Henry James and the Philosophical Novel

Henry James and the Philosophical Novel breaks fresh ground by

examining James's unique position as a philosophical novelist, closely associated with the climate of ideas generated by his brother, William, and his father, the elder Henry. The book offers a detailed consideration of story-telling as a mode of philosophical enquiry, showing how a range of distinguished thinkers have relied on fictional narrative as a vital technique for formulating and clarifying their ideas. At the same time, it investigates (with close reference to his novels) the affiliations between James's practice as a novelist and the epistemological, moral and linguistic concerns pursued by members of the Phenomenological Movement. The study brings to light striking similarities between James's later works and the philosophical project of Merleau-Ponty; it emphasizes James's growing attraction to, and versatility with, deconstructive strategies such as those later employed by Jacques Derrida.

HENRY JAMES AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL NOVEL

HENRYJAMES AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL NOVEL Being and seeing

MERLE A. WILLIAMS Senior Lecturer in English, University of the Witwatersrand

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Delhi Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521104074 © Cambridge University Press 1993 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 1993 This digitally printed version 2009 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Williams, Merle A. Henry James and the philosophical novel: being and seeing / Merle A. Williams. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 43110 7 1. James, Henry, 1843-1916 - Philosophy. 2. Philosophy in literature. 3. Narration (Rhetoric) 4. Fiction — Technique. I. Title. PS2127.P5W55 1993 8 1 3 ' . 4 - d c 2 0 92-13655 CIP ISBN 978-0-521-43110-1 hardback ISBN 978-0-521-10407-4 paperback

For my mother and my father

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: Jamesian thinking and philosophy as storytelling 1

What Maisie Knew: the challenge of vision

2

The Ambassadors: observation and interpretation... passion and compassion

3

The Wings of the Dove: self and society

4

The Spoils of Poynton: experiments in subjectivity and truth

5

The Golden Bowl: the complex of shaping relations

Conclusion: Henry James's version of the philosophical novel Bibliography Index

page x

i 27

49 90

136 166 222 232 246

Acknowledgements

In developing this project, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Professor Kenneth Graham, who supervised the research upon which it is based; over a protracted period, he proved the shrewdest, most sympathetic and most creatively critical of advisers. For their generosity with their time and their penetrating appraisals, I should also like to thank Professor Jacques Berthoud, Professor Inga-Stina Ewbank and R. T. Jones. Both Meirlys Lewis and Fidela Fouche have helped patiently and resourcefully to clarify many of my philosophical perplexities. In addition, Eve Horwitz provided invaluable editorial guidance at a crucial stage in this investigation. Last but not least, I appreciate the encouragement and perceptive comment which my husband, Michael, has invariably been ready to offer. In recognition of their kindness and efficiency in typing this manuscript, I owe many thanks to Beverly Pollinger, and to Caroline and Marina Hazell. For financial support at various stages of my work, I am grateful to: the University of Natal in Durban for the award of an Emma Smith Overseas Scholarship; Bedford College, University of London, for appointing me to a Caroline Spurgeon Research Fellowship in English Literature; and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg for granting me a Council Research Fellowship for the Human and Social Sciences. A modified version of Chapter i on What Maisie Knew has appeared in the Henry James Review, 2 (1980), 36-48. Unless otherwise stated, all references in this study are to the 26volume New York edition of Henry James's works: The Novels and Tales of Henry James (New York: Scribner's, 1907—17; reprinted and reissued 1963-79). Wherever possible, references are included in a suitably abridged form in the body of the commentary.

Introduction: Jamesian thinking and philosophy as story-telling

In the Preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice MerleauPonty gives a concise and persuasive account of what he believes to be the major strengths of the phenomenological approach to philosophical problems. He contends that it is legitimate for phenomenology to ' be practised and identified as a manner or style of thinking' since it, in fact,' existed as a movement before arriving at complete awareness of itself

as a philosophy'.1 This sense of phenomenology, not as a narrow or doctrinaire theoretical school, but as a flexible and creative intellectual approach, is confirmed by Merleau-Ponty's concluding remarks, in which he argues that it is as painstaking as the works of Balzac, Proust, Valery or Cezanne - by reason of the same kind of attentiveness and wonder, the same demand for awareness, the same will to seize the meaning of the world or of history as that meaning comes into being. In this way it merges into the general effort of modern thought, (p. xxi)

While these loosely connected, general statements give a helpful picture of the projected method of phenomenological investigation, of the adaptability of the philosopher's conceptual tools and of his resistance to the rigid categorization of various kinds of exploratory scheme, it is important to identify the concrete content of characteristically phenomenological undertakings. Phenomenology marks a unique moment in recent philosophical effort, one in which an entire tradition of scholarly enquiry is first set aside, and then reinstated on modified - and, if the project is unsuccessful, more rigorous - terms. Such procedures are not unlike the often quoted 1

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology ofPerception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), p. viii. I

2

Henry James and the philosophical novel

experience of religious conversion; the world is renounced, only to be reclaimed and rediscovered from a strikingly fresh and illuminating perspective. The demanding techniques of the phenomenological reduction challenge accepted conceptual patterns, while ensuring that, in the thorough investigation which develops, the possible is carefully founded upon the real (see Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. xvii). Henry James, too, frequently proves himself a skilled discoverer and remaker of worlds, a shaper of brief factual anecdotes into the most surprising array of fictional possibilities. The phenomenological impulse guides his thinking, and leads him in search of the testing limiting conditions for perception, moral appraisal, or even coherent interpretation. The phenomenological approach, therefore, has strong affinities with James's style of narrative; it is this identification of a system of close correspondences between the later novels and a particular type of philosophizing which forms the raison d'etre for the carefully detailed commentary that follows. To offer a compressed and simplified preliminary outline, phenomenology is deeply concerned with the exploration of man's immediate experience; through reflection and careful description, it aims to arrive at a deeper understanding of the fundamental patterns of human existence. The phenomenologist seeks initially to grasp the special qualities of pre-reflective experience; he accepts the challenge of finding a mode of expression and examination which will make what was formerly unarticulated fully available for open-minded, yet meticulous, study. This commitment to considering the phenomena, as they present themselves, is extended to, and exercised at, every level of analysis, from the scrutiny of the relatively simple functioning of sense-perception to the interpretation of the subtlest manifestations of cultural and historical endeavour. The ultimate objective of the phenomenologist must be to cover and to comprehend the widest possible range of human action and interest. This introductory account would suggest that the phenomenological thinker and the novelist or poet share extensive common ground. As the ensuing chapter by chapter analysis will show, the philosopher commands an impressive array of incisive technical tools, whereas the literary writer's resources include drama, irony, extended linguistic play and far-reaching ambiguity. Yet the phenomenological preoccupation with the richness and diversity of human experience promotes fruitful ambiguities, while innovative works of fiction (such as James's)

Introduction

3

challenge accepted theories concerning the interaction between consciousness and its objects. For all its methodological refinements, phenomenology is not a discipline of narrowly end-stopped statements; its imaginative flexibility suits it subtly to a variety of literary purposes. Perhaps the most logical outcome of a phenomenological interrogation should, in fact, assume the lineaments of an adventurous and comprehensive fictional exposition. At the same time this brief and very generalized sketch of the principal preoccupations of phenomenology points to more specific parallels with the work of Henry James. James, like Merleau-Ponty, is an ardent observer of the range and diversity of human experience. He runs the whole gamut of possibilities, from a child's first encounters with the mysterious phenomena of the nursery environment in What Maisie Knew to the dazzling display of sophisticated social manners in The Wings of the Dove. He is adept at minute descriptions, while spinning out elaborate processes of reflection is a hallmark of his later fiction. Of course, phenomenological tendencies can be ascribed to a fair cross-section of literary texts, if one relies solely on the broad discriminations of my preliminary outline; a key function of this study is, therefore, to bring about a productive dialogue between the detail ofJames's narratives and the characteristic techniques employed in phenomenological enquiry. In addition, James's novels of the 1890s and 1900s strikingly exhibit the 'attentiveness and wonder', the 'demand for awareness', and the ' will to seize the meaning of the world... as that meaning comes into being' which Merleau-Ponty considers to be representative of phenomenological thinking. As the following chapters set out to demonstrate, these novels also go much further; the rigour and comprehensiveness of their design embodies a series of searching investigations into problems of subjectivity, truth and social intercourse. In this regard, James proves himself to be a fully-fledged, philosophical novelist, who presses the phenomenological 'style' of thought into the service of his complex process of argument. His narratives themselves become a form of philosophical path-finding and concept-building. Merleau-Ponty's shrewd synopsis of the major concerns of phenomenology, as he practises it, has further significant implications for James's approach to the writing of fiction. In the highly informative Preface to his Phenomenology of Perception, for instance, Merleau-Ponty urges that man is a 'subject destined to the world', and, explicitly

4

Henry James and the philosophical novel

rejecting the basic tenets of idealist philosophy, he insists that 'the world is not what I think, but what I live through' (pp. xi, xvi-xvii). The individual is an embodied consciousness, located within a given spatial context and discovering his very subjectivity as temporality. The potentialities open to each person are defined, not only by the inventiveness of his powers of reasoning, but also by the capabilities of his body, as well as the intricacies of a network of spatio-temporal relations. Under these circumstances, truth is not some predetermined logos which is brought to light, and then expounded in abstruse philosophical doctrines; truth is forged by people in their commerce with the world as the 'closely woven fabric' of the 'real', which incorporates the most surprising phenomena, while excluding the most appealing fantasies and daydreams. Moreover, truths are developed through the steady unfolding of human endeavour. Implicit in this view of the truth, not as absolute, but as creatively founded and constantly evolving, is Merleau-Ponty's conviction that rationality itself may be mysterious and endlessly fascinating, but that it is not essentially problematic. It exists precisely in the fine spiderweb of relationships which binds consciousness to the world, and the world to consciousness. This order of philosophical claim may readily find itself translated into the medium of a fictional exploration. Lambert Strether, for example, thinks intensely, yet he is ruefully reminded that he cannot conjure his enticing speculations into satisfying being. He lives, instead, through Paris and Woollett, struggling with the 'closely woven fabric' of his bewildering experiences and framing his decisions after a protracted sequence of experiments and compensatory realignments. Against this background, there is a Jamesian ring to Merleau-Ponty's statement that 'because we are in the world, we are condemned to meaning' (p. xix). If for Merleau-Ponty the world is a finely-spun tissue of human projects, these remain by their very nature incomplete and inexhaustible in their rich variety. As James, too, frequently demonstrates in his fiction, perception is inherently perspectival, so that any object or situation must be presented from a particular point of view - and this, inevitably, leaves other aspects of the phenomenon unexplored. The individual, who is involved in this pattern of criss-crossing relationships, faces a constant challenge to interpretation and qualificatory reinterpretation. For MerleauPonty, in fact, the world demands interpretation as the price paid by the embodied subject for his sustained interaction with it. A similar

Introduction

5

rationale soon becomes apparent in the universe of James's later fiction. Characters and the reader alike are drawn into following the intertwined threads of a series of compelling, yet elusive, significations. In The Golden Bowl, this drama of proposing, negating and restructuring meanings reaches its climax, as the four central characters vie for control in their constricting situation of interdependence. But the notion of 'meaning' acquires an added connotation in the later works. Like the phenomenologist, James attempts to identify the universal structures of experience through the detailed and disciplined scrutiny of the individual case. So his texts frequently test and elucidate ' what it means to': what it means to judge in The Ambassadors, and what it means to adopt a social role in The Wings of the Dove. The delimiting principles are grasped most vividly and most accurately through the imagination of a particular set of relevant circumstances. Merleau-Ponty's essay, 'The Philosopher and his Shadow', again considers the genesis of meaning, this time within the precise framework of the history of philosophy. He opens his case by endorsing the opinion that' establishing a tradition means forgetting its origins, as the aging Husserl used to say'. However, he immediately clarifies this potentially irresponsible proposition by suggesting that there 'must be a middle-ground' between a strictly objective approach to the history of philosophy, in which the critic conscientiously records the exact details of the appropriate theories, without the slightest addition or modification, and the form of meditation, 'disguised as dialogue', in which the writer both asks the questions and supplies the answers. Merleau-Ponty hopes, instead, to realize a sort of co-presence between the attempt of the philosopher pursuing the discussion, and the contribution of the philosopher whose work is being studied, so that the two styles of assessment interpenetrate and reinforce each other. In addition, he points to Martin Heidegger's belief that the richness of a philosophical work depends upon the ' unthought-of element' which it contains, upon the impetus which it gives later readers or scholars towards following up these hints and thus fulfilling the unexpressed vision of the original author.2 Merleau-Ponty regards himself as treating in just this way the production of Edmund Husserl, the father-figure of the Phenomenological Movement; he is anxious to tease out the 2

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'The Philosopher and his Shadow', in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 159-60.

6

Henry James and the philosophical novel

' unthought-of' strands in his predecessor's texts, and to co-operate with him in achieving the full promise of his phenomenological procedures. He sees loyalty to the tradition as residing not in uncritical acceptance or sterile reformulation, but in a commitment and participation which both deepen and extend the range of available knowledge. This study of the philosophical orientation of Henry James's later fiction aims, in the spirit of Merleau-Ponty, to establish a sort of copresence between the novels themselves and the phenomenological investigations which illuminate them. In this manner, it becomes possible to explore the implicitly phenomenological contours which uniquely define James's highly-wrought texts (rather than a more vaguely delineated 'unthought-of element' which they hold in reserve). And the phenomenological tradition is unmistakably enhanced by its interchange with James's vividly dramatic fleshing out of several perplexing epistemological, moral and interpretative problems. Merleau-Ponty's subtle and flexible model of phenomenological practice is clearly most appropriate to interdisciplinary research of this nature. Yet his thought is firmly rooted in Husserl's persistent efforts towards founding phenomenology as a rigorous science. At the same time, Merleau-Ponty's methodology and interests have strong links with the existential-phenomenological enterprises of writers such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. 3 Soren Kierkegaard, who is often counted as an existentialist philosopher, has shown unique and rewarding insights into the vexed questions of subjectivity and truth; these prove valuable in complementing and refining a predominantly phenomenological line of argument. Finally, a couple of phenomenological theories of the reading process helpfully appraise the kind of responsive and creative activity which James's texts elicit from their readers. If MerleauPonty's version of the phenomenological project lies at the heart of these spreading rings of theoretical enquiry, then it not only functions as a stabilizing reference point, but also gains pertinence and sharpness of definition from its supporting setting. A wide range of philosophical techniques can, therefore, be brought to bear upon the tight nexus of complex relationships which constitute the Jamesian 3

As a useful rule of thumb, phenomenology and existentialism can be distinguished by identifying their guiding themes: the former emphasizes the concept of essence, the latter that of existence (see John Macquarrie, Existentialism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 21-6).

Introduction

7

world. By the same token, Jamesian relations, by their very conception, force outward the frontiers of philosophical debate. 11

Although the phenomenological approach offers a revealing mode of grasping and comprehending James's preoccupation with issues which are broadly termed 'philosophical', his highly complex work naturally exhibits alternative dimensions as well. Nor is this at odds with Merleau-Ponty's recognition that phenomena display a multiplicity of aspects, all requiring thorough exploration, so that the abstract ideal of a single, final and exhaustive description becomes seriously misleading. At the same time, it seems prudent to test the applicability of phenomenological models to a selection of James's novels by placing them under a certain degree of controlled pressure. The incorporation of a number of Jacques Derrida's deconstructive strategies into the framework of this discussion at once exposes some of the limitations of phenomenological procedures, while extending the theoretical scope of the detailed commentary. After all, one of Derrida's earliest theoretical undertakings took the form of a sustained appraisal of some key phenomenological concepts. Nonetheless, Derrida may appear a perverse choice of companion thinker for the phenomenologists, because he is uncompromising in his rejection of Husserl's idea of presence. In Speech and Phenomena, his critique of the treatment of signs in Husserl's Logical Investigations, he sets out to prove that the notion of an expressive sign, or a sign simply "'charged with meaning"', is fallacious.4 The attempt at restricting a particular type of sign to the immediacy of the subject's inner life effectively makes nonsense of the concept of a sign. The self, in the intimacy of its pure self-communion, can manifest nothing to itself and learn nothing about itself. Derrida contends that all signs, including those strictly confined to the processes of mental life, would actually have to belong to Husserl's other category of the indicative: such signs ' [move] something such as a "thinking being" to pass by thought from something to something else'. Natural signs, such as the canals of Mars, indicate that intelligent beings may exist on the planet, while artificial signs (such as chalk marks) operate as ' the instruments 4

See Jacques Derrida, 'Speech and Phenomena', in Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 32.

8

Henry James and the philosophical novel

of conventional designation' {Speech and Phenomena, pp. 27-8). This account, after all, approaches more closely the familiar understanding of a sign as both representative and integrated within an articulated system. Equally damaging for Husserl's position is Derrida's convincing demonstration that the immediate present is not primordial, but derived, because it is defined in terms of its relation to a series of retensions and protensions, or backward and forward references. Nor, according to Derrida, is auto-affection originary; it, too, is derived by an unavoidable differentiation of the self from itself in order to establish a 'subject'. This also threatens the contention that the voice, which emanates from within, guarantees unimpeded contact with the springs of identity.5 ' Speech and Phenomena' seems to strike at the very foundations of Husserlian phenomenology with its striving to acquire apodeictic (or indubitably certain) evidence in the immediacy of self-consciousness. Even Merleau-Ponty, while refuting the idealism of the early Husserl, retains his confidence in an adapted concept of' presence'; and ' The Philosopher and his Shadow' advocates the 'co-presence' of two separate intellectual undertakings as a means of achieving a creative intellectual - or interdisciplinary - cross-fertilization. Derrida, however, reaches the conclusion that every presence is shot through with absence, so that it figures as a species of' non-presence'; this explains why a paradoxical 'primordial supplementation' comes into play. The search for the clearly identifiable origin of phenomena has become futile. Objects give way to signs, which are replaced by further signs, in an endless chain of steady substitutions. There is no longer a solid and trustworthy bedrock of being. Yet the impression of absences and deferments is by no means an alien experience for the reader of Henry James's later novels. The young Maisie's eager yearning for reliable knowledge is repeatedly deflected into a sequence of uneasy substitutions. In The Spoils ofPoynton, the novelist keeps recasting the form of Fleda's anxious judgements, as she gropes her way towards a sharper evaluation of her predicament. And in The Golden Bowl, Charlotte's energetic drive for fulfilment in her liaison with the Prince frequently lapses into a sense of emptiness and 5

Raymond Tallis provides an excellent summary of Derrida's case against Husserl in Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory (London: Macmillan, 1988), pp.

189-202. In a commonsensical and often persuasive fashion he counters Derrida's attack on ' logocentrism' with his own construct of' legocentrism' (pp. 202-33). Tallis's irreverent remarks are usually astute and stimulating, but his analysis is severely weakened by a tendency to oversimplify complex philosophical disputes.

Introduction

9

absence. Against this background Derrida's insistence on the restless movement of differance, as a complex economy of 'differing' and 'deferring', becomes highly pertinent to the patterning of James's fiction. A new angle of vision opens upon problems of indirection, delay and loss. While the critique of Husserl definitely constitutes a crucial phase of Derrida's career, he is equally bound to the phenomenological tradition by a number of vital links. Rather than casting him as the enfant terrible of the literary and philosophical establishment, Rodolphe Gasche presents a searching and scholarly appraisal of Derrida's thought, which lays bare the magnitude of his debt to phenomenological practice.6 In this guise, Derrida is taking up the challenge initially confronted by Heidegger while seeking to transcend the methodological barriers which he believes his predecessor to have encountered. One might even see Derrida as drawing out the ' unthought-of element' in Heidegger's work, to revert to MerleauPonty's formulation. Derrida, too, is keen to break the vicious circle which he regards as circumscribing the history of philosophy: the imitative return by several predetermined routes to the fundamental questions of philosophical investigation. Instead, he tries to come to grips with the limiting conditions of philosophical enquiry - or even to go beyond conventional philosophy altogether. This is perhaps why Richard Rorty, arguing somewhat disingenuously from his own pragmatistic vantage point, claims that Derrida's production has a ' constructive' side which offsets its deconstructive extravagance. In his eagerness to tackle the entire problematic of language, without rehearsing yet again the stale dance of the impoverished sign, Derrida brings himself dangerously close to offering up a fresh philosophy of language.7 Rorty's deduction is deliberately contentious, but it effectively narrows one of the gaps between Derrida's approach and phenomenological theory. If Derrida places himself at the circumference of institutionalized philosophical endeavour, wrestling tirelessly with the shifty and shifting dynamics of signification, then Husserl is also determined in his own way to lay down a gridwork of limiting conditions. His specially tailored method of the phenomenological reduction is designed scrupulously to filter out all 6

7

See The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1986). Richard Rorty, 'Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: An Essay on Derrida', in Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays: igj2-8o) (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982), pp. 99-103.

io

Henry James and the philosophical novel

prejudices and preconceptions and to deliver up the essence of perception, judgement or imaginative projection. He is concerned with 'how it is possible to' perceive, and with 'what it means to' judge. Moreover, this fascination with limiting conditions expresses itself in James's later novels. The idiosyncrasies of Maisie's upbringing at once compel and set her free to discover the parameters of her perceiving relationship with her environment. And the tightening intellectual, social and moral pressures in The Ambassadors lead Strether to examine 'what it means' to frame complex judgements. Any consideration of Derrida's disruptively innovative activities on the borderlines of linguistic philosophy and literary criticism would prove unjustifiably superficial if it failed to engage with some of his remarks about texts. 'Plato's Pharmacy' begins with a paragraph of provocative and shrewdly qualified assertions: A text is not a text unless it hides from thefirstcomer, from thefirstglance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.8 Derrida's line of reasoning clearly draws upon his attack on the familiar metaphysical concept of presence, as well as his rejection of any presumption of straightforward self-contained meaning. For him, textual work is not genteel, superficial embroidery, but' entering into the game' of elaboration and risking 'getting a few fingers caught' in a dissimulating woven texture (p. 63). This passage suggests why Derrida favours his strategically plotted practice of deconstruction, with its flair for revealing internal contradictions and its energetic subversion of textual structures from within those structures themselves. At the same time, the opening of 'Plato's Pharmacy' might serve as an apt description of the tantalizing complexity and elusiveness of a late Jamesian text. James's silences, evasions and suppressions have their affinities with the play of Derridean deconstruction, and his textual explorations cannot invariably be fitted into the mould of distinctive phenomenological attitudes. Derrida's interrogation of a cluster of key metaphysical assumptions must place him at odds with Merleau-Ponty's faith that the individual is a creative body-subject, securely situated in a world 8

Jacques Derrida, 'Plato's Pharmacy', in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: Athlone Press, 1981), p. 63.

Introduction

11

which is constituted as a nexus of criss-crossing perceptual, social and cultural relationships. And the nature of Derrida's dispute with Husserl has already been canvassed. Yet the ingenuity of the 'constructive' Derrida hints that these two sets of perspectives, while often opposing, may not be mutually exclusive. In the chapters which follow, I attempt to show that James's novels enact a predominantly phenomenological approach to human phenomena, but one tempered by Derridean reservations, and interspersed with deconstructive digressions. This subtle admixture becomes the characteristically Jamesian enterprise of fiction as philosophy. in

My conceptually founded case for James's standing as a philosophical novelist would clearly be substantially strengthened if it could be shown that he had come into fruitful contact with philosophical ideas, preferably of a phenomenological cast. As it happens, the James family boasted two adventurous thinkers: William, the pragmatist philosopher and psychologist, and the elder Henry, an eccentric Swedenborgian theologian. In Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, Richard A. Hocks argues cogently that, while direct influences cannot be conclusively traced, there is a striking congruity between William's philosophical style and the form taken by Henry's novels. The theory is to the practice, he proposes, as 'vitamin C' is to 'the orange'; William's pragmatistic thought is 'literally actualized as the literary art and idiom of Henry '.9 However, Hocks seems to me to attach undue importance to Henry's enthusiastic remark, in a letter praising his brother's recently published Pragmatism, that he had all his life 'unconsciously pragmatised'. His book includes a penetrating commentary on the personal correspondence between Henry and William, and this confirms the impression gained from a wider reading of the family documents; the relationship between the brothers is curiously compounded of affection and loyalty, combined with submerged jealousies and professional rivalries (see pp. 15-37). It seems feasible to contend that Henry responded perceptively to William's ideas, without choosing explicitly to import any of them into his fiction. 9

Richard A. Hocks, Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought: A Study in the Relationship between the Philosophy of William James and the Literary Art of Henry James (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1974), pp. 4-5.

12

Henry James and the philosophical novel

Insofar as the novelist's interaction with his father is concerned, Quentin Anderson asserts in a dated, and now largely disregarded, survey that Henry's works are to a significant degree modelled upon his parent's Swedenborgian principles.10 Far more pertinent is Alfred Habegger's psychoanalytic treatment of the way in which the elder James's pronouncements on sexuality, love and marriage are likely to have left their mark on his son's imaginative writing. Habegger condemns Henry James Senior's tactless involvement in the heated public debates on these sensitive subjects, not to mention his perverse fondness for unrestrained and damaging confessions.11 In the face of this evidence, Henry's bewildered, but dutifully admiring, statements in A Small Boy and Others need to be measured against the disturbing details of some of his early experiences at home. Once again, though, it is difficult to demonstrate influences from the social vision or theological system of one James on the elaborately expounded fictions of another; there are certainly no simple causal connections to be exposed. In this process of intellectual sleuthing, a more rewarding trail leads, oddly enough, to the identification of phenomenological analogies. There is already a sizeable body of critical material which associates William James's thought with the phenomenological tradition.12 And the elder James's idiosyncratic production, with its Swedenborgian allegiances, presents a few arresting similarities to both Kierkegaard's speculations and existentialist ethics. The climate of reflection in the James family seems, therefore, to have been existential-phenomenological, where phenomenology is still classified as a 'manner of thinking', rather than an officially acknowledged theoretical school. It becomes implausible to claim that Henry James is a philosophical novelist because he either borrowed or imbibed ideas and analytical techniques from his relatives. But it is intriguing - not to say revealing - that all three Jameses laboured so ambitiously and industriously within an atmosphere of broadly phenomenological enquiry. 10

11

12

See Quentin Anderson, The American Henry James (New Brunswick, N J . : Rutgers University Press, 1957). For a full development of this discussion, see Alfred Habegger, ' The Lessons of the Father: Henry James Sr on Sexual Difference', Henry James Review, 8 (1986), 1-36. Consider principally: Bruce Wilshire, William James and Phenomenology: A Study of e The Principles of Psychology' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968); John Wild, The Radical Empiricism of William James (New York: Doubleday, 1969); and James M. Edie, William James and Phenomenology (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987).

Introduction

13

To focus more precisely upon specific philosophical issues, there is no concrete evidence for an exchange of views between William James and his European contemporaries who were interested in phenomenology. However, it has been reliably established that Husserl studied at least selected parts of William James's The Principles of Psychology) and in an article of 1894 he twice cites the American scholar's treatment of the 'stream of thought' with regard to his own description of the contents of cognitive acts. Herbert Spiegelberg believes that there are almost certainly traces ofJames's explanation of the 'stream of thought' in Husserl's sophisticated development of the notion of the 'stream of consciousness'.13 Phenomenology as a 'manner of thinking' has been transformed into phenomenology as a rigorous discipline. Moreover, it takes only a cursory scrutiny of the second book of The Golden Bowl to see how intensely Henry James is fascinated by the succession of unique events occurring within any 'stream of thought'. William James is also credited with discovering the selectivity of attention, that is, the capacity of the mind for choosing the phenomena on which it will bestow its 'glance', and for allowing itself on occasion to lapse into states of abstraction. The exercise of attention, however, gives the clue to James's notion of'conception', or the ability of consciousness to identify objects as the same, in spite of the constant flux of the ' stream of thought' (see Wild, Radical Empiricism, pp. 116-30). Now this approach to the freely alternating patterns of attention has distinct relevance for Husserl's evolution of a technique of'intentional analysis'. This method concentrates upon the vital interrelation between the subjective and the objective aspects of any act of consciousness. The philosopher seeks to achieve a deeper understanding of his experience, either by attempting to investigate the vague horizons which hover around any given phenomenon, or by subjecting the particular object to a series of imaginative variations, in order to enrich his sense of the fundamental configurations which underlie the different, but closely linked, appearances. In this way, the phenomenologist is consistently concerned with the creative power of consciousness, with its dynamic energy, and with its potential for unfolding systems of meaning. Chapter 2, in fact, suggests that such processes of intentional analysis provide the key to Lambert Strether's strange talent for making the 13

See The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd rev. ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982), pp. 100-3.

14

Henry James and the philosophical novel

transition from Woollett norms to Parisian mores, and then to his own highly individualized mode of interpreting his ever-complicating circumstances. From another angle, William James's idea of the freedom of the will, in addition to that of attention, has obvious ethical implications. As James Edie points out, William James recognizes no criteria for choice ' independent of the free act itself; he notices briefly that there are parallels between this conviction and the views of Sartre, or many other existentialists (William James and Phenomenology pp. 43-4). Edie should, however, have included an explanatory rider: for Sartre, freedom is not only an essential defining condition of consciousness, but also a consummate value sought by the individual. Nonetheless, there is sufficient common ground for both these opinions to be correlated with Henry James's moral vision. In What Maisie Knew, Mrs Wix finds her discriminations constrained by the inflexible dictates of her conventional moralism, while Maisie soon develops a sensitive and existentially orientated morality of free choice. It is Maisie who experiments, learns and grows, while a frustrated Mrs Wix can only admire her progress. One of the most engaging aspects of William James's writing, from a phenomenological point of view, is his treatment of the relationship between consciousness and the body. For James appreciates that the body is not simply an object among other physical objects; instead, the individual is regarded as an embodied consciousness, who lives, and feels, and explores the world, through his very corporeality. At the same time, he considers the ways in which the concept of the self involves more than mere physical or psychological identity. James grasps, for instance, that each person has a variety of'social selves', which are shaped in response to the expectations of the various groups within which he moves, as well as being modified to earn public status or approval. 14 In Volume 2 of The Principles of Psychology, James presses his conclusions still further. He argues that while the world of'sensations' may claim 'paramount reality' since it provides the setting for perceptual existence, with its familiar spatio-temporal dimensions (pp. 299-306), individuals also cultivate an awareness of various other self-consistent ' worlds' of mythology, or imaginative creation, or scientific enquiry. It is both rational and permissible to make judgements about these alternative 'worlds'; one can live within a number of different frames of reference, and each world 14

William James, The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1890), Vol. 1, p. 294.

Introduction

15

retains its own reality, after its own fashion, while the subject is interested in it. Once his attention is withdrawn, the reality of' the world' also lapses (Edie, William James and Phenomenology, pp. 35-6). James's hypotheses have strong similarities to the thought of Merleau-Ponty, who describes man as an embodied 'subject destined to the world'. The primacy granted to perception also calls to mind the phenomenological construct of the 'life-world', as the environment of ordinary, lived daily experience. The lines of convergence may be extended still further, for James lodges the criterion for reality in consciousness, or to put it less starkly, in the interaction between consciousness and its objects of interest [The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 2, pp. 293-8). A major concern of phenomenology is the exploration not only of the fundamental patterns of the 'life-world', but also of the structural features peculiar to the realms of scientific endeavour, or memory, or imaginative creation. Husserl envisaged the application of a method of rigorous phenomenological description to all these areas of experience, so that it would become possible to build up a coherent picture of the nature and range of conscious life (see Wild, Radical Empiricism, pp. 143-67, and Wilshire, William James and Phenomenology, pp. 150-216). Once again, it seems legitimate to draw analogies between these explicitly theoretical contentions and the fictional practice of Henry James. In The Ambassadors, Lambert Strether moves from the 'world' ofWoollett to the ' world' of Paris, and must make every effort to adapt accordingly; some critics have also wondered whether the ambassador fancifully retreats into a 'world' of his own imaginative constitution, thus losing contact with the solid basis of the 'life-world'. And The Golden Bowl examines the struggles of Maggie and Charlotte to confer ' reality' upon the ' worlds' of love and sustained mutuality which they try to summon into being. In The Wings of the Dove, Milly Theale runs a grave risk in retreating from the tensions of the social ' world' into a rarefied atmosphere of dovelike benevolence. Henry James, too, dramatically surveys the shift from 'world' to 'world', as well as the subtlety and intensity of attention required to hold together each framework of desire and anticipated fulfilment. While it is fairly easy to mark out the intellectual territory in which both William and Henry James have a stake, pinning down their father's views is a more daunting task. William notes, perhaps uncharitably, that ' the ideas are singularly unvaried and few... we seem to find him saying again and again the same thing; telling us

16

Henry James and the philosophical novel

what the true relation is between mankind and its creator'. 15 However, the elder James keeps shifting his position, so that the particular distinctions within his vast Swedenborgian scheme for the salvation of the human race become blurred, or even untenable. Even so, Henry Senior appears to have shared his sons' confidence in the creativity of consciousness, as it constantly becomes engaged with the 'life-world'. In A Small Boy and Others, the younger Henry records his father's urging him simply to c convert, convert, convert!' in the serene faith that ' Virtue, as a social grace and value' would result.16 All impressions are thus to be treated as stuff for consciousness to work upon, and to transform into a means of expanding the child's self-command and empathy with others. This goal apparently becomes fixed in the growing boy's memory, for in his influential essay on 'The Art of Fiction' he singles out as the novelist's prime resource his capacity for 'converting] the very pulses of the air into revelations'.17 If the elder Henry's resonant injunction to 'convert' makes its impact upon the budding novelist, his reflections on ethics are equally pertinent, both to the phenomenological analogy and to the tone of the younger Henry's fiction. For the elder James asserts that the 'divine man' or 'God's image in creation' is the individual who ' in every visible form of action acts always from his inmost self, or from attraction, and not from necessity or duty'. He is a 'law unto himself, and ignores all outward allegiance, whether to nature or society'.18 This might be seen as a less temperate version of William's contention that there are no criteria for choice except the free act itself. Such a reading would be borne out by Henry Junior's recollection that it was comically commonplace to hear morality, or moralism as it was more invidiously worded, made hay of in the very interest of character and conduct; these things suffering much, it seemed, by their association with the conscience - that is the conscious conscience - the very home of the literal, the haunt of so many pedantries. (A Small Boy and Others, p. 124) 15

16

17

18

William James, Introduction to The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James, ed. William James (Boston: Hough ton Mifflin, 1884), p. 9. A Small Boy and Others, in Autobiography, ed. F. W. Dupee (New York: Criterion Books, !956)> PP- 122-3. 'The Art of Fiction', in Partial Portraits, ed. Leon Edel (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), p. 388. See Henry James, Senior, 'A Scientific Statement of the Christian Doctrine of the Lord, or Divine M a n ' , in Moralism and Christianity: or, Man's Experience and Destiny (New York:

Redfield, 1850), p. 27.

Introduction

17

However, in the elder James's convoluted metaphysical system, 'moralism' belongs to the stage of 'proprium', or selfhood, in the hierarchy of personal and psychological evolution. People behave with restraint because society as a whole exacts this standard, rewarding compliance with its norms and punishing deviations. On the other hand, the 'divine' or 'spiritual' man has abandoned all narrowly selfish strivings, and discovers the genuine significance of his existence in his relationship with God. He can be truly 'moral' and ' social' because he acts out of spontaneous love for his neighbours as embodiments of the divine creation; he has advanced beyond rulebound conduct. It is striking that the Danish existentialist thinker Soren Kierkegaard maps out a similar progression from the adherence to moral imperatives towards the paradoxical liberation of faith. In Fear and Trembling, he elucidates how Abraham must set aside all established human valuations, and risk sacrificing Isaac, if he is to become the 'father of faith'. Abraham responds willingly 'for God's sake, and (in complete identity with this) for his own sake5.19 While he assiduously prepares to meet God's demand, he knows by the paradox of faith that this demand will not be made, and that everything will be restored to him anew. As John Macquarrie astutely sums up, Abraham is singled out because he is able to 'forge his own categories' when confronted with the call to action {Existentialism, p. 210). This proclivity towards startling moral innovation, which both Kierkegaard and the elder James consider as representative of the spiritually developed individual, also occupies a prominent place in the younger Henry's fiction. The obvious example to cite would be Maisie Farange's fearless experimentation with founding original modes of moral discrimination. And in The Golden Bowl, these gymnastic manoeuvres in ethics are pressed to their extreme limit, so that conventional moral concepts come alarmingly near to merging with their opposites; veracity entwines itself with deception, and generosity with egotistical manipulation. These novels dramatically enact the dizzying process of forging new moral categories. After all, Kierkegaard too, embedded his philosophical appraisal in the Biblical narrative of Abraham's courage. 19

See Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, in Fear and Trembling and The Sickness unto

Death, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 70.

18

Henry James and the philosophical novel IV

The preceding discussion has been developed with the aim of showing that there are highly persuasive reasons for considering Henry James a 'phenomenological thinker', in the broad sense of that term. Not only do he and his brother William share certain preoccupations which have been explicitly and rigorously developed by members of the formal Phenomenological Movement; James ingeniously treats his later novels as a medium for exploring some recurrent and teasing problems in epistemology, ethics and hermeneutics. At this stage, however, it is important to clarify how my study differs from others which are superficially similar, and why a fiction writer may be classified as a 'philosophical novelist'. There can certainly be no question of James's deliberately digesting, and then popularizing, the ideology of a particular theorist or intellectual school. This is not the first reading of Henry James's texts in relation to phenomenological themes. In the opening sentence of his Preface to The Phenomenology of Henry James, Paul B. Armstrong states, not

unexpectedly, that his book 'offers an interpretation of Henry James from a phenomenological perspective '.20 His main purpose is i to shed light on... the relation between [James's] fascination with consciousness and what is commonly called his "moral vision"' (p. vii). At the same time, he finds himself engaged in ' a comparative study of philosophy and literature' (p. ix). This survey is scholarly, lucidly presented and often critically incisive, although there is a tendency towards philosophical confusion; William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Freud, Ludwig Binswanger and various phenomenologists rub shoulders without an adequate differentiation of their initial premises or subsequent methodology. A more serious defect in this project is its fictional scope; Armstrong ranges confidently from Roderick Hudson to The Golden Bowl, lightly skimming over the contrasts in linguistic register and narrative technique between James's early novel and his last completed one. Finally, there is a disconcerting impression that phenomenology is not quite satisfactory for Armstrong's needs, and that he is rather awkwardly trying to defend himself against the charge of being apolitical. When The Spoils of Poynton is used as the setting for a rapprochement between phenom20

The Phenomenology of Henry James (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. vii.

Introduction

19

enology and Marxism, the interpretative matrix begins to groan at its seams. It is clearly not part of Armstrong's informing scheme to establish Henry James as a philosophical novelist of a very special kind. John Carlos Rowe, in his turn, provides a splendid overview of the multiplicity of theoretical issues which have a significant bearing on James's works: nineteenth-century attitudes towards the writing of fiction, feminism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, phenomenological hermeneutics and reader response theory. Rowe's critical performance rises convincingly to meet the demands of so impressive a list of philosophies and approaches; clearly, his interest lies principally in the rich diversity ofJames's cultural affiliations, as he covers the wide spectrum of his chosen author's novels, short stories, essays, autobiographical texts and travel writings.21 This is an enterprise wholly different in its conception from mine. My study concentrates instead on a small sub-group of Henry James's novels, those produced in the late 1890s and early 1900s. It considers them closely in their own right, regarding them as unique in their linguistic complexity and their sharp focus on 'what it means to' become involved in certain forms of personal, social or moral commitment. Phenomenologists characteristically derive the universal structures of experience from a painstaking and carefully controlled scrutiny of individual, representative cases. In an analogous fashion, the detailed vividness of James's meticulously dramatized plots projects intricate patterns of possible epistemological or ethical discrimination. The particular and the general cannot be crudely wrenched asunder. Moreover, the ' co-presence' of James's fictional situations and a sequence of phenomenological or existentialist models confers concreteness upon the sparely formulated philosophical constructs, while the conceptual subtleties of a late Jamesian narrative are at once pinpointed and illuminated. In fact, James's talent for breaking new conceptual ground, and for assessing tricky dilemmas from a series of mutually qualifying perspectives, is thrown into sharp relief as a significant philosophical achievement. The claims which literature may have to recognition as a philosophical discipline are, in fact, highlighted in a special issue of New Literary History on ' Literature and/as Moral Philosophy'. Henry James's work features prominently, too. In ' Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy', Martha 21

See John Carlos Rowe, The Theoretical Dimensions of Henry James (London: Methuen, 1985).

20

Henry James and the philosophical novel

Nussbaum follows the trajectory of Maggie Verver's moral progress.22 However, her searching, if unduly selective, interpretation of the text rapidly gives way to wider and more traditional philosophical speculations on the applicability of moral rules, the difficulties inherent in moral choice, and the legitimacy of abandoning moral criteria. The debate initiated by Nussbaum's paper is also conducted, for the most part, in very general terms. Literature has become the humble handmaiden of Lady Philosophy, providing her with serviceable case-histories. After a gap of several years, Daniel Brudney returns to these vexed questions in his discussion of ' The Golden Bowl and Moral Philosophy'. He is acutely aware of the potentially problematic relationship between literature and philosophy. He acknowledges that philosophers traditionally prefer to use literary texts as convenient examples, which serve to illustrate their more abstract hypotheses. At the same time, Brudney's own suggestions usually retain a bias in favour of philosophy: ' literature might... project some of the concepts of moral philosophy. The text will show a new context for applying a concept, one that reveals new dimensions and resonances. ' 23 Again, Brudney proposes that offering thorough readings of specific texts may help philosophers to gain a firm hold on slippery concepts, such as ' tact' (p. 433). Literature has been reduced, once more, to the subordinate role of clarifying, extending and supporting philosophical enquiries. Nonetheless, one of Brudney's conceptual distinctions strongly buttresses my argument that Henry James's later novels are powerfully philosophical. He points to the difference between 'fashioning an action you think might be the morally right thing to do, and evaluating that action as morally right (or wrong)' (p. 420). Brudney adds that works such as The Golden Bowl can provide important clues to the creative fashioning of moral action (p. 426). Actually, The Golden Bowl not only displays the fashioning of an array of highly complex moral actions, as the principal characters set about forging their own categories of conduct; the novel also enacts, through its very drama, a sustained evaluation or critique of the decisions which are reached. James's later texts at once explore virgin philosophical territory, and uncompromisingly assess the conse22

23

See Martha Craven Nussbaum, ' Flawed Crystals: James's The Golden Bowl and Literature as Moral Philosophy', New Literary History, 15 (1983), 2 5 - 5 0 . Daniel Brudney, 'Knowledge and Silence: The Golden Bowl and Moral Philosophy', Critical Inquiry, 16 (1990), 4 1 6 - 1 8 , 429.

Introduction

21

quences of that dangerous journey. They are folded back upon themselves in the manner of the Derridean ' re-mark'; they do not fit precisely into or over themselves - there is always a significant and revealing angle of deviation (see Gasche, The Tain of the Mirror, pp. 291-2). This is why unflagging attention to textual detail is vital; every tiny nuance contributes to the continuing process of analysis. James's late novels are not merely copious case studies which can be ransacked at will by the beady-eyed philosopher. They constitute literature as philosophy; they stand in a relation of open and equal dialogue with the overtly philosophical investigations which have been juxtaposed to them. The theoretical analysis up to this point has concentrated upon the philosophical orientation of Henry James's literary production. However, it is equally informative to reverse the direction of the debate, and to examine the degree to which philosophical enquiry itself is indebted to the utilization of certain prime literary resources. The practice of story-telling then acquires a position of central importance. Existentialist writers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, provide a helpful preliminary perspective on such correlations, since they have earned their reputation both as fearlessly original thinkers and as openly experimental novelists. At the same time, though, their tactical procedures should be distinguished from James's unique talent for exploring philosophical dilemmas through the medium of his fictional texts. Sartre's Nausea, for example, reflects a markedly similar set of attitudes to the explicitly theoretical arguments advanced in Being and Nothingness and several other of his rigorously structured philosophical commentaries. When Roquentin is overcome with a consciousness of 'Absurdity' on observing the tree-root in the park, when he is racked by violent ' Nausea' at the awful plenitude of his familiar environment, he concludes that the trees go on 'existing, unwillingly and ungraciously, simply because they [are] too weak to die, because death [can] come to them only from the outside... Every existent is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.' 24 Now this perception of the contingency of existence, as well as the closely-linked awareness of the challenge confronting human consciousness in exercising its freedom, and carving out patterns of meaningful activity in the face 24

Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Robert Baldick (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 191.

22

Henry James and the philosophical novel

of the lumpish inertia of brute being, is characteristic of Sartre's carefully considered existentialist stance. His novels provide concretely imagined situations which are thoroughly elucidated in independently presented theoretical statements, while these abstract formulations may be supplemented and enriched by the projection of a corresponding fictional universe. The author's skills in two different disciplines become mutually supporting and illuminating. Nonetheless, the methodological gap separating Henry James and Sartre is not nearly as wide as may initially appear. Frank Kermode suggests that there is actually an element of story-telling in Sartre's formal philosophical endeavour, too. He argues that the little tales in Being and Nothingness of the girl with her seducer, or the waiter who plays at being a waiter, have close affinities to the stories of the lighthouse or the sick cafe proprietor in Nausea.25 Kermode acknowledges the differences between these anecdotes, since the first pair is attached to a theoretical discourse, while the second is woven into the fabric of a fictional plot. However, this insight gives a further clue to the precise sense in which James can be regarded as a philosophical novelist; for, if philosophy may take the form of storytelling, story-telling - in its fullest realization, the novel - may facilitate the forging of new philosophical categories. As it happens, a number of phenomenological thinkers have shown a particular interest in the narrative approach; and this points, once again, to the multiplicity of ways in which James's fictional innovations intersect with the history of phenomenological investigation. Kierkegaard, like Sartre, is acutely aware of the value of the sharply imagined, concrete illustration. In Either/Or, he deliberately sets up a complex system of ironic distancing, which allows him to address his readers through the persona of the editor, Victor Eremita. This editor compiles two collections of papers, which have ostensibly been written by two figures called A and B; these documents represent the two volumes of Either/ Or, and therefore the counterpoised examinations of the ' aesthetic' and the ' ethical' points of view. Yet the pattern of relationships becomes still more intricate; the 'Diary of a Seducer' was, it appears, only edited by A, and is allegedly the record of some other person's experience. In this way, Kierkegaard superimposes layer upon layer of cumulating interpretation, forcing the reader to enter actively into the examination of the 25

See Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 136.

Introduction

23

text, and to weigh up, compare and contrast a variety of possible attitudes. Kierkegaard's later works make an equally effective use of fictional techniques. In Fear and Trembling, as I have already suggested, the Biblical account of Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son, Isaac, serves as the focus for a sensitive appraisal of the nature of faith. And the Concluding Unscientific Postscript is interspersed with brief anecdotes or passages of recollection, which provide pertinent applications for the broader theoretical aspects of the discussion. Kierkegaard's ironic distancing of himself, his imaginative diction, his creative assumption of the role of the Socratic gadfly which stings the torpid individual into thought - this fine blending of techniques constitutes his philosophical method, from which it is virtually impossible to extract a separate literary component. For the Danish writer, story-telling and imaginative projection are vital resources of philosophy itself. In Merleau-Ponty's work, too, there is strong evidence of his sympathy with literary projects. Not only does he comment incisively on the fictional achievement of contemporary thinkers, such as Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir; in addition, he frequently finds that his phenomenological contentions are strikingly fleshed out and vivified in the novels of Balzac and Proust, or the poetry of Valery. And Heidegger also becomes increasingly preoccupied with literary forms, particularly poetry, as his career advances - although it may be claimed that his later research has moved quite beyond the normal range of the phenomenological method. However, the notion of philosophy as story-telling is not confined to the practice of various members of the Phenomenological Movement. J. L. Austin stands firmly within the Anglo-American tradition of linguistic and moral philosophy, yet the persuasiveness of his reasoning depends upon his ability to imagine vividly practical states of affairs in which to root his conceptual analyses. In 'Three Ways of Spilling Ink', for instance, he probes the teasing question of free action and individual responsibility by re-exploring the meaning of the terms 'intentionally', 'deliberately', and 'on purpose'.2* Austin

suggests two possible ways of tackling his problem: on the one hand, he considers an appraisal of the ' grammar' and ' etymology' of the words concerned; on the other, he proposes an examination of 'imagined or actual cases'. And he asserts that the expressions used 26

J. L. Austin, 'Three Ways of Spilling Ink', in Philosophical Papers, ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 273.

24

Henry James and the philosophical novel

by 'commentators on real incidents, or by narrators of fictitious incidents' would carry a particular relevance (p. 274). Since the space available does not permit such detailed scrutiny of existing material, Austin proceeds to supply his own sketch-outlines for a series of instructive stories. The anecdote of the man who kills the penguins by feeding them peanuts in defiance (or perhaps, in ignorance) of the prohibitory notice lies closest to the cautionary tales of Hilaire Belloc (p. 275). But Austin also offers a number of ingenious summaries, each of which might easily serve as the basic plot for a fully-fledged novel. After this meticulous assessment, Austin's problem words must acquire a sharper sense and a more appropriate range of reference; for the notions of ' free action' and 'responsibility' have been at once felt and understood through the philosopher's cogent mini-narratives. Henry James's transitional novels of the 1890s, as well as his now famous tours deforce of the 'major phase', are constructed with the same subtle attention both to their overall design and to the minute details. The effect is one of almost total relevance in the penetration of persistent epistemological, social or moral problems. Austin tells the story of a government official in India, who is called urgently to quell a riot; in his haste to reach the scene of the uprising, he ' deliberately' - but not' intentionally' - drives over a go-cart which belongs to a servant's child, and which has been left lying directly in his path (p. 278). Even in his condensed report, Austin has begun to imagine the prevailing circumstances shrewdly and compassionately. He has started to draw up a scale of relative importances, to conjure up the conflict in the official's mind between national demands and domestic values. He hints at the anxiety of the man desperately hurrying to meet a crisis, counterbalanced as it will be by the misery of a self-absorbed little girl, when she discovers that her favourite toy has been smashed beyond repair. In one respect, though, Austin's definitions must remain provisional and severely circumscribed, because his technique demands the exclusion of elaborate or ambiguous illustrations. Now this is precisely the shadowy ground on which James's investigations thrive, confronting uncertainties and complications with still sharper scrutiny. To view James's undertaking programmatically, What Maisie Knew initiates his probing of the functioning of perception in terms closely akin to the application of the phenomenological reduction. If the 'reduction' is aimed both at uncovering the fundamentals of

Introduction

25

perception and at conferring a fresh grasp on a wide range of experiences, James in a single composite gesture outstrips his professional philosophical counterparts. He moves easily from the perceptual to the moral, so that his novella offers a near-Nietzschean ' transvaluation of values'. Yet What Maisie Knew also deploys the self-critical potential of the Derridean c re-mark'; just as the methodological strengths of the phenomenological reduction are displayed and endorsed, so are the unavoidable deficiencies of this approach lucidly and uncompromisingly exposed. In The Ambassadors, James takes up and refines his interest in the mechanics of both perception and judgement. Lambert Strether then becomes the model of the phenomenological philosopher, dutifully detached from, yet highly receptive to, the patterns of involvement and interaction which form his subject of study. Strether's taxing progress towards the development of a uniquely personal mode ofjudging yet again underlines not only the poised ambivalences of the phenomenological enterprise, but also the intrinsically philosophical structure of James's late fiction. Macrocosmic unfoldings of the plot are reflected in microcosmic variations of linguistic detail; the entire narrative is geared towards the clarification of concepts and interpretative procedures, rather than to a polished recounting of the frustrated ambitions of an elderly artist manque. In The Wings of the Dove, James unrolls an ample canvas on which he paints the activities of a variety of individuals in society. Yet the novel is not concerned merely to capture the glittering surface of accomplished manners; instead, James attempts to trace searchingly and comprehensively the benefits conferred, and the restrictions imposed, by adopting a social role. Existentialist categories predictably prove more appropriate than phenomenological distinctions to this carefully choreographed ballet of encounter and retreat. Yet James places at centre stage the baffling character of Milly Theale, whose self-divided consciousness threatens to undermine - perhaps to annihilate - itself, thus calling in question the very formulations of individual identity and social function. Through the intricate situations of his narrative, James pursues even further than Sartre might have done the ways in which self-deception in one consciousness can spread a dangerous contagion of fantasy and delusion to others. James's discussion of perception, judgement and social adaptation in his later works is accompanied by an eager enquiry into the

26

Henry James and the philosophical novel

knottier and more abstruse philosophical problems of subjectivity and truth. In his experimental piece, The Spoils of Poynton, he inches uneasily towards an equation of existential truth with subjective inwardness. But this novella lacks the assurance of What Maisie Knew, serving instead as an instructive case of misdirected philosophical energy. The complicated succession of comparisons and contrasts loses coherence, and James uncharacteristically finds himself bogged down in a morass of strained, insignificant detail. Moreover, he misses the promising opportunity for allowing his competing evaluative terms to deconstruct one another. Nonetheless, trying to solve the puzzle of moral and aesthetic entanglements is a rewarding exercise for the reader, since it signposts the route to the controlled philosophical evolution of The Golden Bowl. In The Golden Bowl, James unravels, and then reweaves, all the disparate philosophical threads into the figure of the 'relationship'. Questions of individual identity, social interchange, moral judgements and fictional representation are all treated in the light of the 'chiasm', which describes the 'cross-over' or 'interpenetration' between the self and the other, experience and linguistic expression. The Golden Bowl again offers a striking system of sustained relevance, one which embodies the rich flexibility of the phenomenological approach in its most refined version. However, the novel also lays bare the paradoxical shortcomings of such a method in its multiplication of ambiguous lines of response and alternative decodings of states of affairs, in its subversion of any stable set of rules. It is arresting that The Golden Bowl stands as James's ultimate achievement in novel-writing, both because it is his final completed text in this genre, and because it strives towards a maximum of hermeneutic sophistication. Merleau-Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, which remained unfinished at his death, occupies a similar position in his creative endeavour. Through ideas like the ' chiasm' he seeks to cross the boundary between phenomenology and pure metaphysics, and to embrace the limiting conditions of challenging theoretical statement.

CHAPTER I

What Maisie K n e w : the challenge of vision

What Maisie Knew, with its unique blend of comedy, pathos and anguish, is a novel that is deeply concerned with ways of seeing the world. In choosing Maisie as his central consciousness, James has provided himself with maximum scope, precisely because he relies on a set of minimum conditions. For Maisie stands on the threshold of experience; she has not been drawn into the acceptance of conventional values, she lacks even the rudiments of a normal nursery education. Through her influence, James can gain a new purchase on reality, one which provides the bedrock for a shrewd philosophical investigation. The realms of perception and social intercourse are transformed, as he submits them to an open and original examination. To approach What Maisie Knew in this way is not to treat the novel merely as a vindication of innocence and a condemnation of corrupt personal relationships, as viewed from a traditional nineteenth-century perspective. As James himself notes in the preface, the creative approach to experience casts a fresh light even on the more lurid occupations of Beale and Ida Farange. 1 Once the familiar preconceptions have been cast off, the revelation is complete; human events emerge in a sharp new focus. And it is these characteristics of What Maisie Knew which mark out its phenomenological orientation towards questioning and reconstituting established interpretative schemata. The comfortable and uncritical relationship which most individuals establish with their surroundings - the one which What Maisie Knew endeavours to transform - is commonly described by 1

Henry James, The Art of the Novel, introd. R. P. Blackmur (New York: Scribner's, 1934; rpt. 1962), pp. 143, 147.

27

28

Henry James and the philosophical novel

phenomenologists as the natural or the naive attitude. In this state people accept, quite unthinkingly, the basic conditions of their existence. The writer at a desk knows that the rest of the room, and all its familiar objects, lie behind him. Beyond the house is his garden, beyond that the town — and so the environment shades off to a vague horizon. There is no uncertainty about the stable existence of the world. Moreover, the same easy interaction applies to temporal relationships. The writer is completely absorbed in the task of the present moment. Yet he need have no fear that he will be unable to glance back towards the past, either of his own intimate, living concerns, or the colder, more abstract record of history. Equally, he can reach out towards an uncertain future. In other words, the operation of the basic structures of experience is taken for granted. The individual meets others on this sound footing, recognizing that he shares some of their interests and that their responses help to shape his life. Everything has a safe foundation, and the pattern of everyday occurrences is clearly defined. Yet Husserl, the founder of the modern Phenomenological Movement, is aware that living in the natural attitude implies something more complex than this ease of acceptance. The world of 'facts and affairs' exists with equal immediacy as a 'world of values', a 'world of goods', a 'practical world'.2 Individuals, for instance, have their respective moral codes, their favoured criteria for arriving at judgements. James vividly illustrates this tendency in the case of Mrs Wix; he shows that she can live quite effectively in her firm reliance on her 'moral sense'. She knows what constitutes a 'crime branded by the Bible', and she feels no inclination to question such a standard. By the same token, she understands the degree of consideration to which her social status entitles her — and she is moved to the profoundest gratitude when Sir Claude gallantly treats her with more than the required courtesy. The Faranges, too, organize their existence at the level of the natural attitude? Selfindulgence is their watchword, pleasure and freedom from responsibility are their ultimate aims. In their chaotic struggling and bickering they are as unlikely to explore the questionable basis of 2

3

Edmund Husserl, Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, trans. W. R. Boyce Gibson

(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931), p. 103. The term 'natural' may appear strange when applied to the extreme sophistication of Beale and Ida Farange. However, the emphasis falls on the uncritical response to familiar patterns of experience, which are regarded as 'given' or' normal', and therefore requiring no further investigation.

What Maisie Knew: the challenge of vision

29

their life-style as Mrs Wix is to reappraise the sanctities of the nursery, or to dissect the fond memory of Clara Matilda. For these characters, the world simply is, values clearly are - and it is reassuringly convenient to proceed on the ground of these assumptions. However, there is a constructive alternative to approaching reality from the point of view of the natural attitude. Husserl's remedy is the phenomenological epoche, or the process of' bracketing' which puts the natural attitude out of action. The familiar world of people and objects, with all its accompanying values and judgements, is set on one side. The bracket has a similar effect to the one used in mathematics; it alters the status of what it contains.4 Understood differently, thetf/wc/f/correspondsto a process of doubting. But if the attempt to doubt is to be logically consistent, all the facts, assumptions and convictions which relate to the natural attitude must be placed in suspension, and there can be absolutely no recourse to these resources. This does not entail a denial of the existence of the natural world] in this regard Husserl's epoche is totally different from the Cartesian method, in which the universal attempt at doubt suggests a universal negation (Husserl, Ideas, p. 109). It is perfectly compatible with Husserl's experiment that the world of the natural attitude, and all that pertains to that outlook, should continue just as before; these considerations simply cease to be relevant (Husserl, Ideas, pp. 108—9). The practice of the epoche prepares the way for the performance of the phenomenological reduction itself. Because the philosopher has put out of bounds the conceptual framework provided by the natural attitude, he can approach the world without any prior expectations (although this remains one of the most contentious claims of Husserl's enterprise). He treats it merely as a phenomenon, as 'that which appears' to him. And the process is called a reduction (from the Latin 'reducere') because it 'leads back' to an examination of the sources of experience (Schmitt, 'Husserl's Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction', p. 61). Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who took up and developed Husserl's phenomenology, offers one of the most lucid explanations of the phenomenological reduction. In the following passage, he draws no sharp distinction between the stages of the epoche and the reduction itself— that is, the return to the immediacy of experience, before it has 4

Richard Schmitt, 'Husserl's Transcendental-Phenomenological Reduction', in Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its Interpretation, ed. Joseph J. Kockel-

mans (New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1967), p. 59.

