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Henry James

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Henry James
American writer
born April 15, 1843, New York, N.Y., U.S.
died Feb. 28, 1916, London, Eng.
Main
American novelist and, as a naturalized English citizen from 1915, a
great figure in the transatlantic culture. His fundamental theme was the
innocence and exuberance of the New World in clash with the corruption
and wisdom of the Old, as illustrated in such works as Daisy Miller
(1879), The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The Bostonians (1886), and The
Ambassadors (1903).
Early life and works.
Henry James was named for his father, a prominent social theorist and
lecturer, and was the younger brother of the pragmatist philosopher
William James. The young Henry was a shy, book-addicted boy who assumed
the role of quiet observer beside his active elder brother. They were
taken abroad as infants, were schooled by tutors and governesses, and
spent their preadolescent years in Manhattan. Returned to Geneva, Paris,
and London during their teens, the James children acquired languages and
an awareness of Europe vouchsafed to few Americans in their times. On
the eve of the American Civil War, the James family settled at Newport,
R.I., and there, and later in Boston, Henry came to know New England
intimately. When he was 19 years of age he enrolled at the Harvard Law
School, but he devoted his study time to reading Charles-Augustin
Sainte-Beuve, Honoré de Balzac, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. His first story
appeared anonymously two years later in the New York Continental Monthly
and his first book reviews in the North American Review. When William
Dean Howells became editor of The Atlantic Monthly, James found in him a
friend and mentor who published him regularly. Between them, James and
Howells inaugurated the era of American “realism.”
By his mid-20s James was regarded as one of the most skillful writers
of short stories in America. Critics, however, deplored his tendency to
write of the life of the mind, rather than of action. The stories of
these early years show the leisurely existence of the well-to-do at
Newport and Saratoga. James’s apprenticeship was thorough. He wrote
stories, reviews, and articles for almost a decade before he attempted a
full-length novel. There had to be also the traditional “grand tour,”
and James went abroad for his first adult encounter with Europe in 1869.
His year’s wandering in England, France, and Italy set the stage for a
lifetime of travel in those countries. James never married. By nature he
was friendly and even gregarious, but while he was an active observer
and participant in society, he tended, until late middle age, to be
“distant” in his relations with people and was careful to avoid
“involvement.”
Career—first phase.
Recognizing the appeal of Europe, given his cosmopolitan upbringing,
James made a deliberate effort to discover whether he could live and
work in the United States. Two years in Boston, two years in Europe,
mainly in Rome, and a winter of unremitting hackwork in New York City
convinced him that he could write better and live more cheaply abroad.
Thus began his long expatriation—heralded by publication in 1875 of the
novel Roderick Hudson, the story of an American sculptor’s struggle by
the banks of the Tiber between his art and his passions; Transatlantic
Sketches, his first collection of travel writings; and a collection of
tales. With these three substantial books, he inaugurated a career that
saw about 100 volumes through the press during the next 40 years.
During 1875–76 James lived in Paris, writing literary and topical
letters for the New York Tribune and working on his novel The American
(1877), the story of a self-made American millionaire whose guileless
and forthright character contrasts with that of the arrogant and cunning
family of French aristocrats whose daughter he unsuccessfully attempts
to marry. In Paris James sought out the Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev,
whose work appealed to him, and through Turgenev was brought into
Gustave Flaubert’s coterie, where he got to know Edmond de Goncourt,
Émile Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Guy de Maupassant. From Turgenev he
received confirmation of his own view that a novelist need not worry
about “story” and that, in focusing on character, he would arrive at the
life experience of his protagonist.
Much as he liked France, James felt that he would be an eternal
outsider there, and late in 1876 he crossed to London. There, in small
rooms in Bolton Street off Piccadilly, he wrote the major fiction of his
middle years. In 1878 he achieved international renown with his story of
an American flirt in Rome, Daisy Miller, and further advanced his
reputation with The Europeans that same year. In England he was promptly
taken up by the leading Victorians and became a regular at Lord
Houghton’s breakfasts, where he consorted with Alfred Tennyson, William
Gladstone, Robert Browning, and others. A great social lion, James dined
out 140 times during 1878 and 1879 and visited in many of the great
Victorian houses and country seats. He was elected to London clubs,
published his stories simultaneously in English and American
periodicals, and mingled with George Meredith, Robert Louis Stevenson,
Edmund Gosse, and other writers, thus establishing himself as a
significant figure in Anglo-American literary and artistic relations.
James’s reputation was founded on his versatile studies of “the
American girl.” In a series of witty tales, he pictured the “self-made”
young woman, the bold and brash American innocent who insists upon
American standards in European society. James ended this first phase of
his career by producing his masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady (1881),
a study of a young woman from Albany who brings to Europe her narrow
provincialism and pretensions but also her sense of her own sovereignty,
her “free spirit,” her refusal to be treated, in the Victorian world,
merely as a marriageable object. As a picture of Americans moving in the
expatriate society of England and of Italy, this novel has no equal in
the history of modern fiction. It is a remarkable study of a band of
egotists while at the same time offering a shrewd appraisal of the
American character. James’s understanding of power in personal relations
was profound, as evinced in Washington Square (1881), the story of a
young American heroine whose hopes for love and marriage are thwarted by
her father’s callous rejection of a somewhat opportunistic suitor.
Career—middle phase.
In the 1880s James wrote two novels dealing with social reformers and
revolutionaries, The Bostonians (1886) and The Princess Casamassima
(1886). In the novel of Boston life, James analyzed the struggle between
conservative masculinity embodied in a Southerner living in the North
and an embittered man-hating suffragist. The Bostonians remains the
fullest and most rounded American social novel of its time in its study
of cranks, faddists, and “do-gooders.” In The Princess Casamassima James
exploited the anarchist violence of the decade and depicted the struggle
of a man who toys with revolution and is destroyed by it. These novels
were followed by The Tragic Muse (1890), in which James projected a
study of the London and Paris art studios and the stage, the conflict
between art and “the world.”
The latter novel raised the curtain on his own “dramatic years,”
1890–95, during which he tried to win success writing for the stage. His
dramatization of The American in 1891 was a modest success, but an
original play, Guy Domville, produced in 1895, was a failure, and James
was booed at the end of the first performance. Crushed and feeling that
he had lost his public, he spent several years seeking to adapt his
dramatic experience to his fiction. The result was a complete change in
his storytelling methods. In The Spoils of Poynton (1897), What Maisie
Knew (1897), The Turn of the Screw and In the Cage (1898), and The
Awkward Age (1899), James began to use the methods of alternating
“picture” and dramatic scene, close adherence to a given angle of
vision, a withholding of information from the reader, making available
to him only that which the characters see. The subjects of this period
are the developing consciousness and moral education of children—in
reality James’s old international theme of innocence in a corrupting
world, transferred to the English setting.
Career—final phase.
The experiments of this “transition” phase led James to the writing of
three grandiose novels at the beginning of the new century, which
represent his final—his “major”—phase, as it has been called. In these
novels James pointed the way for the 20th-century novel. He had begun as
a realist who describes minutely his crowded stage. He ended by leaving
his stage comparatively bare, and showing a small group of characters in
a tense situation, with a retrospective working out, through multiple
angles of vision, of their drama. In addition to these technical devices
he resorted to an increasingly allusive prose style, which became dense
and charged with symbolic imagery. His late “manner” derived in part
from his dictating directly to a typist and in part from his unremitting
search for ways of projecting subjective experience in a flexible prose.
The first of the three novels was The Ambassadors (1903). This is a
high comedy of manners, of a middle-aged American who goes to Paris to
bring back to a Massachusetts industrial town a wealthy young man who,
in the view of his affluent family, has lingered too long abroad. The
“ambassador” in the end is captivated by civilized Parisian life. The
novel is a study in the growth of perception and awareness in the
elderly hero, and it balances the relaxed moral standards of the
European continent against the parochial rigidities of New England. The
second of this series of novels was The Wings of the Dove, published in
1902, before The Ambassadors, although written after it. This novel,
dealing with a melodramatic subject of great pathos, that of an heiress
doomed by illness to die, avoids its cliche subject by focusing upon the
characters surrounding the unfortunate young woman. They intrigue to
inherit her millions. Told in this way, and set in London and Venice, it
becomes a powerful study of well-intentioned humans who, with dignity
and reason, are at the same time also birds of prey. In its shifting
points of view and avoidance of scenes that would end in melodrama, The
Wings of the Dove demonstrated the mastery with which James could take a
tawdry subject and invest it with grandeur. His final novel was The
Golden Bowl (1904), a study of adultery, with four principal characters.
The first part of the story is seen through the eyes of the aristocratic
husband and the second through the developing awareness of the wife.
While many of James’s short stories were potboilers written for the
current magazines, he achieved high mastery in the ghostly form, notably
in The Turn of the Screw (1898), and in such remarkable narratives as
“The Aspern Papers” (1888) and “The Beast in the Jungle” (1903)—his
prophetic picture of dissociated 20th-century man lost in an urban
agglomeration. As a critic James tended to explore the character and
personality of writers as revealed in their creations; his essays are a
brilliant series of studies, moral portraits, of the most famous
novelists of his century, from Balzac to the Edwardian realists. His
travel writings, English Hours (1905), Italian Hours (1909), and A
Little Tour in France (1884), portray the backgrounds James used for his
fictions.
