Imagistic Clues to the Labyrinth of Ambiguity in Henry James's the Golden Bowl

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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange

Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School

6-1986

The Fascination of Knowledge: Imagistic Clues to the Labyrinth of Ambiguity in Henry James's The Golden Bowl

Marijane R. Davis University of Tennessee - Knoxville

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Recommended Citation Davis, Marijane R., "The Fascination of Knowledge: Imagistic Clues to the Labyrinth of Ambiguity in Henry James's The Golden Bowl. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 1986. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2511

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council:

I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Marijane R. Davis entitled "The Fascination of Knowledge: Imagistic Clues to the Labyrinth of Ambiguity in Henry James's The Golden Bowl." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English.

Daniel J. Schneider, Major Professor

We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance:

William Shurr, Allison Ensor, L. B. Cebik

Accepted for the Council:

Carolyn R. Hodges

Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School

(Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council :

I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Marijane R. Davis entitled '' ' The Fascination of Knowledge ': Imagis tic Clues to the Labyr inth of Ambiguity in Henry ,TaPl.e s' s The Golden Bowl ." I have examined the final copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that :�t be accepted in partial fulfil lment of the requirement.s for the degree of Doctor of Ph ilosophy , with a maj or in English .

Daniel J. Schneider Hajor Professor

We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance :

Accepted for the Council:

Vice Provost and Dean of The Graduate School "THE FASCINATION OF I

IMAGISTIC CLUES TO THE LABYIUNTH OF AMBIGUITY

IN HENRY JAMES'S THE GOLDEN BOHL

A Dissertation

Presen ted for the

Doctor of Philosophy

Degree

The University of Tennessee, Kn oxvjlle

Marijan e R. Davis

Jun e 1986 ii

ACKNOWLEDGHENTS

To my advisory committee chairman, Dr. Daniel J.

Schneider, I extend my sincerest gratitude for his excel lent teaching , wise counsel, and thorough reading of my dissertation . My thanks go also to the other members of my committee , Drs . L. B. Cebik, Allison Ensor, and William

Shurr, for their patience and willingness to serve as readers . I thank Drs. Joseph Trahern and Mary P. Richards for encouraging me for so long and for being outstanding examples of truly fine college teachers .

Hy friends and colleagues in the Graduate School at

Texas Tech University, especially Dr. J. Knox Jones , Jr ., formerly Vice President for Re search and Graduate Studies and Dean of the Graduate School, and Dr. Thoma s A.

Langford, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, have my unbounded appreciation for allowing me the time and resources needed to finish my degree .

I thank my parents , Ernest and Carl een Rountree , for giving freely all the support they could for many years in order that I might attain this goal .

To my husband and children , Gordon , Brandy , and

Benj amin, I give my loving gratitude for supporting their much absent wife and mother and for bless ing me with their love and devotion . iii

ABSTRACT

Henry James 's last completed novel, The Golden Bowl

(1904) , has elicited a multitude of responses so polarized as to suggest some flaw or , at best, some irreducible amb iguity in the novel. An examination of over 1300 images in the novel led to their classification into seven main groups composed of several subgroups: (1) The Adventurous

(discovers and the New World; the exotic; deserts ; gardens and paradise) ; ( 2) The Sensuous (flowers; boats and water; light , dark , shadows , and vei ls; children , games and toys );

( 3) The Superficial (science and technology; the circus; acting , the stage) ; (4) The Fantastic (animals, hunting, prey; we apons, wounds, warfare ; magic, omens, fairy tales; religion, the Grail; royalty) ; (5) The Material (gold, jewelry; possessions; the museum; buying and selling, finance , values ; art and artists; architecture); (6 ) Th e

Intelligent (k nowle dge , stupidity; ambigu ity; watching , seeing , vision) ; and ( 7) The Free (constraint; isolation ; escape; freedom) . A detailed examination of such images provides clues wh ich dispel much of the "amb iguity " arising from plot or characters .

This intense and complicated imagery reinforces the complexity not only of the relationships in the novel but also of Maggie 's journey toward knowledge and maturity and the reade r 's simultaneous quest for the knowledge Magg ie iv ultimately possesses. It is my contention that Henry Jame s provides enough clues through the imagery for us to break out of the labyrin th of amb iguity which some critics see in the novel, to experience with Maggie the "fascination of knowledge ," and to gain insight into James's great moral and aesthetic themes in the novel. v

TABLE OF COH'l'ENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION 1

The Germin ation ...... 8 Gen eral Criticism of The Golden Bowl . . . 13 Early Criticism (1904-1933) .... 13 The American Adam versus Europe (1934-1957) ...... 18 The Archetypal James (1957-63) 20 The Age of Techn ique (1963-84) 27 Criticism of Imagery . . . . 31

II. STRUCTURE AND TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL 44

Foreshorten in g 51 Foreshadowin g . . 53 Poin t of View . . 57

III. IMAGERY IN THE GOLDEN Bm'IL 68

The Adven turous . . 68 Adven turers, Discoverers 69 The Exotic . . . . 76 Garden s, Paradise 82

Deserts . . . . 85 The Sen suous 88 Water, Boats 93 Light, Dark ...... 105 Children , Games, Toys 118

The Superficial ...... 128

Scien ce ...... 130 Circus ...... 133

Acting, The Stage ...... 135

The Fantastic ...... 146 An imals, Huntin g ... 148 Warfare, Weapon s, Woun ds 156 Magic, Omen s, Fairy Tales 169 Religion ...... 183

The Grail ...... 202 Royalty ...... 210 The Material . . . 217 Buyin g, Sellin g, Values, Equilibrium 219 Gold, Jewels ...... 256 Collectin g, Museums .... 264

Works of Art ...... 295 vi

CHAPTER PAGE

The Artist 313 Architecture ...... 323 The Intelligent 348 Knowledge , Knowing ... 354 Visions , Seeing .. 365

The Free ...... 386 Constraint 388

Conveyance ...... 401

Isolation ...... 408

Flight ...... 422

Freedom ...... 428

IV. CONCLUSION 433

LIST OF REFERENCES 442

APPENDIX 455

VITA 487 vii

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE PAGE

A-1 . Analysis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

I,l -1,4 ...... 461

A-2. Analysis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

I,5-II ,2 ...... 462

A-3 . Analysis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

II, 3-II,6 ...... 463

A-4 . Analysis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

II,7-III,3 ...... 464

A - 5. Analysis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

III ,4-III,7 ...... 465

A-6 . Analysis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

III, 8-III,11 ...... 466

A-7 . Analysis of Technique 1n The Golden Bowl ,

IV,l-IV,4 . . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 467

A-80 Ana lysis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

IV,5-IV,8 . . 0 0 0 . 0 . . . 0 0 0 0 468

A - 9 0 Analy sis of Technique in The Golden Bowl ,

IV,9-V,3 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 . 0 0 0 0 469

A-100 Ana lysis of Technique 1n The Golden Bowl ,

V,4-VI ,3 . . 0 . . . . . 0 . 0 0 0 . 0 470

A-1 1o Imagery in The Golden Bowl by Character,

I,1-II ,7 . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 . 0 0 471

A-12o Imagery in The Golden Bowl by Character,

III , 1-III ,11 0 0 0 0 0 . . . . . 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 475

A-1 3. Imagery in 'I.'he Golden Bowl by Character ,

IV, 1-IV, 10 . 0 0 0 . . 0 . . 0 0 0 0 0 479

A-140 Imagery in The Golden Bowl by Character,

V,1-VI ,3 . o o o o o o o o • o o • 483 1

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTIOll

On November 28, 1892, Henry Jame s recorded the "germ" of a story which he had heard (NB 130) and was to develop almost twe lve years later into The Go lden Bowl , one of his greatest works and the culmination of forty years of writing fiction . His interest was stirred by the "the vicious circle" (NB 130) of two marriages bound legally and consan- guineously , but he admitted that "the subject is really the pathetic simplic ity and good faith of the father and daughter in their abandonment" (NB 130-31). However, this

"pathetic simpl icity and good faith" develops into a triumph of goodness over evil, of knowledge and passion over igno- ranee and fear , of maturity and magnanimi ty over childish pettiness and spite , of caritas and eros over luxuria.

Yet several critics have thought such a conclusion ingenuous and have tried to find .ln this nove l such an amount of ambiguity as to enforce a reading wherein

Charlotte and the Prince , not Adam and Haggie Verver, are the wronged couple, and so it is that Charlotte 's and

Amerigo 's good faith is tested . Mildred Hartsock in 1974 noted that

the novel continues to suffer from myopic biases and from careless reading. But most of all it suffers from that common defect of James 2

criticism : the idea that somehow James in genera l and this book in particular provide insurmountable difficulties or unresolvable ambiguities which remove him and it from the real world of men . (287)

The question posed by this paper is whether this seeming ambiguity is insuperable. Does an analysis of the novel's imagery confirm that the victory in the novel is primarily

Maggie 's?

I see my task as being much like Jame s Gargano 's in his excellent essay, "What Haisie Knew: The Evo lution of a

'Moral Sense' ." He states:

In attempting to determine what Maisie knows at the end of the novel, I shall examine the book 's internal logic and authorial commentary in the hope of capturing its staged revelations. For , despite obscurities, What Maisie Knew does po ssess a lucidit�l in the precisely articulated prepara tory scenes that consummate in the superficially ambiguous final chapters . In this study my aim has not been to promote another doctrinaire thesis, but to shovl . . the sure and de liberate architectonics through which James reveals his theme . (223 )

I asr;ume that by "architecton ics" Gargano means th ose structural elements in the novel wh ich bind it into an integrated wh ole , a logical and organic unity expres sing a meaning inherent in the structure . One of the most common critic isms of The Go lden Bowl is that its obscurity and ambiguity lie in the structure and characterizations of the novel . My view is that James used the novel's intense and intriguing imagery to make the reader experience Maggie 's devel opment . This complicat.ed imagery reinforces the 3 complexity not only of the rel ationships in the novel but also of Maggie's journey toward knowledge and maturity and the reader 's simultaneous quest for the knowledge I1aggie ultimately possesses. I agree wi t:h Rimmon , who says that the structure of the novel (girded by the imagery) "directs the reader 's attention to the medium itself, urging him to scan it with greater attention and in new ways in order to capture the elusive solution" ( 2 30) , but I disagree with

RiP1mon ' s contention that the reader fails "t�o break out of the labyrinth of ambiguities ." It is my conten tion that

IIenry James provides enough clues through the imagery for us to break out of that "la:byrint h of ambiguities" and to experience with Maggie "the fascination of knowledge" and to gain moral and aesthetic insight into Jame s•s great theme s in the novel. I also agree with Judith Chernaik that

. neither James 's subject nor his perspective is particularly ambiguous. . The reader should be in no danger of confusing the su rfaces with the essential s, that is, of making the same mistakes the characters repeatedly make . ( 108)

Before proceeding further, I should def ine ambiguity as usect in this paper. Hany gradations of "double meanings" exist; William Empson in Seven Types of Ambiguity del ineates seven types as (1) those which arise when a detail is effective in several ways at once ; (2) those which resolve two or more alternative meanings into one ; (3 ) those which present two apparently unconnected meanings simultaneously ; 4

(4) those which comb ine alternative meanings to make clear a complicated state of mind in the author ; (5) those which are fortunate confusions, as when the author is discovering his idea in the act of writing or not holding it all in mind at once ; (6) those which say what is contradictory or irrele vant so that the reader is forced to invent interpretations; and (7) those which are full contradictions, marking a division in the author 's mind (v-vi) . Empson remarks that the seventh type usual ly leads to a Freudian psychoanalysis of the author by the cri�ic .

Usually the first five types occur in poetry , and I agree that James is "amb iguous" in employing poetically his immense system of images and symbols. Yet the images clari fy a complicated , not an arnbivale nt, state of mind in the author . Those critics who see the sixth and seventh types of ambiguity in The Golden Bowl are mi staken.. The last two types of arnbiguity have to do with arnbivalen ce, the exi s tence of mutually conflicting feelings or attitude s, either within the author or his audience ; both types refer to statements made by the author. But James is typically careful not to make "statements'' from an omniscient point of view. Usually action or description are handled from a character 's viewpoint; a character may think the situation ambiguous without the author doing so. If James felt amb iguous or divided in his treatment or technique in the novel, he left no clue . 5

Those "sure an� del iberate architectonics" of which

Gargano writes are never so effective in James 's works as in

The Ambassadors and The Go lden Bowl . This architectural structure in The Golden Bowl has been noted before and linked primarily with the nume rous architectural metaphors in the novels and in James 's criticism. Fogel, in his Henry

James and the Structure of the Romantic Imagination (1981) , presents to my mind the most cogent argument fo r structure in the later novels, that of the "spiral ascent" of the

Hege lian Bildungsweg, a quest for knowledge and experience specifically Romantic , as exempl ified by Blake , Wordsworth ,

Goethe, and , most importantly for James, Coleridge . Fogel lists the polarities which exist in the novel� in addition to the American-European dichotomy, he notes several othe rs which wi ll emerge from a study of the imagery--"material and spiritual goods, the mora1 sense and the aesthetic sense

. victim and agent, science and history " (90) . As Foge l acknowledge s, the extremes in the imagery create ambiguities on the surface of the novel and make the reader feel these

in the dai ly lives of the characters, the "bliss and the bale" as James calls them in the Preface to w:'lat Haisie Knew

(NYE XI , viii) . But my study will attempt to trace the development of the imagery as it aids in the plot and the characterizations of The Golden Bowl . The imagery is con-

sistent and enlightening and disspells the moral ambiguity

supposed by critics. Of the "ambiguity ," Fogel decides 6

the novel is a masterpiece of controlled amb iguity All too often analyses of the novel become obsessive hunts for ambiguity , whether treated as an Empsonian criterion of value or as a measure of confusion and of artistic fail ure . The critic of a work of the scope of The Golden Bowl ought, perforce, to pay strict attention to the contextual control of the possi ble plurisignations in the text in order to arrive at a clear est imate of the most probable interpre tation. (88)

This last charge is what I will attempt with an analysis of

the imagery, the "possib le plurisignations in the text" which determine meaning and reader response. In the novel,

James leads the reader through a journey of imagination and

growing knowledge , uniting both to impress upon the reader

his moral conclusion, not in order to allow the reader to misinterpret the story , but to allow the reader to experi-

ence himself much of the process which Maggie unde rgoes in

her quest for "happiness without a hole in it big enough for

you to poke in your finger" (II 216) . A diagram of the

structure of the plot might appear thus:

Maggie

Charlotte

The twi sting , twining lines {resembling the doub le spiral

helix) intersect at points as do the characters ' actions and

emotions in the novel. Because the moments of highest 7 intensity in the novel and their reflections of the charac ters ' emotional states are so vivid , some readers may be swept along with the emotional tide , their feelings cresting and ebbing with the sympathies gene rated for different characters in various scenes unless the readers have managed somehow from the beginning to find a firm toehold to which to cling. This firm grounding comes from a careful scrutiny of the structure of the plot and of the imagery associated with each character, especial ly Maggie. Such scrutiny leads one to break away from tremendous personal sympathies for the characters and to achieve balance and detachment in evaluating the novel. As Bryan Reddick has observed of the narrative distance in the novel, there are "many parallel scenes that balance one another in the novel"; there is a

"feJt structure of each chapter, book, and volume , and the image patterns in the wo rk as a whole" (53) c'ameS IS COn- trol of the reader 's reactions 1s crucial to the argument of this paper , for only the reader who penetrates these dis tance barriers to become part of the whole novel will dis cover that the arnbigui ty lies only in the interpretation , not in the creation and intent , of The Golden Bowl . It

should be evident that I here accept a predeconstructionist view of language and art. I assume , that is, that an

author 's intention can be determined , and that the language of the text is controlled by his intention (his comments on 8

revision 1n the Preface to The Go lden Bowl indicate that he thought so too) I do not accept the view that ,James 's image ry escapes his intentional control or that his figures in this novel imply inescapable duplicities.

The Germination

Before attempting such a refutation of the criticism supporting ambiguity , the critic may profit from a review of basic information about James and his prel iminary thoughts about the novel. Following the first lengthy "germ" entry in his Notebooks about The Go lden Bowl , Jame s allov1ed a great deal of time (until February 14 , 1895) (NB 187) to pass before th inking again of the "International" novel--one he hoped would prove profitable through Harper 's. Although he thought it could be done in 60 ,000 to 75,000 words (NB

188), the New York Version runs to 192, 000 words, according to Ga le (251) . Later, 1n December of the same year, James includes it in ''the approx imate or provisional labels of the sujets de roman that I just alluded to one' s having en t�te"

nm 223) . Jame s refers to it as "The Marriages ," even while lamenting that he had already used the title for the short story of 1891 (NB 223) which involve s, ironically , a daughter 's breaking of her father's engagement instead of her actively working for it as Maggie does in The Golden

Bowl . 9

Immediately before writing The Golden Bowl , James undertook the second biography of his career, that of

William Wetmore Story . After their father 's death in 1895, the three Story children proposed the project to James, but he refused. Later, perhaps because of pressing financial reasons , James agreed to write the biography for a generous advance (SL 100). Subsequently, he visited Italy in 1899 to sift through the letters left by the Storys, Brownings ,

Lowells, and other members of the American literary and artistic colony of the mid-nineteenth century. Returning to

Lamb House in the summer, James laid aside his notes for the biography until September 22 , 1902 (The Master 129) . After two months of reminiscing , James finished his "preposterous job" (SL 45) , and it was published in 1903 , its appearance almost coinciding with The Ambassadors . Although James says in the Preface to Lady Barberina "the subject of 'The Wings of the Dove ,' or that of 'The Golden Bowl , ' has not been the exhibited behavior of certain Americans as Americans, of certain English as English, of certain Romans as Romans,"

(NYE XIV, v-vi} , the image ry of The Golden Bowl , as well as some of the major characters , may be traced to the research which James did for the Story biography. Although Ede 1 correctly cites James 's viewing of the George I bowl which belonged originally to Lamb House on December 31, 1902 , as inspiring James to begin work on the novel, Edel misses the 10 significance of James 's letter to Houghton , Hifflin and

Company on the 29th. In this letter Jame s declines the offer to vJrite the life of Jame s Russell Lowe ll for the

American Men of Letters series, citing his work on Story as being too exhausting . The biography hac1 grown (as had so many of his works) too large , for "the brevity of the sub ject [made] amplification of some sort or other positively vital" (HJL IV, 263) . James goe s on to say "if a man has had a quiet life, but a great mind , one may do something with him. " James often wrote (especially in his Prefaces) of the importance of the intense and aware consciousness in a fully lived existence; I believe th is quiet yet intellec tually active person is a model for Maggie Verver . Also, the Storys ' daughter Edith hac1 married an Italian nobleman and might have inspired the situation of the novel in some way . The gol den bowl , the Italian memories , the germ of the novel from 1895 all coalesced into the beginnings of the book in early 1903 (The Ma ster 209) .

James 's first mention of the novel in his letters , however, does not occur until May 20, 1904 , when he writes to Mr . J. B. Pinker , his Scribner 's agent , that he had written 200, 000 words "with the rarest perfection" (LL II,

15) . To Mrs . W. K. Clifford (n§e Lucy Lane , a London author) , he mentions that The Golden Bowl is in an "unpre cedented" fourth edition in the U.S. , attributed to his tour ll of the States (LL II, 30) . However , by 1911 he tells Edith

Wharton that the making of The Golden Bowl was "the most arduous and thankless task I ever set myself" (LL II, 209) .

Perhaps he recalled her comment , when the novel wa s published, that he had "stripped" his characters of "human fringes" (Wharton 191) . Hurt as he wa s by Wharton 's reaction to what he be lieved to be his finest work , he was devastated by the letter written by his brother William:

It put me , as most of your recenter short stories have put me , in a very puzzled state of mind . I don't enjoy the kind of "problem, " especially when , as in this case , it is treated as prob lem atic (viz ., the adulterous relations between Charlotte and the Prince) , and the method of narration by interminable elaboration of sugges tive reference . . goes agin the grain of all my own impulse s in writing; and yet in spite of it all , there is a brilliancy and cleanness of effect, and in this book especially a high-toned social atmosphere that are unique and extraordi nary. Your method and my ideals seem the reverse , the one of the other--and yet I have to admit your extreme success in th is book . But why won 't you , just to please Brother, sit down and write a new book , with no twilight or mu stiness in the plot, with greater vigor and decisiveness in the action , no fencing in the dialogue , no psychological com mentaries , and absolute straightne ss in the style? . I wish you would, for you can ; and I should think it would tempt you , to embark on a "fourth ma nner." (Matthiessen 334)

Henry replied on November 23, 1905:

I mean (in response to what you write me of your having read the Go lden B. ) to try to produce some uncanny form of thing , in fiction , that will gratify you , as Brother--but let me say , dear William , that I shall greatly be huniliated if you do like it, and thereby lump it, in your affec tion , with things, of the current age , that I have 12

heard you express admiration for and that I would sooner descend to a dishonoured gra.ve than have written. Still I will wr ite you your book . (LL I I I 4 3)

William responded on February J, 1906:

Your last was your delightful reply to my remarks about your "third manner ," wh erein you sa id that you would consider your bald head dis honored if you ever carne to pleasing me by what you wrote , so shocking was my taste . Well! only write for me , and leave the question of pleasing open ! I have to admit that in The Golden Bowl and The Wing of the Dove , you have succeeded in get ting there after a fashion , in spite of the per versity of the me thod and its longness, which I am not the on ly one to deplore . (Hatthiessen 340)

Of course, much of Henry 's chagrin at William's ottitude may be attributed to Henry's sense of inferiority to his brother , analyzed and documented by Leon Edel in his five-volume biography of Henry James. William's criticism st.ung Henry . By 1911 he protests to Edith Wharton that he vri ll not repeat

the interminable and formidab le job of my producing a rnon �� another Golden Bowl . . Ny own sense is that I don 't want , and oughtn 't to try , to attack ever again anything bigger than the Outcry . the "artistic economy" of that inferior little product being a mu ch more calcu lated and ciphered , much more cunning and crafty one than that of five G. B. 's. (LL II I 209)

Still, when Mrs . G. W. Prothero requested a reading list of

James's works for a young admirer, James did not he sitate to include The Golden Bowl on both the elementary and advanced lists as one of his five most representative works (The 13

Wings of the Dove lS the other work mentioned on both lists)

( LL I I , 3 3 2-3 3) .

General Criticism of The Go lden Bowl

Readino all the varied criticism on The Golden Bowl , one could infer that the critics were examining entirely dif fcrent novels, for the diversity of opinion is hard to reconcile with the examination of just one book . Only "The

Turn of the Screw" elicits such controversial and polar views on one of Henry James 's works. Almost every critical orientation of the twentieth century ha s been applied to it, from Freudian and Jungian psychological theories to Marxist politics to re ligious themes to arche typal and folkloric interpretations . Some current criticism, though , focuses on

James 's text rather than on his character portrayals , plot complications , or moral and aesthetic themes , and emphasizes the so-called "ambiguity" of expression which some critics read in The Golden Bowl . In particular, Charles T. Samue ls,

Shlomi th Rimmon , and Ralf Norrman discuss in detail Henry

James 's "amb iguity" in The Golden Bowl and in his la.ter novels after "The Turn of the Screw" (1895) .

Early Criticism (1904-1933)

The Golden Bowl wa s not well received by early critics ,

J.n spite of the rapid sales resulting from the American tour ; after the acclaim given to The Wings of the Dove , The 14

Golden Bowl seemed a giant step backward into "vague ver bosity" (LL II , 209) . The longest of his works, The Golden

Bowl might have been too formidable even to devoted

Jacobites (those who read The Sacred Fount also) . Even so ,

Scribner 's printed 2,000 copies of the first impression at

$2 .50 for two volumes on November 10, 1904; Methuen in

England issued 3,000 copies (including colonial sRles) at 6s

(Edel and Laurence , 127-28) . [For comparison , one should note that Wharton 's The House of Mirth had 140,000 copies in

print in only two months (Lewis 150-51) . ]

The earliest critic ism of The Golden Bowl , not sur prisingly for Victorian England and America , centered upon the "scandalous" plot. As early as 1895 Jame s wor ried about how to handle the "adulterine element" (NB 188) , even going so far as to consider publishing The Golden Bowl in France and foregoing the usual magazine serialization . But he then decided "may it not be simply a quest ion of handling that?

For God 's sake let me try" (NB 18 7) .

Some critics were aghast at the relationships between the characters in The Golden Bowl. F. T. Cooper in "The

Trick of Euphemism" speaks of The Golden Bowl as "a sort of verbal game of hide-and-seek an endless chain of improprieties . . a tissue of hideous , nameless complica tions" (551) . One could even hypothesize that the reasons for its unprecedented fourth edition were not only that 15

James was in the U.S. at the time of its publication but also that it was criticized as being as "scandalous" as a

French novel. How James viewed this criticism is not recorded , but his trea tment of the French novel in The

Awkward Age and in his discussions of French novelists implies that he probably would not have believed that his novel could corrupt young ladies such as those he addressed at Bryn Mawr during his tour of the United States; one critic , in an unsigned review in the Nation , noted that "No one except Mr . James could tell it in English without grossness or vulgarity without making us all out to be , in his estimation , no bet.ter than the French" ( 7 4) .

H. G. Wright reported that

readers all over the country filled the papers with denunciation of this book--its under mining of the public morals ("decadence" wa s the favorite word) , its general darkness and unintel ligibility . Indeed , it quite enjoyed a succes de scandale. (167)

Later, in 1916 , Rebecca We st , as usual, had the last word on

the impropriety of The Golden Bowl when she asserted that

. it is one of the strangest things about The Golden Bowl that the frame on which there hangs the most elaborate integument of suggestion and exposition ever woven by the mind of man is an ugly and incompletely invented story about some people who are sexua lly mad . ( 110)

Not all critics, however, harped on the sexual. A few

of the more enlightened decided that The Golden Bowl was at

least worth reading , if not enjoying. (For some , reading 16

Henry James seemed on a par with taking a daily dose of caster oil--hard to swa llow at first , but very stimulating in the end.) Their major complaints about the novel focused on style and characterization.

Of the portrayals of the major characters , Maggie's was seen as the best, although West in her inimitable way said,

"He began to show his age . . the characters in The Golden

Bowl say un speakable sentences, do incredible things, and are not even human" (11 2) . (The same things were said about v�e st herself. )

Almo st every critic , even those disliking the style or the characters , admitted that the book was a masterful psychological achievement . Some of the typical comments indicated that the book was "a marvel of subtle adroitness in a style practiced by a ma ster craftsman with a consummate skill compounded of rare psychologica l insight and extraordinary feeling for words" (Outlook 865); one critic noted that

His elaborate , intricate , hesitating style is really a wonderfully delicate ins trument, a miraculous pri sm th at breaks common light into a spectrum revealing curious and interesting things . Both '-Tames 's style and the fashionable and not very moral society he portrays suit very well his subtle and analytical purpose, in which endeavor he is unrivaled . (Republican 19)

After James's death in 1916, his execu tion of a difficult and distinctive mode of writing gained more praise .

One critic from the Philadelphia Press stated : 17

He was a peerless and exceptionally clear-eyed pioneer in fictionally handling international relationships, in seeing and de l ineating social types. In such masterpieces a The Ambassa dors and The Golden Bowl , he realizes the most vivid sense of actual personality . At his best, James was a great figure , though not a great force , in American literature. (12)

One of Henry Jame s 's �o st vehement supporters was

Elisabeth Cary , who wrote the first full- length study of

James 's wo rks in 1905. In a review of The Golden Bowl , she wrote :

The art created by Jame s 's enlightened and forti fied intelligence is mature and demands a certain ma turity and analytical ab ility in the reader . James is both realistic and my stical, his equal sensitiveness to the vi sible and the invis ible gives his works their moral worth, and he counts for the sturdiest morality. ("Henry James" 39 4)

Later, in her The Novels of Henry James , she suggested that

He has a rare perception of the positive aesthetic value of moral and intellectual visions . Although his characters often do not spring to life immedi ately, they are alive . Jame s interprets their shades of feel ing with precision and subtlety and distills their es sence without dissecting them. (187)

Writing 1n 1927, Pelham Edgar praised The Golden Bowl

in terms wh ich it was not to enjoy for two decades : "The

Golden Bowl (1904) , James's last complete novel, is a work

of so curious and difficult a beauty that of all our

author 's major novels it most profits by renewed contact with its pages" (324) . He also wrote that although he could

not call it the finest of James's works , "yet in many ways 18

The Golden Bmvl seems to me most effectively to comb ine all the resources of James's developed art" (342) . Edgar noted a "Puritanic strain" in Maggie and Ad am which leads to a

"lack of charity" ( 326) ; this view of Maggie and her father persisted in criticism from 1934 to 1957, when the critics of The Golden Bowl occupied two principal camps , the sociali st-Marxist and the folkloric. Both groups tended to focus on Adam; more was written on his elus ive character in the late 1940s and through the 1950s than before or since that period.

The American Adam versus Europe (1934-1957)

This era in Jamesian criticism began auspiciously with the publication of the 1934 issue of Hound and Horn in which the leading young critics of the day praised James 's craft .

Included among articles by critics such as Marianne Moore ,

Stephen Spender, and Edmund Wilson lS Francis Fergusson 's incisive discussion of "The Drama in The Golden Bowl" in wh ich James is seen as moving from romanticism in the early work s to dramatic later novels. Fergusson cited the grand scale on which The Golden Bowl is written and the care with wh ich James arranges the settings in the novel, especially the confrontations between Charlotte and Maggie (407-13) .

Several important discussions of The Golden Bowl were written during these two decades by Rahv , Lewis, Nuhn , and 19

Tintner. Artic les in the mid�SO 's provoked much contro- versy, which led to the great reversal of criticism in the next period . In particular, essays by Joseph Firebaugh ,

Caroline Gordon , and Christo£ Wegelin set the fuse for the outbur st of critic ism on the novel which still continues twenty-five years later. Firebaugh , in a virulent attack on the Ve rvers wh ich ignored mu ch of the imagery associated with the two , contended that Adam is intent on killing all life and substituting for it sterile art in his own constrained, absolute wor ld. t·1aggie is rmre pass ionate than her father, but this just makes her worse , since all her passion is directed toward Adam, asserted Firebaugh , who ignored much of the sexual awareness r.lctggie reaches. His final summation of the novel is that

The Golden Bowl is a gigantic horrified protest again st the manoeuve ring of appearances to favour a priori concepts of the good , the true , and the beautiful; against the use of knowledge to pre serve a specious appearance of innocence . Thus it attacks the gentility of James 's era . (410)

Immediately, defenders of the novel answered th is attack .

C. B. Cox and Edwin Perrin decided

Mr . Firebaugh tries to explain away Adam ' s obvious amiability by suggesting that Adam uses a tissue of little niceties of conduct in order to conceal from himself his own selfishness. In fact, Jame s is emphasizing that the Ververs are excessively generous towards other people. ( 191)

They also anticipated feminist critic ism of the nove l in

the ir statement that "Maggie is not , as Hr . Firebaugh 20 suggests , a Machiavellian schemer, but a woman battling for her rights as an individual" (193) .

In 1956 Christo£ Wegeljn joined Firebaugh in trying to squeeze Adam into the �old of the acquisitive entrepreneur- connoisseur who seeks to denude Europe of her mo st precious treasures. On the other hand, Adam' s estimation has never received a higher worth than ln the opinion of Caroline

Gordon , who, in a remarkable essay containing many of the critical themes of the next decade , stated that "Mr. Verver seems to me his arch-creation , and The Golden Bowl the crown of his life's work Mr . Verver is, I suspect, our national hero--even as Chad Newsome is our national villain "

(44-47) . She went so far as to suggest parallels between

Adam's subduing of Charlotte and St. George 's slaying of the dragon--both heroes save their realms .

The Archetypal James (1957-63)

The year 1957 mu st stand as a "wa tershed" year in

Jame sian studies. Leon Edel notes, "The 1950s brought a great change in Jamesian criticis m" ("Introduction" 8) , and identifies Quentin Anderson 's 'l'he American Henry ,Jame s as the source of the new direction of critical flow :

Anderson 's thesis inaugurated in the 1950s that school of critic ism which reads more into Jame s - than out of him, and this has been true of the attempts to disrover . amb iguity in narrators who reveal themselves with crystal clarity in the ir narratives. ("Introduction" 9) 21

Anderson 's thesis did not just appear suddenly, though � the mytho-religious view of Jame s in general and of The Golden

Bowl in particular was a natural evolution of the socialist

Marxist and of the folkloric critic isms of the 1930s-40s.

The disillusionment following World War II about our Russian allies and the decline of the New Deal certainly diluted the enthusiasm of even the intelligentsia for socialism� the ensuing furor over McCarthyism probably tolled the death knell of any literary criticis m even slightly "pink," at least for several years. In addition , Jame s was Anglo-

American (or truly American-Anglo) and thus represented a forging of literary (and political) traditions for the post-war generation. Who better to exalt as the true imager of both England and America? The zeitgeist was already present in the folkloric criticism of the 1940s� if, as

Caroline Gordon proposed , the creation was the national hero , who else was the logical choice but the creator as the archetypal national historian of American and Engl ish cul tural "growing pai ns"?

As early as 19 4 3 Austin vvarren had noted the my thic emblematic quality of both The Golden Bowl and its succes-

sor, The Ivory Tower. Myron Ochshorn in 1952 thought that

"Among other things The Golden Bowl retells the legend of

Adam (Verver) and Eve (Maggie) in the Garden (Fawns )" (341)

and sees Charlotte as the serpent and the Prince as the 22 rotten apple Maggie tastes. Still, no one , I think, was prepared for Anderson 's book . The public was forewarned in

1955 when Francis Fergusson reviewed Anderson 's manuscript which grew out of his 1946 Kenyon Review articles.

Fergusson said "The allegorical meaning of the late trilogy is simp ly the elder James 's religious-historical philosophy"

(14) . In Anderson 's elaborate scheme of The American Henry

James (1957) , The Ambassadors become s the Jewish Church , The

Y'lings of the Dove the New or Christian Church, and The

Golden Bowl the New Jerusalem, in wh ich all mankind is redeemed and bound by no laws or institutions. The Princ i pino is thus the divine (Maggie) -natural (Amerigo ) redeemed man of the future , Adam is divine wisdom , Maggie is divine love , Charlotte is the ego or selfhood , Bob materialism, and

Fannie (rather deservedly, I should think) the Whore of

Babylon , the false Church . The golden bowl itself is divine marriage and must be emptied of selfhood (the flawed Prince and Charlotte) and refilled with Maggie 's divine love . In a later book , Anderson 's The Imperial Self, Adam becomes the defeated Henry James , Sr . , Maggie Henry Jame s himself, the golden bowl fornication , and the Principino an "imaginative cheat." All this seems bizarre to most Jamesians , yet

Anderson 's stress on personal freedom in James' novels was important . 23

Another important book published in 1957 was Frederick

Crews 's The Tragedy of .t-1anners: Hora J Drama 1n the Later

Novels of Henry James, in which he agrees with Fergusson 's assessment of The Golden Bowl : "The subject of the novel , in my opinion , is power" (85) . Although Crews sees every character in the novel as acknowledging Adam's wealth and power, each one avoids his or her social responsibilities to the others as u consequence of it, and therefore , "each character admits to a basic sense of guilt" (97) . Maggie , then, functions as a redeemer of sorts , trying her best to assuage everyone 's guilty knowledge , all the while untouched by the evil surrounding her and continuing to love all to the utmost , proving that the struggle for power is not all the novel contains . While it is true that the "tragedy of manners" is the societal restrictions preventing each character from obtaining a moral awareness of self and a social awareness of others , f.lagg ie, of all James 's later characters, seems to be the one closest to hurtling the barriers and aiding the others , especially Amerigo , to do so. Crews does not link the struggle for dominance to the major theme of freedom versus enslavement wh ich later critics see in James's works. Walter Wright in The Madness of Art calls The Golden Bowl a mythical romance of adventure and passion and says that "The simplest form of adventure , for James, was the traditional love romance , involving 24 escape for some form of tyranny or conventionality to freedom for self-expression" (19), an assessment with which

I fully agree and will expand later in my discussion on the imagery .

The most rational reading of the entire novel, by Oscar

Cargill, was published ln 1961 . Although the first pages of his chapter on The Golden Bowl in The Novels of Henrv James are devoted to a rather unlike ly source (Paul Bourget) for the three novels of the major phase , his thoughts on The

Golden Bowl are the most judicious and astute to that time .

Combining a fair treatment of prior criticism with a firm understanding of the novel's structure and characters ,

Cargill easily does away with the more extreme or mistaken critics by pointing to the place in their readings where they go wrong . His final evaluation of The Golden Bowl is indicative of the esteem he held for the novel : "Structure , characterization , brilliant di a logue , significant struggle, and techn ique make The Golden Bowl a great novel it belongs among the great novels of modern times" (429) .

Cargill 's chapter, especially the pages of possible sources, anticipates th e next critical era, one that concentrate s on going behind the novel itself, searching for sources , analogues , and parallels to The Golden Bowl , and on James 's techn iques in handling the language of fiction. 25

However , in 1963 three books were published which perhaps encapsulate the critic ism of the late 1950s and early 1960s: Maxwell Ge ismar 's Henry James and the Jacob ites, Dorothea Krock 's The Ordeal of Consciousness, and

F . 0 • Matth i essen ' s -'H'-e-'n_r�'.._l cT_a me_s,: _T h_e M_a�J.._· or_P'-h-'-a-'s'-e. Gei smar _ _.:..;._ _=--- -'-' _ .:__ chose to ignore Maggie 's complete physical surrende r to the

Prince and her concern throughout the second part that

Amerigo will spoil her plan and conquer her knowledge by focussing upon her his immense sexual appeal . Hatthiessen concentrated on the handling of the images, wh ich "consti tute the high-water mark of James 's virtuosity" (81) and argued that "the scenes between Maggie and Charlotte are as charged with the energy of the unspoken as any that James

ever >·Jrote" ( 9 8) • Still, as much as he praised James's techn ique , Matthies sen though t the characterization s failures--Adam unbelievable as a businessman , Maggie and her father essentially incestuous , and Maggie and Amerigo unsuited for each other, facing a futile future . However ,

Hatthiessen is not consistent in his criticism, for after admitting the fairy-tale quality of the novel, "a world of magical enchantment" (94) , he chides ,James for an unreal

Adam and an incestuous Maggie. Matthiessen seems to acknowledge the romantic quality of the novel and then to criticize James for not being realistic . 26

In The Ordeal of Consciousness Dorothea Krook analyzes

The Golden Bow l in much more complimentary terms . Describ- ing James 's heroes and heroines in general, she writes

They are all, these Jamesian heroes and heroines, endowed in an extraordinary degree with the gift of intelligence , imagination , sensibility, and a rare delicacy of moral insight; and they are all extraordinarily articulate about all that they see and un derstand . And since their inordinate capacity for enjoyment an� suffering is matched by their inordinate passion for knowledge , especially self-knowl edge , their suffering is not the blind , brute suffering of con@On human ity, which is alv1ays pitiful , often indeed heartbreaking , but never tragic . Their suffering is the kind pecu liar to the highly intelligent and highly imagina tive it is because the suffering of the Jamesian heroes and heroines is of this kind- because it is suffering illuminated by under standing , or the pass ionate aspiration after understanding--that it is redemptive , even when in the end it destroys them ; and because redemptive in this way , therefore also truly tragic--tru ly exemplary and instructive. (15 -17)

Thus , !1aggie ' s great love for both Adam and 1\merigo becomes redemptive for three reasons : "First, it is essentially selfle ss; second , it is grounded in anguish and humiliation ; third, it is informed by intelligence ; it fights to win, and uses all the resources of the mind to accomplish its end "

(255) . Krook seems to shirk a little at the end , however , by cvpi tulating to the critics of Th e Golden Bowl in a basically untenable thesis:

If the general hypothesis about the Jamesian ambiguity in The Golden Bowl is valid, its pre sence at these crucial points in the resolution of the drama can itself then have only one meaning: that, in Henry James 's total vis ion, the sense of 27

the grimness and bitterness of human life is inseparably fused with the sense of its beauty and blessedness; that neither cancels out the other; and that the amb iguity is intended to express precisely this experience of their permanent , inseparable fusion . ( 3 24)

While Krook might be correct 1n her view of life as mixed , in this interpretation Krook protests too much, for Jame s sees the effects of such a life upon his intelligent creations manifest themselves as "any produced amb iguity of appearance that is not by the same stroke, and all helplessly , an ambiguity of sense " (NYE XXI xxii) . Certainly,

James knew the bliss as well as the bale, but the imagery in this novel, which Krook praises so highly , emphasizes knowledge (not ambiguity) and love (not bitterness) , positive virtues which are not ambiguous , no matter how uncertain the circumstances which lead to them. To recall

Hartsock 's comment , just because the characters are confused is no reason to believe that James is, or that he wanted his readers to be .

The Age of Techn ique (19G3-84)

In the last twenty years, critics have combined discussions of meanings with analysis of Jamesian technique .

The complexity of Jame s 's art and the ability of critics to call it hy many names leads to a similarity of focus which is reflected in the fol lowing list of ma jor critical books to appear during this period : The Negative Imagination : 28

Form and Perspective in the Novels of henry Jame s (Sears

1963) , The Expense of Vis ion: Essays on the Craft of Henry

Jame s (HoJ land 196 4) , The Imaginn.tion of Loving (Lebowitz

1965) , The Ironic Dimension in the Fiction of Henry Jame s

(Clair 1965) , The Search for Form : Studies in the Structure of ,Jame s 's Fict ion (Ward 1967) , Henry lJ ames and the Requ ire ments of the Imagination (Weinstein 1971) , The Later Style of Henry Jame s (Chatman 1972) , Workable Design : Action and

Structure 1n the Fiction of Henry Jame s (O'Neill 1973) ,

Henry James 's "Sublime Economy" : Money as Symbolic Center in the Fiction (Mull 1973) , Femininity and the Creative

Imagination (Appignanesi 1973) , Henry James and the Comic

Form O·lallace 197 5) , Communities of Honor and Love in Henry

James (Hackenzie 1976) , The Crystal Cage : Adventures of the

Imagination in the Fiction of Henry Jame s (Schneider 1978) ,

'l'he Novels of Henry lT ames: A Study of Culture and Con- sciousness (Lee 1978) , Love and the Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Henry Jame s (Sicker 1980) , Henry James and the Structure of the Romantic Imagination (Fogel 1981) ,

Culture and Conduct in the Novels of Henry Jame s (Berland

1981) , and Imagination and Desire in the Novels of Henry

James (Kaston 198 4) .

One expects catchwords such as "imagination ," "form," and "consciousness" to appear in discussions of an author whose work is based on psychological realism, but his 29 imagination is classified as "negative ," "ironic ," "creative," "adventurous ," and "romantic." Do these classifications not reinforce an air of ambiguity ? Not necessarily.

The classifications reinforce the creativity of Jame sian critics themselves, who ln clarifying these distinctions have helped to clarify , or at least to expand the possibili ties of , the novel.

Several other critical strains emerge after the early sixties. Poirier, Rourke, Leyburn , Wallace , Mackenzie, and

Foge l all see The Golden Bowl as a sort of divine comedy wherein the foolish and the innocent (Maggie and Adam) are in truth the wise and the prudent, completely overshadowing the "false wise" Fanny, Charlotte , and Amerigo. Bob , of course , is seen as comic relief. The true lovers (Haggie and Amerigo) are reunited in the end , so that the novel approache s Shakespeare 1 s A Midsummer Night 1 s Dream in its realignment of spouses. Another, and somewhat related , theme grows out of Ferner Nuhn 1 s comment that The Golden

Bowl is a children's tale . Naomi Lebowitz and Lisa

Appignanesi agree that Maggie is a Cinderella princess , with

Fanny acting as the fairy god-mother, Charlotte as the wicked stepmother, and Amerigo as the frog/prince . Maggie 's

"magic" is her self-awareness working with her love for the prince . This view has also been supported by Fogel and Lee .

Judith Fryer, on the other hand , sees Amerigo as a "somewhat 30

dingy prince" whose function in the novel is to create

sympathy for the princess who has to deal vlith him , thus making "her own qualities as princess shine all the

brighter" (86) . The search for analogues in folklore and

fairy tales seems to be a fertile field, fitting as it does

so closely to feminist criticism (of wh ich there has been a

lack concerning The Golden Bowl) and to Jungian archetypal

criticism. A recent work by Clare Goldfarb posits Haggie as

the Questor of the Grail legend , but Goldfarb is un success

ful in proving her thesis, not because of the analogue but

because she chooses to focus on Adam as the Fisher King, not

an apt comparison if one considers his function and descrip

tion in the novel.

On ly one full- length book has been devoted to The

Golden Bowl , vl ilson 's Henry Jame s 's Ultimate Narrative : The

Golden Bowl , in which Wilson tries to resolve the "ambi

guity" of the novel by propo sing an "authorial vantage

point" (24) which is the ma in "center" of the novel rather

than Maggie or Amerigo. By disallowing traditional studies

of structure and quantitative analyses of imagery (such as

mine) , though , Wilson makes the mistake of saying that

Maggie "is not the chief figure in this drama" ( 6 4) ;

instead , James himself becomes the most important "charac

ter" through the shifting , "multiva lent" points of view in

the novel. Needless to say, while Wilson discusses the 31 characters with great enthusiasm and at great length , he emerges as a "Maggie-hater." While showing respect for

James 's narrative technique , Wilson does not give attention to the great theme s embodied in the novel, theme s which are undergirded amp ly by the imagery .

More recent criticism has examined miscellaneous minutiae , the chief writer of which is Adeline Tintner , probably the most prolific critic of James. This search for an iconography of James began in the early fifties with

Allott , Todasco , and Tintner herself and has developed into an elaborate network of references for James 's imagery, characters , and settings , wh ich will be discussed in the next section.

Criticism of Imagery

James's mode of expression is dramatic in its portrayal

of mental and emotional states of being and poetic in its

concentration of images presented as reactions to or illus-

trations of these states . Dorothea Krook calls The Go lden

Bowl "James's mo st ambitious ly conceived and mo st bril-

liantly execu ted long poem" (Ordeal 233) . Alexander Holder-

Barell, in classifying the images James uses in his novels,

says ,

It becomes evident , especially in The Golden Bowl , that every image stands exactly in its prope r place in the devel opment of the plot, and par ticularly that the emphasizing images are always introduced at essent ial points . (47) 32

In relation to Maggie he notes that

With Maggie Verver we find a similar change hetween the first and second parts of the novel. Here again war images are introduced to establish and emphasize the transition which , in her case , is from pass ivity to a.ctivity . (75)

But the images do more t.han just show Maggie 's turn from passivity to activity � instead , the images establish Maggie

as the supreme artist in the gallery of James's characters .

She , more than any other fema le character , approx imates

James 's ideal of the imaginative , perceptive , subtle

knower--the artist who observes life , then paints it in the

colors she chooses. Significantly, Adam thinks in terms of

artifacts, while Maggie "intuits'' through images of art and

drama . Maggie is her father 's daughte r, but with a twist--a

more empathetic , loving "turn" which affects her every

thought and emotion .

Other critics have reinforced , in several excellent

art icles, their readings of the images in the novel. In

1943 Austin Warren defined the mnin division in James 's

images as thot of the "extended conceit ," or prolonged image

reminiscent of the metaphysical poets , and of the emblem, a

"symbolized intuition" which creates the mythic (128) and

wh ich Maggie uses repeatedly in The Go lden Bowl to "image"

persons and their relationships (130) . Ade line Tintner

discussed the imagery as it relates to theme and concluded 33 that Maggie and Adam misinterpret the "experi ence of

Europe"J in stead of learning to assimilate the old with the new , the innocence with the experience , they stultify their

relationshi ps with Charlotte and Amerigo by viewing them only as museum pieces from Europe ("S poils" 239-51).

In the 1950s many articles dug deeper into the mine of

sparkling images in The Golden Bowl , the most comprehensive being R. W. Short 's 1953 article, in which he divides the

imagery of the later novels into three categories . Other

critics elaborated on specific groups. Myron Ochshorn noted

the Garden of Eden imagery (340-4 2) , and Miriam Allott the

recurring art , money, and animal imagery in the later works , which combine "the beautiful and the sinister" ( 3 21-3 36) .

Furthering the discuss ion of imagery immensely, Priscilla

Gibson analyzed James 's use of imagery in his creation of

dramatic intensity :

New insight often begins with a shi ft in point of view. In the "new light" of increased awareness , a mo re complete understanding is superimposed strikingly, and often ironically , on a partial one . As his characters explore the situ ations in wh ich they have placed themselves, the new applications which they find for their initial metaphors enable us to attend a realistic drama of the ir individual and social awakenings . (1076)

She also notes the use of image ry to integrate '' picture" and

"scene" and to illumine characters, and the way in wh ich

foreshadowing becomes dramatic irony through the use of

repetitive images by different characters. Her most valuable comment, though , deals wi Ll! the theme of "'k!l owing " in the novel; denying that James 's chara cters are overly intellectual, Gibson says that characters such as Haggie come to "knowledge" or experience through emotions or intuitions which are expressed in images:

For the capacity to think in images, and to grow by projecting concretions instead of by passing concepts , Jame s had an apt and illuminating metaphor . Instead of "knowing ," his characters are always spoken of as in the process of "see ing." They exchange felt insights, not mere concepts , in terms of metaphors wh ich are more or less figurative ly grasped by each character . (1084)

Calling The Golden Bowl "the ultimate novel" (227) ,

John Enck elucidates two main themes in the novel--the international episode involving Haggie and the Prince and the world of art involving Adam--which he calls the theme s of the tourist and the mu seum . Despite this seeming trivia lization of the theme s, Enck concludes that "Haggie , most convincingly , expresses the emotion [of] a nearly existential faith in love" (237) . However, I disagree with his contention that "to schematize the images into a codified myth violates every page of The Golden Bowl" (239) , believing with James L. Spencer that "Symbolism might be spoken of as the controlling principle of structure and meaning in The Golden Bowl" (333) . Centering his discussion upon the golden bowl itself, he postulates that the bowl symbolizes the Prince 's personality at first, then the

Prince 's affair with Charlotte , and finally, in the second 35 part of the novel, the world of appearances wh ich allows the

Prince and Charlotte their freedom. He also interprets , as

I do , the ending of the novel to mean that Maggie has dis covered the missing piece of the golden bowl--her confidence in the love of Amerigo for her, but a love which does not encompass the knowledge that she has gained.

Likewise , Alexander Holder-Barell sees the golden bowl triply : as good versus evil (Naggie versus Charlotte) , as the collector 's view of art (Adam's viewing of the Prince) , and as the effect of money on personal relationships (the two marriages ). Ruth Taylor Todasco maintains that the imagery associ ated with the golden bowl is indicative of the holy grail, an assertion which holds interesting possibili ties for a complete reinterpretation of the novel. (Indeed , recent articles on Maggie focus on her role as questor .)

Todasco also examines other rel igious imagery in the novel,

seeing the pagoda as a temple enshrining Adam at wh ich

Maggie worships . Her analysis of the golden bowl is that it

not on ly symbolizes the flaw in the marriage of Haggie and

the Prince but also symbolizes, in its perfect conceptual

ized form, the perfect marriage holding their love and

happiness .

Alan Ro se adroitly combines setting , fore shortening ,

and image ry in "The Spatial Form of The Golden Bowl ." Cen

tering on images of ob jets d'art , architectural structures,

and the golden bowl , Rose examines the analogies which help 36 to create the spatial form of the novel: " 'Symbol analogies, ' by relating symbols and their respective contexts in space , create spatial form in Th e Golden Bowl . In the same way , analogies between scenes also create spatial form"

(109) . Also important are James 's use of "translinear stressing" and a "subtly shifting point of viev;" (114) , for the use of these narrative techniques enables James to overcome the limitations of prose writing. Ro se concludes that

By relating scenes, symbols and images in space, . James has succeeded in concreting the narra t.ive flow . He thereby effects his theme , wh ich deals essentially with a spatial complex of rela tionships among characters , moralities , back grounds, environments and attitudes. (116)

�1ore recent articles have dealt with specific image s or

image groups. One of the best is Lotus Snow's 1963 essay

contrasting Fleda Vetch and Prince Amerigo with Hrs . Gereth

and Charlotte Stant. Snow decides that "Both women seem

splendid pieces in their respective collections but give

such proof of their spuriousness as to confirm the authen-

ticity of Fleda and the Prince " (414) . Bel ieving that by

uniting art and morality by images in The Golden Bowl , James

enables the ree1.der to acknowledge the various levels of

perception , and thus morality , in the novel , Snow asserts

that

he used the golden bowl as a symbol of moral percept_ion for distinguishing between appearance and reality. The measure of their esthetic va lue is their morality , and the measure of their morality is the intelligence and the intensity of their perception. ( 4 3 4) 37

Finally , Snow feels that "James made the golden bowl the cup of experience , for Haggie the journey from innocence to the knowledge of ev il and for the Prince the passage from moral ignorance to moral awareness" (435) .

Scott Byrd provided inventive comparisons between The

Golden Bowl and other prose in his 1971 and 1972 articles.

In the former he traced (as I will later) James's imagery in the novel back to prev ious works and previous experiences:

Italian Hours and James's years in Italy. Byrd traces

Amerigo 's heritage back to James 's visit to fe�ale descen- dents of the Venetian doges, the Mocenigo family . In the

later essay , Byrd postu lates that

James's development of a minor, but vivid image from Middlemarch into a central symbol 1n The Golden Bowl of 1904 seems to have been overlooked. The image of a fractured crystal heJ ps to def ine a flawed marriage in each of these novels . ( "Crys tal" 552)

The architectural images of the pagoda and the country

house came under closer scrutiny in the early 1970s.

Adeline Tintner postulates either the Royal Gardens at Kew

or Alton Towers as places where James might have seen

pagodas ("Follies" 13-15) and she presents several objects

from the Baron de Rothschild 's Waddesdon Manor as being in

Adam's collection at Fawns or as inspiring imagery in the

novel ("Waddesdon" 106-11 3) . Amy Ling finds an article in

The English Illu strated Magazine as the source of James 's

knowledge of pagodas and mosques (383-388) . Examining the 38 country house 's fun ction in James's work, Eben Bass notes that "the fusion of morality and esthetics at Fawn s is an ideal seldom achieved in James 's view of the English country house" (N. pag . ). Abiga il Hamblen sees the architectural in£ luence dominating James 's image ry throughout his career as paramount in The Golden Bowl , extending to the architec tural proportions of the structure of the novel (98, 100) .

Robert Gale counts 1,092 images in the 192 , 200 words of

The Golden Bowl (a ratio of 5.7/1,000) , which makes it the third longest novel, after Portrait of a I.ady and The Tragic

Muse and one of the mo st densely packed [the ratios for other novels are The Ambassadors (4.8) , Portrait of a Lady

(3.1), The Sac red Fount (5.7) , The Tragic Muse (4 .0) , The

Wings of the Dove (5.2) , and The Ivory Tower (5.3) ], although some of the later short stories have much higher rations (Caugh t Image 251) . Gale , however, never examines in depth the majority of the images he cites, their function in developing characters or furthering the plot , in expand ing arche typal pattern s or in developing analogues with other literary or artistic sources. He does note that there are ove r 100 water images in The Golden Bowl (he includes goldfish and deserts , categorized as animals and the adven ture , respectively, in my groups) and discusses a dozen of the most prominent; also , over 30 images of metal, primarily gold , and several animal images are mentioned. He omits 39 many references to rel igious imagery. The gold bowl itself , the symbolic center of the novel, receives scant attention .

In short , although Gale categorizes, he never explicates.

Alexander Holder-Barell (1966) and Daniel Schneider

(1978) do excellent jobs of tracing the rhetorical and poetical advantages of tropes used by James. Both employ original systems in categorizing imagery in relation to theme , and both limit their discussions to imagery in the major longer works : Holder-Barell to Roderick Hudson , The

Spoils of Poynton , Portrait of a Lady, The Amba ssadors , The

Wi_!23s of a Dove , and The Golden Bowl ; Schneider to The

American, Portrait of a Lady , The Tragic Muse, The Princess

Casamassima , The Spoils of Poynton , The Ambassadors , The

Wings of the Dove , and The Golden Bowl , although not all are examined in each of his three larger categories.

Schneider focuses on "the unity of James 's imagery , its derivation from a single imaginative center and a consoli dated sense of life" (4) ; that center is "a figure of freedom and enslavement" (6) . For Americans, the crystal cage is constructed from their Puritanism and essentially

"divided selves ," fleeing from their own innate , democratic

freedoms wh ich allow them to be everything , or to be nothing. For Europeans, the cage is barred by historical antecedents which hinder any development of true selves, divided or not , and any honest, sincere , or forthright 40 interaction with others . Schneider also examines how

James 's personal history influenced his choice of images and the ma jor theme of freedom versus ensl avement , doing so in much greater depth than Gale , and 1 inks the major later

(after 1890) works by their imagery .

Holder-Barell explores the rhetorical categories into which the images may be placed : those that expand, characterize , express mental processe s, or aid J_ n the novel's structure . Although he cites fewer specific images in The

Golden Bowl than Gale , his analysis of the function of these images is mo st illuminating, especially as the images help to define Maggie 's deve lopment . He also explains that

. mo st of the analytic metaphors [those which concrete the abstract] in The Golden Bowl show a strong tendency towards an intentional ambiguity . Because of their elaborateness some of them are not immediately effective and clear in their meanings . ( 9 7)

Hy purpose in this paper is to elucidate such images.

A detailed examination of the symbol s and images which Jame s employs in The Golden Bowl should provide clues wh ich dispel any ambiguity arising from the plot or the characters. In order to discuss the plethora of images, I have arranged them in groups, as have Holder-Barell, Schneider, and Gale .

My groups emerged inductively as I charted individual

image s, the subgroups first as a way of easy reference, the

larger groups later as I searched for categories central to

the novel's ma jor themes. Because the groups are so diverse 41 and so full of images, I will examine them both in the order in which they appear in the novel and in order of thematic importance . Thus, the group containing images of the adventurous will be examined first because these images dominate the first pages of the novel and link it to earlier works. Images involving the five senses and children are discussed second, followed by a small group of images showing the playing out of roles and the "arranging of appearances" which I have coined the "superficial" because the images deal with surface appearance s, not with in-depth knowledge . The world of appearances is linked to the next group , the world of the fantastic , the fairy-tale quality which supports both Christian and Jung ian interpretations of the novel. The fifth group contains images of the material world of the Ververs; the number of references to posses

sion s such as precious gems and me tals, works of art , fine houses, and the ability to purchase them makes this group

the largest and one wh ich pervades the tone of the novel.

The last two groups are the most important thematically , are

taken mainly from the last volume , and are interrelated in

that freedom, for James 's characters, is a function of

intelJ igence and morality , of "fine consciences," to borrow

from Conrad.

I have sometimes simplified the implications of an

image by counting it on ly once within a specific subgroup , 42 although it may be mentioned elsewhere when it impacts another image . Thus , the extended image of the pagoda

(II 1-6) is counted under the exotic when there certain ly are reverberations within the areas of religion , gardens, and ob jets d'art. The images will be discussed in terms of what they reveal about the characters and how they may be interpreted to discern the meaning of the ultimate narra tive . Like Carolyn Spurgeon , in her Shakespearean Imagery

(1935) , I chose to divide the images into seven main groups with several subgroups within each . These were

The Adventurous--discoverers and the New World; the

exotic; deserts; gardens and parodise ;

The Sensuous--flowers ; boats and wa ter; light, dark ,

and shadows (veils) ; heat, cold, and fire ; food;

children, games, and toys ;

The Superficial--science and technology ; the circus;

acting and the stage ;

The Fantastic--animaJs, hunting; weapons, wounds, and

warfare; magic, omens, fairy tales; religion; the

Grail; royalty;

The Material--gold and jewelry ; possessions; the

museum; buying and selling, finance, values; art

and art ists; architecture;

The Intelligent--knowing and not knowing, stupidity ;

ambiguity ; watching , seeing; 43

The Free--con straint; isolation; escape ; freedom .

During my analysis of these image groups , I found that several did not contribute greatly either to the theme s of the novel or to resolving the ambiguity seen by some critics. In short, they were images which were neutral in their connotations, providing only surface details about the characters and their mental and emotional processes, or were images used for poetic diction by James . These image groups

(flowers, heat and cold, food, sound, possessions, and domestic images) have been deleted from my discussion of the

image ry in chapter III, although they have been included in the chart which plots the images by chapter and character given in the Appendix .

In the following chapter I will discuss briefly the

structure of the plot and other literary techniques upon wh ich the images depend . In chapter III I will examine the ma jor image groups and how they illumine the chara cters and

themes of the novel in such a way as to resolve several questions about the ambiguity of the novel. In chapter IV I will make some concluding remarks about the novel. 44

CHAP'rER II

STRUCTURE AND TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL

The plot of The Golden Bowl received great criticism when it was first published (see chapter I) , but in more

recent years it has been recognized as both horrible and beautiful in its own peculiar wa y. Drawing, as he did on numerous occasions, on his experience of seeing, as a young boy and man , the French wel l-made plays and the overly me l odramatic late nineteenth-century American plays, Henry

Jame s created a mel odramatic, yet timeless and complex , plot

involving only four ma jor characters who make up four dif-

ferent "love triangles, II while two minor characters function

as ficelle and as comic Greek chorus , in addition to being

(subconsciously) in love wi th the maj or figures.

A summary of the plot of The Golden Bowl sounds ,

admittedly , like the storyline of a popular television "soap

opera ." As the novel begins, Prince Amerigo, a penniless

(but extremely handsome and sensual) Italian nobl eman , one

of the last of the lines of an illustrious family (variously

seen as the Ve spucci, the Borgia , or the Medici) , will a few

days hence marry Maggie Verver, a young, pretty , wealthy

American tourist whom he had met in Rome the previous year

when she accompanied her fabulously wealthy father as he

searched for treasures for his proposed mu seum in the United 45

States . !1 aggie and her father Adam are very close , almost perversely so to Post-·Freudian readers ; Adam and his collec tion have been Haggie 's preoccu pation since her mother died when Maggie wa s ten years old (approximately twelve years before the novel begins) (I 142) . The Prince presumably knows of this situation but cannot un�erstand Maggie 's and

Adam's innocence and American naivete; he does understand

Adam 's money , however, and appreciates that it will enable him to support the members of his family and the three heavily mortgaged residences they occupy (I 164) . There- fore , it becomes apparent 1n the first two chapters , as the

Prince discusses his impending marriage with Fanny

Assingham, the woman who introduced Amerigo to Maggie , that he thinks Maggie is pretty but is not in love with her but with her money . It is just as obvious later in the novel that Maggie is in love with Ame rigo mainly for his familial history and his aristocratic bearing and manners and for his sen suality , wh ich confl icts with , yet intrigues, Maggie 's streak of Puritanism; in fact , Adam refers to her as a nymph

and nun (I 187-88) . And because Adam is just as impressed with Amerigo 's poli shed and civilized exterior as Maggie is,

Adam arranges to "buy" Prince Amerigo and his history for

Maggie .

It is already clear , at this point in the novel, that

this forthcoming marriage is one which will probably face 46 rough waters , yet in the third chapter the true complication appears in the form of beautiful, strong, vivacious

Charlotte Stant , an old school churn of Maggie 's (albeit one a few years older) and , unbeknowst to all {even to Fanny who professes to know everything about them) , Prince Amerigo 's

former mistress in Rome . Charlotte arrives in London practically on the eve of Amerigo 's wedding , ostensibly to buy r-1aggie a wedding present but really to make one more play for the Prince by re-igniting their former passion wh ich was made impractical by their mutual lack of funds .

She begs the Prince to accompany her on her shopping expedi

tion , but it is clear that Maggie 's present is not what

Charlotte is shopping for .

While on this "shopping expedition ," Charlotte and the

Prince find the prototype of the novel 's title , an antique

golden bowl which seems perfect but which has a hidden flaw

in the crystal under the gold leaf covering the bowl 's

exterior . The flaw makes the bowl unacceptab le to the

Prince , but the price is what makes it too dear for

Charlotte , and so she leaves the shop empty-handed ; ironi

cally , in the second part of the novel, Maggie buys the same

flawed bowl as a present for her father on his birthday , and

learns, coincidentally , of Amerigo 's and Charlotte 's former

affair and thus deduces their present one . 47

The Prince and Maggie do marry , spend their honeymoon in the United States, have a son , and return to England .

There , Maggie feels, and thinks that Adam also feels, that she has deserted and neglected him in her wedded bliss.

That feeling , in addition to her fears of predatory females after Adam and his money , forces her to advise him to marry a suitable person, one who could be added to his "collec tion" of perfect things , and so fit into the mold of their lives� accordingly, Adam proposes to Charlotte , who accepts his offer after receiving a telegram from the Prince .

Book III begins fifteen months later. Adam and

Charlotte have returned to London after a honeymoon likewise spent in American City (which Charlotte , a Florentine-born ,

Tuscan -bred , Parisian-educated polyglot , abhors) . One assume s that by this time the joys of being wedded to a forty-eight-year-old treasure-hunting millionaire have paled somewhat for Charlotte , for her conversation with Fanny at the Embassy ball makes clear that Charlotte is lonely and feels isolated by Adam' s and Maggie 's relationship; knowing that Amerigo feels the same , Fanny is thus frightened into believ ing that the former affair has been resumed . At

Matcham (the glorious country house wh ich belonged to Lord

Mark in The Wings of the Dove but is now occupied by Lord

and Lady Castledean) , the affair is , we are led to believe ,

recon summated . After Fanny and Bob have departed for 48

London , the Prince and Charlotte take the opportunity to spend the day in Gloucester, ostensibly to visit the

Cathedral and the tomb of Edward II, but in reality to visit an inn .

From this point on , very little overt action takes place in the novel. Part II germinates in Magg ie 's fertile imagination . Just as the action and images of Part I were marked by the worldliness and sensuality of the Prince , the images in Part II are startling in their vividness and originality and add to our understanding of Maggie, a character hitherto much discussed but rarely presented . The exterior plot, however, is decidedly secondary; almost all of the "action" in the second half of the novel is interior , taking place in Maggie 's mind. The drama consists of

Maggie 's obtaining knowledge and then handling Charlotte so as to maintain their lives. Maggie does realize that some thing is wrong with her marriage and that it stems from her relationships with Adam and Amerigo , sets about to right it without destroying the carefully arranged marriages and intricate rel ationships , and so by necessity must work in silence behind the other characters, especially Adam, whom she seeks to protect most of all .

Briefly then , the rest of the plot may be summarized.

The Ververs move to Fawns for the summer, but Haggie and

Amerigo stay in London while Charlotte entertains in the 49 country . After visiting the British Museum one day to remind herself of Amerigo 's heritage (and of her initial infatuation with him) , Haggie shops at the same Bloomsbury shop as did Charlotte and the Prince four years earlier and buys the flawed golden bowl for Adam' s birthday present.

In probably the most incredible coincidence of the novel (which leads Ferner Nuhn and others to call The Golden

Bowl a fairy tale) , the conscience-striken Jewish shopkeeper comes to Portland Place to inform Maggie about the flaw in the golden bowl and to return her money� while in the drawing-room he spies photographs of Amerigo and Charlotte , and , recognizing them as his customers of four years prev ious , he informs Maggie (not knowing she is Amerigo 's wife) of the Prince 's and Charlotte 's intimate conversation that day .

One of the most dramatic and pivotal scenes of the novel occurs when Fannie , frightened that Maggie will confront the Prince with this evi dence of his continuing affair, smashes the bowl on the marb le floor just as Amerigo enters the room (II 179) . Prince Amerigo at first pretends not to remember the bowl and its implications (II 193) .

Maggie, perhaps bewildered that Amerigo neither admits nor denies his intimacy with Char lotte , dares him to find out what Adam knows of this . 50

With this sly technique , Maggie assumes ascendency over the Prince , but still has to fight Charlotte for both men .

In the most traumatic and dramatic confrontation of the novel, Maggie spars verbally with Char lotte on the terrace at Fawns as the other four characters play bridge within;

Charlotte brazenly interrogates Maggie , but , inwardly agonizing , Maggie denies that anything is wrong and allows

Charlotte to kiss her in reconciliation (II 231-51). In the weeks that follow, both Charlotte and the Prince are

imagined by Maggie to be imprisoned by their pass ion and by

their lack of knowledge of what Adam and Maggie have dis

covered . Adam decides to return to American City. The

dismantling of Fawns 's treasures is the dismantling of four

lives, the rearranging of the marriages back to their

originally intended re lations . Charlotte , playing out her

role to the end , decides to carry it off imperially by

visiting Portland Place as "royalty" (II 354) . The Prince ,

knowing now that Maggie is not the naive ingenue he married ,

or though t he did, attempts to reconcile with Maggie , but

she escapes from his powerful physical seduction with a

promise to wait until Charlotte and Adam are gone forever,

leaving Maggie alone and in peace with the Prince. Adam ,

impeccable and impervious , never overtly acknowledges any

irregularities in either marriage . He has what he wants and

gets his way in the end , wh ich is also what Maggie wants.

It is a victory for the Ververs . 5 1

A close reading of Part I gives the reader great insight into the characters of Amerigo , Charlotte, Fanny , and Bob , wh ile Adam prov ides much introspective detail for the reader in Part II, chapters 1 and 2, and Part II in its entirety reveals Maggie 's personality and thought processes.

James 's techn iques of foreshortening and foreshadowing work to great effect in Book I by preparing the reader for the evil consequences of Fanny 's meddling in the lives of the

Ververs and the Prince . By allowing the reader to view only the dramatic highpoints of the characters ' interactions with each other, Jame s directs attention to the signposts in

Book I which portend disaster later on . A detailed examina tion of the time frame s of both books proves how we ll Jame s controls the structure , thus forcing the reader to tread the path s strewn with brambles with which Maggie must content.

In the Appendix are temporal and spatial charts of both

Parts , which aided me in analyzing the foreshortening and foreshadowing techniques used by James in the novel.

Foreshortening

One of the i terns developed from the chart is that , whereas Part I takes place over four years ' time (six, counting Fanny 's recollections in Book I, chapter 4) and in

Rome , London , Paris, Brighton , and at the country mansions ,

Fawn s and Matcharn, Part II is centered , primarily, in London 52 and, secondarily, at Fawns, beginning in Apr il and ending in

September of the same year , mostly during the summer months.

There is some overlapping of the two Parts--chapters 10 and

11 of Book III occur during the afternoon and night when

Maggie discovers that she is missing "something" in Part II,

Book IV, chapter 1. The foreshortening of Part I necessi tates much careful reading in order to perceive accurate ly the order in which the events occur and the specific inter vals of time passed. Morris Roberts in "Henry James and the

Art of Fore shortening" (1946) and Alan Ro se in "The Spatial

Form of The Golden Bowl" (1966) both discuss James 's well known technique of highlighting certain important scenes wh ich reproduce or illustrate in a few words the emotional quality of the intervening spaces of time . There was not more intense writing in the English language available to

James; what he accomplishes is the linguistic feat of

showing us the emotional or mental process and the result

simultaneously . Because foreshorten ing is by necessity

retrospective , we discover the events wh ich took place while we are experiencing with the character the emotional result.

Thus we are privy not only to past actions but also are to

present reactions simultaneously. In this case, the "lamp "

illumines the past as well as the present, and in doing so ,

helps the reader to foretell future events. 53

Foreshadmv ing

Entirely appropriate to a discuss ion of Jamesian imagery is an examination of the Jamesian techn ique of foreshadowing. One of the essential questions to be asked about The Go lden Bowl is how Jame s creates with in the reader the anticipation , the expectation , the need for Maggie 's triumph . This psychological requirement of the reader 's response is created, I bel ieve , through James 's foreshadow ing, by action and image , the devel opment of the events in the novel and of Maggie 's character. This method of foreshadowing forms a response which is itself fore shadowed by two scenes in the novel (one of which foreshadows the other) , and therein lies the marvel and my stery of the novel. The authorial game of "show-n-tell" is played on a very high plane by many authors , but none ever so high as the one James reaches, his advantage being that, in addition to showing and telling the story to his readers , he creates within the reader the same response, the same "flower of partic ipation" to wh ich Maggie awakens in the course of the novel, the same mental process by which Haggie arrives at her conclusion . Although Ferner Nuhn and others have called

The Golden Bowl a fairy tale , it may also be called a detec- tive story . Fairy tales are created , as is most folklore , in order to explain or to hide the unexplainable, whereas in 54

this novel , the superficially unexplainable becomes clear to

the care ful reader who participate s in the novel.