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been overlaid and neatly categorized by the range of accepted interpretative schemes. It is because we are through and through compounded of relationships with the world that for us the only way to become aware of the fact is to suspend the resultant activity, to refuse it our complicity... or yet again, to put it' out of play'. Not because we reject the certainties of common sense and a natural attitude to things - they are, on the contrary, the constant theme of philosophy — but because, being the presupposed basis of any thought, they are taken for granted, and go unnoticed, and because in order to arouse them and bring them to view, we have to suspend for a moment our recognition of them. The best formulation of the reduction is probably that given by Eugen Fink, Husserl's assistant, when he spoke of'wonder' in the face of the world. Reflection does not withdraw from the world towards the unity of consciousness as the world's basis; it steps back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks from a fire; it slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus brings them to our notice; it alone is consciousness of the world because it reveals that world as strange and paradoxical.5

Merleau-Ponty does not attract the charge of idealist theorizing, which might be levelled against Husserl, because he insists upon man's rootedness in the world. He is acutely aware of the pressures exerted by local, social and historical forces, and appreciates that each individual must come to terms with the limitations imposed by his particular situation. A glance at What Maisie Knew will reveal that James is also thoroughly familiar with such conditions. During the early years of her life, Maisie is shown as trapped within the Farange circle, thrust from one parent to the other without any possibility of escape. As she grows older, the number of restrictions appears to increase. Her step-parents are confronted with the demands of social convention, and they must try to evade the rules of the game. This evasion, incidentally, is quite different from the bracketing involved in the phenomenological epoche. James makes it clear that Sir Claude and Mrs Beale have no interest in transforming the basis of their personal relationship (although they try to efface the burden of commitment); they would simply like to enjoy the pleasures and advantages provided by their society, without submitting to any of its sanctions. The adults' predicament makes Maisie acutely conscious of the external forces which shape individual choice and close off 5

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, p. xiii. Consciousness is described as 'intentional', because it is always directed towards some object and plays a vital part in the constitution of that object - whether it be a physical body, a mathematical theorem, an hallucination (or any other mental construct).

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possible avenues of exploration; her freedom to grow emerges as a freedom enclosed within severe bounds. Yet Maisie has the profound capacity for 'wonder in the face of the world' which Merleau-Ponty describes. This is a far more creative ability than the rather stodgy intellectual facility which Tony Tanner recognizes.6 For Maisie's personal perceptions develop steadily in spite of her potentially damaging and restrictive position. James shrewdly gives full weight to her receptive state of mind when he records her response to her arrival in Boulogne. Being abroad seems to provide her with a key to the mystery and variety of human life. It is clear that the 'forms of transcendence' do fly up for her, because she, like the phenomenologist, finds no object completely knowable, with its interest exhaustible. Thus the 'little yellow-faced houses' of the ' haute ville' figure as ' the homes of misers or priests' and the 'dark chateau' breathes medieval excitement.7 Then there is the fascination of studying the fishermen on the beach and the travellers gathering at the little harbour. Because they assign no positive function to the imagination, because they are too absorbed by the constant round of diverting gratification to wonder, Sir Claude and Mrs Beale eventually find themselves trapped both by each other and by the oppressive nature of their relationship. By contrast, Maisie's course acts out Merleau-Ponty's assertion that the 'world is strange and paradoxical'. She converts her curious situation into a unique opportunity for building creative relationships with her companions and her surroundings. And the paradox proves compelling; for out of meanness and neglect come freshness, energy and a deep sensitivity to the opportunities for learning. At this stage, though, it is vital to establish that it is James, in his capacity as novelist, who uses the method of reduction. Because Maisie has no preconceptions, because she is 'innocent', to adopt the familiar terminology, she provides an excellent point of focus. She also serves as the activating force; since he has selected Maisie as his protagonist, James can examine what it is to 'slacken the intentional threads which attach him to the world'. A challenging and innovative vision emerges, one which is designed to cast light on the limitations of the natural attitude. From this perspective it is possible to study the quality of Mrs Wix's prescriptive point of view or to assess the careless 6

7

Tony Tanner, The Reign of Wonder: Naivety and Reality in American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 278-98. Henry James, What Maisie Knew (New York: Scribner's, 1908; rpt. 1963), p. 267.

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behaviour of Beale and Ida Farange. Still, it is essential to appreciate that James's hand is consistently the guiding and controlling influence; his perception of a unified whole contains, compares and contrasts the varying outlooks of his characters, as he develops his philosophical enquiry. This is not to deny the obvious fact that Maisie figures as the central 'vessel of consciousness'. Yet it is helpful to distinguish James's narrative technique in What Maisie Knew from other approaches which may, superficially, appear similar. James does not follow Mark Twain's method in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,

where Huck's consciousness features as the principal register of events (Tanner, The Reign of Wonder, p. 280); in that case it is the candour of the child's view which constitutes the indictment of adult social standards and adult hypocrisy. Nor does James use the first person device that Dickens employs in Great Expectations, and that enables the mature Pip to elucidate and re-evaluate the activities or aspirations of his boyhood. Instead, he takes up a strategic position between those of Twain and Dickens. This is not simply because a child like Maisie sees more than she understands, or because she lacks the vocabulary to express complicated concepts. Nor is the prime reason that the very young Maisie actually has a fragmented vision of her world: ' her little world was phantasmagoric — strange shadows dancing on a sheet' (p. 9). The preface provides a strong clue to James's motive for choosing this particular narrative method: Maisie's terms accordingly play their part [in the novel] — since her simpler conclusions quite depend on them; but our own commentary constantly attends and amplifies. This it is that on occasion, doubtless, seems to represent us as going so ' behind' the facts of her spectacle as to exaggerate the activity of her relation to them. The difference here is but of a shade: it is her relation, her activity of spirit, that determines all our own concern we simply take advantage of these things better than she herself. (The Art of the Novel, p. 146)

James insists at once on the comprehensiveness of his vision and the integrity of his method. Yet by 'taking advantage' of Maisie's experience ' better than she herself does, he presents more than the immediate shock of encounter between his ' vessel of consciousness' and those who inhabit her world. Behind the inventive and unprejudiced vision lurks another, shadowy vision. This is the point of view of convention, of those steeped in the natural attitude to things. The novelist, in producing a fully realized fictional universe, by

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virtue of his project needs a wider, freer scope than the philosopher, when he undertakes rigorously formulated experiments in perception. And, in the manner of the Derridean 're-mark', What Maisie Knew folds back at an angle upon itself, closely examining and subtly exposing its own narrative processes. Moreover, the analogy with phenomenological practice still holds, for the epoche involves a 'bracketing' or 'suspension', rather than a denial, of everything connected with the natural attitude. James's imaginative investigation fleshes out Merleau-Ponty's theory, too, because Maisie's transforming power is implicitly measured against recognizable social modes of interpretation, so that her creative energy and originality of endeavour are portrayed with maximum relevance. Nonetheless, the Jamesian approach serves challengingly to underline one of the central ambiguities inherent in Husserl's precisely defined version of phenomenology, as this is lucidly identified by Jacques Derrida's deconstructive practice. For Husserl, the phenomenological reduction must subsist as an absolute precondition for all legitimate philosophical enquiry. Yet, according to Derrida, he fails to distinguish clearly between genetic and structural principles: between ' the search for the origin and foundation of [a] structure', on the one hand, and the 'comprehensive description of a totality, of a form or a function', which is organized in terms of the coherence of its mutually dependent elements, on the other.8 In What Maisie Knew the heroine's efforts correspond to the genetic impulse, as she repeatedly searches for fresh starting points or ingenious strategies for mastering recalcitrant appearances. Like Husserl himself, she is a perpetual beginner in her perceptual and social explorations. The shadowy vision of the Farange circle, by contrast, suggests a fixed and stable structure, a sophisticated hierarchy of public norms and the surreptitiously acknowledged devices for their transgression. The novel gives prominence to the individual, genetic enterprise, while society functions largely as a contextualizing backdrop; yet this uneasy conjunction is to re-emerge in a modified shape in both The Ambassadors and The Wings of the Dove.

An instance from the novel should help to clarify these contentions. When Beale Farange and Miss Overmore come to fetch Maisie, after a period spent with her mother, the child is worried that her original governess may have suffered neglect in her absence. 8

Jacques Derrida, '"Genesis and Structure" and Phenomenology', in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), pp. 167, 157.

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' Did papa like you just the same while I was gone?' she enquired - full of the sense of how markedly his favour had been established in her presence ... Papa, on whose knee she sat, burst into one of those loud laughs of his that, however prepared she was, seemed always, like some trick in a frightening game, to leap forth and make her jump. Before Miss Overmore could speak he replied: 'Why, you little donkey, when you're away what have I left to do but just to love her ?' Miss Overmore hereupon immediately took her from him, and they had a merry little scrimmage over her of which Maisie caught the surprised perception in the white stare of an old lady who passed in a victoria, (p. 31) Amid the confusion of her initial uncertainty and her alarm at the violence of her father's reaction, Maisie retains the child's capacity for taking in external events, like the passage of the old lady in the victoria. The language of the piece emphasizes that the child's responsiveness is exceptionally finely tuned: a laugh can strike her with all the force of a physical blow. Yet she remains at a loss for a consistent interpretation of her situation; it is James's calculated commentary, which lies '"behind" the facts of Maisie's spectacle', that reveals the outraged respectability of the old lady. The irony is heightened by Beale's disclosure of the degree of his intimacy with Miss Overmore - this would, presumably, provide a subject for still greater outrage. But the intensity of James's vision, while it glances over and assesses this social standard, is directed elsewhere. He is less concerned with the apparently unseemly behaviour of Beale and Miss Overmore than with uncovering the brashness of their disregard for Maisie's sensitive vulnerability, as well as their inability to meet an open and generous enquiry with anything but smug innuendo. Beale's crude humour and the governess's coyness falsify the terms of their conveniently superficial relationship. The conventions of polite society are sketched in, as part of the background to this encounter, but they are not permitted to blur James's central preoccupation with probing the fundamental operations of Maisie's experience: her pain and bewilderment, as she reaches out in vain for understanding from her self-absorbed companions. In view of the care with which James develops scenes like this, it is difficult to sympathize with Peter Coveney's reservation that What Maisie Knew 'skirts dangerously close to something akin to "obscenity"'. 9 This quite overlooks the subtle balance of James's argument and the thorough re-evaluation of personal interaction that he aims to present. 9

Peter Coveney, The Image of Childhood: The Individual and Society: A Study of the Theme in

English Literature, introd. F. R. Leavis, rev. ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), p. 205.

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The revolutionary view of the world which the phenomenological reduction produces is carefully elucidated in Merleau-Ponty's essay on Cezanne's achievement. He explains that Cezanne lays bare a reality which defies pre-established expectations: We live in the midst of man-made objects, among tools, in houses, streets, cities, and most of the time we see them only through the human actions which put them to use. We become used to thinking that all of this exists necessarily and unshakeably. Cezanne's painting suspends these habits of thought and reveals the base of inhuman nature upon which man has installed himself. This is why Cezanne's people are strange, as if viewed by a creature of another species. Nature itself is stripped of the attributes which make it ready for animistic communions: there is no wind in the landscape, no movement on the Lac d'Annecy; the frozen objects hesitate as at the beginning of the world. It is an unfamiliar world in which one is uncomfortable and which forbids all human effusiveness.10 Quite obviously, the vision of the world which results depends upon the consciousness that performs the phenomenological reduction, and there neither can, nor should, be a standardized version. The crucial requirement is that the reduction should enable the individual to slough off the cocoon of familiarity and to approach the world in wonder. Perhaps Cezanne meant to record something like this experience when he asserted that 'the landscape thinks itself in me... and I am its consciousness' (' Cezanne's Doubt', p. 17). This is his expression of the painter's intense concentration on capturing, in its potential plenitude, just one moment of a scene's existence. On the other hand, Cezanne must have known how to paint and must have had some idea of the demands of artistic representation, before he could have begun his project. As Merleau-Ponty points out, one of the most important lessons of the phenomenological reduction is the impossibility of a complete reduction [Phenomenology of Perception, p.

xiv). People are so firmly rooted in the world that they cannot escape its limitations, or the pull of their past, try as they may to acquire an unfettered vision of reality. In 'Art and Morality', D. H. Lawrence discusses the violent contemporary reaction which was directed against the paintings of Cezanne. The general public felt the pictures to be 'immoral', but Lawrence's retort is that the man in the street tries to reduce perception to the operation of the Kodak camera. What the average 10

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'Cezanne's Doubt', in Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p. 16.

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person wants, Lawrence claims, is the cosy security of the photographic image. By contrast, 'what art has got to do, and will go on doing, is to reveal things in their different relationships'.11 In this way, the paintings of Cezanne seek to present a view of the landscape which deliberately excludes the reassuring signs of familiar human involvement. Lawrence's argument is boldly, even simplistically, stated and I do not wish uncritically to endorse his position. But it seems to me that his contentions do illuminate the conflict between those who remain wilfully trapped within the natural attitude and those who are willing to perform the phenomenological reduction. The reduction becomes a challenge to ingenuity which may well appear outrageous to those who cling affectionately to the Kodak sense of their environment. James, like Cezanne, Lawrence and MerleauPonty, has the courage to experiment with - and so to rediscover the functioning of perception itself. 11

This discussion must, by implication, raise the question of the moral reverberations of the phenomenological reduction. If the natural attitude incorporates a vast range of value judgements, it is an important task of the reduction to give fresh attention to all issues involving value - and the qualities prized may then differ greatly from those which the natural attitude endorses. In a single sweeping gesture, James recasts the framework for perceptual responses and moral assessments, whereas the professional philosopher usually depends upon a series of detailed and protracted experiments with concepts. This is why Tony Tanner is seriously mistaken in assuming that What Maisie Knew 'is about the difficulty of knowing, not the difficulty in judging' {The Reign of Wonder, p. 287). From the moment that Maisie refuses to act as a ' messenger of insult' for her parents, she has unequivocally adopted an independent moral stance. It is clear that she often fails to understand the implications of the abuse transmitted through her, but she does see the anger and bitterness which this fuels. She judges accordingly, and her creative silence effectively ends the voluble quarrel between her parents. In fact, Tanner finds himself obliged to deliver his critical accolade to Maisie in moral language: amongst other characteristics, she displays a 11

'Art and Morality', in Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Edward D . McDonald (London: Heinemann, 1936), pp. 522, 524.

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' generosity of assimilation' and an ' incorruptible, unselfish curiosity' (p. 296). These terms are so apt because they emphasize Maisie's uniquely moral approach to the world, which is inseparable from her idiosyncratic talent for grasping and interpreting events. However, it is simplistic to assert blandly, as Leavis does, that Maisie is 'good' and that she ' represents a positive concept of goodness, though we have no difficulty in taking her as an actual individual little girl'. 12 James describes Maisie as the ' ironic centre' of his story, and it is scarcely compatible with his complex narrative and philosophical design for goodness to be presented as a fixed, unassailable quantity. Maisie defies purely conventional description, because her moral awareness is highly personal and original; unlike Mrs Wix, she cannot come to terms with the unrelenting dictates of the revered 'moral sense'. James indicates that the evolution of Maisie's moral perceptions begins when she is very young. The process is dramatized in her treatment of her doll, Lisette. There were at any rate things she really could n't [sic] tell even a French doll. She could only pass on her lessons and study to produce on Lisette the impression of having mysteries in her life, wondering the while whether she succeeded in the air of shading off, like her mother, into the unknowable... There were for instance days when, after prolonged absence, Lisette, watching her take off her things, tried hard to discover where she had been. Well, she discovered a little but never discovered all. There was an occasion when, on her being particularly indiscreet, Maisie replied to her — and precisely about the motive of a disappearance — as she, Maisie, had once been replied to by Mrs Farange:' Find out for yourself!' She mimicked her mother's sharpness, but she was rather ashamed afterwards, though as to whether of the sharpness or of the mimicry was not quite clear, (p. 34) On a superficial level Maisie is simply playing, re-enacting the practices of her adult acquaintances. She is trying to work her way into their version of the natural attitude so that she can experience a taste of their lives. But the experiment is not a success, because Maisie recognizes the general forms of adult behaviour without understanding the appropriate content. The mysterious aura which surrounds her mother appeals to the child's imagination, and she longs to enter the period of unrestricted freedom and perpetual enjoyment which adulthood appears to represent. Again, James 12

F. R. Leavis, ' What Maisie Knew: A Disagreement', in Marius Bewley, The Complex Fate: Hawthorne, Henry James and Some Other American Writers (London: Chatto and Windus, 1952), p. 125.

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exploits the ironic potential of the scene, for behind the child's puzzlement hovers the image of Ida's preparation for yet another liaison with yet another lover. The impulse towards the phenomenological reduction and the jadedly familiar are skilfully poised against each other. However, the transforming moment comes when Maisie rebukes Lisette. Although she herself remains vague about her reaction to the incident, the drama suggests that she is as much ashamed of her sharpness as of her mimicry. The abruptness towards Lisette disturbs her, because it recalls the turbulence of her encounters with Ida. While acutely aware of the pain which such rough treatment can cause, Maisie obscurely feels that her condemnation of her own action also constitutes a veiled indictment of meanness in her mother. But this does not imply that the child constructs a complex chain of reasoning, in which an acknowledgement of her unkindness to Lisette logically leads on to disapproval of Ida's ill temper. Nor does she arrive at a value judgement simply by inverting the example set by her elders; that view tends to distort the process, because it implies the deliberate reorganization of an established code. It is rather that Maisie learns by living, by embracing wholeheartedly every single experience. To borrow an expression from Cymbeline (m.iii.46), she 'feels knowingly' what it is to stand in a series of relationships with her world, and she adjusts her own attitudes accordingly. This emphasis on Maisie's capacity for transcending and transforming the pettiness of her adult companions underscores the strong divergence between my account of the child's play and Paul B. Armstrong's phenomenological reading of the text. For Armstrong insists on Maisie's epistemological confusion; he argues that she attempts to extract meaning from her predicament by imaginatively assuming the adult role and thus 'projecting ambiguity and bondage onto her doll in order to appropriate clarity and freedom for herself (The Phenomenology of Henry James, p. 11). Yet his preoccupation with Maisie's lonely struggle towards an adequate interpretative scheme in the face of both a formidable social environment and the obscure motives of others shrinks the conscious centre of James's novel and glances over the delicacy of Maisie's discriminations. In spite of her youth and comparative inexperience, she displays a distinct aptitude for innovative — even startling —judgements. At her first meeting with Sir Claude she is captivated, not only by his obvious charm, but also by his spontaneous warmth and

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generosity. He immediately assumes first place in her affection. Still, when the time for leaving Mrs Beale comes, Maisie responds with consummate tact: not the empty courtesy of polite social intercourse, but a deep recognition of the right of each individual to serious consideration. The little girl deliberated; even this consecrated tie had become as a cord she must suddenly snap. But she snapped it very gently. ' Is n't it my turn for mamma?' (p. 63) James paces the scene perfectly, for Maisie steadily feels her way into the explosive situation. Then, and with disarming directness, she tries to present the arrangement of living with her parents by turns as quite normal. Mrs Beale has not been crudely rejected and the conflicting claims are acknowledged; if the adults are not convinced by this effort, the ingenious sincerity of the intention remains. Morality, as this episode establishes, becomes synonymous with 'feeling knowingly3, rather than glib rule-governed conduct. Maisie's sustained effort towards the reconciliation of those she loves, and her instinct for avoiding rejections, are given full treatment once she and Mrs Wix are settled at Boulogne. The clear delight in being abroad is spoiled by the persistent reminder that Mrs Beale has been excluded from the adventure - and excluded by her connivance with Sir Claude and her governess. She enjoyed... an ineffaceable view of the fact that there were things papa called mamma and mamma called papa a low sneak for doing or for not doing. Now this rich memory gave her a name she dreaded to invite to the lips of Mrs Beale: she should personally wince so just to hear it. The very sweetness of the foreign life she was steeped in added with each hour of Sir Claude's absence to the possibility of such pangs. She watched beside Mrs Wix the great golden Madonna, and one of the ear-ringed old women who had been sitting at the end of their bench got up and pottered away. (p. 270) The setting for Maisie's reflections is significant, for James again emphasizes the thorough integration of her experience; her very responsiveness to the foreign surroundings and people makes her more capable of imaginative moral thought. In this way, her sensitivity to the mystery of the ' ear-ringed old women' also heightens her awareness of Mrs Beale's absence. Some of her acutest moral perceptions are experienced in the form of drama; she relives the furious quarrels between her parents; she feels, as well as understanding, the meaning of being a 'low sneak'. If the golden Madonna

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which dominates this scene serves any symbolic purpose, I would contend that it is a symbol of love - the love which gives freely, without recourse to conditions and restrictions, the love which has unqualified compassion for human suffering.13 Maisie's aim is to harness this love, so that it pervades her immediate circle, condemning nobody to deprivation and isolation. Mrs Wix's reaction to such suggestions is uncompromising. For her, the freedom which Sir Claude and Mrs Beale have achieved is not genuine and acceptable freedom, unless they can conform to the prevailing social sanctions and divorce their original marriage partners. Under the existing circumstances, their liaison can only mean the degradation of Sir Claude and the shattering of his admirer's dream for his salvation. Mrs Wix casts the net still wider, to include Maisie's parents, and she reveals that Beale is supported by his lover, the Countess. This prepares the ground for two further propositions: that Sir Claude pays to support Mrs Beale and, as Maisie retorts, that he also pays Mrs Wix. The rapid succession of ideas exposes the gulf which yawns between Maisie's outlook and Mrs Wix's. For Mrs Wix there is an absolute difference between the payment made in return for sexual favours and remuneration for professional services. All Maisie perceives is that in each case one person offers a material reward to another, whose continued presence he values. Behind the tense debate lurks James's shadow vision of the 'fast set', where men are 'kept' by lonely women, other women permit the advances of a lover, and still a third type of woman both accepts the advances of a lover, and is supported by him. These superimposed perspectives place Maisie's conceptual adventurousness under severe pressure. Neither of the disputants is actually able to penetrate the subtle laws which govern the calculated pursuits of sophisticated adults. Yet Maisie's response, despite its apparent inadequacy, is more complex than the determined single-mindedness of Mrs Wix, or the flashy assurance of the shadowy figures who stand as an implied background to the scene. Maisie is concerned with the shaping operation of personal relationships, and with her conviction that they should give expression to personal commitment and compassion. The Countess's 13

Kenneth Graham adopts a diametrically opposed position, arguing persuasively for the ironic hollowness of the Madonna statue as a symbol of transcendent love, in Indirections of the Novel: James, Conrad, and Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 65-6, 72-3.

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generosity and willingness to care are brought forward to shield Beale from Mrs Wix's criticism. By the same token, Maisie understands the affection which she - and to some extent Sir Claude - feel for Mrs Wix; so she tries to reflect this uncomplicated emotion on to the very different relationship between Sir Claude and Mrs Beale. She wants to conceal the payment, which Mrs Wix finds an ugly obstacle, under the glow of a supposed mutual warmth and regard. It is hardly surprising, though, that Maisie and Mrs Wix should find themselves in sharp opposition. To use the distinction formulated by the South African philosopher, Marthinus Versfeld, their disagreement represents the tension between morality and moralism. Versfeld contends that ' moralism is the morality of false guilt, the morality of taboos, of legalism, of sheer convention, of the domination of man from the outside'. 14 This seems a reasonable description of Mrs Wix's standpoint. James consistently presents a character who is haunted by the ideal of respectability, whose ' moral sense' is founded on the adherence to strict rules, on guilty fears, and on the identification and punishment of crimes. Her judgement of Mrs Beale is so summary not simply because she dislikes Maisie's stepmother, but because Mrs Beale has broken the rules of approved social conduct - and the external standard proves decisive. Morality, on the other hand, sets the individual free to engage in open and spontaneous relationships with other people. Versfeld finds the keynote of moral thinking in St Augustine's 'ama etfac quod vis\ or' love and do what you will'. This discussion has already attempted to show how the motive of love repeatedly functions as a powerful force in Maisie's development. Yet Versfeld broadens the context of Augustine's insight, too. Arguing from Aquinas's conclusions, he suggests that narrow intellectualism attempts to arrive at abstractions, whereas love is content only with the thing itself. Augustine's dictum thus becomes a strong plea for an innovative humanism, for the response to individuals as individuals [Persons, pp. 83, 98); and this is what James reveals to be Maisie's moral genius. Her attempts at the reconciliation of those she loves emerge as a determination to grant full recognition to the rights of each personality and to overcome the narrowness of an inflexible convention. At the same time, it is essential to appreciate that morality, as Versfeld defines it, is not triumphantly anarchic. Conduct can 14

Marthinus Versfeld,' Morality and Moralism', in Persons (Cape Town: Buren, 1972), p. 81.

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productively be demarcated by rational bounds, and the acknowledgement of a limitation does not necessarily destroy creativity. The principle which Versfeld advances — and which Maisie practises — is a profound respect for human nature [Persons, p. 96), seen not as an invariable determinant, but as a malleable working model. On this basis, it is easy to dispense with ready-made rules; and here I set rules in opposition to what I have called a guiding principle. The guiding principle simply indicates a general direction or offers a helpful framework, without dictating precise details. Rules, by contrast, represent a fixed structure and demand obedience; the rule takes precedence over the individual instance, because it states what ought to be done in every case. Thus rules belong to the terminology of moralism, while a general principle is appropriate to the language of morality.

It now becomes clear that there are strong links between the concept of morality and the idea of the phenomenological reduction. The reduction lays the foundation for a fresh vision; it makes it possible for the individual to enter into new and constructive relationships with his world. In the same way, the practice of morality demands receptiveness and freedom from preconceptions, because individual dilemmas must be solved through an imaginative appraisal of their complexities. Nor is the element of surprise in Maisie's development, the unpredictable and even disconcerting turns which so many of her decisions take, a bar to the exploration of moral action in the novel. As Versfeld remarks, ' we never quite know what [moral individuals] are going to do next, yet in whatever they do we recognise its entire appropriateness to the agent and to the situation5 (p. 96).

in

What Maisie Knew traces the growth of the young girl's vision through a series of testing encounters with other people. Especially relevant to the expansion of her consciousness is the chance meeting with Ida and the Captain in Kensington Gardens, a meeting which has already received extensive critical attention.15 However, this 15

See, for the purposes of comparison: Leavis,' What Maisie Knew: A Disagreement', pp. 12 7-8; Goveney, The Image of Childhood, pp. 202-4; James W. Gargano, ' What Maisie Knew: The Evolution of a "Moral Sense"', Nineteenth-Century Fiction^ 16 (1961), 33-46; Philip M. Weinstein, Henry James and the Requirements of the Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 82-4, 89-90.

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occurrence vividly illustrates Maisie's ability to derive valuable knowledge from the painful and muddled conditions of her existence. It is crucial for her to see her mother transformed from someone whose alarmingly dehumanized face is ' like an illuminated garden, turnstile and all', whose 'huge painted eyes' are like 'Japanese lanterns swung under festal arches', into a 'clever', 'charming', 'plucky' woman (pp. 143-4, I 5°~ 1 )- The Ida whose extravagant dress and swift changes of mood are so familiar is suddenly shown to her daughter as 'true'. James presses his point to the limit by revealing that even Maisie, with her open-mindedness and her originality of response, can fall into the habit of stale familiarity. After all, one of the corollaries of the phenomenological reduction is the impossibility of a complete reduction. At the same time, the very design of What Maisie Knew makes it sharply self-critical; if the perspective of the phenomenological reduction is comprehensively explored, its inherent weaknesses are just as uncompromisingly exposed. So James leaves Maisie as the passive spectator, while the Captain strips away the sedimented layers of accustomed reactions to her mother. The balance of perception within the text is deftly altered, since fictional enactment can command a subtler range of discriminations than abstract theorizing. Even when Maisie returns to active participation, it is the Captain whom she begs to exercise her vital principle, by loving Ida for 'more than just a little'. Ida has been redeemed by being the object of love and regard, and it is significant that Maisie, for all her boldness, cannot quite repeat the taxing gesture when she and Mrs Wix later debate the relationship between Sir Claude and Mrs Beale. It is instructive to identify the nature of Maisie's response to the Captain, as this again firmly discredits Tanner's contention that her criteria for judging are purely aesthetic (The Reign ojWonder, p. 292). The Captain is not strikingly handsome, like Sir Claude; in fact, he has a 'funny' face, as the child herself registers. Nor is it plausible to assert that Maisie indulges in an 'extravagant, imaginative interpretation ' of the Captain's status as ' her mother's knight in shining armor', only to discover in due course that this attempt at deploying her freedom through beguiling fantasy has proved a dismal failure [The Phenomenology of Henry James, p. 13). It is the Captain's very

ordinariness that inspires confidence, so that the child puts her faith in his obvious kindness and simplicity, rather than his physical appearance. She assesses him as an individual, sympathetically and

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incisively - to this extent her consciousness is fully engaged throughout their meeting. Because she is not susceptible to moralistic prejudice, it ceases to matter that the Captain, as a member of Ida's circle, may have merited the charge of being a 'cad'. If the softening of Ida's harsh outline occurs at a second remove in the Kensington Gardens episode, James remedies this when she arrives at Folkestone, finally to reject Maisie. Ida retains many of her abrasive habits; she is defensive, her explanations are disjointed, and she reacts immediately and angrily to Maisie's unsuspecting allusion to her relationship with the Captain. Yet she also shows a new mildness. In the dusky setting, she begins to exert a curious charm over her daughter, although she remains a lonely figure, strangely remote from human contacts. The calm of the scene is shattered when Ida repudiates her association with the Captain, for Maisie's response is as violent as her mother's: in the midst of her surge of passion... there rose in her a fear, a pain, a vision ominous, precocious, of what it might mean for her mother's fate to have forfeited such a loyalty as [the Captain's]. There was literally an instant in which Maisie fully saw - saw madness and desolation, saw ruin and darkness and death, (p. 225)

James is not indulging in crude melodrama; Maisie sees with unusual clarity what it means to be isolated and unloved. Because hers is not the standpoint of the natural attitude, she cannot comfort herself with the platitude that this is an inevitable outcome for those who elect to rely on fleeting satisfactions, as Ida has done. By recording Maisie's burst of compassion, and setting it against Ida's empty professions, James makes the mother's suffering palpable. There can be no doubt that Ida's recklessness and indifference have condemned her to a state of emotional aridity. Equally, the case for advancing beyond the mere thoughtlessness of the natural attitude is forcefully presented. In the closing sequence of the novel, Maisie becomes still more acutely aware of the full range of individual anguish. Even with her highly developed moral responsiveness, her instinctive respect for human needs, she has no guarantee of finding an unambiguous solution when human concerns are at odds. This risk is the premium paid for a moral approach to phenomena. Sir Claude confronts Maisie with a daunting choice: the possibility of giving up Mrs Wix permanently, in order to settle with her step-parents. And Maisie's very freedom to explore the intricate situation, and to mobilize her

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moral ingenuity, throws into relief her potential liability to error and confusion. She is deeply distressed by this dilemma - for to part with Sir Claude, the person who asserts the most compelling call on her affection, seems almost inconceivable - and her fear is quickened by the knowledge that Sir Claude, too, is afraid of himself. Yet the course of events, as James sketches it, suggests that the resemblance between the two sorts of fear is largely superficial. Maisie 'feels knowingly' the misery of abandoning Mrs Wix, of coldly rejecting her governess's devotion and affection, whereas Sir Claude is predictably defeated by his own weakness. He indulges in yet another of his frequent evasions by shuffling off the responsibility for the final decision, and expecting Maisie to endorse the summary dismissal of Mrs Wix. So James describes the two friends, at once united and alienated by their uncertainty, wandering through Boulogne in an ecstasy of disconnection from ordinary occurrences. A key development occurs after the rapid departure of the Paris train, when Maisie is able to reformulate the proposition initially submitted to her by Sir Claude: she will give up Mrs Wix, provided that he gives up Mrs Beale (p. 346). The chance of escaping to Paris, which briefly tempted Maisie into prudently abandoning any effort at disentangling the conflicting claims of the two women, has been lost; the desperate impulse has passed. The child returns to the sustained interrogation of experience that has set the tone of her judgements, and frames a response that is perfectly compatible with the principle of valuing human beings as independent individuals. In this regard, I believe that Armstrong is right in arguing that Maisie's proposal is a liberating one; but his commentary suggests a disfiguring element of commercial self-interest. Maisie may no longer be willing to permit the manipulations of Mrs Beale, and possibly Mrs Wix as well; yet Armstrong implies that she uses broadly similar tactics to gain her own selfish objective. It is true that she recognizes her ability to choose, and acknowledges Sir Claude's right to do the same; but this transaction takes on the dimensions of a strict bargain, which the two women will be forced to accept without any recourse to appeal. Moreover, it seems unconvincing that Maisie should suddenly, and without previous preparation, come to terms with the insistent demands of a harsh reality after years of trying to express her freedom through the fanciful reconstruction of circumstances (The Phenomenology of Henry James, pp. 27, 17). Instead, Maisie's solution serves as the climax of her perceptive career, while James gives a clue

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to her motives by introducing the notion of' sacrifice' in the opening stages of the exchange with Sir Claude (p. 335). It is obvious that the child and her step-father cannot achieve an honest community of endeavour by continuing on the relaxed, but unquestioning, terms of their former London excursions, or by aiming to preserve their current state of precarious harmony. The relationship must be totally reconstructed, if it is to realize its potential for security and fulfilment. In order to constitute the new arrangements, the sacrifices required must be equal on both sides; conversely, clear-sighted reasoning demands that these sacrifices can only be justified by the soundness of the projected partnership. At the same time, Maisie's crisis of indecision has revealed that the existing situation cannot accommodate all four participants; some change has to be made, and Maisie draws her daring inspiration from the possible fruitfulness of the future associations within her little group. In addition, she imposes a stringent test upon both her sense of commitment and Sir Claude's; each of them will have to give up the person with whom it is most difficult to part. And James underscores the rigorous fairness of Maisie's conception, when Sir Claude is moved to declare to Mrs Beale that the child has advanced the ' only right' condition (p. 356). He has not been able to resist his disabling evasiveness, any more than the external pressure of Mrs Beale's grim possessiveness. He clings to the security of the natural attitude, with its prefabricated excuses, while Maisie follows the bold light of her creative vision, even when the practice of morality entails its due proportion of anguish and loss. Nonetheless, Sir Claude's failure produces the occasion for Maisie's vital choice, and it paradoxically confirms her approach to solving problems. If this is a defensible reading of the novel's closing drama, as this is shaped by the text's dominant philosophical orientation, how should Maisie's final acceptance of Mrs Wix as her companion be interpreted? For Mrs Wix emerges as an uneducated woman, who is wedded to the natural attitude and convinced of the reliability of her moralistic code of behaviour; she is often most comic and grotesque in her moments of highest intensity. The reason for the alliance cannot be, as Juliet Mitchell believes, that the two have complementary visions of reality, the 'straight' and the 'crooked', so that Maisie's hard-won knowledge is offset by Mrs Wix's gossip and folklore.16 16

Juliet Mitchell, ' What Maisie Knew: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl', in The Air of Reality: Mew Essays on Henry James, ed. John Goode (London: Methuen, 1972), p. 169.

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James certainly does not regard these two types of vision as having equal validity. Leavis's theory that Mrs Wix's 'muddled conventionality' is no obstacle to her sharing Maisie's future is more persuasive, for he recognizes the governess's dependability and steady affection (' What Maisie Knew: A Disagreement', p. 131). In fact, the relationship with Mrs Wix remains the only unflawed one in the child's immediate circle. If the governess is 'nobody', as she herself senses, she is nonetheless an enthusiastic substitute mother and a dedicated friend. Nor does pity operate as an insubstantial motive in determining Maisie's attachment to Mrs Wix. From her earliest years, she has carried a touching impression of the way in which her teacher must have 'sidled and ducked through life' (p. 72). Yet again, the resources of the phenomenological reduction endorse the appropriateness of the seemingly incongruous. In Maisie's encounter with the Captain, James has provided a valuable precursor to the departure from Boulogne. Now the refined play of Maisie's moral vision is fully and confidently able to encompass apparent absurdities, to perceive the whole person rather than the isolated failings, to absorb disappointment without excessive rancour or recrimination. Unlike her incurably romantic governess, the girl can also acknowledge the finality of her sacrifice of Sir Claude. She calmly records that he does not watch the boat's sailing, because she 'feels knowingly' the magnitude of his defeat, as distilled into his unwilling sacrifice in not giving up Mrs Beale. She has come to understand the deepest resonance of St Augustine's 'ama etfac quod vis\ In What Maisie Knew, James offers a radical reappraisal of the established modes of seeing and judging, a challenge to the uncritical acquiescence in familiar patterns of enquiry and response. The novel seems to conclude with a confident assertion of the transforming capacity of Maisie's vision, even while acknowledging its liability to misconstruction and rebuff. Yet, as Graham penetratingly records, the novel's narrative style is fraught with 'indirections', while the closing scene 'wittily' displaces the dark potential for tragedy, ' though not quite definitively, into the wings' {Indirections of the Novel, p. 74). The dynamics of Maisie's perceptive faculty produce not only the fearless, visionary redemption of an Ida or the heavily qualified recognition of a Mrs Wix's dubious strengths, but a series of provisional estimates of individuals or situations, which are constantly subject to criticism or restructuration. Like Husserl, Maisie is an inveterate beginner in her perceptual experiments; yet her

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activities evoke a further process of suspended judgement, postponement and indeterminacy. This suggests the working out of what Derrida calls differance, or the steady oscillation of the different, firstly, as the distinct or the discernible, and secondly, as the deferred: ' the interval of a spacing and temporalizing that puts off until "later" what is presently denied, the possible that is presently impossible'.17 According to Derrida, this becomes the fundamental precondition for all awareness within space and time (p. 130). Such a play of differance highlights the risky uncertainty, as well as the creative colouration, of Maisie's efforts at observing and knowing. It teasingly prefigures the restlessly shifting dialogues between Kate Croy and Milly Theale in The Wings of the Dove, or the still more questionable and convoluted discriminations of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl. And the unsettling activity of differance takes on a central significance for Lambert Strether's intellectual adventure in the bewildering setting of Paris. 17

J a c q u e s Derrida, 'Differance', in 'Speech and Phenomena' and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, p. 129.

CHAPTER 2

The Ambassadors; observation and interpretation.. .passion and compassion

Soon after his arrival in Paris, Lambert Strether finds himself sitting on a penny chair in the Luxembourg Gardens, mulling over his correspondence from Woollett and the complexities of his task, while Paris hangs before him, ' a jewel brilliant and hard, in which parts were not to be discriminated nor differences comfortably marked. It twinkled and trembled and melted together, and what seemed all surface one moment seemed all depth the next.' 1 Such an image suggests the sort of challenge which The Ambassadors presents to the reader, except that the novel, for all its teasing intricacy, has both a delicately textured surface, and the energy and vitality of a living organism. Whether or not it is the 'best "all round"' of James's works is arguable, but it certainly is beautifully proportioned (see The Art of the Novel, pp. 308-9). It displays to great advantage the subtle articulation of his later, strongly philosophical method, for it dramatizes the evolution of an entire process of judging. It shows a new scheme of evaluation growing steadily out of a willingness to respond and assimilate, together with an equally active willingness to set aside accepted conventions and to pass beyond established opinions - yet without losing sight of the original background and its unique strengths. There is discovery as much through rediscovering the familiar as through fresh initiations. All these characteristics of the novel invite a comprehensive analysis in phenomenological terms, one which will extend and complement the interpretation of What Maisie Knew in relation to the practice of the phenomenological reduction. At the same time, it is possible to make a definite technical 1

The Ambassadors is printed as Vols. 21 and 22 of the New York edition of the novels (1909; rpt. 1971). See Vol. 21, p. 89.

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advance by showing that such phenomenological descriptions may be applied not only to the content, but also to the form, of James's later fiction. Innovative philosophy finds its fullest expression as carefully modulated story-telling. As in the discussion of What Maisie Knew, the notion of the phenomenological reduction serves as the central pivot of the philosophical examination, although three specific features, which are closely identified with this approach, now assume a dominant role. These key features are the concept of the epoche (or the process of ' bracketing' all accustomed attitudes and reactions, so that the world may appear as pure phenomenon), the revelation of the structure of consciousness itself, and the function fulfilled by phenomenologically determined essences in the search for meaning. In the preceding assessment of Maisie's career, the emphasis falls (with some concluding reservations) on the radical creativity and energetic freedom of her vision; James challenges and reshapes an entire nexus of moral and social values by submitting them to her penetrating gaze. In the opening pages of the novel, Maisie's youth, inexperience and total ignorance of the established norms fit her ideally for realizing such a dramatic purpose. Yet The Ambassadors presents a different type of fictional and philosophical problem. In Strether the reader encounters a mature consciousness, for the Woollett editor has a lifetime's experience - albeit rather sparse - on which to draw. This suggests the practical difficulty of performing the phenomenological epoche in a single, all-embracing movement, and points towards the need for a more gradual, cumulative process. The pressing question becomes one of how an individual, who is steeped in a whole range of personal, social and cultural traditions, can arrive at a fresh and unprejudiced, yet valid and self-consistent, means of judging. How useful is the epoche as an analytical methodology ? In Ideas, Husserl engages in elaborate preparations for the change to the 'fundamental phenomenological outlook', yet his major preoccupation lies in the importance of' bracketing' completely the natural attitude with its conveniently available system of references. However, in his late work, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, a different methodological emphasis emerges. Husserl cautiously feels his way by a series of steps towards the achievement of the epoche, in the full awareness of the immense complexity of the task that confronts him. The advance is more circumspect because The Crisis is geared towards a definitely stated

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goal: uncovering the rational faculty which Husserl believes to form the basis of all genuinely philosophical endeavour, and illustrating how the development of scientific practice in Europe has obscured the nature of man's penetrating intellectual capacity, and thus the quality of his striving for self-fulfilment. Husserl argues that 'what is clearly necessary... is that we reflect back, in a thorough historical and critical fashion, in order to provide, before all decisions, for a radical selfunderstanding : we must inquire back into what was originally and always sought in philosophy'.2 This historical concern, which is a vital aspect of The Crisis, brings to light the tension between the idea of objectivity, as postulated by the modern sciences, and ordinary, everyday modes of experiencing the world. So, Husserl progresses steadily towards a new formulation of the epoche, one which gives due weight to the problems presented by human existence in a non-scientific 'life-world' (pp. 135-7, I 86-g). He contends that this revised version ' corrects' the inadequacies of his previous experiments. However, he returns yet again to a disembodied ego, stripped of its empirical properties, as the ultimate source of philosophical certitude. In this regard, Husserl's attraction to transcendental idealism still sets him apart from Merleau-Ponty's insistence that man is firmly rooted in the 'life-world', and that an absolute phenomenological reduction is impossible. Yet Husserl's discriminations are methodologically significant. In the first instance, they demonstrate that the epoche can be made to proceed by a sequence of carefully plotted stages (as distinct from a mere succession of piecemeal exclusions). Secondly, Husserl's epoche is designed to encourage a return to the world in all its richness and variety, rather than a retreat from it. In The Crisis, the pivotal point of the philosophical enquiry is the crucial correlation between ' world and world-consciousness' (pp. 151-2). Husserl's adapted notion of the epoche, then, offers a helpful tool for assessing the operation of a mature consciousness, like Lambert Strether's; the growth of his knowledge and capacity for judging is not simply a matter of linear progress. There is a complex double movement, which involves both reaching out towards new objectives — objectives which perhaps are not even clearly defined or understood — and steadily shedding a variety of established presuppositions, E d m u n d Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. David Carr (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1970), p. 17.

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which draw their force from custom and the benefit of easy familiarity. It is this emphasis which firmly distinguishes my philosophical reading of The Ambassadors from Richard A. Hocks's view that Strether's approach expresses the basic impetus of pragmatistic thought. Drawing on one of William James's formulations, Hocks argues that 'Strether's "experience is remoulding [him] every moment, and [his] mental reaction on every given thing is really a resultant of [his] experience of the whole world up to that date"'. This statement provides a useful means of entry to the novel, especially as it stresses the important relationship between the Woollett editor's past and his increasing stock of transforming impressions. But to Hocks such an attitude suggests not so much a simple linear model as a circular one, for a 'full pragmatistic approach to the novel would be literally endless in its circularity and "roundness", revolving without halting', and producing ever new valuations of the available evidence. In fact, to escape from this predicament, and to accord the novel its necessary principle of artistic and theoretical unity, Hocks has to turn to a Coleridgean concept of ' polarity' - of interpenetrating opposites held in a dynamic and life-giving equilibrium [Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, pp. 152-81). The interpretation in terms of the gradual epoche, by contrast, is neither reductively linear nor disconcertingly perhaps self-defeatingly - circular. It allows for a series of steady pulses, both in Strether's career and in the complex evolution for the whole novel, with each phase taking up the vital energy of the preceding one, while the superseded attitudes and judgements are allowed to dissipate themselves. Yet the novel retains its guiding momentum and its potential for preserving crucial dramatic insights. But this account raises further questions about the process of knowing itself: how can the sustained education of such a fictional hero be worked out in such a context? Yet again, the processes of story-telling are central to the pursuit of philosophical enquiry itself. In these circumstances, it is illuminating to look to phenomenological resources for an indication of the ways in which information about the world, a strategy for exploring its surface and depths, may be acquired. If the subtle relevance of the phenomenological reduction is to be appreciated - and this approach has a key bearing on James's portrayal of Strether's struggle to preserve his integrity, while refining his perceptions — the functioning of consciousness under these conditions must be elucidated. Now one of the

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major concerns of phenomenology has always been the intentional nature of consciousness: that is, consciousness is always consciousness of something. That may scarcely seem a startling advance, for the view is as old as Greek philosophy. However, Husserl's solid contribution to this theory is his division of the operation of consciousness into two separate aspects, the subjective and the objective. These are given the technical names of noesis and noema (see Ideas, pp. 249-81). The noetic pole represents the 'act structure' of any conscious engagement. There is a wide variety of ways in which perceiving may occur in the act of perception, or judging in forming a judgement — and these subjective modulations or complications need to be fully described and interpreted just as they occur in their respective shaping phases of awareness. The noema, on the other hand, stands out as the object perceived or judged. However, this is not to be confused with an actual, physical object, neutrally situated in three-dimensional space, like the object known to natural scientists. Aron Gurwitsch succinctly explains that the 'noema of perception5, for instance, is 'the object such, exactly such and only such, as the perceiving subject is aware of it, as he intends it in this concrete experienced mental state... the noema may also be designated as the perceptual sense'.3 It is, moreover, possible to extend this notion of noema beyond the simple context of perceptual responses. As Gurwitsch points out in a later article, one can think of Shakespeare as the historical figure, or as the writer of the Sonnets, or as the author of Hamlet - and the same noema, or 'intended sense', will correspond to the three different acts of consciousness, or noeses. This brings to the fore the status held by noemata, not as psychological events, nor as material things, nor even as the representatives of material things: but as meanings.4 The emphasis on meaning in turn throws into relief one of the most valuable conceptual procedures supplied by phenomenology, the method of intentional analysis. Intentional analysis passes far beyond the limitations of conventional analytic techniques, for it draws its strength from Husserl's view of consciousness as dynamic, as a vitally inseparable correlation of noetic and noematic components. To take a straightforward example, the perception of any object will render 3

4

Aron Gurwitsch, 'On the Intentionality of Consciousness', in Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its Interpretation, p. 128. Aron Gurwitsch, 'Towards a Theory of Intentionality', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 30 (1970), 363-4.

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that object incompletely, only as it is seen from a particular perspective and at a particular moment in time. Yet the onesidedness of this view may be overcome by further acts of perception, all of which contribute to an integrated process aimed at offering a more comprehensive sense of the object in question. Each aspect of the thing implicitly contains references to other aspects; in noematic terms, such references are essential features of the noema itself, and in noetic terms they anticipate subsequent acts of examination and verification. Naturally the later acts of perception will have to be carried out in a temporal sequence. However, what really counterbalances the one-sidedness of each individual attempt is, as Joseph J. Kockelmans points out, the fact that these individual endeavours 'confirm, complement and perfect' one another. Considered noetically, perception becomes a process of fulfilment.5 Intentional analysis is not, therefore, simply a technique of dissection, of breaking down the operation of man's conscious engagement with the world into a series of separately identifiable units. On the contrary, it is a creative method, which works towards the evolution of a more comprehensive understanding of the functioning of conscious life by exploring all the available possibilities, and searching for the fullest and most convincing evidence in relation to any particular project. The intentional analysis of an act of perception, for instance, will examine the widest available range of noetic and noematic correlates, as the philosopher tries to establish what it really means ' to perceive'. To treat this question of intentional analysis from a slightly different perspective, the disadvantage of one-sidedness in perceptual awareness is offset by the advantage of open-endedness, the promise of further disclosures. In fact, the object being considered has a sharply defined noematic 'core' or 'nucleus', which is immediately presented in the particular experience, but which also refers to other features not immediately given. In effect, a single perception of the object suggests other possible perceptions to complete the picture; the object has an 'internal horizon' which can be probed in an attempt to capture the thing in its plenitude. At the same time, any object must be seen within a context, which helps to define its contours and identity. This is known as the 'external horizon', for an observer may, if he chooses, shift his attention from the thing originally noticed to its surroundings, thus establishing a different point of focus. Once 5

Joseph J. Kockelmans, 'Intentional and Constitutive Analyses', in Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its Interpretation, p. 142.

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more, these insights can be extended beyond the realm of ordinary perception and applied, for instance, to the solving of logical or theoretical problems. It is this making of the implicit explicit, this exploration of potentialities - thus converting them into actualities which is a distinguishing characteristic of intentional analysis. Once again, if this process is viewed under its temporal and noetic guise, intentional analysis involves an articulated series of protensions: reaching ahead to grasp indistinct features of the object which are about to be apprehended. Moreover, the individual can alter the modality of his perception. He can postulate what he might perceive, if he were to direct the course of his activity differently, by changing his physical position, or by referring to a memory of the object in which he might have seen alternative aspects of its appearance. Or he can engage in a series of imaginative variations on the central project.6 Here too, the creative opportunities provided are striking. Intentional analysis shows the mind at the full pitch of its commerce with the world, seeking out the diversity of vaguely presented possibilities, calling on the resources of the imagination, and exploring its own capacity for constructive response. Since the question of meaning is paramount for Husserl, his method of intentional analysis is peculiarly relevant to a work like The Ambassadors. For the novel vividly enacts the search for meaning, the exhilarated (and often baffled) engagement of Strether's awareness with the constantly changing phenomena that surround him. There is no obvious solution to his constant enquiry; he cannot add up the elements of each problem like figures on a slate. Not only does Strether himself move forward by repeatedly probing the indefinite horizons of his experience, but the structure of the novel itself follows this pattern. Every ' scene' or ' picture' contains within itself the germ of later developments as potentialities needing to be actualized. Finally, the novel itself achieves its measure of plenitude once the contributing aspects of Strether's adventure begin to 'confirm, complement and perfect' one another. Nonetheless, the novel retains both its external and internal horizons. The story is complete, but it is not finished, as the fates of the characters remain open and uncertain — their future possibilities are skilfully sketched in, but nothing is irrevocably determined. On a subtler level, the text itself presents a constant challenge to inventive interpretation and 6

For a detailed discussion of these methodological possibilities, see Husserl's Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i960), pp. 44-9.

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reinterpretation. James gives away none of his conclusions, and the reader is obliged to work - to work very hard - to judge ' the whole piece by the pattern' of each substantial movement, and such patterns by the structure of the whole piece.7 In this respect, MerleauPonty is shrewd in urging the value of the unfinished work which is, nonetheless, complete. As he points out, this characteristic is frequently the sign of a search for new modes of communication; there is no readily available, objectively presented evidence, but a striving towards a fresh set of relations which will inaugurate a fresh set of meanings.8 If it seems awkwardly anachronistic to apply these contentions to a novel written in the early part of this century, before the formal establishment of the Phenomenological Movement as a clearly indentifiable philosophical school, a further analogy with William James's psychological investigations may serve to place the case in perspective.9 This is not to argue, as Hocks does in Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, that Henry - albeit unwittingly - gave fictional embodiment to his brother's leading philosophical principles. It is rather to show that the problem of relating the known to the implicitly suggested, the actual to the potentially realizable, emerges as an important concern of that period and within that cultural setting — indeed, within the immediate circle of the James family. At that stage, moreover, it was possible to formulate such a problem in terms strikingly similar to those later evolved by writers with a distinct phenomenological bias. In fact, Edmund Husserl commends William James for being the only psychologist of his day to become aware of the importance of the horizon (James calls it the 'fringe') that surrounds the phenomena present to consciousness. However, he regrets that William James allows consciousness to remain ' anonymous' in his studies, so that he misses the phenomenological breakthrough that follows the discovery of the transcendental subjectivity of the phenomenological reduction [The Crisis, p. 264). In The Principles of Psychology, James distinguishes 'knowledge about' a thing from simple, immediate acquaintance with it (Vol. 1, pp. 221-2).' Knowledge about' something is achieved in the presence 7 8

9

Henry James, 'The Art of Fiction', in Partial Portraits, p. 389. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. John O'Neill (London: Heinemann, 1974), p. 56. For a more extended treatment of the complex links between the imaginative production of Henry James, the theoretical achievement of his brother, William, and the development of phenomenological thinking, see Section III of the Introduction.

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of its ' psychic fringes or overtones' which give it a concrete context and help to further the process of thought. 'Relation', James argues, to some matter of interest is constantly felt in the fringe, and particularly the relation of harmony and discord, of furtherance or hindrance of the topic. When the sense of furtherance is there, we are 'all right'; with the sense of hindrance we are dissatisfied and perplexed, and cast about us for other thoughts, (p. 259)

In this area, as Bruce Wilshire notes, there is another connection between the approaches of Husserl and James. Husserl clearly states that there is a difference between the full noema of any intentional act, and the bare noema tic nucleus or 'the sheer "objective meaning"'. The nucleus will remain constant through any number of separate acts of perceiving, judging or imagining which are directed towards a given object, while the full noema will vary in accordance with the nature of the particular conscious process involved (Ideas, pp. 265-6). For James, the 'Object of thought' has the same role as Husserl's noema, whereas the ' topic' is the mere central kernel of identification, bereft of the nexus of relations which lend the Object its total significance.10 This points up James's sense of the rich amplification which any phenomenon derives from its integration into a horizonal field. However, it would be misleading to overemphasize the similarities in theoretical outlook between James and Husserl. James remains a psychologist, drawing his conclusions on the basis of the empirically evaluated evidence which presents itself within the 'stream of consciousness'; he tries in this manner to establish how the mind operates, how experience may be ordered. Husserl, on the other hand, adopts his phenomenological method in order to delineate the fundamental structures of consciousness, those that are invariably essential for, and central to, the creation of meaning. He is determined to uncover not only the limiting conditions of experience, but those which, per necessitatem, give it its particular form.11 This is why he feels William James's theory of the 'fringe' to be inadequate; he sees it as too narrowly empirical, and as therefore missing the transforming 10

11

See Wilshire, William James and Phenomenology, pp. 120-1, 237. Wilshire also provides a welldocumented account of the relationship between James's notion of the 'fringe' and Husserl's concept of the horizon (pp. 119-23). For an informative appraisal of these differences in theoretical orientation between James and Husserl, see Richard Stevens, James and Husserl: The Foundations of Meaning (The

Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), pp. 56-7, and Wilshire, William James and Phenomenology, pp. 186-9.

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insights supplied by the notion of intentionality and the clearly articulated 'correlation-conception' of consciousness. At the same time, this gives prominence to Husserl's sustained preoccupation with essences as a means of apprehending the true nature of consciousness and the objects with which it deals. The phenomenological reduction is, in his terms, not only a return to the examination of pure phenomena, just as they give themselves; it is also eidetic (or concerned with essences). The phenomenologist aims to discover, by taking a particular act ofjudging as his starting point, both the essence of the process of judging, qua judging, and the essence of the judgement, once delivered. This may seem a repellently abstract and antiseptic use of the concept of'essence5 , in view of Husserl's emphasis on the rigorous application of his method and his focus on the transcendental sphere. However, just as Merleau-Ponty is able to breathe the warmth of living thought into the idea of the phenomenological reduction, so he puts forward a thoroughly humanized and readily accessible interpretation of Husserl's eidetic theory. In his Phenomenology of Perception, he argues that 'Husserl's essences are destined to bring back all the living relationships of experience, as the fisherman's net draws up from the depths of the ocean quivering fish and seaweed' (p. xv). Far from being remote ideal constructs, Husserl's essences turn out to be 'morphological' or inexact by nature. His terms of reference are 'great' and 'warm', 'oblique' and 'jagged', even 'notched like a lentil', rather than the precise concepts of mathematics and the natural sciences.12 His preoccupation with meaning is not confined to the cold elucidation of logical validities, but embraces the whole range of human experience, as it is lived and felt. Yet this very qualification of phenomenological concepts and procedures introduces an element of uncertainty into the investigation of philosophical problems. Merleau-Ponty recasts Husserl's discoveries in a form which is more appropriate to the daily experience of embodied individuals, rather than transcendental subjectivities. But Husserl's vocabulary of'protensions' and 'unseen sides' of objects, not to mention the prospect of a phenomenological 12

See Emmanuel Levinas, 'Intuition of Essences', trans. Joseph J. Kockelmans, in Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl and its Interpretation, p p . 101-4, and Maurice

Merleau-Ponty, 'Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man', trans. John Wild, in ' The Primacy of Perception' and Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History

and Politics, ed. James M. Edie (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1964), pp. 67-8.

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reduction which occurs by stages, again conjures up the play of 'differing' and 'deferring' entailed in Derridean differance. Derrida himself notes that 'this spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of differance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function'.13 So differance is generated by the concerted quest for meanings or morphological essences, while it is also implicit in the contours of philosophical enquiry per se. At the same time, the pure presence of Husserlian essences is called into question by the repeated displacements of differance, which undermines the simple notion of a satisfying plenitude. The restless flux of differance, then, must be seen as inseparable from an analysis of the formulation of meanings or the processes of judgement in phenomenological terms. And this is, moreover, wholly in the spirit of phenomenological enquiry. It is not only that Derrida's questioning of the idea of an unmediated presence casts a critical light on the classic phenomenological enterprise; it is also that Husserl repeatedly insists on the uncompromising selfawareness of all philosophical effort. This discussion has a close bearing on The Ambassadors, for Julie Rivkin offers a persuasive reading of the text in relation to Derrida's 'logic of the supplement'. The supplement, like the ambassador, is a stand-in supposed to alter nothing of that which it stands for; it is defined as an addition having no effect on the original to which it is being joined. Yet the existence of the addition implies that the original is incomplete and in need of supplementation ; the paradoxical logic of supplementarity is that what adds onto also subtracts from, or reveals a lack in, the original. Thus Strether, who is Mrs Newsome's delegate, finds himself unavoidably involved in a series of deferments and realignments, until he acknowledges that there is actually no perfect fulfilment of personal experience lurking at the heart of Parisian culture. 14 My examination of the novel is far more positive; while it takes account of the doubts and modifications which constantly attend Strether's mission, it demonstrates the growth of a unique and innovative mode 13

14

Jacques Derrida, 'Semiology and Grammatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva', in Positions, trans. Alan Bass (London: Athlone Press, 1981), p. 27. See Julie Rivkin, 'The Logic of Delegation in The Ambassadors', PMLA, 101 (1986), 819, 820-31.

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of judging. Phenomenological and deconstructive insights are combined at once to plot and to illuminate James's creative engagement with the steady emergence of meaning in a variety of forms.

II

From the opening paragraph of The Ambassadors, Strether is engaged in a double process of unthinking' the evaluative standards which he has learnt at Woollett, and of probing the fresh horizons that confront him; he is attempting both to achieve the epoche in its various stages, and to gain positive insights from the repeated intentional analyses of his predicament. This twofold movement is consonant with the double nature of his consciousness: ' There was a detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference' (The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Vol. 21, p. 5). In this respect, he possesses a philosophical turn of mind, one which can 'draw back from its commitment to the world', yet which also finds itself creatively engaged by the spectacle of human events. And it is in this curious guise of judicious philosopher, yet embroiled participant, that the visitor from the New World encounters the most teasing paradoxes of his trip; his two roles are both mutually necessary and mutually exclusive. Moreover, James here offers to the alert reader a useful clue to the possible course of Strether's development. The elderly editor's outlook cannot be identified simply with Woollett's standards, or the Puritan sensibility, or the New England conscience. Strether, in fact, proves himself to have a sound measure of wry self-knowledge, although the full ironic resonance of the novel naturally depends upon delicate controlling touches by the author.15 At the same time, Strether's advance towards the penetration and original interpretation of his circumstances, after he has met Miss Gostrey, would seem remarkably rapid if he were simply a Puritan, giving way to an easy initiation into the perplexing manners of Europe. It is his more complicated awareness that fits him so well to appreciate the logic of Waymarsh's 'sacred rage' (Vol. 21, pp. 45-6). For Strether keenly assesses it not only as a bid for the freedom of unrestricted selfexpression, but also as his friend's attempt at redressing the balance 15

Ian Watt gives an excellent account of the narrative distance between the author and the central character in 'The First Paragraph of The Ambassadors: An Explication', Essays in Criticism, 10 (i960), 257. In 'James the Old Intruder', John E. Tilford, Jr discusses this method and applies it to the novel as a whole {Modern Fiction Studies, 4 (1958), 157-64).

