From the Lists: #26 The Wings of the Dove

My love / hate relationship with Henry James culminates in The Wings of the Dove (1902). A story about Kate, a beautiful, but down-and-out social climber, who pimps her fiance, Merton, to Milly, a rich, terminally ill, American orphan, in the hope that he will inherit her fortune upon her death.  (How's that for Jamesian sentence structure?)

Like James' other novels, there are really no good girls or boys in this story of having and wanting. Even the idealistic love between Kate and Merton, a journalist, is eventually corrupted by the societal machinations of Kate's Aunt Maud and Milly's traveling companion Mrs. Stringham - who, coincidentally, were school mates back in the day.

While Kate is willing to throw off Aunt Maud's "sponsorship" to be with Merton, she is also keenly aware of her struggling father and sister who look to her marriage prospects as benefit to themselves:  "...[T]he more one gave oneself the less of one was left. There were always people to snatch at one, and it would never occur to them that they were eating one up. They did that without tasting."(p. 23) Of course it's easy for Kate to disdain the grasping of others when later justifying her own grasping, manipulating, lying, and betrayal as serving your "higher" purposes.

It appears that a fabulously wealthy, orphaned, American heiress with only a few months to live, really brings out the local London aristocracy. Upon her arrival, balls, dances, dinners are suddenly arranged. The Spring season is extended and the Summer exodus from London is postponed, all for a chance to meet and woo this heiress. What's most interesting for the reader, is that James gives you no clues as to who is in on the plot, who are pawns, and who are the victims.

In many ways, while reading this novel, I was reminded of Downton Abbey - particularly Cora's marriage to Lord Grantham, which included a dowry large enough to save the estate. In Milly's case, the lucky man would only need be married a few months at most, and a fortune would be at his command. Not a bad deal for a slightly tarnished estate or unlanded title holder. Yet, with all these suitors, Milly only has eyes for a poor, secretly engaged, journalist, who coincidentally is our male romantic lead, Merton.

In the end, this is a morality tale about love and greed, innocence and guilt, faith and compromise, which makes it all the more sad. The novel's first act is filled with love, innocence and faith as evidenced by the vows Kate and Merton exchange to conclude the first act, "I pledge myself to you forever." Merton exultant replies, "And I pledge you - I call God to witness! - every spark of my faith; I give you every drop of my life." Sadly, because this is literature, the lesson is not going to be eternal joy and bliss. Instead, the tale will end with a harvest of fruits planted, tilled, and fertilized with greed, compromise, and guilt.

Thinking about Henry James

In reading The Golden Bowl (#32), The Ambassadors (#27), and now The Wings of the Dove, I found myself settling into the parlors and receiving rooms of upper middle class London at the turn of the century. There is a bit of a scandalous undercurrent to all of these stories, there are unreliable narrators, internal dialogs, as well as character types and places his readers would have known or heard about. I think that being a part of and/or understanding this segment of society provided James with some shortcuts that the present day reader is lacking. Once I fell into the habit of reading between the lines and not fully trusting James' narrators, I think I took on more of the persona of his original audience. After all, why write something down when your reader's imagination will add the perfect amount of scandal and spice for the book to provide a rush of titillation in addition to the pleasure of moral superiority?

Next up: #24 Winesburg Ohio

From the Lists: #32 The Golden Bowl (Vulgar and Perverse)

What did rich people do before there was radio to keep them entertained? Well, according to Henry James' The Golden Bowl (1904), they spent their time thinking, reflecting, wondering, circumventing questions, conspiring, and teasing out the intentions of others. All of which were done as indirectly as possible to avoid the appearance of "perversion" and "vulgarity."

(Aside: Perversion and vulgarity remind me of Downton Abbey when Lady Mary asserts that if word gets out of the Turkish Ambassador dying in her bedroom, her name would henceforth become "notorious" in London social circles. Today, notoriety pays the bills for many young stars.)  

If the English people were actually as indirect as the characters in this book, it is a wonder they got anything done. These characters, as well as the author's writing style, are so indirect, so filled with commas and clauses, that I am still unsure exactly what happened in this novel. The 12 page introduction by Gore Vidal provides more insight into the action than the book; however, since literary scholarship assumes you have read the the book before you read the paper written about it, I chose to skip the introduction this time to avoid the spoiler. Silly me.

I created a diagram to help explain the relationships between the five main characters.

Based on their behavior, these characters could have been the younger versions of Dynasty characters. Of course, if Dynasty had been written by Henry James, it would have been more Twin Peaks than tawdry evening soap opera.

The book was originally envisioned as a short story or a play. However, it languished for many years as only an idea in James' journal. The Golden Bowl was eventually taken up again by James at the end of his writing career and was the last novel he published. By this time, James was dictating his novels to typists. Perhaps that is the reason it reads a bit like a long-winded lecture - without the jokes. There are seemingly endless chapters of thoughts and feelings and suspicions and what ifs, all punctuated by pervasive perhapses and howevers.

And the dialog is not much help in understanding the action. Due to the societal need to avoid directness at all costs (one would not want to be considered perverse), there are many confusing uses of pronouns for both the characters and the reader.

The dialog is often similar to the following paraphrased example:

"You must know what I am thinking," Maggie said.
"Yes, I think I do, but are you implying..." Mrs Assingham trailed off.
"I am not sure what I imply, but I have been thinking this for several months now."
"And yet?"
"And yet," Maggie responded, feeling vulgar and exposed by her candor.
"I see," Mrs. Assingham nodded, satisfied that her suspicions had been confirmed. 

Candor? What candor? Who are you talking about? What makes it worse is that even the interior dialogs are so perversely vague as to be vulgarly meaningless.

Not being familiar with the other works of Henry James, I am unsure if this book was intended to point out the inanities of British aristocratic / parlor culture of the time, to satirize contemporary novels, or if this is just his normal style. If I wanted to be generous, I would suggest that this novel sits at the pinnacle of this style; it is the Ulysses of late Edwardian writing in which all characters function as both hero and villain, tormentor and tormented, captor and captured.

Or I can just be petty and thank God I got another book off the list.

The Golden Bowl (2000 Merchant Ivory Productions)

I have added the movie to my Netflix queue. Hopefully, the moving pictures will expose the subtleties I obviously missed. (Roger Ebert's Movie Review)

Next up: #31 Animal Farm by George Orwell. I am looking forward to escaping the Ewardians for a bit of barn yard / political satire. Having read this book in high school, I am hoping to find a deeper, richer meaning today.