instance, in response to Lord

Mark'a careful solicitation during Maud's banquet for her, that "she had, on the apot, dth her first plunge into the obscure depths of a aociety conatituted from far back, encountered the interesting phe­ nomenon of complicated, of possibly sinister motive" (XIX, 153-154).

She is also unabashed by the figure of Mrs. Lowder herself: "She ... felt Mrs. Lowder as a person of whom the dnd dght in two or three days rougUy make the circdt. She would sit there massive at least while one attempted it; whereas Miss Croy, the handsome girl, would indulge in incalculable movements that dght interfere with one's tour" (XIX, 149-150). Later, in regard to Kate, Milly haa occasion to have "felt herself alone dth a creature who paced like a panther.

That was a violent image, but it made her a little less aahamed of having been scared" (XIX, 282).

The important thing about Milly ia that she is capable of com­ plete peraonal involvement in life, of dedication to life and its 89 imponderable relatione, dthout succumbing to the vicioua undercurrents nA&ich cut across the stream of experience. Her capacity for involve­

ment is reveded in her reaction to the banquet where she has Juat per­

ceived a treac^herous note in Lord Mark'a casud conversation:

She thrilled, she consciously flushed, and all to turn pale agdn, dth the certitude—it had never been ao present—that ahe ahodd find herself completely involved: the very air of the place, the pitch of the occaaion, had for her both so sharp a ring and so deep an undertone. The smallest things, the faces, the hands, the Jewels of the women, the sound of worda, especidly of names, across the table, the shape of the forks, the arrangement of the flowers, the attitude of the servants, the walla of the room, were all touchea in a picture and denotements in a play; and they marked for her moreover her alertneas of vision. She had never, ahe dght well believe, been in auch a state of vibration; her senai- bility was almoat too sharp for her comfort. . . . (XIX, 148)

Milly has a aeries of experiences which mark for her an intensity of

involvement accentuated by the redization that she does not have long

to live.^^ Her firat, we see through the eyes of Susan Stringham as

she views Milly perched on her precipice in the Swiss Alps. The young

girl has "a dew of great extent and beauty"; to Susan ahe appears to

be '*looking down on the kingdoms of the earth, and though indeed that

of itaelf dght well go to the brain, it wouldn't be with a view of

renouncing them. Was she choosing among them or did she want them

'''' Jean Kimball's emphasis on Milly's consciousness of death ('*The Abyaa and the Wings of the Dove: The Image of a Revelation,' Nineteenth Century Fiction, X [March 1956], 300) leads to an unusual interpretation of the novel focussing on the heroine's search for immortdity, for an identity that dll survive beyond death. One feels that such an emphasis undercuts Milly's intense consciousness of mortal life. 90 dl?** (XU, 133-124) Milly's embrace of the dngdoms of the world is translated in the atory into her dlllng acceptance of life, of London in particular, in apite of ita threatening character. Her aocid suc­ cess at Lancaater Gate, at Matcham, and in Venice ia a meaningful experience for her, even though she is not duped by the proportions of it. In regard to Aunt Maud'a efforta for her, she was "really consoioua of the enveloping flap of a protective mantle, a ahelter with the weight of an Eastern carpet. An Baatem carpet, for dshing- purposes of one's own, was a tdng to be on rather than under; still, however, if the girl ahodd fdl of breath it woddn't be, ahe could feel, by Mrs. Lowder's fault" (XIX, 216). Densher too haa no illu- aiona about the aocid acddm given Milly. Reacting to the discussion of her success by the London crowd, he sees her as "a Chriatian maiden, in the arena, dldly, caressingly, martjrred. It was the noaing and fumbling not of lions and tigers but of domestic animals let loose as for the Joke. . . . The budded herd had drifted to her blindly—it dght as blindly have drifted away" (XX, 42-43).

Milly is remarkable Just because she is aware of the lidtations of her success but at the same time is capable of feeling intenaely that her peraonal relationahipa are meaningful. She is deceived, of courae, on the vital question of Kate's love for Densher, but her final forgiveness of them both is expressed, ironically, in the kind of gift they had worked toward so diligently: a handsome inheritance. Kate saya of Milly and the giii : "I used to cdl her, in my stupidity—for want of anything better—a dove. Well she stretched out her dngs, and 91 it was to that they reached. They cover us** (XX, 404). Kate uses in the end an image which she first applied to Milly, and which was sub­ sequently taken up by Milly heraelf and others to characterize her relation to life. During the Venetian entertdnment prodded by

Milly, Denaher senses her as diffusing *'in dde warm waves the spell of a general, a beatific dldness" (XX, 213).

Milly was indeed a dove; this was the figure, though it most applied to her spirit. Yet he knew in a moment that Kate was Just now . . . exceptionally under the impression of that ele­ ment of wealth in her which waa a power, wdch was a great power, and which was dove-like only ao far as one remembered that dovea have dnga and wondroua flights, have them as well as tender tints and soft sounds. It even came to Densher didy that auch wings could in a given case , , , spread themselves for protection. Hadn't they, for that matter, lately taken an inordinate reach, and weren't Kate and Mrs, Lowder, weren't Susan Shepherd and he, wasn*t he in partiedar, nestling under them to a great increase of immediate ease? (XX, 218)

The image of the dove, recurring aeveral times and focuaed upon in the title of the novel, is central to an understanding of the hero- 78 ine. It is in eloquent contraat to the animdistic images which characterize Maud Lowder's world; it represents not only Milly*s paa­ sionate desire to live but her power to forgive those who contribute

^® The meaning of the dove imagery has been the subject of much critical discussion. For Kimbdl "the dove is the symbol for the struggle of Milly's soul or her personality to rise above annihilation, to atrengthen itaelf for a life beyond death" (p. 295). This view belies James's humaniatic orientation. Lotus Snow gives a more con­ vincing argument for the dove as a symbol of forgiveness in "The Dis­ concerting Poetry of Mary Temple: A Comparison of the Imagery of The Portrait of a Lady and The Wings of the Dove," New England Quarterly, XXXZ (September 1958), 338-339: '^he Christian imagery of the dove deepena Kate*a dckedness and Densher*s redemption, even as it lights Milly*s goodness." 92 to her deception. Through an interesting tdst of Biblicd meaning,

James has given the image of the dove purely humanistic overtones.

In Psalms 65:6, Dadd prays in ds deapdr, "My heart is sore pdned dthin me: and the terrors of death are fdlen upon me. Fearfulneas and tred)ling are ccme upon me, and horror hath overwhelmed me. And

I aaid. Oh that I had dnga like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest." The fear of death leads David to pray for a quick eacape; Milly*s dngs are to serve a different purpose, for her im­ pending doom has accentuated not the need for escape from life but the desire to live as fdly as possible in the time allowed her. She hovers in an atmosphere ndiere aesthetic, emotional, and moral fulfill­ ment is within her grasp. In her Venetian palace she perceives the perfect beauty of the place: "The romance for her, yet once more, would be to ait there for ever, through all her time . . . and the idea became an image of never going down, of remaining aloft in the divine duatless dr, where she would hear but the plash of the water againat atone" (XX, 147). Milly is not to die either without knodng the meaning of love, although her expreaaion of it is to be realized only in her act of forgiveness. Againat the terrible onalaught of

London morality, where nobody "does any tdng for nothing," MLlly, through her act, effects the moral regeneration of Merton Densher.

Her influence on Densher leads one to speculate whether James char­ acterizes her as a dove in order to intenaify the meaning of her inter­ cession on a purely mord, secular level. It is difficult to avoid, that ia, the traditional aasociation of the dove dth the Holy Spirit. 93

Through the association James suggests the redemptive qudity of Milly* i love, but he handlea the image in such a way as to play down altogether a religious interpretation.

Through the use of images in The Wings of the Dove James gives dsible representation to the basic attitudes of his characters and to the nature of the world in which they live. Kate and Denaher are par­ ticularly vdnerable to the demands of a code wdch leads ultimately to the denial of one*a own humanity. The beatial images characteriz­ ing the moral atmoaphere of London aociety are a forcefd teatimony of James*8 view of a code wdch reduces human beings, however politely,

to the level of commoditiea. Denaher*s initial reaistance to "the car of Juggernaut" is strengthened by his aasociation dth Milly, whose

dovelike hovering in the odnous atmoaphere presents him with a clear

case of the beauty of resistance. For diat would Milly*s own capitu­

lation have consisted of but the natural indulgence of her desire to

retaliate? She haa, after dl» been deeply deceived; she could take

the path of Lord Mark, who acts in the meanest possible way to avenge

himaelf againat Denaher. Not everyone auccumbs, Densher must observe,

to the paralyzing stupidity and hypocrisy of the market place. In

Milly Theale, James gives an "instance of recorded sensibility fine

79

enough to react agdnst these things.'* Her final response to life

is impressive: her spirit could have encompassed no greater experience

than the reveraal of every self-centered instinct.

''^ Preface to "The Lesson of the Master," in The Art of the Novel (New York, 1947), p. 222. Chapter VI

The Ambasaadora

If Henry James haa a lofty conception of human nature, he at the aame time advocates an ethics of carpe diem—aeize the day, and make it aa n^aningful and satisfying as the capacity of hiunan nature perdts. It haa been shown how Milly in The Winga of the Dove appar­ ently finds meaning for her short life by her enthusiastic embrace of the poasibilities of experience open to her. Strether, the hero

of The Ambassadora, feels he dssed in his youth the whole assadt of

life, that it was "as If the train had fairly wdted at the station

for him dthout his having had the gumption to know it waa there."

Hia crowded impressions of Paris, of Chad, of people in Chad*a circle

have their message for him: precisely that life is a many-splendored

thing. To have dased it is to have daaed everything, for "if you

haven*t had your life, what have you had?" Strether's perception of

the human potential is clearly brought out by James in the description

of the garden party at Gloriani's estate, particularly Strether's keen

reaction to Gloriani during their brief introduction. Gloriani seems

to represent the kind of life possible on the basis of purely human

experience. At least Strether so interprets Gloriani in the follodng

paaaage:

He was to remember again repeatedly the medal-like Italian face, in which every line was an artist's own, in which time told only as tone and consecration; and he was to recall in especial, as the penetrating radiance, as the communication

94 95

of the illustrious spirit itaelf, the manner in wdch, while they stood briefly, in welcome and reaponse, face to face, he was held by the sculptor's eyea. He was not soon to forget them, was to tdnk of them, all unconscious, unintending, pre­ occupied though they were, as the source of the deepest intel­ lectud sounding to wdch he had ever been expoaed. He was in fact qdte to cheriah da dsion of it. . . . Was what it had told him or what it had aaked him the greater of the mysteries? Was it the most special flare, unequdled, supreme, of the aea­ thetic torch, lighting that wondroua world forever, or was it above all the long, atraight ahaft aunk by a peraonal acuteness that life had seasoned to steel? ... it was for all the world to Strether Juat then as if in reapect to ds accepted duty he had poaitively been on trial. The deep human expertneas in Gloriani's chardng edle—oh, the terrible life bednd it! * . . (XXI, 197)

When Strether speaka of being on trid in respect to ds ac­ cepted duty, he is of course referring to ds duty as ambassador for

Mrs. Newsome. If his appreciation of the larger life exemplified by

Gloriani is taken into account, he can hardy follow the narrow line put out by Mra. Newaome in her conventiond interpretation of Chad's life in Paris. Strether dmself perceives the scope and richness of

Chad's life, so that hia trid becomes a question of being true to his perceptions. If he is honest in that reapect, he sees finally that he must disobey the command from Woollett and persuade Chad rather to remain in hia Parisian environment where he has learned ao handaomely to live fully.

Since the basic issue of the novel involves Strether*s final approvd of the intimate relationship between Chad and Mme. de Vionnet, it is crucial for J .aes that he make plauaible Strether'a radical change of poaition. At the beginning Strether is fully dedicated to 96 tha Woollett view that any relationship Chad dght have developed dth a woman in Paris, outside of marriage, wodd neceaaarily be aordid.

At the end he is willing to bring down ds curse should Chad comdt the cridnal act of deaerting Mne. de Vionnet. James uses, in effect,

Strether's renewed awareness of the full life and his acute apprecia­ tion of tta vdues to supply the plauaible grounda for da change of dew. Strether is of auch stature that in the face of traditional moral atandards he is capable of appreciating the vdue of the rela­ tionahip between Chad and Mae. de Vionnet. "The fact remains," he saya to little Bilham, "that ahe haa aaved him. . . .I'm apeaking of hia manners and morale, his character and life. I'm speadng of him as a peraon to deal dth and tdk with and live dth—apeaking of dm aa a aocial animal" (XXI, 283).

Strether's changed point of view dso illustrates Henry James's position that every atoral dlenaa is a unique aituation, calling for a creative solution independent of precedent and rde. There can be no doubt that Strether handes the situation creatively on the baais of hia own piercing observations. His creative aolution, as to his own obligation in the mattei; is nowhere more apparent than in contraat with the adamantine conventionality of Sarah Pocock, the daughter of Mra.