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of interaction, at proving himself as much master of the situation as his companions. At this stage, Waymarsh embodies with triumphant simplicity the spirit of Milrose - its cultural attitudes and moral convictions. It is obvious that Europe is totally alien to him. Strether, on the other hand, can see himself in relation both to Waymarsh's behaviour and the European environment. He weighs Woollett against Milrose, the unsuccessful editor against the wealthy lawyer; but he also dissolves these quantities in the flow of his perceptions, and out of that rapid stream precipitates the humorous notion of the 'sacred rage'. The cogency of Strether's image naturally benefits from his longstanding friendship with Waymarsh, for it embodies a half-reluctant admiration for some of the Milrose lawyer's distinguishing characteristics : his rigid loyalty to his cherished standards, his imperviousness to disconcerting outside influences, his austere flair for selfdramatizing action. And this admiration exposes Strether's devaluation of his own tentative personality and quietly analytical talents against the markings on the New England scale. From this point of view he regards himself as weak, inconsistent and insubstantial - too ready to launch into the mere enjoyment of pleasurable sights and sounds. But a definite scepticism offsets this cluster of beliefs. Strether also registers the delightfully comic element in the ' sacred rage'; it is a futile assertion, quite disproportionate to the occasion that provokes it. That is both its glory and its absurdity. The fact that Strether expresses his judgement in this particular image shows how close he still is to his uneasy relationship with his traditional American background. But the philosophical distance from Woollett norms, which is implicit in his individual style of interpreting his experience, is already beginning to widen. In this regard, it is significant that he, and not Maria Gostrey, is the one to identify the 'sacred rage'. Of course, she has only the slightest personal acquaintance with Waymarsh; yet she is ' the mistress of a hundred cases or categories, receptacles of the mind, subdivisions for convenience, in which, from a full experience, she pigeon- [holes] her fellow mortals with a hand as free as that of a compositor scattering type' (Vol. 21, p. 11). However, the convenient rule of thumb proves inadequate for making this initial discrimination, and she must depend on developing the idea that Strether brings to light. In one sense, his process of'unthinking' Woollett has commenced, and he is preparing to give rein to his distinctively creative mode of judging.

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This line of argument can be more fully illustrated - and supported - by a detailed analysis of Strether's responses to Chad after their meeting at the Comedie Frangaise. An early form of his reaction is to discharge his ambassadorial duty as soon as practically possible, and so to forestall any liability to evasion. In the sternly literal spirit of Woollett, he is determined even to outwit the play of differance. Strether confronts Chad with ' I've come, you know, to make you break with everything, neither more nor less, and take you straight home; so you'll be so good as immediately and favourably to consider it!' (Vol. 21, p. 147) This tone amounts almost to parody of his normal speech patterns, and is far more in keeping with Waymarsh's resounding injunction: 'Look here, Strether. Quit this!' (Vol. 21, p. 109). However, this approach is a manifestation of Strether's acute insecurity in the face of Chad's altered appearance. He has desperately seized upon the first means of opening discussion that comes into his mind. He disconcerts himself by his apparently crude choice of expression and this again points out the degree to which he now dissociates himself from the accents of Woollett in his search for a voice which will be distinctively his own. He has managed to 'bracket' the more superficial manifestations of his New England upbringing; yet, at a deeper level, the sense of involvement persists. This passage subtly underscores the practical difficulties involved in performing the phenomenological epoche. In a similar fashion, Strether's capacity for breaking fresh ground is revealed in his late-night walk with Chad, when his provisional view of Mrs Newsome's son as ' the young man marked out by women' (Vol. 21, p. 153) yields to his regarding Chad, first as a 'Pagan' (Vol. 21, pp. 156-7), and then as a 'gentleman' (Vol. 21, p. 160). More than ever before, Strether is anxious to find the appropriate terms to express his judgement. This is an excellent example of his application of the technique of intentional analysis. Strether cannot grasp at a single stroke the phenomenon that confronts him, so he tests one vaguely sensed horizon of potentialities after another, searching for the complementary elements of a comprehensive explanation. And these experimental formulations are not necessarily mutually exclusive; the qualifying operation of differance suggests the need for repeated differential contrasts and puzzled deferments. Chad's being a ' gentleman' does not automatically cancel the notion of him as a

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'Pagan', as well. It is rather that the later conception qualifies and elaborates the earlier, throwing into relief an unexpected series of subtle interconnections. Although Strether steadily augments and modifies his stock of interpretative images, no fixed and final solution can be reached.16 The scene approaches its climax when Chad accuses his family in Woollett of having a ' low mind' if they believe that a young man may only be detained in Paris by his entanglement with a woman. This cut causes the following response in Strether: It so fell in, unhappily for Strether, with that reflexion of his own prompted in him by the pleasant air of the Boulevard Malesherbes, that its disconcerting force was rather unfairly great. It was a dig that, administered by himself- and administered even to poor Mrs Newsome - was no more than salutary; but administered by Chad - and quite logically - it came nearer drawing blood. They had n't a low mind - nor any approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them. (Vol. 21, pp. 159-60) James's prose clearly evokes Strether's embarrassment - and a certain sense of shame - yet the complicated turns of the reasoning show that the ambassador is not simply confused. On this occasion, Strether gives expression to his feeling that only a global view of the situation can do justice to the moral problem at its centre. On the one hand, Chad's indignation is fair and understandable; on the other, Woollett had no means of knowing how dramatically the young man's mode of conduct had changed, especially as he seemed in his early days abroad to have become involved in a number of superficial liaisons as part of his general search for pleasurable fresh experiences. Yet again, Strether can identify the smugness and narrowness of many of Woollett's presuppositions. The distance between his intimate self-awareness and the familiar New England patterns of judgement has increased still further; however, he acknowledges the sincere intentions of the friends who depend upon an evaluative scheme of that kind. It is because he is evolving his own method of gathering evidence, placing it in the broad context of its multiple 16

Hocks also examines this passage in some depth, but his reading suggests that each stage in the perceptual process supersedes the previous one, so that a repeated 'remodelling' is taking place (see Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, pp. 161-3). Paul B.Armstrong, relying on constructs drawn from reception theory, contends that Strether is experimenting with preliminary formulae, which are later to be slotted into a fuller interpretative schema (The Challenge of Bewilderment:

Understanding and Representation in James, Conrad, and Ford

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 67-70).

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relations, and then working towards a conclusion, that he can give Mrs Newsome full credit for her integrity. Against this background, it is important to register more thoroughly the sort of impression that Chad makes upon Strether during the latter part of their long-delayed meeting. If there is a 'certain smugness' in Mrs Newsome's characterization of Chad's way of life in Paris, there is equally a certain glibness in Chad's ready resentment of these imputations. There is a tinge of self-satisfaction in his disgust which overshadows the stir of genuine feeling. This tone, as much as any sound claim to a sense of injury, 'draws blood' when the young American confronts Strether. It makes the ambassador uneasy, as does Chad's trick of' designedly showing himself under the light of a conveniently placed street-lamp (Vol. 21, p. 156). Strether's hazy suspicions at this point are indicative of his perceptiveness ; his early reservations argue against the not uncommon critical claim that the utterly changed Chad is simply Strether's imaginative construction. There is considerable force in H. Peter StowelPs contention that the change in Chad is an index of the change in Strether himself, and that he will only arrive at a fully realistic view of the young man at the end of his educative adventure.17 However, Strether is not a mere dupe or fantasizer, even though he is undoubtedly mistaken about Chad's aims or motives on a number of occasions, frequently misreading the evidence which is laid before him. Yet he persists, exploring new and still newer horizons, and trying to organize a system of complementary insights, until he eventually achieves a healthily sceptical regard, both for Chad himself and for his professions. It is no mere dramatic coincidence that in their last encounter Chad is again showing himself under a street-lamp, while appearing to perform a fantastic little jig on the pavement (Vol. 22, p. 316). A hollowness gnaws away at the dialogue, and James delicately shades in Strether's sharpening impression of Chad's restlessness and dissatisfaction (Vol. 22, p. 318). As a corrective to StowelPs remarks, it is perhaps helpful to note that Strether's enthusiastic exaggeration of the alteration in Chad does not necessarily mean that Chad has not changed at all. It is true that Miss Gostrey warns the ambassador that Chad is ' not so good' as he thinks (Vol. 21, p. 171); moreover, little Bilham endorses this caution with the announcement that his friend is not' really meant by 17

H. Peter Stowell, Literary Impressionism: James and Chekhov (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980), p. 209.

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nature to be quite so good' (Vol. 21, p. 177). However, both these qualified negative opinions point to at least some degree of social polish and presence in the young man — some definite improvement on his original 'roughness'. Thus the novel itself provides a series of counter-checks, and allows the reader to proceed in the knowledge that Strether, as an aspiring philosopher and increasingly reluctant representative of Woollett, is not hopelessly deluded. Insofar as the process of intentional analysis is concerned, the problem of the change in Chad suggests a valuable modification to a philosophical theory which is already challenged by Derrida's disclosure of the play of differance. If it is uncertain whether the philosopher, in his contemplation of relatively simple acts of perception, may actually achieve access to phenomena in the absolute purity of their givenness, this never happens on the plane of ordinary, everyday experience. Strether's bafflements and stumblings nonetheless show how error can make a positive contribution to the search for fulfilling enlightenment. Once he has embarked upon his subjective adventure, Strether's consciousness is assaulted by a vast array of objects of possible interest. There are almost too many horizons to explore, and too many relations to weave into a satisfactorily coherent scheme. Yet, with his readiness to acknowledge mistakes and his sustained curiosity, he is able to persist until he arrives at a richer clarity of understanding. The misidentifications do not constitute irredeemable waste, but rather a succession of hard-won markers on the way to ascertaining what, in the fullest possible sense, is involved in the process of judging. The events of the party in Gloriani's garden, and in particular Strether's ' Live all you can...' speech, bring this complicated relationship between bewilderment and the apprehension of new meanings into sharp focus. In his preface to The Ambassadors, James writes that his hero 'would n't have indulged in his peculiar tone without a reason: it would take a felt predicament or a false position to give him so ironic an accent'. And later in the same paragraph, James gives a specific shape to Strether's disorientating predicament. he had come to Paris in some state of mind which was literally undergoing, as a result of new and unexpected assaults and infusions, a change almost from hour to hour. He had come with a view that might have been figured by a clear green liquid, say, in a neat glass phial; and the liquid, once poured into the open cup of application, once exposed to the action of another air, had begun to turn from green to red, or whatever, and might, for all he knew, be

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on its way to purple, to black, to yellow. At the still wilder extremes represented perhaps, for all he could say to the contrary, by a variability so violent, he would at first, naturally, but have gazed in surprise and alarm; whereby the situation clearly would spring from the play of wildness and the development of extremes. (The Art of the Novel, pp. 313—14) At this stage Strether has advanced further than ever before in the process of the gradually exercised phenomenological epoche. The atmosphere of Woollett thought has been dissipated, and while he is still aware of the content of New England opinions, he has withdrawn his individual assent. This leaves him free to receive openly the flux of new impressions, to explore and experiment. The charm of the old garden sets the fibres of his sensibility into a wondering and sympathetic vibration; then there is Gloriani's expert appraisal of him as a man, the banter with little Bilham and Miss Barrace in which Strether tugs at different threads of the intricate skein in an attempt to discover what his whole situation means, and finally the revelation of his first meeting with Mme de Vionnet. All this prepares the way for his exhortation to little Bilham: 'Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It does n't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you have n't had that what have you had ? This place and these impressions - mild as you mayfindthem to wind a man up so; all my impressions of Chad and of people I've seen at his place - well, have had their abundant message for me, have just dropped that into my mind. I see it now. I have n't done so enough before - and now I'm old; too old at any rate for what I see. Oh I do see, at least; and more than you'd believe or I can express. It's too late.' (Vol. 21, p. 217) The idea that Strether is in a 'false position', that this speech is a reflection of his social discomforture and loss of intellectual poise, leads to one possible order of critical response. As sensitive a reader as Laurence Holland sets the 'splendid and moving' quality of Strether's delivery of his thoughts against the foolishness of offering such advice to little Bilham. If, as Holland understands it, 'living' entails 'seeing', Bilham is already an accomplished spectator of life.18 To treat the negative aspects of the speech first, there can be no doubt that Strether is at a loss for a coherent interpretation of the drama of manners being enacted around him; it is, in effect, the key to these mystifying proceedings that he is so anxious to discover. The pressure of sheer involvement squeezes aside Strether's capacity for shrewd 18

Laurence Bed well Holland, The Expense of Vision: Essays on the Craft of Henry James (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 252-3.

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analysis, subtly pointing up the paradoxical situation of the committed philosopher, who must nonetheless rely upon his capacity for composed detachment. And there is a pointlessness about the older man's trying to advise little Bilham, when the young artist has been guiding him so tactfully through the labyrinth of his personal encounters in Paris. However, Holland's close identification of 'seeing' with 'living' in Strether's appeal seems misplaced. For the succession of Strether's ideas - disjointed though it appears - suggests that 'seeing' involves appreciating opportunities as much as becoming a delicately attuned observer. That is why Strether later regretfully uses the metaphor of having missed the train, although it waited for him at the station; that is why 'what one loses, one loses' has such a resigned cadence (Vol. 21, p. 217). Nor is the remark that 'it does n't so much matter what you do in particular' an outright rejection of the commitment to action. Instead, it is a subordination of the practicalities of any career to a keen awareness of life's varied and attractive resources. Seeing and understanding still play a central role, but self-fulfilment is regarded as prior to competition for public success. In the light of this modification of Holland's argument, a new range of ironies seems to be shadowed forth by Strether's speech. If he has lost the life of action and direct commitment, he is nonetheless living with a rare intensity at the level of seeing and appreciating. And the intensity of his sensibility virtually transforms observation and reflection into a definite involvement. Once he regains his equilibrium, he fully justifies his status as keenly experimenting detached-involved phenomenological thinker. It is a matter not so much of recovering what he has lost or might have enjoyed, as of discovering himself— and a totally new way of relating to the world. So, for instance, his warming to Mme de Vionnet's 'common humanity' is not merely another misreading of the European social code, which he will later have to correct (Vol. 21, pp. 212-13). Of course, there is a grave danger inherent in associating the lady introduced by Chad with Mrs Newsome and Mrs Pocock, and grouping all three under the description 'femmes du monde\ As Hocks points out,' an entire complex of cultural values' separates Paris from Woollett [Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, p. 167). On the other hand, these women of fashion are not so different when they are viewed as ordinary human beings. Each knows how to manipulate the codes most appropriate to her society; each betrays certain

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limitations in her conversational skills when meeting a man under formal conditions; each cultivates her own manner of creating a pleasing and appropriate impression. Most important of all, Strether has managed to dispel the disturbingly unsavoury reputation in which Woollett has contrived to envelop Mme de Vionnet. He responds to her as a woman of charm and accomplishment, someone whose demeanour unquestionably qualifies her to stand comparison with the ladies of New England. And this is a feat which Sarah Pocock, hampered not so much by alien cultural overtones as by sheer personal prejudice, never begins to achieve. While this order of perception on its own is not adequate for dealing with the full impact of a varied experience in a sophisticated society, Strether also shows a capacity for refining the process of intentional analysis. At his first encounter with Gloriani in the artist's garden, he is, as I have already suggested, overwhelmed by the ' assault of images' which threatens to upset his sense of being in touch with certain stable intellectual reference points (Vol. 21, pp. 196-7). He is acutely conscious of having his personal attributes subjected to a penetrating and unmerciful scrutiny; yet he feels the thrill of talking to a person famous for his creative abilities. The second reaction may be naive, but it is not altogether foolish. For Lambert Strether, the obscure editor, the name on the beautiful green cover of Woollett's review, there must be a special delight in at last making contact, if only for a brief moment, with the 'real thing'. At the same time, it seems likely that his susceptibility to Gloriani's ' human expertness' is not mere fanciful fabrication. If his host is, in fact, an acclaimed sculptor, it is reasonable to assume that he would command a certain minimum level of competence in assessing cultural types and weighing up individual character.19 To put it in phenomenological terms, James is presenting the noema of Strether's perception: Gloriani just as he is seen by a particular person from a particular point of view at a particular instant. The act of perception, as an inseparable correlation of subjective and objective poles, is captured in its teasing complexity. Yet this noematic correlate is later modified and enriched when Strether watches the manner of the sculptor at Chad's carefully contrived dinner-party. Then the ambassador detects 'a charming hollow civility' which is projected to span a 19

For a close analysis of the impression that Gloriani makes upon Strether in his capacity as an artist, see Viola Hopkins Winner, Henry James and the Visual Arts (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1970), pp. 112-13.

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yawning social gulf; and, as James makes clear, 'Strether would n't have trusted his own full weight a moment' on this insubstantial bridge (Vol. 21, p. 262). This new insight does not crudely cancel out the earlier reaction, although a major reshaping occurs. Strether has advanced towards a fresh horizon of potentialities, which he has now succeeded in actualizing. He begins to feel that the great artist is not only an intensely intelligent, romantically inspiring creator, or a lithe 'male tiger' (Vol. 21, p. 219), but also a skilled manipulator of social conventions, a cynic, something of an adventurer. This assessment floods Strether with relief, because yet another small piece of the Parisian jigsaw has fallen into place. He, in his far quieter turn, has shrewdly appraised Gloriani; as an added gain, he has realized how a further aspect of the social game is played. The final test of the validity of Strether's educational process comes in his last visit to Mme de Vionnet at her home with its charming evocations of the long history and deeply rooted culture of Paris. During the hours leading up to his interview with her, Strether drifts in a sort of limbo, unable to find a secure point of anchorage after his revelatory chance encounter with the pair of lovers at the inn on the Seine. His sense of disorientation illustrates the final stage of what I have called the 'gradual epoche\ the successive stages of his discarding the accumulated layers of Woollett customs and standards. As he drifts about the city, there is a hint that he may be about to 'revert' to 'his old tradition', on which he has relied for so many years. He wonders why ' the state of the wrongdoer' does not present some special problem, and this suggests an expectation of summary and effective punishment. He wonders why he himself, in view of his tolerant attitude towards the liaison between his young friends and his ready response to Mme de Vionnet's summons, does not 'look demoralised and disreputable' (Vol. 22, pp. 272-3). But these are mere speculations, drained of any sharp accusatory charge or impetus towards appropriate action. Strether examines what he thinks he ought to feel and think, yet these codified values have passed beyond his personal reach; for all their practical force, they have been securely ' bracketed'. The new method which he has found for relating to events is expressed in his transforming vision of Mme de Vionnet. As always, he is susceptible to the delicate seduction of her beautiful rooms as an idealized setting; however, he soon penetrates to the very heart of her predicament: that she is 'afraid for [her] life' (Vol. 22, p. 285).

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She was older for him to-night, visibly less exempt from the touch of time; but she was as much as ever the finest and subtlest creature, the happiest apparition, it had been given to him, in all his years, to meet; and yet he could see her there as vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying for her young man. The only thing was that she judged herself as the maidservant would n't; the weakness of which wisdom too, the dishonour of which judgement, seemed but to sink her lower. Her collapse, however, no doubt, was briefer and she had in a manner recovered herself before he intervened. 'Of course I'm afraid for my life. But that's nothing. It is n't that.' (Vol. 22, p. 286) This is the culmination of all that he has learned: art and the toughness of the workaday world, commitment and detachment, passion and compassion, are held in a tremulous balance. The fact that Strether sees to the core of Mme de Vionnet's unflatteringly human trouble does not destroy his sympathy for her, nor his appreciation of her finely varied accomplishments. It is rather that the paradox of vulgarity so mysteriously combined with the surest subtlety enhances her for him as a vital, fallible person; Mme de Vionnet becomes ordinary, yet touchingly rare. Once again, it is important to establish that Strether is not attempting to escape from unpalatable facts by weaving around them a halo of romantic fantasy.20 He has long since outgrown the rigid criteria of Woollett moralism. Instead he has discovered the creative, if demanding, practice of morality, just as Maisie comes to adopt this approach in her contacts with the strange assortment of people who compose her immediate circle. Yet James demonstrates that Strether and Maisie arrive at their discovery by noticeably different routes. While the young girl's task is simplified from the outset, because she has no conception of how conventional valuations would be formed, Strether (like the dedicated phenomenologist) has to follow a long and tortuous trail. The double movement of his consciousness, both in the direction of 'unthinking 3 the intellectual deposits laid by his former social and cultural instruction, and in the direction of unflagging, open enquiry, gives the clue to his concluding achievement. The journey is dogged by numerous false starts and wrong turnings. This is why the notion of Derridean differance seems especially pertinent to The Ambassadors. Yet, in the end, Strether's capacity for judging human phenomena 20

For a representative version of the argument that Strether indulges in a romantic revision of the existing circumstances, see Robert E. Garis, 'The Two Lambert Strethers: A New Reading of The Ambassadors', Modern Fiction Studies, 7 (1961-2), 311-14.

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has acquired a deeply seasoned maturity, which draws on his miscalculations as much as on his productive insights. So he does not need to set charm and pathos against self-indulgence and deception; he can draw upon an integrated perception of Mme de Vionnet, as someone comprehensively and humanly understood. This is not to assign to Strether some kind of absolute moral prerogative; for his pleasantly disturbing, imperfectly concealed - yet quite unrealizable - love for Mme de Vionnet adds an ironic dimension to the fullness of his compassion. His predicament palely shadows hers, and brings them into a curious intimacy of susceptibility. It is just the degree of Strether's own vulnerability and uncertainty which paradoxically testifies to the appropriateness of his compassion. A useful way of illuminating both Strether's uniquely individual method ofjudging, and his progress towards fuller knowledge, lies in contrasting his characteristic modes of response with those of Mme de Vionnet. Like Christina Light and Miriam Rooth — two of James's earlier heroines — Marie de Vionnet lives vividly and engagingly through acting, through the energy of self-dramatization. At the same time, marked differences separate her from her predecessors. She is neither tensely seeking an escape from herself and the dullness of her constricting situation, like Christina, nor can she boast Miriam's professional detachment and control. Nor, finally, does she possess the intellectual self-command of Kate Croy, who generally knows to the finest degree which social parts are best suited to her exceptional talents. Marie de Vionnet, however, is the acting, is the parts insofar as it is possible for any human being to achieve this state. As Strether perceptively realizes, 'her art [is] all an innocence' and her 'innocence... all an art' (Vol. 22, p. 116). It is this plastic quality about her which also prompts the analogy with a Shakespearean model: like 'Cleopatra in the play', Mme de Vionnet is 'indeed various and multifold' (Vol. 22, p. 271).21 But the comparison with Shakespeare's Cleopatra should not be too rigidly or literally applied. James skilfully dissolves such external material in the medium of his own narrative; thus the delicately tinted descriptions of Marie de Vionnet, now as a 'goddess still partly engaged in a morning cloud', 21

This image of Mme de Vionnet as Cleopatra has been examined in considerable detail from a variety of points of view: see, for instance, U. C. Knoepflmacher,'" O rare for Strether!": Antony and Cleopatra and The Ambassadors', Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 19 (1965), 333-44, and

Herbert R. Coursen, Jr, ' " T h e Mirror of Allusion": The Ambassadors', New England Quarterly, 34 (1961), 382-4.

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now as a ' sea-nymph waist-high in the summer surge', now as a head on a silver Renaissance coin, also include 'thefemme du monde in her habit as she lived' (Vol. 21, p. 271). This quiet echo of the intimately private encounter between Hamlet and his father's ghost (m.iv. 135) shows just how cleverly James is drawing upon his Shakespearean sources, relying upon their allusive quality without allowing these references to interrupt the flow of his novel's argument and image patterns. The evocation of Cleopatra is particularly helpful in giving substance to Mme de Vionnet's potential for revealing raw emotion, and in explaining the impression which she makes upon Strether at their last meeting. Maria Gostrey has, in part, prepared the way by recounting the irregularity of her school-friend's upbringing, and by calling to mind not only her slight waywardness but also her passion for acting any part that came to hand in their early dramatic experiments (Vol. 21, pp. 230-1). All the same, it remains a shock when the mantle of sophistication seems to slide from her, and to expose her as ordinary and very vulnerable. It is almost as though the role of femme du monde has given way to that of the maidservant ' crying for her young man', because Mme de Vionnet must depend on some form of dramatic projection to achieve self-expression.22 And the discord is increased because she is somehow too sensitive and selfaware for this part. It is Strether's compassionate vision, his pitying appreciation, which overcomes the awkwardness as much as her quick recovery. At this moment, the roles of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra are reversed; for it is Strether who redeems Mme de Vionnet by the flood of his gentle understanding, whereas Cleopatra celebrates in her imagination the glorious qualities of the dead Antony. For his bounty, There was no winter in 't: an autumn 'twas That grew the more by reaping: his delights Were dolphin-like, they show'd his back above The element they lived in... (v.ii.86) 22

This perhaps suggests a further Shakespearean parallel with Cleopatra's violent lament over the death of Antony: No more but e'en a woman, and commanded By such poor passion as the maid that milks, And does the meanest chares. (1v.xv.73)

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This is the unique talent, a talent amounting almost to genius, of Strether's double consciousness. Unlike Mme de Vionnet, who finds herself totally involved in the events of the moment, Strether can exercise his special blend of detachment and commitment, of theoretical distanciation and personal dedication. Once again, the phenomenological notion of noesis and noema proves relevant: he judges the particular woman, both as she appears and as he responds to her, in the full light of the surrounding circumstances. In this respect, the philosophical search for meaning takes on a new resonance, for the interpretation that Strether establishes is one shot through with the consequences of his deeply humane perception, quickened by generosity and pitying wonder. This is very much a case of standing back from the world in order to rediscover the world without any inhibiting prior conceptions. It is an exhibition of the free play of intentional analysis — of not tampering negatively with experience, but scrutinizing its steady flow, and unfolding horizon upon horizon in the attempt to build up a composite and living picture. An investigation of one further stage along the way to Strether's culminating vision helps to provide a convincing confirmatory touch to this explanation of the Woollett ambassador's moral and intellectual development. The occasion on which Strether unexpectedly finds Mamie Pocock, upon going to call on her sister-in-law at her hotel, has sadly received very little constructive critical attention. E. M. Forster, for example, seems completely to have misread the deep significance of these pages when he characterizes Mamie as ' second-rate, deficient in sensitiveness, abounding in the wrong sort of worldliness'.23 Quite to the contrary, Strether's impressions of Mamie undergo a subtle series of modifications, which far exceed these narrow, stereotyped categories. First there are the ambassador's memories of their acquaintance in the Woollett days: There was always their old relation, the fruit of the Woollett years; but that - and it was what was strangest - had nothing whatever in common with what was now in the air. As a child, as a 'bud', and then again as a flower of expansion, Mamie had bloomed for him, freely, in the almost incessantly open doorways of home; where he remembered her as first very forward, as then very backward... and once more, finally, as very much in advance. But he had kept no great sense of points of contact... (Vol. 22, p. 147) 23

E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p. 159.

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There is a clearly controlled duality about this passage, which appropriately illustrates the process of the 'gradual epoche\ As he looks back, Strether sees Woollett from his new and broader perspective, yet the force of familiar associations almost imperceptibly draws him into the accustomed habits once again, muting the critical impulse. This is the sort of ironic indulgence with which he responded to Waymarsh's manifestation of the ' sacred rage' at Chester. Culturally and morally, he fells the pull of the Woollett orbit. However, his view of the adult Mamie, as she appears before him, produces a noticeable change: Yes, she was funny, wonderful Mamie, and without dreaming it; she was bland, she was bridal - with never, that he could make out as yet, a bridegroom to support it; she was handsome and portly and easy and chatty, soft and sweet and almost disconcertingly reassuring... she had a mature manner of bending a little, as to encourage, reward, while she held neatly together in front of her a pair of strikingly polished hands... (Vol. 22, PP- 149-50) The force of his new initiations begins to dominate, and the direct, intrusive voice of Woollett is left disregarded. Strether soon realizes that there is an unusual quality about Mamie: she is from New England, but not simply of it. She has a style of her own, a comically impressive manner of shaping her opinions and showing consideration for others. As Strether tries to fathom the phenomenon of this young woman's consciousness, the course of the conversation allows him to turn his sense of promising potentialities into concrete evidence. Mamie has not only met young Jeanne de Vionnet, she has also guessed her secret love for Chad, her strong desire to please her mother, and her uncertainties about her fiance. With an awkward but strangely moving tact, Mamie ranges over these topics, honest and unselfinterested, without the least sign of rancour that Chad should inspire such naive devotion or Jeanne feel it. After the strained and slightly sinister atmosphere in which Mme de Vionnet informed him of the engagement proposed for her daughter, Strether finds Mamie's calmness and candour a vital corrective, as well as a refreshing relief. Her 'splendour' momentarily eclipses the darker shadows of European behaviour; in his new engagement with experience, Strether can grant due recognition to Mamie's relaxed ingenuity and her spontaneous generosity. He appreciates her

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uniqueness as he could never have done from either a strictly American or a strictly foreign perspective. Nonetheless, Strether's development of his own independent method of judging oddly allows him to arrive at a fuller understanding of what is sound and valuable within Woollett culture. During his extended confrontation with Sarah Pocock, he at one point asks whether Mrs Newsome herself claims to be insulted by his recent behaviour in Paris. Sarah immediately responds on her mother's behalf: 'She has confided to my judgement and my tenderness the expression of her personal sense of everything, and the assertion of her personal dignity.' (Vol. 22, p. 203)

Rather than resenting this verbatim repetition of Mrs Newsome's ponderous delegation of responsibility to her daughter, Strether is moved at catching the tone of voice of the lady from Woollett herself. Sarah's comment brings her into presence, expresses the very resonance of her moral identity. And Strether, no longer embarrassed by Woollett's keen appraisal of him as her favoured suitor, can be touched by a certain fineness in her self-sufficiency and rigidity. This new type of respect for Woollett in general, and for Mrs Newsome in particular, also emerges in his conversation with Miss Gostrey. The images of Mrs Newsome as a ' whole moral and intellectual being or block', and 'some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea' (Vol. 22, pp. 239-40), are infused with an ironic respect when Strether handles them. Much of his self-doubt has been diffused, and he is sufficiently confident in his own method ofjudging to recognize the possible strengths of the New England code. He has rediscovered his heritage by ' unthinking' it, and then stepping back to examine it without the emotional charge of a reluctant personal involvement. It is, in fact, Miss Gostrey who betrays the narrower point of view in this sort of discussion; she adopts a slight air of condescension, a wryly dismissive humour. The difference between her use of irony and Strether's is the index of the distance he has travelled since his first meeting with Maria at Chester. He has found his individual mode of vision; more importantly, he has tested and proved it.

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To add a still sharper point to this account ofJames's predominantly philosophical orientation in The Ambassadors, it is important to locate it within a broader context. An illuminating parallel is provided by the approach that William Dean Howells adopts in Indian Summer, a work with an apparently similar focus. Contrary to the conventional critical wisdom, however, Indian Summer turns out to be entirely different in its informing conception. In Howells's story, Theodore Colville, a newspaper editor from Des Vaches, Indiana, returns to Florence after an absence of many years. Not unlike Strether, he is disillusioned by the type of life he has been leading in a provincial American town — although a specific professional disappointment prompts Colville's trip, and he seems to have achieved a reasonable degree of public success and influence. However, he too resolves to recapture the cultural enthusiasms of his youth; he sets out to develop his long-neglected interest in Italian art and architecture. In Florence he meets Evelina Bowen, who used to be a close friend of the American girl with whom he fell in love on his first visit to the city. The memory both of their past adventures and of Colville's crushing rejection by this girl creates a preliminary motive for resuming acquaintance. And Colville's affection and admiration for Mrs Bowen steadily increase as they rebuild their friendship. The plot is complicated, though, by Colville's introduction to young Imogene Graham, for whom Mrs Bowen is acting as a chaperon while she is abroad. As in The Ambassadors, the hero must try to define his relationship to these very different women, to search out the level of his own commitment in order to settle the basis for further encounters. Again like Strether, Colville passes through a series of doubts and perplexities, for he finds it no easier to grasp the nature of his own feelings than always to understand the responses or closely cherished aims of the women themselves. This atmosphere of warm and well-intentioned uncertainty leads him to form an engagement to Imogene, a change in his personal circumstances that imposes a taut strain on his relationship with Mrs Bowen. Colville's involvement in a serious accident precipitates a crisis. Imogene breaks off the engagement - at this stage to Colville's immense relief— and he is left free later to marry the widowed Mrs Bowen. He has discovered the woman whose sensitivity and charm most deeply move him; at the same time, he

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and Imogene have escaped a potentially damaging and restrictive union. So much for the plot of Indian Summer. But is the similarity to The Ambassadors more than superficial and coincidental ? The openings of the two novels already begin to suggest a negative answer to this question. In the first few sentences of Indian Summer, Colville is presented as he lounges against the corner of a shop on the Ponte Vecchio, idly watching the surge of the flooded river beneath him. Howells takes great care to establish his atmosphere, to present Florence as the medium in which the greyness of Colville's recent experience will be dissolved; although the American editor is initially disposed to ignore the promise of personal and aesthetic renewal conveyed by his surroundings, physical details and colour tones are meticulously recorded. It is Florence that is to work the magic and to bring about the Indian summer. The Ambassadors, by contrast, begins with ' Strether's first question...' and ends with ' Then there we are!' And the fourth book closes with Miss Gostrey sounding this note to Strether:' Was n't what you came out for to find out all?' (Vol. 21, p. 189). It is principally the process of investigation that engages James's attention; he is anxious to arrive at the essence ofjudging in its fullest and most complex form, to establish how meanings are won and then re-employed in the conduct of experience. This broadly philosophical preoccupation shapes the structure of his work, as much as setting the limits for its thematic content. Howells's novel is noticeably lacking in any sustained refinement of theoretical interrogation. With regard to the treatment of physical details, Howells immediately conjures up the atmosphere of Florence, setting his characters in motion against that backdrop - and, in fact, using its plastic and historical characteristics as a means of designing his drama. Now James adopts quite a different tactic. Strether's ship docks at Liverpool, which is scarcely a city renowned for its romantic associations. And the assault on Paris proceeds by a couple of preparatory stages, via Chester and London. While there can be little doubt about the function fulfilled by Florence in Indian Summer, the role of Paris in James's novel presents a distinct problem. James himself provides a helpful gloss in his preface; he explains that his choice of locale was prompted by the prevalence of the vulgar and hackneyed view of Paris as a city of sin and temptation, in which established moral codes tend to disintegrate. It was, therefore,

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possible for him to exploit these preconceptions, to economize in terms of both space and artistic effort, by offering Paris as the scene of Chad's liaison and Strether's subsequent mission. In effect, the French capital serves as a 'symbol for more things than had been dreamt of in the philosophy of Woollett'. To clinch his argument, James adds that' another surrounding scene would have done as well for our show could it have represented a place in which Strether's errand was likely to lie and his crisis to await him' (The Art of the Novel, p. 316). Although the statements contained in James's prefaces are not an infallible guide for reading the novels, particularly the earlier works, this seems a pertinent encapsulation of the author's sense of his fictional project. The novel is to concentrate upon the nature of a carefully selected consciousness and the patterns of its expansion, both as it bursts the bounds of old restrictions, and as it slowly and tentatively annexes fresh territory. Unlike Howells, James shows no particular fondness for the whimsical evocation of the picturesque for its own sake. Edwin T. Bowden lucidly sums up this problem when he writes that the Paris of The Ambassadors is neither ' the wicked city of the popular American view' nor 'the city of reality', but 'a great poetic symbol expressing and vivifying the themes of the novel'. 24 This emphasis on the poetic qualities of James's approach suggests an important qualification and extension of the notion that this novel functions as a form of philosophical enactment. For The Ambassadors does not operate at a level of high and remote intellectual abstraction, while Indian Summer retains its concrete references and remains readily accessible to its readers. It is a case of James's doing more, rather than less, with the scenic materials at his disposal. The setting of Gloriani's garden, for instance, tucked away in an unexpected corner of Paris, accommodating its motley collection of guests under a magically clear spring sky, is the ideal context for Strether's acquisition of a wealth of new experience. The garden itself calls up a host of questions about historical background and aesthetic value which Strether must attempt to penetrate, if he is also to pursue his analysis of the potentialities of meaning contained in the social drama before him. He must sustain his awareness of the enveloping relations which, in William James's terms, distinguish 'knowledge about' 24

Edwin T . Bowden, The Themes of Henry James: A System of Observation through the Visual Arts (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1956), p. 101.

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anything from mere acquaintance with it. At the same time, it is enough that Gloriani is an acclaimed artist, while little Bilham comes from the obscure environment of'delicate daubs', 'free discriminations', inadequate furniture, and boundless optimism (Vol. 21, pp. 126-8), for Strether to perceive a whole range of vague horizons calling for further investigation. Howells, by contrast, needs his strictly delimited facts; they go to make up the stuff of his story. The underlying logic of his portrayal depends on his evoking different views of Florence, describing the precise aspirations of a group of young painters called the 'Inglehart boys', or rehearsing the history of the Florentine veglione. Insofar as the handling of matters of general philosophical interest is concerned, another significant difference between the methods of Howells and James emerges. In Indian Summer the weight of much of the explicit commentary on social and moral discriminations falls upon old Mr Waters, who for many years was the Unitarian minister to a small rural community in New England. However, he has resigned his calling in Emersonian fashion, and come to Europe to pursue wider and more challenging spiritual enquiries. In his discussions with Colville he displays a simple, homely and sometimes rather unworldly wisdom, which is nonetheless very astute. The following passage, in which he gently appraises the confusion of considered intention and half-selfish desire attending Colville's engagement to Imogene, gives the flavour of his insight into human failings: 'Oh, I don't know that I blame people for things. There are times when it seems as if we were all puppets, pulled this way or that, without control of our own movements. Hamlet was able to browbeat Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with his business of the pipe; but if they had been in a position to answer they might have told him that it required far less skill to play upon a man than any other instrument. Most of us, in fact, go sounding on without any special application of breath or fingers, repeating the tunes that were played originally upon other men. It appears to me that you suffered yourself to do something of the kind in this affair. We are a long time learning to act with common-sense, or even common sanity, in what are called matters of the affections.'25 Yet Mr Waters's function remains largely choric; he always hovers on the periphery of the novel's action, never initiating changes in 25

William Dean Howells, Indian Summer, ed. Scott Bennett and David J. Nordloh (BlooIslington: Indiana University Press, 1971), p. 269.

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narrative pace or plot direction. If James has reservations about Maria Gostrey's factitious connection with the central line of development of The Ambassadors, and takes immense care to conceal his technical device, Howells evidently feels no such literary scruples with regard to Mr Waters. The old man's leisurely speculations on history and moral practice are not out of keeping with the tone of Indian Summer) they help to thicken the atmosphere and to elucidate the broader implications of the novel's events. Little could be further from the integrated structure of The Ambassadors, where the philosophical exploration and the dramatic development are inseparably fused, are effectively the same enterprise. Strether's 'Live all you can...' speech is not just detached theorizing. It is generated by the unfolding of the Woollett ambassador's adventure and the related increase in his perceptions. It cannot be fully understood out of context because it is an organic part of the novel's forward momentum, a momentum which also holds a vast number of possibilities and ambiguities in suspension. Then there is Strether's experimentation with words, values and images; this too depends absolutely upon a dramatic rendering, if the contrast between his method ofjudging and the prefabricated schemes preferred by other characters is to be grasped. More than that, it is only through confrontation with Sarah and Mrs Newsome, through repeated assessment and reassessment with Maria Gostrey, Chad and Mme de Vionnet, that he can evolve his unique style of interpretation. The Ambassadors is dialogical (even dialectical) in its very design. While The Ambassadors clearly exerts a subtle authority which Indian Summer lacks, it is difficult to do full justice to Howells's endeavour in so brief a discussion. He handles the principal relationships of his novel with deftness and tact, often exploiting the ironic potential of Colville's predicament. In some respects, Indian Summer bears a close resemblance to James's earlier novels of the 'great world' (works like The American and The Portrait of a Lady), as

Howells lets one of his characters notice, when she humorously comments at the author's expense that very little ever 'happens' in his fiction (p. 173). However, the purpose of this examination is to demonstrate that a superficial likeness between two stories does not automatically mean that two similar novels are involved. For the burden of Indian Summer, with its light mantle of nostalgia, is to suggest that one can never go back, that youth can never be recaptured. The force of The Ambassadors, however, is to show that it

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need not be too late to go forward: to learn to see, to appreciate, and to judge. This difference in conception is borne out by the very different careers of Colville and Strether. While Colville's sensibilities deepen and mature, there is no radical change in his outlook; he becomes less hasty and impulsive, more calm and considerate. Yet for Strether a total revolution of consciousness takes place. A great distance is traversed between his wryly admiring contemplation of Waymarsh's 'sacred rage3 and his final compassionate celebration of Mme de Vionnet's magnificently fallible humanity. Not only has he gained access to a previously unexplored realm of moral and cultural experience; he has ' unthought' Woollett, only to regain it in a new and more balanced measure. Most of all, he has established a uniquely individual method of judging, one which penetrates to the heart of what things mean by accepting them in the richness of their enveloping relations. Strether embodies the type of the phenomenological innovator, and he is placed at the heart of an intrinsically philosophical fiction. IV

To round off this reading of The Ambassadors on the model of Husserl's theory of intentional analysis, it seems valuable to turn from the macrocosmic discussion of critical problems to the microcosm, and to concentrate upon the texture of James's thought within a short dramatic sequence. This focus on specific details again reveals the intricacy and intensity of James's method of argument, his concern for a coherence of structure which is nonetheless able, in the phenomenological spirit, to accommodate ambiguity and openendedness. These points are well illustrated by the treatment of Strether's famous trip to the country, in which a day's solitary wandering and contemplation ends in the shock of his unexpected encounter with Chad and Mme de Vionnet at the inn beside the Seine (Vol. 22, pp. 245-66). When Strether leaves the train, he has the impression of entering the frame surrounding a small Lambinet painting which he had many years before admired at a Boston gallery. The landscape with its appealing composition of trees and river, and its gentle play of light, seems to correspond very closely to the tired ambassador's recollection of the picture. In his commentary on this episode, Charles R. Anderson emphasizes James's inverted use of the mirror

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image; for the novelist has transposed the normal procedure of comparing a representational painting with the landscape it depicts, so that its 'faithful[ness] to nature' may be assessed.26 Although Anderson skates hastily over the ticklish question of what may be said to constitute 'faithful' pictorial representation, his insight calls attention to the complicated relationship which James has set up between ordinary experience and its artistic interpretation. In fact, the starting point for this examination is not the Lambinet painting itself, but Strether's memory of it; from a phenomenological point of view, everything is thus perceived under the modality of memory. Moreover, the ambassador does not merely lose himself in the soothing charm of the countryside. He is so sensitive to his surroundings because they represent 'a scene and a stage', a context in which the recent events of his mission may be spread out and reexplored (Vol. 22, p. 253). So the French landscape paradoxically appears to contain and redeliver not only the Boston gallery, but also his newly-found mode of discourse with Mme de Vionnet, the strains and uncertainties of his dealings with the second Woollett embassy even an implicit contrast with Woollett itself. There is a sense in which Strether is, in fact, painting his own Lambinet landscape, loading it with the tones of his own feelings and intimately personal remembrance.27 The phenomenology of imaginative constitution and projection comes vividly into play as an analytical mechanism. However, there is a very subtle shift in the nature of James's writing. As Strether advances further and further into the framed picture-world, the terms of description seem to become less those of the Barbizon school, and more those of the Impressionists. Objects lose their firm outline and conventional perspective, while colours, lights and shades begin to dominate.28 The following passage shows this breaking up of Strether's surroundings into the details of their characteristic colours and compelling features, although it is important to appreciate that there is no awkward hiatus in the sequence of the narrative. It is rather that particular emphasis is placed upon 26

27

28

Charles R . A n d e r s o n , Person, Place, and Thing in Henry James's Novels ( D u r h a m , N . C . : D u k e University Press, 1977), pp. 267-8. For a fuller treatment of the consequences of Strether's entry into his picture-world, see David Lodge, 'Strether by the River', in Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), pp. 195-6, and S to well, Literary Impressionism, p p . 2 1 4 - 1 6 . See Winner, Henry James and the Visual Arts, pp. 74-8, and Charles R. Anderson, Person, Place, and Thing in Henry James's Novels, pp. 269-75.

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what Strether sees, just as it takes shape before his eyes in the immediacy of its emotional and aesthetic impact. He really continued in the picture - that being for himself his situation - all the rest of this rambling day; so that the charm was still, was indeed more than ever upon him when, toward six o'clock, he found himself amicably engaged with a stout white-capped deep-voiced woman at the door of the auberge of the biggest village, a village that affected him as a thing of whiteness, blueness and crookedness, set in coppery green, and that had the riverflowingbehind or before it - one could n't say which, at the bottom, in particular, of the inn-garden. He had had other adventures before this; had kept along the height, after shaking off slumber; had admired, had almost coveted, another small old church, all steep roof and dim slate-colour without and all whitewash and paperflowerswithin; had lost his way and had found it again; had conversed with rustics who struck him perhaps a little more as men of the world than he had expected; had acquired at a bound a fearless facility in French; had had, as the afternoon waned, a watery bock, all pale and Parisian, in the cafe of the furthest village, which was not the biggest; and had meanwhile not once overstepped the oblong gilt frame. (Vol. 22, pp. 251-2) In this description of the latter part of Strether's ramble, James sustains the tension between the patterns of artistic representation and the flow of ordinary experience. While the reality of the whitewashed, slate-roofed church, with its display of paper flowers, is almost more picturesque and enchanting than any artistic image might have led Strether to believe, the knowingness of the rustics separates the idealization of fiction from fact. Yet there is a fairy-tale quality about Strether's sudden fluency in French, which presents an instant and unimpeded matching of desire and realization. As for the beer, ' all pale and Parisian' - that captures an intermediate level at which the fancifully projected expectation is satisfyingly met by the event. Although Strether has granted himself a day's holiday, the relaxation of his involvement with his routine responsibilities does not entail a lapse in attentiveness. Because he is relaxed, he proves the more receptive to the flux of engaging impressions which greets him. Strether is still very much concerned with the search for meaning, with establishing how phenomena are to be grasped and interpreted. Each phase of his walk presents him with a fresh noema, an object in the full context of its enveloping relations; and Strether delights not only in probing the noematic core, but also in slowly, almost selfindulgently, unfolding the horizons that will lead him on to still newer experiences. At the same time, the Woollett ambassador is

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acutely sensitive to the stream of his own subjective processes. He immerses himself not only in his calmly contemplative frame of mind, but also in examining the underlying reasons for this resolution of his guilt and uncertainty. The process of intentional analysis continues throughout the day as memory, landscape and aesthetic values are brought into a complex and rapidly changing set of orientations. The novel becomes a textbook exploration of philosophical processes in both its accuracy and its thoroughness. The experience of the country interlude is, at the same time, particularly important for Strether, because it gives him a new purchase on his European career. It allows him to retreat from the immediacy of his Parisian education and to endow it with a different context; for he is able to relate Paris and Woollett through a third term which is characteristically French, yet which also reflects the cultural aspirations of Boston. By regarding his setting as ' a scene and a stage', he embarks upon the 'imaginative variation' which is one of the strongest interpretative tools of intentional analysis. In his mind's eye clusters of events regroup themselves, characters adopt various attitudes - and Strether is free to scrutinize these interactions at his leisure, to try to extract the essential meaning from his discoveries and his confusions. Once again, his dual capacity for detachment and commitment proves a shaping psychological strength. On the one hand, he is aware of the need to withdraw and assess the validity of the available evidence; on the other, it gives him a richness and vitality of perception which encourages him to embrace a wide range of human possibilities. It is under the influence of his gathering confidence in his own capacity for judging that Strether sees the boat containing Chad and Mme de Vionnet float into view. For two very happy persons he found himself straightway taking them — a young man in shirt-sleeves, a young woman easy and fair, who had pulled pleasantly up from some other place and, being acquainted with the neighbourhood, had known what this particular retreat could offer them. The air quite thickened, at their approach, with further intimations; the intimation that they were expert, familiar, frequent — that this would n't at all events be the first time. They knew how to do it, he vaguely felt... (Vol. 22, p. 256)

Because the ambassador is relaxed and pensive, the pace of his reflection is slow and easy. And he takes in a wealth of detail: the expressive physical attitudes of the young couple, their colourful

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contribution to the landscape, and the emotional atmosphere that radiates from them. Strether extracts an enormous amount of information from a very simple spectacle; he does not limit himself to aesthetic appreciation, nor to registering the mere surface of social manners. He competently and contentedly reads the signs which are given out by two young lovers, happily absorbed in each other's company while visiting their favourite haunts. There is none of the awkward self-doubting which attended his commentary on the 'sacred rage'; instead the perceptions are delivered up whole and critically formed. With the revelation that the charming young couple are actually Chad and Mme de Vionnet, the scene decomposes and distorts. Yet this does not crudely call in question the validity and effectiveness of Strether's sense of discrimination. He has gauged quite accurately, on the basis of the empirical evidence, the quality of the relationship between these two people; it is only when he identifies them specifically as the partners to the ' virtuous attachment' that his poise deserts him. But even under the pressure of this shock, there is not an automatic reversion to the standards of Woollett. Instead Strether finds the occurrence 'as queer as fiction, as farce' (Vol. 22, p. 257), and occupies himself philosopher-fashion, despite his disorientation, with trying to fit the pieces into a provisional pattern which may reflect the changed circumstances. Although he has been alarmingly confronted with the magnitude of his misconception about the 'virtuous attachment', he does not abandon his attempt to understand. Characteristically, his dual consciousness comes to his aid. During the rest of the evening he queasily, half-unwillingly, gathers further fragments of information, which can later be tried in various positions within the jigsaw. To round off this argument, Strether's final interview with Mme de Vionnet endorses the rightness of his initial, shrewdly observed impression of the charming but anonymous young pair in the boat. Little Bilham's lie about the ' virtuous attachment' — insofar as it was a lie in any but the narrowest sense of words - proves to have been merely a ' technical' one (Vol. 22, p. 299). This is not to deny that the moment of revelation at the old pavilion on the Seine casts a shadow back across the peacefulness of Strether's wanderings in the country. Yet this darkening is implicit from the moment that he treats the landscape as 'a scene and a stage', which he animates with reconstructions of his past experience. At the same time, the force of

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the ambassador's last meeting with Marie de Vionnet is also to confirm the darkening, as much as to dispel it. For under a certain aspect of her personality, Mme de Vionnet is the frightened maidservant, 'crying for her young man', rather than the graceful youngfemme du monde enjoying an outing with her handsome admirer. And that handsome admirer is also the Chad with a keen interest in advertising, who over-eagerly professes that he is not tired of the woman who has so greatly influenced his personal transformation. Throughout the novel there is an interplay of retension and protension, a double-edged reference back and forth, in which an element of valuable knowledge may be salvaged even from misinterpretations, while sound assumptions are qualified and controlled by the growth of a fuller understanding. What Strether's country interlude clearly illustrates is that meanings are not simply given fully-fledged and ready-made. Merleau-Ponty provides a helpful synopsis of the processes of search and discovery which are enacted in the novel, when he writes that expressive speech does not simply choose a sign for an already defined signification, as one goes to look for a hammer in order to drive a nail or for a claw to pull it out. It gropes around a significative intention which is not guided by any text, and which is precisely in the process of writing the text.29 In this way, Strether's oscillation between his memory of the Lambinet painting and the elements of the French countryside enables him to paint his own landscape, one which is also saturated with his recent recollections of his ambassadorial mission. Perhaps a closer analogy with such formative processes would lie in MerleauPonty's adoption of Saussure's distinction between la langue (or language, as the stock of available words, together with the various phonological, morphological and syntactical rules which guide their use) and la parole (or truly expressive acts of speech). As MerleauPonty puts it, the institution of each genuinely fresh expression 'shake[s] the chain' of familiar language in a unique manner; the innovative insight depends upon the established system for its raw materials, yet its realization immediately enriches and transforms the existing linguistic structures ('Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', p. 46). At the same time, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that a process of' sedimentation' takes place. The newly-won signification subtly passes into the culture both of its originator and of those with 29

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', in Signs, p. 46.

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whom he communicates, so that it will in future appear as a readily accessible formulation, which may be readopted at will.30 There are, of course, obvious differences between language as a widely accepted, coherently available system and Strether's accumulation of a stock of manipulable meanings: notions like ' the femme du monde\ 'being a gentleman', 'being a Pagan', 'the virtuous attachment', or 'the technical lie'. Yet all these concepts arise out of a more generalized context of socially accepted usages; and once Strether has subjected them to the pressure of his intense scrutiny and made them his own, they serve as constant reference points for his continuing enquiries. These ideas give him a stable foundation which anchors his sense of change. In a similar way, Strether's brief holiday in the country allows him to refract much of his collection of established significations through the medium of his response to the landscape, and so to revise or settle his conclusions. The totally unexpected appearance of Chad and Mme de Vionnet in the boat on the river vividly - almost literally - illustrates how the sudden apprehension of a new meaning can ' shake the chain' of familiarly grounded signs. Strether's shock and feeling of disorientation point to the stress of rearranging an existing structure of interpretation to meet the demands of a radically altered relationship with the world, and with the possibilities of experience which it suggests. Yet Strether's reorganization of his complex of ideas does not entail the annihilation of his old terms, nor the necessary reversal of their original function. Instead, he gains access to a range of ambiguities and refined nuances which he had not previously anticipated or imagined. Moreover, the final encounters with Marie de Vionnet and Chad Newsome put his rearranged system to the test, proving it, modifying it, and endorsing it. So Strether has his little adventure in the field of linguistic philosophy, also. From this point of view, Merleau-Ponty's concept of 'style' suggests another helpful analogy with the evolution of Strether's talent for judging and coining descriptive terms. Merleau-Ponty considers the moment at which style 'germinates at the surface of the artist's experience', while he searches for the emblems which will enable him to disengage a latent but insistently nagging meaning, to give it the concrete embodiment that will make it accessible both to himself and to others. At this stage, the philosopher suggests, style is 30

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'On the Phenomenology of Language', in Signs, pp. 91-2.

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not a ' certain number of procedures or tics' that the artist can inventory, but a concentrated reaching out towards the fulfilment of expression. It is 'the universal index of the "coherent deformation" by which he concentrates the still scattered meaning of his perception and makes it exist expressly' ('Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', pp. 52-5). Style can, therefore, be seen as a register of the interaction between the painter and the world in which he lives and exercises his creative activity. It yields the complex of meanings which he has uncovered, and articulated into an internally consistent and individually satisfying system. It records the generation of these meanings from the unity of his experience, a unity in which perception and interpretation are indissolubly fused. In the light of this proposal, The Ambassadors embodies the growth and refinement of Strether's characteristic style: the novel plots his search, not for single, isolated meanings, but for the 'coherent deformation' which will express his response to the series of increasingly complicated situations through which he advances. He becomes the artist as philosopher. James shows the slow and belated, but deeply rewarding, flowering of his latent capacity for judging. For Strether, the process of evaluation is not a distant and clinical contemplation of the available evidence; it calls upon the full resources of his experience of a challenging ' life-world' and of his engaged compassion. The originality and ingenuity with which he finally arranges the different elements of his pattern, in order to achieve a fully-integrated structure of vision, can be gauged by the effect he produces upon his companions. Miss Gostrey watches his experiments with sympathetic wonder, Chad's attitude is one of uneasiness and reluctant admiration, Sarah Pocock is simply, and monumentally, affronted. And this complex of reactions, in its turn, contributes to the ' coherent deformation' realized by the novel as a whole; it is this interpenetration of varying perspectives which lends such fullness to James's fictional exploration of the challenge of judging. A concise summary of these intricate relationships might, in fact, take the following form: if the course of Strether's education presents judging as personal-cum-philosophical style, then the novel itself is style as a concrete embodiment of the trajectory of the process of judging. Yet these concluding formulations require a final glossing. When Strether withdraws into the French countryside for his holiday outing, he becomes increasingly self-aware, just as the novel seems to

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become increasingly self-conscious in its invocation of the vocabulary of painting, fiction and theatricality. James nudges a body of key premises into the foreground for more explicit evaluation. But selfcriticism is a highly problematic undertaking. As Irene E. Harvey points out, as shrewd a theorist as Derrida has to keep rewriting his critique of the Western concept of reason, in order to prevent his attempted demonstrations from lapsing into the merely irrational and, therefore, the incomprehensible by reason. Trying to describe a process of thinking in the same instant as it is exposing itself through a given statement would be like trying to perform a phenomenological reduction upon the phenomenological reduction itself. This is, of course, where the energy of differance, the endless differing of meanings and deferment of absolute fulfilment, makes itself felt. In these circumstances, Derrida's tactic is to use his terminology 'strategically': that is, 'structurally rather than "literally" 5 . A simple, descriptive ' is structure' is superseded by an allusive and metaphorical 'as structure'. 31 In this way, Strether, too, engages in a series of imaginative experiments with judging, because this is the only possible means of judging the judgement itself, of assessing in principle the complicated intellectual manoeuvres to which he has committed himself. The artist-philosopher acquires the status of meta-philosopher. Moreover, his 'scene' and 'stage' serve as reminders of the fictionality ofJames's philosophical novel; the microcosm of Strether's 'as structure' illuminates the deep complexity of James's carefully plotted ' is structure'. While implicitly acknowledging the play ofdifferance, The Ambassadors sets out to make its presentation of the dynamics of judging both comprehensive and intricately self-critical. Strether's half-triumphant and half-regretful closing words to Maria Gostrey — 'Then there we are!' (Vol. 22, p. 326) — not only mark the climax of his creative achievement, but also precipitate his release into yet another cycle of uncertainties and provisional appraisals on his return to Woollett. 31

Irene E. Harvey, Derrida and the Economy ofc Differance3 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), p. 155.

CHAPTER 3

The Wings of the Dove: self and society

In The Wings of the Dove, Henry James provides a compelling analysis of the rewards and pressures of social life, the possibilities for selffulfilment and the risks of personal pain or disfigurement. The chapters of the novel throb with varied life, as James shifts the focus from one setting to another: the reader is presented with the meanness of Chirk Street, the opulence of Lancaster Gate, the calm decorum of Matcham, the splendour and charm of Venice.1 Within this dense medium, Kate Croy, Milly Theale and Merton Densher must work out their destinies. Each must seek to compose his or her own identity in response to a series of taxing social encounters, to find an appropriate accommodation between the intimate sense of selfhood and the demands imposed by a range of public roles. The novel also takes on both a strong ironic resonance, and a deeply moving quality, through James's treatment of Milly's curious predicament; for in her case, the only generous course seems to lie in the renunciation of her vast freedom, and a retreat from the open competition so common to normal social activity. At the same time, James's exploration of these crucial questions of man's communal existence and involvement shows the philosophical scope of a novel which deliberately delves far beneath the polished surface of sophisticated manners. Once again, story-telling becomes the flexible method for opening up fresh conceptual horizons. However, while The Ambassadors is compactly self-critical, The Wings of the Dove

unfolds tentatively, if majestically, following an elusive trail towards uncertain conclusions. The rigour of systematic phenomenological 1

For a subtle and concise appraisal of the effects of setting in the novel, see Michiel Heyns, ' " T h e Language of the House" in The Wings of the Dove\ Essays in Criticism, 34 (1989),

116-36.