The two aforementioned scenes which instruct the reader

ln his response occur in Book III , chapter 2, and Book IV,

chapter 2. During the former scene , Fanny realizes that

Amerigo and Charlotte collude , even before the reader is

privy to their agreement to do so ln a scene presented

afterwards . As Fanny listens to Amerigo explain his posi-

tion in Mr . Verver 's household, Fanny realizes that

It was sharp for her , at the same time , that she was certain, in advance, of his remark; that she heard it before it had sounded , that she already tasted in fine the bitterness it would have for her . . There it was then--exactly what she knew would come , and exactly , for reasons that seemed now to thump at her heart , as distressing to her. (I 272-73)

The reason for her distress is that

It was what Charlotte had asked her ten minutes before , and its coming from him so much in the same way shook her in her place . She was on the point of replying "Do you and she agree together for what you ' 11 say to me?"--but she was glad afterwards to have checked herself in time it was quite positive ly for her as if she were altogether afraid of him. (I 2 7 5)

Fanny 's reaction prepares the reader for the adulterers '

agreement , when Charlotte says , "It seems to me we must say

the same thing" (I 308) . Amerigo replies , "We must at least

then , not to be absurd together, do the same thing. We must

act , it would really seem, in concert" (I 308) . Charlotte

acquiesces that "It's all in the world I pretend . We must 55 act in concert" (I 308-09) . That Amerigo and Charlotte act alike has already been presented to the reader when Adam , before his marriage to Charlotte , notes that

It had struck him up to know that this particular balm was a mixture of wh ich Amerigo , owing to some hereditary privilege , alone possessed the secret; so that he found himself wondering if it had come to Charlotte , who had unmistakably acquired it, through the young man's having amiably passed it on . She made use , for her so quietly grateful host , however this might be, of quite the same shades of attention and recognition , was mistress of an equal degree of the regulated , the developed art of placing him high in the scale of impor tance . That was even for his own thought a clumsy way of expressing the element of similarity in th e agreeable effect they each produced on him . It might almost have been--if such a link between them was to be imagined--that Amerigo had a little "coached" or incited their young friend . [in] the pleasant application by the Prince of his personal system. (I 20 4-05)

All of the foregoing come s back to the reader when Maggie faces her discovery in Part II, but Fanny 's realization carries with it the additional emotional response of fear, wh ich directly connects with Maggie 's feeling :

Charlotte 's response . enjoyed thereby a cer tain ana logy with our young woman 's aftertaste of Amerigo 1 s own determined demonstrations . Maggie was to have retained , for that matter, more than one aftertaste This analogy , in the two situations was to keep up for her the remembrance of a kinsl:ip expressed in the h10 faces (II 35)

Linked to the adulterers 1 acting "in concert ," both situations evoke similar re sponses from Fannie and Maggie; Fanny

"tasted in fine the bitterness" (I 272-73) and is "altogether afraid" of Amerigo , wh ile Maggie "tasted a sort of 56 terror" (II 29) , "the afterta ste of Amerigo 's own determined demonstrations" ( II 35) . Later , Maggie begins to view Fanny in the same light :

Maggie sometimes felt reminded of other looks in other faces; of two strangely unobliterated impressions above all she would have said that Fan ny was afraid of her . even as Amerigo and Charlotte had been . . (II 103)

Taken only as stages 1n the progress of Maggie's maturation , these scenes are significant , but their import as guideposts to the reader 's response to the novel cannot be understated . After reading Maggie 's reaction , the reader must examine his own response, perhaps in his own interior monologue reflecting Maggie 's: "Wait! If, for Maggie and

Fanny, there are indications of harmonies, of parallels between actions which need explaining because they evoke a certain uneasiness or fear, might not the reader also examine his own uneasiness at these omens , as they are , of betrayal and sexual intrigue?" And , lest we be accused of relying too much on hindsight and reflection , we might emulate Maggie in the last chapter as she recalls similar incidences in her recent past: "The Princess pretended to read there hovered in her own sense the thought of other occasions when she had cheated the appearances of agitation with a book" (II 355) . These occas ions precede pivotal scenes: her sitting by the lamp at Portland Place , pretending to read while awaiting the Prince 's return from

Gloucester (II 12) , her reading the "salmon-coloured French 57 periodical ," most likely the Revue des deux mondes, wh ile the others played bridge at Fawns (II 231) , and her accost ing Charlotte in the temple at Fawns with th e right volume

(II 308-11) .

By using so much foreshadowing in the first two books of the novel, James creates in the reader an anticipation of events and emotions wh ich in turn creates a psychological need in the reader for Maggie to triumph over the evil which encompasses her life. One has the feeling of d§j� vu when climactic scenes such as the smashing of the golden bowl or the ass ignation at Matcham take place , for James forms such a web of prophecy through Fanny and the Prince in Book I that one would be disappointed if these fore shadowings did not lead to answers to mysteries in the lives of Adam ,

Charlotte , and Maggie . By preparing his readers for

Maggie 's maturation , James reinforces not only his plot , but also his authorial technique of using the Princess 's point of view in the second volume , since by the end of the first volume the reader is quite curious as to how Maggie will hand le her husband 's adultery . The next section will examine how James builds on this anticipation through point of view .

Point of View

Another item noticeable from the chart is the changing point of view in Part I as opposed to Maggie 's almo st total 58 control of the point of view in Part II. This discrepancy between Jame s 's product and his stated intent in the Preface of 1909 confuses many readers ; P.. B. J. Wilson makes this discrepancy the basis of his Henry James 's Ultimate Narra tive , in which he argues that r1a ggie is not the main char acter and Jamesian ideal center of consciousness but a ploy by Jame s to hide the true meaning and relationships of the sextet of characters, thus leading to much ambiguity in the novel. On the other hand, several critics take differing views : one group (possibly Evelyn Wood speed readers) insists th at the point of view is all the Prince 's in

Part I, while another group thinks th at James tells the story with no help from the characters . I, conversely, find a middle road in the treatment of point of view in relation to the purpose of the novel.

The first hint is given by Jame s in the Preface when he discusses his strat:egy : "We see very few persons 1n 'The

Golden Bowl ', but the scheme of the book , to make up for that , is that we shall really see about as much of them as a coherent literary form perrni ts" (I viii) . By using alter nating centers of consciousness, James is able to reveal his characters selectively while retaining enough distance that too much is not revealed too soon . This technique approxi mates actual experience in that , in most instances, phe nomena are only partially revealed to us at any time . Jame s 59 thought "that these attributes of experience display the sentient subjects themselves at the same time and by the same stroke wi th the nearest possible approach to a desirable vividness" (I viii) .

That James considered point of vie1.v to be part of characterization is very significant for this story and its structure. Many readers have complained that Fanny seems to usurp the Prince 's perogative for discrimination and dis cuss ion at crucial points in the novel. Instead , what James makes clear is that the Prince 's personality is not intro spective; he wants to be told who and how but not why- whereas for the reader , this information about the motive is essential to an evaluation of the moral quality of the novel. If the Prince appears amoral at first, if he truly is the flaw in the golden bowl , he cannot be in full con sciousness of the moral predicament his affair with

Charlotte presents , nor can he be fully aware of his wife 's abilities of perception and imagination . If he were , there would be no novel, or at least a much different one : he would learn ear ly in his marriage what Maggie really thinks and feels and Charlotte would present no temptation . Like wise, if Maggie were not in such complete control of the point of view in her portion of the novel, we would not be so cognizant of her growth , nor would we be so swayed by her handling of the del icate situation . 60

Perhaps at this point an examination is in order of

James 's use of point of view in relation to the structure of the novel. vJhy does he choose to use the Prince as the first center in Part I, and in doing so, does he create an overly sympathetic response to Amerigo and Charlotte? Jame s must have meant to place the most complex and important center at the end . Therefore , the Prince is utilized first in order to provide a referent of degree and kind for Maggie and Adam , and, in fact , these differences in moral aspect are exactly the topic discussed ln the first chapter .

James introduces the Prince with images of imperial

Rome and London , emphasizing his urbanity and cultured awareness of the history of civilization . The Prince must appear as a man whose civility and appearance is such that a wealthy young woman like Maggie would be irresistibly drawn to him (and his title and sensuality) and so make her father

"purchase" the penniless Prince for her by insuring their monetary future together . Yet the Prince , in order not to appear a money-grubbing goldbricker and cad , must seem immensely grate ful for Adam's generosity and not too eager to get at the money . He must also seem to love Maggie , even if on ly a little, or at least pleased with her person , so as not to appear a comp lete gigolo. However, the reader knows that the Prince 's personality is such that conflicts with these good intentions will arise , just as they do with his 61 later good intentions involving his affair with Charlotte and its effects on Maggie and Adam. Ame rigo doubts himself because of three things : his family history of deception and intrigue (re ferences to the Borgias and a crooked Pope do not reassure the reader either!) , his status as a galantuomo and his sexual attitude toward women, and his desperate need for money . He tries , in the first chapter, to minimize these concerns, but the imagery recurring in his subconscious hints to the reader that these conflicts will surface again .

The Prince also reveals in his conversation with Fanny in chapter 2 that he is bothered by his self-doubts and calls on her aid, a fact which in turn frightens her:

"I'm sure , after all, that the more you 're with me the more I shall understand . It's the only thing in the world I want . I'm excellent , I really think , all round--except that I'm stupid . I can do pretty well anything I see . But I've got to see it first." And he pursued his demonstration . "I don 't in the least mind its having to be shown me--in fact I like that better. Therefore it is that I want, that I shall always want, your eyes. Through them I wish to look--even at any risk of their showing me what I may n't like. For then ," he wound up , "I shall know . And of that I shall never be afraid . . my real honest fear [is] of being 'off' some day , of being wrong, without knowing it ." (I 30)

If the Prince is, as he says, stupid morally, if he does not worry about being wrong but just about not knowing that he is wrong , he cannot be the supreme center of consciousness in this, or any other Jamesian , novel. He , and the reader, 62 must have Fanny 's he lp in interpreting, even if she is

incorrect (sometimes comically so) . Therefore , the reade r

should not be surprised when in chapter 4 Fanny 's po int of

view is used . James is forced to use Fanny for purposes of

exposition : so many hints have been made about her

arranging the marriage in chapters 1 through 3 that James

must give the reader some clue as to Amerigo and Charlotte 's

background and , hence , their duplicity in hiding their

former relationship from Maggie . However, James knows that

it would seem ridiculous to have the Prince spend too much

time recalling his affair with Charlotte on the eve of his

marriage to Maggie; all the Prince 's protestations of good

faith would crumble, and his hesitation at seeing Charlotte

at Fanny 's and later accompanying his forme r mistress on her

shopping expedition would not jibe with any eagerness to

reminisce about Charlotte . His later uneasiness at

Charlotte 's evocation in the park of their past and his

refusal of her offer at the shop would seem unlikely if

Jame s allowed him too much recollection . Therefore , Fanny 's

point of view , however inaccurate , must be used in order to

keep the Prince in character. Likewise, Charlotte 's point

of view must be used in chapters 5 and 6 since it is she who

wants to resume the affair, jeopardizing her lover 's

marriage to her best friend . 63

After learning about the personalities of the Prince ,

Fanny, and Charlotte in Book I, the reader should be curiou s

about Adam and Haggie Verver ; although Maggie is glimpsed

slightly in chapter 1, Adam has hardly been presented at all

and is referred to only as the wealthy father-in-law who makes all the complex relationships possible. Therefore , we

desire more information about Adam , wh ile , at the same time ,

we carry in mind Charlotte 's last sentence of the preceding

book : "Well, I would marry , I think , to have something from

you in all freedom" (I 121) . Charlotte 's comment, motiva

tion , and point of view, added to Adam's reflections on his

career , marriage , and current vu lnerable unmarried state ,

and Baggie' s protestations about this state (which we need

in order to ascertain whether or not Maggie would approve

such a union) , culminate in Adam's offer : "Then let me look

right here with you [for Charlotte 's husband] " (I 190, my

italics) . It is essent ial for James 's plot that the Prince

be kept well in the background in the second book ; it would

be too unseemly, and would certainly undercut the Prince 's

declarations of good wi ll later on , if he were too eager to

marry off his former mistress to his very proximate father

in-law. With this in mind , James send s Maggie and her

Prince on an extended stay in Europe wh ile Charlotte visits

Fawns, accomplishing two additions to the plot : Charlotte

is thrown upon Adam by Maggie and Fanny in such solitude , 64 proximity , and atmosphere that it becomes almost impossible for Adam not to propose, and the Prince is carried off stage long enough for Adam to accomplish the act. There are hints that the Prince actually is uneasy with Charlotte under the same roof--his dream of old Italy serenading him in the moonlight might be a displacement of his memories of

Charlotte in Rome . She is calling to his subconscious just by being in the same house, and the Prince must leave for the safety of his marriage . He , therefore , makes the way clear for Adam's proposal . Adam' s point of view quite naturally dominates the concluding chapters of Book II.

However, as in Book I, Charlotte is the focus of the last sentence � her saving of the Prince 's telegram foreshadows

Book III , chapter 4, in which the contents of the telegram are revealed and the affair is resumed after Charlotte 's marriage to Adam .

Accordingly , Charlotte is again the focus of Book III , chapter 1. We immediate ly learn of the change in her sta tion but not in her personality--she is still the consummate actress (from whom Maggie will eventually take lessons) but now is the leading lady and is costumed as befits her station and self-concept. IIaving already decided "to pick a fight" with Fanny so that she will have an excuse to bar the busybody from Fawns , Charlotte is established as a conniver , for James has come close to making Charlotte too sympathetic 65 in Book II. In Book III she is presented as not only an actress but one who manipulates behind the scenes also (she arranges the fight with Fanny , initiates the resumed affair with Amerigo , and plans the day in Gloucester). The shift in point of view back to the Prince in Book III, chapter 2 is necessary to create the suspicion in both Fanny 's and the reader 's minds that the Prince and Charlotte collude on their stories, but we are not sure that they do until chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 3, however, keeps the suspense alive by allowing Fanny to analyze the situation , at the same time reassuring the reader that �1aggie and Adam will survive the affair and triumph . This chapter does seem somewhat mls placed , however, especially wh en James begins the next chapter vlith "the two friends" (I 288) . Charlotte 's hint that she has visited the Prince alone is realized in later chapters , confirming Fanny 's suspicions , but the break seems abrupt . The break away from the Prince 's point of view in the last two chapters of the volume are more appropriate ; obviously , the Prince has no time for reflection if he is in bed with Charlotte in Gloucester. [James 's concentration on this Matcham weekend is very indicative of his later style, for we see one day through the eyes of the Prince (I 3 26-

63) , Fanny (I 364-402) , and Maggie (II 3-27) .] It is left to Fanny to analyze the situation and assure the reader once more that Maggie will save the marriages. In fact , almost 66 every statement in the last two chapters is echoed at some time in Part II, thus preparing the reade r for the almost complete switch in point of view to Maggie in the second volume . In only one chapter in the latter half of the nove l does Fanny 's point of view intrude to recall events of wh ich

Maggie has no knowledge . After !1aggie ' s discovery of the relationship between Amerigo and Charlotte and the breaking of the golden bowl , Maggie is in complete control of the situation and of the novel.

Perhaps one should imagine the novel told with different emphases to see the beauty of the novel which James actually created . If the parts were reversed , i.e. , l.L·�

Maggie were the first center and the Prince the second , the novel would be incoherent . Maggie knows very little about her husband in the first half of the novel, but comes to know both him and herself in the second half; likewise ,

Ame rigo is cognizant of the details of his past affair with

Charlotte in the first half , but would not be able to apprise the reader of Adam's reaction as Maggie does in the second half. He would still have a romantic , suspenseful novel, but no self-knowledge would be revealed by the characters . If the story were told by Adam and Charlotte

(as suggested by Ferner Nuhn) , it would certainly contain more "fireworks," notab ly in the scene in wh ich Adam tells

Charlotte that they are going to American City and why (as I am sure he does; there is no other reason for Charlotte 's 67 docility in the last chapter of the novel) . But their story , and their marriage , is different--based as it is on mutual respect for each other 's value in the marketplace , not on love . And while respect and love are inextricably linked, respect does not absolve--love does . That is one of the messages of the golden bowl. James reveals to the reader the strength and compassion of Maggie 's personality and the rightness of her cause by making the reader yearn for a reversal in the second part . Maggie evolves from the passive , reclusive , small nymph and nun of Part I, the guise she uses to ease the lives of those who love her and whom she loves in Part II. Modern readers who have grown up in an era of free speech and free love may not approve of her seeming reticence to confront Amerigo or to des troy the ma rriages , but Maggie is James 's most successful portrait of the late Victorian young woman whose duty (and pleasure ) in life is to love and protect those around her. By presenting the second part through Maggie 's consciousness, we discover the hidden Maggie which no one but Fanny seems to realize lies beneath the smooth surface of the Princess 's placid appearance .

The fol lowing chapter will examine imagery wh ich bolsters the undergirding of structure discussed above and provides links wh ich reinforce the technique of foreshadow ing in such a manner as to clarify many points upon wh ich the supposed ambiguity in the novel is based. 68

CHAPTER III

IMAGERY IN THE GOLDEN BOWL

The Adventurous

This group is placed first due to its relationship to the theme of the international marriage , the first theme of which we are aware in The Golden Bowl . As Amerigo peruses the shops of the Bond Street, we are struck by the cosmo politan quality of the young Prince , a quality wh ich is reinforced by his dialogue wi t. h Haggie about romance , art, travel, and the differences between Americans and Europeans.

This quality evinces itself partly, I be l ieve , due to

James 's memories of his friends 1n Italy during the 1870 's and 1880 's. The biography wh ich he wrote immediateJy be fore

The Go lden Bowl , William Wetmore �-> tory and His Friends, might have steered his thoughts to international relation ships , since the Storys lived in Italy for fifty years. By titling the first chapter of the biography "The Precursors ," and recalling the "eclaireurs who have gone before those comparative ly few who, amid difficulties and dangers , set the example and made out the road" (WWS I, 3) of

Euro-American relations , James harkens back to the first true theme of his longer works , that of the international romance . Fortunately, or perhaps un fortunately for the romancer, "Europe , for Amer icans , has , in a word , been made 69 easy" (WWS I, 4) by the efforts of the precursors. Jame s notes that he alludes "not to the great explorers and discoverers who have taken us to the Equator or the Poles"

(N1\IS I, 4) ; instead , the adventurers in his wo rks are adventurers of the heart and the mind . It is this quality wh ich should be examined first in order to viev7 Haggie as the moral victor of the novel.

Adventurers, Discoverers

One of the most obvious links between William Wetmore

Story and The Golden Bowl is the international marriage . f1rs. Gaskell 's reminiscence of Mrs . Twisleton (Charles Eliot

Norton 's cousin , who married an Englishman) recalls to Jame s

"the rosy dawn of the 'international ' marriage , destined subsequently so to flourish" (WWS I, 353) , which 1n turn prefigures the Assinghams ' marriage :

There reigned among the younger friends of this couple a legend , almost too venerable for histor ical criticism, that the marriage itself, the happiest of its class, dated from the far twilight of the age , a primitive period when such things- such things as American girls accepted as "good enough"--had n't begun to be ; so that the pleasant pair had been , as to the risk taken on either side , bold and original, honorably marked, for the evening of life , as discoverers of a kind of hymeneal Northwe st Passage . (I 35-36)

In addition to these "discoverers ," James mentions several others in both William Wetmore Story and The Golden Bowl .

Just as Prince Amerigo is associated with Poe's Pym (I 22) ,

Amerigo Vespucci (I 78-79) , the Emperor Constantine (I 79) , 70

Antony (II 21) , and is called Maggie 's "hero" (I 176) , Adam is likened by the Prince to Alexander the Great defeating

Darius of Persia (I 19) and by himself to "stout Cortez" in

Keats 's sonnet (I 141) . Stephen Mooney 's article (1961) clarifies the relationship of Adam's exploration of the world of art with the larger theme of international relations ; Hooney decides that "In 'l' he Golden Bowl , images of exploration and discovery are LT ames' s means of revealing aesthetic and moral consciousness in his characters" ( 3 9 9) , with Adam as the high priest of the "religion of consciousness" (401) . But one can see Adam's reflection on his per sonal "peak in Darien'' as recalling Cortez 's and Balboa 's plundering of the New World, an ironic comment on Adam' s plundering of Old World art treasures. The "Golden Isles"

(I 141) of Central America, however, become James 's golden land of Italy; speaking of the Story family 's setting off

for Ita ly in 1847, James says , "They started surely as none others had ever done for the golden isles II (WWS I,

83) . After two years, Story "had not . . burnt his ships"

('YlHS I, 19 6) as Adam does 1n the novel in emulation of

Cortez (I 215-18) . And although James noted his admiration

for Paul Veronese 's "La Famiglia di Dario davanti ad

Alessandro" (1648) elsewhere (HI 24, HY 569) there is a

slight envy in his statement that Story was

still in time to see in its place in the Pisani Palace the splendid Paulo of the 71

English National Gallery [moved in 1857] which appears then to have been known by the charming , if slightly inconsequent , title of the Tent of Darius . . How, we feel, could the artist capa ble of such precedes not make his Alexander the perfect type , for all time , of the accomplished "young gen tleman ," and how could the man of the world who was to reflect himself in such an image not have been , inevitably, graceful in behavior? (WWS I, 192-93)

In this instance , art not only reflects life , but instructs it .

In addition to Fanny 's recounting of the Prince 's

Ve spucci relations (I 79- 80) and the numerous references to

Adam as an explorer, in later chapters images abound associating Haggie and Adam with adventurers and pioneers . The first occurs in chapter one as Maggie reveals that she and

Adam have been

" like a pa ir of pirat.es--positiv e ly stage pirates, the sort who wink at each other and say 'Ha-ha? ' when they come to wh ere their treasure is buried. Ours is buried pretty we ll everywhere ." (I 13)

Although Maggie refers to the �rt treasures which Adam seeks, Fanny adds to the secretive air of the nove l by protecting Maggie "by not digging up a pa st that I believed , with so much on top of it, solidly buried" (II 172) , implying that Maggie and Adam , instead of knowing where the treasure is hidden, may be qui te surprised when they uncover their human morceaux de mu see. Much later in the novel , when Maggie follows Charlotte , "this adventurer" (II 307) , into the garden at Fawns, Maggie discovers that Charlotte 's 72

"buried treasure , so dishonestly come by " is buried in

Maggie 's "still countenance ," the "deep soil" wh ich may separate to reveal the truth (II 310) . Maggie herself, in her good faith which seeks to protect those she loves, is the treasure on wh ich Adam , Amerigo , and Charlotte base the ir respective confidences 1n how they arrange their lives. They count on Maggie 's passivity in accepting

Charlotte as a stepmother and as the mistress of the two men mo st important in Maggie 's life and on her keeping the secret treasure buried .

The image of Adam as a pirate fits we ll with Adam's

"rifling" of the Golden Isles (I 14 3) , implying a cold heartedness about Adam's ob jective possessiveness (cal lee reification by Carolyn Porter) . Just as he takes possession of every available objet d'art , he "had taken real posses sion" of his mind (I 149) , a mind understanding art better than the great patron popes (I 150) , a mind in wh ich "the aesthetic principle [was] planted whe re it could burn wi th a cold, still flame " (I 197) , the same flame wh ich lights his

"far excursion " (I 205) into his "labyrinth " (I 207) Hh ich results in a "vast expan se of discovery" (I 207) that he can make Maggie 's life easier by his marrying Charlotte . With such an adventurous spirit, Adam makes a proposal to a woman half his age . James intensifies the image of the explorer by referring obliquely to Cortez 's burning of his ships upon 73 reaching Veracruz , Mexico , so that the crews would be forced to join his small army in attacking Montezuma . In other words, once Adam decides to propose to Charlotte , there is no turning back : "They were walking thus . . to where he should see his ships burn this red glow would impart

a lurid grandeur to his good faith" after "he had applied hi s torch" (I 216, 217) . Is Adam supremely confident of Charlotte 's answer , or just adventurous enough to run the risk of refusal? Whichever his feeling , he "put the question on which there was no going back and which represented thereby the sacrifice of his vessels the redoubled thrust of flame that would make combustion sure"

(I 218) .

In spite of many criti cs ' views of Maggie as a passive little girl, she exhibits a de finite inhe ritance of her father 's adventurous traits . She , too , is one of the

"pirates ," enjoying her father 's expeditions and triumphs in the collector 's world, and seems much more interested 1n leading an exciting life , mentally and emotionally , than

Amerigo . Indeed , the adventurous spirit of his ancestors seems to have dissipated over the centuries , for , as the

Prince tells Fanny , his relations have not travelled exten sive ly--"London therefore will be more or less another planet . It has always been , as with so many of us , quite their Hecca, but this is their first real caravan" {I 25) . 74

Jame s also implies that if the Prince does have an urge to

invade , it is not for the adventure or the excitement, but

for th e "loot of far-off victories " (I 3) , the kind his

ancestors enjoyed in Imperial Rome . His wife , on the other

hand , compares herself to a "settler or a trader in a new

country" (II 323) , her place being an outpost in the wilder-

ness. In the beginning, however, Maggie doubts her ab ility

to "explore" the adulterers 1 relationship, feeling it "the

adventure of an imagination within her that possibly had

lost its way" (II 75-76) . She does find her way, though ,

and Amerigo 1 s too in one complex image combining Maggie 1 s

adventurous spirit, her role as heroine/savior , and mytho-

logical analogues. Just as Adam has a labyrinth (I 207) , so

does Amerigo, but Maggie finds his way for him:

It had operated within her now to the last inten sity , her gJ impse of the precious truth that by her helping him, helping him to help himself, as it were , she should help him to he lp her . Had n1t she fairly got into his labyrinth with him?--was n1t she indeed in the very act of placing herself there , for him, at its centre and core , whence , on that de finite orientation and by an instinct all her own , she might securely guide him out of it? (II 187)

In a later comparison (perhaps inspired by the peacocks at

Fawns wh ich she spies immediately beforehand ) , rlaggie sees

Charlotte as "driven in a kind of flight . some vision

of Io goaded by the gadfly or of Ariadne roaming the lone

sea-strand" (II 307) . The two images, though linked to the

s ame myth , place the two women in different lights; whereas 75

Maggie sees Charlotte as Ariadne , she is not the Ariadne who aids Theseus but the later one , jil ted and set adrift in the sea which bears her name . Likewise , the Io image reflects both Charlotte 's being abandoned by the Prince and her pre vious peregrinations in Europe. Robert Gale thinks that the image foreshadows Charlotte 's "banishment" to the United

States. In addition, one should remember that Ariadne never enters the labyrinth but only gives Theseus the ball of str ing to enable his finding his way out. Maggie, being more adventurous , become s Theseus with Amerigo , becoming totally involved and participating wi·th her husband in an adventure which will lead them to a new life with each other. I also see an implication that, for Amerigo , Maggie is the labyrinth , her intellect and morality "its center and core ," which he must examine in order to solve his problem.

If this is so, James is giving Maggie , and women in general, much more credit as being jntellectually, emotionally, and morally stimulating than they were given in the Victorian view. Maggie, I reiterate , is James 's '' subtlest knower" and her husband finally realizes (though he may not understand) her complexity . She is not the simple innocent American presented in the first volume of the novel, as illustrated by the inventiveness of her adventurous ima ges. The next

section extends her adventurous spirit into a related area , the exotic, which reveals more of her moral character in her 76 response to what James called "the picturesqueness--we might almost say the grotesqueness of the East" (PE 74) .

The Exotic

Directly linked to Maggie 's predilection for adventure is her love of the exotic and her intense interest in the eastern and the bizarre . Maggie , if seen as a typical wealthy Victorian young woman , allows her repressed sexual fantasies to emerge as an intere st in chinoserie (I 8,

II 162) and other exotic images redolent of the harem, but

Maggie is not typical . Although the pagoda image which begins her half of the novel may be seen in Freudian terms as a phallic symbol, its function in the novel is , I be lieve , to show Maggie 's creativity and imagination , pre senting her as an artist painting pictures of the mind of the type by Gerome and Ingre s, portray ing the Middle East in all its strangeness and sensuality. James 's good friend ,

John Singer Sargent, vis ited Egypt in 1897 and returned with watercolors of nude Egyptian girls and colorful Arab

Bedouins which James must have seen. Other echoes of the

East occur in images, discussed elsewhere , of Adam's inter est in Persian carpets and Damascene tiles and of Maggie 's leading the "first real caravan" of Italians to "Mecca"

(I 25) .

The first extended reference to the exotic , though , is the description of Fanny : 77

Type was there , at the worst, in Mrs. Ass ingham's dark neat head , on wh ich the crisp black hair made waves so fine and so numerous that she looked even more in the fashion of the hour than she desired . . Her richness of hue , her generous nose , her eyebrows marked like those of an actress--these things, with an added amplitude of person on which middle age had set its seal , seemed to present her insistently as a daughter of the South , or still more of the East , a creature forrn.ed by hammocks and divans, fed upon sherbets and wa ited upon by slaves . She looked as if her mo st active effort might be to take up , as she lay back , her man dol in , or to share a sugared fruit with a pet gazelle . She was in fact however neither a pampered Jewess nor a lazy Creole She wore yellow and purple because she though it better, as she said , while one was about it, to look like the Queen of Sheba than like a revendeuse; she put pearls in her hair and crimson and gold in her tea-gown for the same reason . the eyes of the American city looked out . . from under the lids of Jerusalem. (I 33-35)

Later , Jame s proves her "love of yel low" (II 167) by noting her "lemon-coloured mantle" (I 364) , the "amber train"

(I 399) , and the "new orange-coloured ve lvet with multiplied turquo ises'' (II 70) , and emphasizes, perhaps recalling W. W.

Story's statues, "her so free orientalism of type" (I 364) in which she resembled "the immemorial ly speech less Sphinx about at last to become articulate" (I 364) . Could these descriptions show Fanny as ridiculous , both in action and appearance? The idea of the Sphinx finally yielding up her wisdom to erase Fanny 's confusion is far-fetched and over- blown , just as is Fanny , wh o, along with Bob , is used for comic relief. Wallace , u1 Henry Jame s and the Comic Form

(1975) , calls Fanny 78

the distressingly ordinary middle-aged wife trying to play the part of far eastern harem mistress. In her desire to be wise and perceptive she is more often merely blundering and confused . ( 4 9)

No Sphinx she .

On the other hand , Maggie and Ad am , who have trave lled more (I 15) and seen more of the East (or who have seen more artists ' renderings of the East) , use more effective images of the exotic. In Regent 's Park Adam questions Maggie as to whether "we were sitting about on divans , with pigtails, smoking opium and seeing visions" (II 92) , perhaps an oblique reference to their parallel visions on the terrace at FGwns and be fore the fire at Portland Place . That father and oaugh ter we re passive is incontestable; what matters now is that Adam sees the need for their activity as being "like the police breaking in--into our opium-den--to give us a shake" (II 92) , wi th Amerigo and Charlotte as the enforcers of the new regimen. No more will "the blue fumes , or whatever they are, of the opium" (II 93) surround the two , isolating them from their spouses and from the outside world. Instead , Maggie and her father must deal somehov1 with their dilemma .

Other images of the exotic result when Adam sees the trip to Brighton as a return to the East, possibly because it is linked to his buying the Damascene titles. The bands at Brighton beach "re sound ed wi th a din Croatian , 79

Dalmatian , Carpathian , violently exotic and nostalgic"

(I 211) , wh ile the Gutermann-Seuss family consists of children "with such impersonal old eyes astride of such impersonal old noses ," "fat ear-ringed aunts ," and "the rest of the tribe" (I 213) . The Lutches, endlessly "visiting ," are "like a tribe of Wandering Jewesses" (II 256) . Later, the hotel lobby in Paris is ominously like a tropical rain forest with lurk ing dangers--" heated , gilded , draped , almost carpeted , with exotic trees in tubs , exotic ladies in chairs , the general exotic accent and presence suspended , as with wings folded or feebly fluttering" (I 232-33) --perhaps warning the explorer Adam to look for fangs or claws before he proposes to take Charlotte home to her "cage."

Maggie seems more comfortable with the far West than she does the East; as noted in the section of discove rers, she twice refers to herself in American We st parlance : as a

Calamity Jane-Annie Oak ley-type gunsl inger (II 311) and as

"some Indian squaw with a papoose on her back and barbarous beadwork to sell" (II 323-24) in the face of the dangerous

Charlotte and the historically placed Prince , both images illustrating her defens ive or inferior position toward the adulterers. These images also illustrate the sudden twists of Maggie 's imagination . In fact, two of the most cele brated images 111 the novel are of the exotic and de fine

Maggie as artist and architect of the mind . 80

The first two pages of Part II introduce Maggie as much more involved with her situation than one is led to believe until Fanny 's explanation at the very end of Part I. The

Chinese pagoda image (II 3) evolves into "a Mahometan mosque" (II 4) covered pe rhaps with porcelain plates and the

Oriental blue tiles of the type bought by Adam in Brighton

(I 194) , then into an "ivory tower, visible and admirable"

(II 6) , an example of which Tintner has noted , and of which a more thorough de scription is found in the la ter novel by the same name . Why does James choose these three Eastern images to symbolize Maggie 's situation? Emphasizing not only Maggie 's imagination and love of the exotic , the three

Eastern religious temples (Chinese Buddhist, Arabic Moslem , and Indian Buddhist) aid 1n linking Parts I and II by recalling "the towers of three cathedrals, in different counties dim silver, 1n the rich sameness of tone "

(I 351) which Amerigo sees from the terrace at Mate ham.

Unlike the Catholic and English Churches, however, 1n the eastern religions women are not permitted to enter the temples (or only during specified celebrations); hence ,

Hagg ie would indeed "pay wit.h her life " (II 6) if found inside . Just as in the allusion to the labyrinth , Naggie seeks to take the masculine initiative and enter bravely where others less imaginative fear to tread . Maggie also acknowledges her responsibility as archi teet of her life , 81 since "the ivory tower, visible and admirable doubtless from any point of the social field , had risen stage by stage"

(II 6) , built by !-1aggie and Adam . Countless critics have noted that Maggie "circles" the pagoda; what she actually does , however, 1s approach it as a work of art , imitating the movements of the painter as he surveys his subject and then paints it: "she had caught herself distinctly in the act of pausin g, then in that of lingering, and finally in that of stepping unprecedently near" (II 4) .

As artist, Maggie imagines another exotic image as she again circles her situation on the terrace at Fawns and views her companions through the windows :

she saw as in a picture a range of feelings wh ich for many women would have meant so much, but which for her husband 's wife , for her father 's daughter , figured nothing nearer to experience than a wild eastern caravan , looming into view with crude colours in the sun , fierce pipes in the air, high spears against the sky , all a thri ll, a natural joy to mingle with, but turn ing off short before it reached her and plunging into other defiles. (II 23 6-7)

Drawn perhaps from Jame s 's admiration for the exotic paintings by Fromentin , Decamps, and Delacroix, this image reveals Maggie 's hes itancy to allow the decadence o.c._ the

East to divert her from her role as de fined in the earlier picture of the scapegoat . Just as Adam recognizes that the

"opium den" has been scattered , Haggie knows that to let herself succumb to "the straight vindictive view, the rights

of resentment , the rages of jealousy, the protests of 82 passion" (II 236) would be to succumb to the defiles of emotion , to let Charlotte 's manner of articulation and accusation triumph rather than to alter their lives through patience and love . That Maggie is able to create the picture and then to erase it reveals a psychological and aesthetic control of her situation not given overtly to any other character, not even to Adam, and establishes Maggie as aesthetically (and therefore morally, 1n James 's scheme ) superior to the other characters .

Gardens , Paradise

Although Jame s knew Shakespeare (especially Hamlet and

Romeo and Juliet) , his use of the garden as a metaphor for the inner life derives from Milton . Tintner postulates

Vallombrosa, owned by Edith and Simone Peruzzi, as a

Miltonic inspiration for the garden at Fawns , although the various gardens may be seen as models for Fawns. This section focuses not on the forrnal g arde ns such as those

James saw at the Tuileries, at Versailles, or at countless great home s and palaces in Italy , France , and England. Such gardens may be symbols of a natural life which is artifi cially controlled or as a logical arrangement of a baffling wilderness . Instead , this section examines the inner garden of the soul and on the arrangement of the lives of the four major chara cters which , in its symmetry , resembles a formal ga rden boxed with triangles . 83

Existing also as spots of refuge or retirement (to be discussed ln a later section) , the gardens in The Golden

Bowl reinforce the quality o f innocence , purity , and intro spection in those characters associated with them. In the first example, Adam recognizes his unmarried state as

"breathing a chill upon this luxuriance of her [Maggie 's] spiritual garden" (I 207) . Maggie, whom Adam had imagined as a nymph (I 188) , also recognizes that she and Adam have made a "garden of her life" (II 3) , especially at Fawns with its temp le where Maggie confronts Charlotte after she "of all people, had chosen the glare of noon for an exploration o f the gardens" (II 307) . In this image , Charlotte 's flight can be seen as et reference to her visit to Matcham, where ironically she and Amerigo were expected to "'go about '

in a state of childlike innocence , the state of our primitive parents before the Fall" (I 335) . That Charlotte fulfills her destiny as temptress and later is driven out of her twin parad ises of London and Fawn s by a paternalistic husband (who at least one critic has identified as God) reinforces the Hiltonic comparison . Therefore, Charlotte is as out of place in the idyllic garden as the serpent itself, who taught Eve the duplicity at which Charlotte is so adept and at wh ich Charlotte then instructs Maggie .

When Maggie initially discovers this duplicity in

Charlotte and Amerigo , she imagines her new-foun d involve ment in life as a flower in her "garden of thought" (II 26) , 84 the same "blooming garden" (II 5) in which the pagoda appears , without a door "to give access from her convenient garden level" (II 4) . This peaceful refuge against the outside world and its responsibi lities become s "an almost

Arcadian optimism" {I 321) in Amerigo 's eyes, a utopia impossible to ma intain . Just as impossible to maintain is

Maggie 's imagination "peopled with images [which] swarmed there like the strange combinations that lurked in the woods at twi light" (II 280) . Rejecting the romantic garden as both passive and impractical , Maggie "had ceased to see

their wood of enchantment, a green glade as romantic as one's dream of an old German forest" {II 280) . Haggie , however, differs essentially from Charlotte in their respec tive emotional gardens ; whereas Charlotte is ejected forcib ly from her paradise, Maggie leaves her garden of her own vo lition , eventually finding the door at garden level which wi ll liberate her from those who seek to control her .

On the other hand , the Prince falls into the fatal, eternal trap when, at Matcham, he stumbles into the romantic frame of mind wh ich Maggie seeks to escape . While Maggie leaves the garden of innocence , Amerigo tries to overcome his hesitancy about resuming the affair by allowing himself a romantic view of Charlotte wh ich is at odds with his previous estimation of her attractions. The spell of

Matcham is such that Amerigo falls into her trap , "the 85 sun-chequered greenwood of romance '' where "his spirit thus , at the opening of a vista, met hers" (I 347) . Like the reference to Wagnerian lovers in a wood , this image allude s to a fatal , passionate love which expires rapidly when faced with the demands of a world outside the "greenwood of romance ." As long as he and Charlotte flee from their spouses to t1atcham or Gloucester, they will not have to face their responsibilities to their social contracts into wh ich they so willingly entered and from which they have so benefitted .

Deserts

The opposite of the spiritual freshness of Maggie 's garden world is the ima ge of the desert in The Golden Bowl , wh ich signifies a moral aridity or an ironic or cynical bleakness. In the first volume of the novel, the desert images provide humorou s touche s of irony , as in the first mention in the interlude between Adam and Mrs . Rance :

the vast table, draped in brown holland , thrust its elf between them as an expanse of desert sand . She could n' t eros s the desert, but she could, and did, beautifully get around it [her ma rriage ] showed somehow from afar as so lost, so indistinct and illusory , in the great alkali desert of cheap Divorce . (I 132)

This complicated image begins as a simile but develops into an objectification of the immorality of divorce . Mrs . Rance will arrange to put away her absent husband as easily as she

sails around the billiard table at Fawns, for her marriage 86 is nothing more than a mirage which can disappear quickly if one looks at it too closely. Such a tenuous relationship is analogous to the marriages in the novel, but it also illustrates the impossibility of divorces for the Ve rvers and their respective spouses--and not only because all are nominal Catholics. The question of Hrs. Rance 's marriage also emphasizes to Adam how we ll Maggie 's marriage is succeeding (at least to outsiders) , how un satisfactory was his first marriage , and how much he needs someone to help him in his great endeavor now that Maggie is married. Adam also needs help in the social world; although he is a man who cannot say "No" (I 133) , apparently he does re fuse countless invitations. Later Charlotte will tread the "arid social sands" (I 317) in his stead .

A slight reference to Eaton Square as a "dim desert" at midnight (I 277) , which has its parallel in the second volume as Portland Place is described as a "desert " in

August (II 381) , precede s the change in the focus of the remainder of the desert images which concentrate on spiritual or emotional isolation instead of social bleakness .

The mirage turns into a true oasis for Amerigo and Charlotte

at Matcham , when

. their associated sense was to drain even as thirsty lips , after the plough through the sands and the sight, afar, of the palm-cluster , might drink in at last the promised well in the desert (I 346) 87

With this image James creates a great deal of sympathy for the adulterers . The reader wonders if their lives, espe cially their marriages which shower upon them luxuries such as weekends at Hatcham, are so desolate and emotionally bereft. The interpretation of the image lies in the sentences immed iately preceding and fol lowing it. The "at last" occur s because of the "hourly voice" of Matcham over

"the last few days" which, in addition to the throb of consciousness (and of sexual anticipation) the Prince has been experiencing , have made for him "a positive obsession"

--an obsess ion as great as that of a man without water even for a single day . The sexual image of the "promised we ll" denotes subliminal desire and contrasts with the a foremen- tioned "greenwood of romance" (I 347) which masks with romantic overtones the real idea with which the Prince has been "restlessly occupied "--that of Charlotte and himself alone at Gloucester.

This image lS an important example of the tight structure of the novel. We note that in this scene the

Prince thinks first of the de sert of his situation , or relief through (sexual) moisture , and then tries to sub limate his sexual feelings for Charlotte by imagining the romantic escape of their souls when what he actually desires is a physical escape through sexuality . In Part II, Maggie rejects the romantic delusions wh ich she has used to embellish her feelings for Amerigo and on which she has 88 based her marriage . That she finds "deep with in her"

(II 280) these metaphors shows that she has inherited her father 's romantic attitude , but when she discovers that "the picture was veiled on the contrary with the dimness of trouble ," she demonstrates her mature vision wh ich accepts her ma rriage as it exists . Immediately following Maggie 's rejection of the romantic interlude , she feels her need for

Amerigo and the lack of frankness between them about the adultery. This lack of commun icu.tion she imagines as

a privation that had left on his lips perhaps a little of the same thirst with which she felt her own distorted, the torment of the lost pilgrim who listens in desert sands for the possible, the impossible plash of water (II 281)

As ironic recasting of Amerigo 's image , Maggie 's de sert reveals her sexual need, as well as her stu.ted need for emotional closeness. For Maggie , the two are equal. The

"privation" will continue until her relationship with

Amerigo is cemented , wh ich will occu r only when Adam and

Charlotte are gone . Maggie 's "torment" as a "lost pilgrim" who is not as confident of finding relief (as is Amerigo

in his image) should create sympathy for Maggie as she

struggles against her need for Amerigo in order to satisfy her need for knowledge .

The Sensuous

As a group , the sensuous images wh ich Jame s employs in

The Go lden Bowl may be taken as positive . Although Jame s is 89 not usually thought of as a particularly sensuous writer, images involving the five senses occur quite regularly throughout both volumes . The Prince is shown from the first pages as a sensual man , perhaps the only man not an artist to so appreciate the physical beauty of the world into wh ich he marrie s, and the only man in James 's fiction to exert a hypnotic sexual appeal. Amerigo is not alone in his love of beautiful things , however; every character in the novel is described physically in detail , with special attention given to facial features, and four of the six ma j or characters use sensuous terms consistently to illustrate their awareness of the wo rld around them (Adam and Bob use few of these terms) .

Although the number of images in each group is not large

(ranging from 15 to 55) the images are placed so consistently throughout the novel, and balance the many references to intellectual activity so wel l, that the beauty of the

�lower images, the bouyancy of the wa ter images , the intens ity of the heat and light image s, and the playfulness of the images of children collectively pervade the pages with the atmosphe re of a fairy-tale world made possible by Adam's wealth and his essentially private nature .

Gale is the only critic to give any appreciable space to a discussion of images involving the senses, and he cite s only a few from The Golden Bowl . He notes that, in general, the eye is James 's "favorite human organ ," followed by the 90 voice (27) . Sensations such as touch and smell are cited only twice in his study . In my examination, however , the senses of touch and and the regenerative properties of plants and water figure mo st dominantly. Aural sensations count very little in th is novel, perhaps because there is so much emphasis on appearances and the "good life" ; one would expect more "audio" in The Tragic Muse or What Maisie Knew.

James appears not to have been influenced by music or musicians; having been trained as an artist, he understand ably incl ined toward the visual, rather than the aural , image . Very few sound images occur in The Golden Bowl and those that do are not terribly enlightening to the reader except for Charlotte 's imagined , silent shriek which, for some critics, damns both Adam and Maggie. Of the characters in the novel, only the Prince seems influenced greatly by sounds; obviously, Jame s draws on his own travels in Italy for these passages (I 16 4, 198) . Music itself plays no large part in the book; only twice are we treated to reci �::.a1 s, the first when Charlotte serenades Adam and the second during the Ververs ' reception , dinner , and entertain me nt, when Mrs . Assingham uses the excuse of being overcome

--by Brahms !--to speak to Amerigo about his proposed trip to

Matcham . Overall, the sound images reinforce the reader 's perception of the relationships which is created by the stronger, deeper images patterns ; a series of undertones, 91 the aural images cannot be sustained until the duets of the sposi are orche strated as Maggie seeks to conduct them .

My analysis of the images of flowers , heat and cold, and food shows that, although numerous, they do not contribute greatly to the thematic content of the novel. Even though they create a pleasurable experience for the reader by arousing his sensual response , these groups are much weaker in content than the other groups. For instance , although one would expect the garden world of the Ve rvers to be fragrant and beautiful , its pla sticity matching the tran quility of their lives, Jame s uses mo st of the flower images to describe relationships or thought processes, not the physical surroundings or the persons inhabiting them.

Still, a group of flower images centers around the Matcham weekend and illustrates the beauty of the house, the par ticipants, and their emotions (I 276 , 329 , 355 , 356 , 357 ,

365 , 367) . The flower images in the second volume usually symbolize Maggie 's emerging consciousness and collaborate with the garden images showing Maggie's essential goodness, as when Maggie offers Ame rigo "the flower of participation"

(II 26) , or when her desire for him "flowered in her face"

(II 352) . Other than characterizing the emotional and moral beauty of Maggie 's enlightenment , these images make little impact on the reader .

Likewise, the images of heat , the majority applying to Adam and Maggie, do little more than provide the few 92 instances of the color red in the novel. In conj unction with the discoverer images, the heat images which Adam uses to describe his emotional and intellectual ventures as being his burning of ships (I 215 , 216 , 217, 218, 221) imp ly rather desperate , inescapable situations, lending a touch of compulsiveness to Adam 1 s actions. The images of cold clustering around Charlotte show that just as she is shut out of the light in the novel, so she is left out in the cold, unable to warm herself with Amerigo 1 s love . While

Maggie thaws into a loving wife pulsating with sexual anticipation , Charlotte grows colder and colder, eventually turning into what amounts to an ice statue (called by James an icon and an effigy) 1n the Jast scene . This reversal of the two female characters, Maggie from cold Grecian statue to warm , waiting wife, Charlotte from sun goddess to snow queen, is hard for some readers (those most sympathetic to

Charlotte) to accept. Nevertheless, the images indicate such changes in the women.

Another images group occurs regularly . As noted by

R. \·J . Short , "For James the passing bell was the dinner gong" (952) . The images in The Golden Bowl certainly bear out such an interpretation; the rotund author somehow contrives to associate almost every important scene with a meal or tea . However, over sixty images of food do more than just function as "time-pegs "--" [to] prevent us gently 93

from floating off into a clockless world" (952)--they pro vide the opportun ities for social interaction and thus for the examination of manners (both general and specific to the occasion ) on wh ich Jame s bases his novels. The most strik ing images, such as the Prince 's desc ription of himself as a

"cr�me de volaille , with half the parts Jeft out" (I 8) or as a chef as he dea ls with his father-in-law 's acts of kindness to him (I 292) , reinforce the distinctions between refined, "boiled down" Continental fare and American plain ness, qualities reflected in other character traits . On the other hand , the act of physical incorporation extends to the sexual , in the images employed by Char lotte and Fanny , or evolves into the intellectual, as when Maggie 's appetite for knowledge grows until her thoughts are "fruits of recognition and perception " (II 3) , eventually being likened to those of the Tree of Knowledge (II 367) .

The optical sen se I will discuss in the section on The

Intelligent because James equates vision with knowledge .

Light, dark , shadows , and clouds, however, will be examined in this section . Children and game s are also taken up in this section because a child's world is essentially that of sensation rather than of thought .

\·later, Boats

The images of water and boating in The Golden Bowl function similarly to the flower images in connotating a 94 peaceful, almost placid, existence , both spiritually and secularly. The waters are never rough, the boats never rocky for Haggie and Adam . Those critics who criticize the ir existence should examine also how quickly the other characters scramble into the Ververs ' boat. Not one of the more than forty images, many extended to several sentences or paragraphs, implies turbulence or troubled waters, even when employed during periods of crisis in the novel.

Serving to illustrate the ease of th is almost fairy-tale world , the images buoy the reader, perhaps lull ing some readers into a complacent and passive rather than an active and participatory approach to the novel. Also, we cannot ignore the psychological interpretation s of the water imagery. Water, waves, and tides have all been associated with reproduction , rebirth , and renewal by various cultures for thousands of years; it is not too much to postulate that this quiet, watery world through vlh ich the characters swim is a type of amniotic sac which protects them from con sciousness of and danger from the outside world. Throughout much of the novel, Maggie seems like magical Lady of the

Lake , submerging herself or being submerged by others in order to protect her from knowledge . On the other hand ,

Charlotte and Amerigo are able to function, like mythical mermaids and mermen, in both worlds. Fanny and Bob founder on the rocks much of the time , wh ile Adam pilots the ship on wh ich they all voyage . 95

Intra ducing the first water image , the Prince begins one chain of rel ated images by imagining Mr . Verver 's wealth as

the waters in which he now floated , tinted as by the action of some essence , poured from a gold-tipped phial , for making one's bath aromatic . No one before him, never--not even the infamous Pope---had so sat up to his neck in such a bath . This was the element that bore him up and into which Maggie scattered , on occasion , her exquisite colouring drops . (I 10)

Exotic in its sensuousness, this image creates a scene of a pampered, almost decadent young man being bathed by an adoring mistress or even a slave girl. Later , Amerigo 's bath change s to a "chemical bath" (I 16) but qu ickly leaves the scientific and returns to the sensuous when Amerigo th inks of "the manner in which these golden drops even ly flowed"

(I 138) , just as Adam' s wealth and the self-confidence it gives Charlotte are "the golden glow in wh ich her intelligence wa s temporarily bathed" (I 264) . In their eagerness not to lose their precious golden bath and to maintain their affair , Amerigo and Charlotte try to drown Maggie 's suspicious in

. a bath of benevolence artfully prepared for her , over the brim of wh ich she could just manage to see by stretching her neck . Bath s of benevo lence were very well , but one usually was n't so immersed save by one 's request. It was n't ln the least what she had requested. (II 44) r1aggie, like the others , needs to control her immersion , which she allows herself quite often throughout the second 96 part of the novel, but one feels the malevolence ln the actions of Amerigo and Charlotte so described . Much later, after Charlotte confronts Maggie on the terrace , Maggie again feels that Charlotte "had n' t only poured oil on the troubled waters of their question , but had fa irly drenched their whole intercourse with that lubricant" (II 279) , making the bath doubly slippery for Maggie to emerge from .

Earlier, Haggie had imagined that "She had n't, so to speak , fallen in; she had had no ace iden t nor got wet"

(II 7) as she denies any suspicion about her life with

Amerigo . Eventually she recognizes just how deeply the involvement intrudes into her life, an involvement which belies Amerigo 's assertion of trustworthiness. The group of images dealing with boats , mo st dominant in the first volume , is introduced, as are mo st of the sensuous images , in Chapter One . r1aggie 's urgent need for a secure existence comes forth as she unconditionally and unwisely accepts

Amerigo 's outwar.d appearance as "the real thing," standing for morally and emotionally being "water-tight" :

"I've divided my faith into water-tight compart ments the best cab in and the ma in deck and the engine-room and the steward 's pantry ! It 1 s the ship itself--it 's the whole line . It 1 s the captain 's table and all one 's luggage--one 's reading for the trip." (I 14-15)

But t1aggie 's ship is not as secure as she thinks; the Prince feels an uncertainty about his own boat in recalling "the story of the ship-wrecked Gordon Pym" (I 22) when he admits 97 that "There were moments when he felt his own boat move upon some such mystery" (I 22) , one such as he describes to

Fanny :

"I'm starting on the great voyage--across the unknown sea; my ship's all rigged and appointed , the cargo 's stowed away and the company complete . But what seems the matter with me is that I can't sail alone ; my ship mu st be one of a pair, must have , in the wa ste of waters, a--what do you call it?--a consort. I don't ask you to stay on board with me , but I must keep your sail in sight for orientation . I don 't in the least my self know , I assure you , the points of the compass . But with a lead I can perfectly follow . You mu st be my lead . having brought me safely thus far. I should never have got here without you . You've provided the ship itself, and if you 've not quite seen me aboard you 've attended me ever so kindly to the dock . Your own vessel is all conveniently ln the next berth , and you can't desert me now." (I 26- 2 7)

Fanny reassures the nervous young bridegroom that his fears are unjustified, his adventure over , "'You talk about ships , but they 're not the comparison . Your tossings are over-- you 're practically in port. The port of the Golden

Isles '" (I 27) . Still, Fanny is not the prophetess she would like to be, for in the next scene, Charlotte arrive s to remind Amerigo of their forme r affair and to introduce a complication wh ich culminates in a later boat image , just as distressing to Fanny , which the Prince expresses at the

Foreign Office ball. There , after Fanny receives clues that Charlotte wishes to resume the affair , Amerigo speaks of the lovers ' being "in the same boat" (I 2 6 7) , to which

Fanny shakenly replies , "'I don't know what you mean by the 98

'same ' boat. Charlotte is naturally in Mr . Verver 's boat '"

(I 267) . Demurring, the Prince insists that by Adam's great wealth he is "made buoyant ," "he could pecuniarily float"

(I 268) , as is Charlotte :

"The 'boat, ' you see . is a good deal tied up at the dock, or anchored, if you like , out in the stream . I have to jump out from time to time , to stretch my legs , and you'll probably perceive , if you give it your attention , that Charlotte really can't help occas ionally doing the same . It is n't even a question , sometimes , of one's getting to the dock--one has to take a header and splash about in the water one of the harmless little plunges, off the deck, inevitable for each of us . Why not take them, wh en thev occur , as inevitable--and above all as not enda� gering life or limb? We shan 't drown , we shan 't sink--at least I can answer for myself. Mrs . Verver too moreover--do her the jus tice--visibly knows how to swim. " (I 2 7 0)

This extended me taphor implies several things about Amerigo and Charlotte , the mo st prominent being that they are quite willing to take the "inevitable" dips wh ich come their way , provoking some suspicion about their good intentions toward

Maggie and 1\dam . More like spoiled children , they rebel against the contracts they made, the exchange of personal

(sexual) freedom for financial security and social position .

Their rebellion take s the form of little dips together (such as an afternoon at Gloucester) , which they do not believe harmful to their marriages. But infidelity, physical or emotional , usually hurts someone in the triangle; Maggie is almo st overcome by their actions, and Charlotte herself, though knowing how to swim socially , loses her preferred 99

lifestyle. Wishing to be "a little less adrift" (I 219) ,

Charlotte willingly enters "the London squash" which is

a thing of vague slow senseless eddies , revolving as in fear of some menace of conversa tion suspended over it, the drop of which , with a consequent refreshing splash or spatter, yet never took place . (I 251)

Into the "double stream of the coming and the going" (I 247)

Charlotte swims , keeping Ame rigo as the "ballast of her

boat" (I 282) , so that when they make their pledge to one

another, the Prince takes Charlotte as his consort and "of a

sudden , through this tightened circle , as at the issue of a

narrow strait into the sea beyond, everything broke up ,

broke down , gave way , melted and mingled" (I 312) . One mu st

not overlook the sexual connotations of this water imagery

in which the "li ttle dips ," deeper and more intimate than

the Ve rvers perceive , lead to the submersion of all goodness

and trust during the Matcham weekend.

At the end of that climactic day, Fanny exclaims , "'I

see the boat they 're in, but I'm not , thank God, in it

myself '" (I 370) . Instead, she and Bob climb into the ir own

boat , "sinking together, hand in hand for a time , into the

my stic lake where he had begun by seeing her paddle

alone" (I 378) , an image which reinforces Fanny 's role as

fairy-godmother for Amerigo; the mystic lake in which the

Lady of the Lake resided held the secret of all goodness,

bravery , and strength in the form of Excalibur (the sword of 100 the Grail legend) . For Fanny and Bob , "what they had brought up from the depths" (I 379) is a commitment to

Maggie in her struggle to bridge the "bottomless gulf"

(I 394) wh ich she ha s created by her excessive concern for

Adam 's well-being .

By using Fanny as a guiding beacon until the golden bowl is found , Maggie pilots her own boat through dangerous straits : "She stands off and off , so as not to arrive ; she keeps out to sea and away from the rocks, and what she mo st wants of me lS to keep at a safe distance with her"

(II 131) . Fanny does this by trying to put Maggie at ease about Amerigo 's intentions , but Maggie is still "restlessly set af loat" (II 171) by her knowledge , just as Amerigo is

"at sea" (II 190) when Magg ie presents him with the evidence of the broken bowl . Initially, then , the sea and boat imuges are employed by the characters to show ease and security , chiefly through we alth , but when emotions complicate the arrangement by forcing realignment into separate

"boats ," the images illustrate disturb ing and disturbed feelings . Maggie 's original trust is shattered , her marriage ba sed on shifting sands instead of solid rock. As she searches for a secure hold on her life, she relies on Adam for emotional strength until he quite wisely navigates his own boat back to American City :

after they had dropped again on their old bench , it was wonderfully like their having 101

got together into some boat and paddled off from the shore where husbands and wives, luxuriant complications, made the air too tropical . In the boat they were father and daughter, and poor Dotty and Kitty supplied abundantly, for their situ ation, the oars or the sail. Why , into the bargain, for that matter--this came to Maggie- could n't they always live , so far as they lived together, in a boat? They need only know each other in the unmarried relation. They had , after all, whatever happened, always and ever each other. (II 255)

Maggie even expresses a thought to turn back time to the point before Adam married , "for remounting the stream of time and dipping again, for the softness of the water , into the contracted basin of the past" (II 258) . Unlike the

"bath" which is imposed upon her, Maggie 's "contracted basin" is a defen se mechanism of her own imagination, and one from which she emerges with a renewed commitment to

Amerigo in a sparkling image :

a creature consciously floating and shining in as warm summer sea, some element of dazzling sapphire and silver, a creature cradled upon depths , buoyant among danqers, in wh ich fear or folly or sinking otherwise than in play was impossible The beauty of her condition was keeping him [Adam] at any rate , as he might feel , in sight of the sea , where , though his personal dips we re over, the whole thing could shine at him and the air and the plash and the play become for him too a sensation . (II 263)

Maggie 's passionate declaration of love for Amerigo , however, convinces Adam that he must remove Charlotte from

Maggie 's life, a decision which apparently takes a little wind out of his sails: 102

with the act of their crossing the bar to get , as might be , into port--there occurred the only approach to a betrayal of their having had to beat against the wind . Her father kept his place , and it was as if she had got over the first and were pausing for her consort to follow. . They had beaten against the wind and she was still fresh; they had beaten against the wind and he , as at best the more battered vessel , perhaps just vaguely dropped. (II 264-65)

The boat images come full circle at the end of the novel as I1aggie , leaving her father in his port , attaches herself to Amerigo and become s his true consort, the type for wh ich he first turned to Fanny and then to Charlotte .

Reunited , the Prince and Princess reaffirm their "water- tight compartments" as "their plank [was] now on the great sea" (II 352-53) in a voyage which one hopes would be more reassuring than Amerigo 's image at Fanny 's evoked. Haggie realigns herself with Amerigo and he with her in an image reminiscent of his and Charlotte 's pJ edge :

He was with her as if he were hers, hers in a degree and on a scale , >-J i th an intensity and an intimacy, that we re a new and a strange quality , that were like the irruption of a tide loosening them where they had stuck and making them feel they floated . vJhat wa s it that,, with the rush of this, just kept her from putting out her hands to him, from catching at him as in the other time , with the superficial impetus he and Charlotte had privately conspired to impart , she had so often , her breath failing her, known the impulse to catch at her father? (II 339-40)

That Maggie matures into emotional and moral awareness

is shown by the many images associating consciousness with waves and tides of enlightenment which wash over Maggie . 103

This third use of water image ry is introduced initial ly by

the Prince in the first chapter as "there kept rising from

him, in waves, that consciousness" (I 19) of his good for-

tune in obtaining Maggie 's hand in marriage . Later Maggie 's

and Adam 's "waters of talk spread a little" (I 167) as they

realize Adam's awkward position regarding Mrs. Rance; Bob's

conversation with Fanny exhibits a "sense of ebbing oppor-

tunity" (I 282) , while Fanny herself feels "a consciousness

of deep waters" (I 366) after the Matcham weekend. Seeking

a way to make Maggie "right ," Adam searches for an idea in

wh ich "the disparities would submit to fusion and so ,

spreading beneath him, make him feel he floated" (I 206) .

Maggie 's own ideas in the second volume wa sh over her ,

described in images such as

The perfection of her success, decidely , was like some strange shore to which she had been noise lessly ferried and where , with a start, she found herself quaking at the thought that the boat might have put off again and left her . (II 41)

Also occur such images as "the warmly-washing wave had

travelled far up the strand positively j_n submarine

depths where everything came to her through walls of emerald

and mother-of-pearl" (II 43) ; "It rushed over her, the full

sense of all this, with quite another rush from that of the

breaking wave ten days before" (II 45) ; "the young woman 's

imagination broke in a small vain wave" (II 49) ; "She had

been qu ick in her preparation , in spite of the flow of the 104 tide that sometimes took away her breath" (II 82) . Amerigo and Charlotte need not have been concerned with keeping

Maggie 's consciousness submerged--she swims in her own realizations more times than not. Two realizations are described in very similar terms . When Amerigo returns from

Matcham, suspicion commences in Maggie :

It wa s for hours and hours later on as if she had somehow been lifted aloft, were floated and carried on some warm high tide beneath which stumb ling blocks had sunk out of sight. . This consciousness wa s the uplifting sustaining wave . (II 24-25)

When she confronts Amerigo months later with the knowledge

supplied by the golden bowl ,

Depth upon depth of her situation , as she met his face, surged and sank within her; but with the effect somehow once more that they rather lifted her than let her drop. She had her feet somewhere through it all--it wa s her companion absolutely who was at sea . And she kept her feet; she pressed them to what wa s beneath her (II 203)

Almost identical in expression , these two examples emphasize

the consistency of James 's image ry and how little he left to

chance , how unambiguous wa s his craft. As in The Ambassa-

dors and The Wings of the Dove , the water imagery in The

Golden Bowl reinforces the structure of the novel, function-

ing as part of the "archetectonics" which Gargano praises so

highly . In its circular patterns of echoing and reechoing

previou s images, the imagery links together crucial passages

such as the ones in which flower, water, and light images 105 predominate . Jame s also undergirds his themes--social , sexual, emotional, moral--with water and boat images which ferry the reader to the opposite shore of understanding.

Light, Dark

Functioning similarly to the water image , James 's light images illumine the reade r as to the states of consciousness of the characters in The Golden Bowl . Again , most of these images are positive , connotating an increased awareness of emotional or intellectual situations and their ramifica tions. The mo st numerous of the sen suous image groups, the light-dark and shadow metaphors enlighten the reader simul taneously as to Jame s 's technique and to his themes. He evokes the images repeatedly, almost obsessively, lead ing one to be l ieve that James equated light , and the properties or dimensions given by light , with the genius of art.

Reading his art criticism, one surmises that he rated such artists as Tintoretto Rnd Delacroix highly because of their trea trnent of light and color. Sometimes his images are important in that they prov ide illumination of the soul and mind and enable the characters to draw conclusions based on analogies in art .

R. W. Short wr ites, emphasizing color rather than

substance , that the "red" images function to describe the golden bowl : 106

The gold and red images of The Golden Bowl , then , along with other expensive , beautiful ma tters , provide an harmonious setting for the symbol of the bowl itself Chiefly , the golden and red series color up the cage-beast and the all important mechanical series, discharging an alchemical office by giving off their tone and substance in the service of James 's golden scenes and pictures. (957)

However, one should recall also the uses of the color red in

Portrait of a Lady and The Amba ssadors, in which it becomes a symbol of the evils of Paris or of lurid intent , usually sexually motivated.

We should not be surprised, then , that one of James 's most common uses of light imagery is to show physical beauty or sexual attractiveness in a character. One possible reason for the positive fee lings of critics for Amerigo and Charlotte is the plethora of light images applied to them, making them almost sun god and goddess, in contrast to the darker images of shadows and veils used by Adam and

Haggie. One should note in the appendix, though , that

90 percent of the "radiance" images connected with the

Prince and Charlotte are in the first vo lume , conjured up by the Prince 's mind at a time when he is most struck by

Charlotte 's sexual appeal. Likewise, the darker images ,

sixty percent of wh ich are in Maggie 's volume , are imagined during the darkest hours of her young life. Therefore ,

James 's images serve to show emotional crisis in one book , physical appeal in the other. 107

For example , in the beginning pages of the novel, James presents Amerigo almo st as a pagan sun god whose physiognomy infuses the air around him with light :

A sobriety that might have consorted with failure sat in his handsome face , constructively regular and grave , yet at the same time oddly and , as might be , functionally almost radiant , with its dark blue eyes, its dark brown mu stache (I 4)

Later , Fanny ga zes at him in adoration :

The Prince 's dark blue eyes were of the finest and , on occasion , precisely , resembled nothing so much as the high windows of a Roman palace The young man 's expression became after this fashion something vivid and concrete--a beautiful personal presence , that of a prince in very truth , a ruler , warrior, patron , lighting up brave archi tecture and diffusing the sense of a function. He seemed, leaning on the crimson damask , to take in the bright day . He looked younger than his years; he was beautiful innocent vague . (I 4 2)

When Charlotte enters , she sheds even more light upon the

Prince :

This last was the thing in her--for she threw it out positively on the spot like a light--that she might have reappeared , during these moments , just to cool his worried eyes with . He saw her in her light : that immediate exclusive address to their friend was like a lamp she was holding aloft for his benefit and for his pleasure . It showed him everything--above all her presence in the world , so closely, so irretrievably contemporaneous with his own . (I 4 5)

Charlotte , then , functions as a sexual mu se to the Prince as

he remembers her body in the light of her sudden appearance

before his wedding . Still, she knows him more intimately 108

than anyone in the novel and shares many of the same experiences, a situation she makes the mo st of. "Then a light visibly came to her--a light in wh ich her friend suddenly

and intensely showed. The ref lex ion of it, as she smi led

at him, was in her own face" (I 119) . Her light is not

always benign ; however, later in the novel, "the light of

Charlotte 's prompt influence" is poison to the Lutches and

Mrs. Rance (I 193) . After her ma rriage , Charlotte 's beau ty

hardens into an almost metallic sheen when her plan to

seduce Amerigo is discovered by Fanny :

The effect of it, as well, was an arrest for Charlotte ; whose face however, all of whose fine and slightly hard radiance , it had the next instant caused further to brighten . . Charlotte promptly rose then , as might be , to meet it, and her colour for the first time perceptibly height ened. . She spoke , at the same time , with the noblest moderation of tone , and the image of high pale lighted disappointment she meanwhile pre sented . . She turned to meet the Amba ssador and the Prince , who had already , between them, she wa s aware , addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden glow in which her intelli gence was temporar i ly bathed . . her success wa s reflected in the faces of the two men of distinc tion before her , unmistakeably moved to admiration by her exceptional radiance . She at first but watched this reflexion . (I 258, 263, 264)

At Matcham, after she abruptly dismisses Fanny as an

unimportant obstacle to their pleasure , "Charlotte 's face

fairly lightened , softened, shone out. It reflected

as really never yet the rare felicity of their luck"

(I 342) . As Ame rigo waits for her to appear on the terrace ,

he recalls that 109

she had, above all, thrown off an image that flashed like a mirror played at the face of the sun . . His whole consciousness had by this time begun almost to ache with a truth of an exquisite order, at the glow of wh ich she too had so unmistakeab ly then been warming herself. (I 346)

Whether this glow is the reflection of the "general brightness" of Hatcham (I 350) or the flush of anticipation , both the Prince and Charlotte are in their glory in these last pages of the first volume awash with Amerigo 's sexuality .

The afterglow of Gloucester is still evident when he returns to Portland Place; Maggie acknowledges that "she was married by good fortune to an altogether dazzling person" (II 21); when he descends like a god from above , "he stood before her refreshed , almost radiant, quite reassuring he brightly reappeared" (II 24-25} . Charlotte , also, appears the next morning "in the light, strange and coloured"

(II 31} which binds the two , even in Maggie 's subconscious . vlhen Haggie examines this connection , it

prompted in Maggie a final reflexion , a reflexion out of the heart of wh ich a light flashed for her . . As soon as this light spread a little it produced in some quarter a surprising distinctness . . the word that flashed the light was that they were treating her . (II 41)

Later, she will connect the two again as "two strangely unobliterated impressions above all, the physiognomic light that had played out in her husband and the wonder of Cha rlotte 's beautiful bold wavering glance" (II 103) .

Eventually, "Other looks, other lights, radiant and steady , 110

with the others, had taken its place , reaching a climax so short a time ago . . when their general interested Lright- ness and beauty, attuned to the outbreak of summe r, had seemed to shed down warmth " (II 103-04) , as if they we re shining divinities beaming down upon their lower devotees .

Gradually, the light images desert Amerigo and

Charlotte , as they must relinquish the ir roles as god and goddess of love . As Maggie asserts herself in capturing the role of her husband 's favorite, her mind alternate s between bright hope and dismal despair. When she realizes that something is amiss ln the quartet, she lS "in the darkening shadow of a false position," but this gives way to her vigil before the fire as she waits for Amerigo , when her thoughts "played through her fu ll after-sense like lights on the whole impression, " in "the light of these concatena- tions" (II 6, 20, 23) . It dawns on her that someth ing must change and that she must initiate it:

again and yet again she paused before the fire : after which, each time , in the manner of one for whom a strong light has suddenly broken , she gave herself to livelier movement She had a plan , and she rejoiced in her plan : this consisted of the light that, suddenly breaking into her restless reverie, had marked the climax

of that vigil . (II 24-25)

Thus , Maggie finds an inner light to guide her way through the tangle of relationships she mu st preserve . Others also provide light when Maggie needs it mos t, as when Fanny reflects Maggie 's relief: lll

Maggie had sprung up wh ile her friend sat en throned , and , after moving to and fro in her intensity , now paused to receive the light she had invoked. It had accumulated , considerably , by this time , round Mrs. Ass ingham 's ample presence , and it made , even to our young woman 's own sense , a medium in wh ich she could at last take a deeper breath. (II 111) or as when Charlotte 's confidence bolsters Maggie 's own :

any confidence, � latent operating insolence , that Mrs . Verver should , thanks to her large native resources, continue to be possessed of and to hold in reserve , glimmered suddenly as a possible working light . (II 240) or as when Maggie realizes Amerigo 's help in handling

Charlotte :

It was in fact as if, thanks to her hovering image of him confronted wi th this admirable creature even as she was confronted , there glowed upon her from afar, yet straight and strong , a deep explan atory light which covered the last inch of the ground. whereas Charlotte , though rising there radiantly before her , was really off in some darkness of space that would steep her in solitude and harass her with care . (II 250)

Likewise, when her father projects his plan to return to

American City, he provides Haggie with the same image of

Charlotte :

There was his idea, the clearness of wh ich for an instant almost dazzled her. It was a blur of light in the midst of wh ich she saw Charlotte , saw her waver in the field of vision , saw her removed , transported , doomed she had made him do it all for her, and had lighted the way to it without his naming her husb and . (II 271-72)

Many of the light images are concentrated in the chapters of the terrace scene and its aftermath ; in the space of three chapters a dozen important images appear. In 112 addition to the three cited above , others predict Maggie 's victory by reinforcing positively her knowledge . Reflecting on the consequences of Charlotte 's embrace after the terrace scene, Haggie evaluates it thus :

Maggie 's own measure had remained all the same full of the reflexion caught from the total inference Supreme ly, however, while this glass was held up to her , had Maggie 's sense turned to the quality of the success constituted on the spot for Charlotte Fanny Assingham must have secretly , in a flash, seen daylight for herself . (I 277-78)

During the terrace scene , even the surroundings bring light to Maggie :

. under the high cool lustre of the saloon , a twinkle of crystal and silver Charlotte 's theory of a generous manner wa s to express that her stepdaughter 's word . . had restored them to the serenity of a relation without a cloud . It had been in short by this light ideally conclu s ive . (II 2 7 9)

The Prince 's reaction , so careful and del iberate , �1a ggie interprets hopefully as his assent to her handling of the situation :

Maggie had a day of still waiting after allowing him time to learn how unreservedly she had lied for him--of waiting as for the light of she scarce knew what slow-shining reflexion of this knowledge in her personal situation . (II 282)

In the second confrontation with Charlotte , Maggie 's deception deepens as she searches for additional ruses for her actions : "Vague but increasingly brighter this possibility glimmered on her. . . It had absolutely, within the time , taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of them 113 alike" (II 313) . Even Maggie 's view of her father changes as her knowledge grows : "she saw him . in a light of recognition which had its brightness for her at many an hour of the past , but which had never been so intense" (II 273) .

Thus , it appears that Maggie 's hope s are brightened as the number of light images increases after these confrontations ; her understanding of the situation is broadened also as she seeks a way to do what she must without visibly harming or emba rrassing the other three .