Newsome who has come to Paris to replace Strether as the spokesman for Woollett. Strether aaks her findly, after she haa had every opportunity to obs rve the richness and variety of her brother*s way of life, "You don*t, on your honor, appreciate Chad*s fortunate devel­ opment?" Her reaponae is brittle and final: "Fortunate? I call it 97 hideoua** (XXII, 205). Chad's connection dth MM. de Vionnet is clearly what Sarah eonaidera ddeoua. Strether, on the other hand, apeaka of Ifeie. de Vionnet in an entirely dfferent way:

I think tremendoualy well of her, at the same time that I seem to feel her 'life* to be redly none of my business. It's my buaineaa, that ia, only so far as Chad's own life is affected by it; and what haa happened, don't you aee? is that Chad'a haa been affected so beautifdly. The proof of the pudding's in the eating. ... I find in her more merita than you would probably have patience dth my counting over. And do you know . , . the effect you produce on me by alluding to her in such terms? It's as if you had some motive in not recog­ nizing all she haa done for your brother, and so ahut your eyes to each aide of the matter, in order, wdchever side comes up, to get rid of the other. I don't . . . see how you can with any pretence of candor get rid of the side neareat you. (XXII, 204-205)

As far as Sarah is concerned, there can be no extenuating circumatances for a relationahip she eonaidera adulteroua. She is, as Strether says of her mother, a "moral block" whose vision is blind to the real merita of the situation. Stupidity, cdefly, ia the drawback, according to

Strether. "They would make the best of wM was before them, but their observation would fail; it would be beyond them," he observes of Sarah and her huaband on their arrival in Paris (XXII, 80). It should be noticed in the above quotation that Strether makes hia own appraisal of

Mme. de Vionnet in a atrikingly pragmatic manner. He does not Judge her action by an abstract SK>ral code divorced from the particular cir­

cumstances of the case. He works rather on the hypothesis that a life

cannot be bad when the conaequcnces of it are so beautiful. The beau-

tifd effect of her association with Chad is all one needs to see that

there ia nothing hideous in the relationship. William James dmaelf 98 dght have aaid '*The proof of the pudding's in the eating,'* so well

does it express here the pragmatic attitude taken by Strether.

The sacrifice of humanity to principle is clearly opposed by

Henry Jamea in his description of the claah between Strether and

Sarah. The dlitant absolutism of Sarah Pocock is solidly founded on

principle, but the principle itself appears corrupted when applied

dthout regard for the digdties of the human beings involved. In

Sarah's eyes, the situation, the illicit love between Chad and Maie.

de Vionnet, makes these individuals wrong. For Strether, the merits

he percreives in Mme. de Vionnet and Chad make the aituation right.

Principled Woollett morality daregarda Ibae. de Vionnet*8 sincerity,

intelligence, love; above all, it is blind to her need. Sarah does not

consider her aa a human being capable of being hurt, capable of insight,

capable of beneficent action. Rigorous adherence to principle causes

her to regard Mme. de Vionnet as a degenerate apecimen of humanity

in all respects, only worthy of being referred to, if referred to at

all, as "she." It is principle, the partiedar principle that adul­

tery is addtery and can never be anytdng else, that brings to Sarah*s

lips her exploaive chdlmige to Strether: "Do you consider her even

an apology for a decent woman?" (XXII, 202). Sarah can conceive of

Strether*a apprdaal of Hae. de Vionnet as notdng less than an outrage

to women like heraelf and her mother, who are decent, indeed noble, if

for no other reason than that they have personally adhered to the prin­

ciple by which they Judge Mhie, de Vionnet. It is ironically present

to the reader that Sarah*s attitude places her many degrees lower than 99

), de Vionnet on the meaauring rod of humanity. It is apparent that inatead of looking down, Sarah ahould be looking up to the woman who has changed Chad*a life. But unlike Strether, Sarah lacks the intel­

ligent perception of values, the aesthetic appredation of the full

life, the moral insight to proceed dthout precedent or rule. The most that can be add for her and her mother, whom she represents, is

that they mean well. They stand on principles believed to be rele­

vant, but they blunder and fall abort for lack of the ability to take in

the particular detdls of the situation which make their principles

inapplicable. In short, they sacrifice humanity to an abaolute stan­

dard.

Imagery in The Ambassadors ia used primarily by James to de­

pict the development of Lambert Strether. Since the story is told

from Strether*s point of view, most of the significant imagea serve

to emphaaize his moral edightenment and to contraat his attitude with

that of the other characters in the novel. As ambassador from Woollett

he is "on the atretch" for aeveral months as he labors to imderstand ds

duty: ds duty to Mrs. Newsome, to Chad, to line, de Vionnet, to him­

aelf. His final decision to throw his weight into the scdes for Mme.

de Vionnet is the resdt of many houra of arduous, perceptive observa­

tion, in which he visualizes through a variety of images his state of dnd and that of his companions. He realizes findly that there ia a

total diaparity between his sense of moral obligation and theirs; Mrs.

Newsome, Sarah, and Wajnaarah are incapable of living up to the complex 80 moral Judgment which Chad*s situation demands. It is the imagery

*^ The aignificance of Strether*s adventure has been interpreted by William M. Gibaon as innocence that has awakened to the knowledge of 100

Jamea uaea which makes the disparity between their view and Strether*a

aubtly but devaatatingly clear.

Strether muat face in the process of re-evaluation not only his

future but ds paat. Through numerous powerfd images James brings the

pressure of the paat immediately to bear on Strether*a reactiona. He

is thus the first novelist to portray a character who brings the whole 81 force of the past into the preaent. Strether iii his past, though

aometdng more, of courae, aince he haa the added power of aeeing it

in perapective. The impact of Europe on Strether is given dth simul­

taneous reference to his life*s experience. This simultaneity James

achievea almost entirely through the images lAiich Strether uses to char­

acterize hia state of dnd as he confronts the Old World. He views, as

good and evil. "James is unable to prdse *a fugitive and cloi8ter*d vertue,* innocence which is untried" ("Metaphor in the Plot of The Ambassadors," New England Quarterly, XXIV [September 1951], 305). Gibaon*s concluaion would seem more applicable to Maisie and Nanda than to Strether. It is a little late in Strether*s life to speak of "innocence." More accurately, he haa changed from an inferior framework of Judgment to a superior one. The Woollett mold of exper­ ience haa aimply given way before a broader view.

81 Dadd Daiches (The Novel and the Modern World, Rev. Ed. [Chicago, 1960], p. 7) suggests several factors which helped to pro­ duce the modem novel. "One is the new concept of time as continuous flow rather than as a seriea of separate points, a concept indepen­ dently enunciated in France, in Henri Bergson*s concept of la duree, and in America by William James with his interest in the continuity of consciousness. ... It led to a suspicion of the old dnd of plot wdch carried the characters forward from moment to moment in a pre­ cise chronological aequence, and there developed instead the dnd of narrative texture that moved backward and forward dth a new freedom to try to capture the sense of time as it actually operates in the human awareness of it." Since James*s images carry the content of the past into the consciousness of the present, he would appear to take the laurels for tds fundamental innovation in the form of the novel. Daichea dstakenly attributes the innovation to Joseph Conrad. 101 he would a pieture, the failures of the paat, the loat opportunities, wdch Pari a makes vivid y present to him:

It had not been, so much achievement dssed, a light yoke nor a abort load. It was at preaent as if the backward pieture had himg there, the long crooked course, grey in the ahadow of his solitude. It had been a dreadful cheerful aociable solitude, a solitude of life or choice, of community; but though there had been people enough all round it, there had been but three or four persons in it. Waymarsh was one of these, and the fact at ruck him Juat now as mardng the record. Mra. Newaome was another, and Miss Gostrey had of a sudden shown sigaa of becodng a third. Beyond, behind them was the pde figure of ds red youth, which held agdnst its breaat the two preaences paler than itaelf—the young wife he had early lost and the young son he had stupidly sacrificed. He had again and again made out for himself that he might have kept hia little boy, hia little dull boy, who had died at aehool, of rapid diphtheria, if he had not in those years so insanely given himaelf to merely dssing the mother. (XXI, 83-84)

His had been a negative adventure in i^ich lingering sorrow had helped to crowd out the poaaibilitiea of life. In Paris, he is confronted with what he has missed, and his paat becomes "the great desert of the years. . . . There were 'movements* he was too late for. . . . There were sequences he had dssed and great gaps in the procession: he might have been watching it all recede in a golden cloud of duet. If the playhouae wasn*t closed his seat at least had fallen to somebody else" (XXI, 87-88). He realizes his meagreness, "a meagreness that

sprawled, in this retrospect, vague and comprehensive, atretcdng back like some unmapped Hinterland from a rough coast-settlement'

(XXI, 87). Standing under the arches of the Odeon before an array of

literature claaaic and casual, he feels "the brush of the wing of the

stray spirit of youth . . . The old arcade indeed, as his inner sense

listened, gave out the faint sound, as from far ofI, of the did waving 102 of dags. They were folded now over the breasts of buried generations; but a flutter or two lived again in the turned page of shock-headed slouch-hatted loiterers" (XXI, 94).

Dim memories are atirred of a visit to Europe in ds youth, of his great expectationa then, followed by the great drop to prosdc life in Woollett. "The process of yesterday had really been the pro­

cess of feeling the general stirred life of connexions long since in­

dividually dropped." His renewed sense of youth makes him "hover and

wonder and laugh and sigh . . . advance and retreat, feeling half

ashamed of ds impdse to plunge and more than half afraid of ds im­

pulse to wait" (XXI, 86).

Because of the poverty of his past, Strether reacts intensely

to the experience of Europe. His "long-aealed eyes" open at the slight­

est proddingt beginning dth the advent of Maria Ooatrey. His casual

meeting with her is a aignifleant departure from the mores of Woollett.

"You*re expensive," he says to her. "You*ve cost me already ... my

past—in one great lump. But no matter . . . 1*11 pay with my last

penny" (XXI, 45). The red velvet band around her throat gives him

over to "uncontrolled perceptions," for "a man might have—at all events

such a man as he—an amount of experience out of any proportion to his

adventures" (XXI, 227). He takes the broad velvet band "as a starting-

point for fresh backward, fresh forward, freah lateral flights' (XXI,

61). Witn a growing awareness of life as it codd have been lived, he

senses the urgency of delivering immediately to Chad the "measage" from

Woollett: "What had above all been deterdned in him as a necessity of 103 the first order was not to lose another hour, nor a fraction of one; was to advance, to overwhelm, dth a rush. This was how he would anticipate—by a night-attack, as dght be—any forced maturity that a crammed conadousness of Paris was likely to take upon itaelf to asaert on behdf of the boy" (XXI, 142-143). Images depicting Strether*s realization of what his life had been, and what it could have been, culdnate in the climactic scene at Gloriani*s garden party:

The place itself waa a great impression ... It was as stridng to the unprepared dnd, [Strether] immediately saw, as a treasure dug up; giving him too, more than anytdng yet, the note of the range of the immeaaurable town and sweeping away, as by a last brave brush, his usual landmarks and terms. . . . [He] had presently the sense of a great convent, a convent of dssions, famous for he scarce knew what, a nur­ sery of young priests, of scattered shade, of strdght dleys and chapel-bells, that spread its mas^ in one quarter; he had the sense of names in the dr, of ghosts at the dndowa, of signs and tokens, a whole range of expression, all about him, too thick for prompt diacridnation. (XXI, 196)

The "assault of images" becomes for him almost formidable. In contact dth the element of glory in his illustrious host, he haa the "con­ sciousness of opening to it, for the happy instant, all the dndowa of da dnd, of letting tds rather grey interior drink in for once the sun of a clime not marked in his old geography* (XXI, 196-197). Sum- dng up hia experience in an image, Strether says to little Bilham,

"It*s as if the train had fairly waited at the atation for me without my having had the gumption to know it was there. Now I hear its faint receding wdstle dies and dies down the line" (XXI, 217). 104

Strether'a renewed appreciation of Burope and his wcmder at

Chad's metaw>rphoai8 lead him. Inevitably, as it appears, to an appre­ ciation of Mae. de Vionnet. He "atepa into her boat" in an electri­ fying scene at Sarah'a hotel in Paria. "He felt himaelf proceed to each of the proper offices, successively, for helping to keep the ad- venturoua sdff afloat. It rocked beneath him, but he aettled dmaelf in ds place. He took up an oar and, aince he was to have credit for pdling, he pulled (XXII, 94-96). * His find knightlike defense of the "other woman," at the sacrifice of ds own future dth Mrs. Newsome, is the culdnation of a strenuous effort to understand dmaelf and ds companions.

Strether is not the only character, of course, whose conscious­ ness is given pdpable form through imagery. The attitudea of the other principals in the novel are also captured in appropriate images, imagea which aerve in an extraordinary way to illudne the coaqtlexity ana fineness of Strether*s moral sensitivity. Waymarsh, Sarah, and

Boat imagery is iterative in The Ambaasadors, clarifying the progreaaive stagea of Strether*s allegiance to the cause of Hae. de Vionnet. Her informal manner toward him in front of Sarah strikes him as a clear case of publicly dradng dm "into her boat" (XXII, 94). "If Mme. de Vionnet, under Sarah's eyes, had pulled him into her boat there was by thia time no doubt whatever that he had remained in it and that what he had really most been conscioua of for many hours together waa the movement of the vessel itself" (XXII, 111). Her intimate reve­ lation to him of the plans for Jeanne*s marriage develops further the strength of the personal relation she has established dth him: "He had struck himself at the hotel, before Sarah and Waymarsh, as being in her boat; but where on earth was he now?" (XXII, 130) In an excel­ lent definitive study of the types of images in James*s novels, Alexander Holder-Barell traces the dramatic function of water-boat imagery through- °^* ^^^ Ambassadors. The essential function of the iterative image, he writes, is to emphasize important stages in the development of either a person or an action" (The Development of Imagery, p. 117). 105 lira. Newsome are invariably characterized in infledble postures wdch contrast dvidly dth our hero's. Strether notes Waymarsh's position on the mege of ds bed dth a simple but conclusive figure of speech:

**It suggestmd . . . somiatdng that dways, when kept up, worried dm— a person astablished in a rdlvay-coach dth a forward inclination.

It repr«s«Bt«d the angle at wdch poor Waymarsh was to sit through the ordeal of Baropa** (XXI, 26). The rigid quality of Vaymar8h*a response to Burope is caught by Miss Bar race, who says to Strether: "He*s like the Indian edef one reads about, who, when he comes up to Wasdngton to see the Great Father, stands wrapt in ds blanket and gives no

sign" (XXI, 206)* The heavy, silent Judgment invariably present in

Waymarsh's attitude toward Strether's re-evaluation of the liaison be­

tween Chad and Mme* de Vionnet ia picked up again in the image of the

cdeftdns "[He] had always more or less the air of sitting at the

door of da tent** (XXII, 26). Ironicdly, Waymarsh comes to find dm­

self in a alii^tly comprodsed position in ds relation dth Sarah,

since it ia clear that those two are hadng their own private but "res­

pectable" courtship as a result of their united front against Strether.