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enquiry frequently gives way to adventurous existentialist strategies or insights. Such an approach is obviously appropriate to the busy social scene, but it also betrays James's puzzlement before the crisis of identity which he sets out to solve. So he keeps on experimenting with his narrative, until he has worked his way through the philosophical labyrinth. The opening pages of The Wings of the Dove embody the novel's central concern: the individual's confrontation with the world in which he moves. The slow uncoiling of the very first sentence, ' She waited, Kate Croy...' points at once to James's preoccupation with the issue of identity.2 Personal identity, rather than emerging readymade and complete, has to be examined and established. Kate's presence is thrown into relief by the shabbiness and imaginative poverty of her father's room in Chirk Street, yet she is clearly trying to evolve a coherent set of relationships with her surroundings. It is against this background of meanness that she must assess her own potential for development, as well as her capacity for meeting the coercive requirements of her immediate situation. James's dramatic realization gives substance to Merleau-Ponty's argument that the cultural world is as much the basis for man's existence as the natural world {Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 347-9). This may appear an obvious conclusion, yet the whole force of James's technique is directed towards showing how far her father's circumstances would threaten to limit Kate's inventive personality, to confine and distort her intense and often mysterious energy. In this setting, her pause before the mirror is not simply another way of filling in time and counteracting her mounting boredom. The reflection in the glass creates an awareness of distance, and serves to place Kate outside of herself. This phenomenon is probably most easily understood in terms of Merleau-Ponty's explanation of the part played by the mirror image in the expansion of the child's consciousness. He notes that its main effect is ' to tear us away from our immediate reality', so that it actually performs a '"de-realizing" function'.3 In the same way, Kate is made to see herself from the outside, as others would see her - weary, disillusioned, trapped. Yet her initial judgement is qualified when she allows herself a longer pause before the mirror. On 2

3

The Wings of the Dove is printed as Vols. 19 and 20 of the New York edition of the novels (1909; rpt. 1976). See Vol. 19, p. 3. See 'The Child's Relations with Others', trans. William Cobb, in The Primacy of Perception, P- 137-

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the later occasion, she sees a handsome, courageous, active young woman - and she feels that she is all these things. Kate knows intuitively that she has not been ' chalk-marked for auction' (Vol. 19, p. 6). Still, a disconcerting blend of deliberate intention and disquieting emotion leaves her in a state of uncertainty, poising the generosity of her impulse towards Lional Croy and her deep longing for family security against her perception of a shrunken universe.4 This leisurely and low-key opening of The Wings of the Dove introduces one of the pervasive characteristics ofJames's treatment of his subject. In 'Metaphysics and the Novel', Merleau-Ponty considers the ways in which the writer may seek to capture the 'overdetermined ' aspect of human action, that elusive complexity which cannot be neatly reduced to a single explanation or theory of motivation.5 Kate's dilemma in the Chirk Street house gives the proof of her internal division, of her difficulty in reconciling a number of conflicting impulses, wishes, and obligations. At the same time, her hesitation amid the shabby furnishings of her father's dreary flat sets the tone for the variety of conflicts that are to develop, as the plot unfolds. The need to reconcile competing loyalties to other people, while also allowing due weight to one's own integrity of existence, and the constant chafing of private desires against social requirements — these are two ofJames's principal themes. And such themes can be more comprehensively assessed through fiction than through abstract theorizing. If Kate is, as she believes, ' formed at once for being and for seeing' (Vol. 19, p. 33) - both for enriching her personal capabilities and for investigating the world within which she moves - this duality of consciousness multiplies, rather than reduces, the potential complications. For Kate needs an open field in which to operate, and an opportunity for endorsing her valuation of herself through the free exercise of her talent and initiative. From this point of view, it is important to consider whether the social forms presented in the novel can, in fact, accommodate and stimulate the ambitious young woman's striving for advancement. Lional Croy's rejection of his daughter's offer to live with him releases 4

The opening of the novel has been widely discussed by a variety of critics from a number of points of view. For particularly helpful commentaries, see Nicola Bradbury, Henry James: The Later Novels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 75-8; Kenneth Graham, Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment: An Approach to the Novels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975),

5

pp. 165-7; and Holland, The Expense of Vision, p. 288. See Maurice Merleau-Ponty,' Metaphysics and the Novel', in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 36-7.

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Kate from poverty and oppressive restriction into the charmed circle of Lancaster Gate, where her position promises wealth, comfort and easy success. Lancaster Gate, in its turn, aspires to the peace and dignity of Matcham. Yet James carefully modulates the reader's impression of the prospects for self-realization within this privileged setting, since thoughtful or constructive communication among the highly fortunate appears to have collapsed. Guests at a party at Matcham drift aimlessly to and fro, contributing a tentative ' I say, Mark' as the prelude to nothing in particular (Vol. 19, pp. 217-18). The picture of the broader social context is no more encouraging. Once due allowance has been made for his bored sophistication, there is a certain aptness in Lord Mark's claim that the movements of London society are little more than ' the groping and pawing, that of the vague billows of some great greasy sea in mid-Channel, of masses of bewildered people trying to "get" they [don't] know what or where' (Vol. 19, p. 150). This assertion is borne out by Densher, even though his personal outlook contrasts sharply with Lord Mark's, and his tendency towards disengagement produces a critical detachment from the occupations of the wealthy or the fashionable. However, he produces a similar explanation for Milly's enthusiastic reception by her acquaintances during a busy social season: The little American's sudden social adventure, her happy and, no doubt, harmlessflourish,had probably been favoured by several accidents, but it had been favoured above all by the simple spring-board of the scene, by one of those common caprices of the numberless foolish flock, gregarious movements as inscrutable as ocean-currents. The huddled herd had drifted to her blindly - it might as blindly have drifted away. There had been of course a signal, but the great reason was probably the absence at the moment of a larger lion. (Vol. 20, p. 43) Such mindless drifting, and the erosion of rewardingly intelligent communal activity, would naturally have been familiar from the direct experience of most ofJames's contemporaries in Britain at the turn of the century. As it happens, such patterns of behaviour are so widespread that Martin Heidegger has identified this as one of the characteristic stages of 'inauthentic existence'. Until the individual willingly accepts the challenge posed by his personal situation, and begins creatively to shape his own future, he falls under the influence exerted by das Man or ' the " they"', the faceless majority of mankind which swamps all originality, and imposes as its law a uniform

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standard of mediocrity, or ' averageness \ 6 This dull mediocrity is one of the diseases that afflicts many members of the Lancaster Gate circle; it is, in its way, as debilitating and stultifying as the misery of Chirk Street. James reveals early in the novel that Kate, too, is aware of the seductive power of material possessions (see Vol. 19, p. 28); yet, if she is to realize her full potential for 'being' and for 'seeing', she is also aware of the need strenuously to resist the more superficial of Aunt Maud's blandishments. This background of the common - and convenient - compromise with circumstances thus becomes a yardstick against which Kate's social progress must be gauged. Every one of her deliberate suppressions and manoeuvres, as well as her skilfully controlled covert opposition to the idea of marrying Lord Mark, becomes the more compelling and comprehensible precisely because she is (as Densher appreciates) too fine for the narrow advancement which Mrs Lowder envisages for her (see Vol. 20, pp. 61-2). The situation proves to be still more taxing, for James suggests that the elaborate rituals of affluent life may conceal sinister motives and schemes. Kate must encounter a vast and smoothly running system of exploitation and self-gratification. The seemingly aimless flow of social currents is presented in a new light when Kate initiates Milly into the intricacies of London manners - and the accepted conventions cast a darker shadow: every one who had anything to give - it was true they were the fewest made the sharpest possible bargain for it, got at least its value in return. The strangest thing furthermore was that this might be in cases a happy understanding. The worker in one connexion was the worked in another; it was as broad as it was long - with the wheels of the system, as might be seen, wonderfully oiled. People could quite like each other in the midst of it... (Vol. 19, p. 179)

The cynicism of this position is arresting. It is not merely that affection appears to be entangled with self-interest, and that cooperation converts itself into the relationship between the ' worker' and the 'worked'. It is rather that these rules are advanced as the chief law of the group's survival, that the necessary and familiar exchange of benefits within any community is here converted into a celebration of personal profit. Sophisticated acceptance becomes a 6

See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), pp. 163-8.

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type of surreptitious justification of this attitude, an evasion of any careful questioning of the basis of social existence. In 'A Note on Machiavelli', Merleau-Ponty advances as the precondition for any humanistic approach the confrontation of the 'relationship of man to man and the constitution of a common situation and a common history between men as a problem5.7 In The Wings of the Dove, James vividly portrays - and shrewdly exposes - a class that has insulated itself against making even this preliminary attempt. Creativity succumbs to convenience, shared endeavour to guaranteed personal gain. Since Mrs Lowder looms large as the presiding genius of Lancaster Gate, and since she embodies several of the distinguishing traits of her milieu, her personality is of key importance in determining the demands to which Kate may be obliged to submit. For the young woman grasps a crucial aspect of her aunt's character when she pictures her as ' Britannia of the Market Place - Britannia unmistakable but with a pen on her ear' and not to be satisfied ' till she might on some occasion add to the rest of the panoply a helmet, a shield, a trident and a ledger' (Vol. 19, pp. 30-1). James sharpens this impression when Susan Stringham produces a complementary view of Aunt Maud's appetite for conquest. For her 'American admirer', Mrs Lowder figures as a 'capacious receptable, originally perhaps loose, but now drawn as tightly as possible over its accumulated contents' (Vol. 19, pp. 168-9). I*1 n e r eager acquisitiveness and her determination to achieve the supreme social rewards, Mrs Lowder has modelled herself to type by entering wholly into the arrangements of the 'worker' and the 'worked'. In becoming Britannia, she has deliberately sacrificed the full flexibility of her freedom and confined her imagination to a single track. In this way, she not only sets out formidably to fix the tone of all encounters at Lancaster Gate, but also to compose the script for Kate's future development. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir draws on the existentialist philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre as the basis for exploring the notion of freedom, as well as the behavioural patterns which may be adopted in order to define or delimit the process of self-expression. These insights have a close bearing on the aspirations of both Maud Lowder and Kate Croy, as James dramatizes them in The Wings of the 7

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'A Note on Machiavelli', in Signs, p. 223.

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Dove. For de Beauvoir argues that the individual (unless forcibly confined or oppressed) need not remain trapped within the situation of the moment. The fact that man is a conscious creature provides the groundwork for his transcendence; he is able either to conquer immediate obstacles or to project his efforts into an open future. Even the acceptance of failure can represent an assertion of freedom, for the person recognizes the alternatives of taking a previously untried approach to the intractable problem, or of choosing entirely new objectives. At the same time, de Beauvoir stresses the dangers faced by anyone who allows his freedom merely to congeal into a solid fixity of purpose, because he has become obsessed with a particular end. Instead, de Beauvoir's theory suggests that the exercise of freedom should lead on to a succession of free acts, to the satisfaction of fresh aims, and to the selection of more difficult challenges.8 Freedom becomes a key value in its own right. This account of the nature of freedom shows how ill Kate can afford naively to accept her aunt either as a mentor or as a role model; all her prospects for the future are at stake. Once she has been rejected by her father - once she has acknowledged the failure of her plans for an existence of independence and unselfish service in Chirk Street- a host of new possibilities appears.9 Kate must now choose whether she is to act in her own interest, or on behalf of her impoverished family, or in accordance with Aunt Maud's strongly expressed wishes. James is anxious to dramatize the complexity of Kate's dilemma in seeking both to recognize fully, and to integrate, these competing claims on her loyalty. Fiction becomes an ideal medium for exploring the dilemmas of existentialist philosophy, because it can persuasively deploy the manifold tensions and conflicts of social interaction. So when Kate defiantly assures Densher, ' I shan't sacrifice you... I shall sacrifice nobody and nothing, and that's just my situation, that I want and that I shall try for everything' (Vol. 19, p. 73), she is contemplating the ideal range of her freedom. For discussion of these ideas in relation to specific examples, see Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: The Citadel Press, 1970), pp. 29-32. It is important for the reader to accept the genuineness of Kate's offer to her father, in spite of the internal pressure which she experiences in formulating the terms of her sacrifice and commitment. If her proposal is seen merely as a provocation, or a test of Lionel Croy's mettle, a strategically placed fictional complication immediately disappears. (Graham also comments, from a slightly different point of view, on the sincere effort represented by Kate's approach to her father; see Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment, p. 167.)

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Yet the effect of the unfolding of the plot is to enact the various ways in which Kate's freedom has already been circumscribed by her dutiful involvement with her father and her sister, and by her economic dependence on Mrs Lowder. On the other hand, a freedom that is subject to certain restrictions has not, as de Beauvoir's comments would endorse, been totally robbed of its potential for reacting to events, and for reshaping the existing circumstances. The fascination of James's fictional situation lies in Kate's attempts at imposing an order on her priorities, and at deciding when or how she is to meet specific demands. Moreover, the strongest threat to her autonomy actually springs from the lure of Lancaster Gate, and would consist in her becoming, like her aunt, a serious worshipper of material and social success. In The Ethics of Ambiguity, de Beauvoir describes the outlook of the serious person in this way - although solemnity would serve as a more accurate English translation for this over-riding preoccupation with a limited number of self-gratifying ends: The serious man gets rid of his freedom by claiming to subordinate it to values which would be unconditioned. He imagines that the accession of these values likewise permanently confers value upon himself... The serious is not defined by the nature of the ends pursued. A frivolous lady of fashion can have this mentality of the serious as well as an engineer, (p. 46) It is easy to appreciate why Aunt Maud, the votary of the 'sensible' value and the utilitarian decision, should have lapsed into such solemnity. She has a ready-made justification for every action, and her kind intentions are ironically qualified by her fidelity to her creed. She, too, relies on social rituals to compensate for her absence of imaginative spontaneity, although she is also far too ingenious to react merely as an unthinking member of the 'huddled herd'. Her familiarity with the accepted public forms gives her scope for her plotting, for manipulating the system to secure the most substantial practical advantage - as her careful plans for Kate's elevation to Matcham effectively illustrate. This proneness to solemnity, however, is not confined to the region of Lancaster Gate. James bridges the daunting gap between fashionable London and Chelsea in his presentation of Marion Condrip. On examination, she also proves to be an accomplished exponent of the solemn attitude to life, for her personality takes shape as 'little more than a ragged relic, a plain prosaic result of [Mr Condrip] - as if she had somehow been pulled

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through him as through an obstinate funnel, only to be left crumpled and useless and with nothing in her but what he accounted for' (Vol. 19, p. 37). Marion has transformed herself completely into the stereotype of the clergyman's widow: poor, lonely, and trailing several dirty children. And her solemnity forms the basis for her belief in 'sensible' values. She feels that her rather dubious duty must lie in seeking every conceivable improvement for her unfortunate children by constantly reminding her lucky younger sister of the compelling power of family ties. In this way the demands of the solemn, which threaten to engulf Kate if her vigilant awareness of contrasting values lapses, become as clamorous at Chelsea as they usually are at Lancaster Gate. Yet it would blur the subtlety of James's characterization (not to mention the thoroughness of his mode of theoretical enquiry) if Aunt Maud's exploits were interpreted solely in terms of solemnity. Her sheer delight in manipulation, her joy in entering the social fray, indicate that another of de Beauvoir's categories might also accommodate her highly coloured personality. Under this aspect, Mrs Lowder is an adventurer, someone who devotes all her energy and innovative capacity to the current undertaking, deriving enormous pleasure from action for action's sake alone (see de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, p. 58). It is interesting, though, that de Beauvoir's type of the adventurer often hardens into the solemn individual; his absorption in eagerly pursuing his task fades, and he begins to reach for the particular goals of his project with single-mindedness and narrow devotion (see pp. 59-60). Aunt Maud reveals precisely this tendency when, for instance, Susan Stringham tries to persuade her to disclose the nature of Milly's feelings towards Densher. James captures the relish with which Mrs Lowder probes the intricacies of the case and responds to the call for decisive action. She puzzles over the curiously interlocking relationships which bind Milly, Kate and Densher, poises her niece's future against the American visitor's millions — but lets the discussion draw to a close on this note: Mrs Lowder seemed to think...' It does provoke me a bit, you know - for of course I'm a brute. And I had thought of all sorts of things. Yet it does n't prevent the fact that we must be decent.' (Vol. 20, p. 118)

Mrs Lowder openly admits to her regret that Milly and Kate will now be deflected from achieving the social status which she had intended for them; and it is the lost promise of substantial material

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prizes which particularly irritates her. Nevertheless, there is a deep irony in her self-congratulatory profession of 'decency', since her manoeuvre also allows her to realize another long-cherished aim. If Densher is to be paired with Milly under the new arrangements, that successfully separates him from Kate; so Kate's marriage to Lord Mark, or to some equally suitable candidate, can be planned in accordance with Aunt Maud's relentless requirements. With the full force of her personality, Mrs Lowder has returned to the solemn mode of thinking, and her favoured objectives assume paramount importance. James vividly conveys the severely damaging consequences of Aunt Maud's persistent solemnity for Kate's freedom of development in passages like this: That was the story - that she was always, for her beneficent dragon, under arms; living up, every hour, but especially at festal hours, to the ' value' Mrs Lowder had attached to her. High and fixed, this estimate ruled on each occasion at Lancaster Gate the social scene; so that [Densher] now recognised in it something like the artistic idea, the plastic substance, imposed by tradition, by genius, by criticism, in respect to a given character, on a distinguished actress. As such a person was to dress the part, to walk, to look, to speak, in every way to express, the part, so all this was what Kate was to do for the character she had undertaken, under her aunt's roof, to represent. (Vol. 20, p. 34)

The brightness and rigidity with which Kate fulfils her role, and the queasiness of Densher's response to the scene, illustrate the extent to which the young woman's commitment of herself to her aunt's expectations has limited her range of creative choice. Kate's fully human transcendence, her capacity for escaping beyond the suffocating bounds of the particular situation, is denied her. Her energy and originality are locked up, and she is reduced purely to the level of the 'worked', without any possibility of reciprocal 'working'. Yet there is a sense in which her predicament is not unique, and in which Aunt Maud's firm insistence, or the acquisitive pressures of the Lancaster Gate circle, are symptomatic of a more widespread threat to personal liberty. James's characters give a finely dramatic realization to one of the inevitable, yet disturbing, results of social existence. Since he is so preoccupied with the notion of freedom, and with man's potential for shaping his own identity, Sartre in many of his writings proves himself acutely aware of the limiting conditions

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imposed by communal living. Yet he has less faith than MerleauPonty in the opportunities for fulfilment and satisfaction provided by shared endeavour, so that he concentrates on the manner in which the performance of any social function may convert the individual into little more than a thing. The waiter in a French cafe, who smiles at customers, takes orders and rushes back and forth, precariously balancing his tray, has become a 'waiter-thing'. While carrying out the job, he sets aside his fully human transcendence - he ignores the fact that he is a person with rights and needs, someone who is able to choose some other way of earning his living.10 Thus the process of ritualizing social forms must be considered from a new perspective. It is no longer plain that these codes simply betray an inner emptiness, or the onset of solemnity. Collective existence, it seems, exacts a due proportion of role-playing from each individual, and the philosophical comprehensiveness of James's craft allows him also to explore the tension between such obligations and the individual's search for satisfactory forms of self-expression. At the same time, James's novel is designed to embody as many as possible of the different, defining aspects of the social process. The more positive potentialities for individual achievement within the social context are dramatized in the tense encounter between Milly and Kate, when they are left alone at Milly's hotel, while Aunt Maud and Susan Stringham attend one of the last functions of the stale season. In the terminology of type-casting, this is a meeting between the 'wondrous London girl' (Vol. 19, p. 171) and the American millionairess; but the force of Kate's personality dominates the conversation. The question of role-playing is given a new twist as the pressure of her will bends her apparently conventional part into unnerving new shapes. In her prevailing confidence as a free and independent individual, who is set upon pursuing her own destiny, Kate is able to deny the ethos of Lancaster Gate, and to warn Milly against its exploitative tendencies. 'We're of no use to you — it's decent to tell you. You'd be of use to us, but that's a different matter. My honest advice to you would be... to drop us while you can. It would be funny if you did n't soon see how awfully better you can do. We've not really done for you the least thing worth speaking of - nothing you might n't easily have had in some other way. Therefore 10

See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (London: Methuen, 1969), p. 60.

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you're under no obligation. You won't want us next year; we shall only continue to want you.' (Vol. 19, pp. 281-2) It is important to appreciate that these remarks are genuinely and generously intended to alert Milly to potential dangers. Kate is not, as Sallie Sears argues, simply engaging in the sort of sophisticated pleasantry which conceals a more ominous, self-seeking motive, and which Milly will be unable to follow because she is not a fully initiated member of the Lancaster Gate set. Nor is there, as Manfred Mackenzie suggests, an element of disguised resentment in Kate's honesty; in his view, the ' London girl' is determined to reduce her pure and unsuspecting spiritual opposite to the level of the mercenary interests which typify Mrs Lowder's circle.11 Although there have been suppressions on both sides, a sound friendship has grown up between these two young women. If Kate is capable of loyalty to Lionel Croy, it should scarcely be surprising that she may also show a sense of protection towards her bewildered American visitor. On the other hand, it is true that the English girl is not being quite candid. While exposing the vices of Lancaster Gate, she nonetheless preserves the full scope of her manipulative power. It is safe for Kate to explain the complexities of the social situation, because she realizes that Milly will never harm her; on the contrary, she has presented her friend with a clear picture of her predicament, and she will simply attract a correspondingly larger measure of gentleness and consideration from the 'dove'. Against this background, there is still another reason for Kate's behaviour, one which perhaps lies closer to Mackenzie's interpretation of her intentions. She is irritated by the discrepancy between her own desperate urge to succeed, and Milly's privileged ignorance of the routine strains and demands of social existence. The galling sense of inequality increases Kate's brutality, her tendency to pace 'like a panther' (Vol. 19, p. 282). And to do justice to her protean nature, this bitterness expresses itself also in the harsh irony of her speech, an irony which becomes a revelation, rather than a concealment, of her own state of mind. She sketches the selfishness and acquisitiveness of Lancaster Gate without the slightest relieving pity for herself or for Mrs Lowder. James vividly illustrates the ' over11

See Sallie Sears, The Negative Imagination: Form and Perspective in the Novels of Henry James

(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968), pp. 76-9, and Manfred Mackenzie, Communities of Honor and Love in Henry James (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 152-3, 157-8.

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determined' quality of Kate's actions; each of her calculated moves in the social game gives palpable form to a variety of deeply-rooted personal motives. Yet through each advance she is also aiming to achieve a variety of results: to enlighten Milly, to lay bare the avidity of her aunt's companions, to dissociate herself from them through the very act of identification. Moreover, in accordance with the restless energy of differ'ance, these aims are shadowed by others, which at once modify and enforce them: to retain Milly's friendship, and to ensure her compassionate compliance. In the language of Cymbeline (m.iii.46), Kate is made to 'feel knowingly' the tensions inherent in her situation, as she struggles to reconcile the misery of her background, and her subservience to Mrs Lowder, with the glowing prospects outlined by her imagination. As Milly's protector, as the 'wondrous London girl', as the 'panther', she acts out the guiding impulses of her consciousness through the constant juxtaposition and redefinition of her range of available roles. The plasticity of her public presence brings about a momentary harmony and complexity of expression that she cannot achieve within her painfully divided private self. However, an opportunity for fulfilment, and for the candid statement of her deepest feelings, is offered to Kate in her relationship with Merton Densher. She absorbs every look he gives her and every gesture he makes during their brief meetings in the park, for these signs of his love foster a profound sense, not only of her own inalienable identity, but also of the reality of her bond with her lover. Here is a type of communion which is totally different from the fierce competition of Lancaster Gate. A helpful guide to the transforming effect which the lovers produce on each other can be derived from Merleau-Ponty's account of the process of dialogue: In the experience of dialogue, there is constituted between the other person and myself a common ground; my thought and his are interwoven into a single fabric, my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion, and they are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator. We have a dual being... {Phenomenology of Perception, p. 354)

This penetrating description is, in fact, equally applicable to those occasions on which Kate and Densher find themselves in disagreement, those times of stress when their unresolved conflict serves as a painful reminder of their need for each other. Together they

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create a sense of satisfying completeness which neither of them is able to achieve alone. James's examination of social relations ranges shrewdly from Sartrean perceptions of oppression and disfigurement to Merleau-Ponty's balanced confidence in the strengthening and enriching power of reciprocity. The fineness of the lovers' union is embodied in the simplicity and the intensity of Kate's promise to Densher: 'And I pledge you - I call God to witness! - every spark of my faith; I give you every drop of my life' (Vol. 19, p. 95). This is a moment of deep sincerity and liberation from extraneous claims for the young woman; Densher's reply, by contrast, suggests that the broader conditions of their relationship are far from reassuring. He is wary of the repeated evasions which serve as the foundation for their meetings, and of the agreed policy of concealing their engagement from Aunt Maud. He speaks of his joy 'not so much of our secret itself, but of what's represented and, as we may somehow feel, secured to us and made deeper and closer by it' (Vol. 19, p. 96). This response points up the radical split which has come to exist in the lovers' lives. They find themselves forced to inhabit two strictly circumscribed realms at the same time: the private sphere, in which their regard for each other and their promised commitment to their union are pre-eminent, is set against the busy public arena, in which the routines of ordinary social involvement are enacted. While they are engaged in their everyday occupations, no hint of a joint purpose and reciprocal obligations can be allowed to pass. An intriguing parallel to this dilemma, too, may be drawn from Merleau-Ponty's discussion of the damaging effects produced by the attempt at living in two worlds at once, so that each acquires a shadowy validity in relation to the other. In this context, the notion of' two worlds' is clearly a highly pertinent metaphor for relying on two distinct, and sometimes incompatible, frames of reference. As a practical instance, Merleau-Ponty cites the case of Lawrence of Arabia, who found that his long residence with the Arabs eroded his 'English self, thus leading him to consider the West from a predominantly Islamic perspective. Yet the ultimate effect of this movement towards the assimilation of a new culture was a sense of personal disorientation, of being caught between 'worlds', rather than of having achieved confident control of one set of ideas in place of another (see Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 187—8). The lovers are, in a curiously similar way, unable to integrate their existence, and to

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acquire a single, unified complex of relations to their total environment. The only practical alternative to their feeling of personal and psychological disinheritance would lie in Kate's breaking off her connection with Lancaster Gate, and so in her risking the sacrifice of both her own material prospects and those of her vociferously dependent relatives. James strategically highlights the effects of this impasse, showing how the pair are forced reluctantly to content themselves with their awkwardly limited - but vitally supportive periods of intimacy. Although Kate and Densher seem to be cut off from any concrete opportunities for realizing their passionate hopes, their meetings in Kensington Gardens are not as remote from external and oppressive social pressures as the image of two separate realms may suggest. Aunt Maud looms as a formidable presence, and the lovers' awareness of her stonily watchful gaze is often reflected in their conversation. It is the difficulty of ' squaring' Mrs Lowder which brings out what James sharply characterizes as the ' difference in truth' between the young man and the young woman (Vol. 19, pp. 98-9). Graham perceptively notes these flaws in their sympathetic understanding of each other as an early sign of a more damaging conflict {Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment, pp. 174-5). Still, while the encroachment of foreign forces on to their private territory makes the couple uneasy, there is also a call for the initiation of counter-measures. Kate's ' talent for life' means that she is eager to express herself in the public context, to be free to adopt and animate a variety of appealing social roles (compare Vol. 19, pp. 50-1). The threat, which these chapters prefigure, is that she may be drawn away from her community of feeling and interest with Densher into the sphere of'sensible' values. There is an ominous hint of the power which material things can exert over her, when she cautions the journalist, shortly after his return from America: ' I verily believe I shall hate you if you spoil for me the beauty of what I see!' (Vol. 20, p. 30). This remark - like so many that pass between the lovers - contains its due proportion of irony, but there is a strong implication that Kate is becoming increasingly preoccupied with the challenges of the exploitative game, as well as the power and flattering status conferred by wealth. These symptoms of solemnity do not augur well for the stable continuation of her secret relationship with an impoverished Densher. The negative analysis of social interaction seems to be gaining ascendancy over the positive.

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Merleau-Ponty's comments on the results of an inequality in commitment between two people offer a shrewd gloss on the potential alienation which Kate and Densher face. In the absence of reciprocity there is no alter Ego, since the world of the one then takes in completely that of the other, so that one feels disinherited in favour of the other. This is what happens in the case of a couple where there is more love felt on one side than on the other: one throws himself, and his whole life, into his love, the other remains free, finding in this love a merely contingent manner of living. {Phenomenology of Perception, p. 257) Under these conditions, the extended scope of Kate's activities is likely to cause the disturbance; and Densher's prospects seem confined to strained contacts and growing frustration. While the threat of disillusionment and consequent rejection persists, the lovers' relationship is also multi-faceted, moulded as it is by Kate's protean consciousness. From yet another point of view, it becomes clear that the lovers' attraction for each other lies in their very difference; the young man's familiarity with the ' high, dim... things of the mind' complements his partner's 'talent for life' (Vol. 19, pp. 50-1). And Densher does delight (half ruefully) in Kate's social achievements, which constitute a vitally arresting source of her charm. After an unusually fine performance at one of Mrs Lowder's dinner-parties, the young man addresses her with passionate appreciation: 'You're different and different — and then you're different again. No marvel Aunt Maud builds on you - except that you're so much too good for what she builds/or. Even "society" won't know how good for it you are; it's too stupid and you're beyond it. You'd have to pull it uphill - it's you yourself who are at the top.' (Vol. 20, pp. 61-2) At moments like this a rare, but perfect, reciprocity is forged; there can be no question of either partner's regarding the other as 'merely contingent' to his way of life. Temporarily, Kate can conjure up a persuasive justification for resorting to scheming and for her sometimes abrasive insistence on the reliability of her judgement. Through dialogue, she and Densher have constituted their own fragile, yet absorbing, world. To clarify the preceding discussion, it is necessary to consider still more carefully the complexity of Kate's characteristic attitude towards Densher. One of Merleau-Ponty's revealing insights into the paradox inherent in the act of loving offers a valuable key to James's

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delineation of Kate Croy's intense, but changeable, feelings for the young journalist. Merleau-Ponty argues that a profound human love 'promises beyond what it knows', that it undertakes to regard the loved person as an ultimate value, even in the face of illness or misfortune, which may threaten to destroy this unique bond.12 The secrecy of her relationship with Densher imposes a consistent strain upon Kate, because her scope for exploring this sort of abundant and unqualified love is severely restricted. Yet James subtly indicates that her involvement with Densher has distinctively altered her sense of her own reality; this is why a sensitively attuned observer, like Milly, is able to see the English girl as she might appear to her lover. In a sense, his existence has become part of Kate's very identity. At the same time, though, Kate is pressed to find practically achievable ways of both expressing and investigating her deeply original commitment to the young man. So she releases him into the shared social realm of change and accident; she take the perverse, and even perilous, step of encouraging the tentative friendship between Milly and Densher. Yet it is simplistic to regard this curious decision as a further instance of Kate's brutality, of her cunning determination to mislead Mrs Lowder - although that motive certainly has its force.13 Kate's action is a tribute to Densher's personal worth, for he is what she has 'of most precious' (Vol. 20, p. 52); it is also an impulse of supreme generosity with regard to the dying Milly. The gesture is made in the full consciousness of her flexible strength and the American girl's thinly-concealed weakness. However, there is a duality of awareness in Kate, which must colour this impression of her daring concern for her stricken friend; while Kate can offer no finer gift than Densher, her manipulative and commercialistic approach lends the transaction a chilling air. James is preparing the reader for the taut and searingly painful instant in which Kate will courageously acknowledge that Densher is to marry Milly. Against this backdrop of glitteringly staged public performances, scenes of intimate private communion, and moments of private revelation which are circumspectly concealed in public, it is easy to 12

13

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Consequences', trans. James M. Edie, in The Primacy of Perception, pp. 26-7. For a more negative treatment of Kate's chosen mode of operation, see Dorothea Krook, The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 206, 208, and Christof Wegelin, The Image of Europe in Henry James (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1958), pp. 108, 119.

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appreciate why J. A. Ward contends that' The Wings of the Dove (like The Golden Bowl) is a pure instance of the novel of relations' — ' the relations among characters actually constitute the subject'.14 While The Golden Bowl has a small cast, operating within a relatively confined situation, The Wings of the Dove provides a richly peopled social canvas. There is a constant process of encounter and retreat, exploration and attempted confirmation. At the same time, the repeated engagement and re-engagement of various individual perspectives suggests a more comprehensive interpretation of the significance of Kate's pauses before the mirror in the dingy Chirk Street room. If she is not 'chalk-marked for auction', this is as much because her personality is shaped by the assessments of others as because she is acutely conscious of her own exceptional capabilities. She may feel herself to be an inventive, courageous, energetic young woman, who hesitates uneasily from time to time as the prospect of her uncertain future unrolls before her. But she is also the socially exploitable commodity which Mrs Lowder prizes. And she is the wonderfully protean creature whom Densher admires. Her identity is 'over-determined', compounded under the influence of a subtle interaction between internal and external forces; thread by thread James weaves the mysterious fabric of relations among his characters. Sustained narrative and close philosophical enquiry fuse almost inseparably in the text of the novel.

11

When Milly Theale arrives in London, she soon begins to 'feel knowingly' the finely balanced tensions of social relationships. At first, her position is not unlike that of the child who, born into a securely founded cultural world, must try to find the key to its accepted practices.15 Yet James is concerned with the examination of a developed adult consciousness, and this means that Milly is significantly equipped to tap a far richer vein of resources. She is able to speculate upon the nature and degree of her involvement in society - and to contemplate the feasibility of withdrawal. Her early response to Lancaster Gate manners indicates that escape from the social 14

15

See The Search for Form: Studies in the Structure of James's Fiction (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1967), p. 175. Compare Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 346-9.

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setting suggests itself as a distinct possibility; nonetheless, Milly proves an astute judge of her alien environment. while plates were changed and dishes presented and periods in the banquet marked; while appearances insisted and phenomena multiplied and words reached her from here and there like plashes of a slow thick tide; while Mrs Lowder grew somehow more stout and more instituted and Susie, at her distance and in comparison, more thinly improvised and more different different, that is, from every one and every thing: it was just a part [of Milly's ' crowded consciousness'] that while this process went forward our young lady alighted, came back, taking up her destiny again as if she had been able by a wave or two of her wings to place herself briefly in sight of an alternative to it. Whatever it was it had showed in this brief interval as better than the alternative; and it now presented itself altogether in the image and in the place in which she had left it. The image was that of her being, as Lord Mark had declared, a success. This depended more or less of course on his idea of the thing - into which at present, however, she would n't go. (Vol. 19, p. 160) Milly is acutely sensitive to the hubbub of the dinner-party around her. She may not have been initiated into the Lancaster Gate creed, but she instinctively feels that Mrs Lowder is a woman of considerable authority and influence in this wealthy circle. Equally she appreciates that Susie is an outsider, who is rendered increasingly quaint and ineffectual as the established forms assert themselves. London society poses problems, and challenges Milly to penetrate its inner workings - to discover, in fact, what it means to be a ' success' among Aunt Maud's associates. In this way, the American millionairess rejects the alternative of a safe, but isolated and sterile, existence. Her crucial decision might be regarded as a cogent fictional illustration of Merleau-Ponty's assertion that the very thought of escaping from the world calls to mind an awareness of that world, and of the lives of other people (see Phenomenology of Perception, p. 360). For Milly merely to contemplate abandoning the bustle of London is for her to have a vivid perception of all the fascinating encounters she must miss. She has come to Europe because she 'wants "people" 5 (Vol. 19, p. 134); now she is bound to face the perils involved in entering any society. She must learn to interpret a multitude of intersecting personal perspectives, which lay the groundwork for communal living. She must also learn to cope with the variety of' over-determined' actions, which present a dense mass of motives and possible explanations, so that her ignorance of English manners makes her particularly

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vulnerable to the sophisticated manipulations of a Mrs Lowder or a Kate Croy.16 Yet these London chapters reveal that Milly is not a mere dupe. She reserves judgement with regard to Lord Mark's personality and intentions, and is wary of Aunt Maud, precisely because she realizes that their command of the social forms may conceal a threat. At her first meeting with Lord Mark she discounts his broad claims for his sophisticated knowledge of the world: 4

You're blase, but you're not enlightened. You're familiar with everything, but conscious really of nothing. What I mean is that you've no imagination.' (Vol. 19, p. 162)

Milly astutely recognizes the difference between urbane accomplishment and the sincere reciprocity between people who are genuinely anxious to explore their common situation. She is distressed by Lord Mark's failure of'wonder in the face of the world', by his incapacity for creative response. His negative and unspontaneous approach to his dealings with others suggests that in seeing everything, he has actually seen nothing at all. His cultivated ennui brings him close to the sterile mediocrity of'the "they"'. If the gathering at Lancaster Gate launches Milly on her quest, it is the visit to Matcham which conveys dramatically the immense difficulty involved in forming constructive and rewarding personal relationships, as Merleau-Ponty describes them. When she arrives at the house-party, she, like everyone else, is seduced by the gentle charm of the day. Milly accepts the shy homage of the other guests and submits willingly - almost gracefully - to Lord Mark's friendly guidance. Then she is brought face to face with the Bronzino portrait: Perhaps it was her tears that made it just then so strange and fair — as wonderful as [Lord Mark] had said: the face of a young woman, all splendidly drawn, down to the hands, and splendidly dressed; a face almost livid in hue, yet handsome in sadness and crowned with a mass of hair, rolled back and high, that must, before fading with time, have had a family resemblance to her own. The lady in question, at all events, with her slightly Michael-angelesque squareness, her eyes of other days, her full lips, her long neck, her recorded jewels, her brocaded and wasted reds, was a very great 16

This perspective suggests Krook's reading of Milly's career in terms of the 'international t h e m e ' (see The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James, p p . 203-5).

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personage - only unaccompanied by a joy. And she was dead, dead, dead. Milly recognised her exactly in words that had nothing to do with her. ' I shall never be better than this.' (Vol. 19, pp. 220-1)17 The encounter with the portrait is so deeply disturbing because Milly sees more than the highly mannered evocation of a sixteenth-century noblewoman; she sees a prophecy of her own life, too. The effect of the painting on her self-awareness is similar to that produced by Kate's pause before the mirror at her father's lodgings in Chirk Street; a process of' de-realization' occurs. Milly not only acquires a more intense awareness of her own state of self-consciousness and of her cautious relationship with the world; she also sees herself from the outside, as others see her. Under these circumstances, the threat of her doom is not the only alarm which the picture raises; there is a subtler, but equally chilling, warning to be read in the canvas. For the woman, with her exquisite dress and her fixed stare, has become the representative of her time and its standards; nothing mars the fine decorum of the pose. Here, in its full pessimism, is the Sartrean view of the disabling restrictiveness imposed by filling any social role. Milly wonders whether this could once have been a living woman, with passions and curiosities — or whether she was simply a fixed type, recorded in the joylessness of her circumscribed existence. She uneasily begins to realize that being a ' success' in the Lancaster Gate circle may point to a similar fate for herself. She appreciates that she is as rich and exotic as her sixteenth-century counterpart; under these circumstances, there would appear to be nothing to save her from the living death of compression into the social mould, of being forced to play the part of a 'success' on demand. To accept the terms of Lancaster Gate, or even of Matcham, is to join in the pantomime, with no prospect of returning to a comfortable, aimless immersion in the society of others. In the light of such a revelation, the abortive overture of a Lady Aldershaw constitutes as much of an attempt to steer Milly in a definite social direction as the more calculated and effective interventions of Aunt Maud. C I shall never be better than this' is Milly's cry of despair. She feels that the afternoon at Matcham has come to represent a high point, the last phase of her freedom, the last opportunity for drinking in 17

In 'The Bronzino Portrait in Henry James's The Wings of the Dove\ Miriam Allott convincingly identifies this as a portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi (see Modern Language Notes, 68 (1953), 23-5). Charles R. Anderson provides further information about the details of this portrait {Person, Place, and Thing in Henry James's Novels, p. 187).

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without reserve the goodwill of her companions. She recognizes the threat of becoming imprisoned within the bonds of fashionable society, just when she wants to reach out greedily to grasp every possible experience. It is Sir Luke Strett who opens up for her a totally new vista of opportunity. His advice, more than amply endorsed by her visit to Regent's Park, presses upon her the awareness that the individual can accept the challenge to live fully and energetically, even in the face of daunting opposition. [Sir Luke's compassion] reduced her to her ultimate state, which was that of a poor girl - with her rent to pay for example - staring before her in a great city. Milly had her rent to pay, her rent for her future; everything else but how to meet it fell away from her in pieces, in tatters... She looked about her again, on her feet, at her scattered melancholy comrades - some of them so melancholy as to be down on their stomachs in the grass, turned away, ignoring, burrowing; she saw once more, with them, those two faces of the question between which there was so little to choose for inspiration. It was perhaps superficially more striking that one could live if one would; but it was more appealing, insinuating, irresistible in short, that one would live if one could. (Vol. 19, pp. 253-4)

The scrupulously detailed evocation of these moments in Regent's Park vividly shows how all the accretions of sophisticated, privileged life in London society have been stripped away; Milly has been compelled to confront some of the most basic conditions of human existence. Like every other human being, she tries desperately to penetrate the future which forms the horizon of the comprehensible present. She 'feels knowingly' the obvious, but fundamental, truth that no individual can rest securely in the possession of his own life; the future appears as a vast area of indeterminacy, which retreats as he advances to meet it. At the same time, the discarding of the superficialities of fashionable life gives Milly a special sympathy with those whom she encounters in Regent's Park. James skilfully touches upon the inherent sense of community which grows up among all human beings. As a philosopher like Merleau-Ponty suggests, their very corporeality expresses a certain mode of existing and facing the world ('Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', p. 54). Thus Milly, stripped as she suddenly is of her security and superiority, enters wholeheartedly into the dejection of her companions on the grass. Yet her new consciousness of her vulnerability, as well as of their desolation, sounds a cautionary note. This dreariness is, after all, the

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minimum condition for human subsistence; it represents survival, not living. Milly's companions unwittingly reveal a fresh dimension to Sir Luke's exhortation; for living - living eagerly and creatively emerges as a matter both of will and of capacity. It demands determination and fearless originality to escape the greyness of' the " t h e y " ' ; it calls for an honest recognition of all the possibilities for personal growth. Milly came to Europe to find not only people, but a particular person; if she is to accept the challenge to live, she must acknowledge to herself her secret love for Merton Densher. Obstacles naturally stand in the way of an easy solution, and the most teasing difficulty of all is the interweaving of Milly's life with those of her new friends, and notably with Kate Croy's wonderfully varied existence. Milly must now face, calmly and without evasion, her intense desire to love and to be loved, to form her own relationship of unique intimacy and reciprocity. In view of her experience in Regent's Park, it is predictable that Milly should find her interest in people quickened; for they alone can help to provide the key to the problem of living. If the paintings in the National Gallery fail to stimulate her responsiveness it is not, as Edwin T. Bowden claims, because she is unready to embrace the wider and more permanent sense of values, which is crystallized in works of art {The Themes of Henry James, pp. 92-3). The explanation is rather that the pictures have lost their urgency of communication when contrasted with the Bronzino; for the Mannerist portrait spoke to Milly of ultimate matters of life and death, whether literally or metaphorically. In her present frame of mind, though, the Gallery has one of the possible, baneful effects of the museum; the paintings are enshrined in an atmosphere of reverential silence, and so alienated from any sense of the human struggle or inspiration which created them.18 Milly retreats from that chilly cultural zone and begins instead to study her countryfolk. There is something pathetic in her attempt at reading a relevant human message into this trailing procession of cardboard cut-out figures (Vol. 19, pp. 289-90). Still, she can derive a weary, untaxing amusement from watching their relationships and registering their typicality. Then -James's timing is magnificent - Merton Densher and Kate Croy appear before her, ostensibly paying separate visits to the Gallery, yet unavoidably producing a subtle impression of together18

In ' Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', Merleau-Ponty perceptively explores the ways in which the 'museum' may freeze a healthy cultural tradition (p. 62).

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ness. The moment is a supreme test, and Milly embarks upon a disastrous course. She sets aside Sir Luke's advice. She refuses to grant sufficient persuasive authority to the pang which her carefully concealed love causes her. The central issue of her future relationship with Densher is not even allowed to present itself as problematic. Milly swings into the role of the 'American girl', deliberately choosing a part which offers a respite to the others, but contains very little comfort for herself. At this point, Milly's sustained practice of badfaith receives confirmation, and the course of the rest of her life is determined. Sartre's notion of bad faith, one of his most penetrating contributions to phenomenological psychology, seems to me to provide an invaluable model for elucidating the course of Milly's development from this point onwards. It offers a new way of interpreting her inner conflicts and outward behaviour, while James's fully dramatized enactment of these patterns conversely gives substance and a wider resonance to Sartre's economical theoretical sketch. Nowhere in his own fiction or drama does Sartre pay such scrupulously refined attention to the problematics of bad faith, whereas James's novel systematically extends the horizons of both a carefully balanced and a subtly delimited enquiry. The Wings of the Dove represents a striking instance of philosophy as story-telling along the lines which J. L. Austin convincingly proposes. There are obviously no convenient dictionary definitions of bad faith, any more than one might unearth satisfactorily documented case-histories. The concept (or 'category') must be forged through the very processes of an extended narrative, whose multiple implications emerge slowly and indirectly, as the story develops. Powerful imaginative projection, in the spirit of existential-phenomenological research, takes the place of the handy rule of thumb. Of course, James could not technically have termed the state of consciousness which he describes as ' bad faith'; yet reading his text as the meticulous plotting of an insidious malady of the human psyche provides a revolutionary understanding of The Wings of the Dove. Milly Theale is no longer perceived in the light of any of the established critical cliches: as languishing nobly in a condition of obscure spiritual elevation, or as perversely and selfindulgently neurotic, or as representing James's strained attempt at assimilating various images of his beloved cousin, Minny Temple. Instead the detail of this painstaking analysis contributes towards an anatomy of consciousness itself.

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The concept of bad faith is actually extremely complicated, but Sartre offers an accessible explanation in terms of the activity of lying to oneself. This process is distinct from the practice of lying in general, in terms of which the deceiver and the deceived are two separate persons. The accomplished liar is fully aware of the truth, but manages to deny it to a second party. The lie is no threat to his consciousness, because the misrepresentation is aimed at some external target and is designed for public consumption. From his own point of view, the liar rejects his lie; he is in no danger of believing it and can afford to be comfortably cynical. Bad faith, on the other hand, is insidious because the deceiver and the deceived now become one and the same person. The individual must try passionately to convince himself that something is not the case, even if there can be no trace of doubt regarding its validity; alternatively, he must persuade himself that he is something which he decidedly is not. A further problem arises because the person who engages in the play of bad faith must be all the more aware of the truth, in order effectively to conceal it from himself, or to generate convenient distortions of the existing state of affairs. Thus bad faith comes to represent a fundamental infection of consciousness. It is the individual's ploy for escaping from seemingly unbearable facts or situations, of trying to 'be what [he] is not and not to be what [he] is'. 19 However, consciousness cannot be split into independently functioning parts, and a perpetual tension remains. The man who lies to himself has to live at once the truth and the lie; and such a balance is scarcely easy to maintain. For this reason, badfaith can readily spill over into goodfaith; under these circumstances the individual accepts his unfavourable situation, gives up the lie, and tries concertedly to come to terms with his dilemma. On the other hand, bad faith may also give way to blatant cynicism. The individual knows that he is deceiving himself, ceases to believe in the falsehood - and yet continues his manipulations in the full awareness of these dubious conditions. The cynic, therefore, becomes a counterpart of the liar who takes advantage of other people. Bad faith, then, is not necessarily a permanent state of consciousness; it may pass into either good faith or cynicism. Nor can it be described as a carefully mounted attack 19

See Being and Nothingness, pp. 48-9, 67. In 'Bad Faith and "Lying to Oneself", Ronald E. Santoni provides a helpful critical commentary on the place of these ideas within the general structure of Sartre's philosophy {Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 38 (1978), 384-98).

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upon the mind, for it is a basic disorder of human consciousness, which operates at a different level from rational evaluation or the spontaneous solution of various practical problems. One of the commonest expressions of bad faith takes the form of man's conflation of his transcendence and his facticity. Transcendence, as the preceding discussion has suggested, is a vital feature of consciousness; it enables the individual to reach beyond the present moment, to exercise his freedom, and to transform the conditions of his existence. By contrast, man's facticity is a stern reminder that he is bounded by his body, subject to physical and social laws, a prey to established circumstances. The person who recognizes his freedom and initiative in good faith will not attempt foolishly to deny the inevitable limitations of embodied life. He accepts the irremediable restrictions which are imposed upon him, and turns his attention to feasible and constructive projects. At worst, he can investigate various methods for redeeming his failures. Facticity and transcendence are therefore readily compassed as the two faces of man's existence in the world. The man of bad faith, on the contrary, is not content unless he can convert transcendence into sheer facticity, or facticity into perfect transcendence. As soon as he admits to his inherence in a given historical situation, he can claim a ready-made excuse for his failings or misjudgements (see Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 56—7). In a similar fashion, the individual's existence in the presence of others can be used to provide a convenient alibi. Instead of considering that existence 'for-the-self' and 'for-others' may be two aspects of a unified life, the individual in badfaith rushes repeatedly between the extremes of'for-the-self' and 'for-others'. Either the self is the only reality, and other people can possess merely a deformed image of it; or the public persona alone is significant, so that life in a private capacity becomes sheer illusion (see Sartre, Being and Nothingness, pp. 57—8). In either case, the individual succeeds in contracting and twisting the complex responsibilities entailed in a global sense of human endeavour. At the same time, the practice of bad faith becomes an attempt at shrinking shared patterns of signification. As Raymond Tallis has noticed, Derrida's notion of differance bears some striking resemblances to Sartre's concept of consciousness as a negativity, which alone can bring meaning into being because its energy cleaves a path through the unrelieved density of inanimate nature. Through its restless non-fixity, consciousness asserts its creativity (see Tallis, Not

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Saussure, pp. 184, 228-9). In like fashion, the economy of differance invokes the absence at the heart of any presence, the complex system of mutually referring signs which make linguistic expression both feasible and productive. This process is vividly illustrated, for example, in Kate Croy's 'pantherish', yet strangely compassionate, revelations to Milly Theale at her London hotel. However, the specific purpose of bad faith is to gain an illusory security by denying differance, and nailing down categories with the predetermined function of encapsulating images, such as the 'American girl' or the 'dove 5 . Finally, the person of bad faith seeks an unattainable form of selfprotection by divorcing himself, as the source of his own role models, from the extended interplay of social structures. Derrida criticizes this overemphasis on the ' genetic', or the self as ultimate origin, in his reading of Husserl's transcendental phenomenology; he argues that it precludes the accurate description of structural manifestations in broader terms. And I have suggested that James inadvertently imposes awkward restrictions on his fictional project when he selects Maisie as the generative source, or the central 'vessel of consciousness', in What Maisie Knew.20 However, The Wings of the Dove

offers a fresh perspective on these technical difficulties. Milly's adoption of bad faith leads increasingly to her isolation, to her lonely clinging to the few dramatic parts which she can fill with assurance. Yet she never succeeds in becoming self-sufficient, and in eluding the intricate web of social manners which surrounds — and sometimes ensnares - her. As her painful death shows, there can be no independently originating and self-governing consciousness; the interaction with communal structures is vital for health and growth. Once again, The Wings of the Dove proves itself to be supremely a novel of' relations'. Milly, in fact, begins to exercise her bad faith when she reduces herself, at a stroke, to the convenient status of her 'self-for-others'. There are undoubtedly elements of the 'American girl' in her personality, just as she possesses characteristics of the 'dove'; but she cannot sink her rounded (and sometimes elusive) identity in either of these roles. By attempting this, she distorts her sense of being a private individual, who may also command a grand public presence within the context of accepted manners. Milly's generosity is quite magnifi20

See Derrida, '"Genesis and Structure" and Phenomenology', pp. 167, 157, as well as p. 33, above.

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cent, and her behaviour is, to a large degree, prompted by the deepest concern for the comfort of Kate and Densher, for the ease of everyone within her close circle. Yet her decision to appear as the 'American girl' cuts her off from any chance of' living', in Sir Luke's sense of the word. She has given up the anguish and desperation of that struggle; she has turned away from the communally inspired insights of Regent's Park. Most of all, she has evaded the slightest possibility of forming a mutually rewarding relationship with Densher. James thus allows the prophecy of Matcham to reach its fulfilment, for Milly steps into the frozen pose of the figure in the Bronzino portrait. The deep irony is that she effects this coup entirely on her own; she is reduced, not only by social pressures, but by a damaging personal choice. If it really was ' more appealing, insinuating, irresistible in short, that one would live if one could' (Vol. 19, p. 254), she has voluntarily locked up her energy and capacity for life.21 The steady unfolding of the events of the novel consistently follows through this reading of Milly's behaviour in terms of the practice of bad faith. Far from there being a necessary law of personality, which decrees that she is destined to become a 'dove', it is Kate who first raises the idea. After delivering the assurance that Milly is indeed a ' dove', Kate seals her revelation with a gentle embrace of her friend: [Milly] felt herself ever so delicately, so considerately, embraced; not with familiarity or as a liberty taken, but almost ceremonially and in the manner of an accolade; partly as if, though a dove who could perch on a finger, one were also a princess with whom forms were to be observed. It even came to her, through the touch of her companion's lips, that this form, this cool pressure, fairly sealed the sense of what Kate had just said. It was moreover, for the girl, like an inspiration: shefound herself accepting as the right one, while she caught her breath with relief, the name so given her. She met it on the instant as she would

have met revealed truth; it lighted up the strange dusk in which she lately had walked. (Vol. 19, p. 283; my emphasis of the full sentence added) This passage indicates a further important reason for Milly's exercise of bad faith. It is true that she is willing to sacrifice herself in the interests of her friends, but she also finds it comfortably secure to be a 'dove' or an 'American girl'. The dangers and challenges of giving 21

This argument should be sharply contrasted with two other approaches which superficially appear similar. Jean Kimball suggests that Milly takes up the role of the 'dove' as a 'disguise' ('The Abyss and the Wings of the Dove: The Image as a Revelation', NineteenthCentury Fiction, 10 (1956), 295), while Holland describes her as 'acting as if, because the adoption of various roles allows her to find the appropriate expressive channels for her developing character {The Expense of Vision, pp. 297-8).

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full expression to her freedom as an individual are neatly removed; she can shelter behind various carefully controlled presentations of a selected role model. Kate's words take on the force of a revelation, because they meet a painful yearning within Milly herself to be rid of the heavy responsibilities of transcendence imposed by Sir Luke's recommendation that she make a strenuous effort to 'live'. After this, it is but a small step for the heiress to begin believing in the full authority of the formal persona which she has adopted. This offers itself as the only way of coming to terms with other people. Thus Milly makes her first appearance in the guise of the 'dove' only a few minutes after receiving Kate's accolade. In a passion of protectiveness, she keeps her friend's secret, and denies to Mrs Lowder the probability of Densher's return to London: 'I don't think, dear lady, he's here' (Vol. 19, p. 284). The fagade is assumed before a larger audience during the meeting at the National Gallery, and after this there can be no respite.22 The splendid party at Palazzo Leporelli marks a climax in Milly's dovelike activity. Everyone is to be set at ease, no jarring note is to be allowed to sound, while the young millionairess falsely, but triumphantly, figures as the mild, confident hostess, without a care to distract her. Nonetheless, Kate's brave efforts to satisfy the demands of her 'beneficent dragon' offer proof of the immense difficulty involved in sustaining an arduous social role. James's careful dramatization of her progress makes it clear that Milly shows great courage in accepting the parts of the ' dove' and the ' American girl'; yet the progress of her career also suggests that she is attempting an impossible task. Another of Sartre's statements - which significantly takes the form of a condensed mini-narrative - helps to clarify the nature of this problem. If the situation of his cafe waiter is considered from within, as the man himself feels it, the simple, preliminary analysis in terms of the 'waiter-thing' no longer offers an accurate reflection of the pressures of his predicament: the waiter in the cafe can not be immediately a cafe waiter in the sense that this inkwell is an inkwell, or the glass is a glass. It is by no means that he can not form reflective judgements or concepts concerning his condition. He 22

Virginia C. Fowler quite mistakenly attributes to Milly a type of increasingly neurotic passivity. She claims that Milly feels inadequate in competing with Kate for Densher's affection, so that she sinks willingly into the inertia of precast roles and impending death (Henry James's American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984), pp. 88-103).

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knows as well what it 'means': the obligation of getting up at five o'clock, of sweeping the floor of the shop before the restaurant opens... {Being and Nothingness, pp. 59-60)

Sartre insists that the consciousness of an ordinary individual cannot be grafted on to the personality of the waiter-type, so that the two fuse perfectly. Consciousness itself is never inert, never totally at one with itself; it aims constantly beyond the immediate object towards new projects and fresh discoveries: the analogy with the play of differance is obvious. In the light of this interpretation, it is not surprising that Milly cannot merge her sensitive identity with that of Milly, the 'dove', or Milly, the 'American girl'. Any such attempt is bound to reveal a cleavage between the two characters, or to cause a distressing distortion. Even Milly may, disconcertingly, try too hard to be consistent and self-sufficient in her bad faith. Her close friends are sometimes aware of the presence of an eager and vulnerable person behind the poised 'self-for-others'. Because the 'dove' soars above all personal and practical difficulties, neither Kate nor Susan Stringham can offer any pity or consolation. Yet they know that Milly herself is suffering intense pain and lonely apprehension in her self-imposed isolation from normal social contacts (Vol. 20, pp. 140-3). Even Eugenio and Pasquale have to be drilled in the familiar routine, so that no hint of her actual state of health may escape. It is ironic that her concern for others is an important influence in initiating Milly's play of bad faith. Once the state of mind is established, however, her companions wilfully support, even encourage, her attitude. Nor is it insignificant that Kate Croy originally delivers the 'accolade'; when it is considered in this light, Milly's choice no longer appears quite independent of social pressures. There is a striking sense in which James's full dramatic investigation of Milly's ordeal as the 'dove' gives substance to one of the possible consequences of badfaith, which is not even hinted at in Sartre's brief theoretical statement. For it appears from the development of events in the novel that bad faith in one person — even the mere breath of it - m a y breed bad faith in his associates. If Sartre makes no direct comment on this issue, he does stress the similarity between the exercise of badfaith and the acceptance of a social role. Moreover, he shows how such analogues of bad faith in the waiter, the grocer and the soldier are promoted in the interests of community service. Milly and her circle seem to provide a persuasive illustration of the spread of badfaith; James's sophisticated fiction engenders possibilities which

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must elude any compact, abstract formulation. Susie, Kate, Densher and Aunt Maud are all helplessly acquiescent in allowing the ' dove' to continue enacting the life of a 'dove' to perfection. There is a strong element of the grotesque in the pretence mounted by Susan and the Venetian doctor, who undertake to discuss the price of provisions while Milly lies dying (Vol. 20, p. 276). In any event, Milly clings to her poses as the 'dove' and the 'little American princess abroad'. She transforms these into an absolute value and, in this process of retreat, succumbs to the condition which de Beauvoir would describe as solemnity. This quality in her behaviour becomes particularly noticeable once she has taken up residence at Palazzo Leporelli. The responses of her visit to the National Gallery are now reversed. She is completely at ease with the ' cool pavements' and the 'painted "subjects" in the splendid ceilings' (Vol. 20, p. 132); in fact, she surrounds herself with the artificial and the inert. She withdraws from the active life of Venice and avoids joining her friends' excursions to explore the city. Like the noblewoman in Bronzino's portrait, she has assumed her pose; the palace acts at once as an impressive backdrop and as a guarantee of her artificial security. The insatiable desire to do everything, and to learn about people, has been frozen. She made now, alone, the full circuit of the [palazzo], noble and peaceful while the summer sea, stirring here and there a curtain or an outer blind, breathed into its veiled spaces. She had a vision of clinging to it... She was in it, as in the ark of her deluge, and filled with such a tenderness for it that why should n't this, in common mercy, be warrant enough? She would never, never leave it... (Vol. 20, p. 143)

Together with Milly's attachment to the palace as something of ultimate value, comes the collapse of her fruitful communication with other people. She and Kate can no longer have the frank, often startling, discussions of Milly's early days in London; the American heiress's public and private appearances are now suspiciously of a piece. Her 'puttings off of the mask' (Vol. 20, p. 138), which is worn for the general benefit of all her acquaintances, give way to a forced substitute for intimacy with Kate and Susie. The image of a Maeterlinck play vividly captures the predicament of the three friends; the stiff, formal circlings of Milly and her handmaidens become a parody of true reciprocity. These encounters illustrate with peculiar force the way in which bad faith breeds bad faith, for the

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subordinate actresses can do nothing but submit to Milly's imposition of her scheme. Still, the strongest sign of her mistaken endeavour appears in her interview with Lord Mark. Because she has no strong feelings towards him, she can afford to be quite honest and open with him - to confess to him that she really is desperately ill. But with everyone who genuinely matters (and this category includes herself) she must preserve the solemn image. She must consent to being that strictly delimited personality, that ' self-for-others' which conceals her spontaneous consciousness - the latter-day Venetian princess in her magnificent palace. James gives the plot a cruel twist when Lord Mark arrives to break the charm of Milly's solemnity, for his revelation of Densher's secret engagement to Kate reawakens the interplay of unrestricted social relations and produces the reaction of a fully aware, flesh and blood human being. Milly is shocked at the unexpected surfacing of a grim fact which seems to strike at the root of all sincerity and integrity in personal relationships. The pose is shattered, because her hidden love for Densher has felt itself assaulted with unwarranted violence. And as the barren isolation of her condition becomes clear, she no longer has any wish to continue living: she 'turns her face to the wall'. There is a deep irony in this shrinking from the pain of existence. The disaster is directly precipitated, it is true, by the malice and insensitivity of a bitter man and the private pact of a pair of lovers. Yet the anguish of Milly's situation is heightened by her returning too late to the living world. In her badfaith, she has let the opportunities for free reciprocity and rewarding contact slip by; she has taken her tiny measure of joy in the small allowances which seemed permitted to her, in her formal and dovelike meetings with Densher. She has been the sick cousin for too long to emerge as a potential lover; she can only prepare herself to endure the anguish of dying. Yet James sets the seal on Milly's consummate generosity in his handling of her final meeting with Densher. Once more, and in full consciousness of the truth, she puts on her mask. But bad faith has passed almost imperceptibly into goodfaith, and the fagade is simply the medium for conveying a charged personal message. With the full power of her love, Milly shows Densher that she forgives him - in these moments she must 'live' with peculiar intensity. It is essential to reiterate that there is nothing deliberately vicious or destructive in Milly's bad faith: it is simply a ruinous mistake. There is, moreover, nearly sublime generosity in many of her actions.