Other minor images of light describe the dawn , espe cially when indicative of a character 's awakening, as when

Adam believes his proposal to Charlotte completes his vision : "He was acting not in the dark, but in the high golden morning" (I 211) , or when Amerigo recalls his old Roman days which "seemed to hang 1n the air of mere iridescent horizons" (I 332-33) , or when Maggie, realizing that Amerigo and Charlotte connive toge ther, feels that "it was in the mitigated midnight of these approximations that she discerned the promise of her dawn" (II 43) . When

Amerigo 's increasing restlessness manifests itself as throbs whose "series toge ther resembled perhaps more than anything else those fine waves of clearness through which , for a watcher of the east, dawn at last trembles into rosy day"

(I 294) , the image is remarkably like that of Maggie 's imagining him alone in London : 114

It had never occurred to his wife to pronounce him ingenuous , but there came at last a high dim August dawn when she could n' t sleep and when . she found the faint flush of the east march Hi th the perception of that other almost equal prodigy . It rosily coloured her vision (II 293)

Finally , "She sank to her knees with her arm on the ledge of her window-seat, where she blinded her eyes from the full glare of seeing that his idea could only be to wait . . at her side" (II 295) . In such images James colors the experiences of both Amerigo and Maggie to create an atmosphere of emerging enlightenment rather than of dim doubt and darkness. The dawn also reinforces the almost Edenic quality of

Fawn s and Matcham, being as they are the "dawn of civilization " as created by Maggie and her father. From these gardens, she and Amerigo will go forward to face their new dawn together. However, one mu st also acknowledge the blinding quality of the dawn and of the knowledge which

Maggie gains , hide though she might from it, both in the scene cited above and in the last pages of the novel.

The images of darkness also serve to enhance the reader 's unrlerstanding of Maggie 's growth . In the more spectacular "visions" of the characters, light connotes discove ry or enlightenment, either intellectual or emotional . Throughout the novel, the aforementioned images alternate with images of darkness almo st clau stophob ic in the comparisons to clouds , veils, and pressing shadows . The 115 extended image in the first chapter of Part I sets the stage for the rest of the images; as Amerigo compares American innocence to Gordon Pym's "curtain of light ," he notes that the curtain is

. concealing as darkness conceals, yet of the colour of mild or of snow. he had never known curtains but as purple even to blackness- but as producing where they hung a darkness intended and ominous. (I 22-23)

Indeed, most of the images function to good advantage by prov iding the reader an anticipation of revelation , for just as the Prince "promised himself virtually to give the

[shroud] a twitch" (I 2 4) , so do the other characters act to emerge from darkness into light . By wondering "what was, morally speaking , behind their veil" (I 24) , Amerigo summa- rizes the entire plot of The Golden Bowl . Each of the characters seeks to peer "behind the veil" into the holiest of holies, into each other 's moral beings , in order to place each other in the universe created by Adam's wea lth.

For example, Adam struggles mightily (albeit invisibly) to garner his money; he had been "inscrutably monotonous behind an iridescent cloud" (I 128) , eventually to emerge victorious , for "the years of darkness had been needed to render possible the years of light" (I 14 4) . One of his realizations in the years of light was that Maggie 's marriage was so successful that "it [was] thus a new light for him" by which to compare his own marriage , a comparison 116 which leaves him with "a strange dim doubt" about Maggie 's mother 's abilities (I 148) and wh ich may provide a clue to his marriage with Charlotte. For although quite 1n love with his wife at the time , Adam remembers most her "depravi- ties of decoration" (I 143) , a painful memory for him, whereas his second wife exerts a po sitive , appreciative

influence on his collection .

In recommending her friend to her father , the "blind-

ers" which Maggie uses toward other persons ' private lives

lead her further into darkness. When she says , " 'I don 't

think I want even for myself to put names and times, to pull

away any veil '" (I 184) from Charlotte 's past, what seems a

proper kindness and decorum becomes an obtuseness with

far-reaching consequences . Charlotte thinks she succeed s in

drawing the ve il further over Adam's eyes--"the fine tissue

of reassurance woven by this lady's hands and flung over her

companion as a light muffling veil, formed precisely a

wrought tran sparency" (II 138) ; however, Maggie believes

that Adam knows her plight and that

It shook between them, this transparency , with their very breath; it was an exquisite tissue , but stretched on a frame , and would give way the next instant if either so much as breathed too hard . She held her breath , for she knew by his eyes, the light at the heart of which he could n' t blind , that he was . . making sure . (II 267-68)

Adam 's powers of penetration into the others seems great ,

for not even Fanny is "thickly veiled" to him (I 153) . With 117

such images, Jame s suggests that Adam sees into the other

cha racters to a greater degree than he exhibits in the

novel, a degree which his daughter must emulate for her

success .

After her confrontation with Amerigo over the golden bowl , Maggie feels a rebirth of sorts, a struggle toward the

light "as if she had come out of a dark tunnel , a

dense wood, or even simply a smoky room" (II 207) , but her

confidence is short-lived when she confronts Charlotte on

the terrace and "faced that blinding light and felt it turn

to blackness" (II 233-34). After that, "other possibilities

left one in a darkness of prowling dangers that was

like the predicament of the night-watcher in a beast-haunted

land who has no more means for a fire " (II 299-300) . Such

images provoke in the reader an uncertainty of Maggie 1 s

perspicuity , perhaps contributing to an emotional unease

(which some critics call the "amb iguous") by which James

approximates in the reader the character 1 s emotions. Even

the Prince , who had sworn to survive Pym1 s fog and pull away

the vei l, wanders through the second volume wi thout knowl

edge : "He was walking ostensibly beside her, but in fact

given over without a break to the grey medium in wh ich he

helplessly groped" (II 281) .

Even in her triumph , Maggie slips between light and

darkness . vlh ile knowing that her moral and intellectual 118 success is clear, she still must deal with her new-foun d sexuality--"her weakness, her desire flowered in her face like a light or a darkness" (II 352) --but after Adam and Charlotte have gone , "the delay in [Amerigo 's] return, making her heart beat too fast to go on , was like a sudden blinding light" (II 36 7) . In this last image , reflected in Amerigo 's "so strangely lighted" eyes (II 369) , James emphasizes Maggie 's receipt of knowledge not only moral and intelle ctual but also sexual and emotional. Because of this knowledge , she is able to experience the "pity and dread" caused by Amerigo 's obvious sexual need . Maggie sees a new light, similar to that of her own surrender, in Amerigo 's eyes .

Through the seventy-five images of light and dark ,

James evokes an atmosphere of sensuality heightened by sexual desire , yet tempered by doubts about its morality.

More than any of the other groups of images, the light and dark imagery seems to reflect James 's own concern about art , life , and sensuousness, and their interplay as seen espe cially in the characters of Amerigo and Charlotte . The dark images also function to immerse the reader in Maggie 's fear and so by opposition to emphasize her triumph in the end.

Ch i ldren, Games, Toys

Over thirty-five references to children, games , and toys occur in the novel, split almost evenly between the two 119 volumes and including the lengthy description of the card game at Fawns in Book V. In the novel which examine s most closely the quality of innocence , James compares several of his characters to children by describing them as having a childlike (not childish) innocent enjoyment of and partic i- pation in their lives and by emphasizing Adam's youthful being and attitude toward the younger members of his menage .

Although Muriel Shine , the critic wh o has examined most fully James's use of children, feels that in most of his novels James "sensed the contradictions of childhood , observed the coexistence of good and evil in the child, and dramatized its search for identity and moral purpose" and felt that "childhood is a time of unhappiness" (22) , she also notes that "The little Principino figures as a symbol of continuity in familial relations the infant is emblematic of the ideal, the constructive , the enduring"

(81) . There are not very many images applied to the child , however; most of the images describe Adam and Maggie as seen through the eyes of the Prince. Amerigo thinks of Adam as looking

like a little boy shyly entertaining in virtue of some imposed rank , that he could only be one of the powers , the representative�ii force- quite as an infant king is the representative of a dynast . (I 324)

It is odd that we never see Amerigo thinking of his own son as such a representative , perhaps indicating that the Prince think s the boy more American (or more Adam's) th an Italian . 120

�loreover, Adam elicits in all three female characters a maternal feeling: Fanny watches over him ass iduously, "as if she were nursing a sick baby" (I 137) ; Charlotte says she believes him "young" (I 218) . Maggie thinks of him as "very slight and young and superficially manageable, almost as much like her child as like her parent" (II 82) and keep s him close "by much the same intimate inseparability of her doll" (II 83) . Repeatedly, Maggie asserts Adam's youth and vigor--

She had sacrificed a parent no older than herself : [her marriage] would n't so much have mattered if he had been of common parental age . That he was n' t he was just her extra ordinary equal and contemporary . (I 206)

By noting that "what stood out beyond everything was that he was always marvelous ly young" (II 274) , Maggie perhaps exhibits a des ire on her part to cling to the stabil ity wh ich Adam represents by imagining him as under her control .

In other words, like a young child who stops sucking his thumb or a young girl who voluntarily gives up her dol ls,

Maggie will not be able to give up her father until she matures to the point that she is secure without him, an act vJh ich occurs late in the novel when she encourage Adam to return to American City. Before such maturity evolves, though , Adam is compared to an expensive animated doll--"His lips somehow were closed--and by a spring connected moreover with the action of his eyes themselves" (I 131) --much like the one to wh ich Maggie compares herself: 121

she was passed about , all tenderly and expertly, like a dressed doll held, in the right manner, by its firmly stuffed middle , for the account she could give . She might have been made to give it by pressure of her stomach; she might have been expected to articulate with a rare imitation of nature , "Oh yes, I'm here all the while; I'm also in my way a solid little fact and I cost originally a great deal of money : cost, that is my father, for my outfit, and let in my husband for an amount of pains--for my training- that money would scarce represent ." (II 51)

Much like Nora in Ibsen 's The Doll House, Maggie rebels against being manipulated and stuck on the shelf of her life and animates herself, as if a fairy-tale doll or puppet come to life .

At Hatcham, Amerigo think s of the two left in London as infantile , perhaps even moronic (a fatal conclusion for him and Charlotte) :

They knew . . absolutely nothing on earth worth speaking of They were good chi ldren , bless their hearts , and the children of good children; so that verily the Principino himself, as less consistently of that descent , might figure to the fancy as the ripest of the trio. (I 33 4)

Just so , Amerigo believes that his and Charlotte 's appearing

"in a state of childlike innocence seemed to publish one as idiotic or incapable" (I 335) . That same night ,

Fanny asserts that "We know nothing on earth . . We 're as innocent as babes. We can be anything

Ab solute idiots" (I 400-01) .

This alignment of innocence with imbecility is the stumbling block over wh ich Amerigo and Charlotte fall; as 122

Maggie says later, "They thought of everyth ing but that I might think" (II 332) . It is significant , then , that the childless individuals, Charlotte , Fanny , and Amerigo (to the extent that Adam usurps his place) , believe children to be stupid , while Maggie and Adam, two of the best parents in all of James 's fiction , know that even small children mature daily at a rate faster , proportionally, than any adult and are capable of receiving knowledge , although sometimes it may be intuitive or instinctive (a knowledge the extent and degree of wh ich Jame s illustrates mo st vividly in What

Maisie Knew) . That Maggie is more cognizant of a child 's knowledge and behavior is evident in her image that she "now built before [Fanny 's] eyes--very much as a wise or even as a mischievous child, playing on the floor , might pile up blocks, skillfully and dizzily, with one eye on the face of a covertly-watching elder" (II 102) . Interestingly, more images of children occur in Part I than in Part II; as l-1aggie is a new mother, one might expect more images of children in her section . She does characterize her plan to visit Spain with Adam as

a plan that the parent and the child . had recurred to on occasion , nursed it and brought it up theoretically , though without as yet quite allowing it to put its feet to the ground. The most it had done was to try a few steps on the drawing-room carpet with much attendance on either side , much holding up and guarding , much anticipa tion in fine of awkwardness or accident. Their companions , by the same token , had constantly 123

assisted at the performance , fol lowing the experi ment with sympathy and gaiety , and never so full of applause, Maggie now made out for herself, as when the infant project had kicked its legs most wildly. (II 46)

She also calls it "a toy to dangle before the other"

(II 46) . And in the second volume is Bob's description as

"the artless child who hears his favourite story told for

the twentieth time and enjoys it exactly because he knows what is next to happen" (II 128) when Fanny discusses

Maggie 's situation with him.

In Part II, however, a preponderance of game images,

specifically card games, illustrate Maggie 's risk in the

game of her life , and the likelihood of her losing all she

has. \vhile other games are mentioned briefly in Parts I

and II [(billiards (I 29 , 31) ; lawn tennis (I 202) ; tea

party (I 34, 126-27, II 157) ; forfeits (I 281) ; toy soldiers

(I 64) ; horse racing (II 38) ], card game s dominate , possibly

revealing more about the social strata the characters occupy

than any deep character traits. However, expert card

players are characterized by a daring cunning, a quick

mathematical mind , and an ability to "read" the card s and

gamb le accordingly, which perhaps gives clues to Adam's

source of wealth . Elsewhere , Adam remembers that

he had be lieved he liked transcendent calculation and imaginative gambling all for themselves, the creation of "interests" that were the extinction of other interests, the livid vulgarity even of getting in, or getting out , first. (I 144) 124

Such an image leads one to imagine Adam adroitly playing the stock market or buying bonds with just the same practical eye with which he buys antiques and art. Adam also seems scrupulously honest and fair as "he wished there fore to match no appearance but that of a gentleman playing with perfect fairness any game in life he might be called to"

{I 2 2 9) , be it cards or stocks or marriage to Char lotte .

There fore , either as a master of guile or as a natural talent, Adam succeeds in winning .

Because she is Adam's offspring, one expects Maggie to be an expert gambler 2lso--which she is, but with a difference . As she acknowledges at Fawns , "cards were as nought to her and she could follow no move . . she had been ever, in her stupidity (Adam' s] small, his sole despair" (II 233) .

Instead , Maggie arranges the cards symmetrically , building houses wh ich she gambles will stand , not fall into chaos .

She is at a distinct disadvantage when playing the game with

Adam , since he is so adept , but Maggie feels equal to the challenge :

She said to herself in her exci tement, that it was perfectly simple: to bring about a difference touch by touch, without letting either of the three , and least of all her father, so much as suspect her hand . So had the case wonder fully been arranged for her; there was a card she could play , but there was only one , and to play it would be to end the game . She felt herself--as at the small square green table between the tall old silver candlesticks and the neatly arranged counters--her father 's playmate and partner. {II 33-34) 125

Maggie keeps several cards back, one being her observation that Fanny is persona non grata at Fawns:

That hideous card she might in mere logic play- being at this time , at her still swifter private pace , intimately familiar with all the fingered pasteboard in her pack. But she could play it only on the forbidden issue of sacrificing Adam . (II 107)

This she cannot do for many chapters as she realizes that

What she had gone on owing him mounted up again to her eyes like a column of figures--or call it even if one would a house of cards : it was her father 's wonderful act [of marrying Charlotte] that had tipped the house down and made the sum wrong . (II 81)

Maggie gambles with her father 's confident abandon that she

can beat him at this game--"She might yet, as at some hard

game over a table for money, have been defying him to fasten

on her the least little complication of consciousness"

(II 84-85) --but we must wait until her supreme gamble beneath the great tree at Fawns to learn of her victory .

Although arguably the mo st dramatic scene in the novel ,

the terrace scene in Book V begins innocuously enough , as a

private family evening when "cards had with inevitable

promptness asserted their rule, the game forming itself, as

had often happened before , of Mr. Verver with Mrs . Assingham

for partner and of the Prince with Mrs . Verver" (II 231) .

However, Maggie 's new-found knowledge of the golden bowl 's

secret gives a more sinister mood to the evening , making it

impossible for her to concentrate on anything except "her 126

father 's wife 's lover facing his mistress" (II 232) ; James

intentionally creates a verbal and thus emotional oistance between Maggie and the others to allow her the freedom to

examine alternatives without taking their emotional conse

quences, the freedom to exercise her creative imagination without costing her dignity and pride . As if a reconstruc-

tion of her memo ry of playing cards wi th her father (cited

above) , the players sit "round the green cloth and the sil

ver flambeaux . . she was always on such occasions out of

the party" (II 232) , an emphasis of t1aggie 's isolation and

of the usurpation of her place as her father 's partner by

Charlotte and Fanny . The latter woman , though , functions as

Maggie 's surrogate in this scene , both as Adam's partner and

as f.1aggie ' s consciousness, for Fanny , "placed opposite to

the three and knowing more about each , probably than

either of them knew of either" (II 232) , approximates

Maggie 's knowledge of the affair. By substituting for

Maggie in the quartet, Fanny allows Maggie to observe them,

"watching them from her corner and consciously, as might be

said , holding them in her hand" (II 232) , noticing how "they

struck her as conforming alike , in the matter of gravity and

propriety , to the stiff standard of the house" (II 2 3 3) .

The last phrase, punning on the word "house" implies both

Fawns and the formal Verver way of life as well as Adam' s

wealth , the "bank" which finances the game they play daily . 127

By calling Adam "a high adept" (II 233) , Maggie focuses not only on his aptitude for cards but also on his inscrutable quality of calmness--his "poker face ," so to speak--in the game of life. That l'>. merigo , Fanny and Charlotte also are noted as being experts in "so complete a conquest of appearances" (II 233) makes the card game an apt metaphor for the action of the novel, with each character trying the guess the others' hands. Charlotte , of course , has the most to lose, but charact-eristically, she plays well, "with only her own interest at stake" (I 317) , though she gambles all that she has in this scene and gives her hand away to Maggie :

as Charlotte showed it so [Maggie] must at present submissively seem to take it. It ca�e home to her too that the challenge was n't, as might be said, in Adam's interest and for his protection , but pressing ly, insistently 1n Charlotte 's, for that of her security at any price. She must remain safe and Maggie must pay . (II 244-45)

But minutes later , Charlotte asks the question which gives

Maggie the clue to her success and so beats Charlotte at her own game of appearances.

Thus, following a tradition which reaches as far back as the fifth century , when the game of life was compared to a game of chess, James uses game s wh ich children and adults play for two purposes: first, to exhibit the character 's qua lities of mental acumen which contrasts sharply with the implied imbecility of those who play "children 's games ," and second , to create an atmosphere of lei sure and pleasure 128 which , in conjunction with the thin veneer of appearances,

covers the more serious game at which the characters play ,

at which they all excel, and wh ich Maggie ultimately wins.

If one compares the two types of metaphors , one should see

that the "children 's games" are mo st dominant in the

Prince 's part , while the "adult games" predominate the

Princess 's, leading one to surmise that Maggie is maturing

at a faster rate than even her husband is aware .

The Superficial

James 's favorite sense was that of "the plastic power

of the human eye" (Emerson 12) which appreciat.es beauty ,

both animate and inanimate . For James , however, seeing was

the maximum involvement allowed for an artist; once touching

or tasting occurred, the artist became participant and could

not maintain his aesthetic detachment. Seeing, therefore ,

became so intense as to constitute touching ; one could ap

preciate beauty, whether in a wo rk of art or in a woman, by

intensely perceiving the surface and its radiant loveliness.

Yet James acknowledged that beautiful appearances could

deceive . In the following groups of images, the world of

appearances dominate s, especially the world of the stage on

wh ich actors may act out only semblances of life. Being

simp ly supe rficial , these semb lances of life and love are

illusions which frustrate and disappoint (sometimes to the 129 point , as with Hilly Theale, that life itself is threat ened) . The superficial , then , is a nonparticipatory view of life and the anti thesis of knowledge ; knowledge is by its very nature insightful , precise, in-depth , and participa tory. Thus , James presents the dangers inherent in seeking knowledge through sight alone--although one may learn much by appearances, the eye can be deceived, especially if the soul is naive . One may "cheat" others through appearances, as Charlotte entices the Prince to attempt with their

"sacred pledge" (I 312) , but they fail simply because their adultery is a performance which Charlotte enthusiastically manipulates and into which Amerigo enters because he wishes to reaffirm his challenged manhood . The show ends when

Amerigo ceases to perform , ceasing to deceive Maggie and inste ad beginning to lie to Charlotte . And Charlotte , because she understands only the superficial, only the beautiful surfaces, is easy to confuse through her lack of knowledge of true love . The superficial, then , determines

Charlotte 's view of Amerigo , Adam, and Maggie. The other characters appropriate these images from time to time--the

Prince his superficial knowledge of science, Fanny her role as clown , Maggie as playwright--but most of these images occur when Charlotte is "on stage" or when the other charac ters respond to her. 130

Science

Precious few images in James 's works involve science or the scientific method , although one assumes that Jame s stud ied some science at the schools he attended in Europe , and that he knew of scientific advances through William, who , being the father of pragmatism, studied the mind in a practical manner. Art , rather than science , fascinated

Henry . In The Golden Bowl , however, the Prince is as so- ciate d with modern science and technical or mathematical interests. As I will di scuss his mathematical ability in connection wi th his family's probable banking interests, I turn from the mathematical and financial to the scientific.

Amerigo 's intere st in science derives from James's observation that modern Italians rejected the art and culture with which they were accustomed in favor of the new and scientific, perhaps best known in the figure of Guglielmo

Marconi and his wireless, first used in 1901 . In 1877 Jame s noted in "Italy Revisited" an Italy "united and prosperous , but altogether scientific and commercial" (IH 112) . The nameless Italian prince of "Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie"

(1900) pre figures Amerigo :

the happy youth , if he was one of the most ancient of princes, was on e of the mo st modern of Romans. Th is second character it was his special aim and pride to cultivate . He would have been pained at feeling himself an hour behind his age; and he had a way--both touching and amusing to some observers--of constantly comparing his watch with the dial of the day's news . (NYE XVI , 378- 7 9) 131

Just so, Amerigo believe s

his future might be scientific. There was nothing in himself at all events to prevent it. He was allying himself to science , for what was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money? His life would be full of machinery, which was the antidote to superstition , which was in its turn too much the consequence , or at least the exhalation , of archives. He thought of these things--of his not being at all events futile, and of his absolute acceptance of the devel opments of the coming age . (I 17)

In spite of his good intentions , Amerigo is still trapped by his heritage , much as his wishes to leave it behind and begin afresh with a new wife and her fortune ; ironically, he recognizes hi s heritage in a scientific metaphor :

he was somehow full of his race. Its presence in him was like the consciousne ss of some inexpugnable scent in wh ich his clothes, his whole person , his hands and the hair of his, might have been steeped as in some chemical bath (I 16)

This bath is prefigured by the sweet bath of wealth poured by "gold topped phials" (I 10) curiously like the one used by Fanny when she attempts to understand ob jectively the phenomena around her:

She found his [Amerigo 's] eloquence precious; there was n't a drop of it that she did n't in a manner catch, as it came , for immediate bottling , for future preservation. The crystal flask of her innermost attention really received it on the spot , and she had even already the vision of how , in the snug laboratory of her afterthought , she should be able chemically to analyse it. (I 271)

Fanny , however, has only superficial knowledge of Amerigo and Char lotte , and so cannot obtain the truth. Thus, her 132

laboratory exercise is an exercise of the imagination only,

not leading to empirical knowledge .

There are even fewer mentions of techn ical achievements . Adam compares "the chamber of his brain [to] a

strange workshop of fortune" wh ich "the master of the forge"

(I 127) could scarcely explain ; Amerigo mentions a "'light

ning elevator ' in one of Mr . Verver 's fifteen-storey build

ings" (I 31) , perhaps inspired by the new skyscrapers

appearing in New York City; Maggie finds her silent commun i

cation with her father "as penetrating as the sound that

follows the pressure of an electric button " (II 72) and her

added awareness a change wh ich "brought about by itself as

great a difference of view as the shift of an inch in the

position of a telescope . It was her telescope in fact that

had gained in range" (II 207) . Hhether James intended to

inject realistic touches of the age into the lives of the

characters or simply to contrast the rather mechanical and

deterministic view of life of Amerigo , Adam , and Fanny with

that of Maggie, James continues to illustrate the superfi

ciality of the knowledge that the other characters have .

Only Maggie obtains true (although not full) knowledge of

the situation , and so is the only one who can make any moral

decisions about the situation . 133

Circus

For mid-Victorians , the circus and the stage provided a vicarious experiencing of the exciting bohemian life of the gypsy /performer. If the life of the actress was seen as scandalous because of its association with prostitution , or at least with the lax morality of exaggerated exhibition of the body and its sexuality , the circus performer 's itinerant , rootless life , the legends of gypsies stealing children, and youths "running off to join the circus" filled them with both excitement and foreboding . But for the

Victorian children , the circus provided a welcome break in a sometimes monotonous, regimented existence . The Barnum and

Bailey show fir st moved by rail in 1872 and toured Europe in the 188 0's, returning to the U.S. to be bought by the

Ringlings , its rival, in 1906 . [We know that young Henry

Jame s saw "Uncle Tom's Cabin " performed at P. T. Barnum 's

Broadv.,ray Mu seum Theater (The Untried Years 100- 01) . J The other travelling shows included "Buffalo Bill" Cody 's Wild vle st Show with the female gunslinger Annie Oakley; in one image , James makes Maggie consider herself a would-be

Westerner or gunslinger, "people she had read about in stories of the wild West , people who threw up their hand s on certain occasions for a sign they were n't carrying revolvers" (II 310-11) .

The other circus images, however, serve to show the superficiality of the "actors" in this domestic drama . In 134 the first such image, the Prince sees Charlotte 's Italian speech "juggled as a conjuror at a show juggled with balls or hoops or lighted brands" (I 54) , an image which echoes her ability to juggle appearances. Later, her knowledge of his language allows them the overconfidence to speak intimately in the presence of the shopkeeper and thus to doom Charlotte eventually to the United States. The rest of the circus images center on Fanny and Maggie in their capacities to delude others as to the extent of their knowledge . As Bob watches Fanny attempt to explain Charlotte 's sudden appearance in London

He watched her accordingly in her favourite element very much as he had sometimes watched at the Aquarium the celebrated lady wh o, in a slight, though tight, bathing suit, turned somersaults and did tricks in the tank of water. (I 6 5)

(James might be referring to the Aquarium at Brighton which opened in 1872 , although the first public aquarium opened in

London in 1853.) Later, at the eventful dinner party when

Maggie begins to "perform, '' Fanny functions as Haggie ' s assistant in the ring :

Fanny Ass ingham might really have been there at all events, like one of the assistants in the ring at the circus, to keep up the pace of the sleek revolving animal on whose back the lady in the short spangled skirts should brilliantly caper and po sture . (II 71)

(This j_mage might be drawn from Seurat 's The Circus (1891) now on view at the Louvre .) Entirely appropriate to

Haggie ' s new feeling as she begins to "flash" her position 135 as Princess is the sparkling image of "spangled skirts" as she "capers and postures" before her guests . Echoing this image is one later at Fawns, when Maggie appreciates Fanny 's help over the past months :

She was like the kind of lady who, happening to linger at the circus while the rest of the spec tators pour grossly through the exits , falls in with the overworked little trapezist girl--the acrobatic support presumably of embarrassed and exacting parents--and gives her, as an obscure and meritorious artist, assurance of charitable inter est. (II 289)

Humorously, Jame s likens Maggie to a young lady forced not only to earn her living but also that of her parent, when

Maggie , of course , needs no such financial support, as Adam tells her that he means for her never to work (II 267) . In addition to reinforcing those which present Maggie as an artist, the foregoing image is also a supreme compliment to

Fanny , who is unlike the others in society , "the bedizened performers of the circus" of appearances who "are poured into the ring" (II 28 9) . vJ ho is the ringmaster of this circus? Metaphors concerning the stage indicate that , although Charlotte leads the others ln false appearances,

Adam controls the movements of the "performers ."

Acting, The Stage

As Leon Edel thorough ly discusses in Les Annees

Dramatiques and his biography of James, the drama fascinated James from his earliest years, an interest wh ich intensified ln Paris and London during the 1870s-80s and 136 culminated in his writing of The Tragic Muse and the plays during the 1890s. Not surprisingly , several metaphors concerning dramatic arts or those assisting in productions can be traced throughout The Golden Bowl . As with the circus metaphors, the stage metaphors reveal the superficial, devious playing out of roles, especially sexual roles, in the complex society in wh ich the six characters move .

Additionally , the novel is essentially dramatic in technique , as James shows the reader dramatic confrontations , traumatic discoveries , and a comic (or tragi-comic or mel odramatic, depending on the critic) ending. His use of foreshortening involves the reader ln such a way that he participates in Maggie 's struggle, one that Wallace sees as comic in theme and form.

The first instances of dramatic imagery bear out th is evaluation . As Prince Ame rigo chats with Fanny Assingham following the prenuptual agreement , he note s her nervousness which results in "their positively portentous stillness , having been keeping it up for a wager , sitting for their photograph or even enacting a tableau-vivant" (I 33) , ln their having "to cheat each other with forms ." Appropri- ately , Fanny is presented to the reader as an actress

(perhaps almost a clown) in appearance and action :

Her richness of hue , her generous nose, her eye brows fwere ] marked like those of an actress . So she was covered and surrounded with "things ," wh ich we re frankly toys and shams , a part of the 137

amusement with which she rejoiced to supply her friends. (I 3 4)

A later reference to Bob and Fanny as the mu sic-hall "Darby and Joan" (I 287) compounds their function as comic relief.

In addition to being a clown , Fanny functions as prompter; just as she is Maggie 's assistant in the circus ring, she gives Maggie "her cue" (II 70) for "learning to fill out as a matter of course her appointed, her expected , her imposed character" (II 71) And Fanny is the actor in one of the most dramatic scenes that James wrote when she smashes the golden bowl ; Amerigo refers to her action as mel odramatic (II 195) .

The most obvious actress of the group , however, is

Charlotte , and the majority of the dramatic images in Part I show her as she "dressed up her act" (I 50) in order to be with the Prince . Gabriel Pearson observes that James allows

Charlotte little point of view in the novel (only the fifth chapter of Book I and the first chapter of Book III) simply because she is drama personified in her superficiality (319-

2 0) • She , like the Prince, does not appear introspective , but unlike him, she acts , and usually on impulse . For the

Prince ,

. the punctuality of performance . . was her weakness and her deep misfortune she was possessed by her doom , but her doom was also to arrange appearances the on ly thing was to know wh at appearance could best be produced and

best be preserved . (I 50) 138

When Charlotte acts or speaks--which is "systematically"

her way (II 249) --she gives away her hand to the Prince ,

who knows her well enought to count on her impulses to

absolve him of any action wh ich is undignified or ungallant .

Fanny 1 s reference to the lovers 1 "little romance--it was

even their little tragedy" (I 70) further implies the

"shown " quality of the pair. Charlotte anxiously preserves

this conspicuous acting-out of her relationship with

Amerigo , and not only because the stage is her natural

metier--Amerigo welcomes the protection wh ich the public

stage afford s :

. it preserved this character, at the best , by being the note of publicity . Quickly, quickly, however, the note of publicity struck him as better than any other. In another moment even it seemed positively what he wanted; for what so much as publicity put their relation on the right footing? (I 61)

Ironically , the lovers will pay later for their "note of

publicity ." If Charlotte shines during the shopping expedi-

tion ["her curious world-quality . . would show larger on

the big London stage" (I 99) ] to such a degree that the

shopkeeper remembers the "beautiful" couple for years, she

scintillates brilliantly during the Embassy ball:

She was though extreme ly apparent , not perhaps absolutely advertised; but she would n1t have cared if she had been . For a couple of years now she had known as never before what it was to look "well" . She fairly liked to be , so long as she might, just as she was--exposed a little to the public, no doubt . she had her reasons, she held them there, she carried them in fact , responsibly and overtly, as she carried her 139

head , her high tiara , her folded fan , her indif ferent eminence; and it was when he [Amerigo] reached her and she could, taking his arm , show herself as placed in her relation , that she felt supremely justified . (I 245-48)

Supremely superficial, Char lotte is so concerned with arranging appearances in order to "square" Fanny that she makes the fatal (in that it ultimately decides her destiny) mistake of arousing the older woman 's fears and suspicions .

But Charlotte , confident in her ab ility "to act as [her situation ] demands" (I 261) , baits Fanny so that a break will occur between them . Aware that Fanny wonders about the complications inherent in the quartet 's relations, Charlotte warns Amerigo to ignore Fanny, or at the very least, to offer her the same stories and explanations , to act in concert for Fanny. Thus, while Charlotte resembles "a per son holding out a small mirror at arm's length and consulting it with a special turn of the head " (I 255) , in Charlotte 's view the Prince "almost resembled an actor who , between his moments on the stage , revisits his dressing room , and , before the glass, pressed by his need of effect , retouches his makeup" (I 248) . In her eagerness to bind the Prince to her , to create similarities which the Prince will later deny , Charlotte focuses on his cosmetic , superficial appeal , an appeal which reflects her own appeal for him. "We 're beautiful--are n't we?" (I 106) she rhetorically asks him , and in her need to show him that appeal, Charlotte miscalcu- lates. When she reminds Fanny "We 've shown toge ther, my 140 dear . . before [in Rome] " (I 257) , Charlotte foreshadows

the ir showing later at Matcham in a situation which Amerigo

finds increasingly intolerable, when he must "go about .

in a state of childlike innocence" (I 335) , an attitude he

finds baffling. Also fatal to them is their showing their

dependence upon each other far too openly, for Maggie even-

tually perceives that Amerigo and Charlotte "take their cues

from each other" (II 41) .

Even the characters wh o trust the others to play the

parts for wh ich they are paid mu st eventually join in the

charade . A few dramatic images belong to Adam in Book II as

he stages his conquest of Charlotte ; he is characterized as

the unseen presence behind the scenes :

his relation to any scene or to any group [was] a matter of the back of the stage , of an almost visibly conscious want to affinity with the footlights . He would have figured less than anything the stage-manager or the author of the play , who most occupy the foreground ; he might be at the best the financial "backer ," watching his interests from the wing . (I 17 0)

Drawn from Jcmes ' s experience in the theater, the image

reinforces Adam's powerful wealth . The producer, the play-

wright , the various backstage functionaries, all familiar to

James during the productions of his plays, serve to bolster

the actor and to provide the arena for his action. The

theater itself is evoked in an image describing Maggie 's

Catholicism, "the faith without which the solid ease

of wh ich , making the stage firm and smooth , the drama of her 141 marriage might n' t have been acted out" (I 152) . As a

product of Adam's wealth , the alliance becomes in reality a

performance in Book II , one which is kept on stage through

Mr . Verver 's financial backing.

When Adam decides to enter the arena , he imagines

himself in a role from the melodramatic 1850s:

He liked , at this preliminary stage , to feel he should be able to "speak" and that he would� the word itself being romantic , pressing for him the spring of association with stories and plays where handsome and ardent young men, in uniforms , tights , cloaks, high-boots, had it, in solioquies , ever on their lips . (I 210)

By finally "acting" (I 211) , Adam not on ly asks Charlotte to

marry him to carry out the plan "that might be a thing of

less joy than a passion" (I 211) , he also satisfies his need

for the romantic , wh ich can be seen as a need for a superfi-

cial or illusory aspect to his relationship with Charlotte

which becomes intolerab le for her later in the novel.

The last dramatic image in Part I provides transition

to Part II through its focus on Maggie as "a little dancing-

girl at rest, ever so light of movement but mo st often

panting gently, even a shade compunctious ly , on a bench"

(I 322) . By evoking an image of the slight, fragile balle-

rina behind the scenes , James strikes the reader as having a

Degasian appreciation of balletic drive and stamina , an

appreciation much like that shown 1n the circus image of

Maggie as the "overworked little trapezist" (II 289) . 142

[James might have drawn his image from numerous studies of the ballet by Degas; the most probable in my view is "Two

Dancers Sitting on a Bench" (1877) , in which the young girl sitting on the left side of the bench rests a hand on each knee , bend s her head, and hunches her back ; in doing so, she almost palpably gasps for breath . On the other side of the bench, a weary ballerina props one foot on the ledge and massages her ankle .] The balletic image is extended into

Part II where Maggie is "some panting dancer of a difficult step who had capered, before the footlights of an empty theatre , to a spectator [Amerigo] lounging in a box "

(II 222) . While in this image Maggie functions as the performer, in another image in her volume she is the spectator closely watching Amerigo and Charlotte for any evidence of their affair :

It fell into retrospect into a succession of moments that were wa tchable still; almost in the manner of the different things done during a scene on the stage , some scene so acted as to have left a great impress ion on the tenant of one of the stalls. (II 11)

These two images intensify the relationship between the four characters (Charlotte , Amerigo , Fanny and Maggie ) who must constantly watch each other for clues as to who knows what , an essentially nonparticipatory relationship which emphasizes the superficial instead of the deep knowledge one should have of one 's family and friends . It is only when

Maggie and Amerigo begin to see the same vis ion (that of 143

Charlotte confused and in pain) that the relationships deepen and fuse so that the couples begin to share instead of only watch each others ' lives.

In the second volume , Maggie must take acting lessons from Charlotte . Maggie becomes

. an actress who had been studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly , on the stage , before the footlights , had begun to improvise , to speak lines not in the text. It was this very sense of the stage and the footlights that kept her up , made her rise higher : just as it was the sense of action that logically involved some platform . . The platform remained for three or four days thus sensibly under her feet, and she had all the wh ile with it the inspiration of quite remarkably, of qu ite heroically improvising . Preparation and practice had come but a short way ; her part opened out and she invented from moment to moment what to say and to do . (II 33)

Thus , Maggie, wh ile becoming an actress , develops a different role than that of Charlotte , who knows only how to play it straight from the text . Although Charlotte manipulates the other actors, she is predictable, never deviating from a role wh ich will best satisfy her superficial view . As

Maggie becomes more and more proficient in her craft, she become s more confident in her part , "acting up to the full privilege of passion" (II 8) . After the mel odramatic scene in which Fanny smashes the golden bowl , Maggie

felt not unlike some young woman of the theatre who , engaged for a minor part in the play and having mas tered her cues with anxious effort , should find herself suddenly promoted to leading lady and expected to appear in every act of the five . ( I I 2 0 8 ) 144 when Amerigo begins to appreciate Haggie ' s ability to hide the truth from Adam . Maggie 's felt responsibility to pro- teet Adam does begin to strain her during their stay at

Fawns . There , Maggie retreats from the others "in a mood of a tired actress who has the good fortune to be 'off, ' while her mates are on , almost long enought for a nap on the property sofa in the wings" (II :?.31) ; she is, however, "on" again almost immediately as Charlotte confronts her on the terrace, a setting wh ich , with its raised platform and pools of light streaming through the parlour windows , duplicates the stage . Afterwards , Maggie notes how "the spectators"

(II 276) reacted to the "little scene" (II 277) much as an actor or playwright gauges an audience 's reaction to a performance. In fact , Maggie appropriates the authorial role when she views her family through the terrace windows with a degree of detachment which some critics find rather cold- hearted, but one which James thought essential to the creative imagination :

They might have been--really charming as they showed in the beautiful room, and Charlotte certainly, as always , magnificently handsome and supreme ly distinguished--they might have been figures rehearsing some play of wh ich she herself was the author; they might even, for the happy appearance they continued to present, have been such figures as would be the strong note of character in each fill any author with the certi tude of success, especial ly of their own histri onic she passed round the house and looked into the drawing room, lighted also, but empty now , and seeming to speak the more in its own voice of all the possibilities she controlled . Spacious and splendid , like a stage again awa iting 145

a drama , it was a scene she might people (II 235-36)

Unlike Charlotte , who controls through manipulation , or

Adam , who controls through his '' f inancial backing ," or even

Amerigo , who controls through his sexual appeal , Maggie controls through her artistic imagination , which is generous enough to undertake rewriting the entire drama . Not content simply to arrange appearances, not cognizant of the financial agreements of the performance (I 12) , Maggie is the actor-playwright who has an in-depth knowledge of the drama itself. Not omniscient--"she too might have been for the hour some far-off harassed heroine--only with a part to play for which she knew exactly no inspiring precedent"

(II 307) --she nevertheless knows more than any character the true drama of the marriages and the action neces sary for their successful staging .

The dramatic images come full circle when Charlotte ,

"visibly in possession of her part" (II 312) , plays her

finest role as grande dame of the mu seum world . Just as the

Prince and Fanny make a tableau-vivant in their charade of

forms , so Charlotte and he sit as motionless "as a pair of

effigies of the contemporary great on one of the platforms

of Hadame Tussaud" (II 360- 61) . The drama over, the scene s

played out , all that is left is to bring down the curta in as

the actors freeze for the last glimpse of the audience . But

that is not the last scene . That James continues the drama 146 of Maggie 's marriage , nnd actually leaves the reader "hang ing" testifies to the modernity of his techn ique , one that is more like the cinema than the stage .

Daniel Schneider has wr itten of Strether in The Ambas sadors that "There is no life , no spontaneity , no freedom in the performance of a role , the reading of a script wr itten by someone else" (184) . As with Strether , Maggie at last break s free of the roles given her by Adam (nun) , Amerigo

(Roman matron) , and Charlott.e (complacent fool) to create her own role and to appreciate those of the other three .

For as playwright, Maggie has a moral responsibility to her characters--to Adam , that he should realize his vision in

America , to Char lotte , that she should not be wasted but should continue to show to her best advantage , and to

Amerigo , that he should find his way out of the "grey medium" (II 295) , the "white curtain" (I 25) of which he was so fearful and that he should find a life of love and trust and forg iveness with his Princess.

The Fantastic

Closely aligned to the images of the exotic is the follm.Jing group which I have designated "the fantastic" : those images wh ich impart the fairy-tale quality of the nove 1, such as images of magic, omens, fairy tales and royalty , and those that create a mythological-folklorical basis for the tale which allows critics a Freudian or 147

Jungian interpretation of the novel, such as images of hunt

ing, weapons, wounds, war, religion , and the Grail. These

subgroups contains images of aggress ion which have led some

critics to see the novel as the epitome , in James 's canon , of the express ion of harmful relationships, but I see these

aggressive images a bit more positively , interpreting them

as necessary for Maggie 's self-expression and the resolution

of her internal conflicts about her maturation . The images

are , in the main, not malevolent but therapeutic, symbo liz

ing as they do self-inflicted emotional wounds and psychic

violence , especial ly when Maggie 's "sacrifices" result in a

self-evaluation which seems to do more violence to her fra

gile psyche than to the stronger personalities of Adam ,

Amerigo , and Charlotte . Daniel J. Schneider, in The Crystal

Cage , has provided the mo st exhaustive discussion of the

image groups of warfare , aggression, animals and pursuit and

has linked them to James 's theme of freedom versus enslave-

ment. He notes these as "an inevitable consequence of the

pessimism James voiced indeed, James saw that every

i tern of experience might be taken to illustrate the fero

cious fight for survival" (72-73) . Furthermore, "normal

experience , in James 's work , becomes nothing more than a

series of maneuvers by which one person seeks advantage over

another" ( 7 3) , he believes, and there is much to support

that view . But The Golden Bowl contains violence wh ich is

fantastical , for Maggie is so sheltered and protected that 148 no actual violence (of the sort wh ich destroys Hyacinth , for instance) can come to her , and the violence she imagines is directed more toward herself than to others . It is, I bel ieve , a purgative violence which cleanses her soul , much

like the ancient initiation rituals, and which prepares her

for a heightened state from which she can prevail over those who would des troy her and bring evil into Adam's kingdom .

Animal s, Hunting

Schneider also catalogs as complete ly as one coherently

can the many negative references to animals and pursuit in

the novel. He does , however, create a bleak impression of

excessive aggress ive acts in the novel as conveyed by anima l

imagery . Specifically , he does not note the more humorous

or benign images of animals, such as those of the birds which symbo lize Maggie 's divine love and her moral freedom .

As an example of the comic uses of animal s, the porcupine is

used several times as des cription : Mrs. Rance 1s "paten-

tially bristling" with marriage proposals (I 151) ; Maggie

later "bristled with filial reference , with little filial

recalls of expression, movement, tone" at her father 's party

(I 323) ; and the Principino "always bristling , like a fat

porcupine , with shrill interrogation-points" (II 98) . How

could James otherwise express, in so humorous an image ,

Adam's shyness and annoyance at the intrusions of others ,

especially at questions and applications with which he does 149 not care to deal , than to compare them to the annoying , but harmless , quills of a herbacious creature which would rather

sleep than fight?

Hany of James 's images of animals, to be sure, are

negative , especiall y those in which the characte rs are seen

as predators in pursuit of their prey. Such images origi-

nate , perhaps , in James 's view of sexual pursuit for the

propagation of the species , of women descending upon hapless men like the Maenads upon Pentheus in order to find husbands

for themselves. Certainly , he recorded in The Bostonians

and its portrayal of sexual battles the effects of a genera-

tion of men being slaughtered upon battlefields , leaving

millions of women widows or spinsters. Likewise, for young

men of a certain class , it was essential to marry we ll in

order to survive monetarily, as the Prince does in The

Golden Bowl ; as the first predator we see in the novel, he

surveys the beautiful women passing him on Bond Street:

He was too restless--that was the fact--for any concentration, and the last idea that would just now have occurred to him in any connexion was the idea of pursuit . He had been pursuing for six months as never in his life before , and what had actually unstead ied him . was the sense of how he had been justified. Capture had crowned pursuit (I 4)

Unlike his later pursu it--as Fanny calls it, his "pursuit of

pleasure" (I 33 7) --the hunt here is purely financial and

dynastic , the welding of financial genius and taste in art

with a royal heritage . 150

In the same manner , Charlotte must pursue a rich husband over two continents, but is sidetracked by her sexual pursuit of Amerigo ; he even describes his former mistress as the goddess of the hunt :

He saw again that her thick haj r wa s, vulgarly speaking, brown , but that there wa s a shade of tawny autumn leaf in it for "appreciation "--a colour indescribable and of wh ich he had known no other case , something that gave her at moments the sylvan head of a huntress . . When she moved off

she looked like a huntress . (I 46-47)

Not unexpectedly, she forces him to join her in a "hunt" for Maggie 's present , recall ing that "Hunting in London , besides, is amusing in itself" (I 92) ; after obtaining his promi se , she nags him about it until he goes and then offers her a ricordo "of this little hunt ," a "hunt for something worth giving" (I 97, 99, 101, 108 , II 193-94) . This pursuit is paralleled by her trip to Brighton with Adam; again, her pursuit of sexual and monetary satisfaction is aligned with

Adam's "customary hunt for the possible prize" (I 213) and his amazement, like Amerigo 's, at her skill in the hunt .

Charlotte 's pursuit of Amerigo intensifies, if possible , after their respective marriages , when their proximity to each other facilitates her access to him. As noted in the chapter on structure , at one point Amerigo seems positively hounded by her insistent pressing :

With the Prince himself, from an early stage , not unnaturally, Charlotte had made a great point of the ir understanding she made frequent occas ion to describe to him this necessity 151

she applied at different times different names to the propriety of their case . There were hours when she spoke . . there were others when . she talked again as if it lurked in devious ways and were to be tracked through bush and briar . So she pursued, and if he did n't meanwhile, it he did n't even at this, take her up, it might be that she wa s so positively fitting him again with the fair face of temporising kindness that he had given her . (I 288, 301)

In this manner the Prince 's pursuit of beautiful women boomerangs back upon him as Charlotte takes up the hunt,

eventually succeeding, as he had done , in capturing her

prey .

In addition , other characters use images of the hunt .

When Bob discusses the situation with Fanny , "She tried in

fact to corner him, to pack him insistently down . . none

of it would escape" (I 284) ; also, they individually pursue

ideas about Maggie 's knowledge (I 387) . Most important are

the images used by Maggie in the terrace scene , when the

positions with Charlotte are reversed and the younger woman

can pursue her idea and her victory :

Marvellous the manner in wh ich , under such imagi nations , l'-1 aggie thus circled and lingered--quite as if she were , materially , following her un seen , counting every step she helplessly wasted , noting every hindrance that brought her to a pause. If, as I say , her attention , now , day after day , so circled and hovered , it found itself arre sted ·for certain passages during which she absolutely looked with Charlotte 's grave eyes . 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 (II 282-84) 152

Because these are the only images of pursuit associated with

Maggie , one is at a loss as to why critics have been so eager to condemn Maggie , and not Charlotte , for stalking her victim. The only explanation to be offered is that the images associated with Charlot te are mostly narrative , told from the Prince 's point of view , and spread over many pages, while those from Maggie are intense, personal, internal, and condensed within a few paragraphs, making them more dynamic and impressive . One should note , however, that in Maggie 's image is her identification with her victim; the tables tru ly are turned and Haggie can pity Charlotte by viewing the situation not only through Charlotte 's eyes but also as

Charlotte 's former victim. This effect mitigates much of the negative overtone of the passage . Weeks later in the novel, Maggie still thinks of Charlotte as being "actually at bay" (II 301) , even as Maggie notes "other shadows as well, those that hung over Charlotte herself, those that marked [Charlotte] as a prey to equal suspicions" to those wh ich Maggie has held about their relationship (II 299) .

Thus , Amerigo and Charlotte emerge as the pursuers in the novel, Maggie and Adam their prey , not the reverse as has been asserted by many critics. Although these images are negative , they should count more so for Charlotte than for Maggie .

Re ferences to animals follow the same pattern . In the first volume , images of domestic animals abound, reinforcing 153 the bucolic atmosphere at Fawns, where Adam is cock of the roost "running about the bassecour [with ] his feathers, his movement , his sounds"; the Prince is a horse that shies when confronted with modern vehicles (or other surprising machin ery) or a "dome sticated lamb tied up wi th pink ribbon. This was n't an animal to be controlled--it was an animal to be educated"; Fanny is full of "restless rumination" like a cow ; and Maggie is "a small creeping thing " so much resem bling her father 's favorite creature-- "the snail the

loveliest beast in nature" (I 8, 158 , 161, 253 , 181 , 146) .

In fact, there are no images of wild beasts in the first volume [even the lions are stone (I 5) ]; only when Magg ie 's

pastoral countryside is polluted with evil do the images

become ferocious . At the beginning, however, she is com

pared to a "sil ken-coated spaniel" and "a dog eager to

follow up a scent ," her guests to a flock of sheep or a

tank of goldfish, and Lady Castledean to a social insect

(II 6, 84, 52, 288) . Maggie never assumes a more aggressive

guise, being on ly a "timid tigress" in a "little crouching

posture ," although she eventually calls herself "a little

beast," a "low-minded little pig" (II 10 , 109, 117) . She

bel ieves Adam and herself "in harness" and compares her

situation to that of riding a plunging horse, but her

modesty (or the latent inferiority she often displays)

compels her to think of herself as a microscopic insect or a 154 bee "clinging with her vringed concentration to some deep cell of her heart, [where] she stored away her hived tender ness as if she had gathered it all from flowers" (II 22 ,

163 , 142, 281) . Even Fanny , to whom Maggie confides her awfullest suspicions, calls her an agitated lamb (II 128) .

Only when she imagines Charlotte 's predicament does Maggie use the aggressive images which stay uith the reader , of her father 's wife as a haunted creature pacing her cage , then attacking, a "splendid shining supple creature . . out of the cage " wh ich is finally tamed and haltered , howling as a

"creature in anquish" caught in the trap of her own making

(II 229 , 235 , 239 , 283 , 287, 294) .

The third group of images, of birds and flight , is more closely aligned with the poles of freedom and constraint within the novel than with the fantastic and so will be included in the last section . The images discussed above contribute heavily toward an interpretation much less amb iguous and critical of Maggie and Adam than has been postulated by Firebaugh and others; when we consider the numbers and types of animal imagery , it is clear that the negative images of predators cluster around Charlotte and , to a lesser extent , the Prince , who are sexual stalkers aggressively seeking to capture wealth and des ire by living off their caught prey , the victims Maggie and Adam . Little support is given to the idea that Maggie is malevolent; 155 instead , she seems almost too empathetic with her captors, who become trapped in their own snares of deceit and manipu lation . I believe that James intended the images of ani mal s, their behaviors, or their instincts to be part of his realistic techn ique (albeit one tending to the naturalis tic) , but their use becomes almo st ironic when applied to such paragons of civility as the Prince or Maggie. While it is true that this irony may be based on the fact that all human being are animals and will fight to protect territory or young as will the other specie s, the images so used in this novel, except for that of Charlotte in her cage , do not emphasize this comparison but instead seem at times almost comical . When does Maggie ever lash out as would her tigress 's claws? When is Fanny truly a donkey except when she is being her most foolish? In any case , animals, unless terribly threatened, are usually shyer of battle than Jame s portrays Charlotte to be , and more protective of their food source than of their mates. What James 1s attempting to show , perhaps , is that Maggie, as the timid tigress, crouches, almo st groveling in her love for Ame rigo and admiration for Charlotte , until her territory , Adam's feelings and her son's birthright , is threatened. Then, her timidity is overwhelmed by deeper instincts to protect what is hers, but she does so by cra ft instead of brute force .

For in allowing Charlotte her dignity , Haggie rises above 156 the animal level and forces the reader 's respect for the manner in which she wins and survives.

Warfare , Weapons, Wounds

Perhaps the most disconcerting group of images in the novel is that describing warfare , weapons, wounds, and violent acts which are imagined by Maggie in the second half of the novel. Admirably examined by Schneider, this group forms the basis on which the most vehemently negative critic ism of Maggie is founded, but two-thirds of the images occur in Book IV, as Maggie strikes back , mentally , as she realizes her oppression by Amerigo and Charlotte. In fact, the images rise to a full battle on the terrace and then subside after Maggie sees that in winning that battle she has begun to turn to tide of the war over her husband and her father. One notes that, although this group is quite violent , Maggie is on the defensive and actually gives ground in t he early page s of her vol ume and that th e image s most condemned are those in wh ich she , as former victim , empathizes with and imagines what pain her "victims" experience . Constantly reminded of the old adage , "All's fair in love and war," the reader observes Haggie fight because of love and for love to go through conflicts within herself more destructive than any in which she spars with Charlotte .

The psychic wounds she receives in her conflicts are sig nificant also, interacting with the symbols of the myth of 157 the grail to create the aura of knight errant , as she is called by Nuhn , or questor , as Goldfarb suggests.

The violence in the novel commences in the Preface and makes Maggie seem even more to be James 's alter ego ; reject-

ing in this novel the "unnamed, unintroduced, and unwar- ranted participant" (I v) , James instead seeks a closer view

of the action in the novel and thus he says

I catch my self again shaking it off and disavowing the pretence of it while I get down into the arena and do my best to live and breathe and rub shoul ders and converse with the persons engaged in the struggle that provides for the others in the encirc ling tiers the entertainment of the great game . There is no other participant , of course , than each of the real, the deeply involved and immersed and more or less bleeding participants (I vi)

The novel itself, then , constitutes for James the real

strugg le of his life--to reflect accurately the disaster

he sees around him, to use words as we apons to chop down

reality to a beatable foe , to fight back at the conflicts in

the life of an author wh ich denied James, he believed , any

personal love or a comfortab le household. The struggle he

creates for Maggie results in her attainment , as a creator

herself, of the "spoils" he denied himself. The novel, as a

creation , both constitutes and describes the struggle in

James 's creative imagination .

After commencing the novel with such images of struggle

and conquest, James on the first page presents the Prince as 158 the vanquished and denuded young warrior as he reflects on the change in venue of the "Imperium" :

if one wished, as a Roman , to recover a little the sense of that, the place to do so was on London Bridge he had strayed simply enough into Bond Street , where his imaginat ion caused him now and then to stop before a window in which objects were as tumbled toge ther as if, in the insolence of the Empire , they had been the loot of far-off victories. (I 3)

Instead of conquering nations with armies, the Italians conquer ma idens with charm, appearance, and titles, but the resulting loot is still the same--conquests sexual and monetary . Even Charlotte is such a conquest, a "Barbarian" who has been civilized by her contact with Italy and the Old v7orld, as demonstrated by her perfect command of languages

(I 54) . Amerigo playfully accuses her of "some strictly civil ancestor--generations back, and from Tuscan hills"

(I 55) , all attribution which foreshadows Fanny 's comment that Charlotte had made Mr s. Rance 's fires turn to smoke , e.g. , she had vanquished her and made her flee the field, leaving it open for Charlotte to invade. Invoking the legend of the Borgias, Fanny brings to the reader 's mind the

Pope 's son , the general Cesare Borgia, the most ruthless man of his day (I 193-95) ; later, Charlotte proves herself inept on the "battle field" when faced with a formidable foe in the small person of Maggie , an enemy who was first a comrade and companion with whom Charlotte had shared "li ttle 159 amenities tantamount heretofore to an easy change of guard

. after acceptance of the pass-word" in order to protect

Adam (II 32) . Likewise, Charlotte later joins forces with

Amerigo to guard Maggie from knowledge; he "deferred to

Charlotte 's easier art of mounting guard always on the rampart , erect and elegant , with lace-flounced parasol

. marching to and fro" (II 144) . In fact, although the martial images begin with him, the Prince proves to be a lover, not a fighter� although Charlotte speaks of him as being in the social field , on it he plays a raw private

"putting [his questions] away and packing them down because he wanted his great gun to be loaded to the brim on the day he should decide to fire it off" (I 257 , 163) . His field of battle is naturally that of the sexual conquest, his telegram to Charlotte proving that

. his career was up-hill work for him, a daily fighting-matter on behalf of a good appearance , and that thus if they we re to become neighbors aga in the event would compel them to live still more under arms (I 290-91)

Thus the Prince seems almo st ridiculously passive , as do the other men in the novel. Even though Adam is cited as once having "had to like polishing and piling up his arms" while building his empire , this images tells us more about his status as explorer and conqueror than as a violent man ; indeed , everyth ing wh ich surrounds him is "conscious of no violence from the present and no menace from the 160 future" (I 144, II 309) . He allows Maggie to ta ke the field for him, play ing the role of advisor-wizard to her (much like Merlin does to Arthur) , who is the unseen power behind the Princess 's throne . Even Bob , the retired colonel, functions as a comic bumbler, the military man ill at ease in civilian 1 i fe. As with Maggie and Adam , James prefers to cast Bob as passive and Fanny as the fighter of the evil she helps to create with the minimum of aid from her husband .

Giving Fanny the password by which they will win their own social battle, he retreats into the bunker, serving only as the rcconnaissence man as he patrols the houses he frequents

(I 400 , 249 , 365) . The mo st military part of the man (who plays with toy soldiers) seems to be his shoe :

The Colonel sat back at his own ease , an ank le resting on the other knee and his eyes attentive to the good appearance of an extremely slender foot wh ich he kept jerking in its neat integument of fine-spun black silk and patent leather. It seemed to confess, this member, to consciousness of military discipline , everything about it being as polished and perfect , as straight and tight and trim , as a soldier on parade . It went to far as to imply that some one or other would have "got" something or other, confinement to barracks or suppression of pay , if it had n't been just as it was. (I 66)

Ineffectual or comical as the men might be , the women play a different game . Fanny is like the other women in the novel , a fierce fighter , a mighty manueveror , a stalwart soldier in the conquest of love . At Matcham she sees her strategy failing , so that 161

She had taken the five minutes, obviously , to retire into her tent for meditation It was from the tent she emerged as with arms refur bished ; though who indeed could say if the manner· in which she now met him spoke most, really , of the glitter of battle or of the white waver of the flag of truce? The parley was short either way; the ga l lantry of her offer was all sufficient. (I 348)

As Maggie 's lieutenant in the second volume , Fanny is characterized as a "kind of helmeted trident-shaking pax

Britannica, " as she "diffused restlessly nothing but peace-- an extravagant expressive aggressive peace , not incongrous after all with the solid calm of the place ," as her high cheer "preceded her approach even like a squad of skirmish- ers" (II 209 , 104) . She thus protects Maggie on her weakest

flank , that of the ploy of ignorance , by helping her to act as if noth ing in the world is the matter. 1\.t the point of

imagining physical violence to herself as puni shment for bringing together the lovers, Fanny expects from Maggie "the

stab of reproach" which never comes, at least physically or verbally , although there are indications that Maggie does

not trust Fanny quite as much after she breaks the bowl as

before (II 162) . A subaltern in whom a commander has little

tru st is of little value , and so Fanny has a much reduced

role in the novel after the scene in wh ich she admits

knowing about Ame rigo 's past and breaks the golden bowl .

Maggie must assume the role of "heroine" wh ich Bob predicts

for her at the close of the first volume and succeed in

winning her battle with a minimum of aid . 162

Few, if any , critics have examined the pattern of the images of warfare and wounds in the second volume , being content to condemn Maggie by implying that throughout the novel she seeks to harm Charlotte . Nothing could be further from the truth . Surprisingly , the images of warfare are concentrated in the early chapters of the second volume in which Maggie is struggling against Amerigo 's sexual attrac tion rather than against her stepmother, whose scenes of warfare consist of the terrace and temple scenes. James 's

implication is that Maggie 's stumbling block during the entire episode is not her fear for her father but her

increasing awareness of her husband 's presence and attrac

tion , at least until she decides to reject his advances

until she discovers the truth . One group of images centers

on violence directed at Maggie , beginning when she imagines

the Mahometan mo sque/pagoda which symbo lizes for her the

"arrangement by which , so strikingly, she had been

able to marry without breaking, as she like to put it, with

her past," an arrangement into wh ich Charlotte , to Maggie 's mind, does not enter until after the golden bowl is broken

(II 5) . Instead , the pagoda represents some knowledge wh ich

Maggie thought hers but is not, a situation for which one

could pay with one's life if the true knowledge were dis

covered (II 4) . When Maggie , through the golden bowl , knows

enough , she imagines such a fate for herself; when she

confronts Char lotte on the terrace 163

Maggie came on with her heart in her hands; she came on with the def inite prevision, throbbing like the tick of a watch, of a doom impossibly sharp and hard , but to wh ich , after looking at it with her eyes wide open , she had none the less bowed her head . By the time she wa s at her companion 's side , for that matter, by the time Charlotte had, without a motion, without a word , simply let her approach and stand there , her head was already on the block, so that the conscious ness that everything had gone blurred all per ception of whether or no the axe had fallen. (II 242)

When Maggie first tries to enter the mosque , the reposi tory of knowledge , she is unaware that Charlotte will be her eventual execu tioner ; later , Amerigo 's mistress will force him into "prison" (and almost execute him) by the anquish in her voice . So great is his torment at Charlotte 's defeat that Maggie, pitying him, decides to join with him

for sharing his last day of captivity with the man one adored as if she were waiting with him in his prison--waiting with some gleam of remembrance of how noble captives in the French Revolution , in the darkness of the Terror , used to make a feast or a high discourse of their last poor resources. She might have been losing her head verily in her husband 's eyes--since he did n't know all the wh ile that the sudden freedom of her words was but the diverted intensity for her disposition personally to seize him. . For the people of the French Revolution assuredly there was n' t suspense; the scaffold, for those she was thinking of, was certain--whereas what Charlotte 's telegram announced wa s, short of some incalculable error , clear liberation . (II 341-42)

Thus it is Charlotte who wields many of the we apons in the novel, although at time s Maggie wishes she could also, as when the violence of her passion for Amerigo forces her to

Portland Place , where 164

She had put her thought to the proof, and the proof had shown its edge i this was what was before her , that she was no longer playing with blunt and idle tools, with weapon s that did n't cut. There passed across her vision ten times a day the gleam of a bare blade , and at this it was that she most shut her eyes . (II 7, 9-10)

Mainly Maggie uses less violent means of impression, such as her "mild manoeuvres" which "instantly strike him . . this had a kind of violence beyond what she had intended" (II 9,

15-16) . Defending herself from Amerigo 's onslaught of sexuality becomes Maggie 's primary goal in the first chapters of her volume , a goal that Jame s examines with a psychological realism which intensifies the reader 's reaction to Maggie 's dilemma : she must save her husband, but in doing so she mu st reject the awarene ss of him which is making its presence known in paroxysms of passion. �his she accomplishes by refusing to "surrender" as she does wh en he returns from Hatcham (II 22) , perhaps fighting back most obviously in the carriage after Charlotte 's party , and continuing the battle for the next five month s. Refusing

Amerigo , yet not telling him why , not accusing him, becomes for Maggie her trump :

there were hours when it carne to her that these days were a prolonged repetition of that night-drive , of weeks before , from the other house to their own , when he had tried to charm her by his sovere ign personal power into some collapse so long as she breathed no charge she kept hold of a remnant of appearance that could save her from attack. Attack, real at tack from him as he would conduct it, was what she above all dreaded; she was so far from sure that under that 165

experience she might n1t drop into some depth of weakness, might n 1 t show him some shortest way with her that he would know how to use again . the result of the direct appeal of any beauty in him would be her helpless submission to his terms A single touch from him any brush of his hand, of his lips, of his voice vmuld hand her over to him bound hand and foot. (II 139-42)

Believ ing him her adversary , Maggie is quick to hide from him her suspicions so that she may investigate further without alarming him or her father. She is always conscious of l�merigo 1 s attraction and the "in ten sity of surrender" which manifests itself in her reward at the end of the novel when she is "almo st awestruck with yearning truly unarmed" (II 139 , 3 3 9) .

Maggie , however, is "under arms" wh en she discovers the truth about Charlotte and Amerigo; during that scene Fanny describes her as

animated by an heroic lucidity . She stood there , in her full uniform , like some small erect commander of a siege , an anx ious captain who has suddenly got news of division within the place . This importance breathed upon her comrade (II 158, 214)

Despite her knowledge gleaned from the golden bowl , and loving her husband with a pass ion rarely seen in Jame s 1 s fiction , Maggie resolves to save him, thus substituting

Charlotte as her adversary. Then Maggie "takes the field " in order to become the heroine which Bob predicted , enlist-

ing the silent aid of her father and the more vocal aid of

Fanny . By doing "active violence" the day of her party 166

"with every one else extravagantly rallying and falling in , absolutely conspiring to make her its heroine . It was as if her father himself ...had dabbled too in the conspiracy ,"

Maggie proves her "figured bravery" as she decides to break the "comp act formation" into wh ich Charlotte has placed them

(II 35 , 69, 70 , 72, 74) . Finally , Maggie reaches a point where she "saw herself as not unarmed for battle if battle might only take place without spectators ," a prevision of her scene with Charlotte (II 106) . Although Maggie acts the part of the victim/sacrifice in that battle, thus throwing off her enemy , in the later scene in the temple Maggie uses the same ploy to triumph .

As she watche s Charlotte leave the house "armed" with the second volume

Maggie prepared on the spot to sally forth with succour . The right volume , with a parasol, was all she required--in addition , that is, to the bravery of her general idea. She passed again through the house unchallenged . (II 308)

Such a description parodies the violence which has come before and undercuts somewhat the intensity which should

invest the scene . It is as if Maggie, realizing that she will win this battle and thus the war, is making light of the emotional dangers which hn.ve been present in earlier

scenes . For instance , as she approaches Charlotte , she uses

a rather comical metaphor to describe her actions :

She herself could but tentatively hover, place in view the book she carried , look as little danger ous , look as abjectly mild, as possible; remind 167

herself really of people she had read about in stories of the wild wes t, people who threw up their hands on certain occasions for a sign they were n't carrying revolvers. She could almost have smiled at last , troubled as she yet knew herself, to show how richly she was harmless; she held up her volume , which wa s so weak a weapon . . . it was like holding a parley with a possible

adversary . . . • (II 310-11)

This light comparison still does not release !1aggie from the knowledge that Charlotte is doomed , "doomed to a separation that was like a knife in her heart" (II 311) , a knowledge which forces Haggic to sympathize with her stepmother as victim and to allow her a dignified exit. Above all, Maggie realizes that Charlotte has been punished by Adam with his enforced exile (which Charlotte tries to make Maggie think her own idea) so that Maggie can let the matter rest, thus achieving the goal which had motivated her from her first suspicions--to bring about a realignment from within by not making scenes, by showing Charlotte the correct way to alter the relationships . Although Adam had promised that he would know of any wounds or blows received by Maggie (I 186) , she seeks a solution which would spare him this knowledge and finds one wh ich will allow all the characters to survive .

She does this by ignoring her own hurt :

Above all she had n't complained, not by the quaver of a syllable--so what wound in particular had she shown her fear of receiving? What wound had she received--as to wh ich she had exchanged the least word with them? If she had ever whined or moped they might have had some reason . . . It fitted immensely togethe r, the whole thing, as soon as she could give them a motive . . . (II 44-45) 168

By stifling her sorrow and screams of betrayal, by viewing the caravan and yet letting it pass by , Haggie achieves a type of martyrdom of love , albeit one which sacrifices the desires of others to its fulfillment . In allowing

Charlotte to bel iever herself the victor, Maggie surrenders her father to her adversary , but she also save her husband and his "sovereign personal power" for herself, disproving

Charlotte 's contention that she values fathers over husbands . Yet the cost of such a sacrifice is one to be

speculated; only 1·1aggie can say whether the struggle wa s worth the cost .

Even though this martyrdom can be seen as the mani

festation of Christian love in this novel, Maggie 's sacri

fice can be construed in a different context to be the

struggle of the inner person to emerge and to survive , a

sort of psychological birth of the ego over the superego .

By re leasing her father to his wife and turning to her husband for emotional and sexual satisfaction, Maggie matures quite a bit over the course of wh at appears to be no more than six months in the novel. In order to achieve this

goal , she must be aggressive and, in some cases, push the

other characters to do her will, as when she makes Amerigo

and Charlotte go to another houseparty together or when she

uses Fanny as a cover for her knowledge of the affair. But

these actions are justified if one views Maggie as the 169 heroine of the romance , as many readers do . That she is able to accomplish so much without more harm to others is to be congratulated , not condemned. Unlike battle in the rea l world, there is no need for a body count in The Golden Bowl .

Magic, Omens , Fairy Tales

As noted in the review of criticism, as early as 1942 the fairy-tale quality of the novel was noted when Ferner

Nuhn , in his chapter entitled "The Enchanted Kingdom of

Henry James ," wrote that "The final scene of The Golden Bowl suggests nothing so much as a splendid make-believe tea party acted out by some unusually imaginative children"

(158) . Noting the dream quality of the novel, he states that its fascination for critics is re ligio-mytho logical , that "Maggie is James 's magic personified. She is the one that is going to wo rk the miracle" (146) . Furthermore ,

"Maggie Verver is the female knight errant who wins the day , who redresses wrong, blows the trumpe t, gives the word , restores the palace to its former life and beauty " ( 127) , outlining the steps which the heroes of the medieval romances accomplished to save their worlds from enchantment and destruction. However, Nuhn believes the fairy tale turns to nightmare when Maggie chal lenges Charlotte , dec laring that "if the daughter-princess is a witch in disguise, the father-king may we ll be a wizard" (138) . 170

Other critics similarly interpret James 's novel; Foge l write s , "I should think that Verver 's oddity is an aspect of James 's exploitation of the conventions of the fairy tale" ( 9 7) or , more generically , of a romance (136) .

Although Gale does not mention The Go lden Bowl in his discussion , he concludes that "Fairy tales are used in figures whose purposes are to dismi ss inexplicable relation ships as magical" ( 117) . The images in The Golden Bowl do not follow this pattern , however. Likewise, later female critics --Lebowi tz , Appignanesi, Goldfarb--have seen Maggie as the passive beauty of the fairy tale, the Princess trapped in her castle with an evil stepmother , while the fairy godmother or godfather del ivers the Prince who will save her . The images of magic in the novel do not support this interpretation , although the plot may be twisted to fit the mold, because Maggie is too active in the second volume ; instead , the images reveal patterns wh ich declare Maggie as apprentice sorceress to her father-wizard , an interpretation enhanced by the grail/cup images to be discussed later , in wh ich she is Grail Maiden to her father-king. Although

Christian religious symbols are strewn throughout the novel, the pagan magic images are almost as numerous, especially if the word "sacrifice" may be read with either emphasis.

The image patterns begin in the first chapter with the

Prince 's admission that he requires Mr . Verver 's millions as 171

"the antidote to superstition , wh ich was in its turn too much the cons equence, or at least the exhalation , of archive s" (I 17) . His fami ly background suggests that they accept the passion , crimes, hypocrisy , and Machiavellian tra its which oppose the good faith and innocence which

Ame rigo perceives in the Americans. However, not having spoken to Maggie or Fanny about their good will toward him,

Ame rigo bel ieves that "All he could say as yet was that he had done noth ing so far to break any charm" (I 24) they might have placed on him . Still, he does begin to doubt his ability to understand anything other than his own heritage

(in this, the Prince is remarkab ly like the Italian count

Valerio in "The Last of the Valerii") . He sees Charlotte 's polyglotism as mysterious and calls her a conjuror; he calls on saints and virgins and neglects not a "vulgar omen" at his weddin g, even going so far as to offer to call in women so that Charlotte will not make a thirteenth guest (I 54 ,

57) • Even though all these "antidotes" are made by the

Prince with laughter , by the end of the first Book , he is serious about his superstitions . When Charlotte offers to present the golden bowl to Maggie and him as a wedding gift, even though (or because) she knows of its flaw, the Prince responds with horror :

The reflection of it, as she smiled at him, was in her own face . "The danger--I see--is because you 're superstitious ." 172

"Per dio I'm superstitious ! A crack 's a crack --and an omen 's an omen ." "You'd be afraid--?" "Per Bacco !" "For your happiness?" "For my happ iness." "For your safety?" "For my safety. " She just paused . "For your marriage?" "For my marriage . For everything ." (I 119)

Amerigo goes on to affirm his concern for omens--and to promise that his instincts for them never will fail. In the end , however , Charlotte gives "a head shake of disenchant- ment" with him as she realizes that she will get neither the

Prince nor the bowl (I 120) . Four years later , she appears to have fallen again under his spell; as she watches Amerigo make his way through the crowd at the Fore ign Office

It was as if in separation , even the shortest, she half-forgot or disbelieved how he affected her sight , so that reappearance had in him each time a virtue of its own--a kind of disproportionate intensity suggesting his connexion with occult sources of renewal. the only witchcraft her companion had used was that of attending Maggie, who had withdrawn from the scene , to her carriage. (I 248- 49)

The Prince works his magic on Fanny also in the same scene , when

. with the meeting of their eyes, something as yet unnameable came out for her in his look , when something strange and subtle and at variance with his words, something that gave them away , glim mered deep down , as an appeal , almost an incred ible one , to her finer comprehension . What , inconceivably, wa s it like? Was n't it, however gross such a rendering of anything so occult, fairly like a quintessential wink . ? (I 271) 173

Later , at Matcham, he appeals to her with "all the little superstitions that accompany friendship" (I 348) . In the second volume his sexual magic is plied upon his wife in order to keep her suspicions quiet (II 56, 13 9) , but once she knows that he turns his power "to conjure away any such appearance of a changed relationship between the two women as his father-in-law might notice and fol low up" (II 227) , she begins to work her own magic. At times, Amerigo seems almost unconscious of the magic as his own , attributing it instead to one of the olde st myths--

Charlotte and he had by a single turn of the wrist of fate . . been placed face to face in a free dom that extraordinarily partook of ideal perfec tion , since the magic web had spun itself without their toil, almost without their touch (I 298)

But the reader knows that more than fate was at work to match Charlotte with Adam and thus to provide the adulterers with their chance .