In his later years, James lived in retirement in an 18th-century
house at Rye in Sussex, though on completion of The Golden Bowl he
revisited the United States in 1904–05. James had lived abroad for 20
years, and in the interval America had become a great industrial and
political power. His observation of the land and its people led him to
write, on his return to England, a poetic volume of rediscovery and
discovery, The American Scene (1907), prophetic in its vision of urban
doom, spoliation, and pollution of resources and filled with misgivings
over the anomalies of a “melting pot” civilization. The materialism of
American life deeply troubled James, and on his return to England he set
to work to shore up his own writings, and his own career, against this
ephemeral world. He devoted three years to rewriting and revising his
principal novels and tales for the highly selective “New York Edition,”
published in 24 volumes. For this edition James wrote 18 significant
prefaces, which contain both reminiscence and exposition of his theories
of fiction.
Throwing his moral weight into Britain’s struggle in World War I,
James became a British subject in 1915 and received the Order of Merit
from King George V.
Assessment.
Henry James’s career was one of the longest and most productive—and most
influential—in American letters. A master of prose fiction from the
first, he practiced it as a fertile innovator, enlarged the form, and
placed upon it the stamp of a highly individual method and style. He
wrote for 51 years—20 novels, 112 tales, 12 plays, several volumes of
travel and criticism, and a great deal of literary journalism. He
recognized and helped to fashion the myth of the American abroad and
incorporated this myth in the “international novel,” of which he was the
acknowledged master. His fundamental theme was that of an innocent,
exuberant, and democratic America confronting the worldly wisdom and
corruption of Europe’s older, aristocratic culture. In both his light
comedies and his tragedies, James’s sense of the human scene was sure
and vivid; and, in spite of the mannerisms of his later style, he was
one of the great prose writers and stylists of his century.
James’s public remained limited during his lifetime, but, after a
revival of interest in his work during the 1940s and ’50s, he reached an
ever-widening audience; his works were translated in many countries, and
he was recognized in the late 20th century as one of the subtlest
craftsmen who ever practiced the art of the novel. His rendering of the
inner life of his characters made him a forerunner of the
“stream-of-consciousness” movement in the 20th century.
Leon Edel
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THE AMBASSADORS
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: About 1900
Locale: Paris, France
First published: 1903
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The Ambassadors marks a turning point in James's attitude toward his
American characters. This novel contains none of the embarrassment found
in many of the earlier works, which portray the author's fellow
Americans as slightly barbaric in their inability to appreciate the
fineness and subtlety of European culture.
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Principal Characters
Lambert Strether, the chief ambassador of Mrs. Newsome, his betrothed,
sent to summon her son Chad back from Paris to the family business in
Wollett, Massachusetts. A fifty-five-year-old editor of a review,
Lambert Strether has all the tact and diplomacy necessary to accomplish
his task, but his sensitivity will not allow him either to complete it
or to take advantage of Chad's situation to gain his own ends. He sees
Chad as immeasurably better off in Paris, himself as somehow changed and
strengthened by his sojourn abroad, though he will not allow himself to
stay in Europe after having failed his benefactress. His heady
experiences renew his earlier impressions, and he forms friendships,
visits cathedrals, and lives easily for the first time since his wife
died while bearing their son, also dead. His delicacy—in approaching
young Newsome and his mistress, Mme. de Vionnet; in handling Chadwick's
sister, brother-in-law, and childhood sweetheart, and in breaking off
from Maria Gostrey, who loves him—is the more remarkable when one
considers that his own hopes of a rich marriage and great influence have
been shattered by his actions.
Chadwick Newsome, called Chad, the handsome, twenty-eight-year-old
successor to a family business on the one hand and the heir to a modest
income from another source. Candid and open-hearted, the graying young
man has been so improved by his years in Europe, largely under the
tutelage of Mme. de Vionnet. that no thought of his return can really be
harbored by anyone who has seen him. Although he himself is willing to
return for a visit and to consider taking over the advertising and sales
promotion of the business he is well equipped to run, his proposed
marriage to Mamie Pocock is unthinkable. His greatest triumph comes as
the result of his mannerly presentation of his sister's group of
ambassadors to his Parisian friends, while his saddest duty is to allow
his good friend Lambert Strether to return to face the consequences of a
diplomatic failure.
Maria Gostrey, a self-styled introducer and tour director and a chance
acquaintance of Lambert Strether. A sensitive, genial, and understanding
woman, she proves to be the agent through whom the ambassador discovers
the irony of Chad Newsome's situation. Her generosity and devotion to
her new friend first touch him and then move him deeply when he sees her
loyalty and love unencumbered by desire for personal gain.
Mme. Marie de Vionnet (ma-re' da ve-on-na'), the beautiful Comtesse
whose religion and social position will not allow her to divorce an
unloved and faithless husband. Gravely lovely and charming, she has
educated young Chad Newsome in the social graces and has won his heart
and soul. Called a virtuous connection by intimate friends, the
arrangement seems shabby to Mr. Way-marsh and Mrs. Pocock, typically
closed-minded Americans. Through the efforts of good friends, especially
those of Lambert Strether, Mme. de Vionnet is allowed to retain her
younger lover in spite of the fact that they have no future beyond their
immediate happiness. Her daughter, who was believed by some to be in
love with Chad Newsome, settles on a marriage more reasonable and
agreeable to all.
John Little Bilham, called Little Bilham, an American expatriate artist
and Chad Newsome's close friend. A perceptive, bright young man. Little
Bilham becomes the confidant of the ambassadors and. along with a
friend. Miss Barrace, their interpreters of social and artistic life in
Paris.
Miss Barrace, a shrewd, witty, understanding woman living in Paris. She
asks Lambert Strether not to force the issue of Chad Newsome's return
home.
Mr. Waymarsh, an American lawyer residing in England, Lambert Strether's
friend. He accompanies Strether to Paris and directly involves himself
in Chad Newsome's affairs when he writes a letter informing Mrs. Newsome
that her ambassador is not fulfilling his mission.
Sarah Newsome Pocock, Chad Newsome's older sister. She, her husband, and
her sister-in-law are also dispatched as Mrs. Newsome's ambassadors to
make certain that Chad returns to America. She and Mr. Waymarsh join
forces to separate Chad and Mme. de Vionnet.
James Pocock, Sarah's husband, who during Chad Newsome's absence is in
control of the Newsome mills. He enjoys his trip to Paris, sympathizes
with Chad, and becomes Lambert Strether's tacit ally.
Mamie Pocock, James Pocock's younger sister, the girl Mrs. Newsome has
selected as a suitable wife for her son. Although she accompanies her
brother and his wife on their mission to persuade Chad Newsome to
return, she loses her personal interest in the young man after meeting
John Little Bilham. Little Bilham's announced intention of marrying
Mamie helps Chad solve his own problems of loyalty and love in his
affair with Mme. de Vionnet.
Jeanne de Vionnet, Mme. de Vionnet's daughter. For a time society
assumed that Chad Newsome might be in love with the daughter. Jeanne
becomes engaged to M. de Montbron.
M. Gloriani, a sculptor, Mme. de Vionnet's friend, famous in the
artistic and fashionable circles of Parisian society.
Mme. Gloriani, his loving wife.
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The Story
Lambert Strether was engaged to marry Mrs. New-some, a widow. Mrs.
Newsome had a son, Chadwick, whom she wanted to return home from Paris
and take over the family business in Woollett, Massachusetts. She was
especially concerned for his future after she had heard that he was
seriously involved with a Frenchwoman. In her anxiety, she asked
Strether to go to Paris and persuade her son to return to the
respectable life she had planned for him.
Strether did not look forward to his task, for Chadwick had ignored all
of his mother's written requests to return home. Strether also did not
know what hold Chadwick's mistress might have over him or what sort of
woman she might be. He strongly suspected that she was a young girl of
unsavory reputation. Strether realized, however, that his hopes of
marrying Mrs. Newsome depended upon his success in bringing Chad back to
America, where his mother could see him married to Mamie Pocock.
Leaving his ship at Liverpool, Strether journeyed across England to
London. On the way he met Miss Gostrey, a young woman who was acquainted
with some of Strether's American friends, and she promised to aid
Strether in getting acquainted with Europe before he left for home
again. Strether met another old friend, Mr. Waymarsh, an American lawyer
living in England, whom he asked to go with him to Paris.
A few days after arriving in Paris, Strether went to Chad's house. The
young man was not in Paris, and he had temporarily given the house over
to a friend, Mr. Bilham. Through Bilham, Strether got in touch with Chad
at Cannes. Strether was surprised to learn of his whereabouts, for he
knew that Chad would not have dared to take an ordinary mistress to such
a fashionable resort.
About a week later, Strether, Miss Gostrey, and Way-marsh went to the
theater. Between the acts of the play, the door of their box was opened
and Chad entered. He was much changed from the adolescent college boy
Strether remembered. He was slightly gray, although only twenty-eight
years old.