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She effectively dams up her own eagerness for life to give others the chance for a greater exercise of their freedom, for the realization of their happiness. Yet, in spite of her fine intentions, the outcome is disastrous for Milly herself. She would have needed to have been either more, or less, than human to have transformed herself completely into the 'dove'. As less than human, she would not have been troubled by the restless play of consciousness; she could have sunk safely into a limited, predetermined pattern of action. As more than human, she would have been possessed of a consciousness which was totally at one with itself, capable of compassing all its aims, foreseeing all consequences, and understanding perfectly the actions of others. In the event, James deliberately reveals that Milly is simply and movingly human. The contention that she has made a sad and costly mistake is enforced by several further results of her determination to become a 'dove'. Because her bad faith represents a discounting of the complex blend of intention and desire which lies behind many actions, she fails to perceive that her selfless generosity may set up dangerous reverberations in the more selfish lives of other people. The gift of her money to Densher is, from her point of view, a material proof that she feels no resentment towards the lovers. She naturally has no means of discovering that uneasy tensions have begun to develop in their relationship; yet it fails to occur to her that her benign gesture may cause discord between them or aggravate already existing differences. She overlooks the possibility that the persistence of her influence after death may become unhealthy - may even negate the impulse towards reconciliation which has set the tone of her life. She cannot regard her gift as an accusation, or a calculated assertion of power; she therefore concludes that others, too, will feel its wholly beneficent quality. So James astutely extends his analysis of the effects of bad faith even beyond the death of the individual who practises it. Then there is the tendency of dovelike behaviour to generate engaging myths of saintliness and grace.23 Because Milly has striven for something beyond the average human range, her memory becomes invested in the minds of several other characters with a mystic and sacramental aura; the outspread wings of the 'dove' are 23

In 'Myth Today', Roland Barthes suggests that one of the prime functions of myth is to ' distort' through the contrived rearrangement of patterns of signification (see Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (St Albans: Paladin, 1973), pp. 121-3). Once again, the connection between bad faith and seeking to freeze the motion ofdifferance becomes clear.

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allowed to obscure the personality of the girl as she was, as she lived. Densher, in fact, all too easily confuses his deep (and half-guilty) feelings for his dead friend with a curious sort of worship.24 The letter, which Kate destroys in her sister's fireplace, gathers significance as the bearer of a profound revelation. Because both it and Milly are lost, Densher is shown to cling the more tenaciously to his faith. [Densher's imagination] had made of [the possibilities contained in Milly's letter] a revelation the loss of which was like the sight of a priceless pearl cast before his eyes - his pledge given not to save it - into the fathomless sea, or rather even it was like the sacrifice of something sentient and throbbing, something that, for the spiritual ear, might have been audible as a faint far wail. That was the sound he cherished when alone in the stillness of his rooms. (Vol. 20, p. 396) The late chapters of the novel establish how damaging this reverential attachment to a memory proves for Densher's own development, for he has not yet managed successfully to confront the recalcitrant problems of his own existence. And this attitude reduces the poignantly human value of Milly's life, with its eagerness and its tremendous suffering; as James himself notes in his preface to The Wings of the Dove, the deeply attractive force of figures like the young American lies in the energy which they commit to the 'act of living' (see The Art of the Novel, pp. 289-90).

in

For Merton Densher the 'act of living' involves considerable vagueness, because he finds his links with the world loose and uncertain. He cannot frame any firm commitment for himself, cannot envisage any clearly conceived plan of development; like a large number of Mrs Lowder's guests, he simply lets himself drift with the prevailing circumstances. Nor does his intelligence - which distinguishes him from the commonplace habitues of Aunt Maud's drawing-room — endow this sense of disconnection with the power of a positive project. It is clear that his is not what Merleau-Ponty characterizes as the 'indefinite refusal to be anything at all', because that at least assumes the presence of reasonably specific objectives, 24

Stuart Hutchinson seems to me wholly mistaken in claiming that Milly deliberately promotes the process of idealization, as a means of exacting retribution from the lovers by disrupting their relationship ('James's Medal: Options in The Wings of the Dove\ Essays in Criticism, 27 (1977), 332).

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which the individual rejects, or from which he holds himself apart [Phenomenology of Perception, p. 360). However, James's description of the young journalist, during the early days of his engagement to Kate, suggests that he does possess some potential for growth, a potential which will be severely tested during the course of the novel. He was in short visibly absent-minded, irregularly clever, liable to drop what was near and to take up what was far; he was more a prompt critic than a prompt follower of custom. He suggested above all, however, that wondrous state of youth in which the elements, the metals more or less precious, are so in fusion and fermentation that the question of the final stamp, the pressure thatfixesthe value, must wait for comparative coolness. (Vol. 19, pp. 48-9) Densher's attitude of detachment is, in effect, his method for dealing with the demands of social existence. Yet this absence of close involvement does not represent bad faith, because he is quite aware that he lacks Kate's ' strength for life' (Vol. 19, p. 51). In addition, he accepts the validity of his principles of conduct within their limited sphere of operation. When he pays his daily visits to Milly at Venice, he is determined to 'behave as a gentleman' (Vol. 20, p. 183) - to capitulate as one, if necessary - and to avoid being ' a brute' (Vol. 20, p. 184). Such weak moral propositions might have been useful to the journalist on his foreign tour, especially if they enabled him to rise above the level of mere gossip or the cheap seeking after effects favoured by the pulp press. But Densher's outlook remains a denial of sincere reciprocity, and it consequently fails to carry him much beyond the emptiness of polite social exchange. In founding his values upon vague abstractions of the way in which people ought to behave, he cuts himself off from the world as a place of transforming encounter and retreat. Nor can his reluctance to alarm Milly be justified simply in terms of Lord Mark's blunder. Densher's inactivity offers the means of reassuring himself that he is at once upholding his standards and protecting the calm of his friend. It was to this his wisdom reduced itself- to the need again simply to be kind. That was the same as being still - as studying to create the minimum of vibration. He felt himself as he smoked shut up to a room on the wall of which something precious was too precariously hung. A false step would bring it down, and it must hang as long as possible. (Vol. 20, p. 253) However, James reveals through the unfolding of the plot that Densher's reliance on his sterile, gentlemanly code is as vulnerable as

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Milly's grasp on her life. In 'The Metaphycial in Man', MerleauPonty presents a lucid and pertinent analysis of the way in which an abstract system of concepts can spell death for vital moral awareness. The abstractions, he points out, dwell in the 'dull world of habitual or dormant consciousness', whereas active moral perception demands constant self-examination, and repeated attempts at forming bonds of sympathy with other people.25 It is precisely this taxing involvement and self-questioning which Densher evades by withdrawing behind his code of good manners and ready consideration. The period spent in Venice provides the evocative setting for James's exploration of Densher's response to the stimuli which encourage personal development. The drama of the text sets out to transmute its character's fondness for theoretical abstraction. The novelist does not show his young man undergoing an arresting conversion, but an atmosphere of unease, of dissatisfaction with the familiar climate of his mind, pervades Densher's lonely wanderings through the city. And Mrs Stringham's visit to his lodgings acts as a valuable catalyst in increasing his self-awareness. In spite of her relatively limited imaginative resources, Susie manages to break free from the niceties and exact discriminations of her New England upbringing. In her absorbing love and compassion for Milly, she appears as another of James's figures who unhesitatingly gives a practical realization to St Augustine's plea of'ama etfac quod vis' (or 'love and do what you will'). Her sense of the American girl's suffering leads her (not unlike Maisie or Strether) to discover the basis of creative morality: that respect for human nature should be the guiding principle in all action.26 Susan's unselfish concern vividly illuminates the gulf between Densher's remote theorizing and true commitment to the lives of other people; for Mrs Stringham 'feels knowingly' every moment of Milly's anguish. However, she is so intent upon her dying friend's predicament that she shows no more than a superficial appreciation of Densher's awkward situation. When she promises to judge the rumour of his engagement to Kate solely in terms of his future treatment of her 'princess' (Vol. 20, pp. 292-3), she ignores the possibility that Kate too may have powerful claims on Densher, and that he may, in return, owe her certain 25 26

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'The Metaphysical in Man', in Sense and Non-Sense, pp. 94-6. See M a r t h i n u s Versfeld's t r e a t m e n t of morality a n d moralism {Persons, p p . 8 3 , 9 6 - 8 ) . T h e s e ideas h a v e been fully e x a m i n e d in relation b o t h t o What Maisie Knew a n d to The Ambassadors (in Chapters 1 and 2).

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loyalties. The intensity which the relationship between the lovers has achieved during those weeks in Venice, and the special nexus of private values which it has created, mean that it cannot be disregarded in an instant. Once again, the fabric of the novel is built out of the interlocking of two uneasily competitive, opposed points of view. In her unqualified devotion to Milly, her dedication to the suffering and the courage of the particular individual, Susie can spare no sympathy for the strain of the lovers' predicament. The shadow of an impending death obscures even the most sacred pledges of the living. At the same time, Densher's faith in the abstract standard places him at an immediate disadvantage; his evasions and rationalizations have ensnared him, and he invites the most powerful assault of the American woman's single-mindedness. In fact, Mrs Stringham's visit has a salutary effect because it exposes Densher's indecisiveness, his failure to place his relationship with Milly on a satisfactory footing, and to reach some sort of resolution with Kate. It also points up his disabling fear of himself (Vol. 20, pp. 281—2); he is, characteristically, wary of acting as Susan has done, and of harnessing all his energies towards the attainment of a single concrete objective. Most of all, he is alarmed at the susceptibility to evasion which has led him by steady steps to his present impasse.27 Now the discordant elements in his situation press themselves upon his notice; he is forced to call a halt, and to contemplate the unpleasantness of the choices before him. Not only has he felt the compromising force of Susan's moral courage and achievement; he has also been subjected to Eugenio's disconcerting view of him as a common fortune-hunter (Vol. 20, pp. 257—8) — and it is undeniable that there is considerable justice in this assessment. Finally, Densher must submit himself to Sir Luke's wise and searching scrutiny. Although he goes to meet the great doctor in a spirit of rueful recognition of his humiliation, he is still trapped within a network of vague general formulations and too uncertain to abandon his uneasily defensive posture. It would be an adventure to break away, to depart, to go back, above all, to London, and tell Kate Croy he had done so; but there was something of the merely, the almost meanly, obliged and involved sort in his going on as he was. That was the effect in particular of Mrs Stringham's visit, which had 27

Densher's fear of himself suggests a number of parallels with the behaviour of Sir Claude in What Maisie Knew, especially as Sir Claude has a habit of resorting to evasion at times of stress.

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left him with such a taste in his mouth of what he could n't do. It had made this quantity clear to him, and yet had deprived him of the sense, the other sense, of what, for a refuge, he possibly could. (Vol. 20, p. 295) If James's explicit presentation of this movement of self-examination gives one indication of a process of growing awareness and critical responsiveness in Densher, another is provided by the young man's decision actively to rechart the course of his relationship with Kate. When they come to strike their bargain, he is determined to exert his will: he agrees to pursue his chances of marriage to Milly, on condition that she will visit him at his rooms in secret. Densher's demand is symptomatic of a painfully growing sexual frustration, yet it also throws light on a deeply seated psychological malady; he needs proof of reciprocity, of the intimate reality of his union with Kate. The formalities of attendance at Palazzo Leporelli, and the perpetual sham of his public appearances, have begun to cast doubt upon the stable persistence of his exclusively private realm. By a single act he wants to give it substance, to reassure himself through justifying his faith in his lover. Thus he experiences a surge of relief at Kate's direct acknowledgement of his request, an acknowledgement that is untainted by any self-indulgent pretence of shock or outrage. There was more to come - everything; he had by no means, with his companion, had it all out. Yet what he was possessed of was real - the fact that she had n't thrown over his lucidity the horrid shadow of cheap reprobation. Of this he had had so sore a fear that its being dispelled was in itself of the nature of bliss. The danger had dropped... So far she was good for what he wanted. (Vol. 20, pp. 201-2) Nonetheless, there is a carefully placed suggestion that a concealed motive strengthens Densher's purpose, and that he himself is not fully conscious of the intense emotional pressures which influence him. After the long succession of delays and disappointments, he needs to prove the reality of his relationship with Kate by subduing her; that submission alone can confirm the power of his will. Moreover, this is to serve as his opportunity for repaying the ' wondrous London girl' for reducing him to a helpless counter in the game of policy. The strained tone of the Venetian encounters contrasts awkwardly with the harmony and trust of those early meetings in Kensington Gardens. There can be no achievement of a genuine reciprocity in the face of such self-interest and compulsion; when the lovers at last agree to consummate their relationship, it is already irreparably flawed.

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This fine tension explains Densher's obsession with that single event, long after Kate has left Italy. It is not that he questions her calm compliance or the delight of the consummation itself; yet the lovers' moment of closest union remains somehow furtive and false. Densher's possessiveness emphasizes that they are trapped within their tiny private sphere, and even its security has been pierced by his contrived importation of a system of trading strengths and advantages, which disconcertingly resembles the fondness for barter at Lancaster Gate. To restore both confidence and order, he must idealize and embalm his experience of communion with Kate. James deftly captures the air of exaltation which interfuses his private existence, and which increases the strain that the young man experiences in his questionable public role. This also prefigures the way in which Milly's memory will be deprived of all ordinary reference, and converted into a revered abstraction, a myth. [The recollection of Kate's visit] played for him — certainly in this prime afterglow - the part of a treasure kept at home in safety and sanctity, something he was sure of finding in its place when, with each return, he worked his heavy old key in the lock. The door had but to open for him to be with it again and for it to be all there; so intensely there that, as we say, no other act was possible to him than the renewed act, almost the hallucination, of intimacy. Wherever he looked or sat or stood, to whatever aspect he gave for the instant the advantage, it was in view as nothing begotten of time or of change could be, or ever would... (Vol. 20, pp. 236-7) During this haunted period, Densher is making scrupulously regular calls at Palazzo Leporelli, too. Because Milly persists in her bad faith, and continues to appear as the 'dove', he is unprotestingly drawn into the web of complicity. Like all the others, he acquiesces in the comforting belief that every possible measure is being taken to ensure her happiness, that it is unnecessary to confront unpalatable facts. But this does not mean, to borrow the exaggerated language of Sallie Sears's commentary, that he enjoys being a ' blue-eyed darling' without realizing that he is actually 'a serpent' (The Negative Imagination, p. 93). There are occasions on which Milly's very kindness embarrasses him; she is too compliant, too eagerly sympathetic, in settling that he stays in Venice because 'he has to' (Vol. 20, p. 249). Then Densher is further humiliated by his stream of convenient lies, and by the falsity of his relations with the American heiress, which smack of blatant cynicism. He is compelled to ' feel knowingly' the poverty and indignity of his present life, in which he

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can keep faith neither with her nor with his lover; and the effect of such moments of self-criticism is cumulative. Moreover, Milly's love and generosity - as well as her human liability to error - penetrate the dovelike pose. Her influence becomes the more potent when her complex personality triumphs over her play of badfaith. On the days when she refuses to meet with him, the young journalist is nudged towards an imaginative appreciation of the terror with which she regards her approaching death. In the climate of this ultimate reality, Densher's reaction is most revealing, especially in relation to his sense of the general conspiracy of bad faith. It was a conspiracy of silence, as the cliche Vent, to which no one had made an exception, the great smudge of mortality across the picture, the shadow of pain and horror, rinding in no quarter a surface of spirit or of speech to reflect it. ' The mere aesthetic instinct of mankind!' - our young man had more than once, in the connexion, said to himself; letting the rest of the proposition drop, but touching again thus sufficiently on the outrage even to taste involved in one's having to see. (Vol. 20, pp. 298-9) It is characteristic that Densher should hang back when the stern test comes. As usual, he finds it easier to blur the picture by dwelling on aesthetic abstractions; but he cannot avoid acknowledging the existence of an over-riding terror. A fuller context is given to this heightened perception of mortality by Merleau-Ponty's searching remarks about the consciousness of death under everyday conditions. Once again, James's narrative captures the precise colouration of a primordial apprehension: this same thinking nature which produces in me a superabundance of being opens the world to me through a perspective, along with which there comes to me the feeling of my contingency, the dread of being outstripped, so that, although I do not manage to encompass my death in thought, I nevertheless live in an atmosphere of death in general, and there is a kind of essence of death always on the horizon of my thinking. In short, just as the instant of my death is a future to which I have not access, so I am necessarily destined never to experience the presence of another person to himself. {Phenomenology of Perception, p. 364)

It is obvious that it is impossible for anyone to experience another person's immediate self-awareness; but some form of understanding by analogy is quite feasible, and a particularly close empathy can be established under stress. Moreover, Densher and Milly do not, in the end, have the normal consciousness of death. Rather than being a menacing unknown, an unforeseeable rending of the smooth fabric of

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life, it becomes an overwhelming presence. To apply a phrase coined by Heidegger, who discusses the phenomenon of death with considerable penetration, the element of the c not-yet' has been removed from the sensibility of the two friends (see Being and Time, p. 303). They are made to 'feel knowingly' that one particular death cannot be outstripped, and that Milly will have to bow to her sentence. Densher's last interview with her gives him a deeply moving sense of her desperate struggle against her own fear. His perception of Milly's sustained compassion towards him implants in the young man an altered sensitivity to his responsibilities, for she has shown him an exceptionally fine way of taking up the challenge of both private and public existence. It is in the light of these transforming realizations that Densher would have acknowledged the authority of the ultimate test and felt compelled to break off his engagement to Kate, had he denied their pledge at this final, and personally taxing, meeting with Milly (Vol. 20, pp. 325-6). Since Heidegger attributes a central place in his philosophical investigations to man's relation to death, another of his pertinent insights uncovers the full significance of those last encounters at Palazzo Leporelli. Heidegger argues that the apprehension of death can give man an acute perception of his ownmost possibility, of the fullest potential of his being for free choice, free action, and the grasping of personal promise. This confrontation with an ultimate end to existence should precipitate the individual into an honest search for all that life has to offer, for everything that will enrich his consciousness (Being and Time, pp. 306-7). For Milly the moment of conclusive trial comes too late, since it is postponed by her persistent practice ofbadfaith; yet her response shows something of the force of this transforming recognition. And, partially and by analogy, Densher shares in her revelation. This makes it especially painful and ironic that he and Kate should fail to appreciate a vital aspect of Milly's refusal to demand an accurate account of his situation. The dramatic and philosophical logic of the novel suggests that it is not simply a case of the dying girl's placing her love for Densher higher than the exposure of a disfiguring fact. It is also that her final gesture is aimed at leaving him free, free to accomplish his ownmost possibility, free after so many expedient evasions to find happiness and satisfaction in his association with Kate. Milly endeavours to pass on the spark of life to those closest to her, even though her own capacity for joy has been lost.

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The extent to which Densher has actually been changed by his experience at Venice is given dramatic shape when he and Kate meet in Chelsea on Christmas Day. They face each other over Milly's unopened letter. She bent her eyes hard a moment to the letter, from which her hand still stayed itself. 'You absolutely desire me to take it?' '1 absolutely desire you to take it.' 'To do what I like with it?' 'Short of course of making known its terms. It must remain - pardon my making the point - between you and me.' She had a last hesitation, but she presently broke it. 'Trust me.' Taking from him the sacred script she held it a little while her eyes again rested on those fine characters of Milly's that they had shortly before discussed. 'To hold it,' she brought out, 'is to know.' ' Oh I know!' said Merton Densher. 'Well then if we both do - !' She had already turned to the fire, nearer to which she had moved, and with a quick gesture had jerked the thing into the flame. He started — but only half— as to undo her action: his arrest was as prompt as the latter had been decisive. He only watched, with her, the paper burn; after which their eyes again met. 'You'll have it all,' Kate said, 'from New York.' (Vol. 20, pp. 386-7) This conversation has the formal tone of many of the discussions in Kensington Gardens, yet there is an underlying current of nervousness, of strained intimacy. In entrusting the letter to Kate, Densher is keeping his side of their bargain, since he acknowledges her right to any benefits which may flow from his relationship with Milly. Besides recognizing her material claims, he also pays tribute to Kate, the woman - she is to hold the only substantial proof of his deeply treasured exchanges with the dying girl. Densher wants his lover to feel Milly's beneficent influence and to construe it as somehow cementing and sanctifying their own bond. Yet this movement towards sensitive understanding, like Densher's part in the bargain, also has a darker side. The ceremony with the letter takes on the character of a trial, an examination of Kate's 'goodness'; for Densher is anxious to establish whether she has become solemn about money, whether in his absence she may have been converted to Mrs Lowder's creed. After the complex and daring sequence of shrewd guesses and careful manipulations, her reference to hearing from New York drops with heavy finality. His fears appear to have been confirmed, as she settles upon the certainty of Milly's material gift.

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At the same time, this scene betrays a failure of perception on Densher's part. The letter cannot conceivably embody for Kate the rich significance which it holds for him; any such assumption would imply that she had shared every one of his interviews with their American friend - and that his courting Milly had not caused his lover the slightest pang. It is natural for Kate to regard the gift as the justification of her efforts, and the symbol of her sustained Tightness in following a roundabout course. At last, she and Densher seem to be on the brink of achieving everything, so that Kate's curious intention of charity has, in its own way, received its reward from the 'dove 5 . Then there is the force of her immediate circumstances, for James provides a setting very like the dinginess of Chirk Street at the opening of the novel. Kate, with her supreme 'talent' and eagerness for life, now has as a backdrop her sister's ugly and overcrowded home; she must attempt to meet the sudden contraction of her universe. Even Kate's imagination falters at the task before her. In the face of Marion's depressing regime, with her father weeping hollowly upstairs, she must turn over the fundamental question of survival. Her predicament recalls Milly's on the day of that transforming visit to Regent's Park; Kate has become the 'poor girl - with her rent to pay', although she presents a composed exterior. Within this context, Densher's determination to exercise his will, and to set his test, can only emphasize the reversal of their former positions of power. His new confidence highlights the way in which she has been reduced, and his probing for the truth of her reactions presses her the harder. Even Densher's pity for his lover in her painful predicament as ' a distinguished stranger... who was making the best of a queer episode and a place of exile' is a subtly compromising touch; it implies that his protean Kate is losing her command of her wide variety of engaging social roles, that she is shrinking to match her narrow conditions (Vol. 20, pp. 363-5). However, one of Kate's comments places this encounter in a new perspective. 'You've had to take yourself in hand. You've had to do yourself violence,' she warns Densher (Vol. 20, p. 386). This incident occurs after the scenes of sentimental contemplation, in which the young man and Aunt Maud venerate his contact with Milly (Vol. 20, pp. 342-3); and it naturally precedes his phase of mourning for the loss of the letter (Vol. 20, pp. 395-6). Densher accuses Kate, through his test, of tending towards solemnity about material benefits; but it emerges that he is growing increasingly solemn about Milly's memory.

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From this point of view his redemption of his pledge to Kate - to whom he is still profoundly attracted - takes on the quality of a violation. His developing ability for engaging creatively with phenomena (whether social or psychological) and his newlydiscovered decisiveness are turned negatively inwards, towards the enshrinement of an idealized memory.28 Once again, the insulating fascination with the abstract reasserts itself, and draws Densher away from the uncertainties of his day-to-day existence. And his immersion in the misty atmosphere of worship widens the emotional gap between himself and his lover, who feels with peculiar sharpness the dreariness of her daily routine in Chelsea. These changes in the lovers' intellectual attitudes, and in the defining quality of their emotional life, are reflected in the manner of their parting. It is Kate, in fact, who overcomes any personal weakness, and advances beyond her restrictive circumstances. When the demand presents itself, she is prepared to renounce Milly's money. Ironically, she justifies her hesitations and machinations by proving palpably that her relationship with Densher, far from being merely 'contingent', is her ultimate concern. Under the threat of what she believes to be the loss of a union of inestimable value, the greatest sacrifices become possible. This response underlines the inadequacy of Granville H.Jones's argument that Kate is consumed with her desire for wealth, and that she would have been equally content to marry either Lord Mark or Densher - provided that her prospective husband had inherited Milly's fortune.29 Yet the possibility that most deeply disturbs her is her perception that Densher may have fallen 'in love' with Milly's memory (Vol. 20, pp. 404-5); she is afraid that he may have committed himself to preserving the image of the dead girl's generosity in such a way that the secure basis of his relationship with her will be eroded. And Densher does, indeed, fall short of Kate's sacrifice, for he persists in clinging to his prized record of the past. In spite of the events at Palazzo Leporelli, in spite of his acquired recognition of the limitations of abstract conceptualizing and the disengaged substitute for existence that it produces, he is drawn back into the realm of detached thought. Moreover, he 28

29

Graham comments perceptively on Densher's susceptibility to this sort of introspection, and on his fondness for this kind of communion with the past (see Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment, pp. 224-5, 229~3°)» Granville H . J o n e s , Henry James's Psychology of Experience ( T h e H a g u e : M o u t o n , 1975), p. 174.

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perversely dedicates himself to the service of a myth, rather than reacting to the anguish and triumph of an actual life. The conclusion of the novel shows the efforts of the young lovers running hopelessly into the sands of self-imposed loneliness and frustrated fulfilment. Holland sensitively notes that the closing movement of the work conveys a profound sense of waste; the *mightbe' has been cancelled, and the 'might-have-been' absorbs the range of human potentiality {The Expense oj Vision, pp. 326—7). However, it is not the waste of the lovers' union that sets the tone, for the treacherous flaws in their relationship have been exposed, subtly but steadily, throughout the course of the action. It is rather that Densher has misinterpreted the significance of Milly's message. Instead of seizing upon her energy, her curiosity about life, and her capacity for touching others, he self-destructively repeats her mistake of solemnity; thus he denies his ownmostpossibility. Her effort is spoilt because he will not accept the gift of his freedom, and enter energetically into his experience; instead, he chooses to adopt his rigid pose of worship. In fact, Kate is again the one with the flexible clear-sightedness to find the words which chillingly describe the lovers' irremediable break: 'We shall never be again as we were!' (Vol. 20, p. 405). Densher's solemnity will not allow them to build the shared structures of reciprocal trust; he is left on his own, strengthened by his new resolve, yet strangely emasculated. The tragic potential of the work is rooted in this sense of baulked effort and disfigured intention. While The Wings of the Dove provides a splendid picture of the iridescent surface of manners, it also delves deeply beneath that surface, in order to expose the fundamental patterns of interaction between the self and society. Under the influence ofdifferance, the novel's linguistic exchanges steadily uncoil increasingly complex systems of meaning. The characters become actors who must face the challenge of defining - or the risk of distorting — their personal identity through their dramatic performance. And the novelist himself is not only an entertaining story-teller, but a creative philosopher, too; he has imagined in fully concrete fashion what it means to take up the burden of social responsibility, how the unavoidable restrictions, as well as the attractive opportunities, of communal living may contribute towards the shaping of each personality. From a more specialized point of view, this interpretation of The Wings of the Dove offers a complete imaginative working out of concepts which are given only a spare, theoretical outline in

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the corresponding phenomenological accounts. Sartre's little stories about the demands of social role-playing, for instance, and his description of the exercise of bad faith, are transformed into a movingly detailed individual history as the aspirations and struggles of Milly Theale evolve. Without any explicit access to precise technical terminology, James has provided an arresting fictional commentary on the tension and anguish which such states of consciousness may produce. Moreover, his novel shows the development of consequences which are only latent in Sartre's argument, for it follows the uneasy spread of badfaith from one of his characters to the others, until the entire framework of charged communication vibrates under the strain of nervous suppressions and unvoiced suspicions. But a work like The Wings of the Dove does not confine itself to a consideration of the merely negative and oppressive; on the contrary there is a vital respect in which James's vision lies closer to Merleau-Ponty's relaxed philosophical astuteness than to Sartre's warily distrustful approach to human phenomena. For the novel is, in its paradoxically near-tragic way, a celebration of the attitude of 'wonder in the face of the world': it embodies James's recognition of Milly's intense creative energy, and his appreciation of her fine capacity for generosity, for charity, and for love. Its failures thus become a measure of the possible, if unfulfilled, range of individual achievement. Its philosophical refinement extends even to capturing the elusive sub-text of the 'might-have-been'.

CHAPTER 4

The Spoils of Poynton; experiments in subjectivity and truth

By contrast with the rich social tapestry of The Wings of the Dove James's leisurely, if critical, unfolding of the interlocking patterns of private aspiration or commitment and communal pressure or support - The Spoils of Poynton presents a far sparser canvas. The structure of the novel is highly formalized, its cast of characters small, and the central problem of the narrative (at first sight) stretched and squeezed in a concerted attempt to produce the highest intensity of dramatic and epistemological interest. However, if this novel is not among the finest of James's achievements, it exerts a powerful claim on the reader's attention, both because it shows the author's restlessly searching thought in process, and because it throws a sharp light on several of his leading philosophical preoccupations. Moreover, the clearly delimited scope of this work makes it easier to move from an examination of James's treatment of the tension between individual development and social enactment or realization, towards a deeper probing of the nature of the self. Because The Spoils is one of James's experimental fictions of the 1890s (and a particularly problematic text, at that), he relies heavily on his technique of shrewdly plotted story-telling to probe and define the contours of individual consciousness. His approach is tentative, yet consistently self-aware, not unlike his brother William's strategy of deploying a sharplyconceived narrative to unravel the dense tangles of metaphysical or ethical enquiry. For Henry, the self most revealingly exposes itself not abstractly in accordance with predetermined psychological norms, but existentially: in terms of its aspirations, efforts and damaging miscalculations. Such varying patterns of selective self-expression become the theme of The Spoils of Poynton. This is, in effect, a drama of exploration and partial discovery, of 136

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risk and loss. Against the backdrop of personal struggle, moral and aesthetic valuations are displayed in a series of constantly changing relations; they merge and compete, enforce and undermine each other, as the conflict of the novel draws Fleda Vetch into closer and more convoluted transactions with her companions. If the question of judgement and the personal response is investigated in the most general terms through Strether's dilemma in The Ambassadors, it is now possible to assign a more concrete content to the notion of truth itself. For Henry James displays arresting affinities with the Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, who rejects the illusion of truth either as mere logical validity or as vast intellectual system-building. Instead, Kierkegaard delights in irony, in complexity, in the finely selected anecdotal illustration. He sees truth, properly understood, as an existential phenomenon; in this regard, his contentions cry out for extended fictional enactment and examination. For poised and subtle as his theoretical discriminations are, they depend upon more concrete amplification. Of particular relevance is Kierkegaard's concept of'inwardness 5 , which can be given its full resonance only through the medium of a novel.1 In The Spoils of Poynton this notion serves vividly to clarify the intricacies of moral choice and sensitively discriminating responsibility which tax James's imaginative ingenuity. The effort towards achieving and sustaining a vital 'inwardness', which is regarded as a delicately integrated unity of freely flowing feeling and critical self-consciousness, stands at the heart of Kierkegaard's writing; it lends urgency to his attempts at calling forth a willing self-assessment in his readers. One of his major concerns is, in fact, the steady development of the individual personality, the refinement of each person's ability for creative self-awareness through the determined striving for a deeper understanding of his situation as a temporally defined creature, who nonetheless possesses great spiritual potential. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard rounds off a long, and sometimes bewildering, discussion of the dynamics of subjectivity by setting out the essential requirements for the subjective thinker: 'imagination and feeling, dialectics in existential inwardness, together with passion'.2 The separation of 1

2

See Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Dread, trans. Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N J . : Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 131-4, 124-6. See Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 312-13, and the detailed commentary ranging over pp. 267-322.

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feeling and imagination from 'existential inwardness' is at first puzzling, as these qualities would seem to be shaping powers within 'inwardness', as Kierkegaard describes it. The solution, however, arises out of Kierkegaard's emphasis on the dialectical aspect of subjective thinking; it is not only governed by the compelling rhythms of personal experience as conscientiously lived and carefully registered - it is also self-reflexive. Each person is repeatedly drawn back to the scrutiny of his own impulses and motives, presuppositions and cherished conclusions. In this way, his thought not only stems from his subjectivity, but is continually remoulding that subjectivity. Moreover, if so taxing a project is to be diligently followed for an entire lifetime, passion becomes an indispensable aid to the processes of consciousness; for such a passion entails not only enthusiasm and commitment, but also the resilient endurance of prolonged suffering. Finally, passion gives the individual the strength to encounter the paradoxical within existence, and to strain his capacities to the limit in confronting baffling obstacles, or wrestling with the anguish produced by the struggles of consciousness itself. The subjective thinker, therefore, comes to stand at the opposite pole from the detached system-builder, the philosopher who has withdrawn from his involvement with the demands and uncertainties of this own existence into a haven of abstract contemplation, in which it is only too easy to find oneself reconstructing experience on conveniently logical and coherent principles. On the other hand, the subjective thinker's aim is to find his truth in existence and, by accepting the challenge embodied in his human situation, to learn to exist 'in truth'. In this sense, truth is subjectivity. The preceding account of Kierkegaard's existential view of truth as subjectivity is, to some extent, a reinterpretation of his approach. It relies upon Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological method of drawing out the threads implicit in a given line of argument, and weaving them into fresh patterns of meaning — patterns which do not simply obscure or supersede the original endeavour, but develop its latent potentialities and insert them into a sequence of new, yet related, philosophical enquiries. This response to Kierkegaard does not, therefore, give prominence to the intricate modulations of his religious perception, although his theological inventiveness and deep Christian conviction are plainly significant in determining the characteristic content and tone of his writing. This new version of his theory of subjective thinking is prompted instead by Kierkegaard's

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ironic stance in his pseudonymous texts (including the Postscript), by his adoption of the role of the Socratic gadfly that stings the reader into independent intellectual and ethical activity. Because Kierkegaard deliberately distances himself from his published manuscripts by assuming a series of masks, and closely linking each of his enquiries to the situation and beliefs of the persona who conducts the investigation, his insights become available within a testing dramatic context, which once again underscores his predilection for the fictional - or pseudo-fictional - mode of composition.3 At the same time, one of the striking features of Kierkegaard's writing is his concern with the individual qua individual, the lonely moral agent who bears an ineluctable responsibility for the quality of his own decisions and the course of his own life. Two of Kierkegaard's guiding themes are the intense 'inwardness' of the instant of choice, and the delightfully unnerving attraction of exercising one's freedom.4 Once the ideas of freedom and choice are given such importance, the concept of truth as subjectivity also acquires a greater stability. For truth becomes a dynamic aspect of the evolution of the individual life, a measure of each agent's success in sustaining a passionate dialectic of inwardness' from moment to moment in the face of a disconcerting range of possibilities. If he is not to evade the hazards of choice - and Kierkegaard clearly excludes idle caprice by his definition of the projected 'either/or' - he must take up the burden of his existence in full self-awareness. This theoretical position, however, requires still further elucidation. In the first instance, Kierkegaard's desire to elicit an active response from his readers does not reduce his pseudonymous works to the status of polemical tirades or inspirational tracts. He relies heavily, as I have already argued, on the imaginative creation of fictions and develops to a subtle degree the techniques of ironic distancing; this means that he is fully aware of both the demands and the advantages of literary conventions. And this approach makes his insights especially pertinent to other forms of literary endeavour, 3

4

In Praxis and Action (London: Duckworth, 1972), Richard J. Bernstein provides a concise, yet very helpful, discussion of Kierkegaard's complicated and original adaptation of ironic and Socratic techniques (pp. 96-100, 118-22). Bernstein also offers some illuminating comments on the role of passion in subjective thinking (pp. 112-13). Warren K. A. Thompson provides an excellent assessment of the positive contribution, as well as the failings, of Kierkegaard's treatment of moral problems in 'A Brief Evaluation of Kierkegaard as Ethical Critic', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 5 (1974),

219-32. This article includes an informative section on the question of'ethical isolation'.

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especially to an examination of the complex conflicts within the consciousness of a character like Fleda Vetch. As James himself notes in his preface to The Spoils o/Poynton, 'the progress and march of my tale became and remained that of [Fleda's] understanding' (The Art of the Novel, p. 128). Moreover, Kierkegaard's theory of subjective thinking can amply accommodate the notion of a richly evolving personal history. To take a useful example, Judge William in Either/Or emphasizes the importance of resisting the charms of an undirected freedom; each man, he considers, should repeatedly 'repent himself back into himself, at once confronting and transforming his past.5 The concept of repentance naturally carries a religious connotation for Kierkegaard. For the purposes of this discussion, however, it points up the value which Kierkegaard attaches to continuity in the efforts of subjectivity - and indicates that the crucial moment of choice is always part of a steadily unfolding process in the search for existential truth. Finally, an appreciation of the functioning of repentance again throws into relief Kierkegaard's preoccupation with dialectical patterns; the truth of subjectivity is not the truth of immediate experience, but rather the truth of reflection: or, more accurately, self-reflection. One major defect in Kierkegaard's presentation of truth as subjectivity is, nonetheless, his insistence on the practical isolation of the moral agent. For if ethics is to have any breadth of application, it must progress beyond solipsistic separation and recognize the relevance of shared projects or of the intricate interactions which constantly occur between one person and another. An extremely helpful assessment of the relationship between the individual predicament and the generation of an intersubjective community of interest and effort is offered by Merleau-Ponty in his essay on 'The Metaphysical in Man'. As a starting point, he considers the unique perception which each human being has of his own experience: It means two things to say that our experience is our own: both that it is not the measure of all imaginable being in itself and that it is nonetheless coextensive with all being of which we can form a notion. This double sense of the cogito is the basic fact of metaphysics: I am sure that there is being - on the condition that I do not seek another sort of being than being-for-me. (P- 93) 5

For the development of this view, see Either/Or, trans. Walter Lowrie, rev. Howard A. Johnson (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), Vol. 2, pp. 220, 251-2, 262.

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He then proceeds, however, to integrate this unique awareness into a wider structure of reciprocal relationships, which are shown to exert a formative influence upon the constitution of specially privileged self-consciousness: when I say that I see someone, it means that I am moved by sympathy for his behaviour of which I am a witness and which holds my own intentions by furnishing them with a visible realization. It is our very difference, the uniqueness of our experience, which attests to our strange ability to enter into others and re-enact their deeds. Thus is founded a truth which, as Pascal said, we can neither reject nor completely accept. Metaphysics is the deliberate intention to describe this paradox of consciousness and truth, exchange and communication... From the moment I recognize that my experience, precisely insofar as it is my own, makes me accessible to what is not myself, that I am sensitive to the world and to others, all the beings which objective thought placed at a distance draw singularly nearer to me. Or, conversely, I recognize my affinity with them; I am nothing but an ability to echo them, to understand them, to respond to them. My life seems absolutely individual and absolutely universal to me. (pp. 93-4) Against this background, the concept of truth as subjectivity ceases to suggest isolation in a negative or solipsistic sense. In this setting, it is quite feasible to envisage the exercise of the sort of moral approach which is described by Marthinus Versfeld (Persons, pp. 81-98). Human lives are established as distinct, yet inextricably linked. The guiding principle of a morality without rigid rules - that of showing the deepest respect for the rights and needs of all human beings, as human beings - thus becomes an index of self-respect, as much as of a freely articulated, sympathetic responsiveness to others. An important consequence of this approach to the dynamics of subjectivity is that truth is regarded as at once concrete and vital; it is reunited with the rhythms of lived experience. Nor is this concern with experiential accessibility to the notion of truth an absorbing preoccupation for existential phenomenology alone. To bring the problem into a very close historical and cultural relation to Henry James's literary endeavour, his brother, William, also rejects the notion of an all-embracing, rationalistically defined Truth, which is somehow separate from the search for truth in any person's ordinary daily transactions.6 Instead, he adopts an 'ambulatory' view of the processes of verification: 6

See 'Pragmatism's Conception of Truth', in 'Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking' and' The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to " Pragmatism " ' (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 95-113.

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Cognition, whenever we take it concretely, means determinate 'ambulation,' through intermediaries, from a terminus a quo to, or towards, a terminus ad quern. As the intermediaries are other than the termini, and connected with them by the usual associative bonds (be these 'external' or be they logical, i.e., classificatory, in character), there would appear to be nothing especially unique about the processes of knowing. They fall wholly within experience; and we need use, in describing them, no other categories than those which we employ in describing other natural processes.7 In other words, there is no spectacular transition from the empirical reality to an appropriate, ideally matching, truth. This 'popular' belief (which William James argues is also the conception of many of his contemporary epistemologists) is based upon an abstraction from the active methods by which truths are forged. The relevant processes have been ' eviscerat[ed]... down to their essential skeletons or outlines'; and this, in turn, leaves the impression that the establishment of truth is not 'ambulatory', but 'saltatory' - that is, dependent upon the sudden ' leap' from idea to corresponding object. Moreover, the fact that certain groups of truths become readily available for repeated use, so that it is not necessary on each individual occasion to repeat the entire programme of 'ambulation', enforces the assumption that truth is, by its very nature, 'saltatory' (PP. 245-8).8 William James's contrast between the 'ambulatory' and the 'saltatory', of course, applies to a wider cross-section of experience than the predominantly personal and ethical undertakings explored by Kierkegaard. Merleau-Ponty's treatment of the metaphysical in man helps, however, to connect the two approaches, and to grant a role to the theoretical (though not the bleakly abstract) interest in founding truth. If truth is intersubjective as well as subjective, it becomes available to a variety of individuals engaged in a variety of projects. At the same time, William James, like Kierkegaard, is eager to focus attention upon the specially subjective form of truth. In considering the ways in which man is able to 'make the truth', he takes the example of a climber in the Alps, who is unexpectedly forced into a dangerous position. His only chance of escape is by making a frightening leap to safety. If he musters his courage, and 7

8

William James, 'A Word More about Truth', in 'Pragmatism' and e The Meaning of Truth\ p. 247. Richard A. Hocks provides a detailed investigation of the bearing of William James's concept of ' ambulatory relations' upon Henry's practice as a novelist (Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, pp. 38-47).

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concentrates all his composite energies on the task before him, he will succeed; if he panics and loses control over himself, he will fail. In this way, ' there are... cases where faith creates its own verification\ and the will

to achieve a predetermined objective 'makes the truth 5 . 9 William James, too, shows an acute awareness of the power exerted by the dialectic of existential 'inwardness'; he too recognizes that there is a deeply subjective element in the shaping of truth. Lastly, his little tale of the mountaineer in the Alps touches upon the dynamic and dramatic nature of truth: truth as a search, truth as a struggle, truth as a record of the evolution of consciousness. All this William James encompasses by devising a suitable philosophical fable; his methods are not as remote from Henry's as either might have liked to believe.

11

When Fleda Vetch returns to London in Chapter 6 of The Spoils of Poynton, her capacity for sustaining the dialectic of existential ' inwardness' has already been severely tested. There is a teasing sense in which she can only find her truth in deception, for her plan of concealment mediates a number of simpler truths. Thus her joy in the beauty of Poynton, her gratitude to, and friendship for, Mrs Gereth must be poised against her love for Owen. And that love, in its turn, must be qualified by Owen's position as an engaged man — engaged to a woman whose tastes and values are obviously at odds with Fleda's deepest personal convictions. Such an awareness of a division against herself naturally complicates the processes of reflection, and makes it increasingly difficult for her to do justice both to her own needs or feelings and to those of the Gereths. Yet Mrs Gereth will not allow Fleda to remain simply as an uninvolved observer of the struggle for the possession of Poynton, in which the son is anxious to claim the house for himself and his prospective bride, while Mrs Gereth resists the dislocation from her past, resists the sacrifice of her splendidly created collection to a young woman who cannot share her aesthetic sensibility. So Fleda is brought forward to avert the disaster, quite ruthlessly presented to Owen as a more suitable wife, as well as an impeccably qualified custodian for the Spoils. Although 9

See ' T h e Sentiment of Rationality', in 'The Will to Believe' and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy and'Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine3 (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), pp. 96-7, and Wild, The Radical Empiricism of William James, pp. 343-5, 352-3-

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Fleda is spared the exposure of her most intimate and vulnerable feelings by Mrs Gereth's single-minded intensity and Owen's simple tolerance, this scene inevitably alters the balance of relationships within the group. 10 Fleda's positive commitments to her friends are merged with the contrary aim of protecting her secret, of neither exploiting her affection for Owen, nor allowing it to be exploited for Mrs Gereth's purposes. The pressure upon her capacity for 'inwardness ' is tightened still further when she is driven into the role of intermediary between the opposing parties; for her pleasure in Owen's company presses uneasily upon her sympathy for Mrs Gereth's practical insecurity and potential loss. In the opening movement of the novel, James cunningly and deliberately complicates Fleda's predicament, so that the traditional categories of moral evaluation rapidly prove inadequate. It is no longer possible, for instance, for the reader uncritically to endorse the practice of directness and plain speaking, when a clear statement of the susceptibility of Fleda's emotional condition would amount to seeking a tempting personal advantage, and to challenging Mona's socially accepted status as Owen's fiancee. It is no longer feasible simply to suggest that love should be recognized as exerting a far greater coercive power than friendship, or alternatively, that earlier promises should be granted precedence over the growth of later relationships, regardless of the happiness which the latter may seem to hold forth. For Fleda is - to her own cost - conscious not only of Owen's innocent puzzlement and his sense of natural (rather than narrowly legal) rightness in making his claim, but also of Mrs Gereth's defiant, yet courageous, determination not to be uprooted from the setting which she values supremely. In this way, Fleda is confronted with the drama of choice from moment to moment, of forging her own existential truths out of repeated self-reflection. At the same time, the web of intersubjective involvement tightens around her, so that the dialectic of'inwardness' demands respect for her own aspirations, as well as a vivid internalization of the sensitivities and requirements of others. The same sort of action can, therefore, spring from contrary, or even 10

Although he underestimates the influence of Fleda's affection for Owen, Charles Thomas Samuels clearly points to the ironic results produced by Mrs Gereth's blatant offer of the young woman as a prospective wife for her son. It is Mrs Gereth's very openness and insistence that initiate the spiralling pattern of Fleda's concealment (The Ambiguity of Henry James (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971), p. 79).

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contradictory, motives. Fleda's flight into the garden at Poynton, after Mrs Gereth has proposed her as an appropriate wife for Owen, is not merely the impulsive expression of her seething anger, pain and humiliation. It is also a deliberate dissociation of herself from Mrs Gereth's scheme, and so an assertion of her independence and personal trustworthiness. James ironically places and assesses Fleda's translation of her intention into precipitate action by sketching in her encounter with Mona, who immediately suspects that she has ' been sent out to spy'. 11 This twist in the circumstances leads Fleda into an outright misrepresentation: she denies any knowledge of Mrs Gereth's opinions, precisely in order to preserve a separate moral identity, and to prevent herself from being irrevocably cast as Mrs Gereth's candidate and Mona's rival. But this disclaimer, in its turn, draws Mona into a perverse and unguarded revelation of her views on architectural style and domestic convenience. Fleda cannot ignore such disclosures - the vision of these monstrosities 'dismays' her (pp. 33—4) — and so, in her very effort to retain her own integrity of choice, she has provided herself with further damning evidence of Mona's unsuitability as a prospective mistress of Poynton. James's concerted attempts at providing repeated challenges to 'inwardness' and truthfulness seem almost to lead his heroine into an impasse of impossible discriminations. The subtly plotted twists of the story are stretched to the point where the line of philosophical argument risks obscurity. Now Fleda's move to London, by contrast with her spontaneous rush into the garden, involves more obvious traces of evasion and equivocation. She has some justification in arguing that she has not ' like a minion of the law, undertaken to see Mrs Gereth down to the train and locked, in sign of her abdication, into a compartment'. Nor has she 'committed herself to hold Owen indefinitely in dalliance while his mother gain[s] time or work[s] with the spade at a countermine'. Moreover, she has solid grounds for considering her position at Poynton 'false and horrid', while it is also natural for her to resent the imputation from her acquaintances that she is a social parasite (p. 60). The situation which James has created is excessively complicated, and there is very little that Fleda can actually do to resolve the quarrel. If she is subjectively to seek her own truth, it is also temptingly easy to manipulate the evidence, and to create her own 11

Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton, in The Spoils of Poynton,'A London Life', ' The Chaperon' (New York: Scribner's, 1908; rpt. 1976), p. 33.

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self-deception. And, at this point, the philosopher-novelist appears rather bemused, too. Thus Fleda produces the need to help with the arrangements for her sister's wedding not only as a reason, but also as a pretext, for going to London. The 'practical unanimity' among those concerned as to the dignified mode of Mrs Gereth's intended departure from Poynton cannot, under close scrutiny, be regarded as 'practical success' (p. 60). For Fleda has watched Mrs Gereth ' tormentedly... prowling up and down' in the great house, 'comparing incomparables' (p. 57). Nothing has, in effect, been conclusively decided or achieved, and the young woman's uneasiness has grown under the impression that Owen may fear Mona's disapproval of their repeated interviews at Poynton (p. 60). A tender wish not to compromise Owen fuses itself, therefore, with an equally tender wish not to be compromised in his regard. Flight becomes a means of escape from intolerable pressures, and no longer the clearly conceived expression of a responsible choice. The manoeuvre betrays a lapse in the dialectic of inwardness'; it sharply exposes the immense difficulty of continuing to live in the truth of subjectivity. However, Fleda's next escape, after her chance meeting with Owen in Oxford Street, gives in its turn a convincing instance of her capacity for self-awareness, and for accepting the stress of an acutely painful choice. Since Owen has committed himself to marrying Mona, Fleda's only 'inwardly' truthful course at this stage can be to forestall his declaration of gratitude and affection. All the pleasure and the shrinking anguish, the uncertainty and the frustration of the morning's strained wanderings, is summed up in Fleda's last awkward dash across the park. ' Good-bye, Mr Gereth - I must get on!' she declared with a cheerfulness that she felt to be an unnatural grimace. She broke away from him sharply, smiling, backing across the grass and then turning altogether and moving as fast as she could. 'Good-bye, good-bye!' she threw off again as she went, wondering if he would overtake her before she reached the gate; conscious with a red disgust that her movement was almost a run: conscious too of the very confused handsome face with which he would look after her. She felt as if she had answered a kindness with a greatflouncingsnub, but in any case she had got away - though the distance to the gate, her ugly gallop down the Broad Walk, every graceless jerk of which hurt her, seemed endless, (p. 68) James has paced the passage skilfully, adding a touch of grotesque comedy to the rawness of Fleda's emotion. At the same time, he carefully records a subtle blend of moral and aesthetic perception, as

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his heroine observes her own behaviour. Amid the effort of breaking away from Owen, and deliberately cutting herself off from any chance of a morally dubious fulfilment, she commands sufficient detachment to register the ungainliness of her hurrying movement and the slightly ludicrous bewilderment of Owen's response. Her sensitivity to such aesthetic considerations has the dual effect of at once distancing, yet heightening, the urgency of the moral choice. The moment, for all its flurry, deserves extended critical scrutiny for it marks a decisive point in Fleda's personal history; she has on this occasion both clearly and passionately chosen for herself, and is faced with the task of sustaining that choice. Fleda's creative ability to fuse her moral and aesthetic responses, to be totally involved in a situation yet discriminatingly reflective and self-aware, is shown from a different perspective when Mrs Brigstock interrupts her tense interview with Owen at her father's West Kensington home. Fleda takes in Mrs Brigstock's blank, pink face, and tries to identify the motivating intention of her equally featureless mind, which wanders sheeplike, unable to fix upon any distinct objective (pp. 172-3). James's characterization is vivid and cruelly funny, particularly because that characterization is also refracted through Fleda's evaluating consciousness. But the young woman's attitude is not merely one of offensive and superior dismissal.12 It is clear-sighted and cautious (for her own predicament is extremely delicate), yet demonstrably compassionate. There is a comic pity in her deciding that Mona's mother is 'no sort of person at all', for to reach a more favourable conclusion would be sheer hypocrisy. However, this assessment is accompanied by the desire to help Mrs Brigstock's vaguely groping mind towards the courteous refinements which it hopes to encompass. Such a reaction is very different from Mrs Gereth's outright scorn of Waterbath ineptitude and the horrors of Waterbath taste. That kind of dismissiveness, rooted as it is in its own limited, if confidently formulated, aesthetic criteria, is superficial by comparison with Fleda's openness to the subtler modulations of human impressions, and her willingness to adopt and internalize the needs of others. Here subjectivity grows existentially, as it shapes and tests its own version of lived truthfulness. 12

Alan W. Bellringer offers a convincing defence of Fleda's judgements at this point (' The Spoils of Poynton: The "Facts'", Essays in Criticism, 18 (1968), 358-9), and pointedly refutes John Lucas's less sympathetic reading of the scene ('James's Intentions: The Spoils of Poynton', Essays in Criticism, 18 (1968), n o ) .

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James, in fact, shows Fleda confirming that her judgement is unclouded when she later disputes Owen's protective resentment of Mrs Brigstock's manner: ' She's simple and slow, but she's not a fool: I think she treated me on the whole very well' (pp. 184-5). Fleda's determination to arrive at the truth - the truth of her own complex reaction and of Mrs Brigstock's narrow experience - draws strength from her memory of Mrs Gereth's calculatedly insulting treatment of Mona during her disastrous visit to Poynton. Her sense both ofjustice and of Socratic irony is finely tuned; there is no juggling with the truth to suit her personal convenience, for her valuations are formed by the constant interaction of feeling and imagination, under the pressure of sustained self-examination. The major misjudgement in Fleda's dealings with Mrs Brigstock lies in her nervous attempt at easing the strain of terminating their encounter with the ill-conceived joke that she may be like ' one of those bad women in a play' (p. 177). This remark undermines all her previous efforts, because it constitutes a disfiguring failure of shrewdness, sympathy and taste. It is the sort of flippant and ready-made cleverness which takes account neither of Mrs Brigstock's obvious intellectual deficiencies, nor of the dangers of misrepresenting her own emotionally charged situation. Perhaps the most striking instance of Fleda's capacity for integrating reflection, feeling and imagination, for allowing her aesthetic sense to enrich her moral responsiveness, comes in the closing sequence of the novel.13 An ironic reversal of roles has taken place, for Fleda now becomes the teacher of aesthetic discriminations, while Mrs Gereth adopts the attitude of a sceptical, but not unwilling, pupil. So Fleda sees her friend's power of artistic organization unwittingly softened and humanized, coaxed almost against its more penetrating standards into letting the sparse and faded furnishings of Ricks tell the gently pathetic story of the old maiden aunt. What Fleda discovers is ' the impression somehow of something dreamed and missed, something reduced, relinquished, resigned; the poetry, as it were, of something sensibly gone". And this adds to the atmosphere of the small, unremarkable house 'a kind of fourth dimension... a presence, a perfume, a touch... a soul, a story, a life' 13

For further discussion of the ways in which Fleda's aesthetic and moral perceptions interact, so that the different modes of response enhance each other, see James W. Gargano, ' The Spoils of Poynton: Action and Responsibility', Sewanee Review, 69 (1961), 651-2, and Charles Palliser, ' " A Conscious Prize": Moral and Aesthetic Value in The Spoils ofPoynton\ Modern Language Quarterly, 40 (1979), 45.

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(p. 249). Graham perceptively notes both the element of strain in Fleda's attempt at giving a richer resonance to such scant resources, and the urge to convert this physical and spiritual legacy from the old aunt into a metaphor for her own pain and loss {Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment, pp. 156-7). At the same time, this poignant reconciliation of shy beauty with shrunken possibilities, this embracing of the presence of ghosts, represents an act of the profoundest 'inwardness'. It is Fleda's attempt once again to found her life in truth — not to mourn hopelessly and self-indulgently for all that has slipped from her grasp, but to capture the active Husserlian essence of what remains to her. It is a moment of painful choice and, not without difficulty, she accepts the stern task of remoulding herself in accordance with her suffering and her errors. If the return to Ricks provides the catalyst for Fleda's period of fullest self-realization, her reaction to Owen's first incoherent attempt at actually conveying his love for her reveals a very different tendency within her personality. The preceding discussion has already hinted at the growth of such possibilities. Moreover, James's handling of this aspect of the dramatic situation betrays a serious flaw in the construction of the novel as a whole. Once Owen has confronted her at Ricks, and escape from her nagging dilemma is no longer possible, Fleda allows her assessment of the problem to move in two awkwardly divergent directions. On the one hand, she argues that Owen's pledge to Mona is ' so deep and sacred' that he has no right to 'get off easily' (p. 106). For his sake and for hers they must act with 'pride', and Owen must be strengthened and supported under the demands of honouring his promise. This line of reasoning eventually reaches the pitch of her wishing that Owen should prove himself'perfect', as that can constitute the only legitimate basis for happiness (p. 193). On the other hand, James gives the following description of Fleda's thought processes during the interlude of contemplation at Ricks: We may not perhaps too much diminish the merit of [her] generosity if we mention that it could take the flight we are considering just because really, with the telescope of her long thought, Fleda saw what might bring her out of the wood. Mona herself would bring her out; at the least Mona possibly might. Deep down plunged the idea that even should she achieve what she had promised Owen there was still the contingency of Mona's independent action. She might by that time, under stress of temper or of whatever it was that was now moving her, have said or done the things there is no patching

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up. If the rupture should come from Waterbath they might all be happy yet. (p.

108)

Fleda's determination not to emerge aggressively as Mona's rival, together with her eagerness to encourage Owen in recognizing his commitments, while also persuading Mrs Gereth to restore the Spoils to Poynton, gives convincing proof of her considered generosity. Nor is it merely devious for her to draw comfort from the perception that Mona's 'independent action' may provide just the kind of resolution to the conflict that she and Owen would welcome. But the terms of her internal debate have drifted too far apart, and the dialectical approach to experience breaks down. A sincerely fostered regard for her own existential truthfulness demands that she, too, should keep faith and avoid any form of self-serving interference. It does not oblige her to exalt the already rigorous constraints of the situation into a test of her moral subtlety and Owen's powers of loyal endurance. James himself qualifies his heroine's stance in this way: 'Even in the ardour of her meditation Fleda remained in sight of the truth that it would be an odd result of her magnanimity to prevent her friend's shaking off a woman he disliked' (p. 107).14 The drama has reached an important turning point. What James fails adequately to explore through his philosophical fiction is the insidious equivocation involved in Fleda's quietly linking her exquisite scrupulosity to the consoling belief that Mona's ill temper may break the dreary deadlock. Fleda is prepared to make appropriate sacrifices, she will strive for total vindication for herself and Owen — in the secret expectation that the permanent and most taxing sacrifice will never be exacted. She has begun to move in a climate of over-refined, and potentially disorientating, self-deception. It is fully in keeping with the design of the novel as a complex philosophical enquiry that its central consciousness should encounter perplexing difficulties, and that she should seek for delicate and innovative solutions to her problems. The development of the narrative (although sometimes a little forced) depends upon Fleda's wrestling with such challenges, and upon James's accurately modulated tracing of her failures and confusions, as much as her positive achievements of perception and evaluation. The author's treatment 14

It is these convoluted sequences of self-examination and the search for an elevated Tightness which give force to Patrick F. Quinn's view of Fleda as an 'ethical absolutist' ('Morals and Motives in The Spoils of Poynton1, Sewanee Review, 62 (1954), 563-77).