Other characters besides the Prince Charming are given magical powers. James seems to feel that sexual attraction and love is a type of magic , that women create spells in order to trap men into intercourse with them . Fanny , for example , is seen as "mistress of a spell to old soldiers" and as fairy godmother to Amerigo , Mrs. Rance as casting a spell over Adam, and Charlotte as having a mystery and charm for the Prince at Matcham (I 63, 274, 175, 362) . The shopkeeper uncannily surmi ses the effect the golden bowl will 174 have on the Ververs--"as an offering to a loved parent , a thing of sinister meaning and evil effect, he had knmvn consideration , he had known superstitious visitings"

(II 223) --while Fanny anticipates "the sinister charm" of seeing Maggie challenge Charlotte at Fawns (II 121) . But the characters most magical in the novel are Maggie and

Adam .

The images applied to the two all appear in the second volume and are thus part of the spell Maggie sets on the reader. Appropriately , Amerigo tells the reader that "both were full of the superstition of not 'hurting '" (I 160) , but he , unmindful of his own magic, does not recognize theirs until much later, when on his return from Matcham he is "visibly beguiled " by the surprises Maggie has for him (II 56) . Over a dozen images of sorcery and magic are given to the father and daughter , most in the last one hundred pages of the novel, when Maggie 's spell has worked and restored the kingdom . (One should note that as the images of weapons and wounds decrease, the images of magic increase . It is as if Maggie decides to fight a battle over

Adam and Amerigo on terms and with weapons of magic by which she alone can triu�ph .) To do this, Maggie must bring Adam out of the darkness imposed by Charlotte 's evil, but to do it care fully and without notice , by resisting

her first impulse to break the existing charm at a stroke . . for her to ask a question , 175

to raise a doubt, to reflect in any degree on the play of the others , would be to break the charm . The charm she had to call it, since it kept her companion so constantly engaged, so perpetually seated and so contentedly occupied (II 32-34)

Her first task is to win the Prince , to gather his sexual, life-giving force to her side, so that she can draw strength from him. Realizing his power more than he , she knows that

She was learning almost from minute to minute to be a mistress of shades . . but she was working against an adversary who was a master of shades too and on whom if she did n't look out she should presently have imposed a consciousness of the nature of their struggle . To feel him in fact, to think of his feeling himself, her adversary in things of this fineness was already to be nearly reduced to a visible smothering of her cry of alarm . Should he guess they were having in the ir so occult manner a high fight, and that it was she , all the whi le, in her supposed stupidity , who had made it high and wa s keep ing it high--in the event of his doing this before they could leave town she should verily be lost. (II 142-4 3)

Again , Maggie fights a battle, but it is one of the occult , and she m i gh t win such a battle if she can return to h er fairy castle to learn from her wizard-father how to renew her powers . But in the interval, the golden bowl is shattered. .t-1 aggie herself faces destruction afterwards as

Amerigo reasserts his charm over her : "his eyes might have been trying to hypnotize her into giving him the answer without his asking the question" (II 192) . In this struggle of wills, Maggie wins and returns to Fawns to fight her greatest battle with the evil Charlotte . 176

Before she can , however, she must create an unbreakab le charm which will protect her and insure her of victory .

This she does in a passage misconstrued by critics such as

Matthiessen , who found it "slightly sickening" (97) . Well he might if he does not see the power which Maggie invokes and with which she controls the scene , in which she declares to Fanny that all she bears is for love . Fogel comes very close to seeing this when he says that Maggie discriminate s between types of love , that for her father , her husband , and a transcending love , but his analysis is basically Christian and does not acknowledge that Maggie, by invoking love three times, is creating a love charm, but one more in keeping with worshippers of the Great Mother and Her life- and love- giving powers. Admitting control over the adul terers ,

Maggie tells Fanny :

"That 's how they 've had again to go off together. They 've been afraid not to--lest it should disturb me , aggravate me , somehow work upon me . . they had to yield to the fear that their showing as afraid to move together would count for them as the greater danger : which would be the danger , you see, of my feeling myself wronged . Everything that has come up for them has come up, in an extraordinary manner, without my having by a sound or a sign given myself away And that 's how I make them do wh at I like!" (II 114- 15)

When Fanny calls such a declaration amazing and terrible , Maggie denies it, knowing that with her powers, she could do much more to make Charlotte and Amerigo mis erable, 177 including hauling them (Catholics all) into divorce court.

Instead , she answers Fanny with the charm :

"I do strike you as surprising , no doubt--but surprisingly mild. Because--don 't you see--I am mild. I can bear anything ." "Oh 'bear' !" Mrs . Ass ingham fluted . "For love," said the Princess. Fanny hes itated. "Of your father?" "For love," Maggie repeated . It kept her friend watching. "Of your husband?" "For love," Maggie said again . (II 115-16)

Maggie thus invokes the charm so that the actors in the universe she creates will right themselves with what is orda ined both by the Christian sacraments and by the elemental forces controlling the characters. With this move , Maggie ceases to depend on Fanny or her martial strategy alone and calls down aid from other , higher powers .

For instance , while the terrace scene 1s described 1n military terms , Maggie later thinks of it as "a thing appointed by some occult power that had dealt with her"

(II 278) . Maggie herself has a way to accomplish a "fantastic flight of divination " (II 282) through her intuition; her father teachers her more powerful spells through his

indescribable air of we aving his spell , weav ing it off there by himself . it was then perhaps that his appearance of weaving his spell was for the initiated conscience least to be resi sted . (II 284 , 290)

After the luncheon at Fawn s with Father Mitchell, Haggie notes "her father 's slightly bent shoulders . . which seem

to weave his spell, by the force of habit" (II 301) . The 178 golden silk cord by wh ich she imagines he holds Charlotte becomes for her a symbol of his power and a way for her instruction , for she sees "the trick of his hands in his pockets" and realizes that

To have recognized . . the play of this gathered lasso might inevitably be to wonder with what magic it was twisted , to what tension subjected These reminded states for the Princess were in fact states of renewed gaping. So many things her father knew that she even yet did n't! (II 330-31)

Finally , though Maggie has retained the spell over Amerigo which she believed he would try to break (II 299) , Adam continues to weave his spell without Maggie 's knowing how he does it. (Although Adam's control over Charlotte appears to be financial and social rather than sexual , Maggie admits that she knows nothing of this aspect of their lives. She also considers her father her equal in all things and does not fear him as the others do , an attitude contributing to her inability to see wherein his power lie s.) Thus, Adam remains for Maggie, and the reader, as inscrutable as the sorcerers who knew of the human mind and heart and how to call upon their powers .

Two minor groups of images help to create the atmosphere of the magical in the novel. In one group are images of the eerie or the ghostly, wh ich includes several of strangers in houses reminiscent of the governess's sightings of Quint in The Turn of the Screw (one of the reasons Nuhn 179 concludes that Haggie is half-mad or a witch) . The first such image belongs to Adam , though; in one of his reverie s, he calls his own mind an "essentially private house that when , after waiting and coming back, he had at last got in twirling his hat, as an embarrassed stranger , or , trying his keys, as a thief in the night" (I 149) . Haggie also uses such images to envision her fear of her suspicions, as "a spying servant , on the other side of the barred threshold" or as "some bad-faced stranger surprised in one of the thick-carpeted corridors of a house of quiet on a

Sunday afternoon" (II 43 , 237) . While others have seen these images as excessive ly paranoid, I see them as quite appropriate for the Ververs; as the wealthy collectors they are , carrying their treasures around the world with them

(like Hrs. Gardner) and rejoicing that they have not lost even the tiniest, sure ly they would fear nothing so much as a thief or an uninvited stranger ab sconding with the symbols of the Verver millions . Thus , these images are perfectly 1n keeping with James's characterizations in the novel.

The ghostly images make a lesser impress ion on the reader, reinforcing as they do only the other magical images. There is, for instance , Maggie 's feeling that at

Fawns

. they played their parts during a crisis that must have hovered for them, in the long passages of the old house, after the fashion of the estab lished ghost, felt, through the dark hours , as a 180

constant possibility, rather than have menaced them in the form of a day light bore (II 221) or her feeling "of her being to a certain extent menaced--horrible as it was to impute to [Amerigo] any intention represented by such a word" (II 7 5) . She fears that any note of jealousy "would have reached her father 's

[ear] exactly in the form of a cry piercing the stillness of peaceful sleep" (II 77) . She bel ieves Charlotte a "haunted creature" and "a creature beguiled" into believ ing that her Judas kiss had righted things "so that no ghost of anything it referred to could ever wa lk again" (II 229,

2 7 9) • Even Adam, be fore he recovers his powers after breaking Charlotte 's spell, thinks that his happiness and privilege is "something haunting--as if it were a bit uncanny " (II 92) . These images are definitely negative and intended to reveal to the reader the evil which lurks behind the supposed good will of the adulterers.

It is not so with the other group, upon which some critics have based their interpretations of the structure of the novel as that of a fairy tale. Two tales are employed in the novel to characterize Maggie or to create an unreal

0tmosphere . The first is the Cinderella legend , one noted by Lebowitz and Appignanesi, 1n which Maggie is the victim of an evil stepmother until the Prince comes with the glass sJ ipper (or the golden bowl) to save her. These images are 181 found in passages in which Maggie imagines herself somehow inferior to Charlotte, both in beauty and in rank; she sees herself as "bent . over her dustbin . . picking . out of the sweepings of her ordered house" (II 42) . In other image used in the Prince 's volume , the atmosphere at t1atcham is quite evil; in such a place

Judgement, the spirit with the scales, might per fectly have been imaged there as some rather snubbed and subdued but quite trained and tactful poor relation , of equal, of the properest, lin eage , only of aspect a little dingy , doubtless from too limited a change of dres s, for whose tacit and ahstemious presence , never betrayed by a rattle of her rusty machine , a room in the attic and a plate at the side table were decently usual. (I 331)

But the Cinderella tale cannot account for the fact that it is the stepmother who Wils the poor "relation " (I 180) elevated by her stepdaughter , rich and a princess to boot , while the fairy godmother (Fanny) shattered the symbol of her majesty rather than give its evidence to the Princess.

The second reference is to the tale of the Sleeping

Beauty and fits the plot of the novel much better . Fanny bel ieves, at the end of the first volume , that Maggie is beginning to wake up (I 401) ; bewitched by the spell put on her by both her surroundings at Fawns, the fairy castle "out of this world" (I 211) , and her husband and stepmother , the

Princess must wake herself (even her father dozes off at

Fawns occas ionally) . During their last interview under the 182 old oak tree (long a symbol of wisdom for the Druids), she is able to break the spell by admitting

" I had lost my position by my marriage . That one--I know how I saw it--would never come back . I had done something to it--I did n't know what; given it way somehow and yet not as then appeared really got my return . I had been assured--always by dear Fanny--that I could get it, only I must wake up . So I was trying , you see, to wake up--trying very hard." (II 260)

Although Fanny helps Maggie to realize that the spell must be broken, the older woman cannot aid in actually breaking the spell; she herself is too much a wicked witch , meddling in her cauldron , to create good out of evil. Even Maggie a.cknowledges that II I she does n' t seem to think so much about their being wrong--wrong, that is, in the sense of being wicked. She does n't . quite so much mind their being wicked "' (I I 2 61) Therefore , it is natural that

Maggie turns away from Fanny 's lies and counsel in the second vol ume and prefers to find her own way, eventually creating a happiness with her Prince like "the golden bowl-- as it wa s to have been" (II 216) and awakening her father from his wife 's spell also (II 260) .

Although these two fairy tales do not contribute much to the plot or the characterizations, they help to create a mood in accord with the other images of magic. Not being fond of allegory , James would not slavishly follow such a mode l, no matter how pleasing he found the tales. But he did put them to good use to prov ide illuminating parallels 183 for his characters. The other magical images are not as positive , sometimes being warnings to the reader as ominou s as any in which the Prince believes. However, the magic wh ich Maggie calls down to use for moral purposes of attain- ing goodness and truth is positive and ethical , and inter- acts with the rel igious imagery discussed in the following section .

Re ligion

One of the most surprising discoveries in this analysis of the imagery was the wealth of rel igious images in The

Golden Bowl , much of which has been overlooked previously .

Two articles written twenty years apart examine this group of images; Robert Gale (1 957) give s a brief summary of religious images in James's works, citing the eastern religious images (the pagoda and the Sphinx) and the two relics which symbolize Charlotte (the medal) and Maggie (the cross) . Much later, Harry C. Rutledge (1977) more fully discusses the classical imagery in the novel , although he counts such dubious examples as an analogy in which Adam 1s a Bacchus figure , "the invisible lover" (62) . However,

Rutledge 's conclusion is warranted :

It is Henry James ' careful handling of his classi cal imagery that helps to make the tale of Maggie and her relations with her family and her friends one of the great studies of character of our century. (62) 184

Gale also affirms that the pagan Greek and Roman myths contribute a great deal to James's rel igious imagery . The most notab le images in The Golden Bowl are the descriptions of !·1aggie and Charlotte in classical terms (I 187, 47) and the comparison of Adam's religion ["the religion he wished to propagate , the exemplary passion , the pass ion for perfection at any price" (I 146) ] to

the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn with a cold still flame � where it fed almost wholly on the material directly involved, on the idea (followed by appropriation) of plastic beauty , of the thing visibly perfect in its kind� where , in short, despite the general tendency of the "devouring element" to spread, the rest of his spiritual furniture , modest scattered and tended with unconscious care , escaped the consumption that in so many cases proceeds from the undue keeping of profane altar-fires. (I 197)

Such a "pagan" regard for perfect physical beauty is representative of the popularity of neoclassicism in England and the United States in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and aligns Adam with the intellectual and aes- the tic prejudices of his youth , even though he seems to carry such principles a little far. Other minor images or ideas associated with pagan religions occur , as in spring 's comparison to an infant Hercules (I 332) .

As mentioned in the first chapter , one of the eternal debate s raging over the novel is Maggie 's dual status as saint and witch, a variation of the madonna/whore dichotomy

1n wh ich the re ligious, psychological, and physiological 185 manifestations of woman are idealized yet contradictory states. James 's use of religious imagery , applied primarily to Maggie , reinforces the arguments of those critics finding in the young woman a Christian martyr-saint. However , few critics have acknowledged that many of the images of sacri fice also can be seen as references to Jewish rites such as the Seder or to types found in the Old Tes tament such as the story of Abraham and Issac. Even so, about one-third of the images definitely can be called Christian , wh ile fully another one half are rel igious generically, without refer ence to specific sect. For instance , the images in which first the Prince , then Maggie , are called pilgr ims (I 20,

II 281) cannot be assigned to one religion , because the call to pilgrimage is as strong for Muslims as it is for

Christians . Other images refer to generic rites which transcend denominations and are common to all spiritual backgrounds, formalized or not ; one such image occurs after the Foreign Office ball, when Fanny recognizes that the relationship between the Prince and Charlotte has developed into "something grave ," wh ich in turn is a pun upon her though t that her return from the ball "re sembled a return from a funeral--unless indeed it resembled more the hushed approach to a house of mourning . What indeed had she come horne for but to inter . . her mistake?" (I 287) .

Elsewhere , James uses a secondary meaning of a reli gious term in a manner which might show that certain words 186 had taken on a secular meaning for James. In this case , he uses "sacred" to mean "private " rather than "holy" or

"venerated" (I 187, II 315) (although Amerigo 's affirmation that Maggie is sacred to him implies veneration of his wife 's position, if not of her person) . However, the great est perversion of its use occurs in the scene in which the affair recommences , when the Prince declares that the vow wh ich he and Charlotte make to hide their involvement from

Maggie and Adam to "protect" them is "sacred ," even as they

"trust the saints in glory" (I 312) . Similarly, Amerigo 's description of Maggie as "divine" in her forgiveness and

Fanny 's use of the word when Maggie ignores the elder woman 's culpability strike one as exaggerated, perhaps even

as facetious (as in the social response currently in use) .

Still, Fanny 's earlier idea of Maggie as being "beautifully, divine ly retributive" is evocative of a goddess's wrath directed toward a wayward lover, as in the myth of Narcissus or in the initiation of the Trojan War and fits well with

Adam's description of Maggie and himself as "lying like gods

together, all careless of mankind" (II 350 , 129, 72, 91) .

The largest group of generic rel igious images consists

of the images of sacrifice in the novel, over a dozen in

number. Although they are seen mainly by readers as imagery

solely in the Ch ristian tradition , one should recogn ize the

Jewish and pagan rites of sacrifice as contributing to the 187 richness of the imagery . As noted above , Adam's "profane altar-fires" are stoked by his sacrificing real knowledge of his wife and daughter for an appreciation of their superficial physical attributes. Similarly , the idea, first expressed by Adam himself, that Maggie "had sacrificed a parent" (I 206) , is an ironic contrast to the Judeo-

Christian tradition of parental sacrifice of children to prove allegiance to a higher ideal than parental love as seen in the type of Abraham 's near-sacrifice of Issac and the anti-type of Christ's crucifixion . Other images of sacrifice in the first volume are minor , involving mentions of social sacrifices the four do for each other to maintain familial harmony, although Charlotte seems jealous of

Maggie 's continual sacrifices of time and attention for her father .

Only after Maggie realizes, in the second volume , that she needs "miraculous help" to overcome the situation in which she finds herself does she decide whether

it were n' t thinkable, from the perfectly practical point of view , that she should simply sacrifice him . She did n't go into the detail of what sacrificing him would mean--she did n't need to . with the appearance about him above all of having perhaps arrived just on purpose to � it to her himself in so many words: "Sacrifice me , my own love ; do sacrifice me , do sacrifice me !" Should she want to, should she insist on it, she might verily hear him bleating it at her, all conscious and all accommodating, like some pre cious spotless exceptionally intelligent lamb . (II 82-83) 188

Despite Maggie 's rather comic portrayal of what she sees is her father 's almost ma sochistic del ight in being vict imized , the image does link together pagan , Jewish, and Christian symbols by evoking the pagan human sacrifices to Adonis (as described by Weston ) , the Jewish rite of sacrificing lambs at Seder in celebration of the Passover (in which firstborn lambs substituted for firstborn sons) , and the Christian

interpretation of God's sacrifice of His Only-begotten Son whose death symbolizes supreme sacrifice and renunciation .

These sacrifices evolve into an almo st ecstatic release from the problematic intricacies of human relationships into a purer love of the kind postulated by Foge l in his discussion of Maggie 's efforts on the part of the others . Later refer ences by Adam to his "sacrifice " (II 267- 269) convince the reader that the father either is totally willing to agree with his daughter 's plan , in which case he is a volunteer or a knowing victim who acquiesces to his own annihil ation for the community 's well-being and considers himself privileged

to be chosen to act in such a capacity (as in diverse pagan

rituals) , or he is reluctant to admit that he feels any discomfiture at such a dismissal for fear of disturbing

Maggie . Maggie 's view is that he is "offering himself, pressing himself upon her , as a sacrifice" (II 269) and so

is a willing participant in his banishment to American City .

If Maggie is correct in her assessment , then Adam clearly 189 follows the pattern of ecstatic self-annihilation experi enced in pagan rites rather than the Judea-Christian pattern

(even Christ questioned His Death while on the cross).

Other characters , including Maggie herself, are forced to make sacrifices so that the marriage s may survive . After discovering Fanny 's involvement 1n reuniting Amerigo and

Charlotte , Maggie seeks some retribution hy coldly seeing

"t·1rs . Assingham ' s personal life or liberty sacrif iced without a pang" (II 101) , although she later modifies her attitude until she begs Fanny to "'make no sacrifice

See me through '" (II 302) . At various places in the novel ,

Magg ie herself makes sacrifices of her intellect, of the truth , then of the pretenses she must use against Charlotte , and finally of her pride (II 140, 163 , 242, 314) . That

Maggie is able to give up so much and still be able to retain her consciousness and appreciation of the difficult positions of everyone involved is certainly to her credit and serves to solidify her position as martyr/savior .

The smallest group of metaphors are those allusions to the Jewish religion , mentioned first by the Prince as he recalls the conditions under which his younger brother married a Jewess (I 18) . Indications are that Jame s viewed

Jews , both American immigrants and established European families, as exceedingly eastern and exotic . Edel cites

James 's finding the Jewish ghetto on the Lower East Side of 190

New York in 1905 as "an imated and bewildering'' (Master 291) , but notes that earlier Jame s had known few Jews personally and so treated them according to the various myths about the race; such allusions appear in the novel in comparisons of the Misses Lutch to a "tribe of wandering Jewesses" and of

Fanny 's appearance--"Her richness of hue , her generous nose"--as that of a "pampered Jewess . but the eyes of the Ame rican city looked out from under the lids of

Jerusalem" (II 256, I 34-35) . Also, Adam is struck by the strangeness of the Jews he encounters in the Gutermann-Seuss

"tribe ," especially the chi ldren with their "such impersonal old eyes astride of such impersonal old noses" (I 213) .

Even Charlotte is impressed by the Old World quality of the gathering and the celebration afterwards, calling it "the touch of some mystic rite of old Jewry" (I 216) . Jame s makes the comical Assinghams return to London after the dismantling of Fawns "looking as pale as if they had seen

Samson pull down the temple" (II 324) , a three-pronged metaphor referring to the temple of Gaza, the garden temple at Fawns, and Adam's temples of art created at Fawns and

American City.

The Bloomsbury shopkeeper serves as a repository of all of James 's prejudgments about the Jews . The Prince makes statements about the shopkeeper wh ich align closely with medieval Catholic legends in which Jews drink the blood of 191

Christian babies, calling the little man a "swindling little

Jew" and a "horrid little beast," although James makes the point earlier that the Prince does not notice the Jew's class of people at all (I 359, II 197) . There fore, the

Prince must be mouthing generalities based on tradition and not on any knowledge of the shopkeeper as an individual.

Charlotte does notice the seller and notes that "he has his way ; for that way of saying nothing with his lips when he 's all the while pressing you so with his face , which shows how he knows you fell it," while Jame s 's description of the collector centers on his business acumen--"He was clearly the master and devoted to his business," both attestations to the well-known trait of the Jews for being excellent businessmen (such as the Rothschilds ) who know the value of a pound (I 106, 104) . Even when he "asked . . too high a price , more than the object was really worth ," another trait of businessmen (Maggie should have known that he wanted to bargain or "jew" the price) , he repents of this action and

"had acted on a scruple rare enough in vendors of any class and almost unprecedented in the thrifty children of Israel," based on his love of family and fear of omens, two other

traits assigned to European Jews (II 197, 222-23) . His polylingual ability also links into the idea of Jewish

respect for education , or could be an obl ique reference to

the wande ring tribes assimilated into many cultures. (Other 192 functions which the shopkeeper performs in the novel are discussed in the sections on magic and collecting .)

The most important use of Jewish tradition in the nove l appears during the terrace scene when Maggie recalls a painting of a Jewish theme , the scapegoat (a description is in the section of works of art) . Because he was familiar with the painter and his products , James might have used such a reference ironically . He also implies that although

Maggie acquiesces to being made the martyr of the situation , there may be not real reason for such a sacrifice unless only for the symbolic value . Whereas in the ancient Jewish tradition (and in other pagan rituals if Fraser is correct) , the scapegoat constitutes a real necessity for the psychological health of the commun ity , in Maggie 's case she seems to be volunteering for a martyrdom wh ich she admits the others would not force on her; instead , she functions only in the abstract symbo lic sense :

They thus tacitly put it upon her to be disposed of, the whole complexity of their peril, and she promptly saw why : because she was there , and there just as she wa s, to lift it off them and take it; to Charge herself with it as the scape goat of old had been charged with the sins of the people and gone forth into the desert to sink under his burden and die . That indeed wa s n't their des ign and their interest , that she should sink under hers; it would n't. be their feeling that she should do anything but live , live

on somehow for their benefit . (II 234-35)

Thus, Maggie negates the function and psychological requirement of the scapegoat by living; the ancient gods would not 193 have been appeased by such an arrogant act by a potential sacrifice . In diluting the impact of this metaphor , Jame s might be criticizing such a tradition and promoting instead the Christian anti type of the raising of the dead Christ, who , wh ile functioning as a scapegoat, does live . In this manner , Jame s seems slightly non-Judaic or even anti-Semitic by blurring the image of the Jewish scapegoat into an almost

Christian symbol .

Not surprisingly, then , Jame s includes many Christian images in this novel of sacrifice and renunciation, images one must discuss in the light of Catholic interpretation , the one mo st imbued with the symbols and my sterious rites of

Christianity . Although Jame s chooses not to make his four ma jor characters excess ively pious, they are all nominally

Catholic. Adam , possibly the character the least inspired by formal rel igious beliefs, defends his right not to go to church wh ile at Fawns; we also learn from Adam that the other characters mo st like ly belong to the Church of

England , as they attend

the little old church , "on the property ," that our friend had often found himself wishing he were able to transport , as it stood , for its simple sweetness , in a glass case, to one of his exhibitory halls . (I 152)

Such a wish is more proof that Adam's rel igion is not moral but aesthetic ln principle, especially as he acknowledges

that he "had been loosely willing always to let it be taken" 194 that he is Catholic (I 129 , 152) . Critics ' alignment of

Adam with the Godhead seems a mi s interpretation when one examines the few religious images applied to Mr . Verver such as his ironic offer to be a martyr to marriage and Fanny 's report that Charlotte thinks Adam meek , an attribution she surely rethinks later (I 174, 195) . Thus, the equation of

Adam, no matter how wise or omnipotent he appears to the reader, with the Supreme Being is not borne out in the

imagery .

The Prince also is not a demonstrable Catholic, despite the fact that his great-uncle was a Cardinal. Of Amerigo ,

Fogel writes, "Catholic in fact, he is pagan in sensibility.

His aestheticism is a high form of materialism" (120) .

While Fogel does not go so far as to link Amerigo with other

Jame sian characters, I bel ieve Amerigo to be in a direct

line beginning with Count Valerio in " The Last of the

Valerii" and continuing through Comte de Mauves and Prince

Casamassima , a line wh ich has its prototype in Donatello in

Hawthorne 's The Marb le Fawn . Foreign Catholic husbands bode

no good for American heiresses in James's fiction , espe

cially if the young ladies possess characteristics resem

bling those of Hawthorne 's Hilda . As with his "forefathers"

in Jamesian fiction, Amerigo sees marriage in the European

Cathol ic tradition : the wife , as a madonna-figure , is

sacred (as Amerigo asserts (II 100) ] and so mu st not be 195 sullied by the husband 's sexual desire , which is reserved for his mistress, in many instances a woman of the household to whom the wife consents. Amerigo , like Valerio, re lies more on his natural instincts and pagan senses and superstitions (some of them ostensibly Christian) to see him through life. His earliest reference to such an omen is his reply to Charlotte about his wedding :

"Your marriage is on Friday ?--on Saturday?" �h on Friday , no ! For what do you take us? There 's not a vulgar omen we 're neglecting. On Saturday, please, at the Oratory , at three o'clock--before twe lve assistants exactly." "Twe lve including me ?" - It struck him--he laughed . "You ' 11 make the thirteenth . It won 't do?" "Not," said Charlotte , "if you 're going in for 'omens.' Should you like me [to] stay away?" "Dear no--we ' 11 manage . We ' 11 make the round number- -we 'll have in some old woman . They must keep them there for that , don 't they?" (I 59-60)

(This excerpt also foreshadows Charlotte 's Geths emene scene on the terrace , when she plays Judas to Maggie 's Christ.)

The second indication is his later conversation , when he swears once by God {"Per Dio") and in the next sentence by

Bacchus ("Per Bacco" ), both interjections common in Italian but particularly telling in this passage on superstitions

{I 119) . By equating Bacchus , god of wine and revelry , to the one true God , Amerigo reveals his values to the reader.

Ironically , the last religious image associated with the

Prince is Haggie ' s comparison of him to a priest in his

"more than monastic cell'' (II 338) . Cut off physically from 196 both women availab le to him, the Prince who is characterized by a pagan sensuality suffers in an unwilling celibacy .

One is not surprised to learn that the Prince 's paramour also exhibits a lack of piety . Charlotte admits early in the novel that she is not "decent" enough spiritually to with stand the temptation of taking advantage of Maggie :

"It makes too easy terms for one . It takes stuff within one , so far as one's decency is concerned , to stand it. And nobody is decent enough , good enough , to stand it--not without help from re ligion or something of that kind . Not without prayer and fasting--that is without taking great care . Certainly such people as you and I are not. " (I 102)

If Charlotte is a reluctant supplicant or penitant , she mu st hide it well; mo st likely she observes some of the forms , since Father Mitchell notes in her

an apparent detachment from any kind of devotion . He would have . taken it for a sign of some smothered inward trouble and natur ally pointed the moral that the way out of such straits was not through neglect of the grand remedy . He had possibly prescr ibed contrition (II 300)

Instead , Charlotte acts the role of Judas wh en she forces Maggie 's "conscious perjury" and asks in return "the prodigious kiss" wh ich seals the fate of the four characters by its public nature , for that aspect calls attention to the fact that something is wrong between the two women . Later ,

Charlotte pays her penance to Adam by proselyting the tour- ists to Adam's religion of beauty , with Fanny 's aid as acolyte : 197

Her words, addressed to the largest publicity , rang for some minutes through the place , every one as quiet to listen as if it had been a church ablase with tapers and she were taking her part in some hymn of praise . Fanny Assingham looked rapt in devotion she supported her , in slow revolutions . (II 290-91)

Finally , Charlotte is no more than a mockery of human suffering . Although Maggie asserts that "'I feel somehow as if she were dying dying for us--for you and me ; and making us feel it by the very fact of there being so much of her left '" (II 346) , ironically, that is just how Charlotte appears in the last scene--zombie-like , almost as one of the living dead. Facing her lover for the last time , Charlotte retreats behind the superficial fa�ade wh ich for her always suffices for emotion. Even Amerigo notices the change in

Charlotte :

It was the strangest of all impressions there occurred, be fore long, a moment in which Amerigo 's look met [Maggie 's] own in recog nitions that he could n't suppress. the shade of the official, in [Charlotte 's] beauty and security , never for a moment dropped; it was a cool high refuge , the deep arched recess of some coloured and gilded image , in which she sat and smiled and waited , drank her tea, referred to her husband and remembered her mission. Char lotte [was] throned the whole scene having crystallised, as soon as she took her place, to the right quiet lustre ; the harmony was n't less sustained for being superficial (II 357- 58)

Unlike the icons in church , symbols of human suffering and sacrifice , Charlotte becomes the symbol of human vanity and avarice , her mission in life to be a "model" wife , even if 198 it means literally turning to stone or wax in order to justify her husband 's millions to the American public and to demonstrate his capacity for possession . Charlotte in effect sells her soul in order to be close to the Prince and by the end of the novel is reaping what she has sown by living a ritualized existence devoid of human emotion . She pays for having as "absolute little gods" the forms of

social conduct instead those of moral virtue (I 318) .

Unlike the other three characters , Maggie is a practic-

ing Catholic, as her marriage in the Oratory and the presence of Father Mitchell at Fawn s demonstrate; we are told

that while at Fawns

Maggie had induced her husband , not inveterate in such practices, to make with her the some what longer pilgrimage to the nearest altar . of the faith--her own as it had been her mother 's . without the solid ease of wh ich, making the stage firm and smooth, the drama of her marriage might n't have been acted out. (I 152)

Adam notes her demeanor as being that of a nun, wh ich she

takes as a comp liment (I 188) , and Fanny informs us that

Maggie wears a cross blessed by the Pope (II 112) . However,

Maggie cannot be extremely pious , as James makes no descrip-

tion of any daily observances or sacraments such as matins ,

vespers , confession , or the baptism of the Principino ,

although they surely take place , while he implies that

Father Mitchell is ineffectual as Maggie "really found her

way without his guidance Someday at some happier 199 sea son she would confess to him that she had n't confessed"

(II 298) . However, whereas Maggie may not follow daily rituals of Catholicism, her imagination is imbued with

Catholic images; in addition , her imagination 's link to her morality seems to be in direct descent from the late medieval mystics of the Catholic church , in particular

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux and William of Saint Thierry ,

Cistercian monks who espoused a doctrine of mystical love of

God wh ich culminated in an ecstatic vision in which human and divine love conjo ined . Etienne Gilson interprets

Bernard as writing that "man 's vision is his intelligence" and vice versa (218) . Indeed , Gil son states that

In this sense the problem of love , as it arises in a Christian philo sophy , is a precise parallel to the problem of knowledge . By intelligence the soul is capable of truth ; by love it is capable of the Good. Consequently, for all purely physical beings , to perfect themselves is to make themselves more like to God. All the more must this be so when we have to do with an intelligent being such as man , for it is his intelligence above all that confers on him both his proper perfection and his proper analogy to God. If we add to this that he has received the promise of the beatific vision , that is to say a state in which his intellect will know God as God knows Himself, it will be seem without difficulty that man is destined to reach simultaneously, and by one and the same act, both the summit of his own perfection and all the fullness of divine resem blance that is open to him. (273, 286-87)

All Cistercian theology is grounded on the premise that God is Love , and mc_n will become more God-like the more he loves, until he reaches the point when he enters a state of 200 ecstatic love in a vis ion in wh ich his soul separate s from his physical being :

. Cistercian ecstasy is at once annihiliation and fulfillment, but this simultaneous double assertion indicates no deviation or internal embarrassment in St. Bernard 's thought . In the first place the Cistercian texts never speak of annihilation, but on ly of an all-but annihilation; and we mu st notice what it is that js annihilated : dissimilitude. . So finally , even when nothing of man remains in man , his substance nevertheless remains, and will remain even in the beatific vision to be annihiliated in God, is to surrender [the soul 's] own will, that is, the separative will that made the man at once differ ent from God and from himself; it is, therefore , to become at one and the same time , both a perfect image of God, and a human plenitude . Charity begins the work of res toration ; ecstasy realizes it as far as it can be realized in this life; it is consummated in the beatific vision . (299-300)

Visions occur with startling rapidity in the novel; their significance is examined in the sections on the Holy Grail and on sight .

l1aggie also uses rel igious imagery to describe her quest for knowledge and moral wisdom. Just as Adam de-

scribe s his genius as "a lamp before a shrine in the

dark perspective of a church" (I 127) , so Maggie compares her "flame of memory " to that "of a lamp in some side-chapel

in wh ich incense was thick" (II 11) . One revelation occurs

to Magg ie after she has vis ited "one of the ampler shrines

of the supreme exhibitory temple" at the British Museum

(II 147) , an image wh ich might be an instance of her

father 's influence by equating art wi th re l igion , but which 201

I see as evidence of the degree of emotion with which Magg ie approaches the sacredness of her marriage , especially when she feels "exalted" after viewing the family archive s

(II 154) . Later, Fanny applies a religious image to their interview to indicate the seriousness of their topic:

"[Fanny] felt as the truly pious priest might feel when confronted, behind the altar, before the festa , with his miraculous Madonna" (II 153) .

The mo st obvious use of the religious occurs in the last pages of Part I and the first of Part II when Jame s employs the three cathedrals and the three eastern temples as bridges between the first and second volumes. The three cathedrals of Worcester , Hereford , and Gloucester are renowned not only for their proximity to each other, enabling such artistic triumphs as the Three Choirs festi val , but also for their combined beauty , with Gloucester being the most celebrated of the three . The associations which the Prince and Charlotte assign to the cathedrals are not to the ir rel igious significance but to the ir romantic auras created by the tomb s of ancient royalty and for the excuse they provide for collusion and deception . Thus, the cathedrals prove ironic in that the Prince views such rel igious structures at the precise moment that he thinks of the hypocrisy wh ich governs social relations in England , a hypocrisy which perhaps itself might stem from the 202

Protestant view of sin, or les situations nettes as the

Prince thinks of it, which does not provide an avenue of confession and penance as the Catholic rel igion does for the characters in the novel, although there are indications that they choose not to exercise such an option. Nevertheless , the perverse use of Gloucester Cathedral as the setting for adu ltery is rein forced by the use of the pagoda, the ivory tower, and the mosque as symbols of Maggie 's fear and con fusion in confronting and correcting her situation . Such an symbolic bridge between the tv10 volumes illustrates the importance of both rel igion and structure in James's imagery , as does the incorporation of the Grail legend wh ich provides not only a Catholic theme but also a more universal theme , that of initiation , for the novel.

The Grail

Only two articles , to my knowledge , have been published

(Todasco and Goldfarb ) which connect , however slightly , the eponymous golden bowl of the novel to the Holy Grail and the symbolic and actual quests for it which have been under taken during the last millenium. Possibly no other physi cal ob ject in history has engendered such an imaginative response , both creative and scholastic ; literally hundreds, if not thousands, of scholarly books and articles have been written examining the medieval writings concern ing the Grail and its conj unction with the Arthur ian legend, wh ile this 203

same subject matter has inspired later artists such as

Wagner , Tennyson , Swinburne , E. A. Robinson , E. A. Abbey,

and C. S. Lewis. In our time , the Grail industry centers on

romantic light fiction , popular musicals, and films . One

recent book postulates that the Holy Grail is an actual

object of veneration and the key to esoteric knowledge con

cerning certa in Cistercian and Carthar literature and

inspires cults today , especially in France , which foment

reaction again st the Catholic Church .

Oddly , Gale overlook s the presence of this tremendously

important image in The Golden Bowl in his discussion of

religious imagery in James 's work , deciding that "There are

only two holy grail images in all of James's fiction, and

they both concern art" (72) , citing metaphors in "The Author

of Beltraffio" and "Collaboration ." While this may be so ,

James knew the Grail legend well enough to write the text

for the exhibitory catalogue for Edwin A. Abbey 's serie s of

wall murals for the Boston Public Library (Edel and Laurence

218-22) . Also, Lawrence Hazzeno has found evidence that

Jame s had Tennyson 's Idylls in mind as he wrote The Golden

Bowl . But the primary evidence that James tried to incor

porate the grail legend into the novel come s from the novel

itself. Skeptics might challenge successfully the equation

of the golden bowl with the grail except for the similarity

of the description of the bowl in the novel and descriptions 204 given of chalices and other vessels assumed to be grail cup s in historical or archeological treatises. James's description of the golden bowl is certainly not that of a deformed champagne glass such as that used in the BBC production of

The Golden Bowl , for James writes of the bowl as

a drink ing-vessel larger than a common cup , yet not of exorbitant size, and formed, to appear ance either of old fine gold or of some material once richly gilt. Simp le but singularly elegant , it stood on a circular base , and , though not of signal depth , justified its title by the charm of its shape as we ll as by the tone of its surface. It might have been a large goblet dimin ished , to the enhancement of its happy curve , by half its original height . (I 112)

James's description conforms almost exactly to the physical dimensions of the Ardagh chalice, a gold , bejewe led vessel used in both Celtic and Catholic rites as a symbol of holy grace , which is the purpose of the Holy Grai l. In legends the Grail appears variously as a cup, a bowl , a platter , and a stone (in a German misreading of Chretien) . By 1300, the grail had become identified with two objects, the bowl wh ich collected the Blood of Christ on the cross and the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper which in turn became formalized as the ciboriurn or the chalice of the Holy Corn- rnunion .

The origin of the grail, however, is bel ieved by scho l- ars such as Loomis and \ve ston to be the Ce ltic myths 1n which the Thirteen Royal Treasures of Ireland included

Manannan ' s Cup of Truth, which broke into three pieces if 205 lies were told, but which would reform if three truths were spoken (Celtic Myth 233) � later , in Robert de Boron 's Joseph d'Arimathie , the Grail is a test of knightly virtue (Celtic

Hyth 232) . In one of the stories of the Welsh Mabiongion ,

Pryderi (Perceval) sees above a fountain in an enchanted castle a golden bowl suspended from chains des cending from heaven (Wales 37) � in other tales Pryderi sees a well made of marble , on the rim of which is a golden goblet with chains ascending into the sky. When Pryderi tries to steal the cup , his hands stick to the goblet and his feet to the marble . There he stands until the castle vanishes into the night air. Loomis be lieves this to be an initiation rite

(Ce ltic Hyth 321) . Such an interpretation would align well with Maggie 's "test" and her initiation into womanhood in the novel.

James des cribes the golden bowl in terms simi lar to those in Chretian 's Perceval:

[Joseph of Arimanthea] collected as much [blood] as he was able in this Grail of fine gold. A very precious treasure was it, and right well he had it guarded, as you will hear me tell. Then he locked it up and put it ln safe-keeping. He has locked the Grail in a precious carved wardrobe .... (Celtic Myth 225)

Behind the dealer were sundry small cupboards in the wa ll. . . . he . . . [turned] straightway toward the receptacle to which he had n' t yet resorted and from wh ich , after unlocking it , he extracted a square box , of some twenty inches in height , covered with worn-looking leather. (I 108, 112) 206

Fanny also approaches the bowl as if it were an object of veneration : "She looked at the precious thing found herself in fact eyeing it as if to draw its secret from it rather than suffer the imposition of Maggie 's knowl edge" (II 167) . The shopkeepe r asserts that the bowl was decorated "by some very fine old worker and by some beauti ful old process a lost art of a lost time "

(I 113-14) . Among other coincidences, the shopkeeper i s a

Jew living in England, as did Joseph d'Ar imathie according to Robert de Boron 's poem . One of Joseph 's descendants,

Bron , becomes the Fisher King who is also the Maimed King in the Grail castle in some versions of the legend (in others , the two are nephew and uncle, or father and son) . In other versions , the wa steland results from the lust of Bron ' s followers which is cured by the Grail .

Sometimes the King is attended by his daughter or sister or another maiden called the Grail Bearer (or the

Grail Maiden) whose function is to present the Grail to the assembled knights, acting as priestess. As a symbol of purity and innocence through whose aid salvation and grace are possible , the Grail Bearer is essential to the Grail's function and significance . In Wol fram von Eschenbach 's

Parzival (the source for Wagner 's opera) , the Grail Bearer , named Repanse de Schoye (Response of Joy) , marries the piebald infidel Feirefiz , travels to India, and there bears 207 a son, Prester John , the bringer of Christianity to th e eastern lands (where one finds pagodas and mosques) , a familial history paralleling that of the pure , innocent

Maggie marrying the pagan sensualist Amerigo and bearing him a son who \v ill combine the best characteristics of the alliance , one is led to believe . Other parallels exist; the

Grail Bearer is usually blonde , blue- or grey-eyed, and bedecked with costly fabrics and beautiful gems , just as

Maggie is in much of the nove l, especially the scene in which the bowl is broken. Maggie, however , does the impar- donable when she forgets her function as spiritual guide in her physical need for Amerigo , seen in recurring metaphor :

" there comes a day when something snaps , when the full cup, filled to the very brim , begins to overflow. That 's what has happened to my need of you--the cup , all day , has been too full to carry. So here I am with it, spilling it over you II (II 18)

When Maggie attempts to set her life aright by rejecting

Ame r igo sexually, she regains her purity , but that is not enough . As she discusses with her father the possibility of his and Charlotte 's departure , she experiences a vision which involves the cup image : "Ah then it was that the cup of her conviction, full to the brim, overflowed at a touch .

There wa s his idea, the clearness of which for an instant almost dazz led her . It was a blur of light" (II 271) .

Following her vision, Maggie strengthens her resolve to see them all through the crisis, and she becomes again the Grail 208

Bearer as "just now she was carrying in her weak stiffened hand a glass filled to the hrim , as to which she recorded a vow that no drop should overflow" (II 298) . However , Maggie allows the golden bowl , as in the legend entru sted to her care by a Jew, to be shattered after she learns it is not the true Grail; instead , she seeks the bowl "as it was to have been" (II 216) , the perfect Grail symbolizing the knowledge and love of her quest in the novel. Such a vis ion has been connected with the legends of the Holy Grail, one of the great symbols of the Catholic Church and one upon which James seems to base Maggie 's own quest for knowledge and love . Loomis explains the integration of Cistercian theology into the pagan Celtic rituals as being the re sult of the inclusion of the beatific vision into the grail legend :

To behold the Grail openly is not to see a sacred vessel in an earthly castle, but the Beatific Vision, vouchsafed by God's grace only to those who have fitted themselves by discipline and con- templation for the ineffable experience . . the symbolism of the Grail becomes explicit . . It is the Holy Grail, it is the grace of the Holy Spirit. If one may sum up the essential doctrine of the Queste , it is this. The Grail is a symbol of grace , and grace is God's love for man . Through grace all man's spiritual desires may be satisfied; thus the Grail dispensed to every knight such meats and drink s as he best loved in the world. God 's love begets a response in the hearts of men and draws them to Him; thus the knights of the Round Table we re moved to seek the G r a i 1 . ( C e 1 t i c Myth 1 7 6 , 1 8 2 - 8 3 )

One should note that the fifth panel of the Boston Public

Library mural (its description attributed to James by Lucas) 209 is the depiction of Sir Galahad 's presence during the Grail procession , during which the knight "sees the bearer of the

Grail, the damsel with the Golden Dish" (233) .

Recent critics have seen in Maggie 's search a quest which extends beyond the novel and into the critical realm.

Sears, for example , thinks that "[Jame s 's] novels are all legend s of the failure of the quest, becau se in his vision truth and beauty are not one . His Holy Grail is the golden bowl without the imperceptible flaw" (90) , and although I disagree with her negative interpretation of both the novel and the golden bowl itself, I see as significant her inclu sion of the Grail legend in her analysis of the novel.

Goldfarb presents valuable parallels to the legend through archetypal critic ism, especial ly 1n reference to Magg ie 's trials as questor : "It is the Quest itself which has edu cated her and made her a worthy participant in the literary heritage of the Grail ritual and romance" (60) , but I vehemently disagree with her assertion that "the primary result of the search for the Grail is the restoration of the inf irm King, and the primary result of Maggie 's quest is the restoration of her father to his proper function in the wor 1 d" ( 5 3 ) . I bel ieve her examination of Adam to be a deliberate misreading of Adam's character to force him into the role of the Fisher King, a role wh ich both the imagery applied to him and explicit descriptions of him refute . 210

Maggie 's role as questor is to gain knowledge of the bowl ,

sometimes through her visions, and to translate a kind of

secular grace into an express ion of love and understanding

which transcends mere intellectualization of the emotions

and is communicated to the other characters in almost mysti

cal ways. Such a function confers on her, according to

Michael Gilmore , "secular sainthood" (207) . Thus , Hagg ie

ach ieves the rank of hero , as defined by Joseph Campbell, by

restoring the treasure and bringing its message back to the

small society she inhabits . In order to be a real hero, one

mu st survive; this Maggie does by passing the tests set for

her in James 's romance .

Royalty

Heroes also are often of royal birth , but other than

entitling the two volumes of The Golden Bowl "The Prince"

and "The Princess," James uses fewer metaphors involving

royalty than one would expect, although relnted images of

power and wealth abound. Perha ps James intended the innate

regal qualities of Maggie and Ame rigo to be demonstrated by

their actions alone ; if he did, he succeeded in no small

degree . Still, as the novel develops, the royal images

center around Adam and the Principino , rather than Ame rigo

and Maggie, because Adam controls the others through wealth

and power, while the Principino represents powerful dynastic

ideals in the novel . Poor Charlotte may look like a queen 211 or a goddess, but she never exerts any power other than sexual , and her wealth is all Adam's. On the other hand ,

Maggie only becomes regal in her desparation to prove herself to the Prince (II 70) and to Charlotte :

It hung there above them like a canopy of state , a reminder that though the lady-in-waiting was an established favourite , safe in her position , a little queen , however good-natured , wa s always a little queen and might with small warning remember it . (II 38)

(This might be an allusion to Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill and is thus a warning abou t Charlotte 's fate.) Later

Maggie 's contro l of her situation makes her feel superior to the others, rising above them in her knowledge : "She found herself for five minutes thrilling with the idea of the prodigious effect that she had in her command

she might sound out their doom in a single sentence"

(II 233) Her imperil presence evinces itself externally only in the last scene , when the Prince stares at "the very first clear ma jesty he had known her to use" (II 356) . It is as if Maggie , as a democratic American woman of Puritan background, cannot allow herself the airs and fancies of nobility (although a Europeanized American such as Charlotte might readily adapt) .

Primarily through Fanny 's eyes do we see Maggie as regal, for the Ververs' world easily approximates royal sumptuousness. Fanny notices Maggie 's room at Portland 212

Place , "her whole splendid yet thereby more or less encum bered and embroidered setting her apartment was

'princely '" (II 152-53) , while the salon at Fawns has "the very look . . of having, with all its great objects ordered and balanced as for a formal reception , been appointed for some high transaction , some real affair of state "

(II 246) . Even Fanny herself may be regal at times, usually when she considers the rather serious consequences in which her meddling has resulted , as when she returns from Matcham to sit in "a sort of throne of meditation " (I 364) or when

Maggie finally voices her suspicions abou t Amerigo and

Charlotte while "her friend sat enthroned" (II 111) . How- ever, for the most part , Fanny participates in these images by association only, as when she accompanies Maggie and the

Prince "to look at things--looking at things being almo st as much a feature of their life as if they were baz aar-opening royalt ies" (II 144) or when entertaining the two , who appear

"much in the manner of a pair of young sovereigns who have , in the frolic humour of the golden years of reigns, pro posed themselves to a pair of faithfully-serving subjects"

(II 149) . One of Mrs . Assingham ' s functions is , then , to make the reader aware of Haggie 's hidden regal quality which will finally emerge in the last scene of the novel .

Absent, though , Fanny will be from that scene, which gives Adam and Charlotte their images of royalty. r·1aggie 213 predicts that they will be such: "'They come in state--to take formal leave. They do everything that 's proper '"

(II 340) , which results in another curious form of abasement for Maggie and even for Amerigo :

they might in their great eastward drawing room have been comparing notes or nerves under menace of some still official visit they might have been quite the privileged pair they were reputed , granted only they were taken as awaiting the visit of Royalty . They might have been ready to repair together to the foot of the sta ircase--the Prince somewhat in front , advancing indeed to the open doors and even going down , for all his princedom , to meet, on the stopping of the chariot , the august emergence He received Royalty , bareheaded, there fore , in the persons of Mr . and Mrs . Verver , as it alighted on the pavement , and Maggie was at the threshold to wel come it to her house (II 354, 356)

Charlotte , acting out her "possible , impossible" title, exhibits her best appearance : "The shade of the official , in her beauty and security , never for a moment dropped

. the difficulty now indeed was to choose . . between the varieties of her nobler aspects" (II 357) . Leaving

Charlotte "throned ," Maggie and her father view their treasures--"Their eyes moved together from piece to piece , taking in the whole nobleness"--including the "two noble persons" seated there (II 358, 360) . James connotes two meanings with that description; obviously only one person in the room can be cons idered noble in lineage . But in having

Maggie apply the word "noble" to them, James seems to be applying it to her also; if she can see the two as 214 magnan imous about their parting, as virtuous for not ma king a stink about it, for preserving appearances, then Maggie herself is magnanimous. The following conversation with her father , in which they agree as to Charlotte 's value in their

lives, is one of the least self-serving of Maggie 's asser tions in the novel. Of course , having kept her husband ,

she can afford to be charitable, but she does so for her

father 's sake , to save him any worry , and so Maggie is generous almost to a fault, since this scene establishes

her in many readers ' mind s as hypocritical . What many

readers miss, however, is that Maggie is speaking in code .

Just as sovereigns frequently must, Maggie is diplomati

cally, politically, saying one thing and meaning another , wh ich is clear to her father. Similar to her conversation

with Charlotte in the temple , when both women say "Adam,"

but me an "Amerigo ," Maggie means "Adam" when she says

"Charlotte ." By calling Charlotte great , Maggie reaffirms

her succes s-driven father 's choice of a wife and also his

way of dealing with her without calling attention to the

fact that a mistake wa s made and a correction was needed.

In this manner Maggie is noble in her feelings for the three

others .

Her husband , the true noble in the novel, at times

seems less so than his wife . In fact, his treatment of

Charlotte (at least as we see it through Maggie 's eyes) is 215 quite caddish. As early as the Bloomsbury expedition we are told that he is a snob--" of how , below a certain social plane , he never saw . He took throughout always the meaner sort for granted" (I 105) , wh ile at the Foreign

Office ball he hobnobs with Ambassadors and the greate st possible "Personages" (the Prince of Wales? Kings of Italy?)

(I 264) . Charlotte later informs him that

"Personage s . . live in state and under con stant consideration ; they have n't latch-keys, but drums and trumpets announce them ; and when they go out in 'growlers ' it makes a greater noise still. It 's you . . who , so far as that goes, are the Personage ." (I 306)

Other than his aristocratic bearing and princely name ,

Amerigo has less the accouterments of nobility than Maggie or Adam. Even as nouveau riche , they have class. The corn- bination of Italian noble lineage and American wealth and class, then , is personified by the Principino , who has more royal images applied to him than to anyone else .

We first are privy to the little P rin c i p i no ' s status by the daily "audiences" between grand father and grandson , the two inexorably linked together by the fact that, until the last page of the novel, the grand son is not seen except in the presence of near-presence of the grandfather. Clearly, the little hoy serves as a symbol to Adam, not only of the visible succe ss of Maggie 's marriage and of Amerigo 's lineage but also as the sole heir to Adam's fortune .

Although we might wonder at Amerigo 's acquiescence to such 216 an arrangement which caused "the place of immediate male

parent [to be] swept bare" (I 15 6) , what else could he do but stand by and let the grandfather-- and such a grand-

father !--dote on his son? The child is given the most royal

environment, as "the Principino , with much pomp and circum-

stance of perambulator , parasol, fine lace over-veiling and

incorruptible female attendance , took the air" (I 156-57) .

Even Fawns itself, although a medium- sized country mansion ,

takes on a special air when the Pr incipino occupies it :

"the private apartments were not much more easily

accessible than if the place had been a royal palace and the

small child an heir-apparent--in the nursery of nurseries"

(I 156) , where nurse and doctor "mount unchallenged guard

over the august little crib " (I 200) . Moreover , when Maggie

leaves Fawns,

Mrs . Noble made them feel that she , she alone , in the absence of the queen-mother , was regent of the realm and governess of the heir. Treated on such occasions as at best a pair of dangling and merely nominal court-functionaries , picturesque hereditary triflers entitled to the petites entrees but quite external to the State , wh ich began and ended with the Nursery , Adam and Charlotte could only retire , in quickened socia bility, to what wa s left them of the Palace, there to digest their gilded insignificance . (I 201-02)

The tables are turned later as "Mrs . Noble had majestically

mel ted , and the whole place signed her temporary abdica-

tion" as Adam watches the Principino in the "ample antique

historical royal crib , consecrated reputedly by the guarded

rest of heirs-apparent and a gift ear ly in his career from 217 his grandfather" (II 305) . There is even a hint that

Amerigo equates his son and his father-in-law when he com pares the two (I 324, 334) , perhaps considering the child more American than Italian . And the "queen-mother" sees her son as regal when she imagines her father and herself

"dandling the Principino and holding him up to the windows to see and be seen , like an infant positively royal" (II 23-

24) , a picture drawn from James 1 s travels in France and

Italy, where the heirs-apparent we re more visible than the

English royal children (IH 288 , The Untried Years 71, 81-

8 2) •

Thus, the little boy carries more than his share of the images of royalty, far more than his father or Charlotte , and with more pomp than his mother or grandfather. Possibly

James wished to emphasize his innate po sition or to predict what the boy 1 s future will be (he is one of the very few children in Jamesian fiction who grow and prosper in

"normal" surroundings) . If he lS a symbol of the inter- nat ional marriage and its success, he is a happy and pleasant , although silent , emblem of James 1 s theme . As a symbol of priv i lege and noblesse obl ige , he functions to amplify the royalty of the adult characters .

The Material

In this section , the images of the material world so dominant in the writings of ,Jame s, and especially in The 218

Golden Bowl , are discussed . The possessions of the Verver world, purchased at great cost, literally and spiritually, translate into the images of the purchase and the purchaser and of the value both intrinsic and extrinsic of the goods.

Critics such as Tintner , Winner, C. Anderson , and Bowden have wri tten extensively on what Tintner rightly calls the

"museum world" of James's fiction and how it functions to illu strate that James's ethics are supported by his aesthet ics. The value of the possess ions consists of their revela tion about their owners, since art did not exist for James for its own sake . Instead, it seems to represent for him the epitome of the romantic ideal , the expression of the good , the true , and the beautiful. In the following discussions of severa l image groups , I will attempt to show how

James used these positive ly in describing his characters and their actions, especially Maggie 's growth as the artist in her world. Only one group , that of money and buying, is found to be negative . As Mull and Porter have indicated in their books on James and money, sex and money were closely related in James 's mind; not on ly are the wealthy able to buy beauty , they are able to buy affection, or at least the sexual favors of the beautiful . Material possessions , such as those enjoyed by the Ververs, were denied James by his own severity--although he did allow himself the pleasure of Rye House--but his friendships with men of wealth and 219 patrons of the arts ln both England and the United States gave him access to the world of possessions at close range ;

he also studied art under John La Farge , frequented the

great museums and galleries of Europe , and knew many artists personally, probably the best known being John Singer

Sargent . James was also a keen observer of architecture , being struck first by the great Italian palazzos and later by the opulence of the French palais and chateaux and the

solemn grandeur of the English country homes and estates.

He implies in all his travelogues that beautiful surround

ings should be peopled by beautiful and virtuous persons;

however, his later experience in English country home s

convince him to make the resplendent Matcham a repository

for all the moral corruption th at Amerigo and Charlotte can

muster, while Fawns is a bright, unworldly environment , full

of precious artwork , an ample shrine for Adam's religion of

collecting. Accordingly, the purpose of this section is to

examine the piece s wh ich make up such a collection and the

way in wh ich they reflect the ir owner .

Buying , Selling, Values , Equilibrium

In the National Gallery of Art in Washington , D.C. ,

hangs a Jan Vermeer masterpiece entitled "A Woman Weighing

Gold" (also known as "A Woman Holding Balance'') . Painted in

1664 by the Dutch ma ster , the painting is quiet yet dynamic,

as are Vermeer 's other productions. In it, a placid young 220 woman , serene in the closing months of her pregnancy , we ighs on a table balance a number of gold coins strewn over the table on which sits an ornate casket spilling its contents over jewelry and coins . Well-dressed in furs and brocade , the woman is obviously wife to a wealthy landowner or mer chant . If that were all to the picture , the artist would have completed a technically correct and pleasing represen

tation of an ordinary daily event , but Vermeer includes one more detail which alters the interpretation of the painting ,

the wall hanging behind the prospective mother which is a

tapes try depicting the Last Judgment . Suddenly, the paint-

ing becomes allegory. Just as the balance is in the exact

center of the painting , so the young woman stands before the

center of the tapestry and thus directly before Christ; just

as she we ighs and balances her worldly treasures , so Christ

weighs the spiritual worth of Man . More than juxtaposition

of life and death , beginning and end , the painting causes

questions to form in the mind of the viewer such as, Will

the woman 's earth ly wealth cost her eternal life? Is the

life of her child beyond redemption , the wealth it will

inherit being a sin of the father visited upon the child?

Does Christ judge human avarice and guilt as she weighs her

gold, or is His Mercy less precise than her balance? No

answers are given by the painting, only provocative ques

tions raised . 221

Much as Adam associates Amerigo with a Luini and

Charlotte with the Oriental tiles, or as Maggie links the

Florentine painting with her final view of her father, so I

always think of the Vermeer painting when I read The Golden

Bowl . The questions the painting poses are ref lected in the

nume rous images of the financial world, of equilibrium and

value , of buying and selling, which constitute the largest

group of images in the novel (over 125 images) . Commencing

with the first sentence , Jame s presents a world of material

wealth and possession backed by untold and seemingly limit

less funds from unrevealed sources, a virtual Mida s world in

wh ich there is the risk of everything turning to gold ,

leaving noth ing but cold, lifeless metal. Fortunately,

James creates in Maggie a woman whose wealth does not dilute

her humility, modesty, innocence, love or good will, but

instead becomes one of the keys to the salvation of the

other characters. For it is only because her father is a

phi lanthropist who wishes to endow his native land with his

treasures that the denouement can be achieved, with Adam and

Charlotte returning wi th dignity and purpose to the United

States, leaving Maggie to shed upon the Prince her infinite

love and goodness.

In this novel Jame s seems to reverse some of his pre

viously held attitudes toward great wealth . Mull believes

that "If he saw it as the source of a potentially unlimited 222 experience , he saw it . . as a limit placed on the potential of the imagination " (11) . Yet Adam and Maggie have enormous wealth and exhibit also great imagination ; Adam's manifests itself in his entrepreneurial career and philan thropic avocation, Magg ie 's in her role as daughter and wife first, then in her own selfhood , for Maggie is the least spoiled of James 's rich girls. Early in the novel, Amerigo and Charlotte agree on her goodness, modesty, and self- effacement; it is echoed later by her father, Fanny , and even her severest critic , Bob Ass ingham .

Four distinct groups of images emerge from my analysis:

(1) images composed of references to money or finances and buying and selling; these images cluster around Amerigo and

Charlotte primarily, with several references in the second volume to Maggie 's paying the price for their adultery ;

( 2) images of calculation or mental reckoning of the emotional cost of the affair ; ( 3) images of value and its corre sponding waste; and (4) images of equilibrium , a group used by Maggie only and exclusive to the second volume , which reinforces her role as mediator .

Commercialism is evident from the first page of the novel. The Prince himself and his familial history con tribute much to this class of images. Frequently alluding to the Borgia or Medici origins of the Prince (which are admirab ly discussed by Cheryl Torsney and Adeline Tintner) , 223

Jame s wisely named no names rather than possibly insult his

Italian acquaintances, of which there were many , dating from his early years in Rome , Venice, and Florence in the 1870 's and 1880 's. Noted critics such as Leon Edel and Ad eline

Tintner have speculated on the influence on The Golden Bowl by �v illiam Wetmore Story and the circle of friends during

James 's stay in Italy. There are many parallels between

Story' s son-in-law Simone Peruzzi de Medici and Prince

Amerigo. Seen by some critics as the model for Prince

Amerigo , the Marchese whom Edith married was of the ancient

Florentine family of bankers who had loaned Edward III of

England almost 1.5 million gold florins in 1343, thus bank rupting themselves when the English failed to repay the loan through their wool exports to the Florentine looms . Except for their real estate holdings through inherited estates , the Peruzzi were ruined financially . In vl ill iam Wetmore

Story James quotes from a letter written by Story to his daughter in which he reported that he had wr itten to Lord

Hartington requesting that the ancient loan be repaid in part , but no action was ever taken (WWS II, 325) . John

Addington Symonds called the Peruzzi "moneylenders , mort gagees , and bill discounters in every great city of Europe "

(121) ; in the first chapter of The Golden Bowl , Prince

Amerigo continually th inks of himself, the Ververs , and his surroundings in monetary terms . Appraising not only 224

Hr . Verver and his millions but also Magg ie and her worth

as a proper wife for an Italian prince (I 10-12) , Amerigo

questions his own "value" early in the novel, a clue to his personality and its conflict with the innocent Americans :

"'I have the great sign of it, ' he had risked-- ' that I cost

a lost of money '" (I 12) . '" Wouldn 't you find out if it were a question of parting with me ? My value would in that

case be estimated '" (I 13) . Later "He felt therefore , just

at present , as if his papers were in order , as if his

accounts so balanced as they had never done in his life

before and he might close the portfolio with a snap" (I 19) .

Finally, he decides that

It was as if he had been some old embossed coin , of a purity of gold no longer used , stamped with glorious arms , mediaeval, wonderful , of wh ich the "worth" in mere modern changes, sovere igns and half-crowns, would be great enough , but as to which, since there were finer ways of using it, such taking to pieces was super£ luaus . (I 23)

Thus, the reader 's first impress ion of the Prince is that he

craves money . We later learn that the money goes to support

his mortgaged estates (I 164) --another financial similarity

with the Peruzzi--and that he coolly appraises everyone as

if he we re a banker sitting calmly across the table, listen-

ing to the plea. It comes as no surprise that the Prince

jilted Charlotte because she had no money, since we assume

that if a young man would marry a woman only for her money ,

he sure ly wouldn 't marry if that is in any way lacking. He 225 even recalls Charlotte in all her beauty as "some long, loose silk purse, we ll filled with gold pieces" (I 47) . If several pages earlier the prince referred to himself as an

"ola embossed coin of a purity of gold, " one can assume that

Amerigo equates, at least subconsciously, sex with money .

In fact , "The Prince 's notion of a recompense to women was more or less to make love to them" (I 21-22 , my italics).

These images of gold, money , and appraisal are associated repeatedly with the Prince throughout the novel. The

Prince , not Charlotte , sees the flaw in the golden bowl , we recall, and his excessive concern with the prices and bargains emerges during their shopping excursion . Finally , in the last pages of the novel Maggie realizes that this is specialized knowledge , this question of "value," especially as it concern s the ones closest to one's heart , but that

"Amerigo knew it, the amount • So far as seeing that she wa s 'paid ' went, he might have been holding out the money-bag for her to come and take it" (II 368) . Thus

Amerigo , more than the other mercenary characters, Bob ,

Fanny and Charlotte , or the philanthropists, Adam and

Maggie , knows the value placed on others and , most of all , on himself.

In Victorian England , where wealthiness is next to

Godliness, Amerigo is forced by circumstances to place himself upon the international marriage market, an exhibi tion of James 's equation of sex with money. Fogel , 226

Schneider, and Morgan agree that the "arranged" marriage

complete with dot is chiefly financial, at least from

Ame rigo 's point of view (Fogel 121 , Schneider 134) ; Morgan

goes on to state that to Amerigo and Charlotte , "Marriage is

. a kind of employment rather than an overwhelming moral

commitment . For Maggie , however, marriage is a rnatter of

giving all, and , in the end, of getting all as well; here

Jame s deviates from his usual pattern" (81) . The first

images show the Prince to be excessively concerned with

financial matters; his remembered glory of Rome centers

around "the legend of the City to which the world paid

tribute" in forms simi lar to the "objects massive and lump

ish, in silver and gold . . tumbled together as if, in the

insolence of the Empire , they had been the loot of far-off

victories" (I 3) . Amerigo 's own small empire had just been

saved after "the London lawyers had reached an inspired

harmony with his own man of business, poor Calderoni'' (I 5)

(I hope the "poor" is comical rather than factual) . We

later learn that such inspiration has breathed new life into

his three mortgaged estates (I 16 4) . Acknowledging to his

affianced bride that his troubles stem from the debaucheries

of those illustrious ancestors of whom she is so fond ,

Amerigo 's primary concern is not with "charming" Maggie but

with her father"whose easy way with his mi llions had taxed

to such small purposes, in the arrangements , the principle 227 of re ciprocity" (I 10 , 5) , a principle by which Amerigo balances his emotional books in dealing with both men and women; it is also an indication that Adam agreed to the marriage without getting anything more than a title for his

daughter and what Maggie describes as "an ob ject of beauty ,

and object of price" (I 12) , for in Adam's case

the ins tinct, the particular sharpened appetite of the collector , had fairly served as a basis for his acceptance of the Prince 's suit . Over and above the signal fact of the impression made on Maggie herself, the aspirant to his daughter 's hand showed somehow the great marks and signs, stood before him with the high authentici ties , he had learnt to look for in pieces of the first order. (I 140)

As the Prince knows , those pieces do not come cheaply (I 12,

140 ' 268) . In turn , the Prince will keep his estates and

receive a wife worthy of the title of Principessa, a good

Catholic (his brother has had to marry a Jewess to bolster

his own finances) , a pretty , intelligent , innocent virg in

who adores him and will endow him with enough riches to

change his personal futility and emptiness into "a new

history that should, so far as possible, contradict and even

if need be flatly dishonor , the old" (I 18, 16) . Little

does the Prince imagine that Haggie will accomplish just

that, but by force of her good faith and love rather than

through her father 's millions . In such a manner , then, the

Prince will be rewarded for his pursuit , "his papers

in order, as if his accounts so balanced as they had never 228 done in his life before and he might close his portfolio with a snap" (I 19) , but not before he has visited the place

"where his pledges had accumulated" (I 20) . Because Amerigo

cannot begin to think in terms other them material , his

confusion about Mrs. Assingham ' s motives in promoting his marriage is justified. Unl ike the minions of his ancestors,

Fanny has helped him because of her American romantic

nature , something Amerigo cannot comprehend ; he believes

that since "He had neither bribed nor persuaded her, had

given her nothing . . had n't, as he believed, made love

the least little bit" (I 21-22) , then "her profit--to think

of it vulgarly--must have all had to come from the Ververs"

(I 21) . This Amerigo can understand; just as Maggie was one

of Mrs . Assingham's "assets ," so Fanny had been one of his,

so that the marriage wa s arranged as easily as possible .

h'hile it might seem rather cold for Amerigo thus to

describe his "fairy godmother ," the woman who will watch

with him as May Bartram does with Marcher, it is even more

chilling when the Prince thinks of his former mistress. All

women, to him, are to be thought of in terms of money; sex

has little meaning for the Prince other than what he can get

by it. Almost like a pimp , Amerigo counts up his women and

puts them in the ledger :

He liked in these days to mark them off, the women to whom he had n't made love : it represented--and that was what pleased him in it--a different stage of existence from the time at which he like to 229

mark off the women to whom he had . It fur ther pas sed across him . . that he had after all gained more from women than he had ever lost by them; there appeared so, more and more , on those mystic books that are kept , in connexion with such commerce , even by men of the loosest business habits, a balance in his favour that he could pretty we ll as a rule take for granted . (I 22, 350-51)

Therefore , we are not surprised when Amerigo 's first thought on learning of Charlotte 's return is that she might unbal- ance the books by wanting something from him through her

"designs" (I 40) . The form of the design is unexpected , being nothing more than a little of his time , but the Prince is aware that Charlotte 's view of sex is just as mercenary as his and so he is troubled by her request. He does receive something from her , however, when upon his inspect- ing his former mistress, the "twentieth woman" (I 50) , he remembers

. above all the extraordinary fineness of her flexible waist which gave her a likeness also to some long loose silk purse , we ll filled with gold-pieces, but having been passed empty through a finger-ring that held it together. It was as if . . he had we ighed the whole thing 1n his open palm and even heard a little the chink of the metal. (I 47)

[He also hears the sound again at Matcham , responding to

"the chink of gold in his ear" when Charlotte explains that they are to stay over (I 345) ]. Who better to fill this

"purse" than the Prince who thinks of himself as "some old embossed coin , of a purity of gold no longer use," a coin which will never be put to the test by being exchanged, but 230 will remain, he hopes, "A large bland blank assumption of merits almost beyond notation" (I 23) . Although Amerigo considers himself "inve sted with attributes ," humility is not one of them, a deficiency shown especially when he thinks himself "fair exchange for a billion" (I 24) .

His conceit emerges also in his parsimonious treatment of Charlotte . As though he is afraid of parting with any of his precious attributes, he forces his former lover to beg, practically , for an hour of his time . Despite the fact that

Jame s is trying to show how cautious Amerigo is about becom ing invo lved again with Charlotte , this emotional stinginess makes Amerigo appear to be a cad of the first order. While he acknov1ledges that Charlotte 's visit is "beautiful" and

"generous ," it is not until Fanny explains to Bob just what are Char lotte 's financial restrictions that we begin to sympathize with what this visit "cost" her (I 41, 71) .

Although Charlotte has managed to gather a "small social capital" through her beauty and congeniality , it does her no good in obtaining what she wants, even when Bob declares that , as far as an affair is concerned , she and Amerigo have

"bought [their relationship] , over the counter, and paid for it," an apt foreshadowing of the shopping expedition and

Charlotte 's confession in the Park (I 54 , 60 , 75) .

The young woman 's prev ious conversatons with Amerigo clue the reader that she has not intended to buy anthing for 231

Maggie, but instead to make a play for the Prince while he

is still "free" ; Charlotte makes much of the fact that she will come much cheaper than will Maggie , although she has no idea how true are her words. Charlotte reassures the Prince that she has "enough" for an hour of shopping, that she is not concerned with getting anything expensive but with "the offering of the poor--something precisely that no rich per

son could ever give her, and that , being herself too rich ever to buy it, she would therefore never have" (I 92)-

another allusion to the golden bowl and how Charlotte misjudges Maggie . Then , beginning to make her pitch ,

Charlotte recalls their little hunts together in Rome , where

Amerigo is expert in bargaining, and reminds him that "I

have them all still, I need n't say--the little bargains I

there owed you . There are bargains in London in August"

(I 92) , revealing that in addition to having mementos of

their previous expeditions which might be somewhat compro

mising to the Prince , Charlotte might expect mementos of

this trip (and the Prince obligingly offers her one later) .

