THE MYSTERY OF WHITENESS: A STUDY OF HENRY JAMES'S THE GOLDEN BOWL by Richard Sever >/ A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of A rts in the Department of English Fresno State College January, 1971 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. THE PRINCE . ± II. THE WHITENESS OF ADAM 15 III. THE WHITE MAIDEN 24 WORKS CITED oQ I THE PRINCE There is a whiteness in The Golden Bowl like the whiteness of Herman Melville's whale, which "has been made the symbol of divine spotlessness and power . .. yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.""' In The Golden Bowl Prince Amerigo finds it difficult to fathom the ostensible goodness and purity of the motives of the Americans, the Ververs and the Assinghams: These things, the motives of such people, were obscure-- a little alarmingly so; they contributed to that element of the impenetrable which alone slightly qualified his sense of his good fortune. He remembered to have read, as a boy, a wonderful tale by Allan Poe, his prospective wife's countryman--which was a thing to show, by the way, what imagination 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 anyone 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 ^"Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or the Whale (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co. Inc., 1964), pp. 254-55. 2 felt his own boat move upon some such mystery. The state or mmd ot his new friends including Mrs. Assingham her- sel , had resemblances to a great white curtain.^ The Ververs and Assinghams, the Prince notes, with their American good faith" (p. 22), have made a "bland, blank assumption of [his] merits almost beyond notation, of essential quality and value" (p. 30), taking it for granted that he is a good prospective mate for Maggie. The Prince knows that he is to "constitute a possession" (p. 30) for the Ververs, as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a purity of gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful, of which the 'worth' in mere modern change, sovereigns and half-crowns, would be great enough, but as to which since there were finer ways of using it, such taking to pieces was superfluous" (p. 30). As merely a rare "piece," Amerigo cannot see their "degree of seriousness" in wanting to possess him--this is the element "lost there in the white mist" (p. 30). "What was," Amerigo asks, "morally speaking, behind their veil?" (p. 30). What did they expect him to do as Maggie's husband in exchange for their money? This question occupies his mind as he travels to Cadogan Place, and at the Assinghams he feels that he has come "a little nearer the shroud" (p. 31). Mrs. Assingham tells Amerigo that since his marriage to Maggie is assured he is "practically 2Henry James, The Golden Bowl, Laurel Series (New York: Dell Publishing Co. Inc., 1963), p. 29. Subsequent refer­ ences are to this edition. 3 in port. The port ... of the Golden Isles" (p. 33); but it comes, her confidence and serenity, "from behind the white curtain" (p. 32), and worries instead of soothes him. Like Gordon Pym, Ishmael, and his ancestor Amerigo Vespucci, he sees himself "starting on the great voyage-- across the unknown sea" (p. 32). Instead of an American discovering the mysteries behind the veils of Europeans—as in the journeys of Christopher Newman, Lambert Strether, and Milly Theale--Amerigo, an Italian, sets out to understand Americans. He believes that in order to escape futility he must seek out a "new world," just as his ancestor, "in the wake of Columbus" (p. 66), had done. Arrogance and greed, Amerigo admits, are the dominant themes in his national history, but with the Americans he can now begin a new life that will exclude the vices of his native Rome. Amerigo is intrigued by Mr. Verver's extensive bank account, yet he "humbly" commits himself to use the money to "make something different" (p. 26). With Adam's money, and with the old superstitions of Euro pe left behind, Amerigo's life "might be scientific": He was allying himself to science, for what was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of mone}^? 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 accept­ ance of the developments of the coming age--to redress the balance of his being so differently considered. (P. 26) 4 Prince Amerigo recognizes that machinery, the product of American capital, attenuates the magical powers of super­ stition, ana superstition, he believes, was responsible for much numan wickedness--the "doings, the marriages, the crimes, the follies, the boundless betises of other people" (p. 21)— in his antenatal history" (p. 25). Amerigo has a candid good faith in the machinery of this new science, for "he was of them now, of the rich peoples; he was on their side--if it wasn't rather the pleasanter way of putting it that they were on his" (p. 26). But the figures who will people his new world of riches are treating him without the amount of caution he feels should be shown toward someone of his background, and this lack of skepticism in the Americans makes him uneasy. His position puzzles him, for he is to inherit a large fortune without being subjected to close personal scrutiny—the Verver's and the Assingham's have somehow calculated his value without regard to his "unknown quantity," his "particular self" (p. 21). He openly admits his pecuniary motives, seeing that there are excellent possibilities for making his nobility solvent, but he also sees that his prospects for fulfillment depend upon validity of their high calculation of his value. Will his manners, his charm, his beautiful Roman countenance, suffice in exchange for their money? Or, if the Americans have miscalculated, will he be required to sacrifice a part of himself to conform to their idea of beauty? 5 Ameri0o has imagined himself afloat in an aromatic ocean where Maggie Verver's innocence "sweetened the waters . tinted them as by the action of some essence, poured from a gold-topped phial ..." (p. 21); but he senses that sucn a position might involve sinking as well as float­ ing, and, m order to remain near solid ground, he must correctly gauge the depth of the waters and skillfully navi­ gate in the narrow straits. So Amerigo does not see himself in port , he feels that he is fac ed with the consequences of understanding the Americans or being swept out t o sea, and ne must prepare himself for a journey of discovery in spite of the temptation, offered by Mrs. Assingham, to accept the Verver s innocent endorsement. The Prince has promised Ma-ggie that he doe s not "lie or dissemble or deceive" (p. 24), and he intends to keep this promise. As the Prince begins his "journey" he is haunted by a figure from the old world, the world he has vowed to leave behind. Charlotte Stant, a woman with whom the Prince has had an affair, comes to London. Seen by Mrs. Assingham as a person "whose looks are most subject to appreciation" (p. 41); Charlotte is a "tall, strong, charming girl" (p. 44), whose life style, the Prince sees, "is irretrievably contem­ poraneous with his own" (p. 45). Charlotte is "strong- minded" (p. 44), but this trait does not correspond to the strong-willed, English-speaking stereotype--girls from whom Amerigo has learned to expect a negative response. The 6 Prince, rather, "has his own view of this young lady's strength of mind (p. 44). 0f American parentage, but born m Florence, Charlotte has "a perfect felicity in the use of Italian" (p. 50); "her parents [are] from the great country [America], but themselves already of a corrupt generation, demoralized, falsified, polygot well before her" (p. 51). So Charlotte displays none of the mysterious whiteness attributed to the other Americans, and Amerigo insists "that some strictly civil ancestor—generations back, and from the Tuscan hills if she would—made himself felt, ineffaceably, in her blood and in her tone" (p. 51). Because of this strain or European blood in Charlotte, it is easy for the Prince to establish a coherent attitude toward her. When he first sees Charlotte at Cadogan Place, to where she has just returned from a trip to America, he "saw again that her hair was vulgarly speaking, brown, but there was a shade of tawny autumn leaf in it, for 'appreciation' --a colour indescribable and of which he had known no other case, something that gave her at moments the sylvan head of a huntress" (p. 45). Suggesting a dusky Diana--Amerigo's "notion, perhaps not wholly correct, of a muse" (p. 46)— Charlotte is not only strong-willed but aggressive, and she is capable of initiating and directing a sexual relationship with a man.