Both Strether and Chad Newsome were pleased to see each other. Over
coffee after the theater, the older man told Chad why he had come to
Europe. Chad answered that all he asked was an opportunity to be
convinced that he should return.
A few days later, Chad took Strether and his friends to a tea where they
met Mme. and Mile, de Vionnet. The former, who had married a French
count, turned out to be an old school friend of Miss Gostrey. Strether
was at a loss to understand whether Chad was in love with the comtesse
or with her daughter Jeanne. Since the older woman was only a few years
the senior of the young man and as beautiful as her daughter, either was
possibly the object of his affections.
As the days slipped by, it became apparent to Strether that he himself
wanted to stay in Paris. The French city and its life were much calmer
and more beautiful than the provincial existence he had known in
Woollett, and he began to understand why Chad was unwilling to go back
to his mother and the Newsome mills.
Strether learned that Chad was in love with Mme. de Vionnet, rather than
with her daughter. The comtesse had been separated from her husband for
many years, but their position and religion made divorce impossible.
Strether, who was often in the company of the Frenchwoman, soon fell
under her charm. Miss Gostrey, who had known Mme. de Vionnet for many
years, had only praise for her and questioned Strether as to the
advisability of removing Chad from the woman's continued influence.
One morning Chad announced to Strether that he was ready to return
immediately to America. The young man was puzzled when Strether replied
that he was not sure it was wise for either of them to return and that
it would be wiser for them both to reconsider whether they would not be
better off in Paris than in New England.
When Mrs. Newsome, back in America, received word of that decision on
the part of her ambassador, she immediately sent the Pococks, her
daughter and son-in-law, to Paris along with Mamie Pocock, the girl she
hoped her son would marry. They were to bring back both Strether and her
son.
Mrs. Newsome's daughter and her relatives did not come to Paris with an
obvious ill will. Their attitude seemed to be that Chad and Strether had
somehow drifted astray, and it was their duty to set them right. At
least that was the attitude of Mrs. Pocock. Her husband, however, was
not at all interested in having Chad return, for in the young man's
absence, Mr. Pocock controlled the Newsome mills. Mr. Pocock further saw
that his visit was probably the last opportunity he would have for a
spirited time in the European city, and so he was quite willing to spend
his holiday going to theaters and cafes. His younger sister, Mamie,
seemed to take little interest in the recall of her supposed fiance, for
she had become interested in Chad's friend, Mr. Bilham.
The more Strether saw of Mme. de Vionnet after the arrival of the
Pococks, the more he was convinced that she was both noble and sincere
in her attempts to make friends with her lover's family. Mrs. Pocock
found it difficult to reconcile Mme. de Vionnet's aristocratic
background with the fact that she was Chad's mistress.
After several weeks of hints and genteel pleading, the Pococks and Mamie
went to Switzerland, leaving Chad to make a decision whether to return
to America. As for Mr. Strether, Mrs. Newsome had advised that he be
left alone to make his own decision, for the widow wanted to avoid the
appearance of having lost her dignity or her sense of propriety.
While the Pococks were gone, Strether and Chad discussed the course they
should follow. Chad was uncertain of his attitude toward Mamie Pocock.
Strether assured him that the girl was already happy with her new love,
Mr. Bilham, who had told Strether that he intended to marry the American
girl. His advice, contrary to what he had thought when he had sailed
from America, was that Chadwick Newsome should remain in France with the
comtesse, despite the fact that the young man could not marry her and
would, by remaining in Europe, lose the opportunity to make himself an
extremely rich man. Chad decided to take his older friend's counsel.
Waymarsh, who had promised his help in persuading Chad to return to
America, was outraged at Strether's changed attitude. Miss Gostrey,
however, remained loyal, for she had fallen deeply in love with Strether
during their time together in Paris. Strether, however, realizing her
feelings, told her that he had to go back to America alone. His object
in Europe had been to return Chad Newsome to his mother. Because he had
failed in that mission and would never marry Mrs. Newsome. he could not
justify to himself marrying another woman whom he had met on a journey
financed by the woman he had at one time intended to marry. Only Mme. de
Vionnet, he felt, could truly appreciate the irony of his position.
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Critical Evaluation
In Henry James's The Ambassadors, plot is minimal; the story line
consists simply in Mrs. Newsome sending Lambert Strether to Europe to
bring home her son, Chad. The important action is psychological rather
than physical; the crucial activities are thought and conversation. The
pace of the novel is slow. Events unfold as they do in life: in their
own good time.
Because of these qualities, James's work demands certain responses from
the reader. He must not expect boisterous action, shocking or violent
occurrences, sensational coincidences, quickly mounting suspense, or
breathtaking climaxes; these devices have no place in a Henry James
novel. Rather, the reader must bring to the work a sensitivity to
problems of conscience, an appreciation of the meaning beneath manners,
and an awareness of the intricacies of human relationships. Finally, and
of the utmost importance, the reader must be patient; the power of a
novel like The Ambassadors is only revealed quietly and without haste.
This is why, perhaps more than any other modern author, James requires
rereading—not merely because of the complexity of his style, but because
the richly layered texture of his prose contains a multiplicity of
meanings, a wealth of subtle shadings.
In The Ambassadors, which James considered his masterpiece, this
subtlety and complexity is partially the result of his perfection of the
technique for handling point of view. Departing from traditional
eighteenth and nineteenth century use of the omniscient narrator. James
experimented extensively with the limited point of view, exploring the
device to discover what advantages it might have over the older method.
He found that w hat was lost in panoramic scope and comprehensiveness,
the limited viewpoint more than compensated for in focus, concentration,
and intensity. It was a technique perfectly suited to an author whose
primary concern w as with presenting the thoughts, emotions, and
motivations of an intelligent character, with understanding the
psychological makeup of a sensitive mind and charting its growth.
The sensitive and intelligent character through whose mind all events in
the novel are filtered is Lambert Strether. The reader sees and hears
only what Strether sees and hears; all experiences, perceptions, and
judgments are his. Strictly adhered to, this device proved too
restrictive for James's purpose; therefore, he utilized other
characters—called confidants—who enabled him to expand the scope of his
narrative without sacrificing advantages inherent in the limited point
of view. The basic function of these "listening characters" is to expand
and enrich Strether's experience. Miss Gostrey. Little Bilham, Waymarsh,
and Miss Barrace—all share with him attitudes and insights arising from
their widely diverse backgrounds; they provide him with a wider range of
knowledge than he could ever gain from firsthand experience. Maria
Gostrey, Strether's primary confidante, illustrates the fact that
James's listening characters are deep and memorable personalities in
their own right. Miss Gostrey not only listens to Strether, but she also
becomes an important figure in the plot, and as she gradually falls in
love with Strether, she engages the reader's sympathy as well.
Lambert Strether interacts with and learns from the environment of Paris
as well as from the people he meets there; thus, the setting is far more
than a mere backdrop against which events in the plot occur. To
understand the significance of Paris as the setting, the reader must
appreciate the meaning that the author, throughout his fiction, attached
to certain places. James was fascinated by what he saw as the underlying
differences in the cultures of America and Europe and, in particular, in
the opposing values of a booming American factory town such as Woollett
and an ancient European capital such as Paris. In these two places, very
different qualities are held in esteem. In Woollett, Mrs. Newsome
admires practicality, individuality, and enterprise, while in Paris, her
son appreciates good food and expensive wine, conversation with a close
circle of friends, and leisure time quietly spent. Woollett pursues
commercialism, higher social status, and rigid moral codes with untiring
vigor; Paris values the beauty of nature, the pleasure of companionship,
and an appreciation of the arts with studied simplicity. Thus, the
implications of a native of Woollett, such as Lambert Strether, going to
Paris at the end of his life are manifold; and it is through his journey
that the theme of the novel is played out.
The theme consists of a question of conscience: Should Strether, in his
capacity as Mrs. Newsome's ambassador, be faithful to his mission of
bringing Chad home, once he no longer believes in that mission? That he
ceases to believe is the result of his conversion during his stay in
Paris. He is exposed to a side of life that he had not known previously;
furthermore, he finds it to be good. As a man of noble nature and
sensitive conscience, he cannot ignore or deny, as Sarah Newsome later
does, that life in Paris has vastly improved Chad. Ultimately,
therefore, he must oppose rather than promote the young man's return.
The honesty of this action not only destroys his chance for financial
security in marriage to Chad's mother but also prevents him from
returning the love of Maria Gostrey. Although Strether's discovery of a
different set of values comes too late in life for his own benefit, he
at least can save Chad. The lesson he learns is the one he passionately
seeks to impart to Little Bilham: "Live all you can; it's a mistake not
to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you
have your life. . . . Don't, at any rate, miss things out of stupidity.
. . . Live!"
If, in reading The Ambassadors, the reader's expectations are for
keenness of observation, insight into motivations, comprehension of
mental processes, and powerful characterizations, he will not be
disappointed. If Henry James demands the effort, concentration, and
commitment of his reader, he also—with his depth and breadth of vision
and the sheer beauty of his craftsmanship—repays him a hundredfold.