The bargain in London, however, is more than a momenta; it

is Charlotte hersel f, who admits that she is "Giving myself ,

in other words, away--and perfectly willing to do it for

nothing" (I 9 8) . However, Char lotte runs a great risk in

offering herself so; if Amerigo had scorned her, she would

have been "sold" in that by placing herself upon the 232 auctioneer 's block so obviously, she might have given up chances at later buyers or have been sold for much less than she eventually is.

All of the foregoing imagery underscores what Fanny calls "one beautiful woman--and one beautiful fortune ." In

Amerigo 's little adding-machine of a heart , women are to be bought, on some terms, counted, consumed, and thrown away ; for this reason, this expendable merchandise should involve as little inves tment, financial or emotional , as possible .

Perhaps Maggie triumph s in the end becau se she makes him earn his sexual fulfillment for once, rather than being like

Charlotte , who gives it all away for nothing , not even for

love; as Fanny explains to Bob , Amerigo will never care too much for Charlotte becau se she came too easy (I 4 00) . In

Amerigo 's scheme , the more he pays , the more he demands from

a woman ; that Maggie is unwilling to pay until he has paid

her wins not only his sexual excitement but his respect as wel l. In fact , the Prince is victim to a rather Freudian

disease (although the macho Italian would deny it) , in this

case one of castration complex in extremis. As Bob puts it, what is the poor boy to do , since he cannot earn a living

(too far beneath a prince) , does not need to try anything

but to be charming and attractive to women , to live off his

wife 's (or rather worse , his father-in-law' s) money , with

the only notion of recompense asked is to be stud to Maggie 233 and museum piece to Adam . It is no wonder that he feels forced to prove he is still a man when he has the chance, instead of being taken for "idiotic or incapable" (I 335) ; no wonder that the good old days of Rome and Charlotte , no matter how poor they were , appear tempting .

Charlotte , having the same view of sex and money as the

Prince, realizes all this and plays upon his vulnerability .

As in her expose in the Park , almost every word spoken in the antique shop is a double entendre . This is not ambigu ous , despite critics ' claims ; the conversation proves that

Jame s knew how to play the game of flirtation and sexual innuendo as we ll as any wr iter of the period (one supposes that James could not have sat in so many parlors with so many witty and beautiful women without hearing , if not say-

ing , s uch things. How else could he have wri tten of the corruption of the parlors of The Awkward Age and What Maisie

Knew?). Quite appropriate ly for these characters, they

interchange monetary terms with sexual terms : Charlotte

assures Amerigo that "'I'm too poor for some things but I'm not too poor for others '" (I 93) , referring to their relationship in Rome , where she was too poor for him to marry , but not too poor to be his mistress, and implies that

she is willing to recommence that affair when she admits

that she has been "saving up" in America (the reader knows

that Charlotte has not been successful in the marriage 234 market there , either) . In the shop she is free to offer

Amerigo '' something ," wh ich he must refuse if he is to marry

Maggie ; she begins by asking :

"Do you mean by that then that you would be free--?" "'Free'--?" "To offer me something?" This gave him a longer pause, and when she spoke again she might have seemed, oddly, to be address ing the dealer. "Would you allow me--?" "No," said the Prince into his little box . "You would n't accept it from me?" "No," he repeated in the same way . She exhaled a long breath that was like a guarded sigh. "But you 've touched an idea that has been mine . It's what I've wanted." Then she added : "It was what I hoped ." He put down his box--this had drawn his eyes. He made nothing , clearly, of the little man 's attention. "It's what you brought me out for?" "Hell, that's at any rate ," she returned , "my own affair. But it won 't do?" "It won't do , cara mia." (I 109)

To all but the most naive , this is Charlotte 's last play to

steal the Prince back from her best friend , at least for a

few hours as she does later at Matcham, or it is, more dia-

bolically, an offer to be his mistress after his marriage--a

real wedding gift for the groom, like a perpetual bache lor 's

party , and one wh ich he will accept four years later . Al-

though one is at first impressed by the Prince 's resolve ,

the earlier chapters make clear that the Prince refuses on

financial grounds , not personal integrity or romantic in-

tentions. Although he might remain friendly to Charlotte ,

and ob lige her with shopping trips , he cannot risk los ing 235 the Verver mil lions . He can sublimate his sexuality for his estates.

Thus , with "nothing more to contribute ," the Prince leaves Charlotte to her surprising little dealer and the golden bowl . The undertones of the conversation continue to be a sort of monetary seduction, with the shopkeeper trying to palm off his booty as Charlotte had tried to sell her body to the Prince . Although many readers see the golden bowl as a symbol for the Prince (based on Adam's des cription of his son-in-law later in the novel ), it may serve as we ll as a symbol for Charlotte , who asks, "'if it's so precious how come it to be cheap?"' (I 114) , a question which the

Prince is likely to ask himself about his mistress. Her

flaw , in his eyes, is simply that she is too easy to obtain;

for Maggie and Adam, Charlotte 's flaw is that she hides her crack, the affair with Amerigo, until it shatters Maggie 's

ideal relationships with her husband and her father , her

golden bowl "as it was to have been ." This crack ,

Charlotte 's basic dishonesty , is revealed first by her lie

to the Prince about the bowl 's price; perhaps bel ieving that

the Prince will buy the bowl for her if she lowers the

price, she tells him that it costs five pounds instead of

the fifteen pounds quoted by the dealer. The Prince 's

knowledge of the crack in the bowl , and perhaps of the flaw

in Charlotte herself, makes it "dear--to make a gift of--at 236

five shillings" (I 118) . This rebuff convinces Charlotte

that the expedition was a lost cause, but she has the part-

ing shot which foreshadows much in the novel--that after she

is married, she will receive her wish, the "something" which was offered in the shop , for then she will pose no threat to the Prince 's marriage .

With this scene , the last in the first Book , the images

of buying and selling almo st cease, centered as they are

around Amerigo and Charlotte . For one reason, as Amerigo

and Charlotte are rel ieved of their financial worries , James

has no cause to dwell on their pecuniary straits; for anoth-

er, the images are so dense in the first Book that few oth-

ers are needed to convince the reader of the characters'

motivation s. A few do appear in the third Book , when the

affair is reignited , in order to apprise the reader of

Amerigo 's growing dissatisfaction with his situation :

He was living, he had been living for these four or five years, on Mr . Verver 's services he was practically living at the ease guaranteed him. Mr . Verver in a word took care of his relation to Maggie as he took care , and apparently always would, of everything else. He re l ieved him of all anxiety about his married life in the same manner in which he re l ieved him on the score of his bank-account . And as he performed the latter office by communicating with the bankers, so the former sprang as directly from his good under standing with his daughter. This understanding had , wonderfully--that was in high evidence--the same deep intimacy---a5 the commercial, the finan cial association founded , far down , on a community of interest. Those people--and his free synthesis lumped together capita lists and bankers, 237

retired men of business, illustrious collectors, American fathers-in-law, American fathers, little American daughters , little American wives--those people we re of the same large lucky group , as one might say; they were all at least of the same general species and had the same general in stincts; they spoke each other 's language, they did each other "turns ." It was a "funny" situations--that is it was funny just as it stood . Their married life was in question , but the so lution was n't less strikingly before them . It was all right for himself because Mr . Verver worked it so for Maggie 's comfort, and it was all right for Maggie because he worked it so for her husband 's. (I 292-93)

Although one may sympathize a bit with the Prince , I believe that James 's intent in this passage is to show the Prince to be an ab solute ingrate , another manifestation of his conceit. If the Prince is not satisfied by his contract, he may always end it and take the consequences , but for the

Prince this seems impossible--not only does he need the

Verver money , but he also needs it for his heir. One wishes that the Prince would grow up and realize that he has con-

tracted into his situation and now must make the best of it,

as Maggie does later. I suppose that that is what he tried

to do by taking Charlotte as his mistress, but this only makes the worst of his situation , as he must live in fear of

Adam's knowledge and possible retribution .

It is not surprising that Amerigo succumbs to

Charlotte 's passion at Matcham; there he is conscious that

the present order , as it spread about him, had somehow the ground under its feet , and a trumpet in its ears, and a bottomless bag of solid shining 238

British sovereigns--which was much to the point--in its hand . (I 333)

Sexually aroused by the presence of money as much as by the presence of Charlotte , Amerigo does not care that he is

"irrelevant to the working of affairs ," so much so that

he had been reduced to a not quite glorious substitute th is vision of being "reduced" interfered not at all with the measure of his actual ease . . with the consequence thus that he was, in the last analysis, among all these so often inferior people, practically held cheap and made light of. (I 352-53)

Like his mistress, he has been bought, but , also like her , with his permission and implicit acceptance of the bargain.

As Charlotte points out to him:

"What could be more simp le than one's going through with everything . . when it's so plain a part of one's contract? I've got so much , by my marriage"--for she had never for a moment con cealed from him how "much" she had felt it and was finding it--"that I should deserve no charity if I stinted my return. " (I 318)

Even Fanny agrees that Charlotte "works like a horse"

(I 398) on her "duties of a remunerated office" (I 318) , but

the Prince , whose on ly work has been to obtain Maggie as a

bride, cannot accept his station and duties. His "payment"

must be sexual, and because of his Old World view of wives ,

it must be with a mistress.

Other images of money in the first volume involve the

Assinghams , chiefly Bob. As a retired colone l, he "could

make economy blossom like the rose," for he "knew everything 239

that could be known about life , which he regarded as . . a rnatter of pecuniary arrangement ," for which he should receive "full credit" (I 35 , 76 , 36) . Seemingly the exac t opposite of Fanny 's extravagant flamboyance , Bob's parsimony manifests itself as he "edited for their general economy the play of her mind , just as he edited , savingly, with the stump of pencil, her redundant telegrams " (I 67) . His interest in Charlotte is also financial as he recognizes one of his own kind , a thoroughly mercenary character, calling her "a smooth and compact inmate and [one] whom he felt as, with her instincts that made against wa ste , much more of his sort than his wife" or even Maggie , whom he views only as a girl with a million a year; by knowing Charlotte 's mind, he feels he can "back" her until Hatcham, when he shifts to the wining side as he and Fanny decide that "They would n' t lavish . . all their little fortune of curiosity and alarm

would n 't spend their cherished savings so early in the day" (I 68 , 83, 68) . The last we learn of Bob , at least monetarily, J.s that he is a "thrifty entertainer ," unlike his hosts at Matcham and Fawn s (I 374) .

That Adam can live in such luxurious surroundings as

Fawns which emphasize his '' rare power of purchase" allows several images to cluster around him. After learning of his acquisitions through the Prince 's point of view in the first book , the reader is prepared for the palatial Fawns, "hired 240 out . within sight and sense of [the owner 's] profit ," for Adam's emergence as the '' financial 'backer ' watching his interests from the wing ," and as being "in the market" for marriage , although he objects to Charlotte 's accepting him

"on approval" (I 160, 170, 172 , 229) . Perhaps since he has so much of it, money does not seem to intere st Adam ; there is no reason for him to think of it or to suffer in life or love because of it as does Charlotte . Adam's sensitivity tells him not to "thrust his money, a huge lump of it . under a poor girl 's nose" (I 217) ; he even believes that

Charlotte costs nothing "but her keep, " when everything in the novel seems to "go on at his expense" (I 197,

26 7) • The Prince describes his father-in-law mo st extensively when he sees a look from Adam wh ich

. neither lingered nor penetrated , and wa s, to the Prince 's fancy , much of the same order as any glance directed , for due attention , from the same quarter , to the figure of a cheque received in the course of business and about to be enclosed to a banker. It made sure of the amount--and just so, from time to time , the amount of the Prince was

certified . (I 325)

This amount is recertified at the end of the novel by Adam's

"'Le compte y est'" and by Maggie 's realization that Amerigo knows the amount of her repayment (II 360 , 367) . Thus , these few images applying to Adam do not, as has been claimed, show him to be especial ly mercenary or grasping .

Like his model , J. P. Morgan , Adam cares not so much for his 241 money , but for what aid it can afford in his quest for beauty , as his daughter anticipates its help in her search for truth and love .

In the second volume , Haggie believes herself to be paying the price for her complacency about her marriage and for her concern about her father in terms rather terrifying for a sheltered young woman, as noted in the section on warfare , as if "paying with one 's life" will be the cost of her concern . Frequently she attempts to make others pay the price of their mistakes also, as when she mentally challenges Amerigo to consider "what you may have to surrender on your side , what price you may have to pay , whom you may have to pay with," a double-edged reference to both

Charlotte and herself (II 188) . That he chooses to pay with his mistress causes Maggie 's contrition , so that

she struck herself as paying , if anything , too little. To make sure of it she would have gone the length of pay ing more , yet of paying with difficulties and anxieties compared to wh ich those actually before her might have been as su perficial as headaches or rainy days (II 228-29)

Haggie 's comparison is a premonition of Charlotte 's actions on the terrace , where , by viewing Adam through the window ,

Charlotte

might verily by this dumb demonstration have been naming Maggie the price, naming it as a question for Maggie herself, a sum of money that she pro perly was to find. She must remain safe and Maggie must pay--what she was to pay with be ing her own affair. (II 244-45) 242

.Maggie desperately wishes that her father "would save her; save her from being the one this way to pay all," but

Charlotte must have "her security at any price ," just as

Amerigo wants his "outward peace at any price" (II 245, 244 ,

227) . Thus, with "reassurances extorted" by the

"poverty of the tribute ," Charlotte acts out her justif i cation too well, inspiring in Maggie the suspicion that "she had exceeded the limit of discretion in this insistence on her capacity to repay in proportion a service she acknowl edged as handsome ," a service which is small indeed , if no wrong has been done (II 279, 243 , 279) . By forcing from

�laggie ' s abasement a "high profit," Charlotte forces Maggie to compensate emotionally for the problem in her father 's marriage . However , by only seeming to allow her stepmother the price , Maggie finds that Charlotte really has nothing as she "counted each day on a harvest of half-crowns," or on

"some benefit that might be . . negotiable some day in the market of misery" but for which she searches in vain at

Fawns ( I I 2 7 8 , 2 8 9 , 3 3 0 ) .

On the other hand , Maggie 1s richly rewarded , beginning with her idea which "had been profiting," one which con tained Amerigo and Charlotte through secret knowledge , and with her plan which "profited [from] the effect of the vio lence she was willing to let it go for" by letting her 243 new-found sociability stun them at her father 's party

(II 43, 52) . In addition , she realizes very early

the purchased social ease , the sense of comfort and credit of their houses, which had essentially the perfection of something paid for, but which "came" on the whole so cheap that it might have been felt as costing--as costing the parent and child--nothing . (II 47)

In such a manner , Maggie , like Amerigo in his dealings with women, keeps a record of "the state of the 'books ' of the

spirit" (II 256) , one of the reasons she is able to accept the shopkeeper 's apology for asking too high a price for the

golden bowl , since she receives so much knowledge from the

transaction. The price Maggie pays is her close relation-

ship with her father, but in the last scene she acknowledges

that her repayment is her intact marriage with the man most

signifying the idea of purchase . However, 1n this last

scene he apportions to Maggie such largesse that he might be

a veri table surrogate for Adam , since the Prince now dis-

penses the emotional tender on which Maggie 's life depends:

Closer than she had even been to the measure of her course and the full fact of her act, she had an instant of the terror that, when there has been suspense, always precedes, on the part of the creature to be paid the certification of the amoun t. Amerigo knew it, the amount; he still held it . His presence alone , as he paused to look at her , somehow made it the highest, and even before he had spoken she begun to be paid i full. So far as seeing that she was "paid" went he might have been holding out the money-bag for her to come and take it. (II 367- 68) 244

With her father 's aid , Maggie has overcome the diffi culties which threatened to maker her "pay with her life , " a

life lately beginning to excite her both sexually and emo

tionally. By paying Maggie 's asking price , Amerigo is stim ulated more by his wife than by his mistress; both cost him dearly, but Maggie is able to share her moral and monetary wealth with him, thus repaying him for choosing her.

Surprisingly, the woman who made the Prince 's fortune

possible is bere ft of monetary images, although James char

acterizes her by her lack of wealth , wh ich makes social

functions such as those at Matcham almo st comical . Instead ,

Fanny has a mental wealth of imagination exposed by the

several images of calculation wh ich cluster around her in

the first volume (although the majority of such images occur

in the second) . Even though Bob abhors her extravagance ,

Fanny is quite adept at mental calculations, which then

appear empirically as if "she might have quoted from a

slate , after adding up the i terns , the sum of a column of

figures" (I 75) . Fanny also keeps her set of books wh ich

constitute for her the "proof" of her interest in and denial

for the others; as she discusses with Bob the affair between

Ame rigo and Charlotte and her involvement in that situation ,

"she had proved what was needing proof , as if the issue of

her operation had been almost unexpectedly a success. Old

arithmatic had perhaps been fallacious , but the new settled 245 the question" (I 76) . In Fanny 's "new" calculations, her knowledge of the lovers ' previous attachment gives her a workab le quotient , a way of multiplying her contributions to the Verver household in order to be "square" with them.

Fanny even attempts to calculate Haggie ' s knowledge "as if it were between quarts and gallons" (I 77) , but can verify only what little Maggie has been told about Charlotte 's appearance before the wedding . For Fanny , then , the mental calculations by wh ich she attempts to achieve her own knowl edge are also des igns which are somewhat devious or schem ing , as she arranges the characters into couples, triplets , and quartets who will cover her tracks and erase her com plicity in the marriages' complications , ones that she ac tive ly encourages and in wh ich she del ights. After Matcham, however , she knows by her treatment from Amerigo and

Charlotte that she will be held accountable for their affair by Adam, if not Maggie. Her figures, as Bob reiterates, do not add up anymore , but she counters with a statement that implies that so long as she does not have to "pay" person ally , she does not care how her "figures," or her friends, miscalculate (I 279) . Thus , James presents Fanny as caring more about her emotional state rather than the financial, but she treats her friends as no more than figures on her

ledger , its columns always computed to her advantage . 246

In the second volume , the supreme calculator emerges as

Maggie , with almost mathematical precision , charts her course in order to make her columns equal. As Fanny 's mis calculations have thrown all the figures off, Maggie must attempt to order the lives of the characters so that the proper equations will result, ones that will allow the cou ples ' marriages to remain intact. This she does through subtle estimations of the knowledge of the other characters; in doing so, she applies to them images of calculation which reflect the state of her mind. For example, Maggie believes that Amerigo 's attemp t at lovemaking in the carriage was

"his calculation to brush private critic ism from its last perching-place ," in contrast to his sudden break with

Charlotte which was "quite uncalculated" and which , if al

lowed to go wrong, would have been "beyond calculation " as to its consequences (II 139, 192, 228) . Likewise, the in

formation she receives from the shopkeeper "might very con

ceivably make a long sum for the Prince to puzzle out," as

it very we ll proves to be (II 226) .

If Maggie bel ieves the prince unable to meet her

equations, she recognizes Charlotte to be capable beyond measure , especially in the calculations which might force

Adam to side with his wife against his daughter 's accu

sations ; Maggie sees that in this instance, "Charlotte 's

opportunities might multiply" to influence Adam if Maggie 247

seems overly concerned or jealous about the relationship

(II 106) . Perhaps Charlotte might try to complicate matters by avoiding Maggie , as she seems to be when the "multiplica- tions of human objects ," as Maggie describes Charlotte 's

friends from London , intervenes between the two women; in a

similar image , Maggie wishes "to multiply their spectators"

so as not to confront Charlotte unless in an arena which

provides Maggie needed support (II 209, 2 26) • All of

Charlotte 's actions "rest on a calculation ," as the terrace

scene proves; not until the end of the novel is Mrs . Verver aware that "multiplied all about her now [were ] perils and

portents ," the results of her calculations which went awry when confronted with Maggie 's superior reckonings (II 240,

2 8 8) •

Maggie recognizes in herself this ability to calculate but denies it in her fear of its results . Even as early as

the Matcham weekend , she acknowledges that her move from

Eaton Square to Portland Place was a cunning action on her

part , perhaps even her first, for

nothing she had even done would hereafter , insome way yet to be determined , so count for her She had but wanted to get nearer--nearer to something indeed that she could n't, that she would n't, even to herself describe; and the de gree of this achieved nearness was what had been in advance incalcuable. Her actual multiplication of distractions and suppress ions , whatever it did for her, failed to prevent her living over again any chosen moment--for she could choose them, she could fix them . (II 10) 248

Not even the smallest detail she leaves to chance, as she

"had , by calculation , dressed for dinner It was a wonder how many things she had calculated in respect to this small incident" (II 11) , an attitude wh ich leads eventually to her realization about "the calculability round abou t them of everyth ing" (II 77) , especially her decision to support

Amerigo with "an act of conformity exquisitely calculated" and played out on the terrace with Charlotte (II 280) .

Interestingly, in Maggie 's view the only miscalculation evident in the novel is her father 's act of marrying

Charlotte ; appreciating his acceptance of the Prince , an act which "she had gone on owing him for this mounted up again to her eyes like a column of figures" but one which by "her

father 's wonderful act made the sum wrong" (II 81) ,

just as his acceptance of Charlotte 's explanations causes

Maggie to feel that he is not "capable of calculations to match" (II 90) . Perhaps these doub ts about her father 's knowledge of his wife 's motivations is the initiation of

Maggie 's emotional break with her father. If this is so,

they "count" as much as any other emotion portrayed in the

novel, particularly when added to Maggie 's estimations of

value which appear predominately in the second volume .

In fact, images of waste rather than of positive value

appear most often in the first volume , especially those

illustrating the almo st oppressive concern of the Prince 249 with his wasted fortune (I 9) or his depleted sexual life

(I 32 0) ' both being sides of the same coin for the Prince .

Likewise, Charlotte mu st be occupied with notions of her value on the marriage market and in the social arena in order to survive; thus , images of her social value not being waste abound (I 68, 185, 295, 389, II 365) . However, some values emerge . Both Charlotte and Maggie view Adam as a valuable husband and father and not only because he pays the bills (I 229 , 14) . Maggie believes that Fanny "bristled with values" after smashing the golden bowl (II 212) and that Lady Castledean "may have a value" after their wary

inspections of each other at Charlotte 's party (II 96) .

This investiture of values upon others may constitute a negative trait of the Ververs as seen by some criti cs, it being a sort of judgment upon the worth of individuals usually reserved for divine or superconscious beings . For

example, Porter hypothesizes that Amerigo 's incomprehension

of the Verver morality results from their having "postulated

in him values which may very well be of their own creation

and totally different from what he envisages his own merits

to be" (131) • Still, other images point to the Ververs '

exquisite connoisseurship and their ability to judge objects

accurately; by the end of the novel this discrimination has

broadened to include persons such as Fanny , Charlotte , and

Amerigo . One even can go so far as to bel ieve that unless 250

Adam and Maggie active ly evaluate their relationships with their spouses and assign high values to those emotional ties, they would not try so hard to preserve them. Just as

she tried to preserve the smashed pieces of the bowl (sym bolically being able to hold only two of the three fragments at one time) , so Maggie acts to fuse the relationships for which the bowl is a manifestation, "as it was to have been ,"

for her. Carolyn Porter extends this argument to illustrate

that as creator of her universe, "Maggie dramatizes the

artist 's role as the redeemer of value from waste" ( 131) ,

or , in more cosmic terms, of order from chaos. One must

recall that not even the golden bowl suffices in Magg ie 's

estimations : "'It's of value , but its value 's impaired ',"

while on the other hand , the fragments "'make an unfortunate

difference for its beauty , its artistic value , but none for

anything else . Its other value is just the same--! mean

that of its having given me so much of the truth about

[Amerigo ] '," noting that "'The strangeness . . is in what

my purchase was to represent to me after I had got it home ;

which value came from the wonder of my having found

such a friend'" in the Jewish shopkeeper who made it possi

ble for her to feel that "'I'm getting its worth my

possess ion at last of real knowledge '" (II 177, 189,

195, 198, 201) . 251

Such estimations of value and the keeping of emotional or spiritual "books" implies an inherent sense of equilibri um, or a judgment involving the comparison of a criterion with an individual value which may balance out rationally but not emotionally . The Ververs seem to excel in this kind of intellectual and emotional reasoning with the aid of some intuition . Mull touches on this when he writes that

"Maggie 's consciousness is as fiercely inductive and analytic as any in James and we can infer from

Maggie 's inferences that the same is true of Adam " (152) and his intellect. This analytical ability makes easier her task of maintaining the assumed equilibrium of the quartet , although she begins to realize that the equilibrium is off balance early in Part II, when she starts to "doubt . . of her wonderful little judgement of her wonderful little

wo r 1 d" ( I 3 8 0 ) . One cannot stand above the balance and judge the we ight; one mu st tilt one's head to see whether the pans are level or to read the mea surements . Just so,

Maggie shifts her vievl of the situation between the two households on the night Amerigo returns from Gloucester- shire : "The dazzling person was upstairs and she was down , and there were moreover other facts of the selection and decision that this demonstration of her own had required , and of the constant care that the equilibri urn involved "

(II 21-22) . Although she and Adam bel ieved the balance they 252

struck--they at home and the other two abroad--was "an existence more intelligently arranged ," Maggie 's perception alters so that she imagines the coach pulled by Charlotte

and Adam with her and Adam inside and initiates a plan to

involve herself more with the social pair, to enter into

life and to be with her husband more of the time (II 22-27) .

Her scheme involve s the balancing of actions as \ve ll as emotions and so contributes to the remarkably effective parallelism between the two volumes . Moreover , her action elicits a similar reaction in Ame rigo as he notices her

increased curiosity and love of him:

. she felt herself present at a process taking place rather deeper within him ...a process of weighing something in the balance, of considering, deciding , dismissing . He had guessed that she was there with an idea , there in fact by reason of her idea . . which really brought it to the turn of a hair for her that she did n' t make sure his notion of her idea was the right one . (II 28)

The right idea dawns on her the next morning when

Charlotte responds to her queries with exactly the same look

and report of the trip to Gloucester: then Maggie "knew

herself again in the presence of a problem, in need of a

solution for which she must intensely work" (II 31) . As

"objects took on values not hitherto so fully shown ," Maggie

adds more to one side of the balance, the side holding both

Amerigo and Charlotte , more considerations and conditions

which "she could have counted one by one on her 253

fingers" (II 31) . Each tips the balance more ; even the rearrangement of the pairs--Amerigo with Adam , Charlotte with Maggie--does not achieve the full equilibrium because

of the additional emotional we ight involved: "this particu-

lar turn of the tide • . . cut them up afresh into pairs and parties; quite as if a sense for the equilibrium was what , between them all, had mo st power of insi stence" {II 39) .

Her father also is aware , she thinks, of the balance 's al-

teration :

The equilibrium, the precious condition , lasted in spite of the rearrangement; there had been a fresh distribution of the different we ights , but the balance persisted and triumphed: all of which was just the reason why she was forbidden . . . the expe r iment of a test. If they balanced they bal anced--she had to take that; it deprived her of every pretext for arriving, by however covert a process, at what he thought . {II 73)

Later Maggie que stions wh ich of the women he would have

taken into his side of the balance "for his clutch at the

equilibrium" {II 244) . In addition , Maggie feels that oth-

ers may influence the measure :

...it was as if Mrs . Assingham might in a man ner mitigate the intensity of [Maggie 's] con sciousness of Charlotte . It was as if the two would balance , one against the other; as if it came round again in that fashion to her idea of the equilibrium . It would be like putting this friend into her scale to make we ight-- into the scale with her father and herself. Amerigo and Charlotte would be in the other; therefore it would take the three of them to keep that one straight. (II 97) 254

The he ir of both houses, the little Principino, although not appearing often in the novel, is also a most heavy we ight for such a little person , so much so that his mother wonders

"if the equilibrium might n't have been more real , might n't above all have demanded less strange a study , had it only been on the books that Charlotte should give him a

Principino of his own" (II 98) . By the end of the novel, as one might guess, the pans on the balance are quite crowded with Adam , Amerigo , Charlotte , Fanny and the Principino all being we ighed in both physical and moral terms , until finally Maggie makes one of her startling realizations, one of the almost epiphanic enlightenments which help Naggie obtain knowledge throughout the novel, when she discovers that she is the balance itself, that she must weigh everything and everyone and incorporate them into her life so that it becomes a whole. As she prepares the way for her father to announce his departure to America , she feels shaken to her

soul :

In the very glare of his observation , she balanced for thirty seconds, she almost rocked: she might have been for the time , in all her conscious per son, the very form of the equilibrium they were , in their dif ferent ways, equally trying to save (II 268)

But she is able to right the balance and to make the estima-

tion; like the woman in the Vermeer painting , she and God

are the two who will decide the full measure of the success 255 of her plan , she in the secu lar, He in the spiritual bal-

ances. Above all, Maggie feels, in the last scene of th e

novel, that she has been right to bring about the equilibri

um that has evolved, that the ends truly have justified the means of her act of preserving love , dignity , knowledge , and

justice in the lives of those she loves. Although there are

indications that Maggie does not achieve all that she sets

out to do--she does, for instance, regret that Amerigo does

not appreciate Charlotte more in the last scenes--she is much more satisfied at the novel's close with her relation

ship with her husband and with her father 's seeming rec

onciliation with his wife . I think James is right to imply

that Maggie is the balance of the novel, especially since

the images of equilibrium are used by Maggie and no other

character in the novel, a usage wh ich keeps before us her

higher knm-;ledge and her Herculean task of preserving the

relation ships wh ich are so important to her.

This discuss ion of the images of monetary or moral

value in the novel suggests that they should be reevaluated ,

especially as they describe Maggie 's emotional progress

toward maturity. Even Morgan admits that Jame s does not

hold true in The Golden Bowl to his pattern of equating

money with renunciation (81) ; despite Maggie 's traits seem

ingly held in common with such heroines as Isabel Archer and

Millie Theale, Maggie does not believe that she must 256 sacrifice all in order to keep both husband and fortune , nor even her father. Morgan also contends that "James uses his characters' financial dealings as moral correlatives and , in addition , uses money or valuable objects as symbols of the failure of passion" (92) , an apt statement to apply to

Merton Densher and Kate Croy or to Gilbert Osmond and Madame

Merle, but even though Maggie uses the image of the money bag in the last scene , the encounter enacted there is full of sexual passion on the part of both characters, especial ly

Amerigo , and of a moral pass ion on Maggie 's side as she tries to make him aware of her struggle. That she rejects his payment raises the morality of The Golden Bowl higher than that of previous novels as Maggie rises above the mate rial concerns of Charlotte , Amerigo , and Adam. In this ,

Maggie is a forerunner of Rose Gaw and Graham Fielder of The

Ivory Tower, who try to use their fortunes to redeem Cissy

Foy ("faith") and Horton Vint ("pride") .

Gold, Jewels

As some of the mo st obvious symbols of the Verver pos sessions, the images of gold and jewels link several of the other groups together , name ly royalty , money, religion , light and dark, and, of course, references to the golden bowl itself. The golden images reinforce the atmosphere of immense wealth and culture wh ich infuses the Ververs ' 257 existence and serve as clues to the values which drive not only Adam Verver but also Henry James. As is evident from all the material images, objects visibly elegant, rich, or ornate attract James 's authorial eye and , on a subliminal level , his love of perfect physical , albeit untouchable to him, beauty . Metals predominate over jewels, whose use is restricted to describing feminine beauty , wh ile gold and silver describe everything from Bob Assingham ' s bald head

["like a silver pot reversed" (I 66) ] to Maggie 's "little golden personal nature" (II 112) . James uses gold to signi fy the best or the ideal, as when he see Maggie and Amerigo as young sovereigns "in the frolic humour of the golden years of reigns" (II 149) or the "golden roll" at Ma tcham

(I 329) ; he especially employs golden images when referring t. o Italy or Rome (many of these images may be traced to

·william Wetmore Story and His Friends) . Among these are mentions of the cinquecento "at its mo st golden hour'' (I 13) and Maggie 's memory of the "old golden Rome " of her betrothal period (I 10).

The image group commences on the first page of the novel as Amerigo views "objects mass ive and lumpish , in silver and gold, in the forms to which precious stones con tribute" (I 13) . As Prince, he is familiar with such rich es, whether family heirlooms such as those given to Maggie ,

"gorged with treasure ," at her wedding, luxuries such as the 258

"gold-topped phial" of his imaginary bath , or the art treasures of "old silver and old bronze" to which he compares his former mistress (I 92 , 10, 47) . Amerigo compares his secret relationship with Charlotte to "a my stic golden bridge between them" (I 325) , a span which is strengthened by the events at Matcham, wh ere "the towers of three cathedrals, in different counties, as had been pointed out to him, gleamed discernibly, like dim silver , in the rich sameness of tone" (I 351) . As the Prince contemplates the afternoon 's coming attractions , he thinks

It had all been just in order that his--well, what on earth should he call it but his free dom?--should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous as some huge precious pearl . He had n't struggled nor snatched; he was taking but what had been given him; the pearl dropped itself, with its exquisite quality and rarity , straight into his hand . Here precisely it wa s, incarnate; its size and value grew as Mrs . Ve rver appeared, afar off, in one of the smaller doorways. (I 3 6 8)

This passage becomes highly ironic when one realizes that the Princess's name means "pearl" in Italian. The Prince subconsciously compares with the pearl his great luck in obtaining Maggie , the "huge precious pearl ," and great wealth and freedom , as he calls his privileges, among which is attending functions with Charlotte with so complete a cover . But he is very much mistaken in believing Charlotte the pearl "incarnate"; it is only when he begins to realize that Maggie, not Charlotte , is the great prize, the treasure 259 of the marriage itself, that the pearl glows with Magg ie 's increasing value for him. Furthermore , although Gale does not mention pearls in The Golden Bowl , he makes some analysis of their use in James 's imagery and concludes that

Pearls • . are mentioned twice as often as diamonds Pearls seem clearly to be lovelier in James 's eyes than diamonds, for he uses pearls--as he does not diamonds--in descriptions of artistic work. Pearls too help express his awareness of amb ivalences and deceptive ap pearances in life; they seem to be softer hued , more palpable and perhaps more subtly irridescent , and more illuminating of the evolution of beauty and art out of irritating life , than pure, hard , mathematically neat diamonds . (188, 196)

This explanation fits Amerigo 's image of freedom as a pearl, for his freedom is somewhat deceptive , not being as liberat- ing in quantity or quality as he seems to have expected simply because of the demands placed on him by the Ververs ' innocence . However, another of Gale's comments strikes closer to the mark , \'Jhen he says that "The pearl came to symbolize for Jame s priceless knowledge to be found in the depths of life 's experience s; oddly, it never stood for mere material wealth , as gold did" (35) . Instead , the Prince should look for his true freedom in his marriage with

Maggie , who already knows of pearls and their value , as she characterizes her perceptions of her experiences in her married life as moments which "stood out beyond the others , and those she could feel again most, count again like the firm pearls on a string" (II 11) . 260

Maggie 's use of gold and jewe l imagery reinforces her background of riches, showing her to be fit as the wife of a prince . As she glows , pearl-like , with the knowledge of her

increasing participation in her life , she recalls the past, when she was more active :

she would take out of the deep receptacles in which she had lain them away the various orna ments congruous with the great occas ions and of which her store , she like to think, was none of the smal lest. She would have been easily to be figured for us at this occupation; dipping, at off moments and quiet hours, in snatched visits and by draughty candle-light , into her rich collections and seeing her jewels again a little shy ly but all unrnistakeably glow. (II 8)

Although her jewels are resplendent once more, and she picks

"small shining diamonds out of the sweepings" of her suspi-

cions (II 42) , Maggie 's physical surrender to the Prince

clouds her thoughts and conscience as she swims "positively

in submarine depths where every thing carne to her through

walls of emerald and mother-of-pearl" (II 43) . The Prin-

cess's images of jewelry are reflected in her appearance

also, as when her conversation with Fanny causes her to

become "as hard . . as a little pointed diamond" (II 4 5)

or when she

had put on too many things , overcharged herself with jewel s, wore in particular more of them than usual , and bigger ones, in her hair [Fanny] attributing this appearance large ly to the bright red spot , red as some monstrous ruby , that burned in either of her cheeks . (II 152) 261

On the other hand , Charlotte , though more beautiful ,

cannot match, at first, Maggie 's collection . Although

Charlotte appears we ll-encrusted at the Fore ign Office ball--" the unsurpassed diamonds that her head so happily

carried , the other jewels, the other perfections of aspect and arrangement . made her personal scheme a success"

(I 246) --she cannot outshine Maggie at the Verver dinner

parties (I 323 , II 50) . One of the final images of

Charlotte is as an exile , with her pride "the last saved

object of price of the emigre , the jewel wrapped in a piece

of old silk and negotiable some day in the market of misery"

(II 330) .

Another group of metal images is employed by James to

set the mood or atmosphere of occasions or places in the

novel. He refers to the "wonderful windless waiting golden

hour ," the "most golden tone ," the "gold-coloured east or

west," the "golden air .. . of a July afternoon" at Fawns

(I 191 , II 85 , 144 , 256) , descriptions which create the

impression of a fairy-tale castle on a golden isle . The

relationship between Maggie and Adam also falls under a

charm as Maggie realizes her prob lem and feels "realities

looming through the golden mist that had already begun to be

scattered" by her perception of Charlotte 's duplicity which

"had the effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind of 262

silver tissue of decorum" (II 31 , 38) . Through this barri- er, Maggie sees that she must speak to her father, for

They would then have been successfully throwing dust in each other 's eyes ; and it would be at last as if they must turn away their faces, since the silver mist that protected them had begun to grow sensibly thin . (II 48)

Later, when she does speak , she sense that "he had begun to

imitate . . the ancient tone of gold" (II 86) . Thus, the

reader feels somewhat separated from Adam , who seems sur-

rounded always by the reflection of glistening metals, al-

most as if he wears some light but invincible mailcoat wh ich

protects him from worry . The series of images ends when

Maggie and the Prince assume their protection and reun ite

under "some handful of gold-dust thrown in the air" by mag-

ic, a sort of matrimonial celebration of their reconcilia-

tion (II 350) .

The most complicated use of jewe lry occurs when the

Prince, Charlotte , and Maggie are compared to golden ob-

jects. After he is "bought" by Adam , Amerigo feels "as if

he had been some old embossed coin, of a purity of gold no

longer used , stamped with glorious arms , mediaeval" (I 2 3) ,

perhaps of the type issued by his Italian princely forefa-

thers and worn by ladies as necklaces, like the one Maggie

imagines as she compares the faces of Amerigo and Charlotte :

To make the comparison at all was, for Maggie , to return to it often , to brood upon it, to extrac t from it the last dregs of its interest--to play 263

with it in short nervously , vaguely, incessantly , as she might have played with a medallion contain ing on either side a cherished little portrait and suspended round her neck by a gold chain of a firm fineness that no effort would even snap . The miniatures were back to back, but she saw them for ever face to face . (II 36)

Furthermore, the Prince , on the shopping expedition, proposes that Charlotte accept a piece of jewe lry which she can wear under her clothes as a momenta of the hour (I 110) : although Charlotte refuses, one recalls the offering when

Fanny speaks of Maggie 's character in facing her situation :

"What I've always been conscious of is your having concealed about you somewhere no small amount of character . . Somewhere under, I should simply have said--like that little silver cross you once showed me , blest by the Holy Father, that you always wear , out of sight, next to your skin . . But the precious little innermost, say this time little golden personal nature of you--blest by a greater power I think even than the Pope--that you 've never con sen tingly shown me ." (II 11�

The first piece of jewe lry would have been the blatant sign of Charlotte 's ill intent by returning to London before the

Prince 's wedding and would have marked her as his own .

Before we congratulate her on her refusal, however, we should note that she will not accept the brooch only for the reason that she cannot wear it outside her clothes; vain to the bone , Charlotte will always want to "show off" anyth ing which could complement her appearance, for that is her chief concern . By contrast, although she we ars brighter jewels than her stepmother, Haggie also wears the cross, symbol of 264 her good faith and love , beneath her clothes, so that her true nature is shown only to those intimate with her, not advertised to crowds as Charlotte prefers to be . Thus, the gold coin , the gold medallion , the silver cross hang togeth er as symbols of the intricate relationships of the charac ters and of the love and good will needed to keep the "jew els" intact.

Collecting, Museums

Some of James 's least read works, his travel sketches, provide much information about his views on museums and collections . In four major compilations he describes the art , architecture , and atmosphere of the American and

European locales he visited from 1873 to 1909. In

Transatlantic Sketches and Italian Hours he mentions the galleries in Turin, Rome , Florence , Antwerp , and Brussels as depositories of great art; Edel has noted the influence of

the Parisian galleries and mu seums on James 's images and

dreams . In A Little Tour in France James briefly cites the

smaller mu seums at Nantes and Montpellier as worthy of view

ing. During the 1870s and 1880s he regularly reported on

the showings at Grosvenor Ha ll, the National Gal lery ,

Burlington House , the Guildhall, and Grafton Gallery in

London (many of these articles are gathered in The Painter 's

Eye) . In an age without electronic media, museums were the 265 transmitters of culture and civilized values, for which sons, and later daughters, of the New World were sent on the traditional Grand Tour which James records with such accura cy and enthusiasm. No other novelist has presented so well the effect of art upon middle-class sensibilities ; he also examines the upper class 's view of collecting beginning with

Roderick Hudson (1873) and continuing until the end of his production (The Outcry , 1909) .

James seems to have had two views of the rather elite activi ty of art collecting. V.7h ile he tremendously enjoyed viewing not only public exhibition but also those private collections which were lent occasionally for public display and those of his privileged friends such as William Wetmore

Story and the Baron de Rothschild, he identified more with those without the pecuniary means to collect art, those who were like Strether passing up the little Lambinet on Treton

Street , or like Hyacinth , who could not afford the beau tifully bound books he produced but who loved and appreci ated art all the same . In some cases, James implies, the owner of a beautiful piece of art becomes callous of its effect upon the senses , like the typically English collec tors of "Travelling Companions" or like the Americans such as Chris topher Newman in the opening scenes of The American and Mr . Leavenworth in Roderick Hudson , or is even uneducat ed about art . Some , like Lord Hertford , "evidently regarded 266 art-patronage as an amusement rather than a responsibility"

(PE 68-69) . Still, the English succeeded in using their pounds wisely and accumulated great collections which were then made available to others :

. the taste for art in England is at bottom a fashion , a need of luxury , a tribute even . . to propriety; not an outgush of productive power But if art is a fashion in England , at least it is a great fashion. Hmv these people have always needed , in a certain sort of way, to be entertained; what handsome things they have collected about them; in the absence of produc tion , on what a scale the consumption has always gone on ! A great multiplicity of exhibition is, I take it, a growth of our own day--a result of that democratization of all tastes and fashions which marks our glorious period . But the English have always both pictures in quantitie s, and they cer tainly have often had the artistic intelligence to buy good ones . In England it has not been the sovereigns who have purchased , or the generals who have "lifted," and London accordingly boasts of no national collection equal to the gallery at Dresden or the Louvre . But English gentlemen have bought--with English bank notes--profusely, unremittingly, splendidly . They have stored their treasures in their more or less dusky draw ing-rooms , so that the people at large have not , on the whole, been much the wiser; but the trea sures are at any rate in the country , and are constantly becoming more accessible. (PE 136-37)

One suspects that Jame s wishes that more Americans were judicious in their art purchases; we know that he was fa- vorab ly impressed with Mrs . Stewart 's collection and that he approved of the Impressionists owned by Nr . Pope at Hill-

Stead , a Farmington , Connecticut, home converted into a museum , which he visited in 1905. 267

The collectors in James 's fiction fall into two broad

categories: the dilletantish amateur collector (New Rosier ,

Christopher Newman) and the serious or professional collec

tor (Mrs. Gereth, Gilbert Osmond , Adam Verver), the latter more likely to have a grasping , manipulative , ob sessive

personality, of which Gilbert Osmonds is the primary exam

ple. In Roderick Hudson , however, Rowland Mallett , while a

fledgling collector, exhibits traits which could easily by

those of a young Gilbert Osmond . Adam Verver, on the other

hand , appears in a more positive light than the other seri

ous collectors, as do also Mrs . Gracedew of The High Bid and

Summersoft (Covering End) and Breckenridge Bender in The

Outcry (one may note that in his 1895 notebook , James

proposed "Bender" as Adam's last name , further linking the

two characters) . Thus , the two type s and their characteris

tics overlap in certain characters and reveal, perhaps ,

James 's dual attitude toward collecting .

Nowhere in James's fiction does the museum world and

its attendant collecting appear in so many guises as in The

Golden Bowl , for besides Adam Verver, the "consummate col-

lector " (II 273) , and his foils, the shopkeeper and

Mr . Crichton , other characters collect to a lesser degree .

Maggie , as collector-in-training to her father, introduces

the first metaphor of collecting in the first chapter during

her interview with Amerigo in the beginning pages of the 268 novel which reveals much about Adam's personality . After establishing him as a romantic whose "'whole life over here

[is] the most romantic thing I know, '" Maggie asserts that

Adam's collection is his raison d'�tre :

" the collection , the Museum with wh ich he wishes to endow it, and of which he thinks more , as you know , than of anything in the world . [is] the work of his life and the motive of everything he does . " (I 12)

Furthermore, Amerigo is

" a part of his collection . one of the things that can only be got over here . You 're a rarity , an object of beauty , an object of price . You 're not perhaps absolute ly unique , but you 're so curious and eminent that there are very few others like you--you belong to a class about which everything is known . You're what they call a rnorceau de mus�e ." (I 12)

The Gallic phrase reveals not only the antiquity and pricelessness of Amerigo 's heritage , it also emphasizes the

"consumability" of the Prince 's life , which is sold to the highest bidder just as is Charlotte 's later in the novel.

Because of what these people represent to Adam , he in effect

"consumes" them by giving them a value , purchasing them, and maintaining them; some critics assert that he also consume s their souls by his forcing them into adultery . This last argument is fallacious , however, for all evidence point s to

Adam's revering his pieces and choosing them particularly to suit his personal tastes , even though those may be suspect.

As Amerigo says , "'if I did n't know some of the pieces your 269 father has acquired I should fear for American City the criticism of experts '" (I 13) ; Maggie later confirms that

Adam's reputation in American City is not elevated :

"'You ' ve given it up to them , the awful people, for less than nothing; you 've given it up to them to tear to pieces , to make their horrible vulgar jokes against you with'"

(II 266-67) . These remarks might reflect worse on backwater

America than on Adam and his collection ; Adam , though , be- lievcs his taste good for "no man in Europe or in America

was for such estimates less capable of vulgar mistakes" (I 140) ; he even compares his critical judgment to that of princes and Popes (I 150) . Still, Adam's works of art are difficult to appraise, although Maggie, Amerigo , and

Charlotte seem convinced of their worth . In the following section , individual works of art are identified, but they number few masterpieces among lesser known or mediocre works of art. Adam's criteria for selection also invites criticism; twice , James notes that Adam values surface appearances:

The note of reality continued to have for him the charm and the importance of which the maximum had occasionally been reached in his great "finds "; it continued, beyond any other, to keep him attentive and gratified he was, as a taster of life, economically cons tructed. . It was all at bottom in him, the aesthetic principle, planted where it could burn with a cold still flame ; where it fed almost wholly on the material directly involved , on the idea (followed by 270

appropriation) of plastic beauty , of the thing visibly perfect in its kind . (I 196-97) and that "IIe cared that a work of art of price should 'look like ' the master to whom it might perhaps be deceitfully attributed" (I 146-47) . Furthermore, Adam is willing to expend vast amounts in order to obtain his choices, so that one wonders whether his works of art are worth quite what he pays or whether he does gather together a priceless collection . Perhaps his naivete and wealth leave him vulnerable to exploitation , but Jame s implies that Adam is wise enough to recognize such action. If anyone exploits, Adam will know and react. Therefore , we probably should acknowledge Adam's collection as worthy of some note and of the prices he is willing to pay :

Mr . Ve rver ...had little to do with shops and was mostly, as a purcha ser, approached privately and from afar. Great people , all over Europe , sought introductions to him; high personages, incredibly high , and more of them than would ever be known , solemn ly sworn as every one was, in such cases , to discretion , high personages made up to him as the one man on the short authent ic list likely to give the price . . (I 100)

That Charlotte will cost a great deal, like the Prince , and is "the real thing" (I 195) portend s her being added to the collection as quickly as Adam can find a way to fit her into his life :

. . . he still but held his vis ion in place , steadying it fairly, with his hands, as he had often steadied for inspection a precarious old pot 271

or kept a glazed picture in its right relation to the light . (I 210)

Even his thoughts of marriage he sees as part of his col-

lection ; appraising Charlotte as he does anything of value ,

Adam applies his rather superficial criteria to her :

Nothing perhaps might affect us as queerer than this application of the same measure of value to such dif ferent pieces of property as old Persian carpets, say , and new human acquisi tions . As it had served him to satisfy himself , so to speak , both about Ame rigo and the Bernardino Luini he happened to come to knowledge of at the time he was consenting to the announcement of his daughter 's betrothal, so it served him at present to satisfy himself about Charlotte Stant and an extraordinary set of oriental tiles of which he had lately got wind . (I 197)

This connection is intensified in Brighton , when Adam views

the tiles in Charlotte 's presence :

The infinitely ancient , the immemorial amethystine blue of the glaze , scarcely more meant to be breathed upon , it would seem, t_ han the cheek of royalty--this property of the ordered and matched array had inevitably all its determination for him; but his submission wa s, perhaps , for the first time in his life, of the quick mind alone , the process really itself, in its way , as fine as the perfection perceived and admired : eve ry inch of the rest of him being given to the foreknowl edge that an hour or two later he should have "spoken." (I 215)

A few hours later he examine s Charlotte with the same

exactitude:

She looked at him, on this, long again--still as if it should n' t be said she had n't given him time or had withdrawn from his view , so to speak , a single inch of her surface . This at least she was fully to have exposed . It represented her as oddly conscientious, and he scarce knew in what 272

sense it affected him. On the whole, however , with admiration . (I 222)

If Adam concerns himself only with appearances , then he may not be so sure of nor so traumatized by the adultery of

his wife , since she too is conscious of the need for appear-

ances. All of the characters acknowledge that, as Fanny so

aptly remarks, "the 'forms ' are two-thirds of conduct"

(I 390) . Charlotte , however, seems a supreme ly superficial

character , one who is hard to judge simply because she does

her job , the acting-out of an actress, so wel l. One wonders

if Adam, or even Charlotte herself, knov; s whether or not

what he bought was "the real thing ." Perhaps James means

for Adam not to wish to know of his wife's escapades, but to

want instead to keep imagining her the "real thing" he

bought , so as not to feel cheated . Possibly he is ignorant

of the affair, although there are hints throughout both

volume s that he is more perspicac ious than Amerigo and

Charlotte suppose. However, by whatever means, Charlotte

continues to be what Adam wants her to be , especially acting

the role of the interested wife :

One of the attentions she had from immediately after her marriage most freely paid him was that of her interest in rarities, her appreciation of his taste , her native pass ion for beautiful ob jects and her grateful desire not to miss anyth ing he could teach her about them. Maggie had in due course seen her begin to "work " this fortunately natural source of sympathy for all it was worth . She took possession of the ground throughout its extent; she abounded, to odd excess, one might 273

have remarked, in the assumption of its being for her, with her husband , all the ground , the finest clearest air and mo st breatheable medium common to them. Charlotte must at least have had for her that, thanks to her admirable instinct, her range of perception marching with his own and never falling behind, she had probab ly not so much as once treated him to a rasping mis take or a revealing stupidity. (II 286-87)

Even so, Charlotte cannot be expert as can Amerigo or Maggie or Adam , as she does not see the flaw in the golden bowl and

turns it down , not because of its intrinsic worth , but be-

cause of its price, an action which would grieve a true

connoisseur . Just as her acting the interested wife is a

pose, so is her "natural" taste for art, as demonstrated by

her inane descript ion of a vase at Fawns, de s cribed by

Maggie as "piling it up , sticking at nothing" (II 291) .

Thus , Charlotte is the lowe st rung (omitting Bob , who has

only toy soldiers as a collection) on the scale of collec-

tors de scribed by Jame s in the novel.

True collectors begin young and collect until they end

their lives, whether it be gathering Picassos, Pol locks , or

prairie dogs. The category of "serious" collector may be

broken down into three types: the collector , the curator,

and the connoisseur.

The collector (specifically , rather than generically ,

speaking) performs the physical task denoted by the Latin

root , com- (together) /S2!!..- (with ) and legere (to gather) , a

task most accumulative and assimila t ive . Noting 274 similarities in order to classify an ob ject, he assimilates much information in order then to discriminate between the categories. The collector must have also a rather practical and materialistic view, for any collector-buyer is a potential seller. Because of their accumulative traits, some collectors become very possessive of their collections, sometimes viewing them as extensions of themselves, and also become quite manipulative and greedy , perhaps even using

illegal or unethical means to obtain a chosen piece (as in the portrayal of extreme possessiveness in John Fowles's The

Collector) . In The Golden Bowl the collectors are not quite

so malevolently possessive . The Prince dabbles in collect-

ing , perhaps in emulation of his father-in-law or out of boredom . Early in the novel, Maggie notes his "liking explanations, liking them almost as if he collected them, in

the manner of book-plates or postage-stamps" (I 160-61) , the

slightest hint that Amerigo has the requisite accumulating qualities wh ich are emphasized later at Matcham, when his

conscious appreciation of his situation begins to approxi- mate the thought processes of Haggie and Adam :

Its general brightness was composed doubtless of many elements, but what shone out of it as if the whole place and time had been a great picture , from the hand of genius , presented to him as a prime ornament for his collection and all varnished and framed to hang up--what marked it especially for the highest appreciation was his extraordinarily unchal lenged , his absolutely ap pointed and enhanced possession of it. (I 350) 275

Amerigo 's acquisitiveness extends to Charlotte , she the pearl which drops into his hand, for which he "had n 't

strugg led or snatched; he was taking but what had been given

him" (I 358) . Because he does not have the wealth and power

of the novel's best connoisseur, Amerigo loses his new pos-

session , or rather, the rightful owner reclaims it. Then ,

in order to avoid hearing Charlotte 's vo ice full of anguish ,

Amerigo leaves Fawns:

[Amerigo ] could on occasion sin by excess of candour. He would n't otherwise have given as his reason for going up to Portland Place in the Au gust days that he was arranging books there . He had bought a great many of late and had had oth ers , a large number, sent from Rome--wonders of old print in which her father had been interested . (II 292)

Thus , Amerigo must forego collecting the hearts of pretty

women and fall back on rare books to occupy his copious

time . Becau se he is not able to collect with enthusiasm or

seriousness, the Prince also occupies a low step on the

scale of collecting in the novel.

The most important of the "collectors" in the novel is

the Jewish shopkeeper , a figure which functions not only as

a foil to Adam but also as a symbol for James the author .

Certainly, James based the little man on an actual person or

persons encountered in his travels through Europe; in 1892,

for example , he described the merchants of Venice thusly :

The antiguity-mongers in Venice have all the cour age of their opinion , and it is easy to see how 276

well they know they can confound you with an unanswerab le question . What is the whole place but a curiosity-shop , and what are you here for yourself but to pick up odds and ends? "We pick them up for you," say these honest Jews , whose prices are marked in dollars, "and who shall blame us if, the flowers being pretty well plucked, we add an artificial rose or two to the composition of the bouquet?" They take care , in a word , that there be plenty of relics, and their establish ments are huge and active . They administer the antidote to pedantry , and you can complain of them on ly if you never cross their thre sholds . If you take this step, you are lost, for you have parted with the correctness of your attitude. (IH 51-52)

Corre sponding even more closely to Maggie 's friend is the pawnbroker of the Preface to Portrait of a Lady :

The figure has to that extent , as you see , been placed--placed in the imagination that deta ins� preserves, protects , enjoys it, conscious of its presence in the dusky , crowded, heterogeneous backshop of the mind very much as a wary dealer in precious odds and ends, competent to make an "ad vance" on rare ob jects con fided to him, is con scious of the rare little "piece" left in deposit by the reduced, mysterious lady of title or the speculative amateur , and wh ich is already there to disclose its merits afresh as soon as a key shall have clicked in a cupboard-door . I quite remind myself thus of the dealer resigned not to "realise ," resigned to keeping the precious object locked up indefinitely rather than commit it, at no matter what the price, to vulgar hands. For there are dealers in these forms and figures and treasures capable of that refinement . (NYE III xii)

Such refinement emerges gradually in the Bloomsbury dealer who indirectly controls much of the action of the novel. Foil to both Adam and James, the little man functions similarly to both in kind but not in degree .

Sharp , shrewd , an excellent judge of objects both animate 277 and inanimate , the shopkeeper appraises the worth of his potential customers by close inspection as Adam estimates a piece of art and as James evaluates the merits of a particular character:

The small but interesting dealer in the Bloomsbury street . . was remarkable for an insistence not importunate , inasmuch as it was mainly mute , but singularly, intensely coercive--this personage fixed on his visitors an extraordinary pair of eyes looked from on to the other wh ile they con s ide red the object \v i th wh ich he appeared mainly to hope to tempt them. they enjoyed the undiverted attention of the shopman . (I 104)

Charlotte , who notices the little people as the Prince does not , appreciates this attention , as she always does when someone looks at her . She comments to the Prince that

. one of the impressions had been that the man himself was the greatest curiosity they had looked at. There fore , she had on this occasion found the antiquario interesting; partly because he cared so for his things , and partly because he cared--well, so for them. "He likes his things--he loves them, " she was to say; "and it is n't only--it is n't perhaps even at all--that he love s to sell them. I think he would love to keep them if he could; and he prefers to at any rate sell them to right people. We , clearly, were right people--he knows them when he sees them . Did n't you see . the way he looked at us and took us in? I doubt if either of us have ever been so well looked at before . . given his taste, since he has taste, he was pleased with us we 're beautiful--are n' t we ?--and he knows " (I 106-06)

The shopkeeper functions as a sort of magician/fairy godfather, seeing all , knowing all, speaking all languages , born all nationalities (he answers only "Che"--"what" or 278

"nonsense"--when the Prince questions him about his origin) .

He also determines plot lines, for in presenting the golden bowl to Charlotte , he presents in loco Jame s the clue to the novel 's secret--whether the adultery actually takes place .

Becau se there are no sexually explicit scenes in the novel, some critics question the adulterous relationship of Amerigo and Charlotte . Ample warning , however, is given by the shopkeeper when he tells Charlotte , "'if it's something you can't find is n't that as good as if it were nothing? '"

(I 114) . When she ob jects to buying a bowl with a flaw , the man answers that "'if one knows of it one has only to men tion it. The good faith is always there "' (I 115) .

In such a manner the two lovers hide their flawed relation ship from Maggie, hoping that her trust in their good faith will cover all. But the reader knows better , having been forewarned by the first pages of the novel and so should heed the shopkeeper's admonition to look deeper for flaws .

Although the man promises to keep the bowl for

Charlotte--at Hatcham, Amerigo recalls, "'you also , no doubt, made a great impression on him, and I dare say that if you were to go back to him you 'd find he has been keeping that treasure for you' " (I 359-60)--he instead sells it to

Maggie and , after doing so , reveals the previous relation ship between Ame rigo and Charlotte when he recognizes the photographs in Haggie 's parlour . Even though Amerigo 279 characterizes the shopkeeper as a "horrid little beast"

(II 197) and a "little swindling Jew" (I 359) , as Maggie 's friend and sympathizer the shopkeeper offers her the key to knowledge and to rectifying her situation . Although the bowl fragments and splits , the knowledge gained by Maggie is still intact and worth the price she paid. Thus the shop keeper , more than anyone (even Fanny) , gives Maggie her clue .

Another collector , Hr . Gutermann-Seuss, is perhaps a younger version of the shopkeeper, as he shares many qual ities in common with the Bloomsbury merchant . Both are

Jewish, both sell precious relics of forgotten age , both assign Charlotte "possible, impossible" titles, and both are part of parallel scenes of shopping expeditions which

Charlotte undertakes in order to manipulate the men involved with her . On the latter occasion , though, Charlotte does not bargain; in silence she waits for the superior taste to judge so that she will not be able ever again to choose, but only to acquiesce , a position appropriate in view of her inability to recognize flaws or to pay the price .

Gutermann-Seuss plays no greater role, then , than to rein force the reader 's view of the other shopkeeper as one who knows that precious thing s should be kept for the appropriate persons . His secrecy about the tiles does amplify the 280

acquisitive and manipulative qualities of the collectors ,

the darker sides of collecting to which some critics ob ject.

As the next stage in the collector 1 s evolution, the

curator prov ides and emotional element to acquisition , not one of greed but of careful attention and appreciation . As the root (L. curare , to take care of) and related words

(assure , insure, secure , curate, accurate , curious) suggest,

the curator pays attention to the details, physical and

historical, which allow him to place the piece properly

within its family, period , etc . Happily, James gives us a

full description of a British Museum curator based upon his

good friend Sir Sidney Colvin, Curator of Prints ("Colvin"

1974) :

Mr . Crichton was the most accomplished and obliging of public functionaries, whom every one knew and who knew every one--who had from the first in particular lent himself freely, and for the love of art and history , to becoming one of the steadier lights of Mr. Verver 1 s adventurous path . It wa s at his invitation that Maggie had, for the glory of the name she bore , paid a visit to one of the ampler shrines of the supreme exhibitory temple, an alcove of shelves charged with the gold-and-brown , gold-and-ivory , of old Italian bindings and

consecrated to the records of the Prince 1 s race . Visits of gracious ladies, under his pro tection , lighted up rosily , for this perhaps most flower-loving and honey-s ipping member of the great Bloomsbury hive , its packed passages and cells; and though not sworn of the province toward which his friend had found herself . . yearning again , nothing wa s easier for him than to put her in relation with the presiding urbanities. (II 146-48) 281

In the novel, Mr . Crichton functions as a foil to Adam , for

in his role as curator , he must be almost as concerned with

the care given to the artwork after it leaves his domain as when it is entrusted to his own attention. Thus the cura-

tor , although acknowledging his lack of ownership, must be

conscious of the responsibilities of such a privileged posi-

tion and work to educate the subsequent owner or curator on

the necessary details of proprietorship. As with the col-

lector , the curator ensures that the buyer will be pleased

with his purchase , but moreover , he will care about it. In

such a manner, Mr. Crichton

. could feel for the sincere private collector and urge him on his way even when condemned to be present at his capture of trophies sacrificed by the country to parliamentary thrift. He carried his amiability to the point of saying that since London , under pettifogging views , had to miss from time to time its rarest opportunities , he was almost consoled to see such lost causes invariably wander at last one by one , with the tormenting tinkle of their silver bells, into the wondrous , the already famous fold beyond the Mississippi . . on this basis of envy charged with sympathy by the more familiar view of the father and the daughter, Mr. Crichton had at both houses, though especially in Eaton Square , learned to fill out the respon sive and suggestive character. (II 146- 47)

(One notes the images of conquest in the above a wishes that

all the vanquished could place the ir trea sures into such

educated and appreciative hands .)

The third classification , the connoisseur , is exempli-

fied 1n the novel by Adam , and , to a much lesser extent , 282

Maggie . Tasks of the true conno isseur differ from those of

the curator and the collector, whose tasks are physical and

emotional, for knowledge and a keen ab ility to discriminate

are the foremost traits of the connoisseur , whose task is

primarily intellectual . His expertise is acknowledged by

the Latin root cognoscere , to learn and to knov-1 , and its

more familiar French derivative conoistre , from which

related words in English are taken such as recognize, cog-

nition , cogitate , and reconnoiter, all of which the true

connoisseur must do . Whereas the collector and the curator

are assimilative , grouping items by some criteria, the con-

noisseur is discriminating in order to judge the true value

of a work . Both the curator and the connoisseur must be

aware of details, but the curator attends to details be-

cause they are part of the care into which the objects are

entrusted , while the connoisseur does so because his mind

functions in a meticulous manner, learning from the details

and using them to discriminate . These are the mental qual-

ities shown in Maggie and Adam which possibly contribute to

their being misunderstood by many readers. Two great crit-

ics of Jamesian aesthetics, Winner and Tintner, agree that

Adam is eccentric , if not worse, in his attitude toward

human "acquisition ," but as Winner points out

Verver judges both human beings and things accord ingly to aesthetic standards but his connoisseurship and acquisitive instincts have not 283

corrupted his moral values . And , indeed , Verver is neither a heartless aesthete . . nor a futile one . Collecting for him is an intellectual passion and is directed toward a philanthropic end ; it is not a means of ga ining personal pres tige or of exerting power over others. (156)

And although Tintner speaks of "the Ververs ' deformed attitude to their precious people" ("Spoils" 250) , one must admi t that Amerigo and Charlotte contribute to such an attitude by being "for sale" and for going will ingly to the highest bidder; it may be concluded that Adam and Maggie are much more benign in their interest in acquisition than they usually are given credit, if for nothing more than giving these beautiful people a setting, a "home ," in which to shine forth and to be "on display" permanently. Pas- sibly these traits are simp ly duplication of one of the more likely models for Adam , the financier and collector

J. Pierpoint Morgan .

The famous "J. P." saved the American economy in 1907 by personally guaranteeing or "backing" government loans, a tacit admission that Mr . Morgan had more money than the

United States Treasury at that time , surely enough to put him on a par with Adam , who is richer than all save a half a dozen other men in the world (I 131) . Born in 1837 to the banking family , Morgan was educated in England and on the Continent, showing such proficiency in mathematics that he was invited to join the faculty at Gottingen . Instead 284 he returned to New York in 1858 , where he fell in love with

Jonathan Sturges 's daughter, Ame lia (Mimi) . Although she was stricken with tuberculosis during their courtship, they were married in 1862 in what one biographer calls a roman tic fantasy based on La Boh�me (Wheeler 82-83) , but f1 imi died four months later in Algiers on their honeymoon .

Horgan returned to the States a changed man ; after taking more responsibility in the banking house and becoming qui etly, but intensely , religious , he remarried, this time to

Fannie Tracy , who bore him four children. Together the family travelled throughout Europe and North Africa in search of treasures which were to fill the temple of art he commissioned to be built next to his house on Madison Ave nue ; he also served as one of the founders of both the Met ropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural

History , besides endowing numerous other museums with art work . His father, Junius , the most powerful banker in the world in the mid-nineteenth century, lived at No . 13

Princes Gate in London, wh ich with the help of Joseph

Duveen he had filled with portraits by the great English artists, mainly Romneys , Reynolds , and Gainsboroughs.

J. P. , however, did not want to compete with his father; his interests lay in other areas such as manuscripts and tapestries (one of wh ich he lent to the British as an altarpiece for the coronation of Edward VI I) . He became 285 noted for the enormous sums he paid and for his habit of buying whole collections on approval while he had their authenticity attested to by other experts; he then decided on wh ich museum he should bestow them (four thousand items to the Met alone) . He also learned to soothe the feelings of countries whose art he had acquired by lending it back to their national galleries .

Sinclair writes of Morgan that

He was fundamentally a romantic collector with a developing taste in royal and re l igious history . Even after he had acquired a host of great wo rks of art, he loved mixing the home ly with the grand. (77)

Wheeler believes that the motive for his buying certain works of art was to raise himself above other collectors , especially the nobles who sneered at him while taking his money for their collections. Wheeler says that

His accretions in the fields of painting , sculp ture , ceramics, and the like quickly acquired a pecuniary tinge and no doubt own much to his grow ing conception of himself as a Medici pr ince or even a pharoah . . In his later collecting days he found a way of giving expression to his role as a magnifico. (191)

Sinclair agrees, stating that

He preferred objects that derived historically from an ecclesiastical or royal or aristocratic period , beautiful things that were inves ted with the ordered value of the ages in which Morgan would have liked to have ruled as a pope in Rome , a Burgundian duke , a Florentine prince, or a belt ed earl in the House of Lords. (204)

Likewise, Adam bel ieves that 286

He was the equal somehow with the great seers, the invokers and encouragers of beauty--and he did n't after all perhaps dangle so far below the great producers and creators. no pope , no prince of them all had read a richer meaning, he believed, into the character of the Patron of Art . (I 141, 150)

The apt expression of such connoisseurship was for

Morgan the museum built on Thirty-sixth Street between

Hadison and Park Avenues . James would have heard or read about the museum before writing The Golden Bowl ; Morgan had hired Charles McKim, one of Stanford White 's partners , to

"draw up plans for a Greek temple of simple classical line" to display the pieces wh ich had lain for years in the base- ment of 219 Madison Avenue , in the warehouse on East For- ty-second Street, or in the storage rooms of the Drexel

Building on the corner of Broad and v7 all Streets (Wheeler

2 0 6) • Built without mortar using ancient Greek con- struction methods, the temple took from 1900 to 1906 to complete and is a replica of Adam's "museum of museums , a palace of art which was to show for compact as a Greek tern- ple wa s compact , a receptacle of treasures sifted to positive sanctity" (I 145) .

Other, smaller, details of Morgan 's life are amazingly like those of James 's characters. In Maggie 's references to travel Amerigo sees "images drawn from steamers and trains, from a fami liarity with 'lines ,' a command of

'own ' cars, from an experiences of continents and seas , 287 that he wa s unab le as yet to emulate" (I 15) ; such images could have been used by the Morgan chi ldren , whose father helped Commodore Vanderb ilt to buy the New York Railroad for eighteen million dollars in 1877 and formed the

International Mercantile Marine Company (the White Star line) after a personal dispute with the Cunard Line , in addition to their travelling as children to Europe and

Egypt. Morgan owned a series of beautiful yachts named

Corsair, wh ich Hoyt describes as having "an adventurous look about her that must have been pleasing to Pierpont , who , after all, was much the romanticist beneath that hard banker 's shell" (26 6) , but Morgan decl ined to buy a person al rail road car, citing it as a waste of money when he could buy art instead. In other images, Amerigo continual ly refers to banking and boats to describe Adam and his personal relations. One of the most amusing coincidences in the traits of the two men is that of Morgan 's love of card games, especially sol itaire , and Adam's proficiency which Maggie describes as being "a high adept" ; the numer ous references to card playing (discussed in the section on children 's games) culminate in the pivotal scene at Fawns in wh ich Haggie and Charlotte clash as the other four char acters play cards. Morgan 's addiction to cards was so great that European art dealers came to New York to learn from card shark s how to play the games of which Morgan was 288

fond so as to be able to receive his attention (Hoyt 199,

3 2 4) •

Most important to the comparison is the similarity in

the personalities of the man and the fictional character.

Many articles have been written examining Adam's seemingly

near-schzoid personality; some critics say that James

failed utterly in his portrayal of the shrewd busines sman

turned connoisseur and that this is the basis for the "am-

biguity" in the novel. However, when one read the various

biographies of J. P. Morgan , one is struck repeatedly by

the one thing on wh ich the biographers all agree about his

personality : he was, hopelessly, a romantic. His school

notebooks from Germany we re filled with daydreams , ma inly

centering on the fairer sex; his tragic first marriage began as a romantic fantasy in wh ich he was the hero meant to

save his beloved from death; even his first acquired paint-

ing wa s bought on a sentimental impulse because the por-

trait resembled his deceased wife . Of his relations with

his intimates , Sinclair writes

The sensitive and romantic nature inherited from his Pierpont ancestors and shown in his first marriage to Mimi Sturges was displayed more and more in his dealings with other men and women. His family had almost exc lusively known of his softer side , his grandchildren adoring him for his love and concern, his daughters relying on his support and generosity . ( 213) 289

Sinclair also notes that this romantic nature extended into

Morgan 's sexual life; Morgan wa s a loving, generous man to his mistresses (he made love to Victoria Sackville-West while in his seventies) , no matter how arrogant he acted toward his business rivals. Morgan 's taste in women paralleled his taste in art ; many of his mistresses could have been physical models for Charlotte Stant:

Morgan 's inclination ran to highest beauty , with intelligence. Here , too , he was a disc riminating collector. . Morgan 's discretion and taci turnity , indeed, spread the legend of his con quests. (Sinclair 196-97)

To those mistresses who married (as opposed to those he passed along to Edward VII and other nobility) , he gave doweries of one hundred thousand dollars. Apparently even the almost invisible Mrs . Morgan was not bothered unduly by his gallantry to women . However, his generosity extended to everyone in his personal domain; Hoyt writes that

Ju st as he lived in his own way , so he collected art in his own way . He never--none of the Morgans ever--did anything ostentatiously. Pierpont wanted lovely objects of art , first to enjoy him self, but always to be shared with others. There had never been any other intention in his mind from the beginning. (193-94)

Of course , these exact words could be applied to Adam , who constantly worries about taking advantages of others, or of not being able to refuse anyone , about his museum , about his daughter and grandson , about his wife 's happiness--about everything , it seems , except his own pride and 290 knowledge. Such a businessman really existed , it appears , in J. P. Morgan . In the eeriest coincidence , Morgan 's last words are prophesized by James when he describes Adam's career:

. he had come out quite at the top of his hill of difficulty , the tall sharp spiral round which he had begun to wind his ascent at the age of twenty , and the apex of which was a platform looking down . (I 131)

Morgan 's son-in-law reported that at Morgan 's death in

1912, his last words were '" I've got to go up the hill'"

(Sinclair 229) . James, one could say, only improved on the original figure of J. P. Morgan .