Although Waymarsh denies knodng anything about Sarah's plans, Strether

knows that he is fibbing, and that the "cdeftain's" little punishment

lay precisely in ds little prevarication. 'What falser position-

given the man—codd the most vindictive dnd impose? He ended by

squeezing through a passage in which three months before he would cer­

tdnly have stuck fast" (XXII, 192). Altogether, however, Strether 106 takes a rather tender view of ds friend*s condition: '*His instinct toward a apirit so strapped down as Waymarah'a waa to walk round it on tiptoe for fear of wadng it up to a sense of losses by this time irretrievable" (XXII, 57).

The adamantine apirit which persists in its preconceived no­ tions despite overwheldng evidence that a change of view 18 in order is further and more forcefdly portrayed in Sarah Pocock and her mother 83 Mrs. Newsome. Their approach to all problema through fixed mord categories gives them a aecurity which Strether, groping for answers, can hardly mjoy. Anticipating the arrivd of Sarah, Strether dreads the effect of a aingle hour dth her: "He saw dmself, under her direction, recomdtted to Woollett, as Juvenile offenders are com- dtted to reformatories" (XXII, 61). Sarah*s sense of superiority is revealed in her whole manner towards him: **She had invented a way of meeting [his inquiries]—as if he had been a polite perfunctory poor relation, of distant degree—that made them almost ridiculous

in him** (XXII, 114). Strether watches, faacinated, to see how such a moral block as Sarah dll take the "dolently pleasant and mercilessly

full" entertainment prodded by Chad. He

poaitively had moments of his own in idiich he found himself sorry for her—occasions on wdch she affected dm as a per­ aon seated in a ninaway vehicle and turning over the queatlon

S3 J. A. Ward substantiates the immordity of auch inflexibil­ ity. Ignorance and fear, he writes, "lead directly to the kind of dynadc intolerance which the later James sees as the source of a far greater evil than Europe" ("The Ambassadora: Strether*s Viaion of Evil," Nineteenth Century Fiction, XIV [June 1959], 47). 107

of a poasible Jump. Wodd she Jump, could she, would that be a aafe place?—thia queatlon, at auch instants, sat for him in her lapae into pdlor, her tight lipa, her conacious eyes. . . He believed, on the whole, she would Jump ... If she should gather in her adrta, close her eyes and qdt the carriage lAiile in motion, he would promptly enough become aware. She wodd alight from her headlong courae more or leas directly upon him; it wodd be appointed to him, unquestionably, to re­ ceive her entire weight. (XXII, 162)

Sarah's leap is obviously her refusal to recognize any sign of improvement in Chad. And she does fall directly upon Strether in her dolent denunciation of the woman reaponsible for her brother*s

"hideous** condition, aa she calla it. In the climactic scene at

Strether*8 hotel the question of Chad explodes: "It was ... as much there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled dth a craah and a splaah on the floor" (XXII, 197-198). Her refer­ ence to Mme. de Vionnet as '*8uch another" brings Strether perilously close to a growl: "Everytdng Mrs. Pocock had failed to give a sign of recognising in Chad as a partiedar part of a transformation— everything that had lent intention to tds particular failure—affected him as gathered into a large loose bunde and thrown, in her words, into hia face. The dasile made dm to that extent catch his breath.

. . .** (XXII, 201) Strether visudizes perfectly the taut qudity of her spirit: "She had let fly at dm as from a atretched cord, and it took him a dnute to recover from the sense of being pierced" (XXII,

206-206).

It is as an inflexible, unmovable persondity that Strether also finally understands Mrs. Newsome, a character whose presence 108 impingea on hia consciousness throughout the novel although she her­ aelf of courae never appears on the scene. In the end he sees her, tds woman he was to have married, as "all . . . fine cold thought.

She had, to her own dnd, worked the whole thing out in advance, and worked it out for me aa well as for heraelf. . . . There*a no room left; no margin, aa it were, for any dteration. She's filled aa fdl, packed as tight aa ahe* 11 hold. . . . What it comes to ... is that you*ve got morally and intellectudly to get rid of her" (XXII, 222).

Speadng hdf to Maria Ooatrey and half to dmaelf, he says absently,

" * I see it all'. . . wdle hia eyea dght have been fixing some par- ticdarly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea" (XXII, 223).^^

Strether'a tentativeness is in aharp contraat to the hard clar­ ity of the Pococks' view. One*s sense of a hovering, groping dnd ia heightened by frequent imagea that depict Strether*a approach to new knowledge: He feela himself "launched" (XXI, 9), and then floating—caught by the force of the current (XXI, 41). He has "fresh

^^ It is impossible to sympatdze with E:>bert Marks*s interpre­ tation of James*s view of a sound morality in this novel. For Marks, Strether is the deluded, muddled moralist, and Mis. Newsome represents the auparior ethic. Of Chad he writes: "It is near Mrs. Newsome, his distlngdshed mother, that a sound basic mordity is more likely to become somewhat more his compass and helm for living" (Jamea*s Later Novels [New York, 1960], p. 92). The imagery alone is enough to show the direction of James*s sympathy in this contrast of characters.

^5 Using a dvid image in the Preface to The Ambassadors, James puts before the reader a chedcd andysis of Strether*s diapoeition: "He had come [to Europe] dth a dew that dght have been figured by clear, green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; and the liquid, once poured into the open cup of application, once exposed to the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or whatever, and dght, for all he knew, be on its way to purple, to black, to yellow" (XXI, xii). 109 backward, fresh forward, freah laterd flighta" (XXI, 51). What seems

'*all surface one moment" seems all **depth the next" (XXI, 89). He is **often at sea** (XXI, 116); there are preconceived lines and tones which are **qdte melted away" for him (XXI, 150). It is hia uaual experience in counaela dth Miss Ooatrey that each of ds remarks seems **to drop into a deeper well" (XXI, 183). At Mne. de Vionnet*s he confronts tha air of supreme respectability—that was a atrange blank wall for da adventure to have brought him to break ds nose againat" (XXI, 246). The climax of hia struggle to arrive at the proper Judgment of the countess is figured for dm as a "flight" (XXI,

265). He is "modng verily in a atrange air and on ground not of the

firmeat" (XXI, 266), and he has "the sense of moving in a maze of mys­ tic, closed alluaiona** (XXI, 279), of "diving deep" (XXII, 13), of

"wdatling in the dark" (XXII, 46). Strether's final attempt to ex­ plain his attitude to Sarah is given in an image that clarifies once

and for all the dfference between him and the other ambassador from

Woollett: "Our general state of mind had proceeded," he says, "from our queer ignorance, our queer dsconceptions and confusions, from idiich, since then, an inexorable tide of light seems to have floated us into our perhapa still queerer knowledge" (XXII, 201). What ia light for Strether, however, impresses Sarah merely as his "partiedar blackneaa** (XXII, 201).

Of the Pococks, only Mamie, Jim*a sister, is capable of appre­ ciating the remarkable change in the man she at one time had hopes of 110 marrying. Strathar aenses her sympathy dth hia own vision of Chad*s new character! "He codd really for the time have fancied dmself stranded dth her on a far shore, during an odnoua cdm, in a qudnt community of adpwreck. Their little interdew was like a picdc on a coral at rand; they passed each other, dth melancholy adles and looka auffidently allusive, such cupfds of water as they had saved'*

(XXII, 162). Ironicdly, Made*s edarged view of Chad leads her to give him up aa a proapective husband, for her aspiration in that re­ gard had to a great extent, according to Strether, depended upon her desire to help dm, to polish the rough potentid which everyone seemed to recognize in dm. She finda that the task haa been beautifully done for her, by Mne. de Vionnet.

Images depicting Chad and Mme. de Vionnet occur infrequently and uaudly are a part of Strether*a imaginative appraiad of their development. "That [Chad] was smooth was aa marked as in the taste of a sauce or in the rub of a hand. ... It was as If in short he had really, copious perhaps but shapeleas, been put into a firm mould and turned auccessfully out. The phenomenon—Strether kept eyeing it as a phenomenon, an eminent case—was marked enough to be touched by the finger" (XXI, 162). Marking Chad's performance in his greeting of the

Pococks, Strether is affected '*as he dght have been affected by some light pleasant perfect work of art: to that degree that he wondered if they were really worthy of it, took it in and did it Juatice'

(XXII, 79-80). Ill

strether aeea Mme. de Vionnet also as something of a work of art: '*Her head, extremely fair and exquiaitely featal, was like a happy fancy, a notion of the antique, on an old precioua medal, some silver coin of the Renaissance; while her slim lightness and bright- neaa, her gayety, hmr expression, her decision, contributed to an effect that dght have been felt by a poet as half mythologicd and hdf conventional. He codd have compared her to a goddeaa still partly engaged in a morning cloud, or to a sea-nymph wd at-high in the ammer aurge" (XXI, 188).

The liaison between Chad and Mme. de Vionnet loses all vulgar connotation for Strether. Yet he is not blind in the end to the weak­ ness of Chad*s character, a weakneas which is an ironic contraat to

Strether*8 original notion of him. He is struck by the yoimg man's response to his paaaionate appeal on behalf of Mme. de Vionnet:

"[Chad] meant no harm, though he dght after all be capable of much

... He apoke of being 'tired' of her almost as he dght have spoken of being tired of roast mutton for dinner" (XXII, 313). As Chad laun­ ches out in their last interview on the attractiona of advertising to a man with an eye for business, Strether watches him "as if, there on the pavement, dthout a pretext, he had begun to dance a fancy step"

(XXII, 316). Strether's insight prepares him to be disappointed in the wonderful youth: Chad dght very well, after all, desert the woman who "adores him ineffably."

In a final discussion of his experience dth Maria Gostrey,

Strether finds, humbly and modestly, "the image of his recent dstory; 112 he was like one of the figures of the old clock at Berne. They came out, on one aide, at their hour. Jigged dong their little course in the public eye, and went in on the other side. He too had Jigged his little course—dm too a modeat retreat awaited" (XXII, 322). Hie search to understand himself, his past, the meaning of his future, and ds obligation to the himan beings dependng upon him, ends in characteriatic aelflessness. Yet Strether has had ds vision, and thoui^ he may have awakened to the possibilities of lifo too late to make reparation "for the injury done his character ... he now at all eventa sees." As James explains in his Preface, "the business of my tale and the march of my action, not to aay the precious mord of everything, is Just my demonstration of this process of vision^M

(XXI, vi). Chapter VII

The Golden Bowl

Aa one approach to The Golden Bowl, the above interpretation

®' li^ Aittbassadors providea at once a meaningfd insight into the complex relationadps between Maggie, her father, the Prince, and

Charlotte Stent. It is interesting to note that in ds introduc­ tion to the novel R. P. Blackmur labels the central situation, the illicit love between the Prince and Charlotte, in the same terms used by Sarah in The Ambaasadors: he calls it a "hideous intolerable 86 addtery." Tds view of the matter, according to Blackmur, is os­ tensibly the view Henry James wishes the reader to take. Yet it seems odd, on the face of it, that one should be called upon to assume the character of the "moral block" which Jamea dmself deprecates in his portrayal of Sarah, Mrs. Newsome, and the tight, conventional town of Woollett. Does James wish his audience to be as aightless as

Sarah in its Judgment of the affair between Amerigo and Charlotte, or are there not extenuating circumstancea which lighten the imputa­ tion of guilt if one is sensitive enough to grasp them?

The rather stark contrast between Strether and Sarah in The

Ambassadora makes the task of taking sides dth Strether relatively easy. The lines of sympathy in The Golden Bowl, on the other hand, are not quite so clearly defined. It is obvious that Blackmur has thrown his sympathies completely on Maggie's side, regarding her, as

®® "Introduction," in Henry James, The Golden Bowl (New York, 1952), p. xi.

113 114 he must, aa innocence hideoualy betrayed. It ia true, in all Juatice to Blackmur, that in the second volume of the novel the bulk of sym­ pathy lies dth Maggie; yet there is the insistent impression gathered from the firat volume that Maggie heraelf is not altogether gdltless

In encouraging the illicit relationadp between her husband, the 07

Prince, and Charlotte Verver, her father's dfe. In her passion not to let her marriage to the Prince deatroy the beautiful associa­

tion she enjoyed dth her father while she remained unmarried, Mai>;gie

virtudly denlea ber huaband a unique place in her life. That is, he makes no difference. Obviously, she loves dm, but in striving to

maintdn a filial relationahip wdch ahould have been radicdly altered

by her marriage, she prevents the creation of a red affinity between

her and her huaband* In light of the importance James appeara to put

on the operation of real affinities if life is to be meaningful, the

Prince*s aituation in tda respect reqdres consideration. Amerigo

reflects at length on the smooth way in which ds relationahipa are

taken care of for himt "Mr. Verver then, in a word, took care of his

relation to Maggie, as he took care, and apparently alwaya would, of

everything elae* He relieved dm of all anxiety about his married

life in the same manner in wdch he relieved him on the score of ds

bank-account ... it of course came up . . . that Maggie*s relation

with him was dso, on the perceived basis, taken care of. Wdch was

in fact the real upahot of the matter. It was a * funny* situation. . . ."