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THE GOLDEN BOWL
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: с 1900
Locale: England and the Continent
First published: 1904
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The Golden Bowl is a meticulous, involved, and incredibly detailed
exploration of the subtleties of thought and nuances of emotion of a
small circle of wealthy, cultured Americans living in Europe. James's
collection of psychological shades and discriminations are at times
almost overwhelming to the reader. A forerunner of psychological
expressionism, the novel describes characters who live in a world shut
off from homely realities, a world that will not tolerate crudities.
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Principal Characters
Maggie Verver, the motherless daughter of an American millionaire. For a
number of years the Ververs have spent much of their time abroad, where
Mr. Verver has devoted himself to acquiring a magnificent art collection
for the museum he plans to build in American City. Sharing her father's
quiet tastes and aesthetic interests, Maggie has become his faithful
companion, and they have created for themselves a separate, enclosed
world of ease, grace, and discriminating appreciation, a
connoisseur-ship of life as well as of art. Even Maggie's marriage to
Prince Amerigo, an Italian of ancient family, does not change greatly
the pattern of their lives, a pattern that she believes complete when
Mr. Verver marries her best friend, Charlotte Stant. What Maggie does
not know is the fact that before her marriage the Prince and Charlotte,
both moneyless and therefore unable to marry, had been lovers. Several
years later the Prince, bored by his position as another item in the
Verver collection, and Charlotte, restless because she takes second
place beside her elderly husband's interest in art, resume their former
intimacy. Maggie finds her happiness threatened when her purchase of a
flawed gold-and-crystal bowl leads indirectly to her discovery of the
true situation. Her problem is whether to disclose or conceal her
knowledge. Deeply in love with her husband and devoted to her father,
she decides to remain silent. Her passivity becomes an act of drama
because it involves a sense of ethical responsibility and a moral
decision; her predicament is the familiar Jamesian spectacle of the
innocent American confronting the evil of European morality, in this
case complicated by Maggie's realization that she and her father are not
without guilt, that they have lived too much for themselves. In the end
her generosity, tact, and love resolve all difficulties. Mr. Verver and
his wife leave for America and Maggie regains her husband's love, now
unselfish-lessly offered.
Prince Amerigo, a young Italian nobleman, handsome, gallant, sensual,
living in England with his American wife. A man of politely easy
manners, he is able to mask his real feelings under an appearance of
courteous reserve. Though he has loved many women, he has little
capacity for lies or deception in his dealings with them; he objects
when Charlotte Stant, his former mistress, wishes to purchase a flawed
golden bowl as a wedding gift to his wife, for he wants nothing but
perfection in his marriage. He and Charlotte are often thrown together
after she marries his father-in-law, and they become lovers once more.
When his wife learns, through purchase of the same flawed bowl, the
secret of his infidelity, he tries to be loyal to all parties concerned,
and he so beautifully preserves the delicate harmony of family
relationships that no outsiders except their mutual friends, the
Assinghams, know of the situation. Maggie, his wife, is able to save her
marriage because his delicacy in the matter of purchased and purchasable
partners makes tense situations easier. After Mr. Verver and his wife
return to America, the Prince shows relief as unselfish as it is
sincere; their departure allows him to be a husband and a father in his
own right.
Charlotte Stant, the beautiful but impecunious American girl who needs a
wealthy husband to provide the fine clothes and beautiful things she
believes necessary for her happiness. Because Prince Amerigo is poor,
she becomes his mistress but never considers marrying him. After his
marriage to Maggie Verver, her best friend, Mr. Verver proposes to
Charlotte. She accepts him and, though Mr. Verver cannot understand her
claim of unworthiness, but she declares herself prepared to be as
devoted as possible, as a wife and as a stepmother to her good friend.
Often left in the Prince's company while Maggie and her father pursue
their interest in art, she resumes her affair with her former lover.
When the truth is finally revealed, Charlotte, determined to prove her
loyalties to all concerned, persuades Mr. Verver to return with her to
America. Her poised and gracious farewell to Maggie and the Prince is
more than a demonstration of her ability to keep up appearances; it
shows the code of responsibility she has assumed toward her lover, her
friend, and her husband.
Adam Verver, a rich American who has given over the pursuit of money in
order to achieve the good life for himself and his daughter Maggie. In
his innocence he believes that this end may be attained by seeing and
collecting the beautiful art objects of Europe. A perfect father, he
cannot realize that there is anything selfish in the close tie that
exists between himself and his daughter, and he tries to stand in the
same relationship with his son-in-law. Prince Amerigo, and Charlotte
Stant, his daughter's friend, whom he marries. All he really lives for
is to provide for Maggie and his grandson the life of happiness and
plenty he envisions for them. When he finally realizes that the pattern
of his life has been a form of make-believe, he sacrifices his own peace
of mind and agrees to return with his wife to make the United States his
permanent home.
Fanny Assingham, the friend of Maggie and Adam Verver, Prince Amerigo,
and Charlotte Stant, and the guardian angel of their secret lives. As
one who senses the Tightness of things, she helps to bring about both
marriages with a sensitive understanding of the needs of all, a delicacy
she will not allow to be disrupted by Maggie's discovery of her
husband's infidelity. Her belief is that even wickedness is more to be
condoned than wrong-ness of heart. She helps to resolve the situation
between Maggie and Prince Amerigo when she hurls the golden bowl, symbol
of Maggie's flawed marriage and the Prince's guilt, to the floor and
smashes it.
Colonel Robert Assingham, called Bob, a retired army officer who
understands his wife's motives and the interest she takes in the Verver
family but who manages to keep himself detached from her complicated
dealings with the lives of others.
The Principinio, the small son of Prince Amerigo and his wife Maggie.
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The Story
Maggie Verver was the daughter of a wealthy American widower who had
devoted all his life to his daughter. The Ververs lived a lazy life.
Their time was spent in collecting items to decorate their own existence
and to fill a museum that Mr. Verver was giving to his native city back
in the United States. They had few friends, Maggie's only confidante was
Mrs. Assingham, the American-born wife of a retired British Army
officer.
It was Mrs. Assingham who introduced the Ververs to Prince Amerigo, a
handsome, quiet young Italian nobleman who struck Maggie's fancy. When
she informed her father that she would like to marry the Prince, Mr.
Verver provided a handsome dowry so that the wedding might take place.
A few days before the wedding, a painful scene occurred in Mrs.
Assingham's home, where the Prince and Charlotte Stant, deeply in love
with each other, met to say good-bye. Each was penniless, and a marriage
had been out of the question. Since both were friends of Maggie, the
present situation was painful for them. As a farewell lark, they spent
the last afternoon in searching for a wedding present for Charlotte to
present to Maggie. In a tiny shop, they discovered a golden bowl which
Charlotte wished to purchase as a remembrance for the Prince from her.
He refused it because of superstitious fears that a crack in the golden
bowl might bring bad luck.
After the wedding of the Prince and Maggie, the lives of the pair
coincided with the life that the Ververs had been living for years.
Maggie and her father spent much of their time together. The Prince,
although he did not complain, was really only a convenience that they
had purchased because Maggie had reached the age when she needed to have
a husband.
After a year and a half, a baby was born to the Prince and Maggie, but
the child made no apparent difference in the relationships between the
woman and her father or the woman and her husband. Maggie decided that
her father also needed a wife. She went to Mrs. Assingham and told her
friend that she planned to have Charlotte Stant marry her father.
Charlotte was a quiet person aware of the love between Maggie and her
father, and she was the sort of person who would be thankful to marry a
wealthy man. Neither Maggie nor Mrs. Assingham puts this into words, but
it was tacitly understood.
Mr. Verver, anxious to please his daughter in this as in everything
else, married Charlotte a short time later. This second marriage created
a strange situation. Maggie and her father both took houses in London
where they could be together a great deal of the time. The association
of father and daughter left the Prince and Charlotte together much of
the time. Maggie encouraged them to go out, to represent her and her
father at balls and dinners. Maggie, however, did not know that her
husband and her stepmother had been intimate before her own marriage to
the Prince.
Several years went by in this manner, but slowly the fact that there was
something strange in the relationships dawned upon Maggie's sensitive
feelings. She eventually went to Mrs. Assingham and poured out her
suspicions. Mrs. Assingham, in full knowledge of the circumstances,
decided to keep silent.
Maggie resolved to say nothing of her suspicions to anyone else. Yet her
attitude of indifference and her insistence in throwing the Prince and
Charlotte together, aroused their suspicions that she knew they had been
sweethearts and that she suspected them of being lovers after marriage.
Each one of the four speculated at length as to what the other three
knew or suspected. Yet their mutual confidence and love prevented each
one of them from ever asking anything of the others.
One day, Maggie went shopping for some unusual art object to present to
her father on his birthday. She accidentally happened into the same shop
where the Prince and Charlotte had gone several years before, and she
purchased the golden bowl that they had passed over because of its flaw.