Thus, that James could have based his character on a historical personage seems clear, but for Maggie he probab ly had no model. Few women of James 's acquaintance , other than Isabella Stewart , were able to collect art or even to appreciate it in the way that Maggie seems to be learning from her father . Although Maggie obviously respects his judgment , defending his choice of pieces to everyone in the novel, she seems to embody the connection between ethics and aesthetics which goes beyond Adam's

"passion for perfection" in appearance only (I 146) . For example, while Adam describes his daughter as a figure on a vase and his grandson as a piece of porcelain (I 188, 147) ,

Maggie describes her father in more human and moral terms , 291 showing how his actions become translated into moral terms , or how the outer Adam reveals the inner man :

The "successful" beneficient person, the beautiful bountiful original dauntlessly wilful great citi zen , the consumma te collector and infallible high authority he had been and still wa s--these things struck her on the spot as making up for him in a wonderful way a character she mu st take into ac count in dealing with him either for pity or for envy. . His very quietness was part of it now , as always part of everything , of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable incalculable energy; and this quality perhaps it might be that placed him in her eyes as no prev ious work of art probably had even been placed in his own . There was a long moment, absolutely , during which her impression rose and rose, even as that of the typical charmed gazer, in the still mus eum , before the named and dated object, the pride of the catalogue , that time has polished and consecrated. Before she knew it she wa s lifted aloft by the consciousness that he was simp ly a great and deep and high little man , and that to love him with tenderness was not to be distinguished a whit from loving him with pride . (II 273-74)

Habitually , Maggie seek s the truth beneath the surface of those around her; whereas early in the novel, the pagoda , "a structure plated with hard bright porcelain"

(II 3) , had as a figure for her marital arrangement seemed a "surface . . consistently impenetrable and inscrutable"

(II 4) , Maggie 's increasing awareness allows her to see through the other veneers. Several times in the novel characters are described in rather hard images: Char- lotte 's surface is likened to the oriental porcelain tiles which Adam views at Brighton; Ad�m's "firm outer shell 292 of his dignity" is "all marve lous ename l" or "polished old i vary ," an "inattackable surface"; Amerigo 's aid to Haggie in vanquishing Charlotte is the "polished, possibly almost too polished, surface his manner to his wife wore for an admiring world" (I 222 , II 203, 299, 228) . The latter

Maggie examines as if searching for gold: "her imagination yet sought in the hidden play of his influence the explana tion of any change of surface , any difference of expression or intention" (II 280) . One of Maggie 's most important functions 1n the novel is to penetrate through these fa� ades in order to reve al the truth; if Amerigo sees his role as "twitching the shroud ," Maggie sees hers as "break ing the she ll." Though she does not ignore the obvious or surface appearance , Maggie still desires the ideal in which the appearance reflects the inner worth of the object or person , so that the aesthetic value does equal the moral.

Grounded in the romantic view of life and art (like her father) , Maggie does alter her concept of worth somewhat during the course of the novel, but va lue to her is in emo tional worth , not in financial or acquisitive terms. Also like her father (whom Fanny characterizes as a sentimenta l idealist) , Maggie can wish for "'happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger '" (II 216) , an ideal wh ich Fanny then likens to the "brilliant perfect surface" of the golden bowl . But Maggie carries the meta- 293 phor farther, for she desires a perfect surface "to begin with," and builds upon it the relationship "'as it was to have been the bowl without the crack '" (II 216-17) .

It is this requirement , that the outer reflect the inner, which blinds her to the bowl 's flaw in the first place , as she is blinded to Amerigo 's nature by his stunning physical attraction and his ref ined manner, but her blind acceptance of the bowl differs from Charlotte 's ignoring the flaw even after the shopkeeper has hinted to her of its imperfection .

Haggie , learning of the flaw, keeps the bowl , not because of its aesthetic worth or outward appearance, but because of its new emotional value as the vessel of knowledge and its symbolic value as the proof, if not of an affair between her husband and her stepmother , then of the decep tion before the wedding which evinces itself in their behavior toward her four years later. When Fanny smashes the bowl , she smashes the relationship, the "mystic golden bridge" between the lovers ; its flaw- -the physical attrac tion of two perfect specime ns based upon sexual desire rather than upon respect for the individual--makes it imperfect .

As a true connoisseur 1n the making , Maggie mu st in telligently deduce the quality of the golden bowl and then display it in a framework which enhances its value. In a similar manner , she must examine her own situation for any 294 flaws and , upon discovery of them , repair the damage so that the situation is returned to its original splendor .

Although she is not able to accomplish all of this, she still strives to rework the pieces into a viable whole wh ich then can be appreciated on its QWn merit. Hinner sees this struggle as fa i lure on the part of Adam and

Maggie , viewing it as "justifiable ambiguity" (167) , espe cially in the character of Adam , but one way to resolve such ambiguity is, first, to look for models on which such behavior may be based, such as J. P. Morgan , and , second , to recognize the level at which each character functions in the novel. Thus , the categories of collector (Charlotte ,

Amerigo , Mr . Gutermann-Seuss, and the shopkeeper), curator

(Mr. Crichton) , and connoisseur (Adam and Maggie) help to organize the chaos and give meaning to a group of important images which describe such actions and thought as are some time s thought ambiguous by critics. A serious point to make is that the ideal connoisseur , the supreme appreciator, the aesthete beyond comparison , does not ap pear in this novel; instead, Jame s sets his characters on a course in the attainment of knowledge and the struggle for goodness wh ich will occupy their lives for years to come after the novel has ended , a struggle complicated to a great extent by the material concerns of the characters , as noted in the section on finances and the following section 295

on the art treasures which occupy so much of their

thoughts .

Works of Art

Of James 's practice of alluding to or of describing

actual works of art , Viola Hopkins says :

he soon learned to practice a wise economy in fusing much of what is normally called setting with action and characterization . The art ob ject is an especially important means of achieving this desired function , for it can be used simu ltaneous ly as a visual detail and as a symbol of a cul ture , superficially as a plot device and more profoundly as character revelation or as rein forcement of a theme . When the allusion is to specific paintings by actual artists or to an artist's style or to that of a particular period , James's ideal of economical richness is most fully realized. (566)

In The Golden Bowl , especially in Maggie' s half of the nov-

el, James alludes to or names several works of art (includ-

ing prose works) wh ich must be recognized and interpreted

if the reader is to perceive correctly the character 's emo-

tion or reasoning at the time of mention , thus fusing set-

ting with characterization, as Hopkins points out . The

first allusion to a specific piece of art is to Poe's poet-

ry. A possible source for the title of the novel is Poe's

"Lenore ," a poem whose emotional basis supposedly was Poe's

resentment that Sarah Elmira Royster, a Richmond he iress ,

married another man , purportedly against her will, wh ile

Poe attended the University of Virginia in 1826 . Written 296 in 1831, but revised until 1849, the poem is typically funereal, lamenting the death of a frail yet beautiful ma iden. There is no connection with the characters or the plot of The Golden Bowl ; however, the emotional upheaval in the speaker of the poem at his realization that the woman he thought was his, is not , parallels Maggie 's anguish at her realization that her marriage to Amerigo is not what she expected and her later discovery that he and Charlotte are involved intimately . \vhereas in Poe's poem the first line , "Ah, broken is the golden bowl !--the spirit flown forever !" indicates physical loss of the beloved , in

Maggie 's situation the loss is emotional, and the object of her affections ultimately recovered.

James has Amerigo make the clearest allusion to Poe , however, in the first chapter of The Golden Bowl , when the

Prince aligns himself, in his confusion about the Ververs ' innocence and good will, with Poe's main character in his short novel , The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym :

He remembered to have read as a boy a wonderful tale by Allan Poe , his prospective wife's country man--which was a thing to show , by the way , what imaginations Americans could have : the story of the shipwrecked Gordon Pym , who, drifting in a small boat further toward the North Pole--or was it the South?--than any one had ever done , found at a given moment before him a thickness of white air that was like a dazzling curtain of light, concealing as darkness conceals, yet of the colour of milk or of snow. There were moments when he felt his own boat f!love upon some such my stery . The state of mind of his new friends, including 297

Mrs . Ass ingham herself, had resemblances to a great wh ite curtain . He had never known curtains hut as purple even to blackness--but as producing where they hung a darkness intended and ominous . (I 22-23)

Admirably discussed by Adeline Tintner , who feels that lT ame s completes Poe's story at the point at which it is broken off in the original ("Poe " 88-91) , this allusion reve rberates with several foreshadowings about the Prince : he is literate and en mode enough to have read in English

(or French) a relative ly obscure novel by an American deceased perhaps twenty-five years, thus revealing an almost perverse intere st in the exotic , the romantic, or the Amer- ican ; Pym is an explorer-adventurer whose life and philosophy is disrupted by his shipwreck, much as the Prince 's life (his ship) will be disrupted by his adventures with

Adam's wealth , Charlotte 's sexua lity , and Maggie 's maturation ; and the Prince 's Latin temperament ("the purple curtain") is seriously at odds with the thick white air of not only the Ververs ' but also of all the Americans ' motives.

The mention of Gordon Pym in a novel by Jame s is surprising , since it is the only prose work mentioned by both title and author in James 's novels; in having an

Italian do so, Jame s injects a mysterious fore shadowing of the Prince 's confusion . The Prince differs from Pym in one way : whereas Pym loses himself in the fog, eventually go-

ing mad , Amerigo survive s and , with Maggie 's aid, come s to 298 appreciate , if not to understand , the Americans ' good will toward him.

Occurring much later in the novel is James 's third and much more sinister allusion to Poe . Maggie has noticed

Charlotte 's discomfort at Fawns, how she continually brings visitors from London to guide them through Fawn's treasures so that she can avoid Maggie and Fanny . Maggie believes that

Beautiful and wonderful for her even at times was the effect of these interventions--their effect above all in bring ing home to each the possible hero ism of per functory things . They learned fair ly to live in the perfunctory ; they remained in it as many hours of the day as might be; it took on finally the likeness of some spacious central chamber in a haunted house, a great overarched and overglazed rotunda wh ere gaiety might reign , but the doors of wh ich opened into sinister circular passages . Here they turned up for each other, as they said, with the blank faces that denied any uneasiness felt in the approach; here they closed numerous doors carefully behind them--all save the door that connected the place , as by a straight tented corridor, with the outer world, and , encouraging thus the irruption of society , imitat ed the aperture through which the bedizened per formers of the circus are poured into the ring. (II 288-89)

This passage seems to describe Prince Prospera 's suite of rooms in his "castellated abbey" in "The Masque of the Re d

Death " (147-153) . In these rooms the draperies and furnishings have the ornate and oriental quality which James's

Prince might have recalled five hundred pages previously :

The second chamber wa s purple in its ornaments and

tapestries , and here the panes were purple . . a 299

brazier of fire projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room . And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appearances. (148)

(The reader will recall that the Red Death finally over- takes Prince Prospero in the shadow of the ebony clock in the seventh chamber wh ich is black with blood-red panes .)

The rooms are arranged such that "There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards . . a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the windings of the suite" (148) . In a similar fashion , in

Maggie 's imagination "doors . . opened into sinister circular passages." In addition , Prince Prospero has summoned

"a thousand hale and light-hearted friends" whom he has sequestered in the abbey by we lding shut its gates ; inside ,

"the prince had prov ided all the appliances of pleasure .

There were buffoons, there were improvisatori , there were ballet-dancers II (147) . Likewise, Maggie 's haunted house contains a door leading to the circus-like society wh ich she and her father dislike .

Why would James align these allusions with these characters? Maggie herself, as seen by the Prince in Part I, acts as if moving in a fog of good will and blissful innocence to her own marriage 's destruction , while Prince

Amerigo is the likeliest person in the novel to have knowledge of "castellated abbeys" and lush inte riors such as 300 those containing purple curtains. These images reveal , however, essential components of the personalities of

Maggie and Amerigo. Maggie 's image is claustrophobic, ter rifying in its labyrinthine quality , and yet it does final ly end in the humorous images of the circus and the dancer associated mainly with Maggie and Fanny and their attempts to satisfy society 's requ irements of the Ververs . A

Jungian interpretation of this passage would insist on its rebirth imagery (the emergence of the individual into soc i ety) , which would prefigure Maggie 's eventual triumph and maturation . Amerigo , on the other hand, is complete ly ur bane and socially sophisticated , not shy or fearful of his place and value. The "white curtain ," while dead ly (we assume) , for Gordon Pym, i s not entirely sinister. The fact that Pyrn thinks the white mist lS the result of a storm might indicate the hope that the "cataract" will dis appear and that the "blindness" will give way to the light in which we leave Pym . Likewise, the Prince has his own moral "cataract" for much of the novel, but on the last page he tells Maggie , "I see nothing but you. " Not as morally acute as Maggie, Amerigo still has moved through some of the white fog , has drawn away the white curtain somewhat , and witb Maggie 's help he may weather the storm entirely and , unlike Pym, survive . 301

Jame s refers to the stories of another favorite writer , Nathaniel Hawthorne , during Maggie 's vigil at the start of Part II:

I should compare her to the frightened but cling ing young mother of an unlawful child. The idea that had possession of her would be , by our new analogy , the proof of her misadventure , but like wise all the while only another sign of a relation that was more to her than anything on earth . She had lived long enough to make out for herself that any deep-seated passion has its pangs as we ll as its joys, and that we are made by its ache s and its anxieties most richly conscious of it. (II 7)

Maggie 's agitation over her idea and her eagerness for knowledge James translates into the damning evidence of an

"unlawful child," an indication perhaps that Haggie fears puni shment or ostracism for her knowledge , which might harm her small society , just as Hester Prynne , "the frightened but clinging young mother ," was when her pregnancy and later the birth of her child from an adulterous relation was known . James seems to say, as did Blake in The Book of

Thel (another source of the novel's title) , that all knowledge is dangerous and forbidding at first, but sexual knowledge has the most far-reaching consequences. Maggie , although the mother of a lawful child, still must discover and acknowledge in Part II both sexual knowledge and , on a higher yet related plane , the knowledge of good and evil.

Two rather minor mentions of veils might refer to the relationship of Zenobia and Priscilla in Hawthorne 's The 302

Blithedale Romance : "Charlotte 's attitude had the

effect of throwing over their intercourse a kind of silver

tissue of decorum" (II 38) and

Gentleness and confidence we re certainly the right thing as from a charming woman to her husband, but the fine tissue of reas surance woven by this la dy 's [Charlotte 's] hands and flung over her com panion as a light mu ffling ve il, formed precisely a wrought transparency through wh ich she [Maggie] felt her father 's eyes continually rest on her self. (II 138)

Charlotte , quite appropriately, plays the role of Zenobia,

the dark lady of wealth and beauty who represents for

Hawthorne hidden and forb idden des ires and who , at one

point in The Blithedale Romance , torments Priscilla , a

fragile blonde inexperienced and manipulated young woman

who plays the role of the Ve iled Lady for the magician

We stervelt. Zenobia, in an attempt to embarrass or fright-

en Priscilla, makes her the victim of a cruel joke based on

the Legend of the Ve iled Lady (a weak version of the Wife

of Bath 's Tale in Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales) (Blith edale

108) . The veil itself

. was white , with somewhat of a subdued silver sheen , like the sunny side of a cloud ; and falling over the wearer, from head to foot, was supposed to insulate her from the material world, from time and space . (Blithedale 6)

Likewise, Charlotte hopes to "insulate" Maggie and Adam

from knowledge of the affair with Amerigo . Later , the 303 tissue threatens to tear as Haggie and Adam realize they mu st part :

It shook between them, this transparency , with the ir very breath; it was an exquisite tissue , but stretched on a frame , and would give way the next instand if either so much as breathed too hard (II 267)

Sexual knowledge and its far-reaching and sometimes fatal consequences (as told in the above mentioned wo rks) are also impl icit in Maggie's vision of entwined lovers , presumably based upon her romantic temperament (wh ich she share s with her father) , but wh ich is now changing :

Her earlier vision of a state of bliss made inse cure by the very intensity of the bliss--this had dropped from her; she had ceased to see, as she lost herself, the pair of operatic , of high Wagnerian lovers (she found deep within her these comparisons) interlocked in their wood of enchant ment , a green glade as romantic as one's dream of an old German forest. The picture was veiled on the contrary with the dimness of trouble (II 280)

Such a reference to "high Wagnerian lovers" alludes perhaps to Wagner 's Tristan und Isolde , Act II, in which the lovers meet in Isolde 's garden to sing a love-duet, embracing under a large tree on a flowery bank . Although James abhored

Hagner, he knew his works we ll, having heard them played ad nauseum during the Parisian spring of 1876 ; also, his close friend , Paul Zhukovsky , became one of Richard and Cosima

Wagner 's intimates before Wagner 's death in 1883 (The Con- quest of London 406) . Based on the thirteenth-century 304

German narrat ive poem by Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isolde is an extremely suitab le opera to be mentioned in The Golden Bowl , dealing as it does with extramarital passion in circumstances duplicated in the novel: an old king (Adam) marries a princess young enough to be his daughter (Charlotte) , only to have her fall in love , through the philtre provided by her lady-in-waiting, with a hand some prince related in marriage to the king , whom she has met before (Amerigo) . In a recent article, J. Peter

Dyson notes that "Jame s structured a crucial episode in

'The Ve lvet Glove ' (1909) on a scene from Wagner 's Tristan

und Isolde" ( 121) . (In the same scene James mentions char acters from Tristan und Isolde and its twin opera

Parsifal.) As recently as 1899, an English production of

Tristan und Isolde was staged in London (James spoke little

German) . The opera itself had an intersting history , which

James knew; although comp leted in 1858, the work was not staged until June 1865 . By that time , Cosima von Bulow ,

Lizst's illegitimate daughter and wife of the conductor of

Tristan und Isolde , wa s two months pregnant with Wagner 's child. Lizst himself collapsed during the third act of the

1886 Bayreuth production and died two days later. Such a romantic and exquisite ly tragic history of the opera per haps made an impression upon James; what is important in the reference in The Golden Bowl is that Maggie ultimately 305 rejects the fatal romantic view of love and begins to base her actions on her trust in Amerigo to deal with Charlotte

and on a realistic view of her relationships with Amerigo

and Adam.

�vh ile Maggie matures and rejects the fatal romantic personality , Adam's behavior undergoes no marked change over the course of the novel. In Chapter 1 Maggie and

Amerigo discuss Adam's essentially romant ic outlook; the

imagery associated with Adam and the metaphors he applies

in the rest of the novel reinforce this view . In one of

the earliest signs of Adam's mode of thinking , James al-

ludes to one of the mo st famous poems of one of the best

known Romantic poets, John Keats 's "On Reading Chapman 's

Homer" :

He had , like many other persons, in the course of his reading, been struck wi th Keats 's sonnet about stout Cortez in the presence of the Pacific; but few persons, probably, had so devoutly fitted the poet 's grand image to a fact of experience . (II 140-41)

Not only does James develop this allusion to characterize

Adam's romanticism, but he also associates it with Adam's

acquisitiveness, his inventiveness, and his daring

exploitation of the European art world. Adam's Cortez also

fits nicely with the images of the explorers and con-

querors , Alexander the Great , Amerigo Vespucci, and Arthu r

Gordon Pym which are used elsewhere in the novel to charac-

terize both Adam and Amerigo; while Amerigo uses Maggie to 306 discover Adam's riches, Adam uses his wealth to discover the art treasures of the Old World.

However, during the course of the novel, we are ap- prised only of Adam's view of his connoisseurship. Al- though James gives us glimpses on wh ich we might rely--the deference of Gutterman-Seuss, the appreciation of the

"touri sts" at Fawns--only Maggie seems affected to any great degree by his taste in art and literature . Adam quotes a line from one of Longfellow's most quoted poems ,

"A Psalm of Life," wh ich may serve to illustrate Adam 1 s rather vacuous or sentimental view of life: Adam's desire for the mu seum in American City to be a temple to art and a testimony to his taste might be embodied in the poem 1 s closing stanzas:

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime , And , departing , leave behind us Footprints in the sands of time ;

Footprints , that perhaps another, Sailing o'er life's solemn main , A forlorn and shipwrecked brother , Seeing, shall take heart again .

Let us , then , be up and doing, With a heart for any fate ; Still achieving , still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait .

The reader, however, might question just how lasting Adam's influence will be on the American barbarians he wants to educate; James alludes to only one Re naissance artist and 307 one Pre-Raphaelite painter , and those are two of the most obscure of the periods they represent : Bernardino Luini and William Holman Hunt .

Just as Adam associates with Charlotte the Damascene tiles bought from Guttermann-Seuss, so he links Amerigo with Luini . Primarily known as a frescante from Hilan ,

Luini , born somet ime between 1475 and 1480 and dead in

1532, superficially follo\>Jed the Hilanese-Lombardy school of Leonardo da Vinci founded in the late quattrocentro . He was especially known for his fresco at Brera , "Hariage de la Vierge et de Sant Joseph ." His works, including

"Sposalizio mistico di S. Caterina" and "La Maddelena ," were displayed at Burlington House during James's years in

London . Critics of Renaissance art accused Luini of slavish and superficial copying of Leonardo; Bernard

Berenson , the foremost art critic of James 's time (and a pupil of William James ), wrote that

Luini is always gentle , sweet, and attractive . But he is the least intellectual of famous painters , and , for that reason, no doubt, the most boring. Nothing ever hap pens ! There is no movement; no hand grasps, no foot stands, no figure offers resistance . His indeed wa s the skill to paint the lily and adorn the rose , but in serious art he was help less. (185-86)

Somewhat less harsh is the judgment of s. J. Freedburg; he notes "heaviness of forms, a mechanical simplicity of 308 structure, and a stressed but superficial psychological content" (390) . On the other hand , he wr ites of

. a freshness like that of a fairy tale, and with a fairy-tale quality of not being real is- tic ally plausible. Colour in the frescoes, silvery and pale increases the sense in them of a removed world. (391)

This view echoes that of James 's contemporary , John A.

Symonds, who appraised Luini very highly in a work which was in James 's library , The Renaissance in Italy: "His feeling for loveliness of form wa s original and exquisite "

(809) . For Symonds, Luini had only one flaw: "We feel him to be a great artist only where the subject does not demand the symmetrical arrangement of many parts" (810) .

If this is the view of renowned critics, why , then , should James mention in relation to Adam's taste in art a relatively obscure artist whose works were rarely known outside Italy? If Luini was known to Victorians especially for the luminosity--the "fairy-tale" quality--of his frescoes , they would fit we ll with the art and fairy tale imagery used in the novel to describe Adam. James may have employed the allusion to Luini to express both �dam's taste in art and his flaw. It is interesting that James also mentions Luini in The American (NYE I 72-73) as one of

Christopher Newma n 's favorite s, thus linking the two

American collectors wh ose tastes are suspect. 309

I1 ikewise, James 's obl ique reference to Holman Hunt 's

"The Scapegoat" (1858) , a picture of singular grote sque ness, might be a clue not only to Maggie 's taste in art , but also to her function in the novel. In his 1874 transatlantic sketch entitled "Ravenna ," James note s that the mosaics depicting Christ "are no more authentic than the more or less plausible inventions of Ary Scheffer and

Holman Hunt" (HI 340) . Hunt, born of the London working class in 1827, was a schoolmate of Ro ssetti and Millais at the Royal Academy , and with them formed the Pre-Raphaelite

Brotherhood in 1848. But while his personal attraction may have been great (he was strikingly handsome) , Hunt's talent was slim. Specializing in Christian allegorical painting ,

Hunt did not please the critics, nor did he sell many paintings. In 1857 he travelled to the Holy Land to copy landscapes suitable for his works. Deciding that the barren shore of the Dead Sea wa s sufficiently "desolate, dreary , and unhealthy" ( 42) , he pa inted a woolly goat wan dering through the remains of other sacrificial lambs along the lake bed. Although the artist publicly stated that the scapegoat represented the vicarious suffering of Christ during the Passion and Crucifixion , the painting wa s gro tesque and displeased all who saw it. Maggie Verver re

Crtlls the painting as she views the quartet of Adam ,

Charlotte , Amerigo , and Fanny playing cards at Fawns; 310 realizing that she cannot break the harmony of their lives by denouncing the adulterers , she decides

to charge herself with it as the scapegoat of old, of whom she had once seen a terrible pic ture , had been charged with the sins of the peo ple and had gone forth into the desert to sink under his burden and die. (II 234)

This allusion echoes the description of George C.

�J illiamson that

The scene wa s a most sui table one in which to represent the wandering sin-striken goat , ded icated to Azazel, the demon of the wilderness, and bearing upon its head the sins of the nation , carried away "out of the sight of Jehovah as a vicarious sufferer of the sins" of the people ( 4 2)

Thus, the mention of this painting evokes two thoughts about Maggie in the mind of the reader : first, that Jame s employed the image of the scapegoat to equate Maggie 's suffering with that of Christ (and so to fit with the other religious imagery applied to her in the novel) , and , second , that James provides a touchstone to Maggie 's taste through this "terrible" painting. Also , James might have used "terrible" ironically; the terror could be either in the subject of Christ's suffering or in the viewing of such a "more or less plausible" representation of that subject . In either meaning lies a clue to Maggie's high value for James. In contrast to Adam's predilection for lesser known , mediocre painters , Maggie seems to have a more traditional and more "moral" view of art and its place 311 in man 's spiritual life, for instead of coveting the work of art for possession's sake , as Adam does , she allows the painting to speak to her and reveal the suffering which she must experience.

The last allusion to a piece of art occurs in the final chapter of The Golden Bowl . As Maggie and Adam circle the drawingroom at Portland Place ,

[Maggie] felt the slow surge of a vis ion that at the end of another minute or two had floated her across the room to where her father stood looking at a picture , an early Florentine sacred subject, that he had given her on her marriage . He might have been in silence taking his last leave of it; it was a work for which she knew he entertained an unqualified esteem. The tenderness represent ed for her by his sacrifice of such a treasure had become to her sense a part of the whole in fusion, of the immortal expression ; the beauty of his sent iment looked out at her always , from the beauty of the rest, as if the frame made posi tively a window for his spiritual face : she might have said to herself at this moment that in leaving the thing behind him, held as in her clasping arms , he was doing the most possible toward leaving her a part of his palpable self. (II 359)

The "early Florentine sacred subject" lS indefinite enough to prevent, despite ma ny hours of research on my part , posi tive identification ; however , among the "early"

Florentines are Botticelli, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Fillippo

Lippi, and Bartolomeo. In Italian Hours, James mentions several paintings, including Botticelli 's "Tobias with the

Angel" in the Florentine Academy , "The Madonna of the

Roses" in the Pitti Palace, and the Madonnas in the Uffizi 312

Gallery, and Fillippo Lippi 's "Madonna of the Roses ," also at the Pitti . Such worthies as Michael angelo , Leonardo da

Vinci, Verrocchio, and Raphael, although among James's fa vorites, must be considered late Renaissance . The previ ously discussed Luini, while a disciple of Leonardo , is of the Milan-Lombardy school , and Paul Veronese, another fa vorite , is, of course , both late Renaissance and Venetian .

(Wilson considers the painting to be Luini 's "The Madonna of the Roses ," but he is mistaken--it is still in Ita ly, and Luini is not Florentine.) Tempting as it is to attri- bute the "sacred subject" to a Cana painting, which would tie in very well with the marriage of Maggie and Amerigo , I could find none by an ear ly Florentine . Luini 's and

Raphael 's paintings of the marriages of various saints , including Mary and Joseph, are either frescoes or paintings still in Italy. Therefore, paintings owned at the turn of the century by American collectors whom James knew must be considered. Mrs . Isabella Stewart Gardner, Bostonian friend of James and the first American collector to own a

Botticelli, seems the best model for Adam . (Her palatial home at Fenway Court became a museum. ) If James had such a discriminating collector in mind , he might not be so crit ical of Adam's taste as the previous paintings indicate .

However , Maggie , wh om James wishes to portray as a good critic, thinks that the painting 's value emanates from 313

Adam's sacrifice , not specifically from the painting it-

self. James emphasizes again Maggie 's "superior lucidity "

as she reacts on a higher plane than the other characters

in the novel.

The Art ist

In addition to the many references to actual works of

art , James allows his characters , especially Maggie to ere-

ate artistic versions of scenes or persons in their lives.

In the Preface , James calls the point of view chosen for

the novel

that nearness quite having thus to become an imagined observer 's, a projected, charmed painter 's or poet 's close and sensitive contact with it. . Beset constantly with th e sense that the painter of the picture or the chanter of the ballad can never be respon sible enough , and for every inch of his surface and note of his song, I track my uncontr ollable footsteps toward the point of view that , within the compass, will give me most instead of least to answer for. (vi)

This point of view centers on the Prince and the Princess ,

"the sentient subjects themselves" (viii ) , especially

Haggie , who

in addition to feeling every thing she has to, and to playing her part just in that propor tion , duplicates , as it were , her value and becomes a compositional resource, and of the fin est order, as we ll as a value intrinsic. (vii)

Likewise, the Prince , "having a consciousness highly sus-

ceptible of registration " (vii) , holds up a mirror reflect-

ing the intere st (which I assume to be the international 314 theme ) of so many of James 's short stories (vii) , although

James admits that Mrs. Assingham contributes greatly to

Book I (vii-viii). One clue that Amerigo and Maggie are , despite the claims of Wilson , the centers of consciousness in The Golden Bowl is the remark James makes later in the

Preface that

The "taste" of the poet is, at bottom and so far as the poet in him prevails over everything else , his active sense of life : in accordance with which truth to keep one 's hand on it is to hold the silver clue to the whole labyrinth of his consciousness . (vii)

Might not this be the same labyrinth discussed in the section on adventure , the labyrinth of Maggie 's moral consciousness to wh ich the Prince must find "the silver clue" ?

It is therefore appropriate that James concentrates the images of the artist as creator in Maggie and to a lesser extent in Amerigo , almost as if he is trying to achieve his maxim in the Preface to Portrait of a Lady :

"Tell me what the artist is and I will tell you of what h e has been conscious . Thereby I shall express to you at once his boundless freedom and his 'moral reference '" (NYE III xi) . Unl ike Quentin Anderson , I disbelieve in Maggie as

James's alter ego , although I believe that in Maggie Jame s presents his supreme artist, the type of intelligence nee- essary to create the morally and aesthetically beautiful world which James attempts in his fiction . Maggie also 315 merits James 's criteria for the artist and his relation to his 11 done11 things of this "superior and more appreciable order" (xxv) --"Our relation to them is essentially traceable It rests altogether with [the artist] not to break with his values , not to 'give away ' his importance"

(xxv) . As no other character (with the possible exception of Strether) , Maggie creates a world with a singleness of purpose and without straying from her values, her primary position being that love , not revenge or bitterness, is utmost in her life . While this position horrifies some critics such as F. 0. Mat ties sen in its inclusiveness and bewilders other cynical observers of James 's craft, who relentlessly label such a posi tion ironic or ingenuous , it reflects the kind of consciousness wh ich is most receptive to the beauty of life and its representations. Winner puts the question directly when she asks of The Golden Bowl :

"Does it also reflect a belief that art should be a mode of knowledge arising out of human life and referable to it

• ?" (154) .

Few will argue that for Jame s the answer is affirma tive that the best or highest consciousness was that which was mo st aware of aesthetics and ethics; there is much evi dence that Jame s bel ieved the two , if not identical, then inseparate . J. H. Ra leigh , in a discussion of the Lockean quality of James 's characters , state s 316

Each person is his own arbiter and must arrive at moral decisions by an appeal to his own experi ence , which , in this case, usually means sense impressions, and , finally , morality becomes pure ly esthetic. The consciousness mo st sensitive to impressions is liable to be the most moral. So in James there is an equation between the esthet ic and the moral sense , and the individual who most appreciates the beauty of a Renaissance painting is also the most moral. (56)

This conclusion may suffice when dealing with fictional characters, but James knew it did not apply to real persons such as Bernard Berenson and J. A. Symonds, two of the leading art critics and appreciators of the day , whose personal lives were certain ly not moral by Jamesian standards.

Instead of believing that the mo st appreciative was the most moral, James be lieved the artist himself (whether painter or poet, as he says in the Preface) wi 11 exhibit necessarily the moral quality of his mind in the moral quality of his product; from that point the spectator may appreciate in the appropriate degree. Nowhere does James expound more on the "moral sense" of the artist than in his discussion of Delacroix , of whom he says

. here is a painter whose imaginative impulse begins where that of mo st painters ends . . he sees [his subjects] in a ray of light that never was on land or sea--which is simp ly the light of the mind . (PE 47)

Later he notes in Turner 's paintings "the unconscious fluid of a faculty more spontaneous even than thought--someth ing closely akin to deep-welling spiritual emotion. Imagina- tion is the common name for it" (PE 7 2) . In the same 317 review Decamp s is described as painting "not the thing regarded, but the thing remembered, imagined, des ired--in some degree or other intellectualized" (PE 74) , a remark which could apply as well to both James and Haggie. In this regard , James would certainly be seen as valuing the romantic imagination in art over the purely realistic and pictorial , a view of art and life which Foge l sees as the dominating structure of James 's novels. In a review of

Lettre s d'Eugene Delacroix (republished in 1878 by Phillipe

Burty) , James makes one of his fullest assessments of the artist as moralist. After establishing Delacroix ' s place in art--"He belongs to the family of the great ma sters of the past11 (PE 184) --James recalls 11 a vivid sense of the rare quality of his genius . . he had the same large lib- eral way of understanding his business. 11 James then ex- pands upon a totally romantic view of the artist:

He intimates that life is a perplexing rather than an amusing business on ly his feeling about it, as he goes, is that of a man who not on ly sees, but reflects as well as sees. It is this reflective element in Delacroix which has always been one of the sources of his interest, and I am not ashamed to say that I like him for his moral tone. I know very well that I appear to be uttering a grievous solecism, and that in the opinion of many people a painter has not business with a moral tone or a sentimental in tention [But ] a painter is none the worse for being of a reflective temperament , or for having a good deal of feeling about the thing he represents the pictorial power of such painters as Tintoretto and Delacroix lies in the ir having felt a good deal about the things 318

they represented. In the arts , feeling is always meaning , and so I think we do not go too far if we permit outselves to allude to the moral and psychological side of Delacroix. (PE 184)

He goes on to say that

I had a vague sense that it proceeded from a se rious mind, perhaps even from a melancho ly nature. I think there is no question that , on the whole, the artist we value most is the artist who tells us the most about human life. This large reference to human life appeared to be the merit of Dalacrioix . It is the presence of heart, and soul , and reason , of something that touches mortalia corda, which constitutes half the charm of Delacroix . (PE 184)

It also constitute s James 's charm on those readers willing to accept or allow his donnees, one of which is the mora l sense required of the artist. For James , the artist also exhibited certain personality traits which revealed his sensitivity and wh ich corre sponds to creative characters such as Strether, Maggie, and the artists of the short stories :

[De lacroix] had a combination of qualities wh ich are not often seen toge ther� he united in his nature what may be called a masculine and a femi nine element. He had a great imagination � he conceived things richly and comprehensively , and yet he was tender, grave , contemplative . He was reserved and del icate , and yet he had in a high degree what the French call la fougue--a grand sweep and energy of execution . . a high artis tic ide al , untouched by the vulgar or the trivial (PE 201)

Thus it is that, for James, Maggie 's worth is mu lti- plied by her artistic personality. Maggie, creating her world out of love , exemplifies James 's view that 319

There is, I think , no more nutritive or sugges tive truth in this connexion than that of the perfect dependence of the "moral" sense of a work of art on the amount of fe lt life concerned in producing it. The question come s back , thus, obviously, to the kind and degree of the artistic prime sensibility , wh ich is the soil, its ability to "grow" with due freshness and straightness any vision of life , represents , strongly or we akly, the projected morality . That element is but an other name for the more or less close connexion of the subject with some mark made on the intel ligence , with some sincere expression . (NYE III ix-x)

Maggie revises her life just as James revises his fiction for the collected edition; when Maggie brings Charlotte the right volume in the temple , she completes the revision of

Charlotte 's life also by indicating "'This is the beginning "' (II 311) of a new life in America with Adam , thus asserting her authorial privilege of re-creation , an artistic impulse seen in the following images which combine to express Maggie 's imaginative , artistic function in the novel.

As one might expect from the foregoing discussion, no images of the artist/creator appear in the first volume .

To the references to specific works of art may be added a hand ful of references wh ich characterize the Prince ,

Charlotte , and Maggie as wo rks of art, primarily from

Adam's point of view. Our first view of the Prince establishes him as "an image--that of some very noble personage"

(I 42) and that "It had been happily said of his face that 320 the figure thus appearing in the great frame was the ghost of some proudest ancestor" (I 42) , an image echoed later in

Maggie 's feeling that "the frame made positively a window for [Adam's] spiritual face" (II 359) . These allusions to human resemblances to art show the relationship in James's mind between art and life as art , themes noted in other novels such as The Tragic Muse and The Sacred Fount, and perhaps most explicitly shown in The Wings of the Dove in

Hilly's resemblance to the Bronzino portrait. In such a manner, to Adam , Charlotte 's value as an acquisition increases in direct proportion to the "multiplication of touches" applies by Mrs . Assingham to "her portrait by some eminent hand" (I 193) and is approximately that of the

Damescene titles (I 215) . The Prince 's worth is estimated to be that of a Luini (I 197) . Appearing more classicly ,

Maggie is for Adam

some slight slim draped "antique" of Vatican or Capitoline halls the blurred absent eyes, the smoothed elegant nameless head passing as an image in worn relief round and round a prev ious vase . (I 187)

Perhaps this is the same type of vase which Charlotte describes in rather ludicrous terms at Fawns (II 291) . These images reveal a distinctly proprietary view of both persons and art which corresponds to Adam's avocation as a collector . 321

Shifting his focus in the second volume from art to artist enables James to vivify some of the rather static art images applied by Adam in the first half. Beginning with the pagoda image (II 3-8) , Maggie introduces into her volume a creative imagination which is perhaps her dominant characteristic: "The Princess showed something of the glitter of consciously possessing the constructive , the creat ive hand" (II 145) . At one point, Maggie asserts that

"One must always . . have some imagination of the states of others--of what they may feel deprived of" (II 258) , a statement which is a key to understanding Maggie's creativ ity in imagining later scenes of Charlotte as a shrieking animal and of Amerigo as a prisoner of some nameless wa r or crime .

Re flecting over her first tangible production (other than the Principino) , that of giving Amerigo "the first surprise to which she had ever treated him" (II 10) , Maggie characterizes the incident as "a great picture hung on the wall of her daily life for her to make what she would of"

(II 11) . Minutes later, her love for Amerigo "shone out to her like the beauty of some family picture, some me llow portrait of an ancestor , that she might have been looking at , almost in surprise , after a long intermission" (II 21) , a foreshadowing of Amerigo 's fixture "as some statue of old of his forefathers" (II 323) . The next day, upon visiting 322

Charlotte and Adam, Maggie realizes that her problem is

"li ke that of a painted picture , which fixed the impression for her, [in wh ich] objects took on values not hitherto so fully shown " (II 31) , while Charlotte 's face constitutes

"the concrete image" (II 32) of that with wh ich Maggie must deal. Thus forearmed , Maggie socially "plied her art"

(II 54) upon the Matcham set . Also , in trying to convince

Ame rigo to go travel alone with Adam, she "made the pic ture , forced it upon him, hung it before him" (II 59) . She discovers that Ame rigo has "a conscious art of dealing with her" (II 75) , one created by Charlotte and himself to lessen Haggie ' s suspicions . Even Fanny contributes to these images as she "easily lost herself each time in the anx ious satisfaction of filling out the picture" (II 127) of

Amerigo 's situation . To Maggie , however , do most of the images apply; for her , pictures swarm (II 95) , they flush with all essential colour (II 31 , 202) . Maggie 's imagination , so vivid that Fanny 's comments about Charlotte "made a picture somehow for the Princess the picture that the words of others, whateve r they might be, always made for her, even when her vision wa s already charged , better than any words of her own " (II 303) , exhibits the funda mental qualities of the true appreciator of art wh ich James amplifies with the museum images. Maggie continues to be the "ideal Jamesian artist" (Ward 216) , not only because of 323 her own ability to create , but also because of her ability to appreciate the creations of others.

Architecture

Setting. The locations of scenes in The Golden Bowl are chosen expressly, it seems , to show "concrete a ttes- tations of a rare power of purchase " (II 360) . The houses , their furnishing, and the art treasures circumscribe a world of luxury and riches rarely seen in James's works.

Even Millie Theale ' s millions are not evident until she rents a Venetian palace commonly acknowledged to be the

Palazzo Barbaro (owned by the Daniel Curtises, cousins of

J. S. Sargent) , and , despite Mrs . Gereth 's years of accumu lation , the "spoils of Poynton" are not worth a tenth of

Adam' s Darian "spoils." Most appropriately , in The Go lden

Bowl the Persian carpets, Oriental tiles, and priceless works of art are housed in settings rich and even faintly royal. Nowhere is this most evident than in James's cho ice of a home for the Prince and Princess.

In the parish of St. Marylebone and situated directly across from Regent 's Park , Portland Place was built in 1772 by Robert Adam and '' reckoned the most magnificent street in the metropolis" (Shepherd and Elmes 15-16) . Later, in the

1820s, the close was elongated and continued around Langham

Place to connect with Regent Street , where the establish ments of the most expensive purveyors of goods were found . 324

Formerly belonging to the Duke of Portland , the land on which the Park and Place were constructed was converted from pasturage and marsh land into the wealthiest part of the City of Westminister , where mansions , squares, and lavish gardens advertised prosperity . Most striking to the eighteenth-century populace was the breadth of the street

(125 feet) which showed to great advantage the four- and five-story residences built by the Adam brothers and

Mr . Nash in the neoclassical style. (The breadth of the street was necessitated by Mr . Foley 's stipulation that his mansion have an unbroken view of the Park.) Early resi dents of the street included General Gage , the Duke of

Hamilton , and Viscount Stormont [who occupied #37 , the most likely address for Maggie Is menage , characterized by the

"high front windows" of the "great square house" (I 294) ]; by the 1820s came professionals, including surgeons and architects, diplomats such as Prince Esterhazy and Prince de Polignac , and aristocrats ; later came Edward Everett , the United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James, and the George Lewises, patrons of the arts . Such a setting enhances the stature of the royal couple and attests to

Adam's reputation as a man of wealth and distinction (one assume s that he has rented the mansion as he leased Fawns ).

Thus, the scenes in the last book , replete with royal images, are made especially poignant and significant as 325

Maggie ascends her staircase and steps out onto the balcony to gaze down the vista de scribed as

. one of the finest in this fine part of the metropolis, finished as it is, by the paradisia cal viev1s of the park . It is an incl ined plane of architectural beauty , rising . . to a climax of scenic perfection , in the distance, that can not be paralle led in Europe; whether we consider the wealth that it embodies, the salubrity of the site which surrounds it, or the optical beauty which results from this charming combination of architecture , sculpture and landscape gardening. (Shepherd and Elme s 96)

Also noted about the architect 's designs was that "Adam's houses--glamorous, gay , original, full of affectations which, nevertheless, are rarely tedious--tell a very different story" from other eighteenth-century houses

(Summerson 143)

The rooms in an Adam house are not a simple ag gregate of well-proportioned and convenient box es, but a harmony of spaces--a harmony in which many contrasts reside . It is all devised for the conduct of an elaborate social parade which was felt to be the necessary accompaniment of active and responsible living. . They were not built for dome stic but for public life--a life of continual entertaining in drawing-rooms and ante-rooms and "eating-rooms " where conver sations would not be wholly ephemeral . . The real glory of the Adam houses died with the life for which they we re built. the measure of emphasis or reticence which it had when the reg ulated tide of eighteenth-century society flowed through it. (Summerson 144-45)

Such a society is what Fanny seeks for the Ververs and for which Charlotte is suited very wel l. One glimpses such a gathering both at the Fore ign Office ball and at the elabo- 326 rate dinner parties given in Book IV. Again , this society further enhances Adam's reputation, one he would rather not live up to.

Half a century later in Belgravia, Charlotte 's horne ,

Eaton Square, was also the address of numerous nobles , including the Harquis of Hertford , and , in our own century ,

Nancy Astor , M. P. Situated two blocks behind the Bucking ham Palace gardens , Eaton Square was one of the most fashionable addresses of James 's time . Named after the ancestral horne , Eaton Hall, of Lord Grosvenor , upon whose land Belgravia was built, Eaton Square was begun in 1827 by the Cub itt brothers . The resulting mansions now are char acte rized as pretentious and show a decline in Georgian and

Regency taste in architecture. Eaton Square , like Portland

Place , faces a long , wide thoroughfare , Grosvenor Road , which runs into Belgravia Street. Its southwest corner abuts Cadogan Square , built in 17 71 by Henry Hol land in what was known as Hans Town . These three- and four-story houses were rebuilt in the 1880s in the Flemish Renaissance manner , usually in red brick. There fore , if Fanny and Bob

As sing ham lived at the southeast corner of Cadogan Place and the Ververs at the southwest corner of Eaton Square, their homes would be only one-and-one-half blocks apart, a

fact one must consider in Books III and IV, when Fanny spends so much time at Eaton Square , watching Maggie 327 perceive the affair, and in Charlotte 's tour of London on the rainy March day which recommences her affair with

Amerigo. Portland Place is roughly two miles in heavy traffic (one takes Piccadilly Road to Regent Street) from

Eaton Square; as Charlotte points out in Book III, the trip cannot be made in less than thi rty minute s by carriage

(I 304) . Therefore , Charlotte 's "adventure ," consisting as it does of visits to the British Museum, the National

Gallery , St. Paul 's Cathedral, booksellers most likely in

Bloomsbury and Soho , and other stops , in addition to three calls at Eaton Square, adds up to quite a full day of being carried through the wet streets of London and would induce in the knowledgeable reader of the day a feeling of pity and perhaps exhaustion . The distance involved between the two households also goes a long way in explaining why

Charlotte and Amerigo believe they will not be disturbed by

Maggie on those days she spends with Adam, and why they feel there is so much trust placed in them by the sposi.

Unlike the London houses of the characters in the novel, the country homes are not actual places (or at least have not yet been positively identified) . Perhaps James wa s overly conscious of insulting or embarrassing the own ers of such fine homes who on occas ion invited him to visit. More likely, James found no location as ideal as the Fawns of his imagination for expressing the wealth and 328 position indicative of the Ververs . To be sure , great family estates and country houses existed in England , but these were owned by the Crown or by landed aristocrats who were not likely to lease a house to Adam or even to the

Castledeans (we recall that in The Wings of the Dove

Matcham belongs to Lord Mark , while in the later novel Lord and Lady Castledean are only tenants) . James also wanted to create an aura of unreality and romance with these hidden , sylvan houses� Fanny calls Fawns "out of this world"

(I 211) , while Matcham seems to have a romantic soul of its own .

Nevertheless, James does not seem fond of the country-house weekend, filled with illicit encounters and long, boring days with nothing to do but eat and hunt . In his article, "The Picture Season in London" (1877) , he calls the country-house "that peculiar English institution of country life which is so beautiful, so stately, so respect- able , and so dull" (PE 134) , a comment similar in tone t. o

Amerigo 's thought that

He had paid first and last many an English coun try visit� he had learned even from of old to do the English things and to do them all sufficient ly in the English way; if he did n't always enjoy them madly he enjoyed them at any rate as much, to all appearance , as the good people who had in the night of time unanimously invented them and who still, in the prolonged afternoon of their good faith , unanimously , even if a trifle auto matically, practiced them; yet with it all he had never so much as during such soj ourns the trick 329

of a certain detached , the amusement of a certain inward critical, life; the determined need, while apparently all participant , of returning upon himself His body , very con stantly, was engaged at the front--in shooting , in riding , in golfing, in walking, over the fine diagonals of meadow-paths or round the pocketed corners of billiard-tables; it sufficiently, on the who le, in fact, bore the brunt of bridge-play ing, of break fasting, lunching, tea-drinking, dining, and of the nightly climax over the bottigliera, as he called it, of the bristling tray (I 327-38)

One envisions James himself viewing his fel low guests at play , detached, critical, amused at their innocent and not-so-innocent attempts at diversion . Matcham itself contributes to such "possible new combinations" by

. the fact that . in the almost inspiring allowances, of the house in question , no indi vidual line , however freely marked, wa s pro nounced anything more than funny . . What any one "thought" of any one else --above all of any one else with any one else--was a matter incur ring in these halls so little awkward formulation

• Eve ry voice in the great bright house wa s a call to the ingenuities and impunities of plea sure. (I 330-32)

Thus , bored by h is English companions , aching for his Roman self, and dangerously near his beautiful mistress in a house known for its looseness, Amerigo has ample opportunity for intimacy with Charlotte (even his hostess provides only the flimsiest cover for her own affair) . "I-1atcham," then, becomes ironic, for the matches between the sexes it produces are not worthy of their surroundings , illustrating only dissolution instead of a moral or aesthetic parallel 330 to the beautiful scenery and priceless treasures found there (Lord Mark exhibits a Bronz ino in the earlier novel) .

And although Matcham itself is described as being on a grand scale, with terraces, tiers of windows , and a grand staircase, nothing which takes place there matches its beauty and grandeur .

Because of James 's rather specific notation of the county in which Matcham lies--" the outlook was in every way spacious--and the towers of three cathedrals, in different counties ... gleamed like silver" (I 351) --several crit ics have tried to identify Matcham, usually as Great

Malvern Abbey in Worcestershire . I be lieve it is signifi cant that Gloucester is cho sen as the cathedral (when there are two , Hereford and Worcester, situated closer to the

Abbey ) which Amerigo and Charlotte visit. As Charlotte

says, " ' . . . is n't it one of the best? There are cloisters or towers or some thing . Or the tomb of some old king '" (I 358) . Gloucester Cathedral is acknowledged as one of the finest in England , with "fan vaulted cloisters,

1370-1412 , perhaps England 's finest central tower, 1450-60, and Lady Chapel , 1457-83, [which] complete a glorious assembly of perpendicular work" (Thurlow N.pag.) . More important to the narrative , however, is the fact that the

"old king" buried there is the unfortunate Edwa rd II, murdered by nobles paid by his queen , Isabella. After 331 being slighted in some manner by the king , Isabella joined with certain jealous barons to deprive Edward of the throne . In 1325 she wa s sent back to her horne country ,

France , to negotiate the end of the war with her brother,

Charles IV. While she wa s at the French court , she met

Roger Mortimer , an exiled baron, and they became lovers .

Finally, Charles drove her out of his court because of her scandalous behavior , but she found refuge with the count of

Hainaul t, whose price wa s the promise of marriage between his daughter, Phillipa , and Isabella 's son , the future

Edward III (the marriage took place and was very success ful) . The next year Isabella returned to England with a band of exiled nobles, causing Edward to flee westward .

Accordingly, Isabella and her band led Parliament in depos ing Edward in favor of their son, Edward III. After his

"voluntary" abdication, Edward II was taken to Berkeley

Castle, Gloucestershire , and imprisoned for several months before being murdered by the inse rtion of a hot poker in his anus. A period of regency followed (1427-30) , but eventually the queen ' s outrageous behavior and Hortirner' s greed so disturbed the new king that he had Mortimer ex ecuted and the regency ended. Thereupon commenced a popu lar and productive reign (Chaucer wrote for Edward III) , but the king's senility in 1369 and his death in 1377 led directly to the pitiful reign of Richard II and the subse quent War of the Roses. 332

Thus , the mention of the "tomb of the old king " would bring to mind the adulterous relationship of Isabella and

Mortimer and the drastic measures to which they went to obtain their lust 's desire . An implicit warning is there fore sent to the reader that , in addition to being adulterous and therefore sinful , this relat ionship between

Charlotte and her amoral paramour might well be dangerous, as James notes in "the growth between them of an exquisite sense of complicity" (I 335) . The images in the second volume add to this aura of danger and mystery, creating suspense and concern for Maggie 's we lfare . Like other royals, Adam and Maggie can be done away with (at least figuratively speaking) by send ing them to Spain , for instance; then , as the guardian for the Principino when Maggie is gone , Charlotte acts in a regential manner .

Finally, a parallel is drawn , and a prediction made , with Isabella 's exiles from England--the same situation

Charlotte faces several times in the novel. For these reasons , the choice of Gloucester Cathedral leads one to bel ieve the relationship between Charlotte and Amerigo more malevolent than commonly is held.

If the affair is aided by Matcham, it is reneged at

Fawns, because at Fawns the aesthetic and the moral tri umph . Tintner has identified the interior furnishings as those of Waddesdon Manor, a palatial estate owned by the 333

Baron de Rothschild; this comparison establishes Adam's being on a level with the richest men of the nineteenth century . Other great houses are brought to mind also-

Blenhe im Palace, although much too large (Fawn s has only eighty rooms) , has the artificial lake , the temple , and the most beautiful long gallery (now the library) in England;

Hereworth Castle (a Palladian villa in Kent des igned by

Colin Campbell) ; Knole; and other neoclassical houses such as Chatsworth , Castle Howard , Easton Neston, and Melbourne

Hall, any of which might have grand staircases and halls, caved ceilings , and great bedimmed dining-rooms (II 212,

287, 297) . None of these estates have a completion data of

1713 (I 159) , but the last four were built during the early eighteenth century by Vanburgh , Hawksmoor , and the Adam brothers during an age of decorum and love of classical simplicity and correspond quite well to Maggie 's tastes.

Of this setting , Bass notes, "The fusion of morality and esthetics at Fawns is an ideal seldom achieved in James's view of the English country house" (Bass N.pag. ).

Other settings in the novel, minor though they may be , contribute to the enveloping luxury and prestige of the

Verver world. The Foreign Office provides Charlotte a grand entrance on the crowded "monumental" staircase

(I 245) � its "great gallery" and other attributes cause

Charlotte to revel in such a backdrop to her position and beauty . She 334

. had an impression of all the place as high er and wider and more appointed for great mo ments; with its dome of lustres lifted, its ascents and descents more majestic , its marble tiers more vividly overhung, its numerosity of royalties, foreign and domestic , more unprece dented , its symbo lism of "State" hospitality both emphasized and refined . (I 247)

Likewise, the 11 high cool lustre of the saloon 11 at Fawns

(II 279) creates in Maggie a feeling of its being a place for negotiation :

. the very look the place had being vivid in its stillness, of having, with all its great ob jects as ordered and balanced as for a formal reception, been appointed for some high trans action , some real affair of state (II 246)

Thus , the confidence which Charlotte ha s for handling, for negotiating with Fanny at the Foreign Office parallels the confidence Maggie feels at. Fawn s in her ability to delude

Charlotte .

Other parallels in settings exist in the two volumes.

Alan Rose has noted the parallels between the terrace and temple scenes involving Maggie and Charlotte, but other important settings reoccur. Balconies, sta ircases, fire- places , gardens , parks and benches recur continually, not only because they are part of everyday life , but also because they provide strict parallels between scenes : for example , Amerigo 's and Charlotte 's discussion of their past lives while walking in Hyde Park in Book I parallels the talk Adam and Maggie have in Regent 's Park concerning the 335 reasons for changes in the ir lives in Book IV. Returning from their walk, they see their spouses on the balcony on which Maggie and Adam appear in the last scene . In

Books III and IV three parties are significant ; Amerigo 's comparing Maggie to a little dancing girl in the first aligns with her own comparison to a circus performer at the last party . The "twin" parties of chapters 3 and 4,

Book IV , show Maggie 's evolution from a talking doll to a performer for the crowd , a guise she manipulates in order to achieve her success. In Books II and V, Maggie and Adam discuss the plans and the consequences of the addition of

Charlotte to the household , with both conversations taking place under the oak tree at Fawns .

Certainly, one of the more obvious parallels is in the lovers ' shopping expedition to Bloomsbury before the wed ding which prefigures the antique hunt at "architecturally perched" Brighton four years later when Adam proposes to

Charlotte , and Haggie ' s finding the bowl two years after.

The parallelism between the last chapters in Books I and II is somewhat ironic and illustrates the completeness of

Charlotte 's ability to assume whatever role suits the situation best and her expertise in handling transportion , which foreshadows the last chapter of Book III. In addi tion , in both scenes Charlotte is mistaken for a wife, for the "signora principessa" and the "Mrs. Verver" or "madame"

(I 111, 213, 239) . 336

Maggie 's Bloomsbury trip also parallels the search for the perfect present for one who has everything. This plot development is not so extraordinary as critics such as Nuhn suggest, for James provides leads into this twist of plot that hold up quite well under scrutiny . For instance ,

Amerigo and Charlotte agree to avoid shops where Maggie and he had been (the Prince would be recognized immediately as being with an unfamiliar woman ), an unnecessary step, since we learn that , like the royal and the very rich, Maggie usually has things sent to her rather than go into the shops . Therefore , James must set up her discovery of the bowl very carefully and plausibly. Accordingly, he has

Haggie dismiss her carriage from the Museum "for the harmless amusement of taking her way alone" (II 154) , much as

Millie Theale walks the streets of London after leaving Sir

Luke 's office. Maggie feels that

To wander a little wild was wh at would truly amuse her cultivating an impression as of parts she did n't know . . There had remained with her moreover an allusion of Charlotte 's of some months before--seed dropped into her imag ination in the form of a casual speech about there being in Bloomsbury such "funny little fas cinating" places and sometimes such unexpected finds. There could perhaps have been no stronger mark than this sense of well-nigh romantic oppor tunity--no livelier sign of the impression made on her , and always so long retained , so watchful ly nursed, by any observation of Charlotte 's, however lightly thrown off. (II 154-55) 337

Just as she looks to Charlotte for advice on her clothing , so Maggie listens to her friend about society and "amuse ments ." Naturally , Charlotte might mention Bloomsbury after recalling the golden bowl while at Matcham, when she wonders if the "little swindling Jew" had sold the bowl , for "'He made a great impression on me , '" to which

Amerigo replies, "'Well you also , no doubt, made a great impression on him, and I dare say that if you were to go back to him you 'd find he has been keeping that treasure for you' " (II 359-60) . Thus, the reader is expecting the golden bowl , or the shopkeeper, or both , to reappear , probably through Charlotte's intervention.

Still, it might seem strange , at first, that Maggie picks up the clue and buys the golden bowl before Charlotte returns for it. However, when the shopkeeper promises in

I3ook I to keep the bowl for Charlotte , he means that he will keep it for the "signora principessa," for the right person to ovm the bowl , whom Maggie turns out to be .

Amerigo 's remark obligates James to make the shopkeeper reappear, but in the most unusual circumstances. The little Jew is in all ways the opposite of Maggie, who calls him her friend , but they do share the moral requirement of good faith . Earlier, the man affirms that flawed presents are morally acceptable as long as they are given in good faith ; apparently he changes his mind over four years , or 338 he discovers who Maggie is and does not wish to "scotch" further sales, or he does regret her giving the bowl as a present to her father. Perhaps he charged her more , recog nizing her wealth and station from her clothing , then he would have Charlotte (b 15) and was conscience-stricken , as

Maggie bel ieves. For whatever reason, Amerigo 's prediction that the shopkeeper will remember them come s true and thus links the two scenes. Finally , the shopping trips are similarly motivated : Charlotte feels that Maggie has too many treasures already and so wishes to amuse her by giving her a trifling item (at least that is her story to Amerigo) ;

Maggie , knowing her father 's scorn of "sentimental" gifts as not being worthy of his col lection , wishes also to amuse him (perhaps this is why Charlotte 's mention of "funny" finds in Bloomsbury intrigues Maggie) . Thus , the two women, one rich , one poor , one a mistress, one a loving daughter, are pulled into the mysterious web of the golden bowl .

James points at various places in the novel to paral lel scenes such as those between Fanny and Amerigo , or

Maggie and Charlotte . As discussed in the section on fore shadowing, the buildup of suspense is adroitly manipulated by the author, for the first-time reader of the novel is unaware of the repetition , spaced as wide ly throughout the novel as it is. However, through the reader 's subconscious 339 accumulation of those scenes, Jame s is able to create an anticipation sustained throughout the two volumes, reinforced by the imagery , wh ich fully prepares the reader for the novel's conclusion and allows him to accept the novel's premi se .

Architectual image s. As early as Portrait of a Lady ,

Jame s employed architectural images; in the Preface he describe s the "house of fiction" as having

not one window , but a million every one of which has been pierced , or is still pierceable, in its vast front . . These aper tures , of dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together They are but windows at the best, mere holes 1n a dead wall , disconnected , perched alo ft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life . But they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes , or at lest with a field glass, which forms , again and again , for obser vation , a unique instrument, insuring to the person making use of it an impression distinct from every other. (NYE III xxi)

In the novel itself, he makes Gilbert Osmond 's house a material exten sion of the man's perverse soul :

The house had a front upon a little grassy, empty , rural piazza which occupied a part of the hill-top; and this front , pierced with a few win dows in irregular relations this antique, solid, weather-worn , yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative character . It wa s the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality looked another way The windows of the ground floor , as you saw them from the piazza, we re , in their noble proportions, extreme ly architectural; but their function seemed less to offer communi cation with the world than to de fy the world to look in. (NYE III 325-26) 340

While in Portrait of a Lady James uses a house to describe its owner, in The Golden Bowl he describes an owner in such architectural terms that we may imagine his house : "The Prince 's dark blue eyes were of the finest and , on occasion , precisely, resemb led nothing so much as

the high windows of a Roman palace" (I 4 2) . In fact, one may perhaps even trace the building wh ich James has in mind by unravelling the clues he gives to the figure upon whom he based the Prince . Tintner (1978) has traced the Medici

Peruz zi background of the Marche se which corre sponds to the

Vespucci background of Amerigo in the novel. The Peruzzi connection is strengthened by the repeated architectural imagery , especially in relation to the Prince ; Tintner cites the "palace-builder" of Chapter 1, probab ly a dual reference to both Leo X and Baldassare Peruzzi (I 24-25) .

Born in Siena, near Florence in Tuscany , in 1481,

Baldassare Peruzzi was a painter famous for his frescoes; a set designer for plays staged by the Medici pope, Leo X, in honor of his family and visiting royalty; a writer of architectural treatises, now collected along with his drawings in Siena and in the Uffizi in Florence ; and a master arc hi teet who built numerous villas and palaces in

Rome , in Bologna, and in Tuscany cities such as Siena and

Montepulciano and who was in charge of building St. Peter 's

in Rome from 1520 to 1527, wh en the sack of Rome forced him 341 to flee to Siena . Characteristic of his early and late styles are his two ma sterpiece s, the Villa Farnes ina and the Palazzo Massimo , both in Rome . Built for a wealthy

Sienese banker, Agotino Chigi , and decorated by Peruzzi with frescoes incorporating mythological themes, the

Villa Farnesina was highly praised for its simple, pre

I3ramantesque restraint , as seen in its central block with two projecting wings. Peruzzi's pre-Mannerist style manifests itself in the Palazzo Massimo delle Colonne . His last work , the Massimo exhibits a unique solution to a dif ficult problem: the curved facade connects the two main residences of the Massimo brothers wh ich face a curved street. These two palaces are also noted for the "new " treatments of the porticos, bays, and windows ; perhaps they insp ired James 's description of the Prince 's eyes as "the high windows of a Roman palace , of an historic front by one of the great old designers" (I 4 2) . James greatly admired toscane architecture ; in Italian Hours he calls the Tuscan palaces "the most dignified dwellings in the world" ( IH

172) and states that "if I ever am able to build myself a lordly pleasure-house I don't see how in conscience I can build it different from these" (HI 412) . Not being enam oured with the style of Andrea Palladia prevalent during the late sixteenth century (IH 123) , James makes Adam

Verver realize early in the novel his mistake in likening 342

Amerigo to a Palladian church , for the Prince "ceased to be , at all ominously, a block" (I 136) . Instead, Adam discovers that his relationship with Amerigo is "a contact but with practically yielding lines and curved surfaces"

(I 137) --the style which made Baldas sare Peruzzi famous .

Besides reminding Adam of a church, the Prince owns three residences (also ident ified by Tintner as Medici or

Peruzzi palaces):

. . . the house in Rome , the big black palace , the Palazzo Nero , as he was fond of naming it, and . . . the villa in the Sabine hills . . . and the Castello proper . . . on the pedestal of its mountain-slope , showing beautifully blue from afar, as the head and front of the princedom . . . . (I 164)

These palazzos appear again in the second volume disguised as Maggie 's reaction to the Prince and Charlotte on the balcony at Portland Place : "they called down their greetings, lighting up the front of the great black house

The group on the pavement stared up as at the peop led battlements of a castle" (II 99) . Later, when

Maggie 's knowledge has made her a true Princess and she has recovered her husband 's affections, she lives in her own private castle : "her seemingly perched position [was] as if her outlook , from above the high terrace, wa s that of some castle-tower mounted on a rock" (II 306) , perhaps an indication that Maggie finally found a door into the pagoda, architectural symbol of the unknown in her imagination . 343

Adam also is described in archi teetural terms . His eyes, also blue , drew "a particular advantage from the outlook of a pair of ample and uncurtained windows

they stamped the place with their importance, as the house-agents say" (I 170) . In addition , Adam's face resembles "a small decent room, clean-swept and unencumbered with furniture"; one imagines New England rooms done in

Quaker or Shaker decor. Such simplicity accords with his taste in buildings as exemplified by the architecture chosen for his American museum : "a palace of art which was to show for compact as a Greek temple was compact" (I 140) .

His mind is an "essentially private house" (I 149) , one which Adam has created as archi teet of his personality.

Adam as architect is seen also in the image of his setting down his mus eum "by his hands as a house on a rock"--a Bib- lical allusion like that of his career being "quite at the top of his hill of difficulty , the tall sharp spiral"

(I 131) which calls to mind Sunday-school pictures of the tower of Babel. His des cription a few pages later of his son-in-law accentuates the architectural mode of expression :

At first, certainly, their decent little old-time union , Maggie 's and his own , had resembled a good deal some pleasant public square, in the heart of an old city , into which a great Palladian church, say--something with a grand architectural front--had suddenly dropped . . The Palladian church was always there , but the piazza took care 3 44

of itself. . By some such process in fine had the Prince, for his father-in-law, while remain ing solidly a feature , ceased to be at all omi nously a block. It all came that the Prince , by good fortune , had n't proved angular. (I 135-37)

In contrast to the very specific images of archi tee- ture which provide clues to the physiognomies of the characters , the images of Part II distinguish themselves by being claustrophobic, describing Maggie 's interior rather than her exterior as did those in Part I. Beginning with the extended conceit of the pagoda, the images emphasize her felt isolation and increasing fear as she attempts to face her uncertain future . For example, Char lotte 's unspoken criticis m of her stepdaughter is characterized as

"accumulations like a roomful of confused ob jects , never as yet 'stored, ' which for some time now Maggie had been passing and re-passing, along the corridor of her life" (II 14) . Such an image invites Freudian and Jung ian interpretations of a narrow , restricted , dead-end life ; later images reinforce th is interpretation , in which Maggie thinks of her relationship with Charlotte as

. the likeness of some spacious central chamber a great overarched and overglazed rotunda here they closed numerous doors carefully behind them--all save the door that connected the place , as by a straight tented corridor with the world . (II 228-89)

Also , she thinks of her father's smile as "held in her breast till she got well away as if it might have 345 been overheard , when some door was closed behind her"

(II 287) , an image which reiterates this quality of closed- ness. James makes the reader feel that this enclosed hot- house situation is one of Maggie 's own making, or at least of her father 's to which she did not object; as she mature s, however, Maggie rejects her preciosity and seeks to break free of her enclosures . James uses the arch twice more as a symbol of the embrasures enveloping Haggie as a cocoon holds the resplendent butterfly, the treatment of

Maggie by Amerigo and Charlotte being described as "it now arched over the Princess 's head like a vault of bold span "

(II 4 2) and "above her , a vault seemed more heavily to arch; so that she sat there in the solid chamber of her helplessness" (II 44) . Formerly, Maggie had , at times, shut herself in (or out) . She consciously shuts the door on Amerigo as a consequence of his trip to Matcham (II 42) ; later , when she confronts her husband with the fragments of the golden bowl , she avo ids mentioning his mistress, "ex actly the door Maggie would n't open to him" (II 193) .

Architectural details, when applied to the Princess, seem to emphasize her isolation . Nowhere is this more evi dent than in the pagoda images, which "reared itself there like some strange tall tower of ivory , or perhaps rather some wonderful beautiful but outlandish pagoda, a structure

. that spread itself so ample and rose so high" (II 3) 346

(one recalls the earlier image of the Prince as a spreading church) . There , too, "though her raised eyes seemed to distinguish places that must serve from within, and espe cially far aloft , as apertures and outlooks, no door appeared to give access from her convenient garden level"

(II 4) . Even though she and Adam had constructed the tower, they had not provided themselves access to the fairy-tale life within (II 6) , a circumstance of which

Maggie grows tired. Likewise, Maggie is architect (as her father) when she builds up her confidence as a child builds blocks (II 102) and imagines Amerigo 's and Charlotte 's confidence in similar terms : "Verily it towered before her, this history of their confidence. They had built strong and piled high" (II 192) , just as she and Adam had built the pagoda. The pagoda image also functions to link the two volumes of the novel; on the same Wednesday on which the Prince leans on the terrace railing at Hatcham and sees

"the towers of three cathedrals, in different counties

like dim silver" (I 351) , Maggie imagines her life to be a tower of ivory , an outlandish pagoda, and a Mahometan mosque (II 3,4) .

That James chose an architectural image for such an important function suggests the manner in which he used such images throughout his novels. Tintner, Winner, and

Anderson have examined most thoroughly James's use of 347 architectural images, and all confirm that these were important to him in his wr itings and in his personal life

(Edel 's description of Jame s 's dream of the Galerie d'Apollon is an examp le of this influence). My examination of the architectural images used in The Golden Bowl indi cates that though the images are not as numerous as those in other groups, they are mo st prominent and are used to great effect by virtue of their length and detail. This may be proven by the fact that most readers, when asked to recall the outstanding images used in the novel, other than that of the golden bowl itself, will name the pagoda image as the primary example and the image of the Prince as the

Palladian church as the secondary (the gilt cage in which

Charlotte suffe rs , a close second , might also be interpret ed as an architectural image because it is virtually her residence during the last chapters of the novel) .

Architectural images in The Golden Bowl , therefore , may be cited as some of its most powerful and effective metaphors, ones that prov ide a firm foundation on which

Jame s constructs a plot set in the most fash ionable of locations. James invests them with some moral and aesthet-

ic value when he describes the contents and happenings which occur under the beautiful ceilings of Matcham, Fawns ,

Portland Place , and Eaton Square ; equating, as he does , beauty with good faith , happiness, and love , one may see 348 these images as predominantly positive , althou gh Schneider feels Fawns to be ma lign in its inertia. However, the images in the second volume which are claustrophob ic are definitively negative in effect, so much so that I debated whether to include them here or in the section on constraint. Deciding that one must take the image as one finds it and not read too much into it, I mention these images of closed doors and windowless rooms in this section to provide examples of the very few times when James uses architecture in a negative image .

The Intell igent

Although the numerous examples of the external , material world of the Ve rvers indicate much about the characters in The Golden Bowl , the inner world of intellect and emotion is given as many references, possibly because the only way to present emotion and thought is to capture them in metaphors for the reader. Even so, wh ile there are more than one hundred uses of forms of the words "know " and knowledge" in The Golden Bowl , few metaphors incorporate images of the mind or intellectual experience . Still, cognition and comprehension can be traced through almost every page of the second volume , while emotional actualiza tion characterizes the first volume . In addition , James ensures the emotional and mental participation of his readers by using the interior monologue to a degree rarely 349 seen even in his fiction, so that , as he writes in the

Preface to the novel, "we see about as mu ch of [his characters] as a coherent literary form permits" (viii) .

Indeed , James seems to expect readers at least as intelligent as the characters in his novels and attempts to challenge his readers as far as their enjoyment of his craft will allow.

The critics who have examined mo st fully the attainment of knowledge and its consequences in James's fiction agree that in Maggie Ve rver Jame s presents his most inte l- ligently and emotionally conscious heroine , one on whom the success or failure of the novel mu st fall. Yeazell singles out Maggie as

the first Jamesian innocent who confronts painful knowledge by choosing neither renunciation nor death ; determining rather to live and to fight , she implicitly chooses instead the ultimate

loss of her innocence . (101)

Joseph Ward be l ieves that "the dominant concern in James's fiction is knowledge . James repeatedly explored means by which the individual might develop his moral and aesthetic consciousness" ( 157) , while John Bayley carries the argument further by stating that knowledge is

a symbol for success in life , a kind of substitute for achievement. If knowledge is power in life , it is a great deal more so in the modern novel. But in The Golden Bowl it is more than that: it also proves a scale of va lues , inti mately pondered by James, against which to measure 1 ove . ( 2 1 7 -1 8 ) 350

Thus, as readers of James 1 s fiction , we must decide whether to acknowledge the Jame sian premise that knowledge leads one to a fuller consciousness of the value of life and love , and to interpret the novel in such a light . One of the main stumbling blocks to our acceptance of the premise as it relates to The Golden Bowl is the reader 1 s lack of knowledge of how much the characters know about one another. Much of the supposed ambiguity of the novel stems , I believe, from incomprehension on the part of the characters, not of the author who through the imagery employed most clearly indicates his meaning . Perhaps an examination of the uses of the words "ambiguity " and

"inscrutable" in the novel will reveal some insight into the patterns of knowledge wh ich James applies to his characters.