^^ F. W, Dupee takes a somewhat sidlar view of Maggie in Henry James, pp. 229-230. 115

With Maggie spendng the days dth her father, it dawna upon the

Prince that **the reflections Just noted offered themselves as his main recreation. They alone, it appeared, had been appointed to fill the houra for him, and even to fill the great aquare house in Portland

Place" (XXIII, 292-394). It is at tds point of illudnation aa to

the statue of his life with Maggie that the Prince ia confronted dth

Charlotte Stant, the wife of da father-in-law, and his intimate

prior to their marriagea* Although they both appear to have launched

their marriagea in good fdth, the **funny" aituation created to a

great extent by Maggie heraelf brings the Prince and Charlotte into

a reauurkably close relationship* Fanny Aaaingham sums up the case,

quite accurately it appears, in the follodng conversation dth her

husband: **There were beautiful intentions dl round. The Prince*s

and Charlotte*s were beautiful—of that I had my faith . , . they

were guileless, all, at first—qdte extraordinarily . , , I really

believe Charlotte and the Prince honeatly to have made up their dnds,

origindly, that their very esteem for Mr. Verver—which was serious,

as well it dght be!—would save them." Fanny analyzes then the

extent of Maggie*s responsibility:

* . . Maggie haa done the most ... she did it originally— she began the vicious circle. For that—though you make round eyes at my associating her dth 'vice*—is aimply what it has been. It*s their mutual consideration, all round, that has made it the bottodess gdf; and they're really so embroiled but because in their way, they've been 8o improbably good. . . . Magpie had in the firat place to make up to her father for her having suffered herself to become—poor little dear, as she believed—so intensely married. Then she had to make 116

up to her husband for taking so much of the time they dght otherdae have spent together to make this reparation to Mr, Verver perfect. And her way to do this, precisely, was by allodng the Prince the use, the enjoyment, whatever you may call it, of Charlotte to cheer ds path—by instdments, as it were—in proportion as she herself, OMking sure her father was dl right, dght be dssed from his side. By so much . • . aa she took her yoimg stepmother, for this purpose, away from Mr. Verver, by Just so much did this too strike her as something again to be made up for. It has saddled her, you dll eaaily see, with a positively new obligation to her father, an obligation created and aggravated by her unfortu­ nate, even if quite heroic, little sense of Justice. . . . Before she knew it, at any rate, her little acruples and her little lucidities, wdch were redly so divinely blind—her fevedsh little sense of Justice, as I aay—had brought the two others together as her grossest dsconduct coddn*t have done. And now she knows something or other has happened. (XXIII^ 394-396)

To say that the Prince has been deserted by Maggie, or, at the very least, neglected, is not to claim that his defection to Charlotte is thereby fully Justified. Faced with circumstances which seem so beautifully contrived dthout hia help to bring him to Charlotte, he could be interpreted simply as lacking the courage and character to dthstand teoptation. But the problem sc^ms more ccMnplex than to be

8o easily solved by attributing weakness of character to the Prince.

On the contrary, James has made him neither merely unscrupdous nor merely weak: the Prince is faced dth an arrangement, created princi­ pally by Maggie, wdch makes his married life insipid. His time is spent, not with Maggie, but rather in reflection on the oddity of his relationahipa, the gradual way in which they have become inane. It ia clear that Henry James treats the Prince as a responsible human being, one whose own sensibilities are not to be discounted when 117

Judgment on his affair dth Charlotte la to be passed. That the couple has wronged Maggie goea dthout aaying, but it is manifest that they

are human belnga dth Uvea to lead. To label their aaaodation merely

aa hideous. Intolerable, ia to overlook their particular humanity.

By abataining from a cut-and-dried, once-for-dl pronouncement

on the culpability of the charactera in Ihe Golden Bowl, one is free

to observe the aubtle changea in them and their relationahips dilch

oddly enough seem to modify, at varioua times, the moral tone of the

problem. That la to aay, no dogmatic imputation of gdlt ought to be

made againat the parties at any one at age in the development of the

plot. Judgment ahodd be pliable to the changee in the charactera

themaelvea* The most illudnating example of how pliable Judgment

can be is given in the development of Maggie. Her view of the liaison

between her husband and Charlotte, as it affects Maggie heraelf, changes

aignificantly from the beginning of her awareness that ahe haa no vitd

life dth her huaband to her final consciousness that their life to­

gether haa been saved* Her own reaction to the affair seems to change

insofar aa 8he changes.

By innocently setting up the "funny" situation, as James calls

it, Maggie shows herself abysmally ndve. It is as if, in Fanny

Aasingham*8 words, Maggie is the person "in the world to whom a wrong

thing could least be communicated . . . as if her imagination had

been doaed to it, her sense altogether sealed." To face the case before her, Fanny goea on, "dll make her, by way of a change, under-

atand one or two things in the world" (XXIII, 384-385). Maggie*s 118 awakening ia in fact greatly intensified Just because of her extreme naivete. Her firat reaction is naturally one of horror. Watcdng the Prince, her father, and Charlotte, with Fanny Aaainghac;, playing quietly, civilly, a game of bridge, Maggie experiences

the horror of finding evil seated, all at its ease, where she had only dreamed of good; the horror of the tdng hideoualy behind, bednd so much trusted, so much pretended, nobleness, cleverness, tenderness. It was the first sharp fdsity she had known in her life, to touch at dl, or be touched by; it had met her like 8ome bad-faced atranger aurprised in one of the tdck-carpeted corridora of a houae of qdet on a Sunday afternoon . . . and yet, yes, amadngly, she had been able to look at terror and dsgust only to know that she must put awmy from her the bitter-sweet of their freshness. ... It was extraordinary: they positively brought home to her that to feel about them in any of the immediate, inedtable, aaauag- ing ways, the ways usually open to innocence outraged and generoaity betrayed, wodd have been to give them up, and that giving them up was, marvellously, not to be thought of, (XXIV, 237)

Had Maggie been another Sarah, she undoubtedy would have atood firdy on principle, expoaing all her coiqianione to the bare facta, bringing the truth to light. **Spacious and aplendd, like a atage again await­ ing a drama, it was a scene she dght people, by the press of her spring, either with serenities and dignities and decenciea, or dth terrors and shames and rdns, things as ugly as those fordess frag­ ments of her golden bowl she was trying so hard to pick up" (XXIV,

236). To have brought the whole affair into the open would have in­ deed cleared the atmoaphere: it would have annihilated their relation­ ships. Maggie is unable to apeak because of her greater truth that they are human beings worthy of being saved. Her own stature is 119 emphasized the more because she is capable of redizing their worth in spite of their wrong. Here agdn is an illuatration of James*s reluctance to overlook the Indiddual for the sake of a principle, the same principle in tda caae as propounded by Sarah Pocock in

The Ambaaaadora, that adultery is addtery and ahould be expoaed as such.

In the process of Maggie's tranaformation from a naive daugh­ ter to a mature dfe, her attitude toward her antagoniets is never static. She becomes progreaeively more compaaaionate toward Charlotte as she realizes the torment her stepmother endures by being kept in complete ignorance concerdng the extent of Maggie*s knowledge. Both the Prince and Maggie lie to her, beliedng apparently that the aur- face amenities between the two couples codd not possibly be main- tdned if Charlotte were aware that Maggie knew of her duplicity.

Maggie* 8 hmbugging, and the lie between Amerigo and Charlotte, leave the unfortunate lady dth a sense of dread, but dthout positive knowl­ edge of any sort on wdch to base it. Maggie redews her stepmother's poaition dth no little sympathy:

There were hours of intensity, for a week or two, when it was for all the world as if she had guardedly tracked her stepmother, in the great house, from room to room and from window to window, only to see her, here and there and every­ where, trjr her uneasy outlook, question her issue and her fate. Something, undstakably, had come up for her that had never come up before; it represented a new complication and had begotten a new anxiety—things, these, that she carried about with her done up in the napkin of her lover's accepted rebuke, wdle she vainly hunted for some comer where she dght put them safely down. The disgdsed solemnity, the prolonged futility of her search dght have been groteaque 120

to a More irode eye; but Maggie'a prodaion of irony, which we have taken for naturdly amall, had never been so scant aa now, and there were mowmktm i^ile ahe watched dth her, thus unseen, when the mere effect of being near her was to feel her own heart in her throat, was to be almoat move*3 to saying to her: "Hold on tight, my poor dear—dthout too Much terror—and it dll all come out somehow." (XXIV, 284)

There are moments for Haggle when Charlottds voice sounds "like the shriek of a sod in pdn," and almost draws from her some auch quea­ tlon as **Hasn't she done enough?** (XXIV, 292) Maggie's find utter­ ance in reapect to Charlotte ia based on Charlotte's value, not only to Mr* Verymr but to Maggie herself. With the final break between the two couples as a result of the departure of the Ververs for American

City, Maggie aaya to the Prince: **Bow can we not always tdnk of her?

It's as if her unhappiness had been necessary to us—as if we had needed her, at her own cost, to build us up and atari ua" (XXIV, 346).

Maggie ie acutely aware that before her orded she had no real life dth the Prince. Now the extraordinary fact comes up for her that he is "dth her as if he were hers, hers in a degree and on a scale, with an intenaity and intimacy, that vere a new and strange quantity, that were like the irruption of a tide loosening them where they had stuck and madng them feel they floated" (XXIV, 339-340). It is as though Maggie acknowledges a debt to Charlotte for having been the in­ atrument of her sdvation. The last tdng she desires is any sort of confession, either from Charlotte or her husband, and is relieved that there haa been no danger of this from Charlotte. During the

Ververa' laat visit, '*the question of the amount of correction to which Charlotte had laid herself open rose and hovered, for the instant. 121 ody to aink, conapicuously, by ita own weight; so dgh a pitch ahe aeemed to give to the unconaciousness of queations, ao reaplendent a ahow of serenity she succeeded in madng** (XXIV, 367). After their departure, what inatantly rose for Maggie was the sense that she must strike the Prince as waiting for a confeaaion. **Tda, in turn, charged her with a new horror: if that was her proper payment ahe would go dthout money. Hia acknowledgment hung there, too monstrously,

at the expenae of Charlotte, before whose mastery of the greater atyle

she had Just been standng dazsled. All ahe now knew, accordingly,

was that ahe ahould be aahamed to listen to the uttered word; all,

that ia, but that ahe dght dispose of it on the spot forever" (XXIV,

368).

It would be a dsunderstandng of the subtlety of Henry James's

humanism to Judge the charaetere in The Golden Bowl dogiMtlcally.

Since Jamea ahowa himaelf on the side of the finer dignities and

decendea posaible between human beings, his meaning would be groaaly

di8tc«^ed were the reader to react in his interpretation aa Maggie

is firat tempted to react to her orded: outraged. Maggie could

not have auatained the surface seredty of their lives, and thus saved

their marriages, had ahe peraiated solely in the dew that edl lay

reveded before her and should be exposed to dl. Her finer rediza­

tion ia that human beings are aleo before her, and that yet a greater

wrong dght lie in giving them up in order to satiafy the sense of

betrayed virtue* 122

In the Preface to The Golden Bowl Henry James writes that mastery of the plctorid art is essential to the aurdval of fiction.

**Figures and scenes," he saya, "are as nought from the moment they fail to become more or less dsible appearancea" (XXIII, x). The

aubjective drama of The Golden Bowl created for James the dfficdt

prodem of gidng visible appearance to states of dnd and levels of

awareness. Fulfilling ds own maxim, the noveliat solved ds prodem

through the use of Imagery. In The Golden Bowl, which haa frequently

been called a "poem," James has caught through ds imagery the tex­

ture of existence at varioua level8, the higheat level figuring in

Maggie, idioae expanded conadousness signifies the ultimate meaning 88 of life.

There is no character in The Golden Bowl who doea not at some

time represent ds condition to himself in terms of imagea. The

image gives texture where dthout it there would be only the thinness

of thought, and at the same time advancea the aubjective drama. The

draoAtic function of metaphor in James's later novels has been ex-

plored by Priacilla Gibaon, but the relation of imagery to James's

conception of the "fdl life" has been to date unexadned. The pre­

sent atudy has sought to avoid the somewhat artificid classification

of images which wodd appear unavoidable if they were treated aepa-

rate from theme. Given James's insistence on the organic relationship

®® Thia discussion of imagery in ^ie Golden Bowl haa appeared ^^ Texaa Studies in Literature and Language, IV (Summer 1962), 228- 240, under the title "Theme and Imagery in The Golden Bowl."

®^ "The Uaes of James's Imagery: Drama through Metaphor," PMLA. LXIX (December 1964), 1076-1084. 123 between form and meaning, any conaideration of techdque apart from theme would alight the principles wdch make the genre of the novel aignifleant.

Tds paper maintdns that the theme of th^ (Soiden Bowl, the quest for the full life, is revealed through the muted tonea of im­ ages, that through imagery, the 'idea" la aublimated into the act of living. In James's view, the full life means essentidly the crea­ tive use of experience which leada to an expanaion of consciousness 90 and to the operation of real affinities. And it is through sidle and metaphor that consciouaneas becomea pdpable, especidly in the later James where the quality of consciousness is definitive of the character's ability to lead the full life. In The Golden Bowl the imagea cryatdlise for the reader the character's state of conscious­ ness at any given moment; they show the reachea of perception wdch are possible to the human spirit, as such; they are uaed by the char­ acters themselves as a means of self-understaadng; and finally they illustrate James's own scde of values in ds esti0Mte of human na­ ture. The noveliat's conception of a "sound humanity** oMrgea in the person of Maggie, heroine of The Golden Bowl, who in turn affords

^^ James explicitly states in ds paper "la There Life After Death?" that conadousness, the creative awareness of things, ia the summum bonum of life (F. 0. Matthiessen, The James Fadly, p. 610). Osborn Andreas haa traced the implications of the statement throughout the entire range of the novelist's works, concluding that the highest good is the expanded conadousnees which results from "a constant, unredtting, and sympathetic consideration of the feelings of others" (Henry James and the Expanding Horizon [Seattle, 1948], p. 7). 124 91 the proper measure of her companions' variationa,

Maggie's development is portrayed primarily through inverted religious imagery. For it is undstakable that the golden bowl itself carries the aura of the holy grdl, and that Maggie's quest is no less than a quest for the ultimate meaning of life. That James has used the most sacred of religious symbols in the service of a purely aecdar realisation is a dear indication of the importance and mean­ ing wdch he attributes to the triu^ih of the Princeas. The myatery of the grail is revealed to Maggie in terms which suggest the novel­

ist's eoneeption of the significant life.