The following day, the shopkeeper visited her. The name and address had
told him that she was the wife of the Prince who had passed up the bowl
years before. He knew that the existence of the crack would quickly come
to the attention of the Prince, and so he had hastened to inform Maggie
of the flaw and to return part of the purchase price. He also told her
of the Prince's first visit to the shop and of the young woman who had
been with him. Maggie then knew that the Prince and Charlotte had known
each other before her marriage and that they had spent an afternoon
together the day before she was married. She was upset. Again, she
confided in Mrs. Assingham.
Having learned that there was no serious relationship between the Prince
and Charlotte, Mrs. Assingham informed Maggie that she was making a
great ado over nothing at all. To back up her remark, she raised the
bowl above her head and smashed it to the floor, where it broke into
several pieces. As she did so, the Prince entered the room and saw the
fragments of the bowl. After Mrs. Assingham's departure, he tried to
learn how much Maggie knew. Maggie and her husband agreed to say nothing
to either Maggie's father or to Charlotte.
Charlotte, too, began to sense that something had disturbed Maggie, and
she shrewdly guessed what it was. Then Maggie tried to realign the
relationships of the four by proposing that she and Charlotte stay
together for a while and that the Prince and her father go to the
Continent to buy art objects. This proposal was gently put forward and
as gently rebuffed by the other three.
Maggie and her father began to realize that their selfishness in
continuing the father-daughter relationship that they had had before her
marriage was wrong. Shortly after that selfishness had been brought into
the open and discussed by Maggie and Mr. Verver, Charlotte told Maggie
that she wished to return to America and to take her husband with her.
She bluntly informed Maggie that she was afraid that if Mr. Verver
continued to live so close to his daughter, he would lose interest in
his wife. Mr. Verver agreed to accompany Charlotte back to the United
States. It was a difficult decision for him to make. He realized that
once he was away, Charlotte would never agree to his coming back to
Europe to live.
On an autumn afternoon, Mr. Verver and Charlotte went to have tea with
Maggie and the Prince before leaving England. It was almost
heartbreaking to Maggie to see her father's carriage take him out of
sight and to know that her old way of life had really ended. The only
thing that kept her from breaking down completely was the look on the
Prince's face as he turned her face away from the direction her father's
carriage had taken. At that moment, seeing his eyes, Maggie knew she had
won her husband for herself and not for her money.
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Critical Evaluation
The Golden Bowl, along with The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove,
is one of the novels of the triad of works upon which the high
reputation of Henry James's "major phase" rests. In these novels,
James's already complex style reaches new levels of sophistication as
the writing becomes more and more intricate and convoluted ,
accommodating ever more subtle levels of analysis of character and
event. Gradually the "center of consciousness" in the mind of a
character, which had been essential to James's earlier works, gives way
to an omniscient point of view, and a narrative voice that is James's
own. Though it hardly appears so to the eye, James's style of this
period is essentially oral—he had developed the habit of dictating his
material to a secretary—and reflects his characteristically ponderous
manner of speech. Seeming to move endlessly to circle or enfold a
subject or an idea without ever touching it directly, James's technique
in these late novels has been admired highly by critics who place a
premium on style, while frequently being disparaged by those who stress
content and clarity of thought. For James himself, the art of the novel
was everything in writing, and there is little doubt that in The Golden
Bowl, his artistry reached a peak.
With this novel, James continues the subject matter of the
"international theme," which had characterized his work from its
beginning, by dealing with a group of Americans in Europe. Adam Verver,
in particular, can be seen as an avatar of the American Adam who recurs
in James's fiction, often, as here, in search of European culture, which
he will take back to his culturally barren homeland. Prince Amerigo is
linked by his name to the historic connection between America and Europe
and, by his marriage to Maggie, might be seen as dramatizing a new
dependence of the Old World upon the New. Yet, The Golden Bowl
ultimately is less an international novel than such works as The
American, Daisy Miller, or The Ambassadors because its concerns are
finally more with individuals than with cultures. Though the Ververs
begin in America and Adam returns there at the novel's end, neither his
experience nor that of Maggie or Charlotte is essentially contingent
upon the sort of conflict of cultural values that is at the heart of
James's international novels and stories. Rather, the problems of love
and marriage at the heart of The Golden Bowl are truly universal;
neither their nature nor their solution depends upon an American
perspective.
Like many of James's works, The Golden Bowl began in his notebooks with
the recording of an anecdote he had heard concerning a young woman and
her widower father, each of whom had taken spouses, who learned their
partners were engaged in an affair. From this scant beginning, James
crafted his longest and most elaborate novel, not by greatly
complicating the essential material of this simple plot but by
scrupulous elaboration of the conflicts and resolutions resulting from
the complex relations among his four central characters. By making his
characters members of the wealthy leisure class, James frees them from
the mundane worries of the world so he can focus his, and their, entire
attention on the one particular problem without regard to external
complications. Ultimately, the novel seeks to pose moral and
philosophical questions that transcend either the psychological or
social levels of the work to confront the basic question of Maggie's
adjustment to a less-than-perfect world.
The golden bowl is James's metaphor for the marriage between Amerigo and
Maggie, and perhaps, in its larger implications, for life itself. The
bowl, not really "golden" at all, but crystal gilded with gold leaf, has
the superficial appearance of perfection, but is, in fact, cracked. As a
symbol of Maggie's "perfect" marriage, the bowl very clearly illustrates
the flaw at the heart of the relationship—a flaw that no doubt existed
even before the Prince and Charlotte resume their old love affair and
that represents a potential threat to the marriage. Both Maggie and her
father are guilty of treating the Prince as nothing more than one of the
valuable objects they have come to Europe to purchase—they have bought
the perfect marriage for Maggie. Unlike art, however, human
relationships are not subject to purchase, nor can they, as in the case
of Adam's marriage to Charlotte, be arranged for convenience without
regard to the human factors concerned. In fact, both Maggie and her
father tend to live in a small, supremely selfish world. Insulated by
their money from the actuality of life, they isolate themselves from the
real complexities of daily existence. Their world is, in effect, itself
more "art" than "life."
The resolution of the novel results from Maggie's positive act, although
in the earlier parts of the novel, she is more passive than active. The
marriage itself, for example, seems more of an arrangement between the
Prince and Adam Verver than a particular choice of Maggie's—Adam wants
the perfect marriage for his daughter, and Prince Amerigo wants access
to the Verver millions, so they come to an agreement between themselves.
Maggie apparently has little to say about it, and even, judging from her
relationship to the Prince throughout most of the novel, no very great
interest in the marriage. Her real desire seems to be to continue life
with her father, rather than to begin an independent life with her
husband. Only when confronted with the Prince's infidelity does Maggie
recognize that she must confront this reality for all their sakes. In
choosing to separate from her father in order to begin making the best
of her imperfect marriage, Maggie discovers a latent ability to confront
the world as it really is and to rise above the romantic idealism that
had characterized her life with her father.
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THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Psychological realism
Time of plot: About 1875
Locale: England, France, and Italy
First published: 1881
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In this novel crowded with brilliantly subtle and penetrating
character studies, James explores the ramifications of a naive, young,
high-minded American girl's first exposure and gradual acclimatization
to the traditions and decadence of an older European culture. The reader
follows step by step the mental process of Isabel Archer as she
gravitates away from the staunch and stuffy American, Caspar Goodwood,
and her frail, intelligent, and devoted cousin Ralph Touchett, into a
marriage with Gilbert Osmond, a worthless, tyrannical dilettante. The
Portrait of a Lady is an excellent example of the Jamesian technique of
refracting life through the mind and temperament of an individual.
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Principal Characters
Isabel Archer, the heroine of the novel. Orphaned at an early age and an
heiress, she uses her freedom to go to Europe to be educated in the arts
of life lacking in her own country. She draws the interest and adoration
of many people, all of whom feel that they can make a contribution to
her growth, or at least can use her. Isabel is somewhat unworldly at the
time of her marriage to Gilbert Osmond. After three years of resisting
the social mold imposed on her by Osmond and his Roman menage, Isabel
faces a dilemma in which her intelligence and honesty vie with her sense
of obligation. Sensitive to her own needs as well as to those of others,
she is aware of the complicated future she faces.
Gilbert Osmond, an American expatriate. He finds in Rome an environment
suited to his artistic taste and devotes his time and tastes solely to
pleasing himself.
Madame Merle, Isabel's friend. Madame Merle was formerly Osmond's
mistress and is the mother of his daughter Pansy. A clever, vigorous
woman of considerable perspicacity, she promotes Isabel's marriage to
Osmond.
Ralph Touchett, Isabel's ailing cousin. He appreciates the fine
qualities of Isabel's nature. Distressed by what he considers her
disastrous marriage, he sees to it that his own and his father's estates
come to Isabel.
Caspar Goodwood, Isabel's faithful American suitor. He has the
simplicity and directness of American insight that Isabel is trying to
supplement by her European "education." He does not understand why he
fails with Isabel.
Lord Warburton, a friend of Ralph Touchett. Like all the other
unsuccessful men in Isabel's life, he deeply admires the young American
woman and is distressed by her marriage to Gilbert Osmond.