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of this crisis, nonetheless, becomes increasingly confused, because a new pattern of thought is covertly introduced, one which may strongly influence (or even redirect) the course of Fleda's intellectual adventure. In the light of these interpretative strains, it is perhaps helpful critically to qualify the range of existentialist models which have been applied to The Spoils up to this point. If the text exhibits concealed strains, a process of deconstruction seems more apposite than further concept-building. Yet, as Derrida himself acknowledges in Of Grammatology, deconstruction necessarily functions from within the parameters of established literary and philosophical systems. The movements of deconstruction do not destroy structures from the outside. They are not possible and effective, nor can they take accurate aim, except by inhabiting those structures. Inhabiting them in a certain way, because one always inhabits, and all the more when one does not suspect it. Operating necessarily from the inside, borrowing all the strategic and economic resources of subversion from the old structure, borrowing them structurally, that is to say without being able to isolate their elements and atoms, the enterprise of deconstruction always in a certain way falls prey to its own work.15 Deconstruction draws one of its motivating impulses from exposing the logocentric tradition in Western metaphysics, from severely testing the assumption that the workings of rationality are transparent to themselves in the immediate present, and that their deductions may serve as an infallible index of truthfulness. This methodology repeatedly favours the trustworthy internal experience at the expense of the external phenomenon, which is regarded as alien or devoid of validating presence. This, in its turn, tends to produce the classic oppositions which characterize the legacy of familiar philosophy: death is seen as simply exterior to life, ' evil to good, representation to presence, signifier to signified, representer to represented, mask to face, writing to speech' (Of Grammatology, p. 315). Derrida's charge against such theoretical manoeuvres can even be levelled against the preceding account of The Spoils of Poynton, in which truth is defined as subjectivity, and a personally endorsed honesty is set against the prudent accommodation of worldly demands. From this perspective, the intensity of Fleda's inner life is juxtaposed to the grinding restrictions of her external circumstances. 15

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), p. 24.

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However, both James's novel and Kierkegaard's flexible approach to subjectivity do, by their very conception, grant freedom for a liberating play of Derridean differance, with its fruitful dual connotations of ' differing' and 'deferring'. In Of Grammatology, Derrida coins a related term, which promises illuminating applications to questions concerning aesthetics or morality. The French word brisure may be defined either as a 'broken, cracked part', or as the 'hinged articulation of two parts of w o o d - o r metal-work', 'the hinge, the brisure [folding-joint] of a shutter'. La brisure thus gives a single expression 'for designating difference and articulation' (Of Grammatology, p. 65). If logocentric analysis capitalizes upon identifying predominantly differences and sharp breaks, then deconstructive techniques involve an appraisal of the shaping contrasts within an articulated system, or an investigation into the operation ofdifferance. Under this dispensation, 'moral' is no longer starkly opposed to ' immoral',' right' to' wrong', or' true' to' false'; all such evaluations are concatenated within the economy ofdifferance. Extended passages in The Spoils ofPoynton, as we have seen, display this kind of resistance to rigid categorization, since discrete judgements or individual episodes derive their full signification only from their place within a continuum of sustained conscious endeavour. Nor is this 'inhabiting' of the available literary structures inimical to the deployment of selected critical procedures which have been drawn from existential phenomenology. Yet James vacillates again and again in his project of strategic textual subversion. He seems, on occasion, almost perversely attracted towards proving Fleda Vetch's 'Tightness' with regard to conventional - as Derrida would call them, ' logocentric' discriminations. The potential for creative deconstruction and philosophical path-finding merely founders. This is probably why the 'telescope of [Fleda's] long thought' is uneasily presented as the instrument of super-refined perception, rather than as the morally and aesthetically ambivalent means of sighting the typical reactions (not to mention the weaknesses) of others. Under the pressure of these narrative inconsistencies, it seems most productive to revert explicitly to the paradigms of constitutive subjectivity which have so far served to elucidate the patterns of psychological conflict within The Spoils. The state of mind at which Fleda arrives in response to Owen's declaration of love has a number of striking similarities to Kierkegaard's complex and adaptable notion of despair or 'the sickness unto death'. While Kierkegaard's

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exploration of this condition is shaped by his concern with the redefinition of the fundamental nature of Christian dedication, the subtitle of The Sickness unto Death indicates that it is also a 'psychological exposition'. Kierkegaard considers despair to be a 'sickness in the self because man is an embodied consciousness, a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, freedom and necessity. Moreover, the sickness may find expression either because the individual is in despair at not willing to be himself, or because he is in despair at willing to be himself.16 The first form of the disease is, quite clearly, negative; and the positive infection of consciousness is at once more virulent yet closer to a cure, since it brings the individual to the point of learning to accept himself in the diversity and vulnerability of his subjectivity. Finally, despair is called 'the sickness unto death' for two paradoxically connected reasons. In one sense, it is an illness in which ' the last thing is death, and death the last thing' {The Sickness unto Death, p. 150), a hopeless and oppressive contraction of the sufferer's spiritual horizons until death finally ends the misery. On the other hand, it is an affliction of the 'soul' which, as Socrates has acknowledged, cannot be consumed by sickness in the same manner as the body (pp. 153-4). Under this more sophisticated interpretation, despair is certainly the 'sickness unto death', for consciousness cannot annihilate itself as consciousness, and thus embrace the oblivion of death. The process of dying cannot be terminated, and the individual struggles on in an apparently seamless and irremediable state of anguish and alienation. In this regard, Kierkegaard's description calls to mind again the functioning of a Derridean brisure: for the despairing person finds every living moment redolent of dying, yet he can embrace neither the reassuring satisfactions of life nor the peace of death. In Fleda's case, there is strong evidence that she is in despair at not willing - or more appropriately, not choosing - to be herself. She finds the strain of existing as a subjective thinker too great; she cannot endure the demands of the dialectic of existential' inwardness' with its call repeatedly to re-establish her life in truth. So she starts to lose contact with the solid and uninspiring bedrock of ordinary affairs. Her imagination wilfully detaches itself from such uncomfortable controls and begins to roam in the realms of the infinite. As the 16

Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, in 'Fear and Trembling3 and ' The Sickness unto Death', p. 146.

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'self is volatilized', the abstract and the absolute appear increasingly attractive; values take on a new and inhuman validity (see Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, pp. 163-5). Thus Fleda invents a pure and sharply outlined moral landscape - only to submit to the coercive power of the artificial standards which she herself has created. There is, in addition, considerable aesthetic satisfaction to be derived from this reconstitution of the moral universe. Once Fleda has idealized the ethical struggle in this way, it is an easy step towards idealizing the range of human possibility, as well. If everything is to be regarded as possible, nothing is disfigured by actual insufficiencies or constraints. Under this charm, James's central reflecting consciousness transforms the simple, weak and warm-hearted Owen into a man capable of sublime feats of moral achievement. It is interesting that Kierkegaard relates this 'wishful, yearning form' of the ' despair of possibility' to the fairy-tale sequence in which the knight first catches sight of, and then pursues, a rare bird. But the bird eludes his grasp again and again, until the knight discovers that night is falling and that he has lost his way in the wilderness (p. 170). The novel includes a couple of brief, but revealing, sketches of the way in which Fleda's imaginative energy gains release in dreamy romanticizing. After the violent row which follows the announcement of Owen's engagement, for instance, she meditatively substitutes charming possibilities for the grim actualities by giving herself'in her sacred solitude, up to a mere fairy-tale, up to the very taste of the beautiful peace she would have scattered on the air [of Poynton] if only something might have been that could never have been' (p. 45). During her stay at her father's house in London after Mrs Gereth's fateful injunction to her to 'let herself go', she again weaves fantasies about what would happen if she were to become mistress of Poynton (pp. 146-7).17 In a similar vein, James uses highly-wrought religious imagery to describe the spirit in which Owen responds to Fleda's acknowledgement of her love for him (p. 189). In that brief flash of painful joy, the reality and the possibility temporarily fuse; and Owen becomes the shining knight of 17

Walter Isle provides a perceptive commentary on the influence which Fleda's strong imagination and romanticizing tendency exert on her general style of behaviour {Experiments in Form: Henry James's Novels, i8g6-igoi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 89-92), while Robert C. McLean refers disparagingly to the periodic recurrences of the tale of Cinderella ('The Subjective Adventure of Fleda Vetch', American Literature, 36 (1964), 15-16, 24).

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courtly love, abasing himself before his lady in spite of his strength attesting to his readiness for heroic endurance or sacrifice. There are, then, these two strongly divergent movements within Fleda's consciousness. On the one hand, she has accepted the challenge of imaginative reflection and self-reflection. On the other, she is tempted to escape from this taxing drama of repeated choice, and to use her imagination negatively, in order to give herself the power of escape into the realm of the absolutely valuable and the infinitely possible. An intellectual upheaval of this kind will naturally exert a certain degree of explosive pressure; still, the interpretative problem posed by The Spoils of Poynton is how far James himself is both aware and artistically in control of these contradictory impulses in Fleda's behaviour. His evocation of the play of Milly Theale's bad faith in The Wings of the Dove is a tour deforce, a splendidly sustained

portrayal of a fundamental infection of consciousness. Yet Fleda Vetch's inconsistencies are of two separate and incompatible breeds. Moreover, James's tightly-knit succession of explanatory scenes frequently constricts the inviting potential for deconstructing one set of attitudes in relation to the other. Then, at Fleda's final meeting with Owen at Maggie's dowdy provincial home, the young woman suddenly adopts an altered view of their waiting for some decision by Mona to set them free from Owen's galling engagement: ' I don't know what you mean by your freedom; I don't see it, I don't feel it. Where is it yet, where, your freedom? If it's real there's plenty of time, and if it is n't there's more than enough. I hate myself,' she insisted, 'for having anything to say about her: it's like waiting for dead men's shoes! What business is it of mine what she does ? She has her own trouble and her own plan. It's too hideous to watch her so and count on her!' (p. 190) This passage shows a new sense of the obsessiveness inherent in such protracted and exhausting speculation about Mona's intentions. Fleda has recognized that her proud withdrawal from open competition, and her plan for Owen's sublime steadfastness, have somehow degenerated into selfish calculation. By intensifying the moral atmosphere, she has defeated her own aim of preserving both herself and Owen in truth; their Tightness is becoming formal and hollow, an empty self-created category. However, Fleda's distraught parting injunction to Owen does little to contain the rapidly spreading confusion. Passionately she warns him that ' the great thing is to keep faith. Where's a man if he does n't? If he does n't he may be so cruel. So cruel, so cruel, so cruel!'

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(p. 197). It is, as James gently reminds the reader throughout the novel, important not to lose sight of Mona's personal claims; even a Waterbath Brigstock, with her appalling taste, is capable of being hurt by the loss of affection and by public rejection. Hocks draws out the implications of this argument; he suggests that Fleda 'characteristically creates a possible other case about Mona', constructing on the basis of her own feelings a vision of what the engagement must have meant for Mona. If this may be seen as corresponding to the 'broadening or "radical" aspects' of William James's pragmatistic thought {Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, p. 144), it would equally represent an impressive instance of what Kierkegaard might call subjective thinking. But Hocks does not entirely succeed in protecting his case, when he dismisses the hypothetical objection of a ' saltatory' reasoner that' Fleda is merely creating Mona in her own image' (p. 144). For it is not at all clear whether Fleda has apprehended the resilient Mona of the shiny patent-leather shoes, or whether she has conjured up an idealized picture of Mona, along the lines of her daydream representing Owen as the steadfast, chivalrous knight. At the end of the novel, Fleda ingeniously explains to Mrs Gereth that she was right in urging Owen to keep his promise, because someone like Mona regains her equanimity and charm once any unpleasant obstacles have been removed from her path (pp. 254-5). Yet this reading of the events constitutes dipost hoc solution, as well as evading a number of disturbing questions relating to Fleda's own logic and system of values. Because James's development of Fleda's teasing situation is so uncertain, the critic's doubts proliferate; there is too little coherent evidence for preferring one interpretative model to another. These perplexities can, to some extent, be reduced by a more thorough consideration of the quality of the attraction which exists between Fleda and Owen Gereth. Graham offers by far the most sensitive and illuminating account ofJames's attempt at presenting a rounded fictional relationship. And he perceptively gives prominence to the strongly suppressed physical passion which draws Fleda towards Owen [Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment, pp. 142-3, 147—50). At the same time there is, as Graham registers, an important sense in which Owen's endearing simplicity and easy acceptance of his experience must form a barrier to the development of any enduring closeness between himself and Fleda. From a philosophical point of view, he has no consistently delineated self, no power

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of 'inwardness' or productive self-examination. He is, to use Kierkegaard's descriptive vocabulary, the 'immediate man', who judges his life in terms of pleasures and pains, lucky occurrences and misfortunes {The Sickness unto Death, pp. 184-5). There is thus a growing need for him to reach his own decisions, to acknowledge his responsibilities, and to act on his own initiative. And within this context, Fleda's refusal to provide him with a ready-made excuse for evading his commitment to Mona takes on a fresh significance. Once again, a complicated form of the ' creation of a possible other case' comes into play. In his Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Kierkegaard

reasons that, where moral dilemmas are concerned, detached admiration of the achievements of others can prove a severely inhibiting force. He argues that the individual should instead turn the actuality of the other person's situation into a possibility for himself, into an objective which he will struggle with determination to realize on his own account (pp. 320—2). Now this is the sort of opportunity which Fleda places before Owen; it is the opportunity to found his own subjectivity and to secure it through a programme of sustained self-reflection and moral endeavour. She cannot force Owen to respond to the challenge - indeed, this would defeat her aim - she can only sketch out a probable course for him to follow. But the young man continues to drift, and to submit to the assertion of Mona's will, so that Fleda's effort of sympathetic imagination is to a large degree wasted. Even this reading of the guiding impulse behind Fleda's behaviour is, nonetheless, clouded by the imprecision of James's philosophical conception and dramatized enactment. Her wish for Owen to find himself seems to be the predominant goal, yet this is qualified by her vision of her potential lover as shiningly heroic and sublime. There is a persistent suggestion that she is surreptitiously idealizing a very ordinary young man, eagerly translating him to the enchanting sphere where anything and everything is possible. If these are some of the conceptual difficulties produced by James's refraction of a large proportion of his narrative through the consciousness of his central character, the fictional balance is restored in the finely dramatic confrontation which takes place between Fleda and Mrs Gereth at a London hotel. On this occasion, each of the women defends her own view of the world and her own constellation of values. Although James describes Mrs Gereth in his preface to the novel as one of the 'fools' (The Art of the Novel, p. 129), hers is not a uniform and uncomplicated awareness. Once again, the most

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penetrating analysis of her consciousness is offered by Graham, who appreciates that she is not merely the embodiment of the avid collector [Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment, pp. 133-6). There is a powerful creative instinct behind her urge for possession, as she shows in the organization of her scant resources at Ricks; yet this talent seems to be hardening rapidly into an inflexible rigidity. James gives a clue to this loss of sensitivity when he notes that ' all Mrs Gereth's scruples were on one side and... her ruling passion had in a manner despoiled her of her humanity' (p. 37). Such a stereotyped ' ruling passion' allows her to disregard totally the feelings of the Waterbath Brigstocks, even to insult them on their visit to Poynton. It prompts an unashamedly pragmatic approach to non-aesthetic problems, a pragmatism of the narrowly utilitarian sort which was disparagingly attributed to William James by his contemporary opponents. It is not simply that Mrs Gereth's removal of the Spoils from Poynton legally constitutes a theft. This is only the overt form of her manipulation of the unfavourable conditions; her fierce admonition to Fleda to c let herself go' verges on a cruel parody of the existential notion of freedom. For Fleda is invited not to seek a unique and constantly evolving personal fulfilment, but to take possession and to be possessed. To draw once more on Kierkegaard's apt philosophical vocabulary, Mrs Gereth provides a striking example of the 'despair of finitude'. She has no time for the taxing dialectic of existential' inwardness' or sustained self-reflection, so she sinks into a sort of ' ethical meanness and narrowness' (The Sickness unto Death, pp. 166-8, especially p. 166). Aesthetic satisfaction and practical success are thus allowed to absorb her energies. When Mrs Gereth roundly rebukes Fleda for her folly and condemns the insubstantiality of the younger woman's scruples, as well as the perversity of her doubts, the reader has been sufficiently prepared to regard this display with cautious scepticism. Mrs Gereth may flourish belligerently the 'showy side of the truth' (p. 219) — but it remains a distinctly circumscribed truth. It is, in effect, the truth of self-interest, of convenience, of inexpensive resolutions. In response to this restricted sense of human potentiality, Fleda passionately opposes her own judgement: 'You simplify far too much. You always did and you always will. The tangle of life is much more intricate than you've ever, I think, felt it to be. You slash into it,' cried Fleda finely, 'with a great pair of shears; you nip at it as if you were one of the Fates!' (p. 224)

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In setting up this debate, James shrewdly removes from the reader the easy alternative of assuming automatically that Fleda will be right. Once again, the subtle movement of a Derridean brisure produces an articulated argument, which develops through strategically poised, dynamic contrasts. For, while the younger woman's plea comes as a stirring emotional appeal, the practical consequences of her choices have apparently produced utter personal defeat. She has not heard from Owen, she cannot begin to guess at Mona's intentions. Yet her dedication to the notion of truth as subjectivity, insofar as it has been persuasively achieved in the novel, renders a value which has been independently forged in the heat of an active consciousness. It is truth as a response to lived conflict, truth as joy and suffering, truth as the access of self-knowledge. Even Fleda's fanciful excursions into the intoxicating regions of imaginative infinity testify, in some respects, to a thirst for truth. It is dangerous and potentially damaging to play with absolutes and to recreate the image of human beings; however, despair is at least evidence of the struggling aspirations of a distressed subjectivity. And, as Kierkegaard's account emphasizes, the more powerful the despair, the stronger the chance of an eventual reintegration of consciousness, a constructive 'repentance of the self back into itself, as it passionately assumes the burden of its own history. When Fleda Vetch decides to send her telegram to Owen Gereth this represents, from one perspective, the collapse of her former resolution under the pressure of her acute sense of loss and her feeling of obligation to Mrs Gereth, following the return of the Spoils to Poynton. The intense emotional reaction is more than understandable, as is the shattering impression of defeat and isolation. Yet there is also an element of perversely advertising her wounds in Fleda's sending a message so publicly to Waterbath, where the Brigstocks are bound to read it if Owen is no longer at the house. She is at once endorsing the literal-minded view of herself as 'one of those bad women in a play', yet calculatedly denying such an accusation by setting up a stark contrast between her former reticence and withdrawal, and her present open declaration of her intentions. She defiantly affirms her honesty on all counts, as well as her willingness to stand critical inspection, however pitiless or destructive. This mode of behaviour corresponds closely to the positive type of despair which Kierkegaard, in fact, calls 'defiance'. This is the despair of willing to be oneself, of stubbornly clinging to one's pain, and

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hopelessness, and humiliation. The sufferer refuses to draw relief from comforting gestures or to embrace the prospect of forgiveness; instead, he fosters his lonely anguish, distilling it into the essence of himself (The Sickness unto Death, pp. 200-7, especially pp. 204-5). So Fleda's collapse is at once negative and positive, a submission to the consequences of her failures of sound practical judgement and fine moral perception, yet a heightening of misery, because the misery is her own. Under these impulses, the search for Owen in London proceeds. The project is characterized by a disorientating blend of pathetic disbelief and wilful blindness to the facts. However, the onset of a defiant attitude prepares the way for a creative reintegration of the human sensibility and a return to the rich life of genuine 'inwardness'. Thus Fleda's defiant acceptance of her situation in London is transformed into the fuller and more resonant acknowledgement of her severely restricted compass at Ricks (p. 249). On the other hand, there remains a strong pull in the contrary direction, as the temptation to evade the demands of the inner dialectic reasserts itself. There are a number of willing lapses into the negative form of despair, in which Fleda escapes from the unhappiness of her mental condition into a highly-wrought artistic world of absolute values. In this way she repeats - but in an unproductive sense — the patterns of an earlier phase of the novel. While she waits for news of Owen's plans at Maggie's dreary house, she retreats into a sort of religion of art, proving that the ' passionately pious' can worship 'even in the desert' (p. 235). The same response reasserts itself after she has received Owen's letter offering her the 'gem' of the Poynton collection. She begins to think of approaching Poynton as a 'pilgrim might go to a shrine' (p. 259); her familiar appreciation of the Spoils and her tenderly bruised love for Owen take on a mythical quality, in the same way as Densher tries to embalm his memory of Milly Theale. Fleda's last flight into the rarefied atmosphere of pure contemplation is, therefore, an escape not only from herself, but also from the stabilizing controls of intersubjective contacts. The beautiful and readily manipulable imaginative fabrication supersedes the waywardness or intractability of the vulnerable, shared projects, which each person has also to internalize and to make an inseparable part of his own growing experience. In relation to this interpretation of Fleda's state of mind in the closing phase of the novel, Hocks seems to offer the most convincing

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explanation of the meaning of the fire that ruins Poynton. He reasons that the destruction of the Spoils abruptly brings Fleda back from her fanciful flights to an apprehension of the configurations of ordinary, unembellished experience. Moreover, he points out that the conflagration itself is not described in the text, so that James's principal concern would appear to lie with the effects it produces {Henry James and Pragmatistic Thought, pp. 149-50). Since Fleda's romanticizing tendency has been shown to be so closely linked with the stimulus provided by the Spoils, their removal would seem to suggest a fresh opportunity for taking up the challenge of existential 'inwardness', for forging her own independently conceived and endorsed values. The last words of the novel — 'I'll go back' (p. 266) — may then carry with them the sense of a return to the self, as well as a return to the circumscribed possibilities of London, and Ricks, and commitment to a disillusioned Mrs Gereth. If this view is enforced by the very openendedness of the ending of the novel, James has nonetheless left the reader with a number of nagging reservations. Because the selected modes of exploring Fleda's experiments in subjectivity have proved inconsistent, it is difficult to relate this conclusion securely to the vacillations between despair and psychic reintegration in the preceding sequence. The dramatic (and the interlocking philosophical) logic of the novel has been fractured, while the challenging potential of a sustained deconstructive approach to conventional value structures is weakly dissipated. Nonetheless, The Spoils of Poynton deserves close scrutiny as an original attempt at probing the struggles of a consciousness which seeks to root and sustain itself in truth. The work gives an added subtlety and concreteness to the notion of truth as creative striving, as an effort towards internalizing the plenitude of shared experience, so that the self may also think according to the other. It enacts the steady dialectic between truth and misconception; it explores (albeit uncertainly) the perplexing territory in which the most limited truths become distortions of human possibility — and the most idealistic standards damaging self-deceptions. in

In any detailed discussion of the critical puzzles raised by The Spoils of Poynton, it is illuminating to explore the function fulfilled by the Spoils themselves. For they not only give the novel its title; they also constitute the immediate cause of the conflict which informs the

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action. In Ideas and the Novel, Mary McCarthy wryly remarks that James manages to ' relate a story of a contest for possession of some furniture in immense detail without ever indicating except in the vaguest way what the desirable stuff was'. 18 After lamenting the loss of so fine an opportunity for evoking the Balzacian universe of things, McCarthy suggests that the furniture itself has been refined away until only an abstract Idea remains. If the novel then comes to revolve around thq struggle for the possession and enjoyment of an immaterial Idea, she continues, the reader can at least supply solidly imagined tables and chairs to suit his own preferences (pp. 6—7). While McCarthy's argument involves a certain degree of wilfully contentious perversity (not to mention a number of thinly disguised assumptions about the appropriate techniques for fictional representation), her view is also the darker face of a positive attitude towards The Spoils of Poynton. For, as Oscar Cargill notes, James's refusal to identify and catalogue these precious objects releases the reader's creative faculty, and grants Poynton security against periodic fluctuations in taste.19 From a different, yet related, perspective, the ploy of deliberate vagueness enriches the drama by allowing the characters maximum scope for constructing - and deconstructing - visions of the Spoils to meet their own expectations. Moreover, James does occasionally sketch in precise descriptions of particular Spoils: the Maltese cross, 'the great Italian cabinet' from 'the red saloon' (p. 71), and the Louis XVI pieces that so disconcertingly appear in Fleda's room at Ricks (p. 78). At the same time, a highly economical process of evaluation by antithesis comes into play, for Poynton is established as the very reverse of the hideous Waterbath. This method is most effective in initiating the comic momentum of the novel; but it should also prompt closer scrutiny. Ugly as the thickly varnished surfaces and ill-conceived knick-knacks of Waterbath may be, they constitute a very easy target for ridicule. At no stage does James seek seriously to test specific aesthetic criteria, to define concretely what he regards as 'good taste', or to advance any kind of general aesthetic theory. The criticism is all in the comedy, and the subtle discriminations in the evolution of the drama: as always, the philosophy and the story-telling become inseparable. 18 19

See Ideas and the Novel (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981), p. 6. See The Novels of Henry James (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 226, 240-1.

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In his preface to the novel, James provides this insight into the principles upon which The Spoils of Poynton has been composed: Yes, it is a story of cabinets and chairs and tables; they formed the bone of contention, but what would merely 'become' of them, magnificently passive, seemed to represent a comparatively vulgar issue. The passions, the faculties, the forces their beauty would, like that of antique Helen of Troy, set in motion, was what, as a painter, one had really wanted of them, was the power in them that one had from the first appreciated. Emphatically, by that truth, there would have to be moral developments... A character is interesting as it comes out, and by the process and duration of that emergence... (The Art of the Novel, pp. 127-8) As these remarks suggest, The Spoils of Poynton is not simply 'about' the coercive power of valuable things, any more than The Ambassadors is ' about' the temptations which Paris may offer to impressionable individuals (whether young or old) who are eagerly in search of a richer and fuller range of experience. The Spoils of Poynton is principally a drama of consciousness, a sensitive study of the complex processes by which individual subjectivity seeks to found and sustain itself in a coherent relationship with its experience. In this context, the Spoils themselves are simply the occasion for the drama, although they naturally set up, modify and realign their own symbolic reverberations. In fact, James's raw materials for his project are of the simplest: a dispute over family possessions, a quarrel that delays a wedding, a sadly yearning love in the heart of a lonely girl. The subject-matter is thoroughly ordinary, even trivial; but it gives James the essential fictional matrix within which to experiment with the philosophical notions of truth-value and self-knowledge. There is no overt theoretical statement, because, once again, the unfolding of the drama is itself the existential exploration. If The Spoils of Poynton advances no specific aesthetic or moral criteria for judging, this is because such a work of art may be regarded as offering not ideas, in Mary McCarthy's predominantly logocentric sense of the word, but what Merleau-Ponty called 'matrices of ideas'. He goes on to explain that an artistic creation ' teaches us to see and ultimately gives us something to think about as no analytical work can', for it 'provides us with symbols whose meaning we never stop developing' ('Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', p. 77). Because the symbolic resonances of the key image of The Spoils of Poynton diffuse themselves throughout James's dramatic examination, finding their life in the ambiguities of a

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conflict that keeps shifting its ground, the reader is obliged constantly to spell over and reform the emerging patterns of meaning. Even Owen Gereth, the human prize of the protracted dispute, finds himself included from time to time as one of the Spoils. These considerations point, in their turn, to the relevance of deconstructive strategies in supplementing a phenomenological treatment of James's novel. The logical and narrative inconsistencies which dog this text have already been examined at some length. Yet deconstruction's talent for working subversively from within established structures is highly apposite to a work whose preliminary assumptions are repeatedly revised, interrogated, and redirected in the light of fresh evidence; Derrida's interpretative 'hinge' moves revealingly, if erratically, to and fro. Nor are these apparently radical practices incompatible with the fertile and original concept of truth which Merleau-Ponty expounds in his later writings. In The Prose of the World, Merleau-Ponty suggests that 'the awareness of truth advances like a crab, turned toward its point of departure, toward that structure whose signification it expresses' (p. 128). Even the Mathematical algorithm, he reasons, does not enjoy some sort of privileged existence in an ideal and eternal realm of absolute security. Instead, there is a development — more precisely, a ' self-development' - of the meaning of established definitions or theoretical constructs as the outcome of a humanly motivated process of questioning. No signification can be entirely transparent and selfsufficient; the evolution of Mathematical truth is also creative (pp. 127-8). In this way, it becomes possible to take up the notion of truth and to broaden the philosophical context of The Spoils ofPoynton still further. James, too, develops the meaning of a carefully selected 'germ', after discarding what he regards as irrelevant, extraneous material. In response to his questioning, the complicated plot unfolds - and the reader is invited to retrace the novelist's steps, and to relive his programme of discovery. Whether one chooses to follow the preface's polished (and mildly complacent) account of the growth of The Spoils of Poynton from its fertile 'germ' within the warm soil of James's artistic perception, or to trace the struggles and perplexities recorded in his Notebook entries, a powerful impression of the nature of the work's genesis remains.20 The creative artist's search for truth 20

For a thorough overview ofJames's working methods, see The Art of the Novel, pp. 121-5, and The Notebooks of Henry James, ed. F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 136-7, 198-9, 207-9, 211-12, 214-19, 247-56.

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moves forward in crab-fashion from its starting point, since it operates under the same general impulses and constraints as the mathematician's endeavour. This approach does not aim to assimilate literary to logicoarithmetic models, or to imply that the novel should strive to achieve the same degree of unambiguous clarity of statement, or spare elegance of formulation, as the theorem. It is rather that the focus falls upon the common challenges involved in the forging of truth itself. Truth, Merleau-Ponty reminds the philosophical community, 'is not an adequation but anticipation, repetition, and slippage of meaning. Truth allows itself to be reached only through a sort of distance' [The Prose of the World, p. 129). The Spoils of Poynton, not

unlike a mathematical problem, shows its 'workings' from the first step to the conclusion; James's uncertainties and miscalculations lie as near the surface as his solid imaginative appraisals. As in The Ambassadors, there is a vital fusion of process and the final form, although this earlier experimental work is less poised and assured, more tentative and exploratory. If the novel embodies Fleda's search for the fulfilment of a sustained and self-reflexive existential 'inwardness', it also expresses James's effort towards finding a method that will express the living truth of each person's ordinary experience.

CHAPTER 5

The Golden Bowl: the complex of shaping relations

Towards the end of The Golden Bowl, Maggie visits the Prince in his self-imposed isolation in his study to discuss the possible arrangements for the final meeting with her father and stepmother before their departure for American City. During this encounter, the husband and wife are clearly sounding each other out, trying to accommodate themselves to the change in their relationship, and to establish what interpretation is to be given to the recent sequence of occurrences which has produced it. At one stage, Maggie says of Charlotte's predicament, 'I see it's always terrible for women'; and the Prince replies, 'Everything's terrible, cara - in the heart of man.' 1 From a certain point of view, these are moving insights into the plight of all human beings and the uncertainty that clings to their most strenuous efforts; from another perspective, the same comments are irritatingly smug and banal in their acceptance of a vague, amorphous existential anguish. This apparent dichotomy points up the central problem which The Golden Bowl presents to its readers. The extreme complexity of the work makes it unusually difficult to locate and probe the novelist's informing concerns; the interaction of the four central characters is woven into a subtle web of language which at once envelops their thoughts and responses, while also creating, undermining and transforming the entire universe of personal involvement. Because the novel is so firmly embedded in the relations which it depicts - both those among the characters themselves, and those between its linguistic surface and the evolution of the plot - a helpful key to its perplexities seems to lie in the detailed exploration of James's sense of the fundamental functioning of relationships. How, 1

The Golden Bowl is printed as Vols. 23 and 24 of the New York edition of James's novels (1909; rpt. 1971). See Vol. 24, p. 349.

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for instance, does he consider that the individual is bound to the world within which he moves ? Or what sort of link does he forge between the experience of his characters and the language they use? To treat the novel in this way is to see it as engaged with a number of broad philosophical questions comparable to the analysis of the process of judging which is offered in The Ambassadors, or to the imaginative realization of a fresh and unprejudiced vision of people and events which is embodied in What Maisie Knew. At the same time, The Golden Bowl penetrates to an even deeper level of relationship than the tension between individual identity and the fulfilment of a social role which is investigated in The Wings of the Dove. It is undoubtedly important that Milly Theale should confront the bare and pressing requirements for human subsistence during her meditation in Regent's Park. Yet her appreciation of these limiting conditions leads her on to the poised alternatives that' one could live if one would' and 'one would live if one could' (Vol. 19, pp. 253-4). She weighs up the counterbalancing aspects of a free choice - while The Golden Bowl provides no choices of this kind. Like the leading figures in The Wings of the Dove, the characters in The Golden Bowl are free to decide the moral or aesthetic quality of their future existence; what they do not have is Milly's independence, her flexible range of personal objectives and practical means. They are bound into a rigidly formalized set of relationships, and they cannot (without enormous cost to all) decide not to live in that environment. If any change is to take place, it must operate in and through the established relationships, recasting them and remoulding those who participate in them. James becomes increasingly curious about the notion of the relationship itself. In the face of this carefully contrived context of total involvement, it is illuminating to consider Merleau-Ponty's generalized, but highly apposite, description of the relationship between the individual and the world within which he moves. For, as his philosophical work progresses, Merleau-Ponty shows an increasingly strong awareness of the way in which the individual effectively exists beyond himself and in the world, while the world comes to live and to take on its full meaning inside each person. This conviction is clearly illustrated by a passage from The Visible and the Invisible, the posthumously published version of the opening phase of an enquiry in which Merleau-Ponty aimed to develop a comprehensive account of the notion of truth. In his chapter on the 'chiasm', or the intertwined complex of relation-

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ships between the self and the world, he takes as a guiding example the act of visual perception. When someone is faced with the colour red, Merleau-Ponty argues in opposition to the conventionally accepted interpretations, he does not simply have before him ' a quale, a pellicle of being without thickness, a message at the same time indecipherable and evident, which one has or has not received, but of which, if one has received it, one knows all there is to know, and of which in the end there is nothing to say'. Instead, Merleau-Ponty contends that the perceiver must sink his gaze into the particular sample of redness, 'fixing it'; and it will then resume its ' atmospheric existence', so that the texture of the object concerned (whether woolly, metallic or porous) will play a central role in defining the visual appearance. Yet Merleau-Ponty takes his commentary a step further: the red patch is a 'variant in another dimension of variation, that of its relations with the surroundings'; and this means that it can only assume its characteristic tone by 'connecting up' with the other shades of red in the vicinity, for it forms an integrated system with them. Even this explanation, however, fails to satisfy MerleauPonty's demand for an adequate reflection of the intricate processes entailed in colour-perception. He suggests that a red dress, for example, attaches itself not only to the 'fabric of the visible', but also to 'a fabric of invisible being'. 2 It is a punctuation in the field of red things, which includes the tiles of roof tops, theflagsof gatekeepers and of the Revolution, certain terrains near Aix or in Madagascar, it is also a punctuation in the field of red garments, which includes, along with the dresses of women, robes of professors, bishops, and advocate generals, and also in thefieldof adornments and that of uniforms. (P- 132)

Merleau-Ponty asserts that the red of the dress is ' literally... not the same', depending on whether it is included in one of these 'constellations' of coloured objects or another. Then there are the varieties of red projected by the imagination, which might set up a different articulated system of comparisons and contrasts. The significant conclusion of this examination is that a naked colour, and in general a visible, is not a chunk of absolutely hard, indivisible being, offered all naked to a vision which could be only total or 2

See The Visible and the Invisible, ed. Claude Lefort, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 131-2.

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null, but is rather a sort of straits between exterior horizons and interior horizons ever gaping open, something that comes to touch lightly and makes diverse regions of the colored or visible world resound at the distances, a certain differentiation, an ephemeral modulation of this world - less a color or a thing, therefore, than a difference between things and colors, a momentary crystallization of colored being or of visibility, (p. 132)3 The concept of interpenetration between an embodied consciousness and the world it inhabits, the notion of'a sort of straits between exterior horizons and interior horizons ever gaping open', becomes the key-signature of the final complex movement in Merleau-Ponty's thought. And, as the following discussion will show, such preoccupations both shape and dominate James's last work of philosophical fiction. Merleau-Ponty, for his part, also extends his argument to the realm of aesthetics in ' Eye and Mind'; he urges, for instance, that Bernard Berenson was mistaken in speaking of an 'evocation of tactile values' in Italian painting. By contrast, Merleau-Ponty claims that' to see is to have at a distance'; the artist gives ' visible existence' to what is normally believed to be invisible, so that 'the eye lives in [textures] as a man lives in his house'. 4 The disparity between Berenson's formulation and the philosopher's counter-proposal is not actually as great as Merleau-Ponty seems to believe, for they approach their problem under the influence of different objectives. Berenson, as an art critic, is concerned with the practical methods by which visual effects are achieved, and with the responses which these draw from the observer. Merleau-Ponty, however, is anxious to explain the fundamental operations of the subject's perceptual engagement with his surroundings, and to expose the close linkage between consciousness and its object — perhaps even to call in question the relevance of the scientifically established (or logocentric) distinction between subject and object at the level of immediate, lived experience. This eagerness seems to lead to occasional overstatements, as when Merleau-Ponty insists that the red of the dress is ' literally' not the same when it is considered within one configuration of coloured things, rather than another. While the context un3

4

Merleau-Ponty's description of red as 'less a color or a thing... than a difference between things and colors' shows the extent to which he has been influenced by structuralist modes of analysis. James Daly provides a brief general discussion of these issues in 'Merleau-Ponty: A Bridge between Phenomenology and Structuralism', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2 (1971), 53-8. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 'Eye and Mind', trans. Carleton Dallery, in The Primacy of Perception, p. 166.

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doubtedly plays an important part in determining the precise manifestation of redness, the appreciation of variations in shading is still founded in a more general capacity for simply recognizing red, as opposed to any other colour. Yet the finer distinctions which Merleau-Ponty develops are most valuable, and he shows a penetrating understanding of the way in which each person is rooted in an environment, shaping it creatively, while unavoidably shaped by it. A concise summary of Merleau-Ponty's position is to be found in an earlier work, his Phenomenology of Perception:

Inside and outside are inseparable. The world is wholly inside and I am wholly outside myself... In one of his celebrated pensees, Pascal shows that in one way I understand the world, and in another it understands me. We must add that it is in the same way: I understand the world because there are for me things near and far, foregrounds and horizons, and because in this way it forms a picture and acquires significance before me, and this finally is because I am situated in it and it understands me. (pp. 407-8) In fact, the closing words of the Phenomenology of Perception are a quotation from A. de Saint-Exupery's Pilote de Guerre, which Merleau-Ponty adopts as a compressed restatement of his argument about the nature of freedom: 'Man is but a network of relationships, and these alone matter to him' (p. 456). Against this background, it is easy to see why Merleau-Ponty should attack the idealist scheme for explaining the individual's ordinary existence as a creature within a familiar environment by concentrating instead upon the constitutive function of human consciousness. For, as Merleau-Ponty points out in The Visible and the Invisible, the determination to regard the mind as ' the cradle of the world', and the generative source of all that is accordingly experienced within that world, gives rise to a serious methodological inconsistency. Because people are so firmly established within a context of physical and social surroundings which provides the frame of reference for their pre-reflective endeavour, the movement towards the self as a constituting centre becomes one of subsequent 'recovery' or 'recuperation'. Therefore, this 'very effort to coincide with a naturans which is already ourselves and which is supposed to unfold the things and the world before itself cannot represent a simple mirror-image of the original play of experience. The one attempt cannot be the inverse of the other in the way in which ' the route from the Etoile to the Notre-Dame is the inverse of the route from the

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Notre-Dame to the Etoile3 (p. 33). In effect, Merleau-Ponty is rejecting the whole undertaking of founding ' the existing world upon a thought of the world' which surreptitiously draws upon prior impressions of that very world (p. 34). He recognizes that philosophies of reflection have to begin at some point, and credits an idealist thinker such as Kant with an implicit acknowledgement of his presuppositions when he justifies the various stages of his Analytic with the rider: 'if a world is to be possible'. Yet Merleau-Ponty objects that such philosophies of reflection destroy the distinction between the originating and the derived (pp. 34-5). He proposes as an alternative a ' hyper-reflection', which would dispense with elaborate theoretical strategies, and seek to explore the full range of sensory and social activity which operates at a pre-theoretical level. Yet this ' hyper-reflection' would also aim to take account of the changes which its style of examination introduced into the basic phenomena - and to register the inevitable involvement of the philosopher as a living human being in his topic of observation (pp. 38-9). This is precisely the function which James assigns to Lambert Strether throughout his protracted enquiry in The Ambassadors. The elderly editor's compassionate involvement is as vital an aspect of the process of innovative cultural appraisal as his shrewdly exercised detachment. Now Merleau-Ponty's research gives due prominence to the notion of relationship: if the experiencing subject is beyond himself in the world, while the world effectively exists in and through the subject, there is a further 'chiasm', or intertwining, of thematic investigation with the progress of immediate experience. In yet another sense, Merleau-Ponty is able to extend his argument that the individual is 'but a network of relationships', and at the same time to discredit a popular idealist thesis. In the Phenomenology of Perception, he develops the view that consciousness is not entirely transparent to itself, and that the immanence of an ideal object in the mind is not necessarily a guarantee of truth; here one may also detect a foreshadowing of Derrida's attack on logocentrism. While love and the will may 'forge their own objects', it is still possible to be mistaken about the character of one's commitment. Subsequent experience may show that in expressing his love the individual was simply attempting to do what was expected of him, or that he was selfdeceived — responding merely from boredom, or force of habit, or out of a community of interest, or because he imagined a strong resemblance to another woman whom he had once loved (pp.

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377-9). 5 By setting up a system of backward and forward references, and by showing that the emotions of the past are always available for revaluation in the light of the present, while that present is constantly slipping into the past, as the future solidifies into a new present, Merleau-Ponty manages to restore to the Cartesian cogito ' a temporal thickness' (p. 398). Instead of trying to achieve a Utopian coincidence of the self with the self in pure transparency, he suggests that 'subjectivity is not in time because it takes up or lives through time, and merges with the cohesion of a life' (p. 422). Once more, the central importance of the complex of relationships reasserts itself; for Merleau-Ponty argues that selfhood is virtually synonymous with temporality. While the individual is occupied with the richness and plenitude of the present, he may also be involved in a process of transcendence towards his past or his future 'which reveals the dimensions of time not as conflicting, but as inseparable' (p. 422). This formulation, in fact, begins to approach Derrida's challenging description of the restless economy of differance, with its repeated oscillations between 'differing' and 'deferring'. Derrida, however, is suspicious even of Merleau-Ponty's circumspect phenomenological faith in the usefully anchoring function of the present moment; this line of thinking he regards as a comforting rationalization, which has implicitly generated a sequence of misconceptions throughout the history of European philosophy. Finally, Merleau-Ponty's treatment of the concept of freedom broadens the perspective, yet draws the reader's attention back towards the central concept of the relationship. Unlike Sartre, whose theory of the vital scope of human freedom has provided a number of pertinent models for the preceding exposition of The Wings of the Dove, Merleau-Ponty does not propose a sharp distinction between the individual's creative capacity and his facticity (or his limitation by a variety of physical and social conditions). And the more cautious, less assertive account seems particularly appropriate to a novel like The Golden Bowl in which James deliberately emphasizes, and conscientiously elaborates upon, the restrictions on his characters' available range of choices. In this case, there is no eager young Merleau-Ponty also explodes the hypothesis of the absolute coincidence of the individual with himself when he is engaged in the exercise of'pure thought', for instance, in solving a geometrical problem (see his Phenomenology of Perception, pp. 383-8). These reservations suggest a significant analogy with Derrida's critique of the notion of absolute self-presence as the guarantor of epistemological certainty in Husserl's enquiries.

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heiress, perched high in the Alps and surveying the 'kingdoms of the earth' - either 'choosing among them' or perhaps 'want[ing] them all' (The Wings of the Dove, Vol. 19, p. 124). By contrast, Maggie and her family have built themselves into a situation in which it becomes increasingly difficult to separate the free from the determined, or a gladly accepted commitment from an enforced submission. In the light of these arrangements, Merleau-Ponty's balanced commentary offers a rewarding series of insights into the perplexities of the situation: What then is freedom? To be born is both to be born of the world and to be born into the world. The world is already constituted, but also never completely constituted: in the first case we are acted upon, in the second we are open to an infinite number of possibilities. But this analysis is still abstract, for we exist in both ways at once. There is, therefore, never determinism and never absolute choice, I am never a thing and never bare consciousness. In fact, even our own pieces of initiative, even the situations which we have chosen, bear us on, once they have been entered upon by virtue of a state rather than an act. [Phenomenology of Perception, p. 453) However, the very generality of this statement suggests that it can only acquire its full significance within a particular dramatic setting, that the philosophical apprehension may fruitfully illuminate a novel like The Golden Bowl, while the novel itself may give a concrete embodiment to Merleau-Ponty's observations. In fact, this principle can also be applied with great profit to the range of forms in which the notion of the relationship presents itself. For Merleau-Ponty's thorough survey of the workings of perceptual experience needs to be extended so that it explicitly covers more sophisticated modes of interaction between the self and the world, or between the self and other people. James's small cast of characters presents such philosophical problems and social relationships with a special subtlety and intensity. Maggie's slow awakening to consciousness provides a particularly vivid instance of her steady discovery of herself through self-transcendence, as well as through her bonds with the lives of those closest to her. And this theme of ineluctable interrelation, of rinding the self in its commerce with the world, or of achieving full emotional and imaginative realization in the compelling union with another, is admirably reflected in the progress of both Charlotte and the Prince. Even Adam Verver is integrated into the structure of the intertwining relationships in a manner which at once endorses the shaping capacities of his consciousness, yet exposes the inadequacy of

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his characteristic attitude. The pattern of relationships shifts steadily as its components constantly modify, or are modified by, one another; and this momentum is the clear expression of the novel's generative energy and carefully expanding philosophical scope. While Merleau-Ponty's thought gives great prominence to the fundamental relationships between each individual and the world, and to the value of' hyper-reflection' as a philosophical method, he is also aware of the importance of incorporating the phenomenon of human expression into his account. And, as the discussion of The Ambassadors has shown, this theory of linguistic structure and creative speech bears directly upon James's experiments with story-telling as philosophy. In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that his notion of hyper-reflection' does not entail a form of idealized and perfect coincidence between the philosopher and the things of the natural world. On the contrary, 'the philosopher speaks'; this may suggest a 'weakness' in him, since there is an element of absurdity in his trying to express a contact with Being which is essentially silent and pre-reflective. Yet Merleau-Ponty points out that language becomes the philosopher's chief tool, since it 'cuts the continuous tissue that joins us vitally to the things and to the past and is installed between ourselves and that tissue like a screen' (p. 125); from this perspective, the philosophical examination of experience resembles the reading of a text. This line of argument clarifies the claim in The Prose of the World that truth may be reached ' only through a sort of distance', for it is 'not an adequation but anticipation... and slippage of meaning' (p. 129). The expectation of a perfect adequacy and transparency of explanation is little more than a delusion. In The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty consolidates his position when he states that' language is a life, is our life and the life of things'. He notes, perhaps a little ambiguously, that 'living' language incorporates a host of references, which bind it both to the realm of mute things'' behind' it and to the universe o f things said', which it projects 'before itself (p. 125). Linguistic signs are linked not only to the complex conceptual framework which they signify, but also to an intricate network of evolving and innovative speech, which is constantly extending and redefining its own boundaries. Language and contact with the world are caught in a process of mutual implication. In the early chapters of The Visible and the Invisible, Merleau-Ponty is particularly interested in the way in which the person who 'lives

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within' his native language is conscious of a 'folding over within him of the visible and the lived experience upon language, and of language upon the visible and the lived experience' (p. 126). Once again, the concept of the 'chiasm', or the 'intertwining', proves to be uppermost in Merleau-Ponty's mind. Some of his formulations in this section are rather obscure, and as Remy C. Kwant comments, he remains vague about the distinctive features of language as it ordinarily engages the speaker or the thinker. Nonetheless, as Kwant also acknowledges, there is a degree of unfairness in this criticism; for The Visible and the Invisible is an uncompleted manuscript, and the entire project was to have included a thorough treatment of the role of language in experience.6 In spite of these practical difficulties, though, it seems legitimate to draw at least one important inference from Merleau-Ponty's investigation. If there is a constant 'folding over' of language upon each person's immediate impressions, just as there is a vital intertwining between the activities of the self and the surrounding world, then there is a sense in which language indirectly shapes perceptual experience just as perceptual experience contributes towards shaping language. This suggests a generative dialectical relationship, in which expressive language at once wells up out of the subject's rootedness in his environment, yet is steadily transforming his awareness of his own identity and of those surroundings. In this respect, the individual constitutes his world as much as it supports and defines him. Nor does this result entail a marked departure from Merleau-Ponty's guiding assumptions; it is predominantly a modification of his idea of'a sort of straits between exterior horizons and interior horizons ever gaping open'. It draws upon his account of visual perception in which the imagination too may play its part in fixing the particular shade of red which is finally apprehended. And it refines the concept of the 'chiasm' so that it embraces the full register of human responsiveness in its interaction with the world. This extension of Merleau-Ponty's approach is endorsed by a parallel phenomenological presupposition: the idea that there is an 6

See Remy C. Kwant, From Phenomenology to Metaphysics: An Inquiry into the Last Period of

Merleau-Ponty's Philosophical Life (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1966), p. 197. Hugh J. Silverman offers an impressive assessment of the development of Merleau-Ponty's treatment of language over four major phases in his philosophical career (see Inscriptions: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (New York and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), pp. 152-71). This includes an excellent commentary on the 'chiasm', as well as problems of meaning, in The Visible and the Invisible.

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indissoluble bond between phenomenology and hermeneutics. In the introductory section of Being and Time, for instance, Heidegger explicitly states that the phenomenological method is hermeneutical (see pp. 49-63). For the purposes of the present study, however, a more helpful account of this mutual dependence is provided by Paul Ricoeur. In ' Phenomenology and Hermeneutics', he concentrates on the refutation of Edmund Husserl's idealist position, so it is once again necessary strategically to broaden the scope of the philosophical enquiry, in order to accommodate a more flexible and less literal adoption of the phenomenological attitude. However, this modification does not detract from the importance of Ricoeur's leading proposition that 'phenomenology remains the unsurpassable presupposition of

hermeneutics\ while 'on the other hand, phenomenology cannot constitute itself without a hermeneutical presupposition \ 7 To put the case in more general terms, phenomenology as a means for approaching experience without prejudice or restrictive preconception, in order to capture the functioning of human awareness and to explore the formation of meanings, clears the ground for subsequent acts of explanation and interpretation. Yet this very phenomenological project rests upon a capacity for lucid description and logically articulated interpretation. To place Paul Ricoeur's insight more closely within the field of Merleau-Ponty's thought, this may come to represent still another instance of the vital 'chiasm'. Phenomenology prepares the way for the free range of hermeneutics, but it needs to employ the most fundamental resources of hermeneutics in order to achieve its own characteristic goals. A more definite content can be given to this general contention by considering three of the specific areas of similarity which Ricoeur identifies between phenomenology and hermeneutics. In the first instance, he connects the hermeneutical concentration on the question of meaning with the phenomenological notion of intentionality. If the theory of intentionality proclaims that consciousness is 'consciousness of something towards which it surpasses itself, then consciousness is actually moving 'towards meaning before meaning is for it and, above all, before consciousness is for itself ('Phenomenology and Hermeneutics', p. 115). In fact, this close affinity between the workings of intentionality and the evolution of meaning forms the 7

Paul Ricoeur, 'Phenomenology and Hermeneutics', in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 101.

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central pivot of the examination of The Ambassadors in Chapter 2; Ricoeur's formulation simply makes explicit what was then implicit in the choice of a phenomenological mode of investigation. In the second place, Ricoeur relates the hermeneutical concept of distanciation - the inevitable gap that exists between the subject and any historical or cultural object - to the phenomenological epoche. Ricoeur suggests that this 'bracketing', or 'placing in suspension' of all preconceptions about experience, may be regarded in a nonidealist sense as a technique for achieving c a distancing from "lived experience " as purely and simply adhered to' (p. 116). This comment also throws light on the reading of What Maisie Knew which was offered in Chapter 1; for it stresses that the epoche is not simply a wholesale discarding of all established knowledge and cultural acquisitions, but a valuable device for capturing the operations of ordinary experience in their freshness. At the same time, it adds force to Merleau-Ponty's refrain that the exercise of the phenomenological reduction itself exposes the impossibility of a complete reduction; for even the philosopher cannot retreat totally from the insistent presence of his living contact with himself and his environment. Finally, and from a slightly different perspective, Ricoeur's attempt at a conceptual reconciliation between phenomenology and hermeneutics helps to confirm that the 'hyper-reflection' which Merleau-Ponty advocates is not simply a recipe for some illusory pure coincidence between the thinker and things. On the contrary, the method for embracing and comprehending experience from a distance may be seen as closely analogous to James's narrative method in What Maisie Knew, in which the novelist strives to recreate the openness of the child's vision through the medium of his complex fictional-philosophical form. Ricoeur's third comparison between phenomenology and hermeneutics establishes that both approaches integrate specifically linguistic meaning into a wider spectrum of meaning ('Phenomenology and Hermeneutics', pp. 117-18). Thus phenomenology devotes its attention to the full range of emerging and accepted significations from the level of simple sense-perception to the realm of artistic creativity, while hermeneutics explores general cultural achievement or the endeavour of the visual arts, as well as the nature of literary production. This sense of an entire universe of meaning, within which a variety of cross-references is at once possible and necessary, is indispensable for the reading of a novel such as The

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Golden Bowl. It suggests once more that a sequence of interrelated concepts and procedures is available for deployment within the intricate development ofjames's text; for the refinements of language are seen to be interwoven with the fabric of personal experience, as are phenomenological designs with the procedures of hermeneutics. The novel itself, as a fictional construct, draws the philosophical problem of relationships into a clearly circumscribed compass, embodying the efforts of the characters in its linguistic texture, yet generating a tension between their situation and their modes of expression - or their silence. The closed world of the novel can transform itself only by transcending itself from within; yet it cannot destroy its own determining conditions. It can only recast its structure through a process of preservation, which is nonetheless a movement of transfiguring change. One of the most striking features of The Golden Bowl is the way in which 'its encounter with reality and its rhetoric become one', as Laurence Holland puts it {The Expense of Vision, p. 335). As the characters talk about the world in which they move, they seem to be remaking their circumstances through their speech — even though their style of expression is, conversely, shaped by those circumstances in which they are so intimately involved. This tendency is illustrated in the opening pages of the book, when Maggie outlines for the Prince his place in her father's collection of valuable rarities: 'You're at any rate a part of his collection,' she had explained - 'one of the things that can only be got over here. You're a rarity, an object of beauty, an object of price. You're not perhaps absolutely unique, but you're so curious and eminent that there are very few others like you - you belong to a class about which everything is known. You're what they call a morceau de musee.'

' I see. I have the great sign of it,' he had risked — ' that I cost a lot of money.' 'I have n't the least idea,' she had gravely answered, 'what you cost' and he had quite adored for the moment her way of saying it. He had felt even for the moment vulgar. But he had made the best of that. (Vol. 23, p. 12)

The conversation has at once a literal and metaphorical force. On one plane of language, Maggie's remarks are innocent, frank, freshly charming - and distinctly disconcerting in their blurring of the distinction between acquiring a unique objet (Tart and taking a young man as her husband. On another level, though, Maggie is paying the

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Prince a supreme compliment by assessing his worth in the terms with which she is most familiar, and according him the highest available measure of appreciation. Her speech is a game, an elaborate romantic fiction cut free from the moorings of dull, ordinary affairs, in itself a tiny work of art.8 If there is a chilling undertone to the ease with which Maggie installs Amerigo in the family museum, her grave ignorance of his cost both deepens the impression and dispels it. Maggie may be the daughter of a millionaire, whose financial position makes the counting of expense irrelevant; but she is also a girl in love, for whom the loved one is beyond price. And this dual interpretation of her response to the Prince's request for quantification of his value draws credence from the young man's momentary sense of vulgarity. His self-possession is threatened both because he has hinted at an actual figure in cash, and because he recognizes the strong current of genuine emotion flowing beneath the surface of the American girl's banter. Maggie and the Prince have few common reference points, yet even this preliminary encounter shows each discovering fresh aspects of his or her own consciousness by moving out into the web of dialogue, and by exploring the implications of the imaginative excursion. The imaginative figure does not coincide with the situation that generates it, but it suggests a potential means for penetrating or restructuring that situation. So the Prince ' makes the best' of the feeling of vulgarity which his experimentation with Maggie's fiction has occasioned; he confronts her with the possibility of his loss, thus extracting a prophetic admission of the circumstances under which she would be willing to pay his full price. Their language is shaping this young couple's love, while the curious uniqueness of their love suggests the tone of their speech. The prominence of the chiastic relationship between the evolution of the characters' experience and the linguistic structure of The Golden Bowl probably accounts for the large number of interpretations of the novel in terms of artistic creativity, conversion, transformation, or redemption. Bradbury, for instance, sees the reader's activity as equal in importance to Maggie's, which in turn runs parallel to that of the author. Her investigation of the text is guided by the twin images of In Henry James: The Later Novels, Nicola Bradbury provides a helpful comment on the odd, and sometime shocking, effects produced by Maggie's extravagant diction (p. 181), while Philip Grover offers a perceptive account of the intensity of focus made possible by James's presentation of such a self-enclosed fictional world {Henry James and the French Novel: A Study in Inspiration (London: Paul Elek, 1975), pp. 176-87).

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the bath and the goldfish bowl, both of which are selected from James's narrative, and which represent the complementary attitudes of immersion and observation [Henry James: The Later Novels, pp. 123-6). Holland argues that the society represented in the novel is built around the pair of marriages, which are first projected and then achieved, so that they are ' at once the stage for the drama and part of the drama itself {The Expense of Vision, p. 350). Dorothea Krook describes The Golden Bowl as a ' great fable... of the redemption of man by the transforming power of human love' [The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James, p. 240). Interpretations like these provide a global and consistently slanted view ofJames's fictional design; yet the novel is built up of a complex of intertwined relationships of different kinds. These call for detailed examination because they both compose the broader perspective, and contribute towards the finer modulations of the novelist's meaning. In the manner of Merleau-Ponty, he explores the fundamental relationship through which the individual may only become himself by transcending himself in his commerce with the world. He considers how the open access between internal and external horizons may lead to the manipulation of others or to deliberate misrepresentation of the self. He investigates how the living relationship may congeal into an inert and restrictive bond. And he shows how the system of inevitable involvement with other people and with one's environment also provides (apparently paradoxically) the resistance necessary to sustain free and imaginative choice. All these relationships are embodied and dramatized in The Golden Bowl, which comes to represent James's most comprehensive — and his most coherently philosophical - appraisal of the patterns of ordinary experience. 11

For Charlotte Stant, in the absence of sound practical or financial resources, the relationship between herself and the world assumes the form of a pressing problem. Her isolation from any close family circle and her rootlessness force her to rely upon her innate energy and talent; yet her efforts occur in a social vacuum, and there is no solid substance to respond to her constructive pressure. The poignancy of her loneliness and vulnerability, her lack of defining relations, is splendidly conveyed at the moment when she has her richest chance of escaping into the realm of enticing opportunity and fulfilment.