Since the image of the golden bowl ia crueld to a proper underatanding of Maggie and of James's estimate of her, the function of the bowl throughout the novel deaervea careful delineation. As

an image it is unique, since it is the only image in the novel which haa a literal counterpart wltdn the novel itself. The bowl is first

introduced as a physical entity; it becomes finally for Maggie an

image repres

that aurrounds it, although the aura is perceived, as James dght say, not by the soft light of a chapel candle, but through the daylight lensei3 of human beings who seek answers dthin the human medium.

91 In criticism of Dickens' characters in Our Mutual Friend, James queries, "Who represeiits nature? . . . Where are those exemplars of sound humanity who should afford us the proper measure of their companion's [si^] variations?" (The Future of the Novel, ed. Leon Edel [New York, 1956], pp. 78-79.)

X 126

Seen first in the Blooeisbury shop, the bowl is described as

... a drindng-vessel larger than a common cup, yet not of exorbitant aise, and formed, to appearance, either of old fine gold or of aome material once richly gilt. . . . Simple but singdarly elegant, it atood on a circular foot, a short pedestal dth a alightly spreading base, and, though not of aignd depth. Justified its title by the charm of its shape as well as by the tone of its surface. It dght have been a large goblet didniahed, to the enhancement of ita happy curve, by half ita original height. (XXIII, 112)

Later it 18 approached by Fanny Aaaingham in Maggie's apartment:

[She] went cloeer to the cup on the chimney—qdte liking to feel that she did so, moreover, dthout going closer to her coii4>anion'8 viaion. She looked at the precioua tdng—if precioua it waa*-found herself eyeing it as if, by her dim solicitation, to draw its secret from it rather than suffer the lm>o8ition of Maggie'a knowledge. It was brave and firm and rich, dth ita bold deep hollow. . . , She didn't touch it, but if after a minute ahe turned away from it the reason was, rather oddly and suddenly, in her fear of doing ao, (XXIV, 167)

She saya, propheticdly, to Maggie, "Then it all depends on the

bowl? I mean your future doea? For that'a what it comes to, I Judge"

(XXIV, 167), At this point, Maggie sees the bowl as a tdng which haa

dracdoualy put her in the way of learning of her huaband's add-

terous affair dth Charlotte Verver, It is this knowledge, derived

through the bowl, irtiich sets Maggie on her quest to save her life with the Prince, dthout counting as cheap the sensibilities of the others involved. It is her unredtting consideration of their human­ ity wdch ultimately opena to Maggie the mystery of the grail. The bowl ceaaea to be for her the flawed, gilded representative of 126 duplicity, not ody because Fanny Aaaingham haa ammahed it to pieces on her polished apartment floor, but becauae she herself has con­ ceived of the bowl as it was to have been, and as ahe dll make it— a perfect veaael repreaenting a consciousness that has wholly sur­ vived its bout dth evil, the "bad-faced stranger" confronted on the quiet of a Simdmy afternoon: "*. . . I want a happiness,*" Maggie aays, "'dthout a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger.

. . . The golden bowl—aa it was to have been. . . . The bowl dth dl our happineaa in it. The bowl without the crack.' For Mra. Aaaingham too the image had ita force, and the precioua object shone before her agdn, reconatituted plausible presentable" (XXIV, 216-217). It 18 the cup of consciousness that she haa so painfully filled that Maggie eeeks to preserve. Thus ahe further dsualizes her situation: "...

Juat now ahe waa carrying in her weak stiffened hand a glaas filled to the brim, aa to irtiich she had recorded a vow that no drop ahodd overflow. She feared the very breath of a better dsdom, the Jostle of the dghar light, of heavenly help itaelf" (XXIV, 298).

The golden bowl is not the only image, however, that haa an inverted religioua aignificance. Although it ia the one sustained image which repreaenta Maggie's experience in terms of an intense struggle for salvation, there are other images which reflect the quality of her consciousness during the various stages of her quest.

Her first intimation that 8omething ia wrong in the comfortable rela­ tionahip between the two couples comes to her in the image of the pagoda. The beautifd temple built by her In filial devotion to her

\ 127 father haa been her place of woradp for Bmvrml yeara, to the exclu- aion of her husband. Now she sees the situation, in which she and her father are as cloae as ever in spite of their marriages, as a temple dthout doora or dndowa:

... it had reared itaelf there like some strange tdl tower of ivory, or perhapa rather some wonderfd beautifd but out- landsh pagoda, a structure plated dth hard bright porcelain, coloured and figured and adorned at the overhanging eaves with silver bells that tinded ever so chardngly when stirred by chance airs. She had walked round and round it—that was what she felt; she had carried on her existence in the space left her for drcdation, a space that sometimes seemed ample and aometimes narrow: loodng up all the while at the fair struc­ ture that apread itself so amply and roae so dgh, but never quite making out as yet where she might have entered had she dshed. • . . The great decorated aur face had remdned con- sistently impenetrable and inscrutable. (XXIV, 3-4)

Maggie's temple casts the shadow of a fdse position; unable to take

comfort at the sight of it any longer, Maggie senses for the first

time that half of life has been shut off from her: ". . .to her con­

sidering dnd, it was as if ahe had ceased merely to circle and to

scan the elevation, ceased so vaguely, so quite helplessly to stare

and wonder: she had caught herself distinctly in the act of pauaing,

then in that of lingering, and finally in that of stepping unprece-

dentedly near" (XXIV, 4). Jamea himaelf interposes that "tds image

. . . may represent our young woman's consciousness of a recent change

in her life" (XXIV, 4).

Aa her .awareness grows, Maggie continues to image her state of

conadousness in figures dth religious overtones. These images

serve principally, as do those above, to accentuate the interbity of

\ 128 her struggle and to convey the sense of ultimate meaning dthin the framework of purely human experience. She sees that her anxiety for her father haa become her **atupid little idol" (XXIV, 81), and ahe visudizes her father offering dmself to her aa a sacrifice to save their marriages, "all conacioua and all accommodating, like some pre­ cious spotless exceptionally intelligent lamb. The poaitive effect of the intenaity of tda figure however was to make her ahake it eway" (XXIV, 83). Findly, when her consciousneaa is pdnfdly awak­ ened to the reaponsibility wdch is hers to ded creatively dth the mutilating condtlons of her life, ahe sees herself as an agent of atonement. Viewing the Prinee, Charlotte, her father, and Fanny

Aaaingham at a game of carda, Maggie thinka, "They thus tacitly put it upon her to be dspoaed of, the whole complexity of their peril, and ahe promptly eaw why: becauae ahe was there, and there Just as she was, to lift it off them nd take it; to charge herself dth it as the scapegoat of old, of whom she had once seen a terrible pic­ ture, had been charged dth the sins of the people and had gone forth

< into the deaert to aink under his burden and die" (XXIV, 234), But

Maggie doea not die under her burden; it proves, to the contrary, to be her salvation. In the crucible of her coneciousness, the Princess realizes that evil can be tranamutadto good. Her burden thus becomes a part of her redemption, and she takes her place beaide those other

Jameaian charactera whose enlarged view of life follows directly from their ability to transcend the mortifying demands of conventional morality.

\ 129

The atages of Maggie's development are also reflected through

Images notable for their almplicity. While the images dth religious overtones are more dramatic, the naturdneaa of others deplete dth fidelity the state of dnd of an innocent auddently touched by the fear of deception; **. . . she tried to deal with heraelf for a apace only as a silken-coated apadel who has acrambled out of a pond and who rattles the water from hia ears* Her shake of the head, agdn and again, as ahe went, was much of that order, and 8he had the re- aource to diich, save for the rude equivdent of his generdiaing bark, the spaniel wodd have been a etranger, of humming to herself hard aa a aign that nothing had happened to her" (XXIV, 6-7). Maggie's images, in the first moments of her enlightenment, reflect her own sense of nonentity. She sees herself first as a pup, then as an in­ effectual wheel of the fadly coach: "So far as she was one of the ndieels she had but to keep her place; aince the work was done for her she felt no weight, and it wasn't too much to acknowledge that ahe had scarce to turn round" (XXIV, 23). As Maggie meditatea on her projected daion, the image takes on "an absurd, a fantastic shape":

She dght have been watching the fadly coach pass and noting that somehow Amerigo and Charlotte were pulling it while ahe and her father were not so much as pushing. They were seated inside together, dandling the Prineipino and holding him up to the dndows to see and be seen, like an infant positively royal; so that the exertion was all dth the others. Maggie found in this image a repeated chdlenge. . . . She had seen heraelf at laat, in the picture she was studying, suddenly Jump from the coach; whereupon, frandy, dth the wonder of the sight, her eyes opened dder and her heart atood still for a moment. She looked at the person so acting as if this person were somebody else, wdting dth intenaity to see what would follow. (XXIV, 23-24)

\ 130

The conadottsneaa of being, or aelf-awareneaa, is here translated to Maggie in the form of an image in wdch ahe can aee herself, ob­ jectively, aa another. But true to human experience, Jamea doea not immediately beatow "identity* upon hia heroine. In the course of her dgh, occult fight to gain the Prince, Maggie senses that to suatain her freedom of action, "ahe muat conced from him the vdidty that, like a dcroaeopic insect pushing a grdn of sand, she was tadng on even for heraelf" (XXIV, 142).

The images nAiich give form to Maggie's condition undergo an

interesting metamorphosis as she gaina validity. In the early moments

of her dsilluslonment she feels herself drowning under the wave of

perceptiona that she is spiritudly unequipped to understand at once.

The full aense that Amerigo and Charlotte are deding dth her ruahes

over her "dth qdte another ruah from that of the breadng wave of

ten days before; and as her father dmaelf seemed not to meet the

vaguely-clutching hand dth wdch, during the first shock of complete

perception, ahe tried to steady heraelf, ao ahe felt very much done"

(XXIV, 46). Later, as Maggie takes the constmctive, the creative

hand, the metaphor changes from an image cC drowning to that of float­

ing. She is present to her father as "a creature conadously float­

ing and shining in a warm summer sea, some element of dazzling sap­

phire and silver, a creature cradled upon deptha, buoyant among dangers,

in which fear or folly or sindng otherdse than in play was impossible*'

(XXIV, 263). In her triiimph, the Princess perceives that Amerigo

\ 131

waa dth her as If he were hers, hers in a degree and on a scde, dth an intenaity and an intimacy, that were a new and a strange quantity, that were like the irruption of a tide loosening them where

they had a tuck and madng them feel they floated" (XXIV, 339-340).

The cage imagery in the Golden Bowl undergoea a aidlar meta­ morphosis aa Maggie'a consciousness awakens to the possibilities of

experience. At first the Princess writhes in the **solid chamber of

her helpleasness. . . . She had flapped her little dngs aa a symbol

of desired flight, not merely aa a plea for a more gilded cage and an

extra allowance of lumps of sugar** (XXIV, 44). Much later, in a

revered of poaitiona dth Charlotte and the Prince, Maggie endsions

the

. . , gilt dres and bruised wings, the spacious but sus­ pended cage, the home of eternal unreat, of pacings, beat- ings, Bhakings dl so vain, into which the baffled conadoua- ness helplessly resolved itself. The cage was the deluded condition, and Maggie, as having known deluaion—rather!— understood the nature of cages. She walked round Charlotte's— cautioualy and in a very dde cirde; and when inedtably they had to communicate ahe felt herself comparatively outside and on the breast of nature: she saw her companion*s face aa that of a priaoner loodng through bars. (XXIV, 229-230)

In his efforts to understand the difficult path of his dfe*6 love,

the Prince too strikes Maggie as caged, "It was yet again as if she had come to him in his more than monastic cell to offer him light or food" (XXIV, 338),

The images through wdch Fanny Assingham, Charlotte, Adam Verver, and the Prince view themselves and each other help one to appreciate

\ 132 the dfference between the timbre of their character and Maggie's.

Fanny Assingham's Images reveel character or attitude indrectly through the play of ideas. As the confidante, Fanny helps to illudne the darkened maze of human relatione in wdch the Ververs find themselves wandering. But though a confidante, Fanny is no detached apectator of

ii^licit tragedy. It was she who arranged the meeting of the Prince

and Maggie, and encouraged the marriage of Mr. Verver and Charlotte,

suppreasing dl the wdle her knowledge of Amerigo and Charlotte*s

earlier intimate relationship. Her cdef concern is not to ahow as

atupid, to fdl in perception, since, aa she says to the Colonel, "stu-

pidty pushed to a certdn point is, you know, immorality. Just so what

is mordity but high intelligence" (XXIII, 88). With the aid of her

huaband, ahe makea dscovaries which help both herself and the reader.

Her rudnationa are necessary to absolve herself of responsibility for

the imbroglio of the yferver establishment and to deterdne the path of

intelligent action. Her images, and those of her husband, reflect re­

velation and Juatification: "She got up, on the words, very much as

if they were the blue daylight towarda wdch, through a darkaome tunnel,

she had been pusdng her way, and the elation in her voice, combined dth her recovered dertnese, dght have signified the sharp whiatle of the trdn that shoots at laat into the open" (XXIII, 76). On her

return from Matcham, her husband sees her on the verge of floundering

in the deep waters of her impressions:

He hadn't quitted for an hour, during her adventure, the ahore of the mystic lake; he had on the contrary stationed himself

\ 133

where ahe codd aignd to dm at need. Her need wodd have arisen if the planks of her bark had parted—then some sort of plunge wodd have become his immediate duty. . . . Before he had plunged, however—that is before he had uttered a question- he saw, not dthout relief, that ahe waa madng for land. He watched her ateadily padde, always a little nearer, and at laat he felt her boat bump* The bump was distinct, and in fact ahe stepped ashore. **We were all wrong. There's nothing . . . between Charlotte Verver and the Prince." (XXIII, 366)

When Maggie confronts her dth the knowledge of Intimacy between

Amerigo and Charlotte, Fanny sees how the Princess is to spare her:

'*She drew in, as if it had been the warm summer scent of a flower,

the sweet certdnty of not meeting, any way she should turn, any con­

sequence of Judgement" (XXIV, 160).