Henrietta Stackpole, an American journalist and a girlhood friend of
Isabel. Henrietta is, in her own right, an amusing picture of the
sensation-seeking uncritical American intelligence ranging over the
length and breadth of Europe. She is eager to save Isabel.
Pansy Osmond, the illegitimate daughter of Osmond and Madame Merle.
Pansy is unaware of her situation, and she welcomes Isabel as her
stepmother; she feels that in Isabel she has an ally, as indeed she has.
Determined to endure gracefully what she must, she feels increasingly
the strictures of her father's dictates.
Edward Rosier, a suitor for Pansy's hand. This kind, pleasant man lacks
means sufficient to meet Osmond's demands.
Countess Gemini, Osmond's sister. She is a woman who has been spoiled
and corrupted by her European experience, and she finds Isabel's
behavior almost boring in its simplicity. Several motives prompt her to
tell Isabel about Osmond's first wife and his liaison with Madame Merle.
She does not spare Isabel a clear picture of Osmond's lack of humanity.
Mrs. Touchett, Isabel's vigorous and sympathetic aunt. Mrs. Touchett is
the one responsible for the invitation that brings Isabel to Europe and
the world.
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The Story
Isabel Archer, upon the death of her father, had been visited by her
aunt, Mrs. Touchett. She proved so attractive to the older woman that
Mrs. Touchett decided to
give her the advantage of more cosmopolitan experience, and Isabel was
quickly carried off to Europe so she might see something of the world of
culture and fashion.
On the day the women arrived at the Touchett home in England, Isabel's
sickly young cousin, Ralph Touchett, and his father were taking tea in
the garden with their friend, Lord Warburton. When Isabel appeared,
Warburton had been confessing to the two men his boredom and his
distaste for his routine existence. The young nobleman was much taken
with the American girl's grace and lively manner.
Isabel had barely settled at Gardencourt, her aunt's home, before she
received a letter from an American friend, Henrietta Stackpole, a
newspaperwoman who was writing a series of articles on the sights of
Europe. At Ralph's invitation, Henrietta went to Gardencourt to spend
some time with Isabel and to obtain material for her writing.
Soon after Henrietta's arrival, Isabel heard from another American
friend. Caspar Goodwood, a would-be suitor, had followed her abroad.
Learning her whereabouts from Henrietta, he wrote to ask if he might see
her. Isabel was irked by his aggressiveness, and she decided not to
answer his letter.
On the day she received the letter from Goodwood, Lord Warburton
proposed to her. Not wishing to seem indifferent to the honor of his
proposal, she asked for time to consider it. At last, she decided she
could not marry the young Englishman, for she wished to see considerably
more of the world before she married. She was afraid that marriage to
Warburton, although he was a model of kindness and thoughtfulness, would
prove stifling.
Because Isabel had not seen London on her journey with Mrs. Touchett and
since it was on Henrietta Stack-pole's itinerary, the two young women,
accompanied by Ralph Touchett, went to the capital. Henrietta quickly
made the acquaintance of a Mr. Bantling, who undertook to escort her
around London. When Caspar Goodwood visited Isabel at her hotel, she
again refused him, though his persistence made her agree that if he
still wished to ask for her hand, he might visit her again after two
years had passed.
While the party was in London, a telegram came from Gardencourt. Old Mr.
Touchett was seriously ill with gout, and his wife was much alarmed.
Isabel and Ralph left on the afternoon train. Henrietta remained with
her new friend.
During the time Mr. Touchett lay dying and his family was preoccupied,
Isabel was forced to amuse herself with a new companion. Madame Merle,
an old friend of Mrs. Touchett, had come to Gardencourt to spend a few
days. She and Isabel, thrown together a great deal, exchanged many
confidences. Isabel admired the older woman for her ability to amuse
herself, for her skill at needlework, at painting, at the piano, and for
her ability to accommodate herself to any social situation. On the other
hand, Madame Merle spoke enviously of Isabel's youth and intelligence,
lamenting the life that had left her, at middle age, a widow with no
children and no visible success in life.
When her uncle died, he left Isabel, at her cousin's instigation, half
of his fortune. Ralph, greatly impressed with his young kinswoman's
brilliance, had persuaded his father that she should be given the
opportunity to fly as far and as high as she might. For himself, he knew
he could not live long because of his pulmonary illness, and his legacy
was enough to let him live in comfort.
As quickly as she could, Mrs. Touchett sold her London house and took
Isabel to Paris with her. Ralph went south for the winter to preserve
what was left of his health. In Paris, the new heiress was introduced to
many of her aunt's friends among the American expatriates, but she was
not impressed. She thought their indolent lives worthy only of contempt.
Meanwhile, Henrietta and Mr. Bantling had arrived in Paris, and Isabel
spent much time with them and Edward Rosier. She had known Rosier when
they both were children and she was traveling abroad with her father.
Rosier was another dilettante, living on the income from his
inheritance. He explained to Isabel that he could not return to his own
country because there was no occupation there worthy of a gentleman.
In February, Mrs. Touchett and her niece went to the Palazzo Crescentini,
the Touchett house in Florence. They stopped on the way to see Ralph,
who was staying in San Remo. In Florence they were joined once more by
Madame Merle.
Unknown to Isabel or her aunt, Madame Merle also visited her friend,
Gilbert Osmond, another American who lived in voluntary exile outside of
Florence with his art collection and his young convent-bred daughter,
Pansy. Madame Merle told Osmond of Isabel's arrival in Florence, saying
that as the heir to a fortune, Isabel would be a valuable addition to
Osmond's collection.
The heiress who had rejected two worthy suitors did not refuse the
third. She was quickly captivated by the charm of the sheltered life
Gilbert Osmond had created for himself. Her friends were against the
match. Henrietta Stackpole, who was inclined to favor Caspar Goodwood,
was convinced that Osmond was interested only in Isabel's money, as was
Isabel's aunt. Mrs. Touchett had requested Madame Merle, the good friend
of both parties, to discover the state of their affections; she was
convinced that Madame Merle could have prevented the match. Ralph
Touchett was disappointed that his cousin should have fallen in love so
quickly. Caspar Goodwood, learning of Isabel's intended marriage when he
revisited her two years later as agreed, could not persuade her to
reconsider her step. Isabel was indignant when he commented on the fact
that she did not even know her intended husband's antecedents.
After her marriage to Gilbert Osmond, Isabel and her husband established
their home in Rome, in a setting completely expressive of Osmond's
tastes. Before three years had passed, Isabel began to realize that her
friends had not been completely wrong in their objections to her
marriage. Osmond's exquisite taste had made their home one of the most
popular in Rome, but his ceaseless effort to press his wife into a mold,
to make her a reflection of his own ideas, had not made their marriage
one of the happiest.
He had succeeded in destroying a romance between Pansy and Edward
Rosier, who had visited the girl's stepmother and found the daughter
attractive. He had not succeeded, however, in contracting the match he
desired between Pansy and Lord Warburton. Warburton had found Pansy as
pleasing as Isabel had once been, but he had dropped his suit when he
saw that the girl's affections lay with Rosier.
Ralph Touchett, his health growing steadily worse, gave up his
wanderings on the continent and returned to Gardencourt to die. When
Isabel received a telegram from his mother telling her that Ralph would
like to see her before his death, she felt it her duty to go to
Garden-court at once. Osmond reacted to her wish as if it were a
personal insult. He expected that, as his wife, Isabel would want to
remain at his side and that she would not disobey any wish of his. He
also made it plain that he disliked Ralph.
In a state of turmoil after her conversation with her husband, Isabel
met the Countess Gemini, Osmond's sister. The Countess, visiting the
Osmonds, knew the situation between her brother and Isabel. An honest
soul, she felt more sympathy for her sister-in-law than for her brother.
To comfort Isabel, she told her the story of Gilbert's past. After his
first wife had died, he and Madame Merle had an affair that lasted six
or seven years. During that time, Madame Merle, a widow, had borne him a
child, Pansy. Changing his residence, Osmond had been able to pretend to
his new circle of friends that the original Mrs. Osmond had died in
giving birth to the child.
With this news fresh in her mind and still determined to go to England,
Isabel stopped to say good-bye to Pansy, who was staying in a convent
where her father had sent her to recuperate from her affair with Rosier.
There, too, she met Madame Merle. Madame Merle, with her keen
perception, had no difficulty realizing that Isabel knew her secret.
When she remarked that Isabel would never need to see her again, that
she would go to America, Isabel was certain Madame Merle would also find
in America much to her own advantage.
Isabel was in time to see her cousin before his death. She stayed on
briefly at Gardencourt after the funeral. long enough to bid good-bye to
Lord Warburton. who had come to offer condolences to her aunt and to
reject a third offer from Caspar Goodwood, who knew of her husband's
treatment. When she left to start her journey-back to Italy, Isabel knew
what she must do. Her first duty was not to herself, but to put her
house in order.