One striking conclusion of this study is that during the course of the novel James applies the words "inscrut able" and "stupid" to every character , adjectives usually considered dissimilar in connotation , the one implying lack of knowledge on the part of the obs erver, the other indi cating lack of knowledge on the part of the observed. It is no surprise that the use of "inscrutable" is almost exclusive to the second volume ; even the one exception comes in the last pages of the first volume , after Fanny assesses the meaning of Amerigo 1 s and Charlotte 1 s staying 351 over at l1atcham. Then, Bob quite naturally perceives her to be looking at him "inscrutably ," as he is the person in the novel with the least imagination (I 365). In the second volume , Fanny appears ins cru table to all save

Maggie , who knows more than Fanny (II 291) . Before her discovery of the adultery , however, Maggie 's ignorance and innocence cause blindness to the extent that all seems inscrutable: Charlotte 's judgment of her stepdaughter

(II 13) , Amerigo 's and Charlotte 's comradeship (II 49) , her father "all indulgent and all inscrutable" with his

"inscrutable incalculable energy" (II 105, 273) , the golden bowl "inscrutable in its rather stupid elegance" (II 165) , even the pagoda which symbolizes her marital life with its

"great decorated surface [which] had remained consistently

impenetrable and inscrutable" (II 4) . On the other hand , when characters are not unknowable , they are unknowing ; every one of them is called both stupid and not stupid at different points in the novel. Interestingly , the indica tions that Amerigo , Haggie, Fanny , and Charlotte are not stupid come at the beginning and ending of the novel (I 17,

176 , 272 , II 187, 216 , 287) , while the middle is full of incomprehension and guesswork (I 309 , 333 , 363 , II 25, 111,

135 , 143, 233) . Perhaps the final pronouncement is the truth of the matter; in call ing his former mistress

"stupid" about both Maggie and him (II 348) , Amerigo shows 352 that he is not as unknowing as he feels he is at the begin ning of the affair. Knowledge , in this fiction as in real ity, is a matter of degree--no person or character has all the questions answered at any point in time but continually seeks such insight .

Thus, things and events seem ambiguous only until the required degree of knowledge is achieved which provides understanding and clarity . For example, Fanny 's motives in promoting the Prince 's marriage are ambiguous to him until he realizes how good faith will pull back the curtain of obscurity which hides the motivations of the Americans

from him (I 22) . In another example , Adam's eyes had

"their ambigui t. y of your scarce knowing i:= they most carried the possessor 's vision out or most opened them

selves to your own " (I 170) from Amerigo 's point of view ; when we view Adam through Haggie ' s eyes, the latter is proven . Charlotte challenges Adam wi th an ambiguous ques

tion about his knowing her, but she clarifies it in the next instant (I 221), just as the Prince replies ambigu

ously to a question Maggie poses until his next comment clears it (II 350) . The Prince 's telegram may seem ambigu

ous to Charlotte , but needs not be to the reader, to whom

Amerigo reveals his hes itancy to renew the affair. Magg ie

realizes that "a certain ambiguity in her" would give the

Prince a clue to her knowledge , so she alters that ambigu

ity to represent a truth (II 55) . Later she finds that 353

Fanny is acting toward her with an amb iguity analogous to

Maggie 's own with her father (II 104-05) ; thus, Fanny 's behavior is explained . When Hagg ie feels "amb iguous days" in London , "her sense of ambiguity happily fell" after her visit to the British Museum (II 148) .

These citations do not prove that all becomes clear at the novel 's end ; James wa s a realist in life as well as in art and so does not present us with a sentimental conclu sion by tying up the loose ends, a method discussed in his explanation of the open ending of Portrait of a Lady . In the novel, as in life , some social situations remain by their nature ambiguous or hypocritical (I 316, 353 , 354) , and there is little the individual participant can do to alter that fact. James also leaves some private matters unresolved, such as Maggie 's and Charlotte 's differing interpretations of Adam's affection for each and Amerigo 's view of the departure of the Ververs, "subject to varieties of interpretation" (II 244 , 345) . Overall, James seems to be duplicating in the reader the same process by which

Maggie obtains knowledge , even though some dramatic irony

is allowed when Fanny reveals early in the novel the past relationship between Amerigo and Charlotte . We are allowed no points of reference , no touchstones which the characters are not given , and so must make our way as they do , some

times blindly, sometimes in the glare of full recogn ition 354 that "Knowledge , knowledge, was a fascination as well as a fear" (II 140) .

Knowledge , Knowing

The uses of "knowledge" are spread fairly evenly throughout the novel, although in the first volume there are forty- or fifty-page gaps between uses. Appropriately, several are concentrated primarily in the chapters in

Book III in which Fanny tries to ascertain how far the resumption of the affair has progressed (I 259-389) . In the second volume , the usages appear at intervals of two or three pages, as Maggie tries to discern her husband 's infidelity and her father 's cognizance of that act; how ever, in six chapters the words are especial ly intense or frequent , those being in the chapters in which Maggie begins to realize her problem (Book IV, Chapters 2 and 3) , approache s Fanny with her theory (Book IV , Chapters 6 and

7) , and confronts Fanny and Amerigo (Book IV, Chapters 9 and 10) .

The first set begins with a description of Maggie as a

"much-thinking little person" who "had been stupid for so long not to have been struck" by Amerigo 's and Charlotte 's plan to exclude her. Her "lucid little plan" and "brave little idea" to regain her husband is developed by "her quickened sensibility; she knew herself again in presence of a problem, in need of a solution for which she must 355 intensely work ," all the while having to produce "only

reasonable reasons ," not "inferior substitutes" (II

20 , 25 , 27, 28, 31, 34) . She is aware that the Prince 's instincts and observations "had been enough for him to see the shade of change in her behav ior" and had resulted in "a plan that was the exact counterpart of her own," yet for

Maggie , "this new perception bristled . . with odd inti mations"� some readers deplore her detachment which allows her to "recover piece by piece" these perceptions and thus to formu late her plan to counteract the "clever idea" by which the adulterers control her (II 40, 4 2, 4 3) ; other critics contend that "Maggie 's deep personal involvement in the situations depicted goes hand 1n hand with her

detachment from them" (Fogel 111) • Only by concentrating on her father can Maggie overcome "the first shock of com plete perception " and then develop her self-control through

"the intensity of her consciousness" and her "deeper need to know" (II 45, 52, 57) . Thus James charts the course for his heroine� unlike his earlier protagonists such as Isabel

Archer or Fleda Ve tch, who allow emotion rather than reason to direct their actions, Maggie succeeds through secret knowledge to restore her marriage . Still, knowledge falls away after a time � the more that Haggie knows about her husband 's affair, the less she wants to know. By the end of the novel, love triumphs where knowledge fails. 356

The second set of uses of "know" begins with Maggie 's quest for absolute knowledge as she badgers Fanny with questions. After sending Amerigo and Char1otte on another weekend together, Maggie asks, "'What awfulness, in heaven 's name , is there between them? What do you believe , what do you know? '," though she is answered by Fanny 's

"stare of ignorance" and a chal lenge of Maggie 's own suspicions, to which Maggie admits that "'I've been thinking for months and months, and I've no one to turn to , no one to help me to make things out; no impression but my own

Help me to find out what I imagine "' (II 107, 108 ,

109) • Fanny replies by flattering Maggie and evading her question , trying to conv ince Maggie that such knowledge is beyond her and thus not worth seeking:

"You 've never affected me , from the first hour I beheld you , as any thing but absolutely good and sweet and beautiful. I've never thought of you but as outside of ugly things , so ignorant of any falsity or cruelty or vulgarity as never to have to be touched by them or to touch them. " (II 111)

Fanny be lieves, as does Adam , that Magg ie is still a child not capable of dealing with evil, even when it threatens her be ing and her marriage . Quite rightly , Maggie attempts to return her conversation Hith Fanny to the subject of knowledge rather than of her own character when she indig- nantly asks, "'You've only bel ieved me contented then because you 've believed me stupid?' , " though Fanny again 357 evades the answer by reverting to a character analysis

(II 111) . When Haggie asserts that the adulterers know that she is suspicious , Fanny "quavers ," for their knowledge would implicate her , a realization which is the focus of the fol lowing chapter in which Fanny discusses with Bob the possible effects of this revelation upon her relations with Maggie and , most importantly , Adam . Although Bob does not understand how Maggie, if ignorant, can harm Fanny, she believes that even if Maggie and Adam do know , they will forgive her :

"But it's with Maggie only that I'm directly con cerned; nothing ever--not a breath , not a look , I'J 1 guarantee--shall I have , whatever happens , from Mr . Verver himself. So it is therefore that I shall probably by the closest possible shave escape the penalty of my crimes ." (II 130)

This statement functions to help the reader in two ways: it not only establishes Fanny as an accomplice in the adultery , however we l l-meaning she wa s, but it also prepares the reade r for Adam's reaction to the affair, for he shows the reader just the same face wh ich Fanny predicts--

"not a breath, not a look ." Fanny also continues by dissecting Maggie 's cognitive and emotional processes with this analysis:

"It is n' t a question of belief or of proof, absent or present; it's inevitably with her a question of natural perception, of insurmountab le feeling. She irresistibly knows that there 's something between them. But she has n't 'arrived ' at it, as you say, at all; that 's exactly what she 358

has n't done , what she so steadily and intensely refuses to do. So far from wanting proof- which she must get , in a ma nner, by my siding with her--she wants disproof, as against herself, and - has appealed to --roe, so extraordinarily , to side against her . . If I'll take care of Charlotte in particular she 'll take care of the Prince II {II 131)

Thus , Fanny predicts what will happen in the closing book of the novel. She accurately describes the dichotomy under which Maggie must act--of wanting , and of not wanting, to know the truth about betrayal of love and trust, a split between being morally right and emotionally bereft.

This dilemma is underscored by Fanny 's que stion in the early pages of the novel, in which she equates morality with high intelligence {I 8 8) . Despite all her "intelligence ," Fanny is unable to be "moral," that is, to aid her friends in finding or creating truth, justice, and virtue rather than in playing "mind games" \vh ich result in distress for her and the other characters. Such a dichotomy lies beneath James 's mo st effective novels, especially The

Awkward Age , The Wings of the Dove , and The Ambassadors , in which intelligent characters must resolve the opposition betwe en innocence and experience and learn from their mistaken judgments wh ile trying to forgive or forget the mistakes. In the end, Maggie will try to do both by refusing to confront Amerigo . Maggie will be right morally and yet emotionally "not right," but she will seek to preserve her marriage by not acknowledging either to any one , not 359 even to herself. Fogel sees this assimilation of the dichotomy as proof of Maggie 's superior consciousness:

"what qualifies Maggie Verver's intelligence as superlative is an essential moral component independent of mere inte l lectual power. Her intelligence , that is, is moral as we ll as worldly" (110) . Thus we may rephrase Fanny 's question as it applies to Maggie to ask "What is intelligence with out high morality?"

However, Maggie is not the only character in the novel seeking knowledge . As Fanny bel ieves, the Prince and

Charlotte will be tormented by their ignorance of what knowledge Maggie possesses, while Fanny and Bob will not be privy, after the scene in which Fanny smashes the golden bowl , to any more of Maggie 's conjectures. Adam' s knowl edge of the affair is always a bit doubtful until the final scenes at Fawns and Portland Place . Still, the majority of knowledge images cluster around Maggie , and never in such proliferation as in the third set seen in the ninth and tenth chapters of Book IV.

One of the two mo st dramatic scenes in the novel (the other being Maggie 's confrontation wi th Charlotte on the terrace) , this scene in which Maggie interrogates Fanny is perhaps the crux of the imagery of cognition and knowledge .

After Maggie reveals to Fanny her "possession at last . of real knowledge" (II 201) , she refuses to allow this 360 possession to possess her; instead , she acknowledges that

"knowledge was a fascination as well as a fear ," so much so

that it ultimately becomes an "aggravation" (II 141, 163) .

Although there is "some knowledge she required" so

that she did not fail because of "the completeness of past

ignorance ," Maggie acquiesces to the shattering of the

bowl , perhaps with relief that it can no longer bear wit

ness to her husband 's infidel ity (II 158, 160) . Still, the

gol den bowl is proof of Maggie 's growing awareness of the

situation surrounding her .

Even Fanny , who swears her ignorance is perfect (II

161, 169) , perj ures herself when she admits that "Maggie

herself saw the truth There was a force in the

Princess's mere manner about it that made the detail of

what she knew a matter of minor importance" (II 168) . This

statement, more than any other in the novel, provides the

antithesis of Fanny 's earlier formu la for morality (I 88) .

Morality , as Maggie discovers, is more than just intelli

gence or a superior fasade ; truth and justice reside in the soul , as well as in the mind. Although Charlotte and

Amerigo are smart enough to hide their relationship for six

years, they are not as perceptive to Maggie 's maturation

and he r American insistence on freedom based on knowledge

and recognition of truth and integrity in human inter

actions. As in her dealings with other characters, to 361

Maggie the process of equity means as much to her as the result; in this case, she is not so shocked by the knowledge she receives from the shopkeeper as by how and through whom it comes about, a situation which not only shake s her trust in her husband but also disturbs her confidence in

Adam's peace of mind (II 193 , 176) . As Yeazell writes,

James 's later novels do not finally give us intel ligence rather than full consciousness: what the late style dramatizes is the painful struggle of the intelligence literally to come to terms with

full consciousness . (18)

This struggle is the process which Maggie must undertake in order to survive ; the depth of her understanding and the clarity of her vision are evident in her triumph in this struggle, which intens if ies when Amerigo enters the room and which is shown in one of the few blatantly symbolic scenes in James 's works, in which he depicts Maggie 's mental contortions by her analogous physical endeavors to hold together the fragments of the shattered bowl , a demonstration which must be carried out so that Amerigo understands her position :

under Amerigo 's eyes she picked up the shining pieces . . . only to find however that she could carry but two of the fragments at once . she could only lay the almost equal parts of the vessel carefully beside their pedestal and leave them thus before her husband 's eyes He should have no doubt of it whatever; she knew, and

her broken bowl was proof that she knew-- (II 182-83)

During this period of time it becomes apparent that Amerigo

"would have to think ," although it was a "strain on his own 362 wit" ; meanwhile, Maggie realizes that "though the bowl had been broken her reason had n't" and that she is "finally sure , knowing everything" (II 183 , 184 , 185) . In sentences which provide many clues to the resolution of the amb igu- i ty believed by some critics to strain the credulity of

Maggie 's task, James reveals her conscious , intelligent decision to he lp Amerigo to think, a decision based on the emotionality of the situation which Maggie must attempt to control or she will lose herself and her hu sband in a jealous , vindictive act :

It had operated within her now to the last intens ity, her glimpse of the precious truth that by her helping him, helping him to help himself, as it were , she should help him to he lp her . Had n't she fairly got into his labyr inth with him? She offered her thus assuredly a kind of support that was n't to have been imagined in advance and that moreover required . . some close looking at before it could be bel ieved in and pronounced void of treachery. (II 187)

Although Maggie is assessing Ame rigo 's possible reaction to her generous offer, James might well be anticipating his readers ' reactions to such an altruistic response on

Maggie 's part. The reader 's surprise reflects Amerigo 's own he sitancy to enter into a discussion about an affair with a wronged woman. But Maggie bel ieves that her conscious desire to help Amerigo will aid him in reaching a decision about his relationship with Charlotte . By this

"certain traceable process," she will gain her husband 's respect, admiration, and love as he comes to know her, and 363 the reader might be expected to allow Maggie the same generosity of purpose.

Wisely, �-1aggie emphasizes not her hurt , nor even her love for her husband, in this scene; instead, she chooses to stress her knowledge of the matter before them:

"What I now know I've learned since--I learned this afternoon , a couple of hours ago [Fannyl was the first person I wanted to see- becau se I knew she 'd know . Know more about what I had learned, I mean, than I could make out for myself. I made out as much as I could for myself--" . (II 188-90)

As she ceases "'to be as I was. tlot to know ' , " she creates in her husband a desire to know her; his "hard yearning " results from "this iteration of her knowledge [her) possession at last of real knowledge" (II 202, 200-

01) . She also instills in Amerigo a fear that Adam knows of the affair, through wh ich she learns that Charlotte is ignorant . This, in fact , gives Haggie her touchstone and her clue in handling the entire situation , once she knows how mu ch her father knows :

. Charlotte . . knew as little as [Amerigo) had known . This vision loomed in this light, it fairly glared for the few seconds--the vision of the two others alone together at Fawns, and Charlotte . . having gropingly to go on , always not knowing and not knowing! The picture flushed at the same time with all its essential colour- that of the so possible identity of her father 's motive and principle with her mm . (II 202)

Such an intu ition imparts enough courage to Maggie for her

to dare her husband to match her knowledge . Once she 364 learns that no collaboration exists between Charlotte and

Adam, or even between Charlotte and Amerigo, now that he knows of her knowledge , then Maggie can create knowledge of her own through intuition and vision. What matters is not what Adam knows or does not know , but what Charlotte and

Ame rigo think he knows . Knowledge does indeed cease to exist for the characters, and they mu st find other means of creating a new existence for themselves, one not relying on appearances and what Schneider terms the "prehensile eye"

(106) . Such knowledge must extend beneath and beyond knowledge based on mere facts; it is based on what Douglas

Keesey calls "understanding" ( 82) , a sense of perspective which treats the subtleties underlying life and which become s the "better knowledge" of vision (II 292) , a vision acknowledging la condition humaine and bordering on the divine . Of course, this suggestion is not new to Jamesian criticism. I believe , however , that James 's own vision is expressed never so well as in The Golden Bowl , and that the mode of obtaining knowledge he allows his characters differs from knowledge gained through experience . This visionary quality in Adam and Maggie allows a depth of emotional experience without the actual loss of innocence

suffered through physical experience . The aforementioned beatific visions deemed essential by the Cistercians for a oneness with God seem closest to the type of experience

James describes his characters as seeing . 365

Visions, Seeing

Gale 's statement that "Characters in James who seek

knowledge are frequently imaged as seeking light, flame ,

fire" (169) does not apply in large degree to the charac

ters of The Golden Bowl . Rather, the reverse seems to be

true--knowledge, usually in the form of strange visions ,

seeks out the characters, for the plot of the novel is

structured around the dictum that no character wants to

know the truth or obtain knowledge about the other char

acters , not until Maggie chafes under her constraints and

begins to "see" her situation. The others do not want to

see anything other than their own preconception s or delu

sions about their lives, preferring to let Adam create the

illusions they need. Ultimately , their psyches begin to

reject such illusions, as the compulsive frenetic activity

of Charlotte 's day "on the town" illustrates; their souls

become restless and crave freedom and consciousness.

Carnal and secular knowledge suffice for Charlotte and the

prince for most of the novel, but Amerigo 's assertion that

Charlotte is stupid and that he sees only Maggie indicates

that he desires other forms of knowledge , although he needs

Maggie to show him how to obtain them.

As in the earlier discuss ion of the superficial sought

to prove , Amerigo and Charlotte are the most visible and

appearance-conscious of the characters because of their 366 physical beauty and their des ire to be seen, an appreciation of their beauty which reinforces their value for the other characters . In the first pages of the novel ,

Amerigo , although affianced only minutes before , eyes the beauties parading along Bond Street in quite the same manner as he mentally disrobes Charlotte an hour later

(I 4, 45) . Like mo st men , Ame rigo is stimulated by the visual and in particular by the feminine form. However , this emphasis on the physical, necessary for the reader 's acceptance of Amerigo 's attraction to Charlotte , becomes secondary to the use of "sight" a few pages later to mean

insight or comp rehension when the prince charts the course of the novel by telling Maggie , "'You see too much

':.-Jhen you don' t . see too little "' (I 11) . In order to

gain some understanding of the Americans ' way of "seeing ," described as a "great white curtain ," Amerigo needs Fanny 's eyes--and her insight resulting from being both American

and European , a cosmopolitan qua lity Jame s describes as

"the eyes of the American city looking out . . from under

the lids of Jerusalem" (I 22, 34-35) . These eyes Amerigo

calls upon to guide him in his exploration :

"I'm excellent , I really think , all round--except that I'm stupid. I can do pretty well anything I see . But I've got to see it first . . I don 't in the least mind its having to be shown me--in fact I like that better. Therefore it is that I want , that I shall always want, your eyes. Through them I wish to look--even at the risk of the ir showing me what I may n't like." (I 30) 367

Schneider rightly castigates such an attitude when he notes that James "created a world peopled with those lack ing a moral sense , men who have only a visual sense .

They live , the se aggressors , exclusive ly in the world of the eye , of the vain appearance" (107) . Over three hundred uses of eyes, watching , seeing , or vision are appropriated by James to portray the world of appearances . Jame s also seems to be l ieve that the eyes of an individual provide both attraction to and insight into a character , for in describing the six characters and some of the minor charac ters of The Golden Bowl , Jame s concentrates on facial qual ities, especial ly the eyes (I 4, 21 , 30 , 34, 42, 66, 131 ,

144 , 170, 190, 230 , II 50 , 59, 269) , in addition to refer ring several times to the "bandaged" eyes which Maggie must wear in order to complete her mission. From the first page of the novel to the last, the eyes play an immense role in the imagery of the novel.

Such an equation of sight with knowledge and the consequent delusion of the equating of appearances with truth, so fittingly expressed 1n the image of the bowl itself, leads the characters into a replay of Oedipus Rex .

If Maggie is intelligent enough to ask the right questions , she might be able to solve the riddle of her life with

Amerigo and Adam, but first she must look ''behind " the appearances. Innocence , in The Golden Bowl , is defined as 368

"seeing without seeing ," of accepting the superficial with out seeking the unseen motivations and emotions of the characters, a definition which accords Maggie her triumph .

The function of the visions of the characters is to make them aware of the unseen . Such experiences are manifestations of a subconscious desire to know , or even of deep knowledge itself which is repressed in the characters , emerging in a sort of compulsive sight which shines upon their ignorance and innocence . At times , this revelatory foresight is charged with mysticism and functions as an almost religious experience . The auras commence typically

in blinding flashes of light and bathe the recipient in a golden glow from which he or she emerges with renewed vigor and understanding. Each character in the novel has a vision of some sort which aids the reader in varying degrees .

As with many important men in history (such as

Alexander the Great, to whom Adam is compared) , Adam , whose vision appears first in the novel, relies on revela

tory foresight in his decision-making. His retrospective vision of his career conveys a great deal to the reader,

including a reinforcement of Maggie 's assertion that her

father is a romantic for all his business acumen . Despite

the demands upon his time and attention , Adam yearns for

quiet in which to receive these visions , wh ich are always

associated with light and knowledge : 369

. it had never for many minutes toge ther been his portion not to feel himself surrounded and committed , never quite been his refreshment to make out where the many-coloured human appeal , represented by gradations of tint , diminishing concentric zones of intensity , of inportunity , really faded to the impersonal whiteness for which his vision sometime s ached . The spark of fire , the point of light , sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twin kles in the dark perspective of a church (I 126-27)

Although Philip Grover states that "what we have learned of

Adam Verver has not prepared us for such extended flights

of fancy " (183) , such a yearning in Adam indeed does

prepare the reader for Adam's more romantic and grandiose

metaphors which follow, in wh ich he compares Amerigo to a

Palladian church and a crystal and Maggie to a nymph and a

nun ( I 1 3 5 - 4 0 , 1 8 7 - 8 8 ) . In fact, James very expressly

tells the reader not to stereotype Adam as a simple Yankee

busines sman , as do Grover and Mercer , when he notes the

"The play of vision was at all events so rooted in him that

he could receive impressions of sense even wh ile positively

thinking" (I 188) ; that is, he could experience sensations

while intellectualiz ing them , a trait which some critics

condemn in his daughter as it approaches extreme detach-

ment , although I doubt if James wanted it to appear so.

Although Adam seems astute, and even wise on occasion, and

is able to see through most superficialities , he neglects

to heed one of his vis ions when he fails to press Charlotte 370 about her objections to their marriage (I 220) . His lengthiest vision is also the most spectacular to wh ich we are privy in the novel; with the force of an aura or a hallucination , Adam's vision inspires him take the step which will change four lives drastically :

Before such a question , as before several others when they recurred, he would come to a pause , leaning his arms on the old parapet and losing himself in a far excursion . He had as to so many of the matters in hand a divided view, and this was exactly what made him reach out, in his unrest , for some idea , lurking in the vast fresh ness of the night, at the breath of which ois parities would submit to fus ion and so , spreading before him, make him feel he floated. . Light broke for him at last . . As at a turn of his labyrinth he saw his issue , which opened out so wide , for the minute , that he held his breath with wonder . He was afterwards to recall how just then the autumn night seemed to clear to be a view in which the whole place , everything round him . lay there as under some strange midnight sun. It all met him during the se instants as a vast expanse of oiscovery , a world that looked , so lighted, extraordinarily new , and in which famil iar objects had taken on a distinctness that, as if it had been a loud , a spoken pretension to beauty , interest, importance , to he scarce knew what, gave them an inordinate quantity of char acter and verily an inordinate size. The hallu cination, or whatever he might have called it, was brief , but it lasted long enough to leave him gasping. The gasp of admiration had by this time however lost itself in an intensity that quickly followed--the way the wonder of it, since wonder was in question , truly had been the strange delav of his vision . He had these several days groped and groped for an object that lay at his feet and as to which his blindness came from his stupidly looking beyond . It had sat all the while at his hearthstone, whence it now gazed up in his face . Once he had recognized it there everything became coherent. The sharp point to which all his light converged was the whole call of his 371

future . When it had all supremely cleared the cool darkness had again closed round him, but his moral lucidity wa s constituted. (I 205-08)

No stronger a vision could come to Adam without the aid of a crystal ball or the opium from his metaphorical den

(II 92) . Its power is such that it directs six lives for five hundred pages more in the novel and beyond , since

Adam's vision is altered somewhat to include life in Ameri- can City .

His wife 's vision also alters dramatically during the course of the novel. Charlotte 's vision, however, is not aimed at aiding Haggie or even Adam , but is directed to obtaining her own desire in the form of the handsome prince . In one of the few chapters that allow us to know

Charlotte 's motivations, she appears so immersed in her image of herself that she is obl ivious to others . After

Charlotte sees that Fanny 's criticism "was much more sharpened than blurred ," the triumphant beauty 's vision strikes her forcefully :

the vision in her was now rapidly he lping her to recognize a precious chance, the chance that might n't again soon be so good for the vivid making of a point. Her point was before her: it was sharp , bright , true : above all it was her own . (I 254-55)

After Fanny responds exactly the way in which Charlotte envis ioned, the younger woman feels supremely justified in 372

"fixing" Fanny as she feels her stepdaughter "fixes" her .

Deluded by her confidence in her own manner of "fixing" situations , Charlotte resumes her vision, entranced by it and herself:

[they ] addressed her a remark that failed to penetrate the golden glow in which her intellect was temporarily bathed. She had made her point and her success was reflected in the faces of the two men of distinction before her She at first but watched the reflexion . . then she made out what the Ambassador was say ing (I 264)

Thus , Charlotte 's vision is similar to Adam's hallucination in two ways; its impact upon her intellect is so overwhelming that all else is forgotten temporarily (these visions even are described in similar language), and it blinds

Charlotte to the reality of the situation she faces, although Charlotte seems to need such deliberate delusion to bolster her affair with the Prince .

Likewise, Amerigo 's vision of Charlotte on the rainy

March afternoon on wh ich the affair recommences de ludes him as to his obligations to his wife and his father-in- law. Re stless, bored , neglected , Amerigo envisions a bleak married life resembling financial transactions more than emotional interchanges with the others. As with

Char lotte 's and Adam' s visions, Amerigo 's occur s during a moment of ref lexion during an emotional crisis. His thought 373

resembled perhaps more than anything else those fine waves of clearness through which, for a watcher of the east, dawn at last trembles into rosy day . The illumination indeed was all for the mind , the prospect revealed by it a mere immensity of the world of thought . (I 294)

Charlotte steps into his vision with an immediacy wh ich portends, to the Prince 's mind , a destiny wh ich they must

accept : "Charlotte Stant turning up for him at the very climax of his special inner vision , wa s an apparition charged with a congruity at which he stared almost as if it had been a violence" (I 295) . When she enters the room and his dream, the Prince has a moment of dej � vu so inten se

that, although he knows they share no such history , he

feels they together mu st create such a vision :

. his vision of alternatives (he could scarce say what to call them , solutions , sa tis factions) opened out altogether He could n't have told what particular links and gaps had at the end of a few minutes found themselves renewed and bridged . . The sense of the past revived for him nevertheless as it had n't yet done : it made that other time somehow meet the future close , interlocking with it as in a long embrace (I 297-98)

In such a manner , Amerigo 's vision prefigures the events in

the following chapter which culminates with the mo st pas-

sionate embrace in all of James 's fiction. By heed ing such

a vision , Amerigo in effect "wishes it so," although his

Mediterranean heritage causes him to blame his actions upon

fate . His own "beatific vision" occurs when Charlotte

utters "the luminous idea" which "had been the substance of 374 his own vision"--that his responsibility to his wife and his father-in-law lay in becoming his stepmother-in-law 's

lover (I 310) . Such a delusion strikes one as even more perverse than those of Charlotte and Adam .

Earlier I asserted that these visions constitute a

revelation of unknown knowledge to the characters. The

aforementioned visions seem to contradict such a statement

unless one agrees that not all knowledge or experience is

intellectual or factual. These visions embody emotional

realities wh ich must be acknowledged despite the physical

demands of the situation in which these characters find

themse lves. As means of escape from "knowledge ," the

visions assume an almost compulsive quality and are so

intense that once experienced, they become solid realities

for the characters, points of departure which determine

the succeeding actions in the novel. However, because

Charlotte , Amerigo and Adam are completely overwhelmed by

these visions, those of Fanny and Bob, who are more objec

tive , aid the reader in greater degree.

Fanny 's vision, occurring after her interview with

Charlotte , appears with the frightfulness of nightmare

in which her imagination returns to the important water

imagery of the first book . Amerigo 's explanation of his

relatioriship with Charlotte heightens Fanny 's perception of

this new development and forces Fanny to reinterpret her

view of the situation : 375

The crystal flash [sic] of her innermost attention really received it on the spot , and she had even already the vision of how , in the snug laboratory of her afterthought , she should be able chemically to analyse it. (I 271)

This feeling is compounded when , at the conclusion of her discussion with Amerigo , she feels that

She had stood for the prev ious hour in a merciless glare , beaten upon by intimations of her mistake . It had become , for the occasion preposterously terror--of which she must shake herself free before she could possibly measure her ground . The sense of seeing was strong in her , but she clutched at the comfort of not being sure of what she saw. (I 276-77)

Indeed , Fanny takes the unprecedented step of con-

sul ting her husband , with "the truth of his plain vision"

(I 284) , so as to obtain an honest point of reference on which to regain her bearings , a step wh ich she must retrace

after the weekend at Matcham. Once more James uses water/ boat imagery to illustrate the play of imagination which

Fanny must employ to absolve herself from complicity ·with

the lovers. However, as her imagination not only fails to

reassure her but instead serves to implicate her further ,

Fanny 's vision provides knowledge which she does not wish

to know. Although she assures Bob that she has "seen" and

thus "knows" the truth of the matter , Fanny lies to herself

and her husband . Instead ,

The eyes indeed of the poor lady's rested on her com�anion 's meanwhile wi th the lustre not so much of intenser insight as of a particular portent that he had at various other times had occasion to 376

recognize. She desired obviously to reassure him , but it apparently took a couple of large candid gathering glittering tears to emphasize the fact . (370-71)

As Fanny has been blinded not only by tears but also by the deficiency of her vision , Bob seeks to aid her; "He had spoken before in this light of a plain man's vis ion , but he

must be something more than a plain man now" (I 3 7 5) . As

Bob consoles Fanny by entering her "boat ," she recovers enough of true vision to see that her way from blindness into light is to throw her support from Charlotte to Maggie and to embellish Maggie 's vision vli th her own .

Certainly, Maggie inherits her extraordinary visionary ability from her father. She has more visions than the other characters combined , perhaps as a symptom of her repression of knowledge of her husband 's infidelity and of her father 's handl ing of that affair . Maggie 's "job" in the novel is to accept the truth by maturing into knowledge of the world, of losing her naivete but not her faith and love ; in other words, to learn about life without becoming cynical or bitter . Her visions allow her to perform such a task by being "waking dreams " in which she can assume many guises and participate in the situation emotionally and intellectually if not physically . The tremendous impact of her visions upon the reader accounts in a large degree for the wealth of imagery and the sympathy for Maggie engendered by such imagery in the second volume . Within her 377 visions occur the impressive images of coach , cage , beast, and scapegoat which influence the reader 's interpretation of the novel.

One aspect of Maggie 's visions wh ich contributes considerably to the discuss ion of ambiguity in the novel is their ability to overpower physical reality . The scene s which Maggie envisions, such as her imaginary declaration of love to Amerigo and her response to Charlotte 's "entrapment" in Book V evince such solid reality that many readers cannot tell what happens in the novel and what Maggie imagines, a mistake leading to the varying interpretations which have caused the novel to be viewed as ambiguous .

Appearing earliest as Maggie 's vision of her life as a carriage ride (to be discussed more fully in the section on freedom) . Like her predecessor Isabel Archer, Maggie contemplates her position in a nocturnal reverie:

She had a long pause before the fire during which she might have been fixing with intensity her projected vision , have been conscious even of its taking an absurd, a fantastic shape . . Maggie found in this image a repeated challenge; again and yet again she paused before the fire : after which, each time , in the manner of one for whom a strong light has suddenly broken, she gave herself to livelier movement. She had seen herself at last , in the picture she was studying , suddenly jump from the coach; whereupon , frankly, with the wonder of the sight, her eyes opened wider and her heart stood still for a moment. She looked at the person so acting as if this person were somebody else, waiting with inten sity to see what would follow. The person had taken a decision--which was evidently because an impulse long gathering 378

had at last felt a sha rpest pressure . Only how was the decision to be applied ?--what in partic ular would the figure in the picture do? (II 23- 24)

As if she were a film editor piecing together a celluloid ,

Maggie splices together the slices of her life by replaying

such a "moving picture" or vision until it provides enough

clues to knowledge for her to act upon . If she can "see"

herself acting in certain ways , she will overcome her

inertia and replicates such movements which are necessary

for the resolution of her problem.

Quite often these visions unsettle Maggie, causing her

to retreat from what she sees; like Fanny , she sometimes

refuses to acknowledge the obvious. For example, when she

recalls life with her father before Amerigo and Charlotte ,

she feels faint :

. the light of their ancient candour , shining from so far back, had seemed to bring out some things so strangely that, with the sharpness of the vision, she had risen to her feet th e picture , in her vis ion , had suddenly swarmed . The vibration was that of one of the lurches of the mystic train in which , with her companion , she was

travelling . (II 95)

Likewise, when Adam announces the cancellation of their

trip to Spain, Maggie notes the lovers ' reaction with

similar symptoms :

There were thus some five wonderful minutes dur ing which they loomed, to her sightless eyes, on either side of her, larger than they had ever loomed before , larger than life, larger than thought , larger than any danger or any safety . There was thus a space of time in fine , fairly

vertiginous for her . (II 53) 379

Noting such disorientation in his wife, Amerigo attempts to

reassure her sexually while in their carriage, an action

which triggers an unexpected response:

Her inner vision fixed it once more , this atti tude , saw it in the others as vivid and concrete , extended it straight from her companion to Charlotte what she really saw of a sudden was that her stepmother might report her as above

all concerned . (II 64, 66)

The more Maggie imagines Amerigo and Charlotte connected

somehow , the farther back she withdraws; such a negative

reaction , however, signals to Amerigo her concern , espe-

cially for her father. Later , Maggie 's imagination, like

that of her father, takes "a long excursion" in which she

has "the vision of what a summer at Fawns, with Amerigo and

Charlotte still more eminently in presence against that

higher sky , would bring forth" (II 86) , a vision which

foreshadows her later vision which

gave her all strangely enough the still further light that Charlotte , for herself, knew as little as [Amerigo ] had known . The vision loomed in this light, it fairly glared for a few seconds --the vision of the two others alone together at Fawns, and Charlotte , as one of them, having gropingly to go on , always not knowing and not knowing! (II 202)

One reason for Maggie 's empathy with Charlotte may be

her knowledge of Charlotte 's position as being the one who

is the fourth wheel; such visions help Maggie to unde r-

stand Char lotte and to help her friend keep her dignity .

Maggie 's realization that they have reversed positions (see 380 the figure in Chapter 1) allows her to respond more gener ously than other women might .

Other visions of Charlotte emphasize such empathy as when Maggie sees Charlotte "really off in some darkness of space ," or when "by way of a fantastic flight of divina tion" Maggie "saw her , face to face with the Prince , take from him the chill of his strictest admonition ," or when

Adam 's threat to return to American City becomes "a blur of light in the midst of which she saw Charlotte like some object marked by contrast in blackness, saw her waver in the field of vision , saw her removed, transported ,

doomed" (II 2 50 , 282, 271) . The most powerful visions of

Charlotte , though , are those in which Maggie imagines her as a caged or haltered beast (II 229-30 , 235, 239, 241,

283 , 286- 87, 292) , "an agitating image " (II 240) because it forces Maggie to examine her own presumption s, motives, and actions taken after her first eventful nonresponse in the carriage . Although these images might create in some readers sympathy for Charlotte , I believe James intended that they function more to enlighten the reader about

Maggie and her magnaminity toward those who would harm her under the guise of protection. As noted in the section on aggression , Maggie 's images imply injury to herself, not to

Charlotte . Also , Maggie projects quite a bit of her own personality into these images; possibly she feels great 381 empathy for Charlotte not only because of their former friendship but also because of the emotional reality of the images. That is, Maggie knows how she would feel if she lost Amerigo to a rival (which is why she is fighting so hard to keep him) and projects such a response onto

Charlotte . The reader has no knowledge of Charlotte 's reaction other than that reported by Maggie; there is every indication that Charlotte 's passion for the Prince would

"fizzle out" in recriminations and grief if allowed to continue much longer. If Amerigo bel ieves Charlotte to be stupid and undesirable, the possibility exists that

Charlotte feels the same of him. But for Maggie, such a reaction to Amerigo 's abandonment is emotionally impossible and one with which she cannot identify.

Not as symptomatic of paranoia or inferiority are

Maggie 's visions as artist/ creator . The most intense of these visions, the images which strike her on the terrace so powerfully also impact the reader forcefully. Visions involving art or artistic endeavor occur chiefly in the second half of the second volume , when Maggie has achieved partial knowledge from the golden bowl and has planned her steps accordingly. Because of Maggie 's improved self confidence , the aggressive images decrease and those of knowledge and creativity increase, especially in the terrace scene and the following chapters. Still, these 382 visions appall her by their :meaning , a signifying of her power and control over the situation . As she views her companions wh ile they play cards ,

There reigned for her absolutely during these vertiginous moments that fascination of the mon strous, that temptation of the horribly possible , which we so often trace by its breaking out suddenly in unexplained retreats and reactions. she might sound out their doom in a single sentence . . she had faced that blinding light and felt it turn to blackness (II 223-34)

Out of the darkness arise the visions of the scapegoat, the caravan , and the playwright (II 234-36); while Maggie rejects the artist's "terrible" portrayal of the scapegoat and her analogous function as being to no one 's satisfaction and also denies herself the other extreme of righteous fury , she seems to accept the position of dramatist as she recognizes her respons ibilities to all involved . Unlike the painter who creates only a static and two-dimensional

"life," the dramatist may reconstruct reality in space and time using actors who for the moment surrender their iden- tities to the imagination of the playwright. Such an analogy fits Maggie 's actions in the novel, as the other characters, including the great actress Charlotte , must acquiesce to Maggie 's imagination in order to act out the imagined whole . In a novel whose imagery is dominated by images of appearances, James is justified in presenting his heroine as a creator of appearances wh ich serve her moral purpose . 383

Two of Maggie's last vis ions associate themselves with

Adam, and in them she recre ates her father in images designed to gain her enough con£ idence and stability to continue her life without him:

The "successful" beneficient person , the beautiful bountiful original dauntlessly wilful great citi zen ...po sitively , under the impression , seemed to loom larger than life for her, so that she saw him during these moments in a light of recognition wh ich had had its brightness for her at many an hour of the past, but which had never been so intense ....Be fore she knew it she was lifted aloft by the consciousness that he was simply a great and deep and high little man , and that to love him with tenderness was not to be distin guished a whit from loving him with pride . . It was like a new confidence . . . his strength was her strength, her pride was his, and they were decent and competent together. (II 273-75)

This confidence is compounded a few weeks later when Maggie feels "the slow surge of a vision" overcome her at Portland

Place (II 359) . Once again she unites her father 's ability to judge aesthetically with her own to judge morally and deems both to be successes. James 's use of visions creates an atmo sphere in wh ich readers may agree with Maggie .

One of Fanny 's functions in the novel is to augment

Naggie ' s vision so that they do not become simply "waking dreams ." Once she has helped Maggie to "see" her si tua- tion , however, Fanny is dispensable. Maggie and Fanny trade visions of Adam (II 173, 303) , of Amerigo (II 213) , and of Charlotte (II 213, 303) . The effect of Fanny 's words upon Maggie on these occasions James presents as 384 making "a picture somehow for the Princess the pic ture that the words of others , whatever they might be , always made for her , even when her vision was already charged , better than any words of her own" (II 303) .

By the novel's conclusion, Fanny accepts Maggie 's vision as the true and only solution to the circumstances

Fanny initiated. The force of Adam's and Maggie 's vis ions upon the others contribute s greatly to their aesthetic and moral power in the novel. In Adam's case, the visions includes not only a perception of the requirements of the aesthetic imagination as typified by his countless trea sures on their \·Jay to the American City museum but also a moral forethought which is personified by the joining of his daughter 's wealth and American innocence with the

Prince 's beauty and European heritage . Maggie, able to project her father 's vision and enlarge upon it , carries her idea of the marriage further as it evolves into a relation ship greater than just a marriage of cultures and institutions . By ente ring into a world of appearances and exorcising the "evil eye" of seeing only the superficial,

Maggie is able by the novel 1 s end to see far more than her father or her husband know . Her vis ion of Charlotte deprived is vision enough to ensure Maggie 1 s sympathy and forgiveness, an act she also extends to her husband in the last scene . 385

The uses of the words "sight" and "see" cluster around the aforementioned visions, wi th the majority occurring after Maggie purchases t. he golden bowl . For example, the scenes in which Maggie confronts Fanny and Ame rigo with the evidence of the bowl are imaged almost exclusively with knowledge , sight, and vi sian metaphors. Social occasions , such as the parties and the balls, and confrontations between the characters are also dominated by these meta phors , as one would expect in situations in which appearances are of utmost concern. However, since critics such as Schneider, Gale, and Holder-Barell have examined sight and eye imagery extensively, I will refer reade rs to those discussions . No one reading The Golden Bowl can deny that these images are crucial to James 's themes .

I debated whether to emphasize knowledge or freedom as the dominant and pervasive theme of The Golden Bowl and decided , based on the paucity of actual images involving knowledge (although many sight images contribute to the concept of the intellect) , that the abundance of emotion ally charged and thought-provoking images of freedom and isolation support the contention that for James, knowledge is on ly the medium of freedom, the handmaiden holding the key wh ich opens the window through wh ich the soul flies .

Knowled�e makes us free; while it does necess itate experi ence \vh ich may destroy innocence , the loss is compensated by the increase of consciousness leading to freedom . 386

The Free

Throughout Jamesian fiction the contrast between the

"free" and the "bound" provides a model of the Hege lian dialectic which forms the basis for the dynamics of his work. Continually , characters who seem free because of their physical activity or, in some cases, because of their powers of manipulation or deception which allow them to take full advantage of situation s are presented as foils to characters who initial ly seem bound but who , thou gh pas sive , live a free life of the mind and spirit and so over come their more earthbound cohorts throu gh mental rather than physical activity , although when they make moves (as

Maggie does the night Amerigo returns from Gloucester) , the consequences are dramatic and far-reaching .

Ironically, such pass ive characters enact the roles of protagonists in many of Jame s 1 s novels; although Jame s 1 s use of the "psychological" aspects of the novel do not preclude a more active main character, wisdom advises that readers do not react favourab ly to an overabundance of both mental and physical activ ity , the result being too much of a good thing at best, or at worst, a confusing hodge-podge of frenticism. Thus, in order to allow his readers the leisure to follow the psychological activity in the novel , . James necessarily reduces the numbers of physical activi ties, or at least concentrates them in the secondary 387 characters so as not to detract from the "thinkers" in the novels.

Daniel J. Schneider discusses thoroughly the images of constraint seen in The Golden Bowl in his detailed study of

James 's imagery , The Crystal Cage . Taking as his thesis that "To be passive , to surrender to the world as it is, to allow oneself to be caged or trapped--this is the over whelming evil in James 's fiction" (140) , Schneider goes far indeed in convincing his audience that the struggle between those who would enslave and those who would be free is the

"figure in the carpet" of LT ames's fiction. Building upon his interpretation, I shall examine also the images of freedom and flight which congregate in the second volume to emphasize Maggie 's release from jealousy and fear to love and compassion .

One of the most striking aspects of The Golden Bowl for the late twentieth-century American reader must be the stifling atmosphere of the novel. True to the societal restrictions of his day , James hems in his characters with a schedule of social obligations, wh ich are reflections of the London "season" of which he had much to say in his

English Hours� other duties concomitant upon the upper class are such that Adam and Maggie Verver are constrained by their wealth also . Adam, a basically shy and unassuming man , is not a social creature, but he cannot refuse anyone 388 who appeals to him for aid or comfort, such as the Misses

Lutch. On the other hand , Maggie learns to participate in

society over the course of the novel simply to retain her husband 's attention . The spouses of father and daughter

appear freer, not on ly because they lack wealth (origi nally) but also because they have learned how to behave

socially, the Prince through his position and Charlotte by

the necessity of living with others year-round in order to

survive on her scant income .

Social restraints which limit the spatial and temporal

boundaries of the characters are not the only types seen in

the novel. As true Victorians, the characters are bound by

the nineteenth-century mores which prohibited the expres

sion of both doubts or fears about sexuality and its enj oy

ment and thus brought about the rather neurotic morality

which Amerigo condemns in the English (I 354) . As Haggie

breaks free of her self-imposed modesty and timidity, she

begins to enjoy her relationship with her husband , feels

the throbs which she had ignored before , and matures into

a passionate wife , another factor contributing to her

success.

Constraint

Through images of locks , bars , and cages , James

emphasizes the sexual and emotional claustrophobia wh ich

is most evident in Maggie; besides freeing herself from her 389 bondage to her father, she also must escape from the trap created by Amerigo and Charlotte , who force her into an arrangement she does not des ire. At first , Maggie believes that their plan is corollary to hers for an "existence more intelligently arranged" (II 22) , but to her horror she discovers instead

some required process of their own , a process operating quite positively as a precaution and a policy . They had got her and must keep her there . In that condition she would n' t interfere with the policy , wh ich was estab lished, which was arranged . . she had made out her husband and his colleague as directly inter ested in preventing her freedom of movement . Policy or no policy , it was they themselves who were arranged. She must be in position so as not to disarrange them. Of course they were arranged--all four arranged Amerigo and Charlotte were arranged together , but she--to confine the matter only to herself--was arranged apart . (II 44-45)

Unab le to approach her father to reveal this plan formed by

Charlotte and Amerigo , Maggie feels "definitely caught in opposition" as "she was, all round , imprisoned in the circle of the reasons it was impossible she should give"

Adam and of her replies to possible queries about Charlotte

(II 106) .

Expressed by many images , the idea of constraint or entrapment recurs throughout the novel, sometime s in connection with Maggie , sometimes with Amerigo . or Charlotte .

Several references to strings or springs compound the idea of enslavement , as if the weaker characters are slave 390 automatons controlled by an equally machine-like master , or in less modern terms, a puppeteer manipulating his mario nettes, as in Maggie 's image of the Prince "pulling wires and controlling" Charlotte in order to keep his mistre ss from alarming her husband (II 281) . James also implies with these images a heightened emotionalism or tension which comes near to breaking several times as the charac ters confront each other; such a technique also keeps the reader tensely anticipating the outcome of the affair. For example, as Fanny begins to realize her mistaken trust in

Amerigo and his "betrayal" of her plans, Bob notices in her

"the inner spring of this present comparative humility" wh ich combines with "the pressure of some spring on her inner vision" to frighten both him and the reader (I 336,

377) , a presentiment which surfaces again when Fanny is summoned to Maggie 's boudoir to view the golden bowl : "She knew on the spot . that her feared crisis had popped up as at the touch of a spring, that her impossible hour was before her" (II 151) . Immediate ly after she shatters the bowl on the marble floor , the Prince enters and speaks, a

"clear vibration of the touched spring as the first effect of Fanny 's speech" (II 179) . The Prince himself yields to these pressures several times in the novel , usually when his much-vaunted intuition does not carry him through situations, one example being his escape from 391

Fawns, when Charlotte 's incomprehension is evident, in order to keep "whatever inward springs familiar to the man of the world, he could keep from snapping ," or when

Charlotte pressures him to recommence their affair after her honeymoon by appealing to his protective instinct toward Maggie and Adam , an appeal which "moved him, in any case , as if some spring of his own , a weaker one , had sud denly been broken by it" (II 294, I 310) . The final force is applied by Maggie , when the full implication of her sacrifice and love "pressed again in him the fine spring of the unspeakable" (II 350) . She also feels inner compul sions which James depicts as pressure points , as when the sexual tens ion created by Amerigo after Gloucester became

"the spring acting within herself," a "spring of reckless ness" to which she must not accede or her intellectual faculties will not be able to plumb the situation (II 29,

17) . Twice James describes emotionally unsettling dis turbances as "an effect as penetrating as the sound that follows the pressure of an electric button " and the

"vulgar , prolonged . . . sharpness . . . that of an elec tric bell under pressure" (II 72 , 327) , referring to the doorbell which rasps as irritatingly as a fingernail on a chalkboard, a spine-jarring effect which reflects accur ately Maggie 's heightened sensitivity to her emotional and physical environments. As Maggie paces on the terrace at 392

Fawns and analyzes her situation , this sentience increases until her tension become s like "the key that could wind

and unwind without a snap of the spring" (II 23 6) .

"Snapping ," an occurrence mightily to be avoided, would undo all Maggie 's thinking and planning, making her weak ness evident not only to Amerigo and Charlotte but also to her father. Even Adam , serenely mysterious, is not exempt

from these compulsions , from emotions seemingly uncontrol

lab le in a man whose exterior is portrayed as that of a cool , objective aesthete . In fact, beauty , or his compre hension of his ability to assess beauty , is "The very

finest spring that ever responded to his touch [that] was always there to press" (I 150) , until his future alliance with Charlotte become s just as compelling , a "romantic

spring of association with stories and plays where handsome and ardent young men had soliloquies

ever on their lips" (I 210) . As their insistent ideals

about the romantic become realized in their spouses , Maggie and Adam fall prey to the type of entrapment of the mind

over the soul which Jame s portray s throughout his fiction.

A few other images of traps appear in the novel; they

also alarm the reader with their persistent theme . Early

in his relationship with Charlotte , Adam thinks of Paris

as "laid [with ] bristling traps all smothered in 393

flowers ," while Maggie imagines Charlotte at Fawn s much

later as having a "false response [which ] laid traps com pared to wh ich the imputation of treachery even accepted might have seemed a path of roses" (I 228 , II 300) .

Charlotte herself feels trapped in her marriage (although

she enters into it acknowledging what will be her duties) , complaining to Fanny that she is "'fixed as fast as a pin

stuck up to its head in a cushion. I'm placed--I can't

imagine any one more placed I II (I 256) . In the same

conversation she accuses Maggie of plotting to be with

Adam, an arrangement which disturbs Charlotte seemingly as much as her later "arrangements" with Amerigo irritate

Maggie (I 258) . Even Amerigo , as passive as he is , feels

somewhat hampered by his home-bound state when Charlotte

chides him for not be ing "on the town" (I 302) . However,

the majority of the "trapped" images fall to Maggie in the

second volume as she become s aware of "the great trap of

life" which threatens to bar her permanently from both

husband and father by creating barriers beyond which she

cannot venture (II 227) . Even Maggie 's admirable qualities

of compassion , sacrifice , and empathy are "traps set for

Maggie 's spirit at every turn of the road" (II 330) , for

they tempt her to ignore the moral consequences of the

adultery and to concentrate instead on the emotional losses

involved . Instead of succumb ing to such a temptation , 394 however, she decides to escape from the "happy confidence" wh ich foreboded "the possibility of a trap" (II 85) and to create a trap of her own , one designed to unite her with her husband :

She was keeping her head for a reason , for a cause; and the labour of this detachment held them together in the steel hoop of an inti macy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air (II 141)

Such a constraint become s an intellectualized substitute for the sexual passion which Maggie represses in order to escape from a larger trap , that of Amerigo 's sexual appeal , and it also serves as an apt contrast to the "artless passion" of Charl otte 's own trap for Amerigo and foretells

Maggie 's later triumph .

As effective as these metaphors are in presenting the conf inement of the characters to James 's audience, the most disturbing of the constraint images , for many critics, is the image of the cage or prison which occurs throughout the second volume . Schneider points out that "James 's resentment of the confining, narrowing, stultifying pressures of propriety and conformity wa s to stimulate him to examine limitation and conf inement in all areas of human experience" (117) , an examination beginning with Claire de Cintre in The American , continuing throughout James 's fiction as expressed by images of cages , prisons , finance , and obj ects d'art , and culminating in the experiences of Millie Theale 395

1n her Venetian palace and r1aggie Ve rver in her London townhouse and country estate .

Such images occur primarily in the second volume of

The Golden Bowl , as do most of the images of constraint, although one series of images commences in ·the opening pages of the novel. As do many bridegrooms , Amerigo views the signed prenuptial agreement as the shutting of one segment of his life and a subsequent loss of the freedom of his bachelorhood :

his fate had practically been sealed , and . the moment had something of the grimness of a crunched key in the strongest lock that could be made . It was already as if he were married . (I 4-5 )

This quite understandable attitude explains why Amerigo seeks solace from Fanny (to whom he describes marriage as a

"monster") and why he so definitely refuses Charlotte her one last fling . vJ i th the papers signed, legally he is married , for breach of contract may be brought against him if Maggie suspects his affections (not to mention his body) lie elsewhere . (LTame s explores the disastrous results of such a suit in The Bench of Desolation. ) But in describing himself as a galantuomo , Amerigo gives notice to the reader that marriage will constrain his actions with women in a degree even more frustrating than most men feel . There- fore , it is no surprise that when the lovely Miss Maddock visits Fawns , Fanny 's function is as a "jailor," albeit an 396 unnecessary one for such "a domesticated lamb tied up with pink ribbon" (I 161) . Not visibly chaffing from his mari-

tal tether , Amerigo gives no clue as to his dissatisfaction with his pos ition until Maggie notices his hesitation on

seeing the fragments of the golden bowl ; she had no idea as

to "how he was straitened and tied" by his marriage and

later by his affair with Charlotte (II 192) . Gradually,

the bonds tighten as Maggie 's knowledge grows and as he is

compelled to break confidence with his mistress, so that

Amerigo is imagined to be both imprisoned and cloistered:

"It was like his doing penance in sordid ways--being sent

to prison or being kept without money" (II 294) . Such a

condition intensifies after Maggie joins him at Portland

Place :

. after she had stepped into his prison . she recognized the virtual identity of his condi tion with that aspect of Charlotte 's situation for which she had found with so little seeking the similitude of the locked cage . He struck her as caged He had been turning twenty ways , for impatiences all his own , and when she \va s once shut in with hirn in his more than monastic cell There was a differ ence none the less between his captivity and Charlotte ' s--the difference , as it might be , of his lurking there by his own act and his own choice. (II 338)

Even so , in her struggle to conjoin Amerigo 's life with

hers, Maggie makes her own choice to be with him in the

dark time . She reenters the arrangement from wh ich she has

worked so hard to escape in order to share "his last day of

captivity with the man one adored": 397

It was every moment more and more for her as if she were waiting with him in his prison . If she had broken with everyth ing now , every observ ance of all the pa st months, she must simp ly then take it so--take it that what she had worked for was too near at last to let her keep her head . (II 341)

Thus, she offers to make it possible for Amerigo to escape from his prison for one last ray of light, to make possible his being alone with Charlotte on her last night in

England . However, Ame rigo refuses the offer and in doing so accepts the confinement of his marriage , a decision wh ich is compounded by his explanation of how he would use the time with Charlotte if he chose: to tell her of her mistake and of her underestimation of Maggie (II 347-49) .

The other images of the cage cluster around Charlotte , although they are reminiscent of Maggie 1 s ear ly complaint that "She had flapped her wings as a symbol of desired flight , not merely as a plea for a more gilded cage and an extra allowance of lumps of sugar" from Amerigo and

Charlotte (II 44) . Drawing on her own experience , Maggie imagines Charlotte as imprisoned by ignorance , a condition wh ich Maggie overcame and with which she can emphasize :

Even the conviction that Charlotte was but await ing some chance really to test her trouble upon her lover 1 s wife left Maggie 1 s sense meanwhile open as to the sight of gilt wires and bruised wings , the spacious but suspended cage , the home of eternal unrest, of pacings, beatings, shakings all so vain, into which the baffled consciousness helplessly resolved itself. The cage was the deluded condition , and Maggie , as having known 398

dclusion--rather !--understood the nature of cages. She walked round Charlotte ' s--cautiously and in a very wide circle : and when inevitably they had to communicate she felt herself compara tively outside and on the breast of nature : she saw her companion 's face as that of a prisoner looking through bars. So it was that through bars, bars richly gilt but firmly though dis creetly planted, Charlotte finally struck her as ma king a grim attempt: from which at first the Princess drew back as instinctive ly as if the door of the cage had suddenly been opened from within. (II 229-30)

The confrontation on the terrace between the two women elaborates upon this image as Maggie tries to protect herself from assault in a situation wh ich she describes as

"a breaking of bars . The splendid shining supple creature was out of the cage , was at large : and the question .. rose of whether she might n't by some art ...be hemmed in and secured" (II 239) . After Haggie decides that she can thwart Charlotte 's attack and recage the predator , she views her stepmother differently :

. . . [Charlotte 's] face was fixed on her, through the night; she was the creature who had escaped by force from her cage , yet there was in her whole motion assuredly . . . a kind of por tentous intelligent stillness. She had escaped with an intention , but with an intention the more definite that it could so accord with quiet measures . . . . (II 241)

Maggie realizes that the quieter the stalk, the more deadly the predator, allowing her to lie to Charlotte with no expectation of denial or acquiescence on the part of Adam or Amerigo , who must be kept out of the argument. Although 399

Charlotte tries to force Maggie to involve her father by

steering her to his reflection in the window , Maggie 's presence causes no disruption and so her secret plan is kept intact. So successful is she that her next view of

Charlotte sees her recaptured and returned to her cage :

She had had , as we know , her vision of the gilt bars bent , of the door of the cage forced open from within and the creature imprisoned roaming at large--a movement on the creature 's part that was to have even for the short interval its impressive beauty , but of wh ich the limit, and in yet another direction, had loomed straight into view during her last talk under the great trees with her father the likeness of their [Adam's and Charlotte 's] connexion would n't have been wrongly figured if he had been thought of as holding in one of his pocketed hands the end of a long silken halter looped round her beautiful neck . He did n't twitch it, yet it was there ; he did n't drag her, but she came (II 283, 2 8 7)

Maggie 's image cuts through the reader 's consciousness

like a knife , for it introduces a sense of malevolence in

a man heretofore portrayed as serene and benign . His

"magic ," before seen as entertaining or helpful , now is

seen as awesome in its control over Charlotte , even to the

point that former roles of the pair, she leading, he fol-

lowing , are reversed (II 289) , an indication that Charlotte

either has been chastized and called to heel or at least

views her banishment to the United States as such an order.

The image of the halter never leaves Maggie 's imagination :

The thing that never failed now as an item in the picture wa s the gleam of the silken noose, his 400

wife 's immaterial tether . . . Mrs. Verver ' s straight neck had certainly not slipped it; nor had the other end of the long cord--oh quite conveniently long !--di sengaged its smaller loop from the hooked thumb that , with his fingers closed upon it, her husband kept out of sight. To have recognized, for all its tenuity , the play of this gathered lasso might inevitably be to wonder with what magic it was twisted. (II 331)

These images prepare the reader for the last scene , in which Adam's power is presented as clear ly as possible and removes to a large degree the charge of the misrepresenta- tion of a man of great influence and acumen which some critics have leve lled against James . As Maggie listens to his estimation of Charlotte 's value , she realizes that "It was all she might have wished , for it was , with a kind of speaking competence , the note of possession and control"

(II 365) , a control more powerful in its subtlety than that of the most blatant wife-abuser. There might be in such a wish for possession and control a sense of relief that the one possessed is Charlotte and not Maggie herself, another indicat.ion that the time has come for Maggie to shake off the filial bonds which have dominated her emotions for so long and to enter into a more mature "bondage"--that of a sexual union with Amerigo which will lead (she hopes) to an awakening of his moral being within the confines of a marriage contracted by a more sacred pledge . than his with

Charlotte .

An examination of one specialized group of images of constraint usually thought to be connotative of freedom and 401 escape illustrates how James captures an image and recasts it into a new symbol , in this case that of conveyance representing entrapment rather than release, becoming a me taphor for Maggie 's isolation in the novel.

Conveyance

In the Preface to Portrait of a Lady , Jame s de fines the ficelles in his novels with an image of conveyance :

Maria Gostrey and Miss Stackpole then are cases , each, of the light ficelle, not of the true agent; they may run bes ide the coach 11 for all they are worth , 11 they may cling to it till they are out of breath (as poor Miss Stackpole all so visibly does) , but neither, all the while, so much as gets her foot on the step , neither ceases for a moment to tread the dusty road. Put it even that they are like the fishwives who helped to bring back to Paris from Versailles, on the most ominous day of the first half of the French Revolution , the carriage of the royal family. (NYE III xix)

The ficelle who helps the story along is never so prominent in James's works as in The Golden Bowl , where Fanny threatens , as James acknowledges in the Preface , to take over the

Prince 's book . Appropriately, the first instances of the conveyance group of images are James 's comparisons of Fanny to trains :

She got up , on the words , very much as if they were the blue daylight toward s wh ich, through a darksome tunnel , she had been pushing her way , and the elation in her voice , comb ined with her recovered alertness, might have signified the sharp whistle of a train that shoots at last into the open. (I 76) 402

Much later, as she tries to fathom Charlotte and Amerigo 's relations , she note s "this far red spark , which might have been figured by her mind as the headlight of an approaching train seen through the length of a tunnel, wa s not, on her side , an ignus fatuus" (I 271) . One should expect that

Fanny , travelling as she does over the English countryside

in pursuit of social stimulation, should be compared to and make her own comparisons with her chief mode of transporta

tion . The lady herself plunges into conversation s, situa

tions, and conclusions with all the subtlety of a runaway

locomotive--and like the one in the first example , she is usually in the dark about some aspect of the situation .

But one should also note that. these images are, like the

labyrinth images of Maggie and Adam, types of rebirth or

recognition images which illustrate how the characters seek knowledge. The chief function of the train images is con

veyed when, at Matcham , Fanny finds the "far red spark";

for when "she took for granted their public withdrawal

together ," and "remarked that she and Bob were alike ready ,

in the interest of social ibility , to take any train that would make them all one party" (I 345) , Charlotte 's answer

clarifies the relationship once and for all, and the "blue

daylight" of Amerigo 's good intentions , in which Fanny had

placed so much confidence , turns to bleak skies . These

train images foreshadow the maj or images in Part II, just 403 as Bob's comment that Charlotte should feel "gratitude to the Prince for not having put a spoke in her wheel" (I

282) , for not revealing their former intimacy at the time of Adam's proposal , prefigures Maggie 's image of a carriage drawn by Amerigo and Charlotte. Why should the Prince "put a spoke" in Charlotte 's wheel if she is expected to help him pull this coach of state , one remarkably like the

"chariot" (II 354) wh ich transports Adam and Charlotte to the ir ult imate destiny?

Usually the images of physical conveyance which James employs indicate freedom or a flight of imagination, the most celebrated being Isabel Archer 's definition of happi ness in Portrait of a Lady (seen by some critics as a

Jamesian allusion to Flaubert ' s Hadame Bovary) : "A swift carriage , of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see--that 's my idea of happ iness" (NYE

III 235) . In The Golden Bowl , however, Haggie 's metaphors of conveyance reveal her feeling of being trapped by

Amerigo and Charlotte when they suspect that she knows of

their adultery . On three occasions �1aggie thinks of Adam

and herself as trapped in swifting moving coache s or trains without any control over their conveyance or their destina-

tions. Therefore , images of conveyance must be seen as a

special subgroup of constraint images. The first image

of this type appears at the beginning of Part II as the 404

Princess realizes that her suggestion that Adam marry

Charlotte to ease the Ververs 1 social obligations had not been as beneficial as planned:

. she seemed to see to-night as she had never yet quite done that their business of social representation , conceived as they [Adam and Maggie J conceived it , beyond any conception of her own and conscientiously carried out was an affair of living always in harness. Charlotte had been "had in ," as the servants always said of extra help, because they had thus suffered it to be pointed out to them that if their family coach lumbered and stuck the fault was in its lacking its comp lement of wheels. Having but three , as they might say, it had wanted another, and what had Charlotte done from the first but begin to act, on the spot , and ever so smoothly and beautifully , as a fourth ? Noth ing had been immediately more manifest than the greater grace of the movement of the vehicle--as to which, for the completeness of her image , Maggie was now supremely to feel how every strain had been lightened for herself. So far as she was one of the wh eels she had but to keep in her place; since the work was done for her she felt no we ight, and it wa s n1t too much to acknowledge that she had scarce to turn around. She might have been watching the family coach pa ss and noting that somehow Amerigo and Charlotte were pulling it wh ile she and her father were not so much as pushing. They were seated inside together , dandling the Principino and holding him up to the windows to see and be seen, like an infant positively; so that the exertion wa s all with the others . Maggie found in thi s image a repeated challenge She had seen herself at last, in the picture she was studying, suddenly jump from the coach; whereupon , frankly , with the wonder of the sight , her eyes opened wider and her heart stood still for a moment . She looked at the person so acting as if this person were somebody else , wa iting with intensity to see what would follow. (II 22-24)

This image is of great importance for our understanding the change in Haggie 1 s sexuality. Traditionally , the 405 coach or conveyance with a person , usually a woman , inside

symbolizes the body with the soul or a repressed sexuality

inside ; when the carriage is loosed or out of control, as

in Isabel 's image , the body and its sensations have con

trol , usually symbo lizing sexual orgasm or the capacity for orgasm. Maggie 's image , however, is somewhat more compli

cated by the presence of her father and son , also usually

seen as repressing influences standing for the additional

pressures of filial and maternal love and duty not con

ducive to sexuality (at least not in the Victorian period) .

Emotionally tied to Adam and the Principino , Maggie is

truly "trapped" in the royal carriage of her own making ,

hut her subconscious , the Maggie whom she watche s "as if

this person we re someone else," suddenly emerges into the

foreground and breaks free of the coach , rej ecting the

innocence and sexual immaturity resulting from her emo

tional attachment to Adam and accepting "the full privilege

of passion" (II 8) which Maggie now demands in her altered

relationship with Amerigo .

I find it surprising that no critic has ever asso

ciated the foregoing image with a later important scene in

which Maggie , in her carriage , rejects Amerigo 's sexual

advances. That Maggie has matured sexually and is able to

exert cbntrol over that sexuality is evident immediately.

When Amerigo hurries her into the carriage , trying to trap 406 her again into a passive state , she resists, surmising his intention :

his virtually urging her into the carriage was connected with his feeling that he must take action on the new ground . he had already found something to soothe and correct--as to which she had on her side a shrewd notion of what it would be. She \vas herself for that matter

prepared . (II 55)

This re sponse is unlike that of the evening when Amerigo returned from Matcham, when "she tasted a sort of terror of

the weakness" (II 2 9) wh ich Amerigo 's lovemaking produced

in her; now , "she was in his exerted grasp , and she knew what that was; but she was at the same time in the grasp of her conceived responsibility" (II 56) , her duty to maintain her family 's balance and to work unobtru s ively. Now she

ignores the "throb of her consciousne ss" (II 56) , the

feel ing which "had begun to vibrate with a violence"

(I I 7) , in short , a physical passion for her husband of a

type never before described in James 's works (the kisses of

Caspar Goodwood and Owen Gereth notwith standing) , minding

instead "the throb of her deeper need to know" (II 57) .

Also evident is that Maggie herself begins to play the game

on Amerigo 's terms ; whereas "she had lately more than ever

learned [Amerigo is] so munificent a lover" (II 56) ,

Amerigo perceive s

her recurrence to the part he had lately p layed, to interpret all the sweetness of her as a manner of making love to him. Ah , it 407

was no such manner , heaven knew , for Maggie; she could make love , if this had been in question , better than that! (II 61)

Those critics who wonder how Maggie transfers Amerigo 's

affections from Charlotte to herself should examine more

closely Maggie 's triumphant sexuality , her ability to be both wife and mistress for Amerigo .

The second and third images of conveyance in Part II

involve the locomotive (II 69, 95) . Significantly, the

locomotive differs from the coach in that, while one may

call to the coachman above and jump out of the carriage as

Haggie does in the first image , one may not leave a train

so precipitously without physical injury . At the most, one

may pull the emergency cord and force the brakeman to stop

the train , but in doing so one upsets everyone else , some-

thing Maggie is loathe to do, especially as the Prince and

Charlotte control this train:

if Amerigo and Charlotte had at last got a little tired of each other 1 s company they should find their relief not so much in sinking to the rather low leve l of their companions as in wish ing to pull the latter into the train in which they so constantly moved. "\ve 1 re in the train ," Maggie mute ly reflected "we 've suddenly waked up in it and found ourselves rushing along very much as if we had been put in during sleep- shoved like a pair of labelled boxes into the van ." (II 68-69)

Because of her lack of control of the situation of being

forced perpetually into a quarte t, Maggie feels an "irre-

sistible impulse to give her father a clutch when the train 408 indulged 1n one of its occasional lurches" (II 69) . When

Char lotte invites her friend s to Fawn s in an attempt to avoid Fanny and Maggie , Maggie feels that "The vibration was that of one of the lurches of the mystic train in which , with her comp anion , she was travelling " (II 95) .

Thus, the images of conveyance emphasize Maggie 's con straints and isolation rather than show a freedom wh ich

Maggie will not realize until the end of the novel.

Isolation

Many critics of The Golden Bowl , the first being Edith

Wharton , have comp lained of the physical isolation of the major characters 1n the novel and about how little they interact with others and reveal themselves except by the most tortuous of conversations . However, careful reading reveals that, contrary to being isolated physically , Adam and Maggie , and later the other four characters, are almost never alone . We meet Prince Ame rigo first as he eyes the beautiful women parading down crowded Bond Street; later he tells Fanny that Maggie could invite many people to her wedding , but that she only wants his family because she has none and would feel uncomfortable showing her lack to her friends. The only "solitary" conversations the Prince and

Charlotte have in Book I take place on staircases, in drawing-rooms , in public parks, and mo st portentiously , in shops , where people are always conscious of their presence , 409 if not always of their speech . In Book III their assigna- tion at Gloucester is planned with martial strategy to avoid the eyes of the valet, the maid, and various "little" people along the way . However , as Bob Assingham points out:

"If your couple have had a life together they can't have had it completely without witnesses, without the help of persons , however few , who must have some knowledge They 've had to meet , secretly, protectedly, they 've had to arrange and have n' t thereby in some quarter or other had to give themselve s away . . Therefore if there 's evidence up and down London--" "There must be people in possession of it?"

"People are always traceab le in England , when tracings are requ ired . Something sooner or later happens; somebody sooner or later breaks the holy calm . " ( I I 134 )

Likewise, Adam Verver is seen first in the novel as he

tries to escape from the clutches of Mrs . Rance , guardian

of the Misses Lutch of Detroit, old school chums of Maggie , who apparently bel ieve that their acquaintance with the

Ververs places a moral obligation upon them to introduce

the girls into English society . These American nomads

live , as Charlotte once did, off the kindnesses of richer

friends, and as such become personifications of the social

demand s besett ing Maggie and Adam, caus ing them to "get"

Charlotte to handle and appease such demands. The greater

inner isolation of the major characters is their protection

and their price for being so rich and well-known . 410

James 's great skill at creating setting and tone carries over into our interpretations of the characters .

The feel ing of isolation for the reader is great, even when details are crowding in at each paragraph . But the reader 's sense of being "adrift" at some points might be only a calculated reaction created by James so that the internal isolation of the characters will be reinforced and accepted by the reader. At three crucial places in The

Golden Bowl , Maggie feels she is a child peering at th ings

she is denied--a ridiculous feeling, of course, for she is a grown woman wealthy enough to buy three of any thing she wishes. �vhat is essential about this feeling is that it

reflects Maggie's perception of herself, of always being

outside looking in, of not knowing. At other points in the novel, Adam , Charlotte , Amerigo , and Fanny also feel the way Maggie does , aga in multiplying in the reader the feel

ing of alienation separating , yet binding , the characters.

Haggie 's triumph is her smashing of the window , of grabbing

hold of her knowledge with a ferocity illu strated by the

animal and martial imagery in the second volume .