The summum bonum for Fanny is to act Iritelllgently. Such a

truncated dew of the moral life seems ultimately to be inapired by

the selfish fear of playing the fool and conaequently may reduce its

adherent to the role of maintaining the surface amenities of life at

all costs. Thus Fanny, by tda avenue, takes up the role of the hum­

bug, Just as Maggie also takes up the role, but dth the inspired pur­

pose of salvaging out of the chaos of duplicity the dgnities of her

coiQianiona* If Fanny is an exanqple of the sterility that follows upon such a principle of morality as intelligence only, Charlotte and

Adam Verver no less demonstrate the aridity of existence that results

from complete absorption in aesthetic and socid forms.

Although the uae of images as an agency to reflect state of be­ ing is most effective when a character is functioning as James*s

"vessel of consciouaness," Charlotte, who is the "center" only once.

\ 134 and then briefly, may alao be underatood through the images she uses in dialogue and indirectly through the image-madng processes of the other characters. Charlotte uaea a revedlng figure wdle speaking to the Prince in regard to what she owed Mr. Verver for placing her so well as his dfe; she owed it to dm, she saya, to fulfill their social obligations: '*These tdngs henceforth, if you're interested to know, are my rde of life, the abaolute little goda of my worahip, the holy imagea aet up on the wall' (XXIII, 318). With all the inten­ sity of a devotee, Charlotte consecrates the forms of social life.

Even the Bowl, which takes on a deeply symbolic meaning for both

Maggie and the Prince, is placed snugly in her scheme of life as merely an improper gift* While Charlotte functiona as the center of con­ sciousness, she sees herself in no comparative terma. What she does

see while she standa on the atairway at the Bmbaasy Ball ia the "image"

she creates for the people around her. She sees heraelf as others habitually see her—as a showpiece—though she does not formulate the

simile explicitly. Her own appearance as an incomparably well-placed

social figure is the stuff of her dnd, and the impression given the

reader that she is a creature made for display is consistent with the

view of her that has been built through the images characterizing her

in the dnds of the other characters.

Charlotte's level of awareness can be approached best, though

obliquely, through the eyes of her companions. The image in this case

cuts two waya: it reveals something about Charlotte, but even more

about the character who thus visualizes her. Adam Verver views her.

\ 135 for example, as a great find, as diatinctive a work of art as the extraordinary aet of orientd tilea also under consideration (XXIII,

197). But Adam Verver conaiatently appliea the same measure of value to new human acqdaitions as he does to pieces of property* All of his images are seen by the light of profane altar-fires, for it is the aesthetic principle that shapes the images through wdch he views his associates* The Prince is, for Mr. Verver, a great Palladian church dth a grand arcdtecturd front (XXIII, 135), and a pure and perfect cryatd whose absence of friction greatly enhancea hia vdue

(XXIII, 138).

Representative precious objects [writes James], great ancient picturea and other worka of art, fine ednent "pieces" in gold, in silver, in enamel, majolica, ivory, bronze, had for a number of years so multiplied themselves round him and, as a general challenge to aoquiaition and appreciation, so en­ gaged all the faculties of ds dnd, that the inatinct, the partiedar aharpened appetite of the collector, had fairly aerved aa a basis for ds acceptance of the Prince*a adt. (XXIII, 140)

Adam Verver viaudi^es hie daughter in the same aesthetic glow. He sees her aa

. . . some slight slim draped "antique" of Vatican or Capi- toline halla, late and refined, rare as a note and immortal as a link, set in motion by the draculous infusion of a modem ii^pulse and yet, for all the sudden freedom of folds and footateps forsaken after centuries by their pedestd, keeping still the quality, the perfect felicity, of the sta­ tue; the blurred absent eyes, the smoothed elegant nameless head, the impersonal flit of a creature lost in an alien age and passing as an image in worn relief round and round a pre­ cioua vase. She had alwaya had odd moments of striking him, daughter of his very own though she was, as a figure thus simplified. (XXIII, 187)

\ 136

It is Mr. Verver*6 failure that he oversimplifies his companions and ds relationship dth them. His consciousness, so filled out as it is dth the sense of his own artiatic geiAis, denies ultimate aigni­ ficance to anything wdch lacks the proper form. As a "Patron of

Art" he datakenly thirks that his immense freedom in matters of taste is sufficient to stand for dl freedom (XXIII, 160). Thus he fdls short of the intensity of Maggie's final awareness that mere form stultifies the realization of true affinitiea. Maggie saves both her father and Charlotte in the only terms which they understand completely— by the keeping of form—though it appears that ahe has saved them for nothing more than to "ahow** themselves at another time and in mother place, in American City. The sympathy one feels for them on their de­ parture for that illustrious place is grounded in the sense that their lives there dll be for public dsplay along dth the rest of the repre­ sentative objects in Mr. Verver*8 collection. Their relationadp dll aubsist only in the arid atmoaphere of public admiration. Such a development la entirely conaiatent dth the rdson d'etre of their union, since they married in the first place to create a comfortable appearance. The significant private relationship which James values so higdy is thus consumed in the exigencies of form*

It is, of course, in Maggie's creation of an intensely personal relationship with the Prince that she breaks the immature bond with her father. There remains yet a good deal to be aaid for the Prince, who is thorougdy capable of appreciating the value of socid and

\ 137 aesthetic forms, but who nevertheless understands, finally, as Christof

Vegelln puts it, the qdckening penetration of de dfe'a spirit.

An exadnation of the Imagery through which the Prince sees dmself and others indicates that in the beginning his consciousness too is imbued dth the material and aesthetic vdues that 8o characterize the imagea of Adam iferver and Charlotte Stant. Like ds father-in- law, he firat perceives Charlotte as **something intently made for exdbition." The paaaage is worth quoting aa representative of his essential view of her: .

He aaw the aleeves of her Jacket drawn to her wriats, but he again made out the free arms dthin them to be of the completely rounded, the polished slimness that Florentine Bcdptors in the great time had loved and of which the ap­ parent firmness ia expressed in their old silver and bronze ... he knew her special beauty of movement and line when she turned her back, and the perfect wordng of all her main attachments, that of some wonderfd finiahed instrument, some­ thing intently made for exdbition, for a prize. He knew above all the extraordnary fineness of her flexible waist, the stem of an expanded flower, wdch gave her a likeness also to some long loose silk purse, well filled with gold- pieces, but having been passed empty through a fingor-ring that held it together. It waa as if, before she turned to him, he had weighed the whole tdng in hia open palm and even heard a little the cdnk of the metal. (XXIII, 46-47)

Meditating on his own significance, the Prince sees himself through images very sidlar to those he applies to Charlotte:

It was as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a pur­ ity of gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful, of which the "worth" in mere modem

92 The Image of Europe in Henry James (Dallas, 1958), p. 140.

\ 138

change, sovereigns and half-crowna, wodd be great enough, but as to which, aince there were finer ways of using it, such tadng to piecea was superfluous. That wa8 the image for the aecurity in which it was open to dm to rest; he was to constitute a possession, yet was to escape being re­ duced to ds component parts. (XXIII, 23)

Though he early accepts Adam Vervmr^B view of him as a "collector's item,** and even comes to regard dmaelf aa a amooth crystal which he hopes is dthout a crack, the Prince soon redizes that the comfort­ able form of his life is singdarly insipid. His attempt to give it significance resdts in ds figurative achievement cf the "golden bowl": da day dth Charlotte in Glouceater shines for dm aa "a great gold cup that we mu8t somehow drain together" (XXIII, 359). But ds asso­ ciation with Charlotte is no red advance for the Prince. Brilliant aa ahe is, she becomes in his old Roman scheme of life the **twentieth woman." Not until he is made aware of intense little Maggie does

Amerigo realize what is possible in the heart of man, for the sake of love. '*'See'?" he says finally to the foinceas, "'I see nothing but you.'"

Both the Prince and the Princeaa image their hopes of fulfill­ ment in the form of the golden bowl. The significance of the cracked, gilded bowl has too often been interpreted solely as the flaw in their marriage, '*the horror of the tdng hideoualy behind, bednd so much trusted, so much pretended, nobleness, cleverness, tenderness"

(XXIV, 237). At one level, the bowl obdously means this, but in the dnda of Amerigo and Maggie it also assumes the perfect foraj of a

X 139

vessel capable of holding their happiness*®^ In all good fdth, the

Prince quaffa the great gold cup in his relation dth Charlotte.

"•I feel tds an occasion'," he says to her as they anticipate their

rendezvous in Gloucester, "'and I hope you don't mean . . . that as an occasion it*s dso cracked*" (XXIII, 359). The cup, however, though imaged by the Prince as a perfect specimen, reveds its pre­ vailing flaw under the intense pressure exerted by the Princess in birr effort to reconstruct the bowl. The cup i^ich represented to the Prince an ultimate fulfillment is shattered, and hia converaion to Maggie*a reconatructed image is brought about only by the inten­ aity of her greater love.

The imagery in T^ (Solden Bowl ia integrd to an underatanding of James*8 vdues. Infrequently uaed to achieve a momentary 'pretty" effect, it serves primarily as the dsible representation of subjec­ tive states of being. Through it, James catches the qiMlity of experi­ ence, gives texture to the rarefied atmoaphere of consciousness. To say that the texture may be of fine or coarse quality according to the image uaed by a character is probably to distort the discridna- tion James wodd lEake, for dth the refinements of taste apparent in

The Golden Bowl, the term "coarse" seems fdrly inaccurate. Perhapa the consciousness reflected through the images of Adam Verver and

®^ R. W. Short contends that the deep meanings of the story do not come fx^om the bowl ("Henry James's World of Images," PMLA, LXVIII [December 1953], 957). He thus underestimates one of the most powerful imagea in the whole range of James's fiction. His emphasis on imagery which points up the sophisticated "market-place" atmos­ phere of the novel may be responsible for the depreciation of the bowl's thematic aignificance.

\ 140

Charlotte can be best described as too heavily muffled by the canons of taste. These two souls are smothered, »o to speak, under the eider down of aocial and aesthetic forms. On the other hand, Maggie and the Prince breathe freely, findly, in an atmoaphere where due cogdzance haa been paid to the keeping of forma, but where the cre­ ative awareness of one spirit for another has survived. James's use of imagery in The Golden Bowl should dispel once and for all the occaaional lingering sentiment that the novelist became the dupe of European eophiaticatlon. The devemeas of Fanny Assingham, the taste of Charlotte and Adam Verver, represent those elements of Old

World culture that, when puraited as ends in themselves, lead to the negation of innocence and good fdth and the restriction of conscious­

ness to the periphery of experience. As Eddn Bowden writes, "A

true morality, a feeling for the life of others, is the necessary

adjunct of taste, and dthout it only egotism, sterility, and evil 94 can follow*" It is the quickening spontaneous spirit of the little

American heroine, Maggie, wdch encompasses the kind of consciousness

most representative for James of a "sotind humanity." In Maggie,

innocence and good faith, taste and intelligence, though tutored by

the masters of nuaiice, survive the latent blight of so-cdled advanced

civilization.

®^ The Themes of Henry James, p. 60.

\ Chapter VIII

The Ivory Tower

Of the ten books projected for The Ivory Tower, James had com­ pleted ody three and had begun the fourth when he put the novel aside at the outbreak of war in 1914. With the advent of war, Percy Lubbock expldns in his preface, *'Henry Jamea found he could no longer work upon a fiction supposed to represent contemporary or recent life."^^

Despite James's own dissatiafaction dth his theme, one cannot help regretting that the novel waa dropped* Though he felt out of tune dth the immedate crisis of ds age, James had been preoccupied dth a diseaae of the modem world whose pecdiar ravagea are 8till dth ua.

A cancerous materidism permeating the American scene proddes the atmosphere of The Ivory Tower, working its disfigurements on characters like old Abel Gaw, the Bradhams, Horton Vint, and Cissy Foy. The caee of reaction ia represented by Graham Fielder and Rosanna Gaw, both of whom are deeply diatruatful of a Veltanachauung predaed on the dtimate vdue of money, a specious philosophy which posits as its sumraxim bonum not the innate worth of the individud but the overt signs of affluence and power* They see all too clearly the corrodng effects of such a dew on the men and women who have devoted their lives to a demonstra­ tion of its validty. The vision of such people is blinded to the mdtiple needs of human nature by the glaring, narrow spotlight of

^^ !!*• Ivpyy Tower (New York, 1922), XXV, v. The Ivory Tower was added to the New York Edition after James's death. All quotations are from the 1922 edition, and hereafter dll be cited in the text by volume and page number only.

141 142

•aterld vdue. The readt is that the conventional atandard of

Judgment becomes a queatlon of what dll pay, and the predatory in­

stinct thereby receives pdlosophicd sanction. One recognizes at

once the market-place atmoaphere of The Wings of the Dove in its

American gdae. It la given in The Ivory Tower a stark brutal ex~

pression that is muffled in The Winga of the Pove by the cultural

refinements of London society. The people of Newport flout the beauty

of the caah vdue as their ddm to identity; the more subtle Londoners

of the earlier novel keep the vdue under as a aubstratum of the "inter­

esting" life. Though the corruption of motivation ia the same in

both cases, it is to Jamea's credit that he ao clearly recreates the

difference of tone between the two aodetiea.

In the completed portion of the novel, James presents the involvement of four characters in the American dlieu where "the awfd game of grab" is an unwavering preoccupation. Roaanna Gaw,

Graham Fielder, and Morton Vint are centrd veasels of consciousness, with Cissy Foy codng in for a fairly full treatment through her association dth thMi. All are deeply enmeahed in the imbroglio of the monetary ethic, each seeking according to his lights to arrive at some livable relationsdp dth it. An understanding of their attitudea can be best appreciated through the imagery James uses, as alwaya, to characterize a basic orientation to experience. No attempt will be made here to apecdate on hia intended conclusion of the novel; this haa been done on the basis of the projected notes which he has left us, and althouigh the speculations are interesting, they are, of

\ 143 96 courae, from the nature of the caae, dwaye questionable. The mdn predaes of the noveliat *s philoaophy cf humanism are articulated in the completed portion; a aynopsis of the "germ" of the story as it unfolds In that portion is sufficient for an explication of the relation between theme and imagery.