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Critical Evaluation
The Portrait of a Lady first appeared serially in England and America
{Macmillan's Magazine, October, 1880-November, l%%\; Atlantic, November,
1880-December, 1881); it was published as a book in 1881. Usually
regarded as the major achievement of Henry James's early period of
fiction writing, The Portrait of a Lady is one of the great novels of
modern literature. In it, James demonstrates that he has learned well
from two European masters of the novel. Turgenev had taught him how to
use a single character who shapes the work and is seen throughout in
relationship to various other characters. From George Eliot he had
learned the importance of tightening the structure of the novel and
giving the story an architectural or organic form that develops
logically from the given materials. He advances in The Portrait of a
Lady beyond Eliot in minimizing his own authorial comments and analysis
and permitting his heroine to be seen through her own tardily awakening
self-realization and also through the consciousness of the men and women
who are closest to her. Thus his "portrait" of a lady is one which
slowly grows stroke by stroke as touches are added that bring out both
highlights and shadows, until Isabel Archer stands at the end of the
novel as a woman whose experiences have brought her excitement, joy,
pain, and knowledge and have given her an enduring beauty and dignity.
Isabel is one of James's finest creations and one of the most memorable
women in the history of the novel. A number of sources have been
suggested for her. She may have been partly drawn from James's cousin
Mary "Minny" Temple, whom he was later to immortalize as Milly Theale in
The Wings of the Dove. She has been compared to two of Eliot's heroines,
Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch and Gwendolyn Harleth in Daniel Deronda:
to Diana Belfield in an early romantic tale by James entitled "Longstaff's
Marriage"; to Bathsheba Everdene in Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding
Crowd; and even to James himself, some of whose early experiences
closely parallel those of Isabel. Yet, though James may have drawn from
both real and fictional people in portraying Isabel Archer, she
possesses her own identity; she grew from James's original "conception
of a certain young woman affronting her destiny," as he later wrote in
his preface to the novel. He visualized her as "an intelligent but
presumptuous girl" who would yet be "complex" and who would be offered a
series of opportunities for free choice in the affronting of that
destiny. Because of her presumption that she knew more than she did
about herself and the world, Isabel was to make mistakes, including the
tragic error of misjudging the nature of Gilbert Osmond. But her
intelligence, thought it was not sufficient to save her from suffering,
would enable her to achieve a moral triumph in the end.
Of the four men in Isabel's life, three love her, and one uses her
innocence to gain for himself what he would not otherwise have had. She
refuses marriage to Lord Warburton because, though he offers her a great
fortune, a title, an entry into English society, and an agreeable and
entertaining personality, she believes she can do better. She turns down
Caspar Goodwood, who also offers wealth, because she finds him stiff,
and she is frightened by his aggressiveness. Her cousin, Ralph Touchett,
does not propose because he does not wish her to be tied to a man who
daily faces death. She does not even suspect the extent of his love and
adoration until she is almost overwhelmed by learning it just as death
takes him from her. She accepts Gilbert Osmond because she is deceived
by his calculated charm and because she believes that he deserves what
she can offer him: first, a fortune that will make it possible for him
to live in idleness but surrounded by the objects of the culture she
believes he represents; and second, a mother's love and care for his
supposedly motherless daughter. Half of the novel is given over to
Isabel's living with, adjusting to, and, finally, triumphing over the
disastrous choice she has made.
In his preface, James uses an architectural figure to describe The
Portrait of a Lady. He says the "large building" of the novel "came to
be a square and spacious house." Much of what occurs in the novel does
so in or near a series of houses, each of which relates significantly to
Isabel or to other characters. The action begins at Gardencourt, the
tudor English country house of Daniel Touchett which Isabel finds more
beautiful than anything she has ever seen. The charm of the house is
enhanced by its age and its natural setting beside the Thames above
London. It contrasts greatly with the "old house at Albany, a large,
square, double house" belonging to her grandmother which Isabel in her
childhood had found romantic and in which she had indulged in dreams
stimulated by her reading. Mrs. Touchett's taking Isabel from the Albany
house to Gardencourt is a first step in her plan to "introduce her to
the world." When Isabel visits Lockleigh, Lord Warburton's home, she
sees it from the gardens as resembling "a castle in a legend," though
inside it has been modernized. She does not view it as a home for
herself, or its titled owner as her husband, despite the many advantages
he offers. The front of Gilbert Osmond's house in Florence is "imposing"
but of "a somewhat uncommunicative character," a "mask." It symbolizes
Osmond whose mask Isabel does not see through until she has married him.
The last of the houses in The Portrait of a Lady is the Palazzo
Roccanera, the Roman home of the Osmonds, which James first describes as
"a kind of domestic fortress . . . which smelt of historic deeds, of
crime and craft and violence." When Isabel later broods over it during
her night-long meditation in chapter 42, it is "the house of darkness,
the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation."
Isabel is first seen at Gardencourt on her visit with Mrs. Touchett, and
it is here that she turns down the first of three proposals of marriage.
It is fitting that she should be last seen here by turns with each of
the three men who have loved her. Asserting the independence on which
she has so long prided herself, she has defied her imperious husband by
going to England to see the dying Ralph, whose last words tell her that
if she has been hated by Osmond, she has been adored by her cousin. In a
brief conversation with Lord Warburton after Ralph's death, Isabel turns
down an invitation to visit him and his sisters at Lockleigh. Shortly
afterward, a scene six years earlier is reversed. Then she had sat on a
rustic bench at Gardencourt and looked up from reading Caspar Goodwood's
letter implying that she would come to England and propose to her—only
to see and hear Warburton preparing to offer his own proposal. Now
Caspar surprises her by appearing just after she has dismissed
Warburton. There follows the one sexually passionate scene in the novel.
In it Isabel has "an immense desire to appear to resist" the force of
Caspar's argument that she should leave Osmond and turn to him. She
pleads with streaming tears, "As you love me, as you pity me, leave me
alone!" Defying her plea, Caspar kisses her:
His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread
again, and stayed; and it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it,
she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each
aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his presence, justified of its
intense identity and made one with this act of possession.
Caspar had possessed her for a moment only. "But when darkness returned
she was free" and she flees into the house—and thence to Rome, as Caspar
learns in the brief scene in London with Henrietta Stackpole that closes
the novel.
James leaves the reader to conclude that Isabel's love for Pansy Osmond
has principally determined her decision to continue enduring a marriage
that she had freely— though so ignorantly and foolishly—chosen.
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THE TURN OF THE SCREW
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Type of work: Novella
Author: Henry James (1843-1916)
Type of plot: Moral allegory
Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century
Locale: England
First published: 1898
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More than a horrific ghost story, The Turn of the Screw is an
enigmatic and disturbing psychological novel that probes the sources of
terror in neurosis and moral degradation.
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Principal Characters
The Governess, from whose point of view the story is told. Employed to
look after his orphaned niece and nephew by a man who makes it clear
that he does not wish to be bothered about them, she finds herself
engaged in a struggle against evil apparitions for the souls of the
children. There has been a good deal of the "Is-Hamlet-mad?" sort of
inconclusive speculation as to whether The Turn of the Screw is a real
ghost story or a study of a neurotic and frustrated woman. Probably both
interpretations are true: the apparitions are real; the children are
indeed possessed by evil; and the governess is probably neurotic.
Miles, a little boy, one of the governess' charges. At first he seems to
be a remarkably good child, but gradually she learns that he has been
mysteriously corrupted by his former governess and his uncle's former
valet, whose ghosts now appear to maintain their evil control. Miles
dies in the governess' arms during her final struggle to save him from
some mysterious evil.
Flora, Miles's sister and feminine counterpart. The governess finally
sends her away to her uncle.
Miss Jessel, the former governess, now dead. She appears frequently to
the governess and to the children, who refuse to admit the appearances.
Peter Quint, the uncle's former valet, now dead. Drunken and vicious, he
was also Miss Jessel's lover. The governess sees his apparition
repeatedly.
Mrs. Grose, the housekeeper of the country estate where the story is
set. Good-hearted and talkative, she is the source of what little
concrete information the governess and the reader get as to the
identities and past histories of the evil apparitions. Allied with the
governess against the influence of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel, she
takes charge of Flora when the child is sent to her uncle.
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The Story
It was a pleasant afternoon in June when the governess first arrived at
the country estate at Bly, where she was to take charge of Miles, age
ten, and Flora, eight. She faced her new position with some trepidation
because of the unusual circumstances of her situation. The two children
were to be under her complete care, and the uncle who had engaged her
had been explicit in the fact that he did not wish to be bothered with
his orphaned niece and nephew. Her uneasiness disappeared, however, when
she saw her charges, for Flora and Miles seemed incapable of giving the
slightest trouble.
The weeks of June passed uneventfully. Then, one evening, while she was
walking in the garden at twilight, the governess was startled to see a
young man at a distance. The man looked at her challengingly and
disappeared. The incident angered and distressed the young woman, but
she decided the man was a trespasser.
On the following Sunday evening, the young woman was startled to see the
same stranger looking in at her through a window. Once again he stared
piercingly at her for a few seconds and then disappeared. This time the
governess realized that the man was looking for someone in particular
and that perhaps he boded evil for the children in her care. A few
minutes later, the governess told the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose, of the
incident and described the appearance, of the man. Mrs. Grose told her
that it was a perfect description of Peter Quint, the valet to the
governess' employer but that Mr. Quint was dead.