This seeming external isolation is but a reader 's

response to James 's technique . As noted earlier, this

novel is extremely social and quite crowded with minor

characters, albeit ones who serve the plot--Lady Castledean

and Hr . Blint , Mr . Crichton , Mr . Gutermann-Seuss, and the 411 shopkeeper, for example. We are constantly aware , too , that this novel, like the Prince 's and Charlotte 's affair, is carried out in society , even if we are privy to the thoughts of only a handful of persons functioning in that social structure . There are no "bedroom" scenes in the novel--only those which lead one to assume what happens within closed rooms ; even in the final scenes , Maggie surrenders to her Prince in the drawing-room at Portland

Place . The plethora of servants , nannies , priests, and social parasites surrounding our weal thy social "hermits" renders the reader quite claustrophobic , even in the midst of emotional and mental isolation of the characters and despite James 's descriptions of vistas and scenes wh ich attempt to enlarge the spatial dimensions of the novel.

James uses the minor characters to reinforce one of the main themes in his work, that of manipulation or construe- tion versus freedom. Schneider aligns images of "refuge" and "sequester" with the crystal cage and the evil which restrains and kills emotionally the characters in James 's novels. Howeve r, the images themselves are essentially neutral; they create a pleasant contrast with the busy social world outside Fawns and emphasize what splendid ease immense wealth can ensure . Only in one subgroup of image s does James 's theme shine through and reinforce the individual isolation , the alienation , wh ich characterizes modern fiction . 412

One of the first references occurs when Adam escape s

Mrs. Rance and gains "his achieved isolation" as if it were an award (I 125) . At Fawns , the fairy-tale castle "out of this world" (I 211) , he is able to indulge himself in avoidance of others as he and Maggie discuss his future

in a quarter hidden from that in which their friends were gathered unseen , unfol- lowed, along a covered walk they gradually passed to wh ere some of the grandest trees spaci ously clu stered and where they would find one of the quiete st places. A bench had been placed long ago beneath a great oak . . They knew the bench ; it wa s "sequestered" . (I 158-59)

They will return to the "sequestered bench" years later for a similar talk (II 253) . Adam will propose to Charlotte by

"the out-of-the-way bench observed during one of their walks" (I 217) , while he and Maggie have another talk in

Regent 's Park in "the first pair of sequestered chairs they came across" (II 84) . Even the ir houses seem like cloisters--Eaton Square has "sequestered sofas"; Maggie has

"sequestered hours" at Fawn s 1n which she imagines her husband caged in a monastic cell as he removes himself from

Charlotte 's influence (I 326 , II 323, 338) . Connections must be made between these images of withdrawal from the world and Adam' s view of Maggie as a nun in her prim pret- tiness (I 188) , a description with which she concurs. More than just the musings of a protective father, this image is somewhat disturbing in its placement in the novel, coming as it does so soon after Adam's realization that Maggie is 413 such a perfect wife and mother. (Perhaps it is no more than a reflection of the Victorian view , however ironic , of

Madonna-l ike maternity .) Such images also can be seen , in accordance with Schneider, as indications of an extreme desire for peace and security which turns into a death wish, a shirking of re sponsibilities to each other and the world.

Closely aligned with images of "sequester" are images involving exile or re fuge; indeed, these images are but elaborations upon the legal and religious meanings of

"sequester" --to remove or to confiscate , to segregate and to isolate . "Refuge ," however, implies some volition of the refugee , although he may go reluctantly, while "exile" seems more compulsive , as the result of a command or sen tence with no hope of appeal. The idea of a resting place occurs first in Amerigo 1 s conversation with Fanny as he wishes for a port in which to rest (I 27-28) , a passivity he accomplishes by allowing Fanny , Maggie , and Charlotte to decide his life for him. Charlotte speaks of their affair as "their taking refuge" from their spouses 1 presumptions and as "prima ry efforts at escape"; later, Matcham will give them a sense of danger and exci tement in "their escape " (I 288 , 289, 335) . As for Fanny , she enjoys being at Fawns primarily because her husband 1 s thriftiness kept her "destitute . . of any rustic retreat, any leafy bower 414 of her own" (I I 121) . However, she describes her Cadogan

Square residence as "her final refuge , the place of peace for a world-worn couple" as if she and Bob were "a pair of specious worldly adventurers driven for relief under sudden stress to some grim midnight reckoning in an odd corner"

(I 28, 371) . Maggie imagines Charlotte 's excursion to the garden temple as "betaking herself on ly to some unvisited quarter that she had already marked as a superior refuge the asylum the poor wandering woman had in view . . was a conceivable retreat" (II 307-09) . Maggie also sees Charlotte , in one of the most empathetic images in the novel, as

pleading for some benefit that might be carried away into exile like the last saved object of price of the �migr� , the jewel wrapped in a piece of old silk and negotiable some day in the market of misery . (II 330)

'!:'he metaphor is apt for a vmman whose marriage lies in shambles, whose love is gone , and whose only profit from her future will be the material goods she might receive as payment for her exile ln American City . Charlotte 's

"aspect of isolation" is intensified at the end of the novel when she appears as a wax figure , as "some coloured and gilded image" in "a cool high refuge , the deep arched recess" in which she must live (II 289 , 357) . The "ostensibly happy isolation" of Mr . and Mrs . Verver will continue henceforth in the even more isolated midwe stern state to 415 which Charlotte is exiled, seen by Maggie as "some darkness that would steep her in solitude and harass her with care"

(II 138 , 250) .

Haggie' s own isolation in the novel takes two forms : one is her self-imposed dome sticity wh ich is a cover for her lack of social confidence; it is described in terms of physical retre at and confusion by such images as her dress being "a refuge " from anxiety about Amerigo , echoed by

Fanny 's perception that "nothing more pathetic could be imagined than the refuge and disguise [Maggie 's] agitation had instinctively asked of the arts of dress, multiplied to extravagance , almost to incoherence" (II 13, 152) . This concern overwhelms Maggie until the party at Eaton Square

for the Matcham set. There , Maggie learns to use her hitherto taken·-for-granted retiring pose to her advantage by becoming alive and vocal . This change results from her acknowledgment that

Their common memory of an occasion that had clearly left behind it an ineffaceable charm lent them, together, an inscrutable com radeship against which the young woman 's imagination broke in a small vain wave . . (II 49)

As with the image of the pagoda with no door, Maggie 's

isolation is suggested by repeated images of solitary

introspection . Her realization that Ame rigo and Charlotte are together but that she is "arranged apart" "rushed over her . with quite another rush from that of the breaking 416 wave of ten days before . so she felt very much alone"

(II 45) . Thus, despite her denial that "she wished she had been of the remembered party and possessed herself of its secrets ," Haggie still feels isolated both physically and emotionally (II 49) .

These feelings are most apparent in the three extended images of peering through windows . As implied by the quo- tation above , Maggie 's solitude is caused partly by her ignorance . Elsewhere , James uses the same image to characterize adolescent ignorance of the adult world, as in v� hat Maisie Knew, where Maisie 's removal from classes in

French literature made her "feel henceforth as if she were flattening her nose upon the hard window-pane of the sweet- shop of knowledge" (NYE XI 137) , or in The Princess

Casamas sima , where Hyacinth

was often planted in front of the little sweet-shop on the other side of the street , an establishment where periodical literature , as well as tough toffy and hard lollipops, was dispensed and where song-books and pictorial sheets were attractively exhibited in the small paned dirty window. He used to stand there for half an hour at a time and spell out the first page of the romances . (NYE V 4)

In Maggie 's case we must interpolate art for literature as the medium through wh ich knowledge is obtained . On the first occas ion of such imagery , Maggie walks through

Bloomsbury so �hat she may experience new sensations :

To wander a little wild was what would truly amuse her; so that , keeping clear of Oxford 417

Street and cultivating an impression as of parts she did n't know , she had ended with what she had more or less been plotting for . . . . (II 155)

Her secondary motive is to find a birthday present for her father, one that he may install in privately viewed cases:

. his sweet theory [was] that the individual gift , the friendship's offering, was by a rigor ous la><; of nature a foredoomed aberration, and that the more it was so the more it showed . . . . The inf irmi tyof art was the can dour of affection . . . the ugliest objects . . . figured in glass cases apart , worthy doubtless of the home but not worthy of the temple . . . against the thick locked panes of which she still like to fla tten her nose . . . . (II 156-57)

Thus, for Maggie and Adam, human emotions are to be rele- gated to the locked and paned , a notion which fits with the description of their isolated, serene life . That these emotions are manife sted by art objects is also in keeping with the theme of art in the novel. As Maggie discovers later , though , emotions cannot be confined forever. In the next major image , as she agonizes over her decision to sacrifice herself and her father, she views the others playing bridge through the high windows from her vantage on the terrace (II 235-36) .

A few minute s later Charlotte appears on the terrace;

she also looks at the party through the windows and forces

Maggie to view them with her. As the beast for wh ich

Haggie waits is about to spring at last, Charlotte makes her strongest move : 418

They presently went back the way she had come , but she stopped Maggie again within range of the smoking-room window and made her stand where the party at cards would be before her. Side by side

for three minutes they fixed this picture . • . (II 243)

James 's setting for this scene is inspired , for the long reflections of light streaming through the windows down across the terrace would appear to be bars on the cage , barriers which Maggie must break through in order to survive her crisis, just as she must break through the other barriers of pagoda and window to find the truth and love she desires. The third image involving isolation also includes Charlotte :

Behind the glass lurked the whole history of the relation [Maggie] had so fairly flattened her nose against it to penetrate--the glass Mrs . Verver might at this stage have been fran tically tapping from within by way of supreme irrepressible entreaty ....Sh e could thus have translated Mrs . Verver' s tap against the glass, as I have called it, into fifty forms ; could have translated it most into the form of a reminder that would pierce deep. (II 3 2 9)

Just as Haggie peers through the glass to assess Adam's love for her , so she tries to penetrate through the glass to gauge Charlotte 's deprivation of love from Amerigo .

Unlike the first image in this val ume , that of Haggie ' s tapping away from without for entrance into life with

Amerigo , here Charlotte taps from within to escape her confinement in the crystal cage of a barren life with Adam .

These images deepen the reader 's sympathy for both women 419 and serve to emphasize that all women 's lots in James 's fiction , as in life, hinge on their conditioning that rela tionships with those they love are uppermost. That "�:lOmen are isolated, either through force or by choice , by this love is one of the supreme ironies of life and one which

James examines to the fullest in his wr iting.

Such images as those discussed above also reflect the inner isolation--the alienation--of the characters caused by their inability to comprehend or to appreciate each other 's values (their realities) . In face , the entire plot of the novel is based on the idea that one should not be alone , as stated by Fanny Assingham , who believes that the

Verver wealth requ ires an accompanying sense of noblesse oblige which will destroy the tempting peace and solitude which Maggie and Adam enjoy . By insuring that his daughter is not alone in life , Adam forces her to contemplate his own vulnerable solitude and then to balance the scales with a marriage as successful as hers. Their attempt to lessen alienation from the outer wo rld results in the ir being alienated , physically, from one another. James also indicates that Adam and Maggie will be isolated, emotionally or morally , from their spouses as a result of the adultery which is a reaction , supposedly , to the isolation of

Amerigo and Charlotte together. Thus, attempts to rectify isolation, in this novel, lead not to a closer relationship 420 betwe en partners but to a destructive impulse which take s months to resolve .

Thus , I do not see isolation as the passive , evil state which Schneider implies in The Crystal Cage . Rather,

I see the evil or good in an isolated life as being pre cisely how one deals with his isolated state . Charl otte deals with it by becoming an icon of aesthetic apprecia tion , by returning to her gilded cage , while Maggie con tinually seek s to reach out , to form new links with the loved ones in her life . Her attempts at activity , for example the elaborate parties she hosts or the frantic play- and opera-going of Book V, are negative action and not in character for her. Only when she returns to Fawns

(a symbol of ugly sterility to Schneider) does she begin to break free of her constraints and thus to enforce the iso

lation of Charlotte from Amerigo , an act which must be

accomplished before her imposed isolation may be obliter

ated by a union with Amerigo. Such a desire motivates

Haggie to rejoin her husband in his isolation , to relive

the worst days of her life, all the while contemplating the

removal of her father, the person from whom she never has

been alienated . The "pity and dread" she feels at the end

of the novel results from her realization that the desired

union has not come about--although the physical act is

impending. What the "romantic" Maggie yearns for is the 421 complete union of the two into perfect being , an ideal which will take much longer to achieve , given l; merigo ' s personality, than Maggie can conceive .

In his discus sion , Schneider seems to posit a Hegelian view of being , that is , the self can only come into being

through interaction with others . This is the root of the

evil of "passivity," that the interaction is all one-sided

and thus can be manipulated. However, the other side of

isolation is the freedom for the active mind to transcend

the passive inertia of the body and to escape from the

physical prison to discover the Other , and thus itself in

opposition to the Other. Such isolation is thus productive

rather than reductive , leading not to Laing 's "divided

self" but to an awareness of self. Nowhere in this nove l

is this awareness of the Other so apparent as in Haggie ' s

sympathetic re sponse to Charlotte 's imagined cry of anguish

at being captured by Adam . [One may even go so far as to

speculate that f-1aggie' s imagination "over-activates" at

this time precisely because she is alone in her attempt to

create meaning out of chaos, shut off as she is from emo

tional support from her father. Ben Mijuskovic believes

that "it lS because man can free].:.Y posit meanings , cre atively endow his life with (fictitious) significances ,

pointing toward a realm external to himself that he is able

to fashion consoling images toward which he strives" (22) .) 422

The Hegelian view of isolation also links it to a powe r struggle to dominate the Other that is conceived , to reduce it to nothingness by demanding one's exclusive right to being, thus further alienating oneself from the Other and recreating the loneliness wh ich motivated the reaching out to the Other. Thus one is more alone than before .

Although Schneider never expresses such an analogy , one would think that Adam, and to a lesser extent Charlotte , is in such a predicament. Maggie 's attempt at power , however, signifies her he lping Amerigo to become less alone by reaching out to construct a new dyad with him rather than to annihilate his being. But the struggle to create being is much harder work than even Maggie can accomplish in the course of the novel; that she is well on her way can be seen in these images of freedom in the second volume .

Flight

As exemplified by Maggie 's image of a bird bruising its wings against the bars of its cage as it tries to escape , the quest for individual freedom in The Golden Bowl is contrasted vividly with the aforementioned images of iso lation and entrapment . While critics have noted before such a dynamic in James 's imagery , none has examined in detail the individual images of escape and freedom in the novel. Even Schnei der mentions only the artistic freedom 423

Maggie is allowed to express through her creative imagina tion and attributes to James a rather pessimistic view of freedom : "If Jame s keeps talking about freedom , he never ignores the interconnectedness of things and never over simplifies cause-and-effect relationships " ( 149) , although

Schneider believes that "the artist lives the largest possible life because , in his daring , he enjoys the great est possible exten sion of experience and consciousness"

(152) . Such an explanation does not take into account the many images of flight and freedom in the novel which are not concerned with artistic freedom ; in fact, of the more than sixty images of escape and freedom only one describes intellectual freedom . The rest are expressions of the desire for emotional, social, sexual, and physical freedom from the types of alienating constrictions placed upon the growth of the characters in the novel, especially Maggie 's.

The fol lowing paragraphs discuss the categories of images of flight in the novel which describe such desires.

The first group , which signifies physical escape from unpleasant surroundings or unbearable situations, attache s itself primarily to Charlotte . Although others in the novel take flight, as does Adam from Mrs. Rance and Fanny from Amerigo (I 125 , 390) , Charlotte 's existence is the most nomadic, undertaken to escape her financial and social constrn.ints (I 68-70) . Moreover, the flight from Rome and 424 the broken affair with Amerigo is an escape from the sexual and emotional demands of such a relationship which threat ened to destroy the del icate balance of Charlotte 's life of taking all she can wh ile giving the least possible in return , a stance she must taken in order to survive . Per- haps the irony (or the tragedy) in the affair is that when

Charlotte does wish to give , the Prince always refuses--in

Rome , in London, at Fawns, everywhere except at Matcham- trapping Charlotte into a cycle of giving yet not giving .

At the end of the novel, Charlotte is attempting still to flee from a situation which does not allow her the freedom to give and to receive what she wishes ; Maggie underscores such a fate by comparing Charlotte to "Io goaded by the gadfly or . . . Ariadne roaming the lone sea-strand " as she is "driven in a kind of flight" from the "loss of her free dom" which the exile to the United States represents (II

307 , 312) . Such images create much reader sympathy for

Charlotte while they reveal the free and empathetic imagi nation which Maggie possesses .

More important in emphasizing the quality of freedom

in the novel are the images of height and of the flight of birds . Jame s indicates his characters ' superior ity by placing them high above others physically, as he does with

Amerigo and Charlotte on the balcony at Portland Place , or by making them imagine themselves higher than others , a 425 show of confidence inspired by the freedom of their person alities. For example, when Amerigo watches Charlotte arrange her appearance in Fanny 's drawing-room, he believes that Charlotte will handle the situation we ll: "She would take it high--up , up , up, ever so high . Well then he would do the same ; no height would be too great for them, not even the dizziest conceivable to a young person so subtle"

(I 52) . Likewise , after Charlotte has arranged for them to stay at Matcham, he wonders how "to bring ftheir response] by some brave free lift up to the same height [as their good fortune ]" (I 34 7) . The image of height , then , expresses a notion of success or good luck, just as Adam imagines his success in business as the apex of an ascend ing spiral , and as he proposes to Charlotte on a cliff overlooking Brighton . Repeated ly , Maggie approaches vertiginious chasms and is saved from emotional annihila tion by calling on her reserves of love and compassion

(II 105, 139, 185, 192, 268, 330) . By concentrating on the positive qualities of those she loves, Maggie is able to lift herself out of self-pity and blame into hope and pride in her achievements (II 139 , 156, 203 , 268, 273, 306) , so that she eventually becomes "unsinkable" in her love for

Amerigo and her pride in her father: "When however you

love in the most abysma l and unutterab le way of all--why

then you 're beyond everything and nothing can pull you 426 down " (II 262) . Thus, Maggie matures into a confidence in herself best seen in the last scene in Portland Place , where she emerges as superior to the others in her ability to love and to forg ive .

Closely linked to the images of height are the com parisons of Maggie 's soul to a bird in flight (or, as formerly , in a cage) . James constantly draws her in the same light as that of Hilly Theale, the "winged dove" of his prev ious novel, although Maggie 's imagination is the point of comparison mo re times than not, while Hilly's mind is hard ly opened to the reader in The Wings of the Dove .

Very early in The Golden Bowl , James allows the Prince a glimpse of Haggie's "wings of young imagination" ; later we

see her "conscious of the flitting wings of this

impression" or "clinging with her winged concentration"

(I 53 , II 49, 281) . As she deals with Charlotte 's humilia tion , Maggie reacts with "passion , so powerless for vindic

tive flights [which ] bruised its tenderness against

the hard glass" (II 329) . At other times , Maggie 's imagi-

nation creates images which "hover" around her like winged

creatures , perhaps doves or angels (II 229, 241 , 244 , 250,

283) . The most effective uses of the flight imagery occur

as James describes Maggie 's emotional reactions to si tua

tions; in them, the image of flight serves to join the 427 participants in an exhilerating experience , not in an escape or self- imposed isolation . For example, upon presenting Amerigo with evidence of his affair, Maggie forces herself to keep quiet and not to look at Amerigo in order to allow him to deal with her accusation without her inter- ference , but even then she feels such sympathy for her husband that

. . . [she] knew once more the strangeness of her desire to spare him, a strangeness that had already fifty times brushed her, in the depth of her trouble, as with the wild wings of some bird of the air who might blindly have swooped for an instant into the sha ft of a well (II 185)

Likewise, she views her enforced rationality as joining the two in "the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air"

(II 141) , an allusion to Charlotte 's transparently con- trived and thus "artless" liaison, which is contrasted sharply in the novel with Maggie 's more subtle but not less intense emotion . In her final reckoning with Charlotte ,

Maggie accepts her "failure" in Charlotte 's eyes with equal feeling as she "took if and for a mon�nt kept it; held it, with closed eyes, as if it had been some captured fluttering bird pressed by both hands to her breast" (II 317) , one which Maggie will release , as she knows too well the helpless vulnerability of the caged soul . 428

Freedom

Images such as those mentioned above convey to the reader the depth of the emotional struggle which Maggie must endure in order to gain the freedom she needs to create her life anew. However, in her quest she is hin dered by the freedoms taken by the Prince and Charlotte .

Unlike the freedom from social obligations which Adam seeks

(I 125 , 176) or the freedom from financial constraints wh ich allows him to pursue his avocation as a collector

(I 150) (liberties which benefit Maggie) , the sexual license taken by the adulterers harms Maggie, entrapping her in fear and jealousy .

Justifying their "primary efforts at escape" as being obligatory in their positions, Ame rigo and Charlotte sense that "they might enjoy together extraordinary freedom . . . from the moment they should understand their position aright" (I 288) . Part of the Prince 's position is that this freedom should originate with Charlotte ; passively he waits for her to move first , leaving her free to come to him, as they had been placed "face to face in a freedom that extraordinarily partook of ideal perfection , since the magic web had spun itself without their touch" (I 296,

2 98) • Such personal freedom become s primarily sexual at

Matcham; where, as he watches Charlotte , the Prince believes 429

his freedom should at present be as perfect and rounded and lustrous as some huge precious pearl he was taking but what had been given him� the pearl dropped itself, with its exquisite quality and rarity , straight into his hand . (I 358)

This he thinks as Charlotte smiles at him "for free" (I

361) , an offer reminiscent of her offer in the Bloomsbury shop , where she was "free to offer" and wished "to have something from [Amerigo ] in all freedom" (I 109, 121) .

Charlotte 's lack of money and family leave her "quite free to respond" to Amerigo in Rome ; obviously , she hoped to have the same freedom after her marriage (I 53) . Even as she is exiled, Charlotte 's pride wi ll not allow her to acknowledge her misjudgment of the limits of her freedom; to Maggie she denies "any loss of her freedom" (II 312) .

For Maggie, true freedom will not be possible until

Charlotte loses some of hers , although Amerigo believes that Charlotte will find a new type of freedom in her role as benefactress in America. Like Charlotte , Maggie yearns for the freedom of physical intimacy wi th Amerigo , although for I1aggie the act represents her freedom to surrender, not to possess or to control, as it does for Charlotte .

Earlier , Maggie had not fe 1 t free to respond to her husband; after she imagines Amerigo 's confession--" 'I've strayed . away , I've fancied myself free ' "--she resi sts him in order "to be free, to be free to act," although later 430 she allows that "he had a right . . . to so many more free- dams than he took ," once she is sure of his devotion (II

141 ' 142' 294) . Such an open response on Maggie 's part demonstrate s her magnanimity , especially when she feels that others should have the same freedom as she does after her rebirth , evincing itself in images such as "the birth of a new eagerness" or the emergence from a dark tunnel or wood (II 7 , 2 0 7) . Her belief that her father married

Charlotte in order to "liberate" Maggie (II 81) and that such an action had resulted in her confinement dissolves when she realizes that such a position provides an unfore- seen opportunity for her :

. . . action began to hover like some lighter and larger but easier form .... It would be free , it would be independent , it would go in . for some prodigious and supe rior adventure of its own . What would condemn it, so to speak , to the responsibility of freedom ...wa s the possibil ity , richer in every lapsing moment , that her husband would have on the whole question a new need of her . . . . (II 186)

Such a need manifests itself when Maggie, with "a sudden freedom of words" (II 341) offers to arrange for Ame rigo a private last meeting with Charlotte , and he refuses it, although if such were arranged, Amerigo would tell

Charlotte of her mistake . Instead, both Amerigo and Maggie

" feel Charlotte 's telegram and subsequent departure a clear liberation" (II 342) . 431

Once Maggie is free of concern for Adam and Charlotte , she is able to begin a new chapter, one concentrating on

Amerigo :

Yet this above all--her just being there as she was and waiting for him to come in , their freedom to be together there always--was the meaning most disengaged: she stood in the cool twilight and took in all about her where it lurked her reason for what she had done . She knew at last really why--and how she had been inspired and guided , how she had been persistently able, how to her soul all the while it had been for the sake of this end . (II 367)

It is no wonder that she approache s this next stage in her life with trepidation. Erich Fromm , in Escape from

Freedom, explains that

. once the stage of complete indiv iduation is reached and the individual is free from these primary ties , he is confronted with a new task: to orient and root himself in the world and to find security in other ways than those which were characteristic of his preindividualistic exis tence . ( 2 5)

Just such a task faces Maggie when she turns to Amerigo to begin her life anew and realizes that she has come farther than he toward being truly free . Although one cannot assert that Maggie is fully individuated , she has changed more than the other characters, whose beings intensify themselves rather than evolve and mature as Maggie 's has done . Such maturation into freedom aligns well with interpretations of the novel indicating Maggie 's triumph , interpretations wh ich cast her as savior , questor , and heroine, 432 and interpretations which consider the novel as comedy instead of tragedy. That Maggie has grown into partial freedom leaves the reader free to speculate on how far that freedom will extend after the novel 's end and on Maggie 's ultimate success in her marriage . 433

CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

While writing the foregoing chapters, I examined over

1300 images in order to categorize them in order to arrive at some conclusion as to the meaning of James 's last novel.

Several points of emphasis emerged during this classification, some of which bolstered earlier critics' readings of the novel; for example, my analysis of light and sight imagery differs only slightly from that of Schneider and

Gale . However, in these discussion s I have searched expressly for clues to puzzles in the novel which might have been overlooked or misinterpreted by earlier readers, and I have concentrated especially on images or image groups which have been seen as amb iguous or have elicited conflicting interpretations. A discussion of a few of the points in this paper I consider most significant fol lows .

As I stated in the introductory chapter , I sought to elucidate images which some readers have seen as "inten tional ambiguity ." One of the groups contributing to polarized views of Maggie is the beast and warfare imagery , disconcerting to critics who think Maggie should roll over and play dead in order to accommodate the adulterers . My examination reveals a pattern in wh ich the aggressive imagery is directed more towards Amerigo and Maggie herself 434 than to Charlotte , a pattern more paranoic than aggressive and based more on sexual behavior than on jealousy or ven geance . Maggie 's awareness of Charlotte 's depriva tion should create sympathy for Maggie as we ll as for Charlotte , as such images are expressions of Maggie 's unstated fear of losing Amerigo at the moment when her desire for him is awakening .

Contributing also the charge of amb iguity is the imagery of material possessions . James uses images of possession , control, and acquisitivene ss extensively and effec tiveJ_y throughout the novel as a contrast between material , aesthetic , and moral concern s as we ll as to show Maggie 1 s function in the novel. Images of equilibrium and balance cluster exclusively around Maggie in the second volume , indicating that Maggie is not only the focus of that part but also the key to the novel 's balance between secular and spiritual interpretations and meanings. Not as grasping as

Charlotte or as mysterious as Adam , Maggie equalizes and stabilizes the circumstances in wh ich she finds herself by being neither "saint nor witch ," although almost every critic other than Wright believes her to be one or the other. More than any other character in the novel, Maggie personifies the Hege lian dialectic which Fogel thinks so important to James 1 s work , and her association wi th the scales of justice implies also that James intended his audience to respect and sympathize with Maggie . 435

In addition to analyzing symbols in the novel , I have sought also to identify historical events and actual per sons or places wh ich parallel those in the novel and might provide connections to James 's views of situations which he duplicated in his novel and discussed in his notebook s and letters. Several other critics have written briefly on these connections ; however, more extensive examinations and the ir results are reported herein, especial ly the connec tion with Gloucester which might provide a clue to wh ether the adultery takes place and its evil consequences if it has .

Most surprising , though , has been the plethora of re l igious imagery and symbo lism wh ich has been discussed only briefly hy other critics of the imagery , especial ly that which connects Maggie 's function in the novel to the

Grail legend and to other mythological heroes and quests.

These images must be analyzed in order that we understand the emotional force of Maggie 's journey to knowledge and freedom upon the reader. As the images of aggression and physical and sexua l power decrease in the second volume , the symbols of occult or sacred power increase, illustrat ing that Maggie 's victory will be a spiritual one rather than the Machiavellian power play which some critics read into her actions . My interest has been aroused most by the visions of the characters wh ich seem to exemplify the 436 nove l 's dichotomies of knowledge versus delusion and free dom versus entrapment , and their effect upon the reader's response , as many critics have misread these visions to be occurrences in the novel rather than the characters ' own emotional and moral responses. The image ry of art, cre ativity , and the senses also contributes somewhat to the visionary qua lity of the novel; however, the ultimate func tion of the visions is to represent the moral and aesthetic knowledge which informs both character and reader and which lessens considerably the charge of amb iguity in the novel.

As long as the symbols and images in the novel remain unexplored , delusion does exist for the reader as it does for Maggie be fore her own visions ; when the images are analyzed and connections made , delusion is stripped away and ambiguity reso lved to a great degree . I vehemently disagree with Norrman 's conclusion that "the truest response to The Golden Bowl is bewilderment" (175) and that

"the reason why critics . . have not know whether to side with Maggie or Charlotte is that James himself did not know " (180) . James did know , and challenges his readers t_ o discover, Maggie 's function and the meaning of the novel: her discovery for herself, and then the leading of the other characters to , knowledge about themselves and the freedom from emotional or mental entrapment which such knowledge grants . 437

I do not believe that Jame s wrote an amb iguous novel in The Golden Bowl ; my own response is much too positive and definite for my reading to have been so confused , although my interpretation of the novel is quite different after having analyzed the imagery than it was before. Nor do I think that James wrote an ambiguous, a "happy ," or an

"unhappy " ending to the novel, a charge wh ich leads again to the assert ion that a. mb igui ty permeates the novel and determines its ending . Jame s did create in the last pages an optimistic ending, wh ich is all that one can hope for in situations such as those in which Maggie finds herself.

The characters are left with the freedom toward wh ich they have strived throughout the novel: Amerigo and Maggie are alone together, she now reaches out of her iso lated self to him instead of her father, and Amerigo is beginning to appreciate his wife 's American qualities, although his sexual excitement in the last pages obscures this response ; even this, however , may be seen as a positive indication of the ir success.

Only when we apply conventional morality to the novel does it seem equivocal; instead, we should accept the novel for what it is: a plea for freedom from constraints im posed not only upon the characters but also upon the structure and techn ique of the novel itself. Magg ie has risen above conventional morality (which would require jealousy 438 and vindication , the very emotions she rejects while on the terrace) to create her own morality based upon an increased awareness of and understanding of her relations with her

father and her husband . Just so, as readers we must lay

aside our expectations of this novel and allow it to

develop its own moral, not one which we expect of it .

James allows us the same freedom of interpretation which he

allows Maggie in the novel in the hope that we will accept

his situation and its resolution as viable given the char

acters ' superior values for each other and for the reader .

Rachel Salmon defines the function of poetic ambiguity in

James's work as "push [ing] back the diachronic boundaries

of the art of fiction in order to make possible a 'mar

riage ' between writer and reader, life and art. The strug

gle with amb iguity makes the reader creative" (802) , an

assertion with which I fully agree . However, I carry the

argument further in be lieving that Jame s not only forces

the reader to be creative but to be creative in the same

manner in wh ich Jamesian characters of "high intelligence"

and great moral quality are creative--through an imagistic

knowledge wh ich combines the aesthetic and mimetic func

tions of art with the ethical and emotional demands of

life . A similar argument was put forward by Schneider and

challenged by Yeazell in letters appearing in issues of

PMLA . Elsewhere Schneider asserts that 439

It is by massing in the imagination the recurrent images, and by discerning the structure of the images--which is, in the main, a structure gen erated by conflict, a structure of oppositions- that the sensitive reader elicits "meaning" from mo st literary works . ( 4 8)

Attempting to trace such images and applying to them moral

and aesthetic values based on historical research, I have

reached the conclusions stated above .

Also I have noted in recent criticism more interpreta-

tions (mainly feminist} of James 's work which agree \v i th

me . A call for feminist critic ism of James was made by

Susan Carlson in the Henry James Review and seconded in the

following issue by no less a critic than John Carlos Rowe .

Indeed , four major contributions to feminist Jamesian

criticism were made in 1984 alone : Elizabeth Allen's A

Woman 's Place in the Novels of Henry James, Virginia

Fowler 's Henry James 's American Girl: The Embroidery on

the Canvas , Carren Kaston 's Imagination and Desire in the

Novels of Henry James, and one chapter in Rowe 's The Theo-

retical Dimensions of Henry James. Such criticism relate s

to my study of imagery in The Golden Bowl , in that as more

critics, both male and female , approach Jame s from a

feminist stand, more studies of his images, especially

those of fairy tales, myths, religion, and social customs ,

will be forthcoming and less deconstructionist ambiguity

hunting will be done , for feminist criticism seeks to 440 define sex and power in fiction , and two less ambiguous concepts (for most women) cannot be found.

Another ambitious path Jamesian criticism is taking is that of combining philosophy and literary theory , as opposed to the literature and psychology or sociology which loomed large during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1983 an entire i ssue of New Literary History was devoted to James, The

Golden Bowl , and moral philosophy . In it, Martha Nussbaum notes that

Jame s tells us emphatically that the moral claims of his texts depend centrally on the presence inside them of such high characters , both agents and interpreters of their own lives, whose read ings of life we will count as high exemplars of our own . ( 41)

Such a response may we ll be invoked by the plethora of images which fills the reader 's own "cup of consciousness" to overflowing . However, I want to conclude with emphasis not on knowledge and the mind (al though the conclusion of a dissertation might \varrant such closure) , but on James 's real theme running through all his wo rks : "the heart of man" which yearns both for love and the freedom to express it. For us as readers, the "fascination of knowledge " as well as our fear of it is that no matter how much we

"know, " we may not gain insight into our souls and those of persons we "know. " Mere knowing is not enough , as Maggie understands by the novel's end; what James examines in this novel is the effect of knowledge upon the heart. The 441 intellectually "amb iguous" images reveal the conflicting emotions felt in situations when knowledge falls away and the soul bursts its bonds . In a response to Ms . Nussbaum' s paper, Mary Ann Caws states this position best:

I think we must as critics and feeling ones, show how and what and why and on what basis we are hooked into the specific text. Why do � many of us read and reread James? Not at all for the reasons we reread Jane Au sten , but for reasons which Pascal would have called rea sons of the heart . I believe a commi tted reading will bring out from the text , and from us, something more than strategies of the mind . That something more--which we sense in James, in Proust, in poets like Rilke and Rene Char--is what we have to respond to , or else we are fail ing our depths of moral possibility . (214-15) LIST OF REFERENCES 443

LIST OF REFERENCES

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0--The Outcry . The Complete Plays of Henry lT ames . Ed. Leon Edel. New York : Lippincott , 1949. 761-816.

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s--summersoft. The Complete Plays of Henry James. Ed . Leon Edel. New York : Lippincott, 1949. 519- 46.

TC--"Travelling Companions ." The Complete Tales of Henry James . Ed. Leon Edel. New York : Lippincott , 1961. 171-225. 444

TS--Transatlantic Sketches. Boston : Houghton-Mifflin , 1888 . vmS --Wi1liam Wetmore Story and His Friends: From Letters, Diaries, and Recollections . Edinburgh : William Blackwood & Sons , 1903.

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Temporal Chart

1829? Adam born .

1849? Charlotte born in Florence. Adam's career begins .

1851? Maggie born in Detroit?

1849-65? Charlotte reared in Tuscan convent, me t Maggie at Paris school in second of five years there .

1861? Maggie 's mother dies .

1864? Adam spends year in Florence , Naples, Rome .

Nov . 1872? Charlotte and Amerigo in Rome together.

Feb . 1873 Fanny and Bob arrive in Rome before the end of the month .

April 10, 1873 Charlotte suddenly leaves Rome , travels to Florence v1here she meets with Maggie and Adam; Haggie gives her money to go to the United States, wh ich she does by way of rHlan and England . Fanny begins to think of finding a rich wife for Amerigo .

May 1873 Fanny introduces Amerigo to Maggie; she is immediately taken with him because of his family name .

Feb . 1874 Amerigo decides to pursue Maggie .

June or July 1874 Amerigo proposes to Maggie .

August 1874 Wed. , 3 pm Bk I, ch 1 The marital contract is signed .

4 pm I ' 2 Amerigo talks to Fanny .

4:30 pm I, 3 Amerigo talks with Charlotte .

( 8: 3 0 Amerigo dines with Haggie and Adam. )

12:00 am I' 4 Fanny and Bob talk . 457

(Thurs. Amerigo 's family arrive s .)

Fri . 10:30 am I, 5 Amerigo and Charlotte shop. Flashback to Thurs . talk.

11:30 I, 6 Charlotte and Amerigo go to Bloomsbury shop.

( Sat . 3 : 0 0 pm The wedding . )

(Sept. or Oct. 1974 to Amerigo and Maggie in May or June 1876 U.S. Principino born in NYC at end of hiatus .)

Sept. 1876 Sun . am II, 1 Adam thinks at Fawns .

II, 2 Adam recollects his career .

pm II, 3 Maggie and Adam talk.

II, 4 Haggie tells Adam to marry Charlotte .

Oct. 15 to Nov . 1876 II, 5 Adam decides to propose .

Nov 1876, second day II, 6 Adam proposes to Brighton Charlotte .

(2 days at Fawns, 4 days at Paris)

Nov 1876 Paris am II, 7 Adam receives tele gram from Maggie , Charlotte one from Amerigo. Charlotte accepts Adam's pro posal .

(Dec. 1876? Adam and Char lotte are married. Travel for fifteen months in U.S.)

March 1904 London pm III, 1 Foreign Office recep tion . Charlotte and Fanny talk. 458

III , 2 Amerigo and Fanny talk.

later pm III , 3 Fanny and Bob talk .

March 1876 earlier than III, 4 Amerigo and Charlotte preceding talk.

chapters III , 5 Amerigo and Charlotte kiss.

March 1876 a few nights III, 6 Charlotte 's party . after the Foreign Office ball.

April 1876 a few days III, 7 Charlotte , Amerigo , after the Fanny and Bob at party, 3 wks. Hatcham. after Foreign Office ball. (Go on Good Friday , stay until Wed. )

Wed . am III, 8 Charlotte arrange s for Amerigo and her self to stay at Matcham.

later am III , 9 Charlotte arranges to go with Amerigo to Gloucester .

later pm III , 10 Fanny and Bob talk .

later pm III , 11 Fanny and Bob talk.

earlier pm IV, 1 Maggie returns to Portland Place. Amerigo arrive s about 9 pm .

Thurs. late am IV, 2 Maggie visits Eaton Square , hears Charlotte 's story .

April 1876 a few wk s. IV, 3 Charlotte gives party later for Matcham set. Maggie feels watched . 459

Hay 1876 one month IV, 4 Maggie has party for later Hatcham set; a few days later, Maggie and Adam talk in park.

same am IV, 5 Adam tells Maggie he is happy with arrangement .

June 1876 ear ly June IV, 6 All at Fawns. Maggie asks Fanny what she knows ; Fanny denies all.

July 1876 first we ek IV, 7 Fanny and Bob talk .

second week IV, 8 Maggie assesses her knowledge , goes to British Museum , dines with Fanny and Bob .

four days IV, 9 Maggie recounts to later Fanny buying the golden bowl , accuses her of lying; Fanny smashes bowl .

IV, 10 Haggie accuses Amerigo with evidence of bowl , dares him to find out what Adam knows .

ten days v, 1 All at Fawns. Maggie later recounts to Amerigo how she found out . Amerigo chooses not to tell Charlotte .

a few nights V, 2 Bridge party . later Charlotte confronts Haggie on terrace , Maggie "sandbags . "

three days V, 3 Maggie and Adam talk. later Adam will take Charlotte to u.s.

July, August 1876 v, 4 Maggie imagine s Charlotte 's pain and ignorance . 460

three weeks v, 5 Maggie confronts after V, 2 Charlotte . Charlotte lies , says she is taking Adam to U.S.

August 1876 three weeks VI , 1 Haggie confident she later has won Amerigo back. Adam and Charlotte packing .

Sept . 1876 am VI , 2 Maggie and Amerigo wait for Adam and Charlotte 's departure to reconcile.

5:00-5:40 pm VI , 3 Adam and Charlotte say good-bye ; Maggie and Amerigo alone together at last. TABLE A-1. ANALYSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , I,l-I,4

Part One Book, chapter I,l 1,2 I,3 1,4

Locale London , Bond St London , Cadogan Pl Lo ndon, Cadogan London, Cadogan

Setting street scene Fanny 's residence

Time of day , season, Au g, Wed, 3 pm 4 pm 4:30 pm 12 midnight weather sultry rainy

Point of view , Prince Prince Prince Fanny mode of expression exposition dialogue dialogue dialogue

"'" Action Prince signs Prince discusses Prince and Fanny tells Bob 0'\ I-' marital contract marriage with Charlotte about Prince 's

He is puzzled Fanny. She discuss her former affair by Maggie 's tel ls him that presence . with Charlotte,

and Adam' s Charlotte is decides to find American in town . her a husband. innocence .

Primary symbols Prince as water, boat , Charlotte as explorer, circus

investor , fog, explorer purse, flower , scientis t; Diana , etc. Adam as cock.

Misc. Description Description Description Description of Prince of Fanny of Charlotte of Bob TABLE A-2 . ANALYSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , I,S-II,2

�rt �e Book , chapter I,S I,6 II, 1 II ,2

Locale London London Fawns Fawns

Setting stair, park shop billard room b illard room

Time of day , season , Fri , 10:30 am 11:30-1 :30 Sept , Sun am hot weather cool , gray 2 yrs later

Point of view , Prince Prince Adam Adam mode of expression dialogue dialogue exposition exposition

*"' Action Char lotte lets Char lotte finds Adam hides from Adam recalls "" N Prince know golden bowl , Mrs . Rance , the beginning

she still cares but can 't buy recalls life of his avocation for him. it. and career. of collecting.

Primary symbols buying , selling , golden bowl , exp lorer, fire explorer getting omens

Misc. Desc. of Adam TABLE A-3 . PRA LYSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , II,3-II,6

Part One Book , chapter II,3 II ,4 II ,5 II ,6

Locale Fawns Fawn s Fawns Brighton

Setting garden garden stair , terrace G-S's house, cliff

Time of day , season , same Sun pm Sun pm Oct-Nov 2 days in Nov

weather hot hot

Point of view , Adam Maggie Adam Adam

mode of expression dial ogue dialogue exposition narration , dial . .j:>. Ada'll proposes 0'\ Action Maggie takes Maggie asks Charlotte and w Adam to tree , Adam to invite Adam watch over to Charlotte

concerned about Char lotte to Principino after buying

women bothering Fawns. while Maggie tiles from

him . and Amerigo in Gutermann-Suess. Rome . Adam They wait to

thinks Char lotte hear from Maggie .

is much like the Prince, decides

to propose.

Primary symbols possessions , myths , light royalty , explorers , fire architecture children

Misc . Desc. of Maggie Desc. of Adam TABLE A-4 . ANALYSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , II,7-III,3

Part One Book , chapter II, 7 III, 1 III,2 III,3

Locale Paris London Londo n London

Setting hotel lobby Foreign Office Foreign Office Cadogan Pl

stair, gallery gallery brougham

Time of day , season , 1 wk later March same pm same pm weather in Nov 20 mons later

Point of view, Adam Charlotte Prince Fanny

mode of expression dialogue expo + dial dialogue dialogue � 0'\ � Action Adam receives Charlotte tel ls Prince and Fanny tel ls telegram from Fanny about Fanny discuss Bob about her Maggie , Char Adam , hints Charlotte and suspicions

lotte rece ives about Prince . Adam. about Prince

one from Prince . and Charlotte . Charlotte accepts Adam's

proposal.

Primary symbols flowers jewels, food , food, boats boats , wa ter ,

Char lotte as seeing actress

Misc. TABLE A-5. ANALYSIS OF TEClllliQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , III,4- III,7

Part One Book , chapter III ,4 III ,S III ,6 III , 7

Local e Portland Pl Portland Pl Eaton Square Matcham

Setting Prince 's room Prince 's room drawing room terrace

Time of day , season , early March pm a few nights 3 wks after

weather rainy after Foreign Foreign Office Office ball. ball. sunny , gusty

Point of view , Prince Prince Prince Prince ,!:>. ffi mode of expression exposition dialogue narration exposition U1

Action Charlotte visits The af fiar At party given Fanny and Bob Prince alone resumes . by Charlotte , follow Charlotte

just as he is Amerigo recal ls and Prince to

wishing she woul d their pledge . spy on them . come to him. He compares his wife unfavorably

with Charlotte.

Primary symbols freedom, buying boats , water food, jewels , gold, flowers , flowers heat , light

Misc. first kiss of novel--Prince

and Charlotte TABLE A-6 . ANALYSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , III,8-III,ll

One Part Book, chapter III ,8 III,9 III,lO III,ll

Locale Matcham Matcham London , Cadogan London , Cadogan

Se tting terrace terrace stair, drawing stair , drawing room room

Time of day , season , Tues pm Wed 11 am Wed prn Wed pm

weather warm warm

Point of view , Prince Prince Fanny Fanny

mode of expression dialogue dialogue dialogue dialogue

� Action Char lotte Charlotte Fanny and Bob Fanny is scared 0'\ 0'\ arranges for arranges to analyze together of what a mess

Prince and go to Gloucester she has made of

herself to with Prince . the couples ' lives ,

stay over. but thinks that Maggie will pu ll everyone through .

Primary symbols boats flowers, freedom boats , water wounds desert

Misc. Fanny and Bob embrace TABLE A-7. ANALYS IS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , IV ,l-IV,4

Part Two Book , chapter IV, 1 IV ,2 IV,3 IV,4

Locale London , Portland London, Portland London , Eaton Sq London , Portland

Setting drawing room drawing room

Time of day , season , Same Wed pm Thurs early pm end of Apri l end of May weather warm warm

Point of view , Maggie Maggie Maggie Maggie

mode of expression exposition exposition exposition expos + dial

� Action Maggie realizes Maggie thinks Adam decides not Maggie and Prince "' -....1 something is Charlotte and to go to Spain host Matcham set,

wrong , wai ts Amerigo conspire Char lotte and Maggie and Adam for Pr ince at together and Adam host the discuss his

Portland Pl try to separate Matcham group. marriage. rather than Maggie and Adam. Eaton Square

Primary symbols pagoda , ivory Maggie as warrior Art , flight , Circus , exotic ,

tower, weapon s, and artist. constrain t weapons, myths ,

warfare , garden, Light , royalty , games , food,

water , freedom , constrain t, fairy animals constraint tales, go ld

Misc. Maggie refuses Prince 's sexual advances TAB LE A-8 . ANALYSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , IV ,5-IV,8

Two Part Book , chapter IV, S IV,6 IV, 7 IV,S

Locale London London, Portland London, Cadogan London

Setting Regent 's Park drawing room street

Time of day , season , May , same am Jun e July , lst wk July , 2nd wk weather sunny cold warm warm

Point of view , Maggie Maggie Fanny Maggie

mode of expression expos + dial expos + dial dialogue expos ition

.!::> 0"\ Action Adam tells All plan to go Fanny and Bob Maggie visits a:> Maggie how to Fawn s. At go over to the British

satisfied he lunch one day , Maggie and Adam's Museum , then

is with his Maggie asks side. buys the golden marriage. Fanny if she bowl for Adam . She thinks he suspects some says so to thing , but Fanny

make her feel denies all. better (does

he know? )

Primary symbols flight , con Light , dark , water , animals Royalty , magic ,

straint, con warfare, myths , myths , weapons ,

veyance , art, gold, animals , warfare , constraint,

go ld, possessions constraint , gold, flowers flight

Misc . Maggie and

Fanny embrace TABLE A-9. J\Nl\1YSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL , IV, 9-V, 3

Part �0

Book, chapter IV,9 IV ,lO V,l V,2 V,3

Locale Portland Place Portland Place Fawns Fawns Fawn s

Setting Maggie 's boudoir Maggie 's boudo ir staircase terrace garden

Time of day , season , Wed pm same pm afternoon night warm ,

weather warm warm warm, 3rd wk July warm, stormy 4th wk July

ten days after IV ,lO 3 days after V,2

Point of view , Maggie Maggie Maggie Maggie Maggie

mode of expression dialogue dialogue expo + dial narr + dial dialogue

Action Maggie tells Maggie picks up Matcham set at Maggie watches Adam and Maggie

Fanny about pieces of bowl , Fawns. Maggie others play reflect on their

shopkeeper 's accuses Amerigo. tells Fanny that bridge , is marriages. ,j:>. 0'1 visit, accuses Dares him to Amerigo hasn't tempted to Maggie admi ts "' Fanny. Fanny find out what told Char lotte reveal all. that she is a

smashes golden she and Adam that Maggie knows . When Charlotte little jealous ,

bowl as Amerigo know . Flashback to accuses Maggie but Adam is not.

enters room . interview with of hiding some Adam says he shopkeeper. thing, Maggie will take

lies . Charlotte away to u.s.

Primary symbo ls religion , games, Maggie and Fanny Char lotte as boats , port,

warfare as warriors , beast on the ligh t, dark,

Char lotte as loose , Maggie animals

caged beast as frightened

warrior, actress

light , dark

Misc. 2nd kiss of novel Adam and Maggie --Maggie and embrace

Charlotte TABLE A- 10. ANALYSIS OF TECHNIQUE IN THE GOLDEN BOWL, V, 4-VI ,3

Two Part Book, chapter V,4 V ,5 VI,1 VI ,2 VI ,3

Locale Fawns Fawn s Portland Place Portland Place Port land Place

Setting gallery garden Amerigo 's rooms Amerigo 's rooms parlor, balcony

Time of day, season, August 3 pm , 3 wks after ho t, end of August ho t, Sept am hot, same day ,

weather hot V,2 hot 1 wk after V,5 5-5: 40 pm

Point of view , Maggie Maggi e Maggie Maggi e Maggie

mode of expression expos ition narr + dial expo + dial desc + dial dialogue

� Action Maggie recalls Maggie fol lows Maggie and Amerigo Amerigo tells Adam and -....J 0 her fight with Charlotte to wait in London as Maggie that Charlotte say

Char lotte . gazebo, al lows Adam and Charlotte Charlotte is goodbye . Ameri-

Maggie agonizes her to accuse pack up at Fawns . stupid for not go and Maggie over Char lotte 's Maggie of plot Maggie tells Fanny realizing what reconcile after banishment to ting against that she has won Maggie has done . Adam and U.S. , thinks of Char lotte 's Amerigo back but They agree to Charlotte leave .

Charlotte in marriage to has lost Adam. wait until Adam Maggie loves

pain. Adam . and Charlotte Amerigo , but

are gone to pities him. reconcile.

Primary symbols animal s, birds , Maggie as warrior, Ame rigo as monk , royalty , ob jet magician , prisoner. sacrifice prisoner d'art , buy ing ,

selling

Misc. Desc. of Ada m Maggie evades Amerigo and Amerigo 's Maggie embrace

advances once

more TABLE A·ll. IMAGERY IN THE GO!JlDI flCW!: BY CHAAAC'I'!R, I,1-II, 7

Book , Chapter I•age Character I ,1 I ,2 I,3 I ,4 I,S I ,6 11,1 11,:2 11,3 !!,4 11,5 11,6 !!,7

Circus Aloeriqo Cbar lotte 54 Fanny 65 Ma.gqie

Discoverers, explorers Aloeriqo 3,22 79-80 176 Charlotte Fanny 36 Ad ... 13,19 25 131 , 140-43 149,150 205,207 215-18

Desert Aaeriqo , Charlotte Fanny, Bob Mrs. Rance 132-33

Gardens , Paradise Amerigo , Charlotte Maqqie 188 207 211

Exotic Fanny Maggie 8 33-36 Adu 15 25 211,213 232-33

Heat , cold, fire Ado 216-21 Maggie Amerigo Charlotte ""' -....J Light, dark ..... Meriqo 4,22-24 42 Charlotte 45 119 193 Fanny Ada� 128 143,144,148,153 204-08 211 Maqqie 178,184

Boats , vater Allertqo 10, 16, 19,22 26-28 138 ChAr lotte 219 Fanny 26-26 65 Adam 167 205-o6 Maqqie 14·15 167

Flowers Amerigo Charlotte 47 215 Fanny Maqqie Adlllll 144,152 ,153 228 Bob 66 1st Mrs. Verver 142 Mr. Criqhton

Food Amerigo 8 42 91 163 192 Char lotte 92 ,102 194 ,195 Fanny Bob 66 Maggie 92 Ad411 147 162

Alliaals Aaeriqo 4,5,8 161 Charlotte 46-47 92 ,9?,99,101 108 Fanny Na.qqie 181 Adea 8 146 158 213 'I'AI!LE A-ll (continued)

Boot, Chapter lallqe Character I,l I,2 I,3 I,4 I,5 I,6 II,l Il,2 II,3 II,4 II,5 II,6 II,7

ADJ.aals (continued) Lady Castlede60 Pr1nc1p1no Mrs.. Rance 151

Children, toys, qa.s Adu 126-2 7,131,132 1U 206 218 229 llaqqie Pannr :Z9,31,34 137 Bob 64 Char lotte 202 Principino

Sound Alller1QO 95-98 198 Charlotte 202 llaqqie J&a Panuy Bob

Science, technoloqy AllleriQO 10, 16,17,19 31 Fanny Kaqqie J&a 126-27

Roya lty Aaeriqo 105 � Charlotte Fanny -...J Maqqie 1\J .w .. 200 Prine! pi no 156-57 200-Q1

Maqic, o.ens , fairy tales Kaqqie 160 184 Ad4a 149 160 175 211 Alleriqc 17,24 119,120 Charlotte 54,57 Fanny 63

Rel1q1on, Dlyths Kaqqie 152 187 206 Ada• 146 189 197 Aaeriqo 18,20 119,120 137 Charlotte Jt-35 47,59-60 102 l'anny Bob Shopkeeper 104,106,110

lleapons , wounds, war Maqqie 1116 Fanny Aaeriqo 3 163 Olarlotte 54 193-95 Bob 66 Ad4a 144

Gr-ai l, cup 108,110, 112-14 147 194,196

Buying, values Adu 11,14 160 170,172 210,217 229 llaqqie beriQO 3,9, 12,13, 19,20, :l'l-22,23,24 71,?S 92 111 161-62,164 Charlotte 40,41 46-4 7,50,54 68,71,75 92,93,96-98 121-25 179,183,185, 197 Panny 21 68 ,75, 75,77 Bob 35,36 67,61,76,83 TABLE A-ll (continued)

Book, Chapter llulqe Character I,1 I ,2 I ,3 I,4 I,S I,6 11,1 II,l II,3 II,.f !I,S 11,6 II, 7

Gold, jewels Meri

Collecting, possessions Adu 12,13,l.f 100 139.140 145,146-47, 195-97 210,ll5 150 Maggie 11 187 215 Allerigo 12-13,14,23 140 160-<;1 Charlotte 46-47 195 ,197 222 Prine! pi no 147 Shopkeeper 104-111 GJtermann-Seuss 213-15

Worts of art, art ists Maggie 187 Aaeriqo 22-lJ 42 CJarlotte 193

Architecture Aeeri. 152 -.J Fanny 24-25 w Staqe, acting Aeer1CJO 12 70 Charlotte so 70 99 106 Fanny 34 Maggie 61 152 210-11 Adam 170

Watching, seetnq, visions Meriqo 3,4,22 42 45,48 99 105,106 Charlotte 40 45,50,51,52 99 106 ,110,111 222 230,238,240 Fanny 21 30,36 80,85 153 Maqg te 11 180,182 Adaa 11 126,131,144 147,154 170 188 192,204-08 220 231 Bob 66,70

Knowledqe , knowing Maggie 9,12 79,84 176,182,186 Adaa 182 221 Aooori

Coostraint Allert go 4-5 Charlotte !laqgie Adam 150 210 228

ConY@Y'anc• !laqqie Fann y 76

Isolation !laggie 188 Allert go 27-28 Char lotte Adaa 28 125 158-59 211,217 TABLE A-ll (continued)

Book, Chapter Iaaqe Character 1,1 I,< 1,3 1,4 1,5 1,6 II,l II,l 11,3 11,4 11,5 II,6 II, 7

Flight .berigo 51-Sl Charlotte 5!-52 68-70,74 llaqqie 53 Adaa llS Fanny

Freedoa llaqqie 176 Ada• ll5 ISO 176 Aaer1qo 109 161 Charlotte 53 109,121

� -.....J � TABLE A-12. IMAGERY IN THE GOLD!:II BOWL BY CIIARAC'I'ER , III,1-III,ll

Boot , Chapter Iuqe Character III ,1 III ,2 III,3 Ill,4 III ,5 IU,6 III,7 UI,8 III,9 III,10 UI,ll

Circus Alleriqo Charlotte Fanny Maggie

Dtacoverers, explorers -'-ertqo Charlotte Fanny 371 Adaa

Desert Aaer1go , Charlotte 317 H6 Fanny, Bob 277 364-65 Mrs. Rance

Gardens, ParadisP. Meri']O, Charlotte 335 3t7 Pkt.qqle 321

Ex:otic Fanny 351 364 399 Maggie Mall

Heat, cold, fire Ad all 323 Maggie Aaeriqo 334 � Charlotte 296 -....] Liqbt, dark U1 Aaerlqo 294 310 333 346 350 Charlotte 258 ,263,264 310 342 Fanny AdAII Maggie

Boats, water Aaeriqo 267-68,470 282 312 346 370 Charlotte 24 7,251 ,264 26 7-68 1 282 312 346 370 270 Fanny 272 365-66,378 399 Adall Maggie 374 nowers Aeerigo 292 329 355,357 Charlotte 246 329 357 Fanny 276 365-67 Maqqle 322 Adall Mr. Crichton

Food Aaeriqo 292 300 315 328 356,361 Charlotte 263 323 356,361 Fanny 259 273 276 326 346,348 365 Bob Maqqle Adaa

Aniaals -'-erlqo Charlotte 282-84,288 301 398 Fanny 253 272 284 337 392 l!aggie 323 380 Adaa TABLE A-1.2 (continued)

Book, Chapter luqe Character III ,1 III ,2 Ill,3 Ill,4 111,5 1!1,6 III, 7 III ,8 Ill ,9 Ill , 10 III,ll

Aniaals (continued) Lady Castledean Principino

Children , toys, qa.��es Adaa 252 324 334 Maggie 252 334 Fanny 281 4()()-01 Bob 400-Ql Cllarlotte 317 335 Principino

Sound Allertgo 298,308 357,361 Charlotte 296,308 357,361 Haggle Adall Fanny Bob

Science, technoloqy Aaerigo Fanny 271 Maggie AdaJI

Royalty Ameriqo 254 306 Char lotte 264 � Fanny 364 -....] Maqgie 0'\ Adam 324 Principino 334

Magic, omens , fairy tales Maggie 401 Adalll .Qerigo 248-249 271,274 299 324 331,332 348 360-61 Char lotte 298 362 Fanny 274

Re ligion, myths Maggie 397 Adalll Aaeriqo Charlotte 318 Fanny Bob 286,287 Matcham 332

Weapons , wounds, war Maggie 282 311 Fanny 263 348 400 Amerigo 257 290-91 Charlotte 249 290-91 Bob 365 Adalll

Grai l, cup 274 315 356,358-60

Buyinq, values Adaa 325 Maggie 380 Aaeriqo 268 292,298 320 320,333 345 350,353,358 Charlotte 255 268 292-93,295 317,318,325 342 389 Fanny 279 Bob 374 TABLE A-ll (continued)

Book , Chapter x.aqe Character III ,1 III,l III,3 III,4 III,5 III ,6 III, 7 III ,8 III ,9 III ,10 III,ll

Gold, jewals Allerigo 292-93 318,323 325 333 345 351,352-53,358 368 Cbarlotte 246 325 Maqqie 267 325 Ad&ll Fanny Bob

Collect!nq, possessions A&ul Maggie Aaertqo 292 350 Char lotte Principino

Works of art, artists Maqgie "-erigo

Arch! tecture Aaeriqo 294 327-28,330-32,335 350-51,358 Charlotte 245 ,247 304 Maggie Adaa Fanny 371,377

Staqe , acting bleriqo 248,257 Cbarlotte 24 7, 248 ,255 ,25 7, ol::oo 261,263 -..,J Fanny 287 335 -..,J Maggie 322 Adaa

Watching, seeing, visions Nlerigo 248,263 271 282,289 295,297 310 339 375 Char lotte 247,249,2.54,255, 270 321 356 257,263 Fanny 250,251, 266,267, 277,278,279 340 370,371 388 251 274 280 Maggie 324 381,382,396 Adaa Bob 245

Knowledge, knowing Maggie 333-34 385,389 Ada• 333-34 Aaerigo 297,299,300 353,354 Charlotte 300 310,316 363 Fanny 259,262 271,272 291 309,314 365

Constraint Aller!qo Charlotte 256,258 289 302,310 Maggie Adoa Fanny 336 377

Conveyance Maggia l"anny 271 345

Iaolation Maggie Aaerigo 288,289 326,335 Charlotte 288,289 335 Fanny 271 '!'ABLE A-ll (continued)

Book, Chapter Iuqe Character 111,1 III,2 III,3 III ,t III,S III,6 Ill, 7 III,S 111,9 III, 10 III,ll nt¢t AMr1go 3t7 Charlotte 347 Maggie Adaa ronny 279 390

Freedoa Maggie Ad.'lll Mer! go 28a,296,298, 320 358 299 Charlotte 255 ,261 288 ,296,298 , 320 358,361 299

*"' -J (X) TABLE A-13. IMAGERY IN THE GOIDEII !niL BY CHARACTER, IV,1-IV,10

Book., Chapter Iaaqe Character IV,l IV,l IV,3 IV,t !V,S IV,6 IV,7 IV,B IV,9 IV,lO

Circus Meriqo Charlotte l'anny 71 MAggie 71

Discoverers, explorers Alleriqo 21 187 Charlotte Fanny Adaa Magqie 75-76 172

Desert Ameriqo, Charlotte Fanny , Bob Mrs. Rance

Gardens, Pa..rad 1se Ameriqo , Cbarllltte Mo�g1e 3 ,4,5 26

Exotic Fanny 70 162,167 Maqqie 3,4,6 92-93 Adall

Heat , cold, fire Ad&ll 11 MAggio 162 Amerigo 184 ,192 � Charlotte -.1 \.0 Liqht, dark ARrigo 24 Charlotte 3l 138 Fanny lll Ad.all MAggie 6,20,21,23 25,41,43 103 181,202

Boats , water Allert go 21 190 Charlotte Fanny Adaa Haqqie 6-7 24-25,41,43,44 49 82 130-31 163,171 203

Flowers Aaeriqo 37 Charlotte Fanny 100 159 Magg ie 26,41 144 Adaa Mr. Crichton 148

Food Alleriqo Charlotte Fanny Bob Maggie 3,18 27,30 68, 7'2,76 102 154 185 Adall

Aniaals ARrigo 193-94 Charlotte 193-94 Fanoy MAggie 6-7, 10, ll 22 52 84 109,117 128 142 163 185 Adaa 22 82 TABLE A-13 (continued)

Book, Chapter laaqe Character IV,l IV,l IV,3 IV,t IV,5 IV,6 IV,7 IV,B IV,9 IV,10

Animals (continued) Lady Castledean 50 Principino 98

Children, toys, games Ad .. 34 82,83 156 Maqqie 7 34 46,51 81,84 102,107 156 Fanny 165 Bob 128 Charlotte Principino

Sound Alleriqo 4l,U Charlotte 42,U Maggie 3,4 22,32 74 104 Adam 74 Fanny 126 Bob 126 Mr. Crichton U7

Science, technology Amerigo Fanny Haqgie 72 Adaa

Royalty ol:>o Alleriqo U9 00 Charlotte Fanny 1ll 0 Maqqie 23,38 70 144,149 152-53 Adaa Principino 23

Magic, ot�ens, fairy tales Ma qqie 34,42,43 75 92 U4-16 U2-43 Adam 34 77 92 AlleriQO 56 139,142-43 192 Charlotte Fanny 121 138

Religion, ll)'ths Haqqie ll 56 72 100, 108,112 129 140,147-48 153,154, 199 156, 160 Ad.. 82 91 Ameriqo 180 Charlotte 153 Fanny 101 180 Bob Shopkeeper 197

Weapons, wounds , war Maqqie 4,5, 7 ,9, 22,32,35,44 69,70,72,73,74 106 139,141-44 158, 162-63 181 15-16,16 Fanny 104 Alleriqo 141-44 181, 193 Charlotte U4 Bob Adall 7l

Grall, cup 18 44 159,167,180 181-82

Buy inq, values Adaa 81 90 Maqqie 4,10,11 21-22 ,28, 47,48,51, 73,84 97,98 106 188 , 198 31,39 52 Aaer lqo 139 192,198 Charlotte 98 106 Fanny 96,97 TABLE A-13 (continued)

Book, Chapter Iaaqo Character IV,l IV ,2 IV,3 IV,4 IV,S IV,6 IV,7 IV,S IV,9 IV,lO

Buyinq, values (continued) Bob Lady Castledean 50 96

Gold, jovels AMr1go Charlotte 144 llaqq!o 8,10 31,35-36,38, 85 112 145,159,151-52 42,4:3,45

Ada a 86 fanny Bob

Collf'ICtinq, possessions Mall 46 9o-91 Maqqie 90-91 Aaeriqo 95 Charlotte 85,90 Principino

WOrks of art, artists !laqqie 3-8,10,11 30-32 S',59 95 138,140-41,145 202 Amerigo ll 75

Arch!tecture Aaer!qo 192 Cbar lotto 192 Maqq1e 3-5,14 42,44 99,102 192,193 Aclo.ll � Fanny 151 00

Stage, actinq 1--' Aller!go Char lotte Fanny Maqqie 8,11 33 7o-7l 195 Adam 41

Watchinq, se-einq, visions Aaeriqo 26,35 64 119 Charlotte 30,35 108 119 183 ,187' 189 Fanny 102 122,124,125 180 Maqg1e 9,11,15,16 23,38,39, 48,50,52 ,53,54,57 ,58 , 96 112 140,141,142, 156 ,158, 182-202, 42 69,80 143, 144,145 160-81 207 Adam 69,73,80 86,89,92, 138 94,95

Know ledqe, knowinq Maq;ie 4,20 25,21,28,31,34, 35,40,42, 66, 75, 85 104,109 125,131 138,140, 158, 16o-78 183,187-203 44,52,55,57 79,81 143,148 Aclo.ll 98 105 130,135 173,174 A.lleriqo 40,43 49 113 160,164 190 Charlotte 13 43 49 113 Fanny 104 ,107' 108 133,134 154' 159' 161 Bob 123

Constraint A..er1qo 22 141 179 192 Charlotte 22 ,l3 Maqq1e 7,14-15,17 29,44, 48-49 72 85 106 141 U-45 Aclo.ll Fenny 151

Conveyance Maqq1e 21-24,29 55,56,57 68-69 95 Fenny

Isolation l!aqgio 13 45,49 84 152,155-57 TABLE A-13 {continued)

Book, Chapter Iuqe Cba.racter IV,l IV,:Z IV,l IV,t rv,s IV,6 IV,7 IV,8 IV,9 IV,10

Isolation (continued) -'-eri;o Charlotte 138 Fanny 1l1 Adaa at

Pliqbt Aaeriqo u 46,49 73 98 Charlotte 44 46,.f9 73 98 llaqqie t9 105 139 156 185-86' 192' 203 Adaa 73 Fenny l'reedo• llaqqie 5,7,8 :Z6,44 81 Ul 155-56 Adluo Amerigo U1 Charlotte

,l::.. 00 N 483

TABLE A-14. IMAGERY IN THE GOLDDl BOWL BY CIIAAACTER, V,l-VI ,3

Book , Chapter Image Character v ,1 V,2 V,3 V,4 V,5 VI ,l VI,2 VI,3

Circus Amerigo Charlotte Fanny 302 Maggie 289 30 2,310-11

Discoverers , explorers Amerigo Charlotte Fanny Adam Maggie 236 256 310 323

Desert Amerigo, Charlotte 281 Fanny , Bob Mrs. Rance 234 321

Gardens, Paradise Amerigo, Charlotte Maggie 280,295 306-07

Exotic Fanny Maggie 237 256 311 323-34 Adam

Heat , cold, fire Adam Maggie 209,213 250 299 337 Amerigo Charlotte 330

Light , dark Amerigo 281 Charlotte 250 271 279 313 Fanny 278 Adam 268 Maggie 207 234 ,240,250 272,273 279,282, 299,313 352 367,369 292,295

Boats , water Amerigo 339-40,353 359 Char lotte 279 Fanny Ada.'II 255,258,263-65 Maggie 209 255,258 ,263-65 279 339-40,353 359

Flowers Amerigo Charlotte 278 Fanny Maggie 210 250 295 352 Adam Mr. Crichton

Food Amerigo 329 Charlotte 329 Fanny Bob Maggie 298 338,341 354-65,367 Adam

Animals Amerigo 229 Charlotte 283-84,294 303 Fanny Maggie 227 235 281 , 282-84, 299 285,288 484

TABLE A-14 (continued)

Book, Chapter Image Character V,l V,2 V,3 V,4 V,5 VI ,l VI,2 VI,3

Animals (continued) Adam 285 Principino

Children, toys , games Adam 273 305 332 367 Maggie 231-52 Fanny Bob Charlotte Principino 305 366

Sound Amerigo Charlotte 243 292 , 294 316 367 Maggie 243 272 Adam Fanny 209 Bob 209 Mr. Crichton

Science , technology Amerigo Fanny Maggie 207 Adam

Roy alty Amerigo 356-68,360 Charlotte 354 ,360 Fanny Maggie 233,246 356 Adam 340 354 Principino 305-06

Magic, omen s, fairy tales Maggie 211,221,223 237 260 278 ,279,280, 299 ,306 350 28 2,288-89 Adam 28 4,290 301 331 358 Amerigo 227 Char lotte Fanny

Religion, myths Maggie 234,242 256 307130813141315 350 Adam 256 ,269 Ame rigo 281 338 Charlotte 290-9 1,292 300 329 346 357 Fanny 302 324 Bob Shopkeeper 222-223 Father Mitchel l 298 , 300

Weapons 1 wounds , war Maggie 214,220 242 308-09,311 323 339 Fanny 209 ,214 302 Amerigo 219 341-42 Charlotte Bob Adam

Grail, cup 216 271 285 298 329

Buying , values Ad !Ill 245 267 360,365 Maggie 228 244-45 256 ,268 280 367-68 Amerigo 226 347 367-68 Charlotte 240,244-45 278 ,288 ,289 330 365 Fanny 212 Bob 485

TABLE A-14 (continued)

Book, Chapter Image Character V,1 V,2 V,3 V,4 V,5 VI ,1 VI,2 VI,3 -

Gold, jewels Amerigo Charlotte Maggie 216-17 232 350 368 Adam Fanny Bob

Collecting, possessions Adam 266-67 273 358-60 Maggie 285-86 354,359 Ame rigo 323 360 Charlotte 360 Principino iiorks of art, artists Maggie 234 ,237 266-67 280,288-89, 303 291 Amerigo

Architecture Amerigo Charlotte Maggie 212 246 279 ,287 , 288 297 306 323 360 Adam Fanny

Stage, acting Amerigo 360-61 Charlotte 277 313 360-61 Fanny Maggie 208,222 231,235-36, 277 289,295 307 243 Adam 249

Watching, seeing , visions Amerigo 244 Charlotte 286 364 ,369 Fanny 213,216 238,24 1, 278 243 , 245 Maggie 213,214, 232-52 253 ,256,260,264 282-96 301-18 324 , 328,332 342,349-53 358,364, 22 1-28 268 ,273,275 ,276,277 36 8,369 Adam 264 ,269 , 290 ,292 270,275

Know ledge, knowing Maggie 208,214,216 233,244, 280 282 , 283,291 , 292 332 344,345 255 Adam 263 ,273 273 Amerigo 350 Charlotte 213 247,244 , 248 287,288 347,348,356 Fanny 304 Bob

Constraint Amerigo 281,294 338,341,350 Charlotte 229-30 23 9,241 28 1,283 ,287 ,298 300 329,33 1 365 Maggie 227 236,239 327,330 341-42 Adam 283 ,287,289 331 365 Fanny

Conveyance Maggie 354 Fanny

Isolation Maggie 235-36,243-44 253 329 Amerigo 323 338 Charlotte 250 289 307-09 330 357 486

TABLE A-14 (continued)

Book, Chapter Image Character V,l V,2 V,3 V,4 v,s VI,l VI ,2 VI,3

Isolation (continued) Fanny Adam 253

Flight Amerigo Charlotte 307,312 Maggie 229 24 1,244,250 26 2,268, 277 ,281,283 306 ,317 329,330 365 273 Adam

Freedom Maggie 207 294 341,342 367 Adam Amerigo 307,312 342 367 Char lotte 30 7,312 487

VITA

Marijane Rountree Davis was born in San Antonio ,

Texas, on November 27, 1952. She attended public schools throughout south Texas and was graduated from Bella ire High

School , Houston, Texas, in May 1971 . She attended Houston

Baptist University as an Endowed Academic Scholar . In 1974 she transferred to Texas A&M University , where she received the Bachelor of Arts degree in English magna cum laude in

1975 and immediately began a teaching assistantship in

English while studying for the Master of Science degree in

Educational Psychology. In 1977 she received the Master of

Arts degree in English from TAMU . In January 1978 she accepted a teaching assistantship at the University of

Tennessee , Knoxville , and received the Doctor of Philosophy in June 1986.

The author is a member of several professional organi zations and teache s part-time in the Department of English at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas, in addition to her current administrative position as Assistant to the

Graduate Dean in the Graduate School.