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James meticulously structures the scene in which Charlotte hears Adam Verver's proposal of marriage, so that it occurs against the backdrop of the 'waning afternoon', with the 'red glow' of the metaphorical burning of Adam's ships occupying the additional role of a sunset (Vol. 23, p. 216). The crucial discussion takes place while the couple sit on an 'out-of-the-way bench', with the 'city of stucco' perched nearby, the 'close neighbourhood of a great replete community' above them, and the ' rumbling beach' and ' freshening stars in front' (Vol. 23, p. 217). They are of the humanly safe and familiar world yet not quite in it; very much alone, but comfortingly linked to the evening routines of Brighton society. In this setting, Charlotte will be expected to frame her decision. ' In fact,' she said, so sincerely that it almost showed pain, yet so lucidly that it almost showed humour, 'in fact, you know, I want to be married. It's well, it's the condition.' 'The condition - ?' He was just vague. 'It's the state, I mean. I don't like my own. "Miss," among us all, is too dreadful - except for a shopgirl. I don't want to be a horrible English oldmaid. ' 'Oh, you want to be taken care of. Very well then, I'll do it.' ' I dare say it's very much that. Only I don't see why, for that I speak of,' she smiled - 'for a mere escape from my state - I need do quite so much.' (Vol. 23, pp. 219-20) James deliberately records the fine blend of sincerity and lucidity, pain and humour, which constitutes the essence of Charlotte's predicament. Of course, the drama is shadowed by the spectre of her deliberate suppression of her earlier association with the Prince; but it also enacts the play of her abhorrence at the prospect of becoming an isolated old maid or of being addressed in a manner more appropriate to a pert shopgirl. This vision of the shrinkage of her possible relations with the world is equally a chilling apprehension of the potential shrivelling of the self. It contrasts sharply with the tableau which James later creates when Charlotte pauses on the '"monumental" staircase' at the 'great official party', at once showing herself with marked intention, and feeling herself worthy to be seen. Her delight in the definite proof of her private theory that ' materials to work with had been all she required and that there were none too precious for her to understand and use' draws its motive force from her sense of vindication and renewed self-confidence (Vol. 23, pp. 245-6). She has demonstrated her own value, and therefore

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her entitlement to the recognition she receives from the Prince and the other guests at the party; and this recognition contributes to a further confirmation and enhancement of her value, which will call for still more responsive attentions. James vividly and perceptively presents the expansion of the creative self within the medium of favourable relations. It is, nonetheless, this dynamic of interactions which casts doubt upon the dry inadequacy of Adam's statement that Charlotte wants ' to be taken care of - although this would clearly involve his providing the materials for her to 'work with'. Her reluctance to commit herself to the projected marriage - her feeling that this would demand too much - suggests her perception of the ideal structure of human relationships. Static security is insufficient for her imaginative drive, and even the implied certainty of ample resources becomes hollow when it is envisaged in terms of an enclosed relationship between herself and Adam Verver.9 The detached and apparently businesslike tone of the discussion covers a void of unexpressed doubts which merge into conscious concealments. This encounter is clearly the antithesis of Charlotte's intense private reunion with the Prince at Portland Place, when a deep physical and psychological communion is re-established. When the two draw together for the kiss that is to seal their 'sacred' pledge not to injure the Ververs or disturb their serenity in any way, ' everything broke up, broke down, gave way, melted and mingled' ' as at the issue of a narrow strait into the sea beyond' (Vol. 23, p. 312). James's image is one of release as well as reunion; but it is interesting that he should choose a picture so similar to Merleau-Ponty's notion of the straits 'ever gaping open' between interior and exterior horizons to express the fullness of the rewarding relationship. For James shows Charlotte finding herself in the Prince, just as he finds himself in her through their embrace and their fusion of consciousness. The sense of an unimpeded reciprocity of understanding is emphasized by the way in which Amerigo's impressions of the pair's past experience are revived until these quite swallow up the claims of the present, even though the Prince's memory of their Roman encounters can supply no counterpart for his immediate situation (Vol. 23, pp. 297—8). James's dramatic rendering at this point strongly confirms Merleau-Ponty's view that the self lives in 9

In 'Henry James's Last Portrait of a Lady: Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl\ Jean Kimball gives a full and sympathetic assessment of Charlotte's predicament (American Literature, 28 (1957), 449-68).

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and through a complex temporality, which confers validity and significance upon every single experience. However, there is a darker aspect to this gratifying and reorientating facility of interaction. Charlotte arrives wearing 'a dull dress and a black Bowdlerised hat', almost as though she were adopting a deliberate disguise, and her account of her day's activities betrays an exaggerated eagerness artificially to recapture the freedom of the past (Vol. 23, pp. 297 and 303-4). Ironically, her awareness of her needs has been turned inside out; for she now has the practical resources which she longed to possess - but the absence of a satisfactory context of relations in which to use such materials robs her of fulfilment. Her initial reservations about marrying Adam Verver are justified, for the relationship has proved to be a form of self-enclosure and imprisonment. Her resistance to the encroaching deadness adds passionate energy to her reunion with Amerigo. But this relationship, too, appears to be flawed; it is not so much spontaneously created as reconstituted under the pressure of Charlotte's imaginative urgency. James subtly records her efforts to make their private return to the old terms of their association seem both inevitable and logically justified. Nothing stranger surely had ever happened to a conscientious, a wellmeaning, a perfectly passive pair: no more extraordinary decree had ever been launched against such victims than this of forcing them against their will into a relation of mutual close contact that they had done everything to avoid. (Vol 23, p. 289) This concise explanation of their dilemma is an accomplished piece of imaginative reconstruction, or biased deconstruction, and the unspoken scepticism of the Prince's response suggests the gap between his perception of their moral status and Charlotte's (Vol. 23, pp. 289—90). There is, perhaps, one aspect of a detached appraisal of the pair of marriages which conforms recognizably to Charlotte's statement of the formative conditions; she and the Prince are the passive victims of the Ververs' self-absorption. But they are not simply helpless victims, nor are they necessarily driven towards the resumption of their liaison - and this is where the convenient distortion begins to operate. Charlotte's deconstructive ingenuity boldly rearranges the unappealing structure of the existing marriage relationships from within; but, in a parody of the Derridean prediction, it 'falls prey' almost instantly 'to its own work' {Of

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Grammatology, p. 24). The calculated manipulation betrays its own objectives, so that Charlotte's reinterpretation of her circumstances fails to command Amerigo's considered assent. By contrast, Maggie's elaborate fictional projections do not pretend directly to realign actual states of affairs. They offer a means for approaching her experience from a distance, for coming into a challenging relation with it, and for living it the more fully by exploring its multiple contours through the flexible medium of her colourful conceptions. The breadth of James's enquiry leads him to treat the problem of relations from a different angle in his portrayal of the Prince; for Amerigo has a smoothly oiled system of applicable strategies for dealing with personal encounters and routine social phenomena. Even when he consults Mrs Assingham about the unfamiliar moral outlook of people like the Ververs, his poise is founded upon his reassuring awareness of her affectionate sympathy and slightly comical admiration (Vol. 23, pp. 25—33). But this self-possession is gradually threatened as the events of the novel unfold, and the Prince's confidence faces a particular test during the weekend houseparty at Matcham. Amerigo is then forced to consider both the public and the private effects of Maggie's sublimely trusting readiness to leave her husband and Charlotte to represent both couples at various engagements, while she remains at home with her father. Being thrust, systematically, with another woman, and a woman one happened, by the same token, exceedingly to like, and being so thrust that the theory of it seemed to publish one as idiotic or incapable - this was a predicament of which the dignity depended all on one's own handling. What was supremely grotesque in fact was the essential opposition of theories - as if a galantuomo, as he at least constitutionally conceived galantuomini, could do anything but blush to ' go about' at such a rate with such a person as Mrs Verver in a state of childlike innocence, the state of our primitive parents before the Fall. The grotesque theory, as he would have called it, was perhaps an odd one to resent with violence, and he did it - also as a man of the world - all merciful justice; but none the less assuredly there was but one way really to mark, and for his companion as much as for himself, the commiseration in which they held it. (Vol. 23, P- 335)

The rationale of this meditation maps out a different course from the tight sequence of Charlotte's efforts at reconciling her deepest wishes with the unhappy results of her marriage, and at generating with inventive aplomb a more satisfactory intellectual and emotional

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product. The Prince's argument, as James persuasively develops it, is both practically sensible and confessedly cynical. The difficulty is that it not only follows another (and demonstrably incompatible) phase of his reasoning, but subtly superimposes itself upon the previous examination. He acknowledges the awkward opposition between Maggie's attitude towards social commitments and his own; he realizes that in her protected simplicity she cannot imagine the nature of his current perplexity. And he then advances his case almost exclusively in the language of his own point of view, thus moving towards a potentially workable solution for himself and Charlotte, which also firmly excludes any response to Maggie's values. There is a double-edged irony to his claim that ' as a man of the world' he does his wife's theory 'all merciful justice'; for it is precisely as a man of the world that he slides it into obscurity and, in association with Charlotte, ' marks his commiseration' with Maggie's belief. The novel's silence, weighted as it is with the urge towards sexual consummation, initiates a relationship of a very specific type. Yet this reading proves, once gain, to be a one-sided interpretation of James's scrupulously rounded existential presentation of the processes of self-scrutiny and self-justification. If Amerigo's concluding swagger is coldly shadowed by the discarded image of Maggie's naive faith, beneath the entire passage glows ' the red spark of [the Prince's] inextinguishable sense of a higher and braver propriety'. He is in a 'false position' and his wife's curiously disorientating trust has made him 'ridiculous' (Vol. 23, p. 334). The superficial unpleasantness of being drawn into the atmosphere of clumsy intrigue diffused by Lady Castledean is the outward form of a disturbing erosion of the Prince's identity. He is placed on the same footing as Mr Blint, 'a sleek civil accomplished young man', whom Amerigo finds it difficult to 'take seriously' (Vol. 23, pp. 352-3). Under such circumstances, the affair with Charlotte is not simply the outcome of his boredom and lack of occupation, but a means of retrieving some measure of his own worth by involving himself with a woman whose high personal and social value he recognizes. Moreover, James clearly shows him to be the sort of man who defines himself quite naturally in his relationships with women. His analysis of what he regards as the inherent weakness of feminine nature, the 'doing by the woman of the thing that [gives] her away', distils the fine blend of aesthetic and sensuous appreciation, compassion and arrogance, indulgence and exploitation which characterizes his

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dealings with members of the opposite sex (Vol. 23, pp. 49—50). His cultivated charm also operates relationally, as a mixture of conscious superiority and delicacy: when Charlotte tries to persuade him to accompany her on the search for Maggie's wedding present, he decides that beyond a certain point it is ' pitiful to make her beg of him' (Vol. 23, p. 93). In submitting to Charlotte's request he secures his own identity by redefining himself as comfortably self-sufficient, yet able to give way graciously. In this context, the Prince's delight in the perfection of the morning at Matcham, and his eagerness for the expedition to Gloucester, become predominantly the expression of a compensatory commitment, which will cancel out his loss of public dignity and private purpose. Bradbury shrewdly detects the operatic mannerism of the scene in which the Prince pays homage to Charlotte as she leans out of an upstairs window and throws down a ' rich white rosebud' as a token for Amerigo to fix in his buttonhole (Vol. 23, pp. 355-7). But the ' false tone' of the lovers' diction - ' a moon, a mandolin and a little danger' - is not merely a straightforward indication of their duplicity (see Bradbury, Henry James: The Later Novels, p. 149). It is rather that both are eagerly acting, even ironically overacting, in proportion to their need for the adventure to fulfil its promise. There is, of course, an artificiality in their attempting to internalize the beauty of the day and the prospect of the various groupings of cathedral towers by treating the country house as a stage-setting for their liaison. Yet the pair are poised on a knife-edge between turning their affair into a ham performance of a comic opera, and making their love existentially true because they enter into the relationship with sufficient passion and imagination. As the chapter progresses, James adds further notes of uncertainty and potential disharmony, but these qualifications are designed to establish the risk of the encounter as emotionally and psychologically significant. The lovers' openness to, and dependence on, each other leads to a close intertwining of honesty and subterfuge, demand and acceptance, creativity and worn conventionality. This episode, in particular, conjures up the curiously 'scripted' quality of the relationship between Charlotte and Amerigo. James portrays them as dissembling, acting and conspicuously staging performances. Yet they long for the immediacy and fulfilment of a consummated reciprocity. One of the central themes of Derrida's Of Grammatology is the way in which this yearning for satisfaction in a

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perfect present is undercut by the constant movement of a 'trace' or an 'arche-writing', which robs the spoken word of its uncomplicated plenitude. Like the play of differance, 'arche-writing 5 disrupts the simple economy of speech; it challenges the common belief that speech must be logically (and also ontologically) prior to written modes of expression. In 'The Violence of the Letter', Derrida reflects upon the familiar anthropological assumption that primitive peoples are corrupted when their oral culture is disturbed by their learning written formulae from European teachers. The French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss suffers guilt and remorse when he perceives that his display of superiority in commanding writing skills has tempted the chief of the stone-age Nambikwara Indians into exploiting his fellow tribesmen. Yet, Derrida argues, these regrets are misplaced and largely self-indulgent. By deconstructing LeviStrauss's research notes and published materials, he reveals that the Nambikwara have long since lost their innocence. Tribal customs and behaviour have been characterized by violence, deviousness, and the convenient manipulations of a concealed system of social hierarchies (Of Grammatology, pp. 101-40). For Derrida the 'trace' is always already at work; his ' arche-writing' subversively permeates all efforts at spoken communication, exposing the myth of primal purity. Clearly, Charlotte and the Prince belong to a highly sophisticated society; yet they, too, experience intensely the 'violence of the letter'. Their relationship at this point in The Golden Bowl suggests strong parallels with Derridean models, rather than with the more stable patterns of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The trite script of adulterous liaisons inhabits and infects their intimate exchanges. And they are drawn equally into the dynamics of exploitation towards each other, towards the Ververs, towards the cynical hostess whose invitation facilitates their covert meeting. The activity of the 'trace' frustrates their longing for a sustained union; achieved self-realization becomes indefinitely deferred, while pleasure is measured against its difference from public obligations and marital entanglements. As the lovers write and rewrite their various parts, straining against the restrictive text which their uneasy clandestine plot has imposed upon them, their hope for a potential fulfilment steadily recedes from their grasp. By contrast with these strategic personal manoeuvres, the case of Adam Verver calls for an almost total reformulation of the

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philosophical question of relations. He emerges as the most enigmatic and inaccessible of the characters in The Golden Bowl; yet he is seen to exert a powerful shaping force on the lives of the other three members of his family circle. James repeatedly draws attention to his command of enormous wealth and his instinctive capacity for acquiring the finest specimens available within the art-world. However, it seems to me a distorting oversimplification to dismiss Adam either as the embodiment of the collector with an overdeveloped aesthetic sensibility, or as a crassly manipulative millionaire.10 When James breaks into the flow of the Prince's section of The Golden Bowl to explore from the inside the workings of Adam Verver's consciousness, one of his first remarks is that ' this amiable man bethought himself of his personal advantage, in general, only when it might appear to him that other advantages, those of other persons, had successfully put in their claim' (Vol. 23, pp. 125-6). This attractive picture is, nonetheless, soon modified by the explanation that amiability is insufficient for the achievement of prosperity on a grand scale, since this also demands a disciplined concentration of the imagination virtually equivalent to 'monotony' (Vol. 23, p. 128). At the same time, the impression of Adam's generous humility and calm good sense is undercut in an almost sinister fashion by his interpretation of his destiny as, in effect, inevitably ordered and determined: his 'years of darkness had been needed to render possible the years of light' (Vol. 23, p. 144). In other words, he perceives the period of struggling to amass his fortune as an essential preliminary phase, which is later justified and redeemed by the powerful scope which his money gives him as an appreciator of the arts. And Adam's idea of himself as a 'Patron of Art' is most revealing; he returns to the birth of his conviction that 'no pope' and ' no prince' could have ' read a richer meaning' into this role than the significance with which he had from the first intended to animate it: 10

A large body of the criticism on The Golden Bowl has mistakenly attempted both to define and to reduce Verver's participation in the drama in this way. Joseph J. Firebaugh, for example, regards him as an unimpassioned aesthetic absolutist ('The Ververs', Essays in Criticism, 4 (1954), 402-10), while Edwin T. Bowden treats him as typical of the collector whose aesthetic preoccupations threaten his humanity (The Themes of Henry James, pp. 103-6). However, Frederick G. Crews opposes these perspectives by commenting perceptively on Adam's exercise of power within the novel (The Tragedy of Manners: Moral Drama in the Later

Novels of Henry James (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1971), pp. 85-6, 89-92). By far the subtlest and most pertinent analysis of power relations in The Golden Bowl is to be found in Mark Seltzer's Foucauldian study, Henry James and the Art of Power (Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 59-95; unfortunately, though, Seltzer accords very limited space to Adam Verver and so fails to confront the enigma which he represents.

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He was ashamed of [the popes and princes] really, if he was n't afraid, and he had on the whole never so climbed to the tip-top as in judging, over a perusal of Hermann Grimm, where Julius II and Leo X were 'placed' by their treatment of Michael Angelo. Far below the plain American citizen in the case at least in which this personage happened not to be too plain to be Adam Verver. Going to our friend's head, moreover, some of the results of such comparisons may doubtless be described as having stayed there. His freedom to see - of which the comparisons were part - what could it do but steadily grow and grow? (Vol. 23, p. 150) James's wry suggestion that Adam's intoxication with his 'freedom to see' has been neither dissipated nor diminished supplies the final piece of evidence necessary for a more balanced and comprehensive interpretation of the motivating principles behind the American collector's behaviour. Merleau-Ponty's distinction between the idealist practice of reflection and his own notion of 'hyper-reflection' offers a useful model for exploring the functioning of Verver's conscious processes. What James has described with minute attention is the withdrawal of the millionaire from his direct involvement in the competitive programmes of industry and commerce to a position of detached (but not disinterested) contemplation. He no longer regards himself as naturata, a creature caught up in the flux of ordinary experience within a specified human environment, but now considers himself to be naturans, a creative centre of awareness which unilaterally prescribes the boundaries of taste and judgement, possible choice and permissible action. There is a direct parallel with the pattern of idealist reflection, for Verver's state as a businessman (as naturata) is the indispensable presupposition for his state as a connoisseur (as naturans). His recognition of the founding stage in his career is, unlike the idealist thinker's acknowledgement, explicit rather than implicit; yet he is no more inclined than the philosopher to examine the influence of his basic presupposition on his adopted intellectual position.11 He could not be more different from the willingly selfquestioning Lambert Strether. From his secure station as a controlling consciousness, Verver insists that his 'freedom to see' can only 'grow and grow'. The analogy with philosophical reflection 11

It is interesting that Gabriel Pearson should detect a growing influence of various forms of idealist philosophy (Transcendentalism Swedenborgian and Hegelian) on Henry James's fictional production ('The Novel to End All Novels: The Golden Bowl\ in The Air of Reality, p. 308). An unqualified endorsement of that contention would clearly involve an extension of the present argument about Adam Verver to The Golden Bowl as a whole.

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may be extended still further, for Verver's capacity for 'monotony 5 serves to make his interpretation of his function as a ' Patron of Art' consistent, just as any sort of philosophical enquiry is bound by the demands of internal consistency. These results do not automatically imply that Mr Verver is, by definition, vicious or exploitative in his outlook; on the contrary, James particularly notes his 'amiability'. But such a reading of his value system does point to a belief in order and control, and therefore in the moulding of events in accordance with a passionately predetermined conception. Strether, in sharp contrast, allows his views to be moulded by events, as his unique form of philosophical enquiry proceeds towards the evolution of an inventive (and experientially informed) method of judging. On the other hand, a corollary of Verver's dedication to his idealist preconceptions is that a ' plain American citizen' may decisively gain aesthetic ascendancy over the princes and popes of history. The potential danger of this attitude lies in the cutting loose of the source of power and constitutive energy from the everyday transactions of people who are fully engaged with the constraints of their familiar circumstances. There is an ominous and naive suggestion that personal or social endeavours can be reorganized from the outside in the interests of an overall improvement. To revert to the philosophical analogy, this discussion foregrounds one of the most innovative features of Merleau-Ponty's notion of' hyper-reflection'; for the individual thinker - a Strether, for instance - becomes committed not only to describing and comprehending the fundamental patterns of experience, but also to registering the effect of his own participation upon the phenomena under examination. The way in which the complex of conflicting needs and preferences in The Golden Bowl is drawn towards its resolution shows that Adam Verver lacks this balanced, self-reflexive capability, despite the composed detachment of his approach to the principal occurrences of his residence in England. This sketch for a reading of Mr Verver's characteristic interpretative stance in terms of the model of idealist reflection can be filled out by exploring the various processes of reasoning that prompt his marriage to Charlotte Stant. The simplest explanation of his decision is that he is anxious to p u t ' his child at peace' by involving himself in a close personal relationship which will relieve Maggie of any worry that he may feel lonely or neglected (Vol. 23, p. 208). If this were the only stimulus for his action, it would strongly suggest an attempt at godlike manipulation, at calculatedly rearranging human

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lives to ensure Maggie's happiness; even worse, it might represent the selfish appropriation of Charlotte to give his daughter the maximum freedom for her own marital commitments. But this view is significantly discredited by the evidence of a discussion which he and Maggie have in the garden at Fawns, after the girl has received a letter from Charlotte virtually asking for an invitation to the country house. Adam is clearly intrigued by Maggie's belief that Charlotte has tried unsuccessfully to marry, that she has shown considerable courage in spite of suffering, that c she has loved — and she has lost' (Vol. 23, pp. 183-5). Adam's reaction is unequivocal: 'Well [Charlotte] must n't be wasted. We won't at least have waste' (Vol. 23, p. 185). While the generosity of his sentiment is clearly apparent, this is also an uncomfortably abstract tone in which to propose the salvation of a person. There is a sense in which Verver is exercising his unbounded freedom to see by creating an appropriately godlike vision of Charlotte's future, which will then be suitably realized. Yet the progress of the novel brings about a series of repeated modifications in the perception of Verver's consciousness. When Maggie goes to hunt for a birthday present for her father in the fourth book, James provides this glimpse of his response to receiving gifts: the friendship's offering, was by a rigorous law of nature a foredoomed aberration, and... the more it was so the more it showed, and the more one cherished it for showing, how friendly it had been. The infirmity of art was the candour of affection, the grossness of pedigree the refinement of sympathy; the ugliest objects in fact as a general thing were the bravest, the tenderest mementoes, and, as such, figured in glass cases apart, worthy doubtless of the home but not worthy of the temple... (Vol. 23, p. 156) This eccentrically charming theory gives an indication of the extent to which Adam values the ties of friendship, and is warmed by the tangible proof of affectionate interest. But even these mementoes are duly catalogued and laid out in their own display cases; their separation is at once a recognition of their special status and a sign of their aesthetic inferiority. A consuming rage for order, rather than sterile aestheticism, predominates; Adam forms his environment, and on occasion the human material in it, according to his preconceived scheme of responsibilities and importances. If Charlotte is not to be wasted — and there is an undeniable component of aestheticism in Verver's appreciation of her worth - the process of reclamation will fall within a benign, but carefully integrated, overall design.

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At the same time, Verver is not indifferent to the manner of his entering into a potentially binding relationship with Charlotte. During their period alone together at Fawns he has the opportunity for observing her, and for finding that they share a satisfying community of sympathy and aesthetic interest (Vol. 23, pp. 200-9). He is quite unashamedly attracted by her amenability, her practical competence, and her consideration; moreover, Charlotte meets an unfulfilled need in him for the comfort of a deep personal relationship in which his worth and achievement may be suitably recognized (Vol. 23, p. 205). And the exclusive aspect of such a relationship would clearly constitute a protection against the obtrusively illinformed recognition of his merits by women like Mrs Ranee or Kitty and Dotty Lutch. In her commentary on the circumstances preceding Adam's marriage, Bradbury suggests that he is lulled into a state of unwariness by the mood of expansive acceptance which grows out of a Keatsian golden autumn at Fawns {Henry James: The Later Novels, pp. 135-41). While it is plain that this poetic atmosphere produces a relaxation of alertness, and that Verver is not sufficiently sensitive to the possible consequences of his marrying Charlotte, the cultivated peace and order at Fawns represent values which he deeply cherishes. It is Charlotte's capacity to enhance these conditions which attracts him to her, and which James skilfully describes in order to convey Verver's natural susceptibility as a man. Here again the sustained comparison with the practice of the idealist thinker proves useful, for Adam is almost unconsciously drawn into the web of shared emotion, in spite of his confidence in his ability to see and direct with unqualified freedom. Yet the warmth of emotion also infuses the energy of reflection. When Verver concludes that it would be impermissible to consider marriage merely for his own sake, but that the project is justified by the intended influence on Maggie's domestic happiness, James shrewdly reveals in him not only a talent for impartial appraisal, but also a touching modesty (Vol. 23, pp. 208—9). His reflective control is applied as much to his own behaviour as to the prospects of others; his desires are meticulously scrutinized, yet they help to enrich the processes of meditation. This drawing up of the energy of personal emotion into the service of a shaping rational reflection is vividly dramatized by the scene in Brighton, when Verver purchases the set of Damascene tiles for his collection. During the transaction, he shows a sort of dual awareness, an appreciation of the rare artefacts (less absorbing than usual)

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which is coloured by his intense consciousness of Charlotte's presence, and a strongly aesthetic responsiveness to Charlotte's attitude and conduct.12 The way in which Verver's career unfolds gives a fuller existential resonance to James's apparently simple preliminary statement that 'as a taster of life' Adam is 'economically constructed'. Yet, as the sequence of the narrative indicates, the American millionaire is not unaware of his concentration of sensibility; and this self-appraisal makes the 'application of the same measure of value to such different pieces of property as old Persian carpets, say, and new human acquisitions' not entirely sinister (Vol. 23, p. 196). Verver's 'monotony' of interest is his mainspring of power and his weakness. It makes his actions particularly effective it aims for perfection, and seeks to ensure success. However, such a narrow and sharply outlined focus of attention tends also to undermine its most benign conceptions by assuming an absolute freedom. It loses sight of the interpenetration between the projects of the self and those of the other, of the intertwining of spontaneous choice and unavoidable limitation, of the complicated dialectic between imaginative anticipation and the eventual conversion of concrete actuality into a richer design. in

If Adam Verver's reflective approach often leads him to believe that the world is simple and controllable, Maggie begins with a simple faith in the transparency of her relations with the world. Her development, therefore, suggests strong similarities with the project of the artist or the philosopher-storyteller, because she becomes deeply and adventurously involved with events, attempting to interpret or transform them from within rather than seeking to impose the shaping patterns dictated by a constitutive consciousness. The extent to which this commitment of understanding marks a difference from her father's characteristic outlook is conveyed by one of the early images which James uses to describe her struggle towards greater self-awareness. When Maggie realizes that she (like Amerigo) is in a 'false position', and that she can no longer rely on the accustomed scale of values, her puzzlement is conveyed through this extended simile: 12

Holland offers a detailed and illuminating analysis of the structural importance of this passage (The Expense of Vision, pp. 359-63).

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she tried to deal with herself for a space only as a silken-coated spaniel who has scrambled out of a pond and who rattles the water from his ears. Her shake of her head, again and again, as she went, was much of that order, and she had the resource to which, save for the rude equivalent of his generalising bark, the spaniel would have been a stranger, of humming to herself hard as a sign that nothing had happened to her. She had n't, so to speak, fallen in; she had had no accident nor got wet; this at any rate was her pretension until after she began a little to wonder if she might n't, with or without exposure, have taken cold. (Vol. 24, pp. 6-7) James has set up a number of interlocking systems of reference. There is, as Merleau-Ponty would term it, a complicated 'folding over' of the language of the novel upon the experience of the character concerned, and of her experience upon the novel's language. The fiction of the spaniel's tumble into the pond is both Maggie's and James's. It is at once her metaphor for the attempt at reassuring herself that no mishap has yet occurred, and James's elaborate figure for her painful perplexity. Moreover, James carefully preserves a gap between the image of the wet dog and the minute tracking of Maggie's thought-processes. There is an intriguing double focus, which juxtaposes the two pictures in space as well as unfolding the sequence of movements along a temporal perspective.13 In addition, the particular extract produces a striking redirection of textual energy, so that the spaniel's process of recovery gathers its own momentum, and draws Maggie's tentative searching along in its wake.14 Maggie is both held within the fiction about the dog's splash and flight, and detached from it. Her capacity for 'humming to herself hard as a sign that nothing [has] happened to her' goes so far beyond the spaniel's means of expression as almost to destroy the impression of resemblance. And the suddenly arresting realization that her circumstances have indeed changed, that she has almost certainly 'taken cold', ends the extravagant rush of the metaphor by bringing it abruptly to a halt. Maggie, as an artist, is trying to reach the existential truth through 'a sort of distance', while Maggie, the Princess, is caught up in the immediacy of living and not analysing - on the contrary, battling to outrun the demand for penetrating self13

14

For a fuller discussion of these techniques, see Alan Rose, (The Spatial Form of The Golden Bowl\ Modern Fiction Studies, 12 (1966), 113-14. For a fine commentary on this passage, as it represents James's use of metaphor in his later works, see Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 41-4.

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examination. Through his fine philosophical fiction, James holds the reflected and the unreflected experience in a near-perfect poise of simultaneity. The nature of the ' false position' in which Maggie finds herself, and which she is so apprehensive of penetrating, is helpfully summed up by Fanny Assingham in one of her late-night colloquies with the Colonel. Fanny tends to place a largely favourable construction upon Maggie's behaviour, and this glosses over some of the harsher effects which James disconcertingly produces elsewhere in the novel - for instance, the jarring manner of Maggie's suggesting, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, that Charlotte 'had been "had in," as the servants always said of extra help', to ease the Ververs' family situation (Vol. 24, p. 23). When allowance has been made for the investigatory extravagance of Maggie's imaginative formulations, this nonetheless remains an exploitative view of Charlotte's role, a view touched with the unattractive manipulative connotations of Adam's familiar attitude of detached reflection and organization. However, Mrs Assingham's account of the origins of the 'false position' is, in its essentials, accurate (Vol. 23, pp. 394-6). As Fanny indicates, her young friend's problem arises out of her attempt at setting up a complicated mechanism of compensations and countercompensations : first she tries to reassure her father that her marriage to Amerigo will not undermine their old intimacy, then she tries to redress any possible neglect of the Prince by ensuring that the young man enjoys a wide variety of social activity in Charlotte's company. To the extent that Maggie is deliberately arranging the lives of others to meet her own requirements, she is, like her father, resorting to the supreme constitutive powers of consciousness as a means of controlling events. However, she is also immediately and unselfishly involved in the dilemma which she hopes to resolve. Because she is sympathetically aware of the interdependence of the members of her close circle, and of her responsibility for their individual happiness and security, she aims at the idealized goal of completely satisfying the needs of both her husband and her father. Her practical obtuseness and insensitivity thus become the measure of her deep concern; and it is this concern which is to be transformed into a mature force for creative commitment during the course of the novel.15 In this regard, 15

In 'Maggie Verver: Neither Saint nor Witch', Walter Wright tries to strike a balance between the extremes of unqualified approval and outright condemnation of Maggie's attitude in The Golden Bowl {Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 12 (1957), 59-71). Although Paul B.

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Fanny Assingham is right to assert that Maggie and her relatives have become ' so embroiled... because, in their way, they've been so improbably good' (Vol. 23, p. 394). Their predicament illustrates Merleau-Ponty's insight that the free and the determined become so closely intertwined that it is virtually impossible to extract separate strands. James's careful deployment of his characters minutely demonstrates how they have produced by their own choice and their own action the conditions which confine them; yet they remain enclosed by the consequences of these free decisions. This is not to argue that Merleau-Ponty's theory entails, or that The Golden Bowl presents, a surreptitious form of determinism. Just as Merleau-Ponty explains that the pre-established provides the basic material for freedom to adapt and remould, so James penetratingly dramatizes Maggie's efforts towards converting a system of restraints into a structure that will support satisfying growth. This does not mean, however, that Maggie takes the offensive as soon as she begins to appreciate how her devotion to her father is being treated by Charlotte and the Prince as the justification for their liaison. On the contrary, there is a protracted period when her role is shrewdly and tactfully shaped by the others. Even after she has bought the golden bowl, and learnt its secret from the shopkeeper, she avoids direct intervention. She stands the bowl where Amerigo cannot fail to see it, if he should come into her room — but his genielike appearance immediately after Mrs Assingham has smashed it to pieces functions, in terms of the creaky internal logic of the novel's events, as a fortunate chance (Vol. 24, pp. 164, 179). In fact, Maggie's early experimental attempts at fathoming the quality of the relationship between Charlotte and the Prince show her to be at a distinct disadvantage in seeking to exercise an oblique influence. When she calls at Eaton Square on the pretext of gaining from Charlotte more detailed information about the party at Matcham than Amerigo has been able to provide, she rapidly suppresses the 'impulse to break the existing charm at a stroke', and so to destroy her father's tranquil enjoyment of his interests (Vol. 24, p. 32). Instead, she intimates her state of mind through the medium of her Armstrong also adopts a phenomenological approach to this novel, he seems to me seriously mistaken in assuming that the major complications of the narrative arise out of Maggie's dedication to a type of solipsistic communion with her father, which consequently blinds her to the individuality and private requirements of others, as embodied in Charlotte and the Prince (see The Phenomenology of Henry James, pp. 150-8).

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improvised performance, using the dramatic fiction of a freshly aroused social curiosity to alert Charlotte to her heightened level of awareness (Vol. 24, p. 33). Far from achieving the effect she desires, she finds that her fictions breed fictions which she is then obliged to live out as actualities, since Charlotte and Amerigo are capable of exerting a more powerful creative force. The lovers' mastery of impromptu script-writing subjects Maggie to the 'violence of the letter', releasing her still amateurish efforts into an irresistible and disorientating play of differance. They deliberately misread her intentions; they turn the hermeneutically inspired imaginative projection into a means of holding Maggie at a calculated remove from the informing truth of their experience and her own, rather than allowing her to arrive at a fuller insight through a productive technique of distancing. This procedure gives Maggie the clue that they are ' treating' her by a plan which is an ' exact counterpart' of her own (Vol. 24, p. 41), although the reader recognizes that the lovers are engaged in a double deception, rather than a single manoeuvre. For Maggie's initial design is a deliberately transparent falsehood, a method for proposing and enacting a major change without a complete disruption. In this regard, her method is similar to James's strategy of setting up elaborate plots in order to explore a range of philosophical problems with maximum subtlety and comprehensiveness. Charlotte and the Prince, on the other hand, do not intend that their liaison should be exposed; yet, by entering into the field of imaginative play, they too participate in a 'folding over' of their skill for artificial representation upon their urge for satisfying experience. Unwittingly they reveal the nature of the relationship in which each strives against the existing odds to gain his or her own fulfilment, and to endorse a vulnerable identity, through the other. And Maggie reaches this conclusion about their co-operation: It was n't from her they took their cue, but - and this was what in particular made her sit up - from each other; and with a depth of unanimity, an exact coincidence of inspiration, that when once her attention had begun to fix it struck her as staring out at her in recovered identities of behaviour, expression and tone. (Vol. 24, pp. 41-2)

Nonetheless, such inspired guesses do not constitute proof, and Maggie is left helplessly alone with her surmises. The means of access between the interior and the exterior horizon are closed off; she is excluded from the comfort of normal, frank relationships, and forced

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in upon herself. James traces how this sense of isolation, in turn, produces a frightening feeling of alienation which prompts Maggie to seek Fanny's advice. The individual cannot survive in a vacuum, bereft of all relations. So Maggie breaks out in her desperate need for an independent confirmation of her impressions with the appeal that she is 'bewildered and tormented', and has 'no one but [Mrs Assingham] to speak to' (Vol. 24, p. 116). Then, driven by an apparently contradictory impulse, she moves in the direction of disproof. ' I had much rather you should denounce me than denounce them. Denounce me, denounce me,' she said, 'if you can see your way.' It was exactly what she appeared to have argued out with herself. ' If conscientiously you can denounce me; if conscientiously you can revile me; if conscientiously you can put me in my place for a low-minded little pig - !' 'I think I shall be saved.' (Vol. 24, p. 117) Maggie would prefer to believe herself mistaken than be convinced that her suspicions are correct; yet Fanny's parade of reassurance only deepens her lonely feeling that her relations with those closest to her are steadily being eroded.16 The scene offers a strange mixture of lies and truth, in which the truth is conveyed through a lie - although this is still not quite the truth, since it cannot assume the status of clear evidence. Once again, Maggie is presented with a fiction which may help her to interpret, or at least to manage, the complexities of her situation. But the fiction is extremely fragile, and Maggie's immediate predicament exerts a tremendous pressure towards the disintegration of the self in the absence of external support. Not only is Maggie's very psyche under threat, but the aspiring philosopherstoryteller cannot sustain a creative purpose in isolation from the challenging and enriching phenomena of her life-world. During this period Maggie's relationship with her father is also brought under considerable strain. She is faced with the secret knowledge that she may in the future need to sacrifice him (although she can at this stage give the notion no definite application), and she is further aware that Verver would be a willing victim (Vol. 24, pp. 82-3). This perception is in itself sufficiently painful, as Maggie's 16

Holland provides an illuminating discussion of the relationship between proof and disproof, truth and lies, in this encounter (The Expense of Vision, p. 383).

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relationship with her father is the one instance of unconditional reciprocity which she has yet experienced. But even this reciprocity is in danger of being converted into a pathetically empty fiction, since she will have to prevent him from guessing the reason for the sacrifice. If Verver's marriage was to have secured Maggie's peace of mind, she cannot admit that it has produced the opposite result - still less that it has threatened her own marriage to Amerigo. The loss of candour in the association between the father and daughter, and the frail artificial terms which are substituted for the unreserved openness of each to the other, are skilfully evoked by James's painstaking description of their walk together in the London park. Adam, too, indulges in a share of imaginative fabrication when he suggests that the two couples 'move as a selfish mass', and fills out his theory with the image of Orientals 'sitting about on divans, with pigtails, smoking opium and seeing visions'. But this picture of exotic relaxation is sharply followed up by a reference to Longfellow's call to ' " b e up doing"' (Vol. 24, pp. 91-2). The implications of such a sequence of ideas are only thinly veiled; Adam is indicating to Maggie his consciousness of the potential risks in their situation, and is hinting at some form of controlling action as a possible remedy. This interpretation of his intention is endorsed by the way in which the conversation comes to centre upon Charlotte. Particularly striking in its ironic reverberations is Verver's remark that he feels it ' a good deal' for himself' to have made Charlotte so happy — to have so perfectly contented her', whereas Maggie's happiness and contentment are figured as 'a matter of course' (Vol. 24, p. 92). Denials are subtly invited and withheld, while the elaborate pretence of assured success and confident self-congratulation continues. The extravagant structure of complacent satisfaction is supported by an effort of sheer will-power, and unstated meanings become almost the reverse of the stated. Through this extended and baroquely elaborate instance, James searchingly and relentlessly examines how the 'folding over' of experience upon language, and various linguistic formulations upon experience, may reveal deeply rooted uncertainties which the speakers would prefer to conceal. Each is anxious to protect the other, and can do so only by deceiving the other, so that the exchange crystallizes into a barrier of understanding through deliberate misunderstanding. James pushes the permutations on subtly cultivated relations to the outer limit. This discussion becomes a bizarre variation on the frank talk in the garden at Fawns, when

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Maggie first enlisted her father's ready help in finding a husband for Charlotte. This stalemate of frustrated reciprocity and self-defeating communication is broken once Maggie gains proof of her suspicions about the liaison between Charlotte and Amerigo by acquiring the golden bowl. Workable relationships begin to re-establish themselves, although still under a high degree of stress. And Amerigo's oblique enquiry as to whether Adam shares Maggie's recently won knowledge suggests to her a new pattern of powerful co-operation between herself and her father. From neither of them, she deduces, will Charlotte ever discover how much is known about her. Maggie realizes that Verver is almost certainly responding from similar motives to her own, and that by caring for each other's peace of mind and public dignity they are actually aiming towards the same goal (Vol. 24, pp. 202-3). There is a strong resemblance to Maggie's earlier experience of the tacit complicity between Charlotte and the Prince: each partner's attitude mirrors the other's but, in this case, as the sign of a mutual openness of understanding which virtually constitutes the consummation of their loving relationship in a corporate identity. However, the major disentangling and reweaving of the threads of relationship takes place during the house-party at Fawns. The resolution of the central problem of the novel, which James strives to complicate to the highest pitch of intricacy, is concentrated into a couple of intensely dramatic scenes which achieve the refinement of a sustained prose poem. In his preface to The Golden Bowl, James notes that 'the "taste" of the poet is, at bottom and so far as the poet in him prevails over everything else, his active sense of life'; he adds that any writer, irrespective of his choice of literary genre, becomes worthy of the title of'poet' 'in the degree in which his impulse and passion are general and comprehensive' (The Art of the Novel, p. 340).17 In the terms of this definition, the entire novel is a poetic narrative, for its guiding concerns embrace the most general and the most fundamental of human concerns. It gives solid embodiment to the basic notion of the essential relationship between the self and the world, or the self and the other, in which personal identity is rooted and through which it grows. It enacts through 17

This attempt at generalizing the scope of poetry beyond verse forms to embrace the most complex accomplishments of literary imagination may profitably be compared with the influential account developed by Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (ed. George Watson (London: Dent, 1956); see especially pp. 173-4).

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every meticulous detail the constant dialectic between continuing experience and linguistic formulation - and explores the paradox that the immediately felt impression may only acquire its full signification through an effort of' distancing' or translation into a medium of expression, such as language. It condenses into its own structure the processes of artistic creation, compelling a fusion of the endeavour of author, characters and reader. The card-game at Fawns is staged with deliberate theatricality so that Verver, Charlotte, the Prince and Mrs Assingham are seated at the table, while Maggie watches from the periphery, either inside the lighted room, or outside on the terrace. This effective distancing of those most closely involved in her predicament, the compression of all the features of her dilemma into a single, dramatic image, releases in Maggie a new surge of imaginative energy. James ingeniously marks the philosophical centre of his novel with a striking emblem. The conflicting possibilities Maggie canvasses represent concretely the different aspects of an awareness that has been developing steadily since her first discovery of her 'false position'. Very strong is the impulse to denounce the lovers, an impulse which has been suppressed since her earliest confrontation with Charlotte at Eaton Square (Vol. 24, pp. 233-4). This desire is figured not only in moral terms as the prerogative of 'innocence outraged and generosity betrayed', but also as a more fundamental need to subdue the 'horror of the thing hideously behind' the poised and serene appearance (Vol. 24, p. 237). Maggie is not anxious simply to proclaim her own self-satisfied rightness; it is rather that she desperately hopes to strike through the surface of deception, to suppress the 'violence of the letter', to rebuild the framework of direct and undistorted relationships. Her horror is the horror of compelled exclusion, of the dead silence which muffles and conceals, thus substituting itself for the responsive silence that fosters creative expression. However, the processes of her thought themselves suggest the impossibility of overt denunciation, for they generate the figure of the ' wild eastern caravan' which is so violently incongruous amid the decorum of Fawns (Vol. 24, pp. 236-7). The fictional interpretation is 'folded over' upon the perplexity of her lived experience, and the threat of an outburst is drawn off in the 'turning off short' of the caravan and its 'plunging into other defiles'. Instead, her private struggle brings out not so much the failure of a relationship as the existence of a bond of a different kind. 'Giving [the others] up' is

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' marvellously, not to be thought of because she finds herself in and through them, and because they depend upon her (Vol. 24, p. 237).18 Paradoxically, her alienation and isolation have also produced the necessary intellectual and emotional distance for her to apprehend the human values which she cherishes most deeply; she comes to understand that the relationship between herself and her family can command her sacrifice because her 'generosity betrayed' is the foundation of their security. In the completeness of this reborn openness between the self and the other, there is a willing curtailment of the requirements of the self and a readiness to embrace the preoccupying interests of the other. But James does not present this passage as the simple movement of Maggie's generosity and redemptive instinct; her responses are coloured by doubt, fear, and a more selfish desire to diminish, if possible, the magnitude of her likely sacrifice. Once again, she questions the validity of the isolated, individual point of view which may have been shaped at a remove from healthy commerce with the world. James pertinently shows Maggie wondering whether it is, in fact, the 'dire deformity of her attitude' to her companions which has produced the impression of horror, whether her father and Charlotte are perhaps in such close sympathy that any charge against Mrs Verver would be sharply dismissed (Vol. 24, pp. 239-41). And this teasing uncertainty is heightened by the pressure of Charlotte's presence beside her on the terrace; she wills her father to look up from his game of cards, to acknowledge their silent and inviolable communion, and so to ' save her from being the one... to pay all' (Vol. 24, p. 245). If this is Maggie's 'one little lapse from consistency - the sole small deflexion in the whole course of her scheme', it is prompted by her need for relief from imprisonment in the turmoil of her own consciousness. She longs for the unequivocal assurance that at least one of her precious personal relationships is still intact, and that oppressive responsibilities can be shared. While her father remains oblivious of her mute cry for help, comfort ironically reaches her in the least expected form. As she prepares to risk everything by denying that she has any grounds of complaint against Charlotte, she suddenly realizes that she and Amerigo are ' close, close together 18

Dorothea Krook suggests that Maggie at this point recognizes her responsibility for achieving a common salvation for herself and her companions by preserving the formal appearances which unite them {The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James, pp. 263-6); this line of reasoning, however, obscures the originality and comprehensiveness of Maggie's intense appraisal of her obligations.

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whereas Charlotte, though rising there radiantly before her, was really off in some darkness of space that would steep her in solitude and harass her with care' (Vol. 24, p. 250). If Charlotte is driven to exacting a clear statement from Maggie, then she too must be in doubt - which, in turn, establishes that the Prince has kept from her Maggie's discovery of the bowl and its damaging story. The proportions of the scene instantly shift, for it is Maggie who is in vital relation with Amerigo (albeit awkwardly and painfully in the face of their recent struggle of wills), and Charlotte who is constrictingly alone. Maggie's lie is no longer an absolute risking of her future prospects, but the qualified risk which will preserve the delicate configurations of life at Fawns in the hope that the key relationships may be transformed from within. The lie is at once an act of policy and an act of charity, which declines to publish Charlotte's defeat. It meets the consciousness of suffering with the readiness to share in suffering, and to grant the other person the maximum of dignity in her contacts with the world. The balance of the scene tilts still further when Charlotte seeks to consolidate her supposed advantage by kissing Maggie.19 In one sense, this conspicuous gesture seals Charlotte's success; yet her wish for a triumphant public assertion of her impunity also undermines her intention. Not only does the embrace suggest to the other members of the party the need for a reconciliation between the two young women; their attitude also gives Adam and Amerigo the measure of the pressure which Charlotte has attempted to apply. And this, in turn, leads to the colloquy in the garden which crystallizes Verver's decision to return to American City. Far from being cut off from the nexus of guiding relations, Maggie finds herself at the centre and in potentially powerful contact with all three of her close companions. Moreover, the taxing initial encounter, which is played out in an atmosphere of alternating darkness and bright artificial light, only achieves its full significance in a later meeting between Maggie and Charlotte (Vol. 24, pp. 309-18). This complementary 19

Charlotte's kiss, with its implicit evocation of the 'Judas Kiss', and the impression which Maggie earlier forms of fulfilling the function of the scapegoat (Vol. 24, pp. 234-5) ~ n o t t 0 mention the title of the novel itself- suggest that the book has religious overtones. These are usefully summarized by Crews, although he does not regard the work as embodying an essentially Christian scheme of salvation (The Tragedy of Manners, pp. 105-8). It seems to me that the allusions to Judaeo-Christian cultural traditions are so finely woven into the fabric of the text that James has skilfully adapted them to the broader structure of the novel's linguistic and imagistic patterns. It is his own line of fictional-philosophical enquiry which forms the central focus of attention.

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scene takes place in the dazzling light of noonday, and in the remoteness of a ' sort of umbrageous temple, an ancient rotunda' in the grounds of the estate. The harsh clarity of the light reflects at once the conquering of Maggie's former confusion, and the acuteness of Charlotte's anguish. When Maggie invites her stepmother's declaration that she herself has engineered the move to American City as a means of preserving and intensifying her intimacy with Verver, the inherent generosity of the informing motive seems to me sympathetically realized. In effect, Maggie is giving Charlotte back her sense of her own authority by offering her this opportunity for a demonstration of independence. If her stepmother is seen to have won the contest for Adam's affections, and Maggie appears to have lost it, there can be no disfigurement of Charlotte's deftly cultivated social presence. And if this seems a hollow form of concern - since Charlotte is to be permanently separated from the Prince, and transferred to an unyielding environment which she despises - it is illuminating to consider James's complex and clear-sighted treatment of personal relationships throughout the novel. For he repeatedly shows that the self finds its most satisfying expression in the interaction between itself and the world, by transcending itself in order both to discover and to develop its finest capabilities. For Maggie, the time of her own isolation and imperfect knowledge was the period of greatest misery. She cannot restore to Charlotte her communion with the Prince - in fact, her own claims uncompromisingly exclude such an affinity; but she can point the way towards the recovery of an integrity of consciousness by allowing Charlotte to define a new sphere of interest and influence. The configuration of relationships within the family group has been deliberately realigned by the exercise of covert forces, and in the conscientious avoidance of clumsily obvious dismantling. Scars have undoubtedly been inflicted, but the damage is not irreparable. At the same time, this method of proceeding is far from unproblematic. The way in which generosity is achieved through dishonesty, and a type of harmony restored through carefully concealed plotting, raises a number of pressing moral questions.20 It is less clear in this novel than in What Maisie Knew how the notion of a non-doctrinaire morality might be used to disentangle the major 20

Marius Bewley, for instance, is disturbed by the manner in which James seems to blur the distinctions, and to invert the relations, between truth and falsehood, appearance and reality {The Complex Fate, pp. 87-95).

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dramatic conflicts. For the central principle of'ama etfac quod vis' (or, 'love and do what you will') through its very conception allows considerable latitude of interpretation; and the aim of showing the fullest respect for human beings, as struggling human beings, is inevitably difficult to realize when needs or interests clash.21 Nonetheless, The Golden Bowl suggests that there is scope for the practice of morality, even in situations of the greatest intricacy. The resolutions produced are - and must be - imperfect, but morality itself emerges as a form of drama. James traces minutely the stages of Maggie's growing self-awareness, recording the development of her insight into her own psychological constitution and into the intimately personal requirements of others. He shows that these apparently separate processes are actually part of a single movement towards a deeper and more sensitive understanding: as MerleauPonty's enquiries confirm, ' man is but a network of relationships, and these alone matter to him'. In this way, the increase in Maggie's self-knowledge is marked by an increase in her creative capacity for thinking and feeling according to others. She can, for instance, conjure up a picture of Charlotte's desperate tapping against the glass of her mental prison, and supply the imaginary text for her stepmother's lament over the misery of losing a relation 'filled to the brim with the wine of consciousness' (Vol. 24, p. 329). But such perceptions are won at the cost of loneliness, humiliation and a confusion of values. And Maggie is also quite unrepentantly selfish; in one respect, the entire second part of The Golden Bowl is the history of her contest to regain the love of the Prince, even at the expense of giving up her father. But this would, as an unqualified conclusion, be both simplistic and reductive. Just as the novel enacts the repeated intertwining of the endeavour of the individual with the responses of his companions, so James also presents the interweaving of the selfish and the selfless, the willingness to sacrifice with the willingness to be sacrificed. When reviewed in this light, The Golden Bowl does not represent a departure from the themes of What Maisie Knew so much as an intensification and complication of such fictional and philosophical possibilities. The dramatic context is tightened, and the central dilemma becomes more exacting, as the focus shifts from the 21

In 'Flawed Crystals', her essay on the moral implications of The Golden Bowl, Martha Nussbaum claims that 'a deep love may sometimes require an infidelity against' the key standard which she perceives as the novel's ethical norm: becoming ' finely aware and richly responsible' (p. 39). Nussbaum's preoccupation with rules and 'norms', however, seems to me seriously to constrict her sense of the work's moral complexity and adventurousness.

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freely explanatory attempts of a child to the more mature efforts of a young woman who is directly involved in the cohesive pattern of adult relationships. Nor does The Golden Bowl embody a colossal moral relativism by exploring the constant interpenetration of opposing values. The final vision is both positive and receptive to individual weakness: it encompasses the play of uncertain judgement, qualified generosity and flawed compassion. James's moral philosophy reveals the importance of conceiving, spinning out and examining the structural tensions which constitute each unique case. James's presentation of a system of challenging moral ambivalences, which are nonetheless cross-referenced one upon another, is also closely linked to his treatment of dialogue in The Golden Bowl. Strategically placed silences give speech and thought their maximum scope in creating fresh relationships. Maggie's last private meeting with her father at Fawns, for example, shows a marked difference from the elaborate pretence of their earlier strained discussion in the London park. On this occasion, there is a genuinely shared effort towards the development of a finer sympathy and sharper discriminations of understanding; the gaps between their spoken comments become richly productive. Adam strategically introduces the topic of American City as an interest which he has pursued from a strong personal motive, as well as in his character as a public figure. Then the talk turns to their domestic selves and the consequences of the two marriages: this time they half-humorously canvass the possibility that Verver may, in fact, have found himself sacrificed to his daughter's happiness. In due course, the father asserts with mockseriousness that it ' would serve [Maggie] quite right' if he were to make the move abroad (Vol. 24, pp. 266-71). No more is explicitly said, but Adam has indicated his intentions, and together they have thoroughly explored his plan. The hint is neatly dropped, registered, allowed to lie unnoticed, then experimentally reworked into the conversation. Merleau-Ponty points out that 'if we rid our minds of the idea that our language is the translation or cipher of an original text, we shall see that the idea of complete expression is nonsensical, and that all language is indirect or allusive - that it is, if you wish, silence' ('Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', p. 43). And James at once demonstrates and deploys this aspect of linguistic signification to particularly strong effect in this exchange between Maggie and Adam. The allusive potentiality of speech is pushed to the limit, as they communicate intensely while avoiding the explicit

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statement of painful conclusions. Language is 'folded over' upon silence, and silence upon language; speech wells up out of the diversity of experience, and flows back to reshape and redirect that experience. It is as though the pair were thinking aloud, testing out various sequences of their ideas to see where such tentative scenarios lead them. Here, too, Merleau-Ponty notes that 'our thought crawls along in language', yet moves through it 'as a gesture goes beyond the individual points of its passage' (p. 43). So Maggie and her father frame proposition and response, trying to feel their way by using the readily formulated means of expression - but sometimes deliberately, sometimes unintentionally, carrying themselves beyond the preconceived boundaries. James perceptively shows both how they rely upon the established forms of communication, and how the act of conversing itself generates a fresh range of meanings. Maggie's explanation to her father of the connection between love and jealousy helpfully illuminates the degree of unvarnished personal insight which is at once encouraged and facilitated by these linguistic proceedings: 'My idea is this, that when you only love a little you're naturally not jealous - or are only jealous also a little, so that it does n't matter. But when you love in a deeper and intenser way, then you're in the very same proportion jealous; your jealousy has intensity and, no doubt, ferocity. When however you love in the most abysmal and unutterable way of all - why then you're beyond everything, and nothing can pull you down.' (Vol. 24, p. 262)

Adam is granted a privileged glimpse of the intensity and inclusiveness of Maggie's feeling for the Prince, one which far exceeds anything she might have envisaged in describing the condition of passionate attachment. It moves Verver towards imagining concretely what his daughter has found and he has never enjoyed, although he nonetheless delights in the contemplation of her pleasure and her opportunity for fulfilment. At this moment, he celebrates the unique richness of Maggie's experience by picturing her as 'a creature consciously floating and shining in a warm summer sea, some element of dazzling sapphire and silver, a creature cradled upon depths, buoyant among dangers, in which fear of folly or sinking otherwise than in play was impossible' (Vol. 24, p. 263). Although he is still shrewdly seeing and evaluating, he is also more deeply and personally involved with the currents of experience than at any other point in the novel. While Maggie's comments on love clearly refer to the physical and emotional relationship between two

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marriage partners, they point, in addition, towards a compelling reinterpretation of the bond between the father and his daughter. For Verver, too, there can be no jealousy, only a supreme care for his child's happiness — and, as an unreserved expression of his paternal affection, he is prepared to give her up to her absorbing union with the Prince. For the reader, these visions of love, interdependence and sacrifice promote an altered perspective on the earlier sequences of the novel, subtly qualifying Maggie's taut responses to Amerigo and her contrived treatment of Charlotte. They consolidate the impression of the misery which the Prince's liaison with Charlotte must have caused his wife, but they also encompass the passion which has almost irresistibly driven Mrs Verver into pursuing her affair with Amerigo. At the same time, a distinct shadow darkens these images of play in a warm atmosphere of diffused radiance: an easy inference from Adam's remark that he has never been jealous is that he loves too much as a father - and too little as a husband. James's experimentation with the interweaving of language and silence provides him with an exceptional evaluative resource; sequential theoretical analysis is replaced by seeing a situation simultaneously from a multiplicity of mutually enforcing and undermining perspectives. As with the figure of the spaniel's drenching, each perception is engagingly active; yet, in this instance, James exposes even the sinister dimension of vibrant, self-transcending love. Nonetheless, the mood of loving transmutation is felt again at the end of this scene (Vol. 24, pp. 273-5). For Maggie, too, this quiet exchange with Verver leads to the conversion of the directly spoken into a comprehensive private attestation, a creative effort which embraces the wide range of her father's qualities, as touched and enhanced by the strength of her emotion. It is, therefore, important to register that her characterization of Verver as 'simply a great and deep and high little man' is the response of a daughter who is ' lifted aloft' by the deduction that ' to love him with tenderness was not to be distinguished a whit from loving him with pride' (Vol. 24, p. 274). In unfolding Maggie's process of revealing insight, James draws out the allusive properties of language as skilfully as he earlier employs the power of silence to form an envelope of further signification around the conversation between the father and daughter. As Maggie struggles to give shape to her conception, imagination and keen emotion are barely contained within the limits of formulable linguistic expression; James emphasizes the almost physical pressure

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exerted by her feeling in its attempt to break through the structure of words by describing her awareness as 'swelling' or 'raising' her 'higher, higher'. Yet this passage of loving transformation equally conveys through its very language an ominous sense of both Maggie and her father. The words 'success', 'strength' and 'pride' occur repeatedly, setting up reverberations not only within their immediate context, but also with the rest of the novel. Maggie appears at her most empathetic and responsive, Adam at his most humane and responsible. Still, the preoccupation with exerting power and control not only remains central to his consciousness, but freely infuses itself into Maggie's. If she is a 'child of his blood', then James hints that there may be a more sinister aspect to her attempt at reshaping the relationships among those close to her. It is not only Verver's usual attitude of detached observation and careful organization which is potentially damaging and manipulative. Maggie as well, working scrupulously within the constraints of her family situation, may nonetheless find that her care and self-restraint imperceptibly turn themselves into the means of covert domination and blind selfjustification. James skilfully points to the difficulties inherent in sustaining an approach of balanced and creative ' hyper-reflection'; it is all too easy for the dubious attractions of an authoritarian idealism to assert themselves. If Maggie is to fulfil her promise as a daring artist and a philosopher-storyteller, she (like Strether) must constantly re-examine the knot of relations which tie the self to a mutable social world, while also shaping the life of consciousness in terms of its vital interaction with the experience of others. The final scenes of the novel unite the multiple aspects of James's fictional and philosophical project, fusing the perfected with the flawed, the transformed with the unchanged, and success with failure (Vol. 24, pp. 358-69). While the novelist's description seems to concentrate upon the details of physical objects and works of art pictures, sofas, cabinets, even the fine lines of the human figures — the aesthetic has obviously become a metaphor for other sorts of value. Just as Maggie uses the terms of the museum to give an index of her appreciation of the Prince's worth in the opening chapter, so now the symmetry and decorum of the drawing-room express the resolution of conflict and the saving power of generous concern.22 Even within 22

Winner astutely notes that the reference to a ' rare power of purchase' in this section includes not only the acquisition ofobjets (Tart but also the appropriate treatment of human resources (Henry James and the Visual Arts, pp. 160-2).