One afternoon shortly afterward, a second apparition appeared. This time
the ghost of Miss Jessel, the former governess, appeared in the garden
to both the governess and the little girl, Flora. The strange part of
the situation was that the little girl refused to let the governess know
that she had seen the figure and knew who it was, though it was obvious
that she had understood the appearance fully.
The governess learned from the housekeeper that the two apparitions had
been lovers while alive, though the girl had been of a very fine family
and the man had been guilty of drunkenness and worse vices. For what
evil purpose these two spirits wished to influence the seemingly
innocent children, neither the housekeeper nor the governess could
guess. The secrecy of the children about seeing the ghosts was maddening
to the two women.
They both felt that the boy was continuing to see the two ghosts in
private and concealed that fact, just as he had known of the illicit
affair between the valet and the former governess in life and had helped
them to conceal it. Yet, when in the presence of the children, the
governess sometimes felt that it would be impossible for the two
children to be influenced into evil.
The third time, the ghost of Quint appeared to the governess inside the
house. Unable to sleep, she had sat reading late at night. Hearing
someone on the stairs, she went to investigate and saw the ghost, which
disappeared when faced by her unflinching gaze. Each night after that,
she inspected the stairs, but she never again saw the ghost of the man.
Once she glimpsed the apparition of Miss Jessel as it sat dejectedly on
the lowest stair. Worse than the appearance of the ghosts was the
discovery that the children had left their beds at night to wander on
the lawn in communication with the spirits who were leading them to
unknown evil. It became apparent to the governess that the children were
not good within themselves. In their imaginations, they were living in a
world populated by the evil dead restored.
In such an atmosphere, the summer wore away into autumn. In all that
time, the children had given no sign of awareness of the apparitions.
Knowing that her influence with the children was as tenuous as a thread
which would break at the least provocation, the governess did not allude
to the ghosts. She herself had seen no more manifestations, but she had
often felt by the children's attitude that the apparitions were close at
hand. What was worse for the distressed woman was the thought that what
Miles and Flora saw were things still more terrible than she imagined,
visions that sprang from their association with the evil figures in the
past.
One day, Miles went to her and announced his desire to go away to
school. The governess realized it was only proper that he be sent to
school, but she feared the results of ghostly influences once he was
beyond her care. Later, opening the door of the schoolroom, she again
saw the ghost of her predecessor, Miss Jessel. As the apparition faded,
the governess realized that her duty was to stay with the children and
combat the spirits and their deadly influence. She decided to write
immediately to the children's uncle, contrary to his injunction against
being bothered on their behalf. That night before she wrote, she went
into Miles's room and asked the boy to let her help him in his secret
troubles. Suddenly a rush of cold air filled the room, as if the window
had been blown open. When the governess relighted the candle blown out
by the draft, the window was still closed, and the drawn curtain had not
been disturbed.
The following day, Flora disappeared. Mrs. Grose and the governess found
her beside the garden pond. The governess, knowing she had gone there to
see the ghost, asked her where Miss Jessel was. The child replied that
she only wanted to be left alone. The governess could see the apparition
of Miss Jessel standing on the opposite side of the pond.
The governess, afraid that the evil influence had already dominated the
little girl, asked the housekeeper to take the child to London and to
request the uncle's aid. In place of the lovable angelic Flora there had
suddenly appeared a little child with a filthy mind and filthy speech,
which she used in denouncing the governess to the housekeeper. The same
afternoon, Mrs. Grose left with the child as the governess had
requested.
That evening, immediately after dinner, the governess asked Miles to
tell her what was on his mind before he left the dining room. When he
refused, she asked him if he had stolen the letter she had written to
his uncle. As she asked the question, she realized that standing outside
the window, staring into the room, was the ghost of Peter Quint. She
pulled the boy close to her, shielding him from any view of the ghost at
the window, while he told her that he had taken the letter. He also
informed her that he had already been expelled from one school because
of his lewd speech and actions. Noting how close the governess was
holding him, he suddenly asked if Miss Jessel were near. The governess,
angry and distraught, shrieked at him that it was the ghost of Peter
Quint, just outside the window. When Miles turned around, the apparition
was gone. With a scream, he fell into the governess' arms. At first, she
did not realize that she had lost him forever—that Miles was dead.
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Critical Evaluation
One of the world's most famous ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw was
first published serially in Colliers' Weekly from January 27, 1898, to
April 16, 1898, and in book form, along with a second story, Covering
End, late in 1898. In 1908, Henry James discussed at some length the
origin and nature of the tale in the preface to volume 12 of The Novels
and Tales of Henry James. Considerable critical discussion and
controversy have been devoted to the story, especially since Edmund
Wilson's 1934 essay on "The Ambiguity of Henry James," in which Wilson
argues that "the governess who is made to tell the story is a neurotic
case of sex repression, and that the ghosts are not real ghosts but
hallucinations of the governess." Since many critics have taken issue
with Wilson and since Wilson later modified his interpretation, it is
important to note briefly what James himself says about his story, his
characters, and his theme in the preface. He calls The Turn of the Screw
"a piece of ingenuity pure and simple, of cold artistic calculation, an
amusette to catch those not easily caught . . . the jaded, the
disillusioned, the fastidious." He terms the governess' account "her
record of so many anomalies and obscurities." He comments that he
purposely limited his revelation of the governess' character: "We have
surely as much of her nature as we can swallow in watching it reflect
her anxieties and inductions." He says he presented the ghosts as "real"
ones, and he describes them as
my hovering prowling blighting presences, my pair of abnormal agents
. . . [who] would be agents in fact; there would be laid on them the
dire duty of causing the situation to reek with the air of Evil. Their
desire and their ability to do so, visibly measuring meanwhile their
effect, together with their observed and described success—this was
exactly my central idea.
Concluding his discussions of "my fable," James explains that he
purposely did not specify the evils in which the ghosts either attempt
to or actually involve Miles and Flora: "Only make the reader's general
vision of evil intense enough, I said to myself . . . and his own
experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy (with the children)
and horror (of their false friends) will supply him quite sufficiently
with all the particulars."
Thus, readers see that James conceived of the tale as one in which the
governess, a young woman with limited experience and education but high
moral principles, attempts to protect two seemingly innocent children
from corruption by the malign ghosts of two former servants who in life
were evil persons. His capitalizing of "Evil" and his use of the term
"fable" to describe the story suggest a moral as well as an aesthetic
intent in writing it. To interpret The Turn of the Screw in terms of
Freudian psychology, as Wilson and some other critics have done, is to
go beyond James and to find what he did not put there—consciously
anyway. Admittedly, some of the "anomalies and obscurities" which puzzle
and trouble the governess do lead the reader in the direction of a
Freudian interpretation. The account is the governess' alone, and there
is no proof that anyone else actually saw the ghosts though she believes
that the children saw them and lied to her or tried otherwise to hide
the truth from her. Before his reading of the governess' journal,
Douglas admits that she was in love with her employer, the children's
handsome uncle who showed no personal interest in her. Within the
account itself, the reader who hunts may find apparent Freudian
symbolism. For example, the male ghost, Peter Quint, first appears
standing on a tower when the governess has been deeply longing for her
employer to appear and approve her care of the children. The female
ghost, Miss Jessel, first appears by a lake and watches as little Flora,
also watched absorbedly by the governess, plays a childish game:
She had picked up a small flat piece of wood, Which happened to have
in it a little hole that had evidently suggested to her the idea of
sticking in another fragment that might figure as a mast and make the
thing a boat. This second morsel . . . she was very markedly and
intently attempting to tighten in its place.
Tenear-old Miles's repeated use of the word "dear" in speaking to the
governess may suggest a precocious boy's sexual interest in his pretty
governess.
One can go on, but it is important to remember that James's story was
published in 1898 and that Freud's first significant work explaining
psychoanalytic theory did not appe until 1905. Perhaps it is best to
regard such details in the story as those cited as no more than
coincidental, though they may seem suggestive to the post-Freudian
reader of The Turn of the Screw.
Among the most difficult facts to explain away in developing the theory
that the ghosts are mere hallucinations of a sexually frustrated young
woman, is the governess' detailed description of a man she has never
seen or heard of:
He has no hat. ... He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a
pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little,
rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are,
somehow, darker; they look particularly arched. . . . His eyes are
sharp—awfully. . . . His mouth's wide, and his lips are are thin, and
except for his whiskers he's quite clean-shaven.
Mrs. Grose easily identifies him as the dead Peter Quint. She just as
easily identifies Miss Jessel when the governess describes the person
she later saw: "A figure of quite an unmistakable horror and evil: a
woman in black, pale and dreadful—with such an air also, and such a
face!—on the other side of the lake." It is difficult to argue
convincingly that Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not "real" ghosts.
The Turn of the Screw will continue to fascinate and to intrigue because
James's "cold artistic calculation" has so filled it with suggestiveness
and intentional ambiguity that it may be read at different levels and
with new revelations at each successive reading. As Leon Edel has said,
"The reader's mind is forced to hold to two levels of awareness: the
story as told, and the story to be deduced."
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