Through the persond intervention of Rosanna Gaw, daughter of an AsMrican tycoon, Graham Fielder inherits a aizeable fortune from hia uncle, Mr. Betterman. The nephew returns to Newport after having apent his life abroad in intellectud and aesthetic pursdts to find himaelf the recipient of a large amount of money that has been earned through the questionable practices of the dedicated businessman. He has been, up to that time, relatively poor, and notorioualy unconcerned, as they dght say in Newport, dth monetary intereats. The unfiniahed novel as we have it deds dth his con­ frontation of the meaning of money, the meaning for dmeelf and for his American acquaintances. He enters the American scene dth a aenaitive appredation of life fairly divorced from the driving motivation to "aucceed"—ds attitude is compared and contrasted with

Ro8anna*s, Uorton*s, and Ci88y*s.

Rosanna, the centrd reflector of the first book, is the suc­

cessor to James's American heroinee Milly and Maggie. While the

latter accept the fortunes bequeathed by enormously rich fathers

whoee methods of acdevement are never called into question by James,

^^ See, for example, Cargill's analyais. The Novels of Henry James, pp. 465-476.

X 144

Rosanna is mordly repelled by the "taint" of her money, eamed by

Abel Gaw at the expense of ds own integrity and at the sacrifice of ds fellow beings. She loathes, as Horton says, every separate dol­ lar of her twenty dllions. She sees what money haa done to her father in a nimber of violent images that reflect her repulaion and his ravagement. As he sits waiting for his enemy, old Betterman, to die, so that he dght know exactly the amount of his estate, she sees dm perched there '*like a ruffled hawk, motionless but for ds single tremor, dth ds beak, wdch had pecked ao many hearts out, visibly sharper than ever, yet only ds talons nervous; not that he at last cared a atraw, really, but that he was incapable of thought save in sublidties of arithmetic, and that the queatlon of what old Frank wodd have done dth the fruits of ds sdndle, of the occasion of the rupture that had kept them apart in hate and dtuperation for so many years, was one of the things that could hold him brooding"

(XXV, 6-7). The intensity of the old man's obsession is given not only in terma of the savage ferocity of the hawk but also in terms suggestive of religious fanaticism: "the glare and noise and the harsh recognitions of the market" are the idols of his worship (XXV,

9). With a dnd of pity that is too clear-sighted to be tmly compaaaionate, Roaanna summarizes her father's condtion for Gray:

Having to do dth money, she saya, coneists "of the tdngs you do f^ it—which are moetly awful. . . . The effect has been to dry up his life" (XXV, 141). The effect of his millions on Rosanna ia disastrous, for she becomes incapable of believing in the sincer­ ity of any man's interest in her. "She's in the dreadful poaition,"

\ 145

Horton Vint telle Ciaay Foy, "of not being able to believe ahe can be loved for herself" (XXV, 169). Her money, for all her loathing of it, has had the adverse effect of giving her a "block" view of human nature. That Horton himself is worthy of her derogatory Judgment, avowed fortune hunter that he ia, does not dndicate her general appraisal that a little of Horton ia to be found in any edtor for her hand. Her appraiaal of Graham Fielder is an exception, the only difficulty being that though she cares for him, there is, dth Cissy

Foy in the field, no indication that hia thoughts of marriage involve the heiress of the Gaw millions. On the basis of James's notes, one dght even infer that Graham too wodd be unacceptable because of a poaaible tdnt of motivation should he apply for her hand after Horton has successfully drained him of his own fortune. Ironically, Rosanna's life is blighted by a rigidity of Judgment that is shaped wholly by the monetary ethic to which she objects so strenuously. She is both repelled and bound by the conventional mores of the market place.

James's characterization of Graham Fielder in the unfiniahed novel has many prodsing elements thrown into relief by contrast dth ds companions. His struggle to arrive at an understanding of the world of money is picked up in the second book where he is the vessel of consciousness. His first contact dth the business obsession is afforded by the sight of old Abel Gaw, perched on the terrace of the

Betterman home. He affects him "as a small waiting and watching, an almost crouching gnome, the neat domestic goblin of some old Genaanic, some harmonised, fadliarised legend" (XXV, 86). He strikes Gray as

\ 146

aomehow aqueesed together by the operation of an inward energy or neceasity, and as animated at the same time by the conviction that, should he sit there long enough and etill enough, the young man from

Burope, known to be on the predaes, might finally reward ds curi­ osity.** Mr. Gaw, Gray sees, is curiosity embodied, "it in fact quite aeemed to him that he had never yet in dl his life caught the prying paaaion so shamelessly in the act. Shameleasly . . . because his sense of the reach of the aharp eyes in the small white face, of their not giving way for a moment before hia own, auggeated to him

. . . the act of listening at the door, at the very keyhole, of a room, combined dth the attempt to make it good under sudden detection"

(XXV, 87-88). Mr. Gaw repreaenta, for both Roaanna and Gray, the waated life, the life of self-destruction resulting from an obaession as devaatating aa the vampiriah intellectuallam of the narrator in

The Sacred Fount. Both theae men attach to their prey with an insati­ ability the satisfaction of wdch is necessary to life itself. On hearing that Mr. Betterman dght recover, Abel Gaw in fact collapses.

He is another example, in the James canon, of the spirit that feeds, to its own ultiiaate impoveriahment, at the sacred fount of its fellow beings.

The old man even provides for satisfactions beyond the grave.

He leaves as his laat written testament a long letter to be delivered to Graham Fielder by his daughter. It is an odnous dssile turned over by Rosanna to the young man enclosed in an exquisitely carved ivory tower. The tower becomes symbolic of Graham'a dilemma: the

\ 147 crlala he facea in adjuatlng to the fact that he la a wealthy man whose money ia very likely cureed by the dstory of its acquisition. Os­ tensibly, the letter contains damaging evidence of Mr. Betterman*8 character and so represents a threat to Graham* 8 free and conaci on- able uae of da inheritance. The young heir leaves the letter un­ opened, ensconced in its ivory tower. He is reproached by Horton

Vint as afraid of its contents: "You looked at your affair Ju8t now,' aaya Horton, "aa you dght at some damgeroua, aome biting or acratch- ing, animal whom you're not at dl 8ure of" (XXV, 223). He accuses him of turning from the redities of hia situation to the comfort­ able retreat of a make-believe ivory tower. But Graham is by no means a aimple romantic who refuses to face up to the consequencea of knowl­ edge. He want8 in fact only to imderstand in order to keep clear ds sense of moral reaponsibility. "I propose ... to know so far as possible where I am and what I'm about: morally apeadng at least, if not financially ... My acqdaition of property seems by itself to prodse me information, and for the understanding of the leaaon

I shall have to take a certain time. . . . Becauae I think it may be the only way for me not to waate understanding" (XXV, 227-228).

The ivory tower, then, at this early atage of symbolic development, means for Graham a determined detachment from hia money in order to understand how he may be mordly affected by it. The image haa great potential which James undoubtedy would have exploited had he finished the novel. The evidence of ds notes shows he projected for Graham m. painfd realixation that the source of his money is tainted, and

\ 148 that the only way to free himself from the taint is to dlow its embezzlement by da aapiring friend Horton who is so thorougdy a captive of the standards of the market place. The tower dght then have been viewed as an escape, but a realistic one necessary to keep

Graham human. The imbroglio is such that for him to keep the money

18 to be somehow ruined by the ethics that made it possible.

Horton, whose point of view is given in the third book, is, in contraat, dedicated to the materialiatic code, to the "stdls" in the theatre of life rather than the "pit" (XXV, 162), as he so unflatteringly refers to Grahaa's interests. He and Cissy Foy form a community of two reminiscent of Merton Densher and Xate Croy in The

Wings of the Dove. Like these earlier lovers, their felt need for affluence prefigures devious methods for the attainment of it. Their portraits reveal little hope, however, that either can survive the experience of pla ing another for a dupe. Horton is as intelligent as Merton, but lacks completely his mord sensitivity. He has all the signs of the predatory, and one can easily picture him in his shriveled old age as another poor relic of the dsguided life, the very image of old Abel Gaw.

The Ivory Tower represents, even in its unfinished state,

James's sustained interest in those forces which corrode man*s moral fiber. There are no signs of a diminishment of tdent to portray human beings in circumstances that press painfully on their self- seeking instincts. ThoBO like Gaw, the Bradhams, Cissy, and Horton are in various stages of self-destruction; Rosanna and Graham alone

\ 149 seem to atruggle to keep the broader posBlbilities of fdfillment in focua. One*s only disappointment is that the novel remains a fragment.

\ Chapter IX

The Sense of the Past

After giving up work on The Ivory Tower becauae of hia sense of its Irrelevance to the times, Jamea turned in 1914 to a novel which he had begun several years before. Its remote, phantasmal aubject dlowed for a more diaintareated approach than The Ivory Tower and engaged hia attention until his last sickness made dl writing im- poBBible. The Sense of the Past is an interesting fragment not only for what it prodaea; ita position aa the laat piece of fiction to come from the novelist makes it legitimate ground for a find appraisal of Jamea's aciimen in the field of paychologicd drama. His penetra­ tion into the labyrinth of complex motivation, it dll be ahown, is as keen as ever in the portion of the novel that ia completed. One dght debate about the projected concluaion provided in ds notes, but it is unfair to qdbble over implauaibilities that do not receive da sanction in finished form. This study intends to concentrate on the fragment itaelf, not on conjectured possibilities auggeated by

James's scenario.

The Sense of the Past is a ghoat atory, and like all of James's excursions into the imreal, it is solidy based on the paychologically probable. Ralph Pendrel, an Ax^rican intellectual recognized as an historian of note, is a rejected lover* He fdls back upon ds pas­ sion for the paat as a means of compensating for ds felt impotence

160

\ 151 97 In the present. Calling forth a strong dter-ego, he retreats to

the year 1820 to escape the hudliation of ds condition in 1910.

There, in the paat, he is an attractive and very much desired lover.

The fragment leavea dm verging on the realization, however, that his escape from actud life dght prove to be an annihilating experi­

ence. In terma of James's himaniam, Ralph Pendrel'a escape is a

negation of the consciousness of life. The dynadc qudity of exiat-

ence is forfeited In the fixed and finiahed framework of the past where the apirit may give itaelf up to the inevitable. In BO doing,

it ceases to be that creative force wd<^ must shape its own destiny

if life is to be significant. Rdph repudates, in effect, his

capacity to give form to the chaotic elements of experience, and in

tda repudiation he gives up ds humanity. Retreat to the static

past is James's fictional counterpart to the refuge offered by pdl-

oaopdcal absolutism which his brother WilHam found so distasteful.

^^ The Sense of^ the Past James shows himaelf still a master in

the depiction of subtle psychological states. Agdn he uses imagery

as an indispensable aid to the revelation of character, and nowhere

is it more effectively employed than in the portrayal of Rdph Pendrel's psychic Journey. The meaning of that adventure becomes clear through the study of the images wdch give form to a consciousness engaged in a stultifying experience.

^^ His situation is similar to that of Marmaduke in James's short story "Maud-Evelyn.'* Marmaduke finds compensation in a bizarre marriage to a dead girl.

\ 162

Arriving in London to cldm ds inheritance of an old homeatead hequeathed dm by a deceased relative, Ralph wandera through his domain dth the excited eye of the dstorian. Hia adt for the hand of ddow

Aurora Coyne has only recently been rejected, but hia inheritance has had a happy effect on **the heat of hia wound," since it appeala dth the greateat intensity to his '*other" paaaion, da obaession for the past* Turned down by Mrs. Coyne, he believes, becauae he is a "mere tdnker" (XXVI, 10) totally dofident in the arena of action, he now finda dmself in an environment eapecidly amenable to hia tdrat to penetrate the pasts

No Rian, he well believed, could ever so much have wanted to look bednd and etill behind—to scde the dgh wall into wdch the successive years, each a squared block, pile them­ selves in our rear and look over as nearly as possible dth the eye of sense into, imless it should rather be cdled out of, the vast prison yard. He was by the turn of da apirit oddy indifferent to the actual and the possible; his inter­ est was dl in the spent and the dsplaced, in what had been deterdned and coi4>osed round-about him, what had been pre­ sented ae a aubject and a picture, by ceaaing—so far as things ever ceaae—to bustle or even be. It was when life was framed in death that the picture was really hung up. (XXVI, 48)

Withdrawal from the pressing demands of the actual to the spent, com­ posed, static picture of the past is Pendrel's answer to a paychic need. He senses, however, the threat t> his being in such a retreat,

"strange his divination . , , that from such a plunge at Number Nine as wodd thorougdy penetrate he dght possibly not emerge undamaged— or even, it was actually to be figured, not emerge at all" (XXVI, 70).

Pendrel ia eepecially faacinated by a portrdt of a young man, one of hlB anceators, vAio la in the unueud position of facing backwards.

\ 153

*'The practicd snub for poor Ralph was thus that he looked away into a world of ds own—off into the dark backward that at once ao chal­ lenged and so escaped his successor" (XXVI, 79). The intensity of

Rdph's desire to penetrate into the young man's past is emphaaized through religious Imagery, a typical Jamesian dedce for heightening aecdar experience. Be sees himself as the "pious magnifico" who hovers about an object of devotion in the great Italian church pic­ turea. Around the handsome uplifted head of the youth, he imagines,

'*as by the patina of the years, the soft rub of the finger of time," an encircling nimbus (XXVI, 79-80). When the youth steps down from his picture frame (a truly Gothic touch), he presents to Ralph "the face he bad prayed to reward hia vigil; but the face--dracle of mirmeleB, yes—confounded dm as his own" (XXVI, 87-88). By means of religious images, James suggests that immersion in the paat takes on for Pendrel the appeal of an ultimate salvation. But there are in James's philoaophy no ultimates of this sort for the apirit of man. His spirit dies, in effect, v^hten it ceases to create.

Overwhelmed by the confrontation dth his alter-ego, Ralph

Pendrel feels the need to take a precautionary step. He must share his secret dth a friend in order to give himself at least one vital link dth the present. The American Ambassador serves this need.

To him Ralph explains: "I'm like one starting a perhapa perilous

Journey and wanting not to have neglected precautions in advance"

(XXVI, 109). On leaving the Ambassador, at the end of Book Three, he atepa inside the door of Nimber Nine and is swallowed up by the paat.

\ 164

Book Four reccunta his aingdar adventure dth the Midmore family

as they existed In 1820, He arrivea aa the expected and accepted

suitor for the hand of lovely Molly Midmore, No Imiger a *'mere tdnk­

er** he is welcomed aa an "aecldmed wooer** (XXVI, 125), as **an adven­

turer from overseaa**

(XXVI, 182), as marked "for the full ravage of femde loveliness"

(XXVI, 166). James leaves one In no doubt about the erotic character

of Pendrel*8 experience. Ralph sees how Molly and her mother approve

of dm, approve of dm "almost as if their soft hands had stroked

dm for their pleasure** (XXVI, 180).

He finda dmself betrayed, however, by his modernity. His

manners, his very consciousness, produce a terrifying malaise in da

companions. His queer explanations amount practically to a rupture

of relation: **lt was for all the world as if his own interpretation grew . . . exactly by the lapse of theirs, lasting long enough to

at^gest that his very care for them had somehow annihilated them, or had at least converted them to the necessarily void and soundess

state** (XXVI, 213). Ralph* s plunge into the past is plagued by hia lingering sense of the present. Because he cannot totally merge da consciousness dth the past he cannot know the complacency which such a retreat into a static, finished experience had prodeed him.

Notdng about the whole affair seems inevitable, so that he is not only deprived of his ultimate rest, but is further and ironicdly incapable of exercising any control whatsoever over his situation.

He ia no longer a creator, i.e. a human being, nor does he have the

\ 155 pleaaure of deaired inertia. The novel leaves off dth the appear­ ance on the scene of **aweet Nan,** the only member of the Midmore fadly who aeems to understand ds plight. "*Why she*a modem, modem!' he felt he was thindng—and it aeemed to launch dm dth one push on an extraordnary aea** (XXVI, 280). James tells us in his notes that Ralph feel a more and more the urgency of returning

to actual life, realizing that his immersion in the past is hell.

Somehow through the medation of Nan hie return will become possible.

Though a fragment. The Sense of the Past offers a final bril­

liant statement of James's philosophy of humanism. The burden of life

is presented again as a peraiatent challenge to the human apirit:

to abrogate tda challenge ia to release one*s claim to dl meaning

and fulfillment. Ralph Pendrel sees that in his exile from the ac­

tual he has condemned himself to a void where humanity is tranaformed

by an act of its own into "stone or wood or wax." The bleaaing of

**significance" he redizes is granted only to those who accept the

burden of the chdlenge.

\ PART POUR

CONCLUSION

Life is an assadt for James*a characters wdch demanda at every moment a atrenuous perceptive analyais of experience. The fact that they are allowed no fuzzy periphery of conadouaneas ia not a "precious** idosyncraay of Jamea*a later style: it ia inte­ grd to the moral demand made upon them to impose order on the cha­ otic elements of raw experience. His heroes and heroines seem dways to hover on disaater, the daintegration of aelfhood, in the face of a world whose elements are not of a "pre-eatablished harmony." Their world, as William James dght express it, is never absolutely fixed and finiahed; on the contrary, they have the crushing responsibility of deterdning from moment to moment the moral com>lexion of reality.

Their peraonal adventures are dvid recorda of creativity, creativ­ ity which has aet them apart from and above the predatory purauits of those who people tieir world. The Spoils of Poynton brings into conflict the aesthetic appetite of Mrs. Gereth and the moral sensi­ tivity of Fleda Vetch. The former conducts her campaign to keep the spoils in queenly oblidon to the finer needs of the humMi personality.

She uses Fleda as a means merely, a means to assure the safety of her treasures, and in the process of appropriating the very existence of her young friend to satiafy her aesthetic need she suffers herself a loas of identity. It is Fleda who resists the pdl of self- aggrandizement; she emerges from her orded a whole person, in spite

156

\ 167 of the sacrifices she has made to keep morally "atraight." Her con­ duct seems to distress those who think her scruples too fine for a woman in love; they have, it aeems a truncated view of the aignif 1- cant life, for in Jamea*a novela, the fdfillment of paaaion la only part of the human adventure. It is kept in perspective by its rela­ tion to other vmluea which make life meaningful: the intellectual, the aesthetic, and, above all, the mord. Fleda Vetch is a crea­ tive apidt who haa managed to keep her values in proper perspective.

The development of Maisie and Nanda in What Maisie Knew and

The Awkward Age repreaenta the trial of innocence in its exposure to the unsubdued Jungle where values have a way of becoming monatrously distorted in the hands of the undisciplined. Caught at the crucial moment of unfoldment, they, like Fleda, are among the gallery of

Jameaian portraits which present the human spirit in its triumph over the subtle attractions of the selfish life. The narrator in

The Sacred Fount, on the other hand, must take his place in the lower reaches of himanity. He is the victim of that self-deatruction which follows from the sacrifice of mord sensibility to the titillation of the intellect. In these four novels, wdch mark the beginning of James*8 mature writing, the meaning of the novelist*s humanism is dear. The worka are polished gems reflecting various facets of a fdl-hlown intereat in the ultimate aignificance of life. They are, to use another figure, the lyrics which precede the author*s plunge into the crowning novels of his later phaae. The Wings of the Dove,

The Ambaasadors. and The Golden Bowl may appropriately be called the

\ 168 epic acdevements of Henry James. Their scope and complexity lead one to cdl th«n superior to ds former endeavors in the same sense that an epic ia add to be superior to the lyric. Tbe Ivory Tower

^'^^ The Senae of the Paat dght have formed a part of tds acdeve­ ment had they been completed.

In the fid shed trilogy one notices that the partiedar por- tiona of experience dealt to the characters and their reactions to them show Jamea's increasingly complex view of creativeness. His conception grows thicker as he moves from The Winga of the Dove to

The Ambaaaadora and The Golden Bowl. For Milly Theale, who could have passively given up and ded, creativeness means translating the terrible perversity of her doom into the stuff of life itself. Her greateat sense of the possibllitieB of the human apirit ia acdeved at the moment of death when she translates the Impulse to retaliate into an act of forgiveness. I^liether or not James was conscious of the Biblicd pardlel the implication of Milly's final response to the assault of life is impressive: her spirit could have encom­ passed no greater experience than the reversd of every self-centered instinct. Thus, in a sense, Quentin Anderson is right when he says 98 James conceived of a divine humanity. There is no need, though, for the elaborate theologicd framework of the novelist's father to understand the creative aignificance of Milly's turning of the cheek.

A certain conventionality of plot, however, distingdshes The

Wings of the Pove from the other two novels. The trap set for Milly

^^ ^•erican Henry James, p. 78,

\ 169 by Kate Croy and Mra. Lowder, and undttingly at firat by Merton

Densher, is a aomewhat conventional intrigue to fleece a doomed woman. Milly heraelf comes innocently on the scene, in contrast to the personal moral involvement of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl, who helps to set the stage for her predcament. As Jamea writea regarding Milly, *'l saw the mdn dramatic complication much more prepared for my vessel of sensibility than by her—the work of other hands" (XIX, x). Thua the ethics of creativeness as it has been considered in The Ambassadors and The Golden Bowl is not so clearly developed in The Wings of the Dove. Milly does not dtogether push the action forward, as Maggie and Strether do; dramatic intensity ia gained rather by her sensitive response to the situation prepared for her, in so far as her responses fill out her sense of having lived*

The aituation in The Ambassadors is considerably more complex than that in The Wings of the Dove. In the totally unconventional conclusion reached by Strether in regard to Chad's relationship dth

Mme* de Vionnet, James seems to weave into his carpet a somewhat sur­ prising pattern v^iich cdls for another look at hi8 concept oX moral creativeness* Whereas Milly concludes her ordeal with i^at may be deaignated as a "Christian'* response to a rather conventional type of injury, Strether creates out of his Parisian experience a mandate wdch defies both civil and ecclesiastical law. "Lambert Strether,"

Bays Joseph Warren Beach, "who 11 the very incarnation oI New England conscience, feels bound to declare in the end for the continuance of

\ 160 an addterous relation—to put it In legd terma—as the clear man­ date of gratitude and good faith."^^ The boundariea of conscience so-edled are daaolved in favor of a dder dew that rests on the fine discridnation between what la worth aaving and loaing in any particular individud's life. And creativeness, manifeated in The

^^•Pgg of the Pove dtdn conventioadly acceptable modea of thought and conduct, breaka through as a cognizance that "the higheat ethi- cd life • . . coneiats at all times in the breadng of rules wdch have grown too narrow for the actual case."

The breadng of rules is complicated further in The Golden

Bowl in 8o far as the moral involvement of the heroine is more pro­ nounced. The extent to which Strether playa the role of an ambas­ sador lidta ds drect involvement considerably. That is, he stands outside of, and ia in no way reaponaible for the original liaiaon between Chad and ds datreas. Therefore, though ds final pronounce­ ment is the resdt of a Jolt to his moral heritage, it stands at the end as a piece of writing on the wdl, to be noted or not according to Chad'a inclination. Maggie, on the other hand, is personally entangled in the development of the liaison between Prince Amerigo and Charlotte Verver. To save her marriage ahe must ded imagina­ tively not only dth her husband and step-mother but dth her own culpable role in encouraging their relationadp. She is, in other words, intimately involved in her mord Judgment of these two; to abaolve them ia ultimately to recognize the extent of her

^® Method of Henry James, p. 135. 161

responsibility. Jamea thus deepens the hues of creativeneas in The

^^^^^''•^ l2J[l» wdch is perhaps his most difficult performance.

The provocative role wdch imagery playa in gidng concrete

embodiment to James's pdlosophy of htuMuiism haa been amply demon-

atrated in the preceding pages. Although no attempt haa been made

to analyze types of images or to classify them accordng to sidlar- 100 itiea, one cannot avoid noticing certain affinities among images

wdch give sensuous reality to James's humaniatic viaion. The preda­

tory instinct is consistently drrored forth through a variety of

animaliatic images: there is the vampire image in The Sacred Fount,

the vdture that characterizes Maud Lowder, the panther that depicts

Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove. Abel Gaw of The Ivory Tower is

no leaa than a ruffled hawk with ds beak, "wdch had pecked so

many hearts out, visibly sharper than ever." The extent to which some

people use other people as a means to an end is expressed through

images which have in coflmK>n the quality of uaefdness. For her

parenta, Maisie is a "shuttlecock**; for Mrs. Gereth, Fleda is an

iaolated ialand afloat for her particular enjoyment; for Mra. Brook­

enham, Mitchy and Van and the other m««bers of the circle are the

"material" wdch ideas are made of. Adam Verver reduces human nature

to aesthetic content, his companions appealing to him as objects of art. These images, innocent In themselves, become in the Jamesian

100 The work of classification has already been done by such writers as Alexander Holder-Barell (Development of Imagery), Robert L. Gale (**Art Imagery," American Literature, XXIX, 47-63), and Viola Hopkins ("Visual Art Devices," PMLA, IJCXVI, 561-574). 162 context conveyors of the edl that growa out of relationships when human beings are InaenBltlve to the innate worth of the personality.

The caae for the appreciation of hinuuiity ia given imaginative form

throui^ such ImAges aa "the sacred fount," "the aeolian harp" of

The Awkward Age, "the dngs of the dove," "the golden bowl." There

is a saerednesB attaching to the human apirit which finds poetic

expression in the very titles of James*s later novela. Through

imagery, James mkes pdpable the texture of consciousness itself

as it assidlatea, for good or for evil, the stuff of experience.

As no other device can, the image dlows him to present a conscious­

ness to the reader* 8 eye, to project in the most dvid manner the

timbre of the spirit*s peraonal adventure.

The characters of James*s mature phase, frequently accused

of being mere shadows, fables dth no essential reality as individ­

uala repreaentative of life, are aeen, as fiction only can convey

them, as persons engaged in an intense stmggle against the mortify­

ing forces of convention and irrelevant principles. They are crea-

tora, for their values depend on the moment to moment apprehension

of the meanings they find in their world. Earlier in his career,

James thought of the possible objection to characters who stand out,

someimat idealistlcally. against the hypocrisies of an average hu­

manity. In the preface to The Lesson of the Master he gives possibly

the first and last word on the creative response of ds characters

to the mutilating conditions of life: 163

What doea your contention of non-exiatent conacioua exposures, ia the midst of all the stupidity and vulgarity and hypocrisy, imply but that we have been, nationally, ao to speak, graced dth no instance of recorded sensibility fine enough to react against these tdngs?—an admission too distressing. What one would fdn do ia to baffle any auch calamity, to create the record, in defadt of any other enjoyment of it; to ima­ gine, in a word, the honourable, the producible caae. . . . How can one consent to make a picture of the preponderant futilities and vulgarities and daeries of life dthout the impulse to exhibit aa well from time to time, in ita place, some fine example of the reaction, the opposition or the escape?^"*

In ds later novela, Henry Jamea acdevea "the thing at which he was dways more or less consciously aidng."^ The significance of the "fdl life" and the etdcs of creativeness emerge dth increas­ ing emphaais and complexity, cddnating in the triumph of Maggie

Verver in The Golden Bowl. It becomes posaible, on the hypothesis of his humanism, to appreciate James's subtleties of style as the almost perfect agreement of content and technique. As an element of atyle, the pervasive imagery of the later novels is in extraordi­ nary rapport dth the novelist's humanlBtic aesessment of the aigni- ficant life.

^^-^ The ^ of the Novel, pp. 222-223.

^^2 Beach, Method o£ Henry James, p. 5, BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED

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