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the physical universe, a species of transformation has taken place. Verver closely studies a painting,' an early Florentine sacred subject' which he has given Maggie on her marriage - and this love-offering, in its serene beauty, comes to stand for the fineness of Verver's regard for his daughter and the completeness of his sacrifice (Vol. 24, P- 359)- I* represents in her sphere what the 'individual gift, the friendship's offering', the 'foredoomed aberration' cannot adequately represent in his; the intertwining of personal and moral values with the aesthetic has been effected, and given a concrete embodiment. Yet the formality of this parting encounter betrays the cost at which this poise has been (both literally and metaphorically) purchased. Works of art become a metaphor for other kinds of human value because the springs of love and pain lie too deep to be safely released. Behind the language of harmony and fulfilment lurks the sub-text of suffering and disfigurement. By allowing the language of this farewell gathering to shade off into silence, James 'folds' the triumphant conclusion of his novel back upon the preceding events. The complex of defining relations among his characters shows, for the moment, as a fragile artifice which covers the void of loneliness, and loss, and defeat. Yet the success is also real and tangible; the Florentine painting and the assured grace of Charlotte's attitude exist to prove it. This transition into the region of metaphor in order to capture the delicate resonances of an ambiguous parting brings to the fore a further structural dimension of The Golden Bowl. Derrida's critique of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's preoccupation with the functioning of origins encompasses his theory of language, too. Unlike his contemporaries, Rousseau identified the beginnings of speech not in literal denotation, but in passion and metaphor; however, Derrida also claims that at the cost of a cunning twist of intellectual sleight of hand, Rousseau manipulates the genetic process back into a progress from the literal to the literal. If, for example, a primitive man is frightened by encountering strangers, and calls them ' giants' because they appear to him as huge and threatening, then ' the signifier - as the idea of the object - will be metaphoric, but the signifier of [the] passion will be literal. And if I then say " I see giants," the false designation will be a literal expression of my fear' (OfGrammatology, pp. 275-6). In due course, moreover, 'giants' becomes a literal term for ' others' in the given language. Something akin to the emergence of' primitive metaphor' can be detected in the concluding sequence

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of James's novel. Banked down passion dominates the preparations for a final farewell. Adam, Charlotte, the Prince and the Princess have all committed themselves to achieving the highest available value for their efforts. The intense desire for value in return for their various forms of anguish becomes the measure of their powerful emotion; yet this yearning cannot be literally acknowledged. So aesthetic objects - and aesthetically pleasing persons - conveniently fill the role of an appropriate primary metaphor, especially as objets (Tart can readily be retranslated into the literal cash values which Adam Verver understands so shrewdly. And the moral implications of these subtle personal adjustments, delicate and elusive as they are, figure as a type of secondary metaphor. The pulse of feeling and the controlled appraisal of sophisticated acquisitions find themselves intertwined in a new knot of relations, both linguistic and personal. The closing embrace between Maggie and the Prince, yet again, compresses into a single gesture a teasing complex of opposing significations.23 In a novel which is so deeply concerned with relationships - the basic relationship between the individual and the world in which he moves, the 'folding over' of language upon ordinary experience and experience upon the evolution of language, as well as the intertwining of speech and silence -James ends with the intimate relationship between the self and the other. The ' pity and dread' which Maggie feels as she buries her face in Amerigo's breast reflect both the extent to which she has won her struggle and earned his love, and the risk entailed in the intensity and self-absorption of their communion. The promise of fulfilment has been kept, but it remains for Maggie self-critically to sustain the energy of her passion, and to help create a living relationship in which she may find herself in and through the Prince, while leaving him sufficiently free to forge his identity through his bond with her. Although this reading of the final phase of the novel focuses upon the ambivalence of James's attitude, and the ineluctable play of differance which repeatedly shades the positive with the negative, it does not involve a simple endorsement of Krook's view that ' the ambiguity is perhaps best defined as a huge, elaborate metaphor for James's experience of the unavoidable, unalterable mixed motive of all human action, and the consequent dual... character of all human endeavour'. Moreover, 23

Marianna Torgovnick offers a useful commentary on the structure and fictional function of the concluding pages of the novel; this includes an assessment of the existing criticism {Closure in the Novel (Princeton, N J . : Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 143-56).

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Krook contends that there is a direct causal connection between good and evil, baseness and nobleness {The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry

James, p. 319). This suggests an inherently schematic interpretation of The Golden Bowl, whereas the preceding account of the novel is at once dramatic and dialectical; it does not depend upon demonstrating a necessary linkage between opposing values within the novel. It seeks instead to explore James's presentation of the steady unfolding of his characters' experience, an unfolding which is repeatedly modified by their imaginative projections, which are, in turn, caught up in the web of experience and transformed into a fresh matrix of guiding circumstances. This interpretation is more guarded than Krook's in that it firmly declines to treat The Golden Bowl as a clearly defined fable of redemption. It is, in another regard, less morally pessimistic, for it accepts the success of James's vision of transformation, and the soundness of Maggie's achievement, without advancing loss and suffering as unavoidable preconditions for harmony and happiness. Instead, this reading of the novel gives prominence to James's full existential perception of the richness of human possibility; this richness is qualified by individual weaknesses and blindnesses, but it actualizes itself in the sacrifice of Adam's love and the spontaneity of Maggie's generosity, in the courage of Charlotte's grace and the charm of the Prince's composure. And because the informing complex of relations binds the characters so tightly together, their humanly flawed success is ultimately achieved as corporate endeavour. IV

One of the fundamental structures of relations underlying The Golden Bowl is starkly revealed in the scene in which Maggie and Adam Verver watch each other across the intervening space of the gallery at Fawns, while Charlotte lectures to her guests on the most noteworthy features of the artefacts on display: The high voice went on; its quaver was doubtless for conscious ears only, but there were verily thirty seconds during which it sounded, for our young woman, like the shriek of a soul in pain. Kept up a minute longer it would break and collapse - so that Maggie felt herself the next thing turn with a start to her father. 'Can't she be stopped? Has n't she done it enough?' some such question as that she let herself ask him to suppose in her. Then it was that, across half the gallery - for he had n't moved from where she had first seen him - he struck her as confessing, with strange tears in his own

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eyes, to sharp identity of emotion. 'Poor thing, poor thing'-it reached straight - 'is n't she, for one's credit, on the swagger?' After which, as held thus together they had still another strained minute, the shame, the pity, the better knowledge, the smothered protest, the divined anguish even, so overcame him that, blushing to his eyes, he turned short away. (Vol. 24, p. 292) As Maggie and her father pause on the periphery of the action, they seem to be observers rather than participants, although the invisible tie which Adam has created between himself and Charlotte has effectively coerced her strained performance. At the same time, the watching pair are, in a sense, joint authors of this drama; their agreement on the general outline of the plan for separating the two couples, and Verver's skill in translating his intention into a practicable form, have led to the staging of the present production. For Charlotte the ' violence of the letter' makes itself palpable once more. Most of all, though, Maggie and her father operate as interpreters in this passage. Maggie's intense perception of Charlotte's anguish leads to her silent communication with Verver, a communication which he both acknowledges and understands. After this, a drama of involvement and implicit self-evaluation is played out between the father and daughter. Their reading of each other's signs has a transforming effect; the movement of interpretation becomes a sort of commitment in which each is changed by the attempt at penetrating both the nature of Charlotte's misery and the other's awareness of that pain. In this way, they become creative as readers of the intricately interlinked appearances within their world; for they open themselves to its impressions, and modify their patterns of response in accordance with the acquisition of fresh evidence. They extract meaning from expressive silences, and are intelligently guided by the blanks within the system of overt signification. And their ability as critics of their flow of shared experience grows in proportion to their receptiveness, their imaginative agility, and their willingness to be remoulded by the force of their discoveries. A similar intertwining of the roles of participant, creative artist and reader of experience is to be seen in the case of the Assinghams.24 Fanny is, of course, predominantly an interpreter of the novel's events. But it is also she who promotes the marriage between Maggie 24

For informatively detailed accounts of the function which the Assinghams fulfil in the novel, see Holland, The Expense of Vision, pp. 3 3 8 - 4 3 ; Yeazell, Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James, pp. 8 7 - 9 9 ; a n ^ Ora Segal, The Lucid Reflector: The Observer in Henry

James's Fiction (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 193-210.

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and the Prince, who guides Amerigo's first steps in his relationship with the Ververs, and who implicitly challenges the lovers into finding an appropriate method for at once concealing and conducting their liaison. Moreover, she allows Maggie to test out her theories about her unnerving predicament after the discovery of the bowl, for she listens, prompts and questions as her young friend's ideas gain coherent definition. At the same time, Fanny's service as a choric commentator is fully integrated into the structure of the novel; as Segal perceptively points out, she is a far from infallible interpreter of the difficulties of her associates, so that her rococo (and often comical) explanations add to the complexity of the prevailing conflict {The Lucid Reflector, pp. 197-8). However, Yeazell overstates the case in suggesting that Fanny is, in her obsession with good talk and the analysis of motive, 'the classic Jamesian character carried to a farcical extreme' {Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry

James, p. 88). Fanny undoubtedly serves to provide light relief from the main tensions of the novel, but she also performs an indispensable function in dramatizing explicitly the processes of interpretation which are being enacted and re-enacted throughout the narrative. She even dramatizes her own appearance and style of speech as a means of both projecting and understanding herself, of setting up relationships with others and apprehending the nature of her contacts with society. The way in which the supporting activity of the Assinghams is thoroughly woven into the fabric of the novel is illustrated by their drive home, after Fanny's shocked recognition of the motives governing the publicity of the joint appearance contrived by Charlotte and Amerigo at the 'great official party' (Vol. 23, pp. 276-87). James carefully sets up a system of arresting reverberations between Fanny's ride in the 'hired brougham' and the occurrences which influence the lives of the four principal characters. Her alarm when she is suddenly caught in the beam of the policeman's flashlight, while immersed in her guilty reflections, points forward to the symbolic interplay of darkness and light as Maggie and Charlotte circle cautiously on the terrace at Fawns, and pass in and out of the brightly illuminated reception rooms. Then there is the comic pathos of the Assinghams' arrival at their front-door, when James describes them as ' crawling up their steps quite mildly and unitedly together, like some old Darby and Joan who have had a disappointment' (Vol. 23, p. 287). The moment crystallizes an impression of the couple and

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their intimate relationship, giving them a concrete identity of their own, and making them substantially more than a mere compositional resource. At the same time, this scene contrasts sharply with the return of Maggie and the Prince to Portland Place after the carriage ride in which she for the first time resists her husband's embrace, and tries to draw him round to co-operating in her scheme for a significant restructuring of their personal arrangements. While the Prince waits for his wife to alight from their carriage, he pointedly places himself on the edge of the terrace, with a servant on either side of him, so that Maggie is left with ' the sense of a life tremendously ordered and fixed' (Vol. 24, pp. 66—7). Amerigo's withdrawal sharply intensifies her impression of hopeless isolation, of being locked into a tightly restraining set of formal relations; and this failure of sympathetic communication between the Prince and the Princess is thrown into relief by the eccentric success of the Assinghams' marriage. From a more general point of view, Fanny is, as Holland notes, repeatedly made conscious of being both guilty and guiltless (The Expense of Vision, p. 339). She is the interpreter of her friends' experience, but the degree to which she is able to achieve even remotely accurate readings of the course of events depends upon her empathetic involvement with her associates, her willingness to project herself into their predicaments. She enters into their concerns as a means of compensating for her own lack of family commitments; she lives with and through her companions, converting observation into an absorbing occupation by the sheer weight of her enthusiasm. Yet James is also careful to explore the way in which Fanny's interaction with the Colonel operates as a persuasively rounded personal relationship, in which comfort is securely founded upon understanding and an exchange of views, however oblique, can take place. When, for instance, Fanny tries to extract some solid evidence about the type of intimacy between Charlotte and the Prince from her husband's impression of their demonstration at the party, the Colonel laconically replies, 'Leave it... to them' (Vol. 23, p. 285). Yeazell suggests that he responds very much as though the blunt and frequently literal-minded William James had accidentally wandered into one of his brother's later novels, and were expressing his frustration at the constant indirections and convolutions of the style (Language and Knowledge in the Late Novels of Henry James, p. 91). But

this again sweepingly overlooks the intricacy of James's overall design. Bob Assingham's grunts and brief outbursts patently function

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as a foil to Fanny's baroque speculations, but he is also a not imperceptive reader of the novel's events. He belongs to its intense fictional world, even if he usually retires to the remote and more congenial region of his club for solace. And his recommendation to Fanny is at once sensible and penetrating. It is not simply that Mrs Assingham would be ill-advised in attempting to restore the balance of relations among her friends by direct intervention; it is principally that these tensions can only be relieved by those immediately involved through the exercise of their duplicity, their tact, or their inventiveness. With rough concern the Colonel reminds his wife that they are only outsiders - interested and implicated observers, but primarily interpreters of the performance, who must find their satisfaction in unbiased appraisal and compassionate analysis. The way in which James weaves even the endeavour of those characters who are predominantly commentators into the tight fabric of the novel is indicative of the experience which confronts the reader of The Golden Bowl. He is faced with the complex task of tracing out the intertwining patterns of ambiguity, and of following through the processes by which the text enfolds layer upon layer of interlocking significations. Such demands are, quite routinely, made upon the readers of any novel; yet The Golden Bowl (like the entire body of James's later fiction) represents a special problem, because such works rely heavily upon the power of allusion, upon metaphorical modes of expression, and upon the creative interpenetration of language and silence. The reader must open himself unreservedly to the modulations of the text, and must also engage in a productive effort towards building up coherent sequences of dramatic realization out of the interplay between the explicitly formulated and the finely hinted. Paul Ricoeur helpfully describes the manner in which the individual may overcome the distance which separates him from the text, and, in fact, treat this as a vital aspect of his experience of reading, by embarking upon a process of appropriation. Such appropriation does not entail mere absorption, or a return to assuming the absolute authority of the idealist subject. On the contrary, the reader comes to understand himself' in front of the text'; in this practice, he actually undergoes a sort of disappropriation by subduing the assertive claims of his circumscribed personal identity and making himself freely receptive to the alien existence of the work. What is, in effect, appropriated is the matter (or the 'world') of the text, because the reader exchanges ' the me, master of itself, for the self

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disciple of the text' ('Phenomenology and Hermeneutics', p. 113). The reader thus gains a subtler and more comprehensive awareness by involving himself fully in the fictional universe created by the author; he commits himself willingly to exploring the multiple facets of the writer's imaginative projection. However, this does not suggest an ultimate extreme of complete disappropriation, in which the individuality of the reader is swallowed up into the unfolding of the narrative. Ricoeur himself clarifies the position by explaining that the process he outlines ' could also be expressed as a distanciation of self from ^//'within the interior of appropriation' (p. 113). This means that the reader recovers and enriches himself by giving of himself, by seeking to sustain this complicated double movement of surrender and vigilance, which confirms his capacity both to embrace and to judge critically the unique atmosphere of the novelist's world. Wolfgang Iser, who has made a detailed study of the process of reading from a phenomenological point of view, develops an analysis which is broadly similar to Ricoeur's. He contends that in the act of reading the conventional philosophical opposition between subject and object is abolished, making way for a ' division' within the reader himself. Because he is involved in thinking the alien thoughts of another, 'his own individuality temporarily recedes into the background ', and he begins to operate on two separate levels. There is the 'alien " m e " ' which submits itself to the rhythms of the text, and the 'real, virtual " m e " ' which cannot disappear entirely if any coherent effort at interpretation is to take place. Moreover, Iser considers that these two notional levels within the identity of the reader can never be totally cut off from each other; for each individual can become absorbed in the imaginative creation of another only to the extent to which his own personality is able to adapt to this fictional universe. This, in turn, entails that different boundaries will be drawn between the 'real, virtual " m e " ' and the 'alien " m e " ' , depending upon the nature of the specific text under examination.25 Iser, therefore, eliminates the notion of the distance separating the reader from the fictional work, and shapes his exposition in terms of the imaginative capability of the individual for conforming to 25

See 'The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach', in The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore, M d . : Johns Hopkins

University Press, 1974), p. 293. Iser elaborates his theory, and includes an original (if contentious) discussion of the function performed by the various sorts of gaps within a literary text, in The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1978).

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the patterns of the author's invention. Yet, while Ricoeur's theory of appropriation suggests a different emphasis, and belongs to a different context of philosophical enquiry, both he and Iser are anxious to explicate the creativity of the reading process. Iser, in particular, points to the {dialectical structure of reading', noting that ' the need to decipher [the work] gives us the chance to formulate our own deciphering capacity'. In this way, the individual is brought to recognize aspects of his own identity which had previously escaped direct notice. Iser sums up his argument by stating that 'the production of the meaning of literary texts... does not merely entail the discovery of the unformulated, which can then be taken over by the active imagination of the reader; it also entails the possibility that we may formulate ourselves and so discover what had previously seemed to elude our consciousness' ('The Reading Process', p. 294). This view calls to mind Merleau-Ponty's poetic description of the generative powers of language itself. He points out that discourse does not entail a simple matching of sign to signification; instead, language is the necessary medium through which thought grows towards its realization. As he puts it in ' Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence', the writer, like the weaver, 'works on the wrong side of his material. He has to do only with language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by meaning' (p. 45). These phenomenological theories bring into focus not only the affinities between the effort of the imaginative writer and the endeavour of the attentive reader, but also the way in which the reader finds himself by giving himself up to the experience of the text. What James has achieved in The Golden Bowl is an intricate intertwining of the roles of writer, characters and reader; the form of the novel at once expresses the processes by which it was created, and the processes by which it is to be interpreted. The characters frequently follow the example of the author, and engage in imaginative projection in an attempt at comprehensively embracing or deliberately restructuring the world of the novel. Maggie is the most accomplished artist, not only in handling her elaborate sorties into the realm of fictional experimentation, but also in controlling the blend of sympathetic concern and manipulative falsehood which is to help her in transforming the complex of defining relations from within, and thus avoiding the disfigurement of outright denunciation. Charlotte, too, strives to command a diction which will recast her given circumstances in conformity with her deepest desires. Yet she,

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more acutely than any other participant in the drama of rearrangement, suffers the relentless play of differance, which constantly defers and redifferentiates the terms of a prized, but receding, personal fulfilment. Amerigo is a master of the smooth aesthetic exterior, with a cultivated talent for seeming to conjure away the uncomfortable by the exercise of his charming ingenuity. And Adam is not only the great Patron of Art, but the most effective producer of all (the artist, perhaps, in Olympian guise) - the one whose cool detachment leaves him no fear either of the hidden ' violence of the letter' or of the ambivalences of action. Moreover, if each of these characters is an artist with his own style, each is also a committed reader of events, who seeks to develop his deciphering capacity in proportion to the intricacy of the problems presented for analysis. From a global perspective, the reader also works through the range of possibilities embodied in the novel; and the subtlety of his interpretation is governed by the degree to which he is willing to immerse himself in the drama of transformation, and to sharpen his evaluative skills in response to the challenge of James's text. His role is bound very closely to that of the novelist himself, for the steady ' folding over' of layer upon layer of the fictional structure tests to the limit his capacity for recreating the informing design, and for generating fresh constellations of meaning. This version of the fictional constitution of The Golden Bowl throws further light on James's use of the concrete symbol of the bowl itself. The bowl undeniably functions as a structural anchor within the novel, for it acts as the point of convergence for a number of intricate systems of aesthetic, psychological and moral reference. And it has fruitful associations with the imagery of shape and colour throughout the book. As Ruth Taylor Todasco shrewdly notices, it occupies a central place within the figurative patterning of the text, precisely because it is the only image which 'has a literal counterpart'. 26 Just as the Spoils in The Spoils of Poynton are not merely a scrupulously inventoried collection of furniture, but assume a wider symbolic resonance which is diffused throughout the novel, so the golden bowl operates as part of a comprehensive scheme of imaginative and metaphoric cross-referencing within James's later narrative. The bowl is, arguably, a less successful conception than the Spoils, because it is less representative and adaptable, on occasion even 26

See 'Theme and Imagery in The Golden Bowl\

(1962), 229.

Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 4

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lumpish and intrusive.27 At the same time, though, its purpose is distinctly subordinate; it is taken up into the central movement of transformation, of success and failure, of achieved generosity and painful human loss, in the drama. No single image or symbol, however amenable to variation, can express the truth of The Golden Bowl, for that truth is embodied only in the overall process of the novel which interweaves the activities of author, characters, and reader. This again suggests a return to Merleau-Ponty's notion of truth, not as 'an adequation3 , but as 'anticipation, repetition, and slippage of meaning'. To add a final clarification to this idea of the truth of The Golden Bowl as its process — and this theory has also been explored with regard both to The Ambassadors and to The Spoils of Poynton - it is

informative to consider the relationship between the ordinary and the exotic, as well as the particular and the general, within James's fictional universe. John Bayley perceptively comments on the careful attention which is paid to the physical details of life when he records that' the characters have baths, use latch-keys, get their clothes wet, smoke and drink, feel hungry, and experience sexual desire'.28 Yet the very ordinariness of this activity is integrated into a world apparently dominated by enormous wealth and priceless works of art, and in which daring imaginative excursions seem to know no limit. These contrasts, however, fall in admirably with the scope of James's embracing philosophical design; for the structure of the novel serves to show the intertwining of the most fundamental human needs with the richest possibilities of creative energy. Maggie Verver, unlike Maisie and Strether who are frequently forced by their circumstances into a position simply of engaged observation and assessment, becomes at once fully immersed in the current of activity, yet grows increasingly aware of the importance of compassionate appraisal. The novel binds together for its characters the central complex of relations which delimit the situation of each individual — those between the self and the world, the self and the other, experience and language, pre-existent conditions and the defiantly restless imagination - subjecting them to repeated transmutations and revaluations. It achieves a vision which integrates loss and suffering 27

28

There is, for instance, a tone of strained artificiality about the way in which Charlotte and Amerigo revert to their discovery of the bowl, while planning their romantic expedition to Gloucester (Vol. 23, pp. 359-60). See The Characters of Love: A Study in the Literature of Personality (New York: Basic Books, 1961), p. 219.

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into the finest accomplishments of love, and recognizes the shaping power of freedom in response to the resistance of rigid fact. The Golden Bowl is James's most complete fictional and philosophical statement, at once uniquely inventive and highly generalized, because it is the work most adapted to sustained reinterpretation. At the same time, it represents a ne plus ultra for both phenomenology and imaginative narrative, because its treatment of the relationship' strives to achieve near-total relevance and comprehensiveness. Each minute philosophical discrimination calls for still further refinement, until the sequence of analyses threatens to spin itself out to infinity. To offset this runaway tendency, the text keeps doubling back on itself, converting the literal into the metaphorical, and rhetorical figures into fresh twists of the plot. This 'folding over' (or Derridean 'remarking') sets forth the greatest strength and the greatest perplexity of phenomenological ' hyper-reflection': while such an approach is unequivocally creative and self-critical, it cannot be legitimately translated into formal, end-stopped statements. To arrive at its most coherent and incisive expression, Merleau-Ponty's thought needs the novel. Nothing less than a full fictional enactment of his method of enquiry, on the model of Henry James's practice, will suffice.

Conclusion: Henry James's version of the philosophical novel

In 1904 Henry James returned to America after an absence of twenty years, and was almost overcome by the magnitude and complexity of the changes which he perceived. The American Scene records his attempts at describing and coming to imaginative grips with a homeland made strangely new and alien. What this volume of travel sketches displays with peculiar vividness, according to Sharon Cameron, is the power of an assertive consciousness to dominate objects, or even to 'dispense' with them, so that the focus of the commentary becomes something like Jamesian consciousness itself.1 While this reading seems to me neatly over-ingenious, it does cast light upon James's intense struggle — both with himself and with various cultural or demographic phenomena - to make sense of the rush of bewildering experiences which assailed him. His treatment of the Jewish ghetto in New York, for instance, presents a curious compound of surprise, aversion and penetrating social analysis. Some of his remarks savour of unrelieved prejudice: There are small strange animals, known to natural history, snakes or worms, I believe, who, when cut into pieces, wriggle away contentedly and live in the snippet as completely as in the whole. So the denizens of the New York Ghetto, heaped as thick as the splinters on the table of a glass-blower, had each, like thefineglass particle, his or her individual share of the whole hard glitter of Israel.2 At the same time, James admires (albeit in rather invidious terms) the fecundity and vitality of the Jewish community, and he notices how their practical living conditions have been improved by the move from the oppression of the Old World to the relative freedom of 1

2

See Sharon Cameron, Thinking in Henry James (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 7. Henry James, The American Scene, introd. Leon Edel (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968), p. 132. 222

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the New. More significantly, he begins to detect the 'Accent of the Future' {The American Scene, p. 139), for he realizes that the English language, as he knows it, must undergo radical transformation in response to so many energetic, foreign influences. Laurence Holland, however, slips too readily into a tone of special pleading as he sympathetically charts James's distressed, yet determined, progress towards gauging the probable impact of steady immigration on twentieth-century America.3 The elderly expatriate is unbending, resentful and bemused, inconsistently trying to rationalize his own dubious reactions. In The American Scene as a whole, James fails repeatedly to collate his impressions and to integrate his assessments; he is defeated by the vastness of the geographical scale and the diversity of American customs, beliefs and institutions. Just as he believes Washington, the seat of national government, to mask its exercise of power behind a facade of polished conversation, so James himself conceals his authorial perplexity and frustrated textual manipulations in a mass of deliberate indirections and metaphorical figures.4 Without a plot to dramatize, a story to tell, he appears lost and unable either to master contemporary sociological challenges or to achieve persuasive and coherent conceptual distinctions. The stylistic muddle of The American Scene contrasts sharply with James's delicate enquiry into the functioning of human relations through the intertwining of the roles of author, characters and reader in The Golden Bowl. Nor can the attempt at a polished travel survey deliver anything approaching the subtlety of his examination of'what it means to love', when he goes '"behind" the facts' of the little girl's history in What Maisie Knew. For James, as the preceding discussion has demonstrated, storytelling and philosophical activity are inextricably linked. Conversely, his projection of fictional narratives functions as a vital technique for both developing and refining epistemological or ethical hypotheses, in the exploratory spirit of his brother William, Soren Kierkegaard or Jean-Paul Sartre. While these remarks would seem to draw attention away from James's volume of travel sketches, The American Scene in a curious way highlights his dependence on story-telling as a malleable medium for 3

4

See Laurence Holland, 'Representation and Renewal in Henry James's The American Scene', in The Expense of Vision, rpt. ed., introd. Richard Poirer (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), pp. 424, 427-30. For a shrewd and original discussion of this issue, see Seltzer, Henry James and the Art of Power, pp. 125-35.

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deducing patterns of personal or cultural interrelationship. In The Visionary Betrayed, David L. Furth contends that James's attempt at unifying his impressions of America by superimposing a democratic matrix of interpretation ultimately fails, forcing the writer back upon his private resources as aesthetic visionary. However, Furth also acknowledges that James seeks to work through the problematics of his disturbing encounter with a continent made impenetrable in his unfinished novel, The Ivory Tower, and at least three of his late short stories: 'A Round of Visits', 'Crapy Cornelia' and 'The Jolly Corner'. 5 Because The Ivory Tower was incomplete at James's death, it tantalizes the reader with half-promised fresh insights into the ageing author's perception of commercialism and industrialism, as well as their concomitant social or psychological effects; but the textual evidence is too scanty and provisional to withstand the pressure of detailed theoretical scrutiny which I have already applied to the experimental fictions of the 1890s and the subtly comprehensive works of the early 1900s. However, Furth's analysis confirms my claim that James finds in his scrupulously crafted narratives a rich and revealing hermeneutic potential. To approach this issue from a rather different angle, John Carlos Rowe comments astutely on James's fictionalizing tendency in certain dense passages of The American Scene itself. If, for instance, Baltimore in Maryland seems closed and resistant to description, its status as a ' perversely cheerful little city of the dead' soon summons up reminiscences of the unique role it filled in the Civil War. And, by a curious act of self-projection and ventriloquism, James finds himself in due course commanding and modulating the evaluative voice of History herself (see Rowe, The Theoretical Dimensions of Henry James, pp. 212-14). The annals of

the Civil War have been manipulated into a pseudo-story, which James shapes in terms of his own hierarchy of figurative resonances. In this fashion, he determines what Baltimore means — as Husserl might have phrased it, he extracts the morphological essence of the place. Interestingly, Rowe as critic also resorts to story-telling in order to confer greater force and coherence on James's tactical manoeuvre. He invokes, not implausibly, the notion of James's deeply-rooted anxiety, since the acuteness of his suffering from a back injury apparently precluded him from military service in the Civil 5

See The Visionary Betrayed: Aesthetic Discontinuity in Henry James's ' The American Scene \

published by the Department of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1979), pp. 56-60.

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War. James's heuristic fiction is fictionalized still further into a complex confrontation with, and uncertain exorcism of, past guilts, through which the functioning of Jamesian artistry is ingeniously exposed. This synoptic account of the manner in which story-telling guides James towards lucid conceptual discriminations - or, more positively, to the forging of new philosophical categories - gains equivocal support from an article by Sara Blair. ' Henry James and the Paradox of Literary Mastery' opens with the disconcertingly unsubstantiated assertion that 'within the Anglo-American literary canon, Henry James holds sway as our most philosophical novelist, the writer whose fictions uniquely dramatize the moral status of interpretive acts'. While Blair narrows the philosophical field to the areas of ethics and hermeneutics, it is odd that she gives only the briefest attention to James's fiction, supporting her judgements instead by citing cursorily the work of a variety of established literary critics. In fact, her main concern lies elsewhere; so she makes a passing gesture in the direction of James's exploration of ' the subtleties of consciousness' and the 'indeterminacy of meaning', before moving on to the logic of his prefaces to the New York edition of his novels. According to Blair, these documents expose James's aesthetic imperialism and his desire to exert repressive forms of authorial control: the Master's 'visual epistemology, and his acts of insight and recognition, constitute a regulation of cultural forms'.6 The deduction from this line of reasoning is that the attractive range of freedoms examined in James's fictional texts is based upon a covert theory of cultural domination and authorial self-validation. While this conclusion is challenging and, to some extent, enlightening, it fails to attach due weight to the special relationship between James's prefaces and his novels, whether in their original or their revised state. For if, as Blair half-acknowledges, the material collected in The Art of the Novel is a highly ambiguous (and sometimes evasive) late appendix to James's creative project - even a contrived apologia pro vita sua — it must be misleading to retroject the professed values of such statements on to the earlier novels and short stories. Blair rarely sets the polished abstract formulations of the prefaces against the intricate convolutions and philosophical drama of James's imaginative narratives. She never consults the extensive body of searching 6

'Henry James and the Paradox of Literary Mastery', Philosophy and Literature, 15 (1991), 89, 96.

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critical essays and reviews which spans his entire career. She lightly touches on the teasing blend of biographical, economic and publishing forces which led to the crystallization of the New York edition.7 In short, her assessment has some pertinence within a restricted sphere, but there can be no substitute for a detailed examination of the novels themselves, if James is to be read as a philosophical artist. The identification of a few isolated rhetorical figures or belated expressions of intent is quite insufficient. The philosophical enquiry lies in the drama of James's novels, in the evolution of a succession of minute existential comparisons and contrasts, in the interplay between the plotting of a revealing fictional situation and the generation of a multiplicity of more or less appropriate linguistic registers. Trying to overlay a tidily drawn interpretative template cannot meet the case; that is even less satisfactory than practising a shaping idealist reflection in the mode of Adam Verver. Another far from successful attempt at treating the philosophical dimension of James's later writing is Sharon Cameron's Thinking in Henry James. Her study is, tellingly, split between fictional and nonfictional works: The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl are juxtaposed to The American Scene and the now popular prefaces. But Cameron's undertaking draws its strength from the highly selective, yet perceptively slanted, treatment of a range of carefully isolated extracts. Moreover, she is equally partial in her deployment of philosophical or psychological ideas and techniques. Her version of the phenomenological method is derived largely (and, on occasion, inaccurately) from Husserl's Cartesian Meditations (see pp. 22-9, 175-7); t m s enables her to emphasize the constitutive powers of consciousness, which once again emerges as unrestrainedly domineering and manipulative. The Jamesian thinker is an aspiring world-maker, seeking to cut loose from the anchoring limitations which even a figure like Adam Verver recognizes. While Cameron appreciates the engaging affinities between James and phenomenology, she stops short of registering that the novelist's closest kinship is with Merleau-Ponty, an existential-phenomenological innovator, and not with Husserl, who even in his 'middle period' uneasily resisted the insistent pull of idealism. Chapter 1 on What 7

For a helpful book-length account of the personal and literary preoccupations which governed the preparation of the New York edition, see Philip Home, Henry James and Revision: The New York Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

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Maisie Knew shows clearly how this constellation of relationships among James, Husserl and Merleau-Ponty is to be understood. Moreover, both James and Merleau-Ponty become increasingly fascinated by the interaction between consciousness and the world; the vitality and openness of this relationship is one of the hallmarks of their thinking. Merleau-Ponty is shrewdly receptive to parallel philosophical developments: the growth of structuralist influences in the social sciences, the theoretical implications of experiments in clinical psychology, the existentialist investigations of his contemporary, Jean-Paul Sartre. His assimilation and adaptation of such insights is embodied in The Visible and the Invisible, which serves as the locus classicus o f the chiasm', or a metaphysic of truth as relational. In a not dissimilar fashion, James steadily works over his novellas and longer fictional works of the 1890s and 1900s. His findings are repeatedly sifted and reassessed, until The Golden Bowl comes into being as the quintessential narrative of relations. The very generality of its argument depends upon a saturation of details which compose the dramatic and conceptual structure of the work. This is the paradox which takes shape in James's fictional practice, as well as in the elaboration or application of Merleau-Ponty's theories. Broad principles constantly threaten to dissolve themselves into further problems, qualifications or illustrations. This is also why scrupulous close reading, instead of sweeping abstract speculation, is the key to comprehending each of these authors. Nonetheless, it is feasible to sketch in several generalized conclusions without running counter to the dialectical (and sometimes self-deconstructing) approach which characterizes both James and Merleau-Ponty. If James, like a significant number of pragmatistic thinkers and existentialist critics, pursues his philosophical interests through story-telling, this refined methodology may provide a key to the pervasive ambiguity which troubles many of his readers. At the same time, this view offers a fruitful alternative to Edmund Wilson's superstitiously faithful account of obscure psychological anxieties and familial tensions, or Shlomith Rimmon's scheme of first devising and then applying a doctrine of literary-philosophical ambiguity, or Ralf Norrman's heavy reliance on minute logico-linguistic discriminations.8 In fact, I would contend that Jamesian ambiguity arises out 8

For the full development of these treatments of ambiguity in James's writing, see: Edmund Wilson, 'The Ambiguity of Henry James', in A Casebook of Henry James's ' The Turn of the Screw', ed. Gerald Willen (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, i960), pp. 115-53; Shlomith

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of the process of interaction between the novel and the reader, as the reader is drawn into a collaborative operation of disclosing and realigning the widest possible range of vividly dramatized meanings. These meanings are realized through the processes of narrative enactment which are typical of the later works. The novels thus produce an effect both of leisurely unfolding and of extreme concentration, as James strives to give appropriate embodiment to the finest nuances of each act of perception or sequence of counterpoised judgements. His texts bulge under the pressure of the burgeoning meanings which they struggle to contain; they compel the reader's attention and eagerly invite his creative co-operation. Once again, there is a thought-provoking similarity between Henry James's fictional practice and Merleau-Ponty's inventive phenomenological approach. For Merleau-Ponty's project has been described as a 'philosophy of ambiguity', and he himself contends that the subject situated within the nexus of worldly relationships is 'condemned to meaning' {Phenomenology of Perception, p. xix). In Inscriptions, Hugh

Silverman argues penetratingly that this idea is intimately bound up with the French phenomenologist's sense of the individual's capacity both for discovering, and for living out, patterns of meaning. At the level of ontology, at the level of epistemology, at the level of personal effort which is always experienced through the informing structures of temporality, ambiguity and the emergence of meaning are inevitably conjoined (pp. 82-91). For no person can ever be entirely self-sufficient; he is always beyond himself and in the world, reaching out from the present towards the future. He is an embodied consciousness, a visible, physical being, which also sees objects and uncovers complex patterns of signification. He is at the centre of a network of relationships, which he defines, and which contribute towards the shaping of his self-awareness. Wherever he turns, he is surrounded by potentialities for meaning which he himself must activate. In this respect, both James and Merleau-Ponty appreciate that the rich uncertainty of spreading significations is all. For James, then, as for Merleau-Ponty, ambiguity and an engaging multiplicity of meanings are two faces of a single philosophical coin. If the comparison is pressed a stage further, one arrives at the play of Derridean differance, with its interminably uneasy displacements of Rimmon, The Concept ofAmbiguity: The Example of James (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); and Ralf Norrman, The Insecure World of Henry James's Fiction: Intensity and Ambiguity (London: Macmillan, 1982).

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jostling significations. Moreover, such sensitivity to the inviting possibilities both of experience and of generating meaning exerts an important influence on the related moral aspect of James's writing. In his attitude as a creative artist there is no hint of the baneful 'conscious conscience' which his father so despised. Instead, the novels explore moral endeavour as the forging of new categories in the spirit of Kierkegaard, as a form of drama, as a sort of'situation ethics' (to use an extremely apt existentialist term) which has, once more, been subtly and comprehensively analysed and imagined. By their very conception, James's stories break and cultivate previously unexplored moral ground; they are not stale case-histories to be conveniently appropriated by the doctrinaire specialist in ethics. To consider this issue in the light of Marthinus Versfeld's discriminations, the later novels regularly enact the processes of morality, rather than asserting the dogmatic claims of moralism (see Persons, pp. 81—98). At the same time, Versfeld's slight modification of St Augustine's famous dictum proves particularly appropriate to James's fictional performance. For the more measured and ceremonious 'dilige et quod vis Jac\ Versfeld has substituted the simpler and more appealing £ama etfac quod vis' - in either case, 'love and do what you will' (see pp. 83, 87-98). Nor does this appear simply as a careless inaccuracy, or as a convenient misrepresentation of Augustine's advice to mankind; this version makes the commitment to loving fully and clearly human, places it within the common world of everyday struggles, and failures, and disappointments. And this is the context in which James sets his characters in motion, so that they may pursue their individual expectations and confront their respective crises. It is the environment in which he places Maisie, and Strether, and Maggie Verver. It is the scene for Fleda Vetch's striving and confusion, as she searches for the truth of her lived effort, for a flexible and creative alternative to a self-serving utilitarianism in ethics, to comfortable and inexpensive conviction, or to the serene unconsciousness of evaluative complexities. Finally, it is the world which accommodates Milly Theale's daring adventure, as she stretches to the limit her opportunities for spontaneous generosity and exacting, but deluded, sacrifice. In James's fictional production, the processes of moral choice and development become dynamic, dramatic, and consistently absorbing for his characters and his inevitably implicated readers alike. In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty suggests in

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response to a poetic image shaped by Paul Valery that perception itself is the '"flaw"' in the '"great diamond'" of the creation. It is not simply ' one of the facts thrown up' by our human environment, since ' we can never fill up, in the picture of the world, that gap which we ourselves are, and by which it comes into existence for someone' (p. 207). In James's novels, too, consciousness is presented as the ' flaw' in the' diamond'; it is restless, curious, energetic, introspective, self-delighting - never wholly at one with itself. On occasion, it even approaches the unnerving condition of Derrida's problematical' nonpresence'. It is a deep fissure in the smooth fabric of events, yet the vital precondition for experience and a powerful decoder of meanings. Little could be further from the aggressively domineering and solipsistically self-aggrandizing faculty which has been engineered by several recent critics of James. On the contrary, in James's later fiction, as in Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, the concept of the chiastic relationship has been shown to acquire a central importance. James's characters immediately become involved with the universe in which they operate; they commit themselves to one another; they take over the function of the novelist, seeking by their imaginative thrust to transform the constraints which encompass them. At the same time, the reader is drawn into the scheme of interaction, collaborating with novelist and characters alike, and helping to disclose the resonating patterns of variable signification. As MerleauPonty puts it, truth is constantly coming 'into being' through these processes; systems of explanation are evolved, reformulated, and converted into fresh configurations. And, within the context of copresence which has been established by the preceding chapters, there is also a sustained and mutually illuminating interchange between the available phenomenological constructs and the subtly dramatic realization of the human dilemmas which are explored in James's later texts. Neither the philosophically developed narrative nor the rigorously conceived theoretical method of enquiry may claim to represent the whole truth about experience; instead, each supplements, clarifies and enriches the other. Each qualifies or reinforces the other - and so, through the interdisciplinary dialogue, a new sort of truth is brought 'into being'. If these should seem either vague or extravagant claims regarding the philosophical standing of James's later novels and the comprehensive depth of interpretation made possible by interdisciplinary studies, it is informative to consider the response of at least one of

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Merleau-Ponty's colleagues to his paper on 'The Primacy of Perception'. M. Brehier sharply asserted that 'your philosophy results in a novel. This is not a defect, but I truly believe that it results in that immediate suggestion of realities which we associate with the writings of novelists...' ('The Primacy of Perception and its Philosophical Consequences', p. 30). The terms of Brehier's critique are clumsily imprecise, yet they point productively to the ways in which James's texts may be seen as 'acting out' and endorsing the premises of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology. The co-presence between the theoretical and the literary now entails a sequential relationship of necessary imaginative elaboration, in addition to one of mutual clarification and enrichment. Alternatively, James's historical position as a 'phenomenological thinker', in intellectual communication with his father and his brother, suggests that his narrative approach at once prefigures and expresses, in the most appropriate form, the leading concerns of innovative theorists, such as Kierkegaard, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In any event, the notions of literature-asphilosophy and philosophy-through-literature should scarcely come as a shock to the contemporary student or critic. The efforts of Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty and numerous others have for some time been directed towards breaking down the limiting conventional barriers between academic disciplines. So James's later novels dramatize concretely the process through which a phenomenological enquiry is projected and conscientiously transacted. So James's heuristic fictions encompass the variety of possible worlds which comprise the shifting faces of the real. As tirelessly as a Husserl or a Heidegger, James commences his researches again and again; his guiding theme is what it means to be 'condemned to meaning'.

Bibliography

Below is a selected list of texts which are particularly relevant to the philosophical orientation of Henry James's later fiction (1895-1905). Where a number of pertinent essays have been included in a single volume, the title of that collection is cited, rather than listing each paper individually. Alexander, Ian W. 'What Is Phenomenology?' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 1 (1970), 3 Allott, Miriam. 'The Bronzino Portrait in Henry James's The Wings of the Dove', Modern Language Notes, 68 (1953), 23-5 Anderson, Charles R. Person, Place, and Thing in Henry James's Novels. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977 Anderson, Quentin. The American Henry James. New Brunswick, N J . : Rutgers University Press, 1957 Armstrong, Paul B. The Challenge of Bewilderment: Understanding and Representation in James, Conrad, and Ford. Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1987 The Phenomenology of Henry James. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983 Austin, J. L. Philosophical Papers. Ed. J. O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970 'Three Ways of Spilling Ink', in Philosophical Papers, pp. 272-87 Bannan, John F. The Philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1967 Barral, Mary Rose. Merleau-Ponty: The Role of the Body-Subject in Interpersonal Relations. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1965 Barthes, Roland. 'Myth Today', in Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans: Paladin, 1973, pp. 109-59 Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans: Paladin, 1973 S/Z- Trans. Richard Miller. London: Jonathan Cape, 1975 Bayley, John. The Characters of Love: A Study in the Literature ofPersonality. New York: Basic Books, 1961 Bellringer, Alan W. ' The Spoils of Poynton: James's Intentions', Essays in Criticism, 17 (1967), 238-43 ' The Spoils of Poynton: The "Facts'", Essays in Criticism, 18 (1968), 357-9 232

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Berland, Alwyn. Culture and Conduct in the Novels of Henry James. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1981 Bernstein, Richard J. Praxis and Action. London: Duckworth, 1972 Bersani, Leo. 'The Narrator as Center in The Wings of the Dove\ Modern Fiction Studies, 6 (i960), 131-44 Bewley, Marius. The Complex Fate: Hawthorne, Henry James and Some Other

American Writers. London: Chatto and Windus, 1952 Blair, Sara. 'Henry James and the Paradox of Literary Mastery', Philosophy and Literature, 15 (1991), 80-102 Bloom, Harold, et al. Deconstruction and Criticism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979 Bossert, Philip J. 'The Sense oi"Epoche" and "Reduction" in Husserl's Philosophy', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 5 (1974),

243-55 Bowden, Edwin T. The Themes of Henry James: A System of Observation through

the Visual Arts. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1956 Bradbury, Nicola. Henry James: The Later Novels. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Brudney, Daniel. 'Knowledge and Silence: The Golden Bowl and Moral Philosophy', Critical Inquiry, 16 (1990), 397-437 Buber, Martin. / and Thou. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. 3rd ed. Edinburgh: T. a n d T . Clark, 1971 Buitenhuis, Peter. The Grasping Imagination: The American Writings of Henry

James. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970 Bukala, C. R. 'Sartre's Phenomenology of the Mask', Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 7 (1976), 198-203

Cambon, Glauco. 'What Maisie and Huck Knew', Studi Americani, 6 (i960), 203-20

Cameron, Sharon. Thinking in Henry James. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1989 Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Trans. Justin O'Brien. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975 Cargill, Oscar. The Novels of Henry James. New York: Macmillan, 1961 Catalano, Joseph, S. A Commentary on Jean-Paul Sartre's 'Being and Nothing-

ness'. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980 Chatman, Seymour. The Later Style of Henry James. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Biographia Literaria: or, Biographical Sketches of my

Literary Life and Opinions. Ed. George Watson. London: Dent, 1956 Coursen, Herbert R., Jr. ' " T h e Mirror of Allusion": The Ambassadors', New England Quarterly, 34 (1961), 382-4 Coveney, Peter. The Image of Childhood: The Individual and Society: A Study of

the Theme in English Literature. Introd. F. R. Leavis. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967 Crews, Frederick C. The Tragedy of Manners: Moral Drama in the Later Novels

of Henry James. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1971

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Crowther, Paul. 'Merleau-Ponty: Perception into Art', British Journal of Aesthetics, 22 (1982), 138-49 Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985 Saussure. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1976 Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975 Cumming, Robert Denoon. 'The Odd Couple: Heidegger and Derrida', Review of Metaphysics, 34 (1981), 487-521 Daly, James. 'Merleau-Ponty: A Bridge between Phenomenology and S t r u c t u r a l i s m ' , Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2 (1971), 53-8 de Beauvoir, Simone. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Trans. Bernard Freehtman. New York: The Citadel Press, 1970 She Came to Stay. Trans. Yvonne Moyse and Roger Senhouse. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1975 Danto, Arthur C. Sartre. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1975 de Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 2nd rev. ed. Introd. Wlad Godzich. London: Methuen, 1983 Derrida, Jacques. Dissemination. Trans. Barbara Johnson. London: Athlone Press, 1981 Edmund HusserVs 'Origin of Geometry': An Introduction. Trans. John P. Leavey, Jr. New York: Nicholas Hays, 1978 Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982 Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976 'Plato's Pharmacy', in Dissemination, pp. 61-171 Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Athlone Press, 1981 'Speech and Phenomena3 and Other Essays on HusserVs Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1973 The Truth in Painting. Trans. GeofTBennington and Ian McLeod. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1987 Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 Descombes, Vincent. Modern French Philosophy. Trans. L. Scott-Fox and J. M. Harding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. Ed. Angus Calder. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965 Diem, Hermann. Kierkegaard: An Introduction. Trans. David Green. Richmond, Va.: John Knox Press, 1966 Donadio, Stephen. Nietzsche, Henry James, and the Artistic Will. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978 Dooley, Patrick Kiaran. Pragmatism as Humanism: The Philosophy of William James. Totowa, N J . : Littlefield, Adams and Co., 1975 Edel, Leon, ed. Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays. Twentieth Century Views. Englewood Cliffs, N J . : Prentice-Hall, 1963 The Life of Henry James. 2 vols. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977

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Edie, James M. Speaking and Meaning: The Phenomenology of Language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976 William James and Phenomenology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987 Elliston, Frederick, and Peter McCormick, eds. Husserl: Expositions and Appraisals. Notre Dame, In.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977 Feinstein, Howard M. Becoming William James. Ithaca, N.Y. and London: Cornell University Press, 1986 Firebaugh, Joseph J. 'The Pragmatism of Henry James', Virginia Quarterly Review, 27 (1951), 4 I 9~35 'The Ververs', Essays in Criticism, 4 (1954), 400-10 Fogel, Daniel Mark. Henry James and the Structure of the Romantic Imagination. Baton Rouge: Louisana State University Press, 1981 Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962 Fowler, Virginia C. Henry James's American Girl: The Embroidery of the Canvas. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984 Friedman, Alan. The Turn of the Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966 Furth, David L. The Visionary Betrayed: Aesthetic Discontinuity in Henry James's 'The American Scene'. Published by the Department of English and American Literature and Language, Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1979 Gale, Robert L. The Caught Image: Figurative Language in the Fiction of Henry James. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954 Gard, Roger, ed. Henry James: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968 Gardiner, Patrick. 'Sartre on Character and Self-Knowledge', New Literary History, 9 (1977), 65-82 Gargano, James W. 'The Spoils of Poynton: Action and Responsibility', Sewanee Review, 69 (1961), 650—60 ' What Maisie Knew: The Evolution of a "Moral Sense"', NineteenthCentury Fiction, 16 (1961), 33-46 Garis, Robert E. 'The Two Lambert Strethers: A New Reading of The Ambassadors', Modern Fiction Studies, 7 (1961-2), 305-16 Gasche, Rodolphe. The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986 Gibson, William M. ' Metaphor in the Plot of The Ambassadors', New England Quarterly, 24 (1951), 291-305 Girling, H. K. 'The Function of Slang in the Dramatic Poetry of The Golden BowV', Nineteenth-Century Fiction, n (1956), 130-47 Goode, John, ed. The Air of Reality: New Essays on Henry James. London: Methuen, 1972 Graham, Kenneth. Henry James: The Drama of Fulfilment: An Approach to the Novels. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975 Indirections of the Novel: James, Conrad, and Forster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988 Gratton, C. Hartley. The Three Jameses: A Family of Minds: Henry James, Sr.,

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Richard Poirier. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982, pp. 411-34 Hopkins, Viola. 'Gloriani and the Tides of Taste', Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 18 (1963), 65-71 (see also 'Winner, Viola Hopkins') H o m e , Philip. Henry James and Revision: The New York Edition. Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1990 Howells, William Dean. Indian Summer. Ed. Scott Bennett and David J. Nordloh. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971 The Rise of Silas Lapham. Ed. Walter J. Meserve and David H. Nordloh. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1971 Husserl, Edmund. Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology.

Trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, i960 The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology. Trans.

David Carr. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1970 The Idea of Phenomenology. Trans. William P. Alston and George Nakhnikian. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964 Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Trans. W. R. Boyce

Gibson. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1931 The Paris Lectures. Trans. Peter Koestenbaum. 2nd ed. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975 Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness. Ed. Martin Heidegger, trans.

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Index

In order to assist the reader, and to highlight the philosophical orientation of this study, a detailed listing of theoretical terms has been provided. Wherever appropriate, such concepts are cross-referenced to related philosophical entries. Bold type indicates a chapter devoted to the novel which is cited. Abraham (Biblical) 17 aesthetic values 137, 143, 146-9, 151-2, !53-4> J 57-8, 160, 163, 169-70, 187-9, 191-3, 209-11, 218-20, 224, 225 Allott, Miriam n o n.17 Anderson, Charles R. 81-2, n o n.17 Anderson, Quentin 11-12 Aquinas, Thomas 41 Armstrong, Paul B. 18-19, 38, 43, 45, 63 n.16, 195 n. 15 Augustine, St 'ama etfac quod vis' 41, 47, 125, 204, 229 Austin, J. L. 113 'Three Ways of Spilling Ink' 23-4

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 200 n. 17 'polarity' 52 consciousness 30 n.5, 50, 51, 52-3, 56-8, 74-5, 78, 81, 91-2, 107-8, 109-10, i n , 113-16, 119, 121, 129-30, 134, 136, 138, 141, 142-3, 150, 152-4, 157-8, 159, 163, 169-72, 173-4, 182, 188-9, 193, 195, 203-4, 208-9, 222, 225, 227, 228, 229-30 co-presence, of theorfes/modes of thinking 5-6, 8, 19, 231 Coursen, Herbert R., Jr 71 n.21 Coveney, Peter 34, 42 n.15 Crews, Frederick C. 188 n.io, 203 n. 19

Balzac, Honore de 1, 23, 161 Barthes, Roland 'Myth Today' 122 n.23 Bayley, John 220 Belloc, Hilaire 24 Bellringer, Alan W. 147 n. 12 Berenson, Bernard 169 Bernstein, Richard J. 139 n.3 Bewley, Marius 204 n.20 Binswanger, Ludwig 18 Blair, Sara 225-6 Bowden, Edwin T. 78, 112, 188 n. 10 Bradbury, Nicola 92 n.4, 179, 186, 192 Bronzino, Agnolo 109, 117, 120 Brudney, Daniel 20

Daly, James 169 n.3 de Beauvoir, Simone 23 CONCEPTS

the adventurer 98 freedom 95-7 solemnity (seriousness) 97-100, 104, 119-20, 131, 132, 133-4 WORK

The Ethics of Ambiguity 95, 96 n.8, 97, 98 deconstruction 7, 9, 10-11, 58-9, 150-2, 155, 161, 162, 163-4, J ^ 3 ' x^7> 2 2 7 Derrida, Jacques 7—11, 89, 230, 231 CONCEPTS/STRATEGIES

'arche-writing'/the 'trace' 186-7 la brisure ('the hinge') 151-3, 158-9, 164 differance 8-9, 48, 59, 62-3, 65, 70-1, 89, 101-2, 115, 119, 122 n.23, J34) I52» 172, 186-7, 196-7, 211, 219, 228-9 logocentrism 8, 151-2, 163, 169, 171-2 origin (vs. structure) 33, 115-16 primordial supplementation 8 the supplement 59

Cameron, Sharon 222, 226 Camus, Albert 21 Cargill, Oscar 162 Cezanne, Paul 1, 35-6 choice 139, 144-7, 148-9, 153, !54-5> *59> 167, 172-3, 180, 196

246

Index the 're-mark' 21, 25, 33, 221 WORKS

'Differance' 48 '"Genesis and Structure" and Phenomenology' 33, n6n.2O Of Grammatology 150-2, 184, 186-7, 2 I ° ' Plato's Pharmacy' 1 o ' Semiology and Grammatology' 59 n. 13 Speech and Phenomena 7-8

dialogue 102, 105, 179, 206, 230 Dickens, Charles 32 distanciation (hermeneutical) 177, 201, 216-17

247

Holland, Laurence Bedwell 66-7, 92 n.4, 117 n.21, 134, 178, 180, 192 n.12, 198 n.16, 213 n.24, 215, 223 Home, Philip 226 n.7 Howells, William Dean Indian Summer 76—81

Husserl, Edmund 5-6, 8-9, 13, 57, 116, 176, 224, 226 as perpetual beginner 33, 47, 231 CONCEPTS

edietic phenomenology 58-9 intentional analysis 13, 53-6, 60, 62-3, 65, 68, 73, 81, 84 natural {naive) attitude 27-9, 50

Edie, James M. 12 n.12, 14 essence 50, 58-9, 129, 148-9, 181, 224 existentialism 6 n.3, 12, 91, 151 'feeling knowingly' (Shakespeare) 38-9, 45, 47, 101-2, 107, i n , 125, 128, 130 figurative language 178-9, 180-1, 193-4, 199, 201, 207-8, 209-11, 216, 219-20, 221, 223, 224, 226 Fink, Eugen 30 Firebaugh, Joseph J. 188 n. 1 o Forster, E. M. 73 Fowler, Virginia C. 118 n.22 freedom 90, 99, n o , 122, 130, 134, 139, 151-2, 158, 170, 189-91, 193, 221, 222-3; see a^so entries under de Beauvoir, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre Freud, Sigmund 18 Furth, David L. 224 Gargano, James W. 42 n. 15, 148 n. 13 Garis, Robert E. 70 n.20 Gasche, Rodolphe 9, 21 Graham, Kenneth 40 n. 13, 47, 92 n.4, 96 n.9, 104, 133 n.28, 148-9, 156, 158 Grover, Philip 179 n.8 Gurwitsch, Aron 53 Habegger, Alfred 12 Harvey, Irene E. 89 Heidegger, Martin 5, 6, 9, 23, 231 CONCEPTS

das Man ('the "they"') 93, 109, 112 inauthentic existence 93 ownmost possibility 130, 134 WORK

Being and Time 94, 129, 175-6 hermeneutics (as phenomenological) 175-8 Heyns, Michiel 90 n. 1 Hocks, Richard A. 11, 51-2, 56, 63 n.16, 67, 142 n.8, 156, 160

noesisand noema 53-5, 57, 68-9, 73, 83-4 phenomenological epoche 29-30, 33, 50-2, 60, 177 the gradual epoche 61-75, 80-1 phenomenological reduction 9, 29-30, 33 ' stream of consciousness' 13 WORKS

Cartesian Meditations 55 n.6, 226 The Crisis of European Sciences, etc. 5 0 - 1 , 56 Ideas 28 n.2, 29, 50, 53, 57 Logical Investigations 7-8

Hutchinson, Stuart 123 n.24 idealism 8, 30, 51, 170-2, 176, 189-93, 2O9> 216,218-19, 226 identity, individual 25, 90-2, 95-6, 99-100, 102, 106-7, 116—17, 118, 133, 167, 185-6, 197, 200, 201-2, 203-4, 214 identity, of the reader 217-18 Isaac (Biblical) 17, 23 Iser, Wolfgang 217 n.25 ' The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach' 217-18 Isle, Walter 154 n. 17 James, Henry affinities with deconstruction 10, 228-9, 230 as philosophical novelist 21-3, 24-7, 49-50, 223-31; ambiguity in philosophical approach 227-9 phenomenological thinking 2-6, 15, 18-19, 49-50, 226-31; use of the phenomenological reduction 31-2, 35 WORKS

The Ambassadors 4, 5, 10, 13, 15, 25, 33, 48, 49-89, 90, 125, 137, 163, 165, 167, 171, 174, 176, 189-90, 220, 229 The American 80

Index

248

The American Scene 222-5, 226 'The Art of Fiction' 16, 56 n.7 The Art of the Novel 27 n.i, 32, 49, 65-6, 78, 123, 140, 157, 162-3, 16411.20, 200, 225 ' Crapy Cornelia' 224 The Golden Bowl 5, 8, 13, 15, 17, 18,

19-21, 26, 48, 107, 166-221, 223, 226-7, 229 The Ivory Tower 224

' The Jolly Corner' 224

truth 141-3 WORKS

The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James

(ed.) 15 Pragmatism 11 The Principles of Psychology 13, 14, 5 6 - 7 ' The Sentiment of Rationality' 142-3 Jones, Granville H. 133 judging 5, 25-6, 28, 36-41, 47-8, 49, 5O- 1 . 53, 57~9> 60-75, 77, 80-1, 84-6, 88-9, 91-2, 108-9, IJ8> 125, 137, 147-8, 151-2, 163, 167, 190, 228

The Notebooks 164 The Novels and Tales (New York edition) 226; prefatory note x Kant, Immanuel 171 The Portrait of a Lady 80 Kermode, Frank 22 Roderick Hudson 18; (re Christina Light) Kierkegaard, Soren 6, 12, 17, 139 n.4, 71 231 • 'A Round of Visits' 224 A Small Boy and Others 12, 16 as philosophical story-teller 22-3, 137, The Spoils of Poynton 8, 18-19, 26, 136-65, 223 219-20, 229 CONCEPTS The Tragic Muse (re Miriam Rooth) 71 categories, forging one's own 17, 113, What Maisie Knew 3, 8, 10, 14, 17, 24-5, 229 26, 27—48, 49, 70, 116, 125, 126 n.27, despair 152-4, 158-60, 161 167, 177, 204-5, 22O> 223> 2 2 6~7, 229 'either/or' 139 The Wings of the Dove 3, 5, 15, 25, 33, 48, 'inwardness' 137-8, 139, 142-7, 148-9, 71, 90-135, 136, 155, 160, 167, 172-3, i53> X57> l5%> 160-1, 165 226, 229 subjective thinking 137-8, 139 n.3, 140,

James, Henry, Sr 11-12, 15-17, 229, 231 CONCEPTS

the'divine man' 16-17 'proprium' (or'selfhood') 16-17 WORK

'A Scientific Statement of the Christian Doctrine of the Lord, or Divine Man' 16-17 James, William 11-15, 18, 56, 136, 215, 223,231 distinguished philosophically from Husserl 57-8 CONCEPTS

'ambulatory' and 'saltatory' relations 141-2

attention, selectivity of 13 ' conception' 13 embodied consciousness 14; and social selves 14 freedom (of the will) 13-14, 16 'fringe' 56-7 ' knowledge about' 56-7, 78-9 multiple worlds 14 ' Object of thought'/' topic of thought' 57 pragmatistic thought 52, 155-6 'stream of thought' 13, 57

truth (as subjectivity 138-9, 140, 141, 142-3, 145, 147-9, I5 1 * J53> !59 WORKS

The Concept of Dread 137 n . i Concluding Unscientific Postscript 23, 137,

138-9. J 57 Either/Or 22-3, 140 Fear and Trembling 17,23 The Sickness unto Death 152-4, 157, 158, 160 Kimball, Jean 117 n.21, 182 n.9 Knoepflmacher, U. C. 71 n.21

Kockelmans, Joseph J. 54 Krook, Dorothea 106 n.i3, 109 n.i6, 180, 202 n.18, 211

Kwant, Remy C. 175 Lawrence, D. H. ' Art and Morality' 35-6 Leavis, F. R. 37, 42 n.i5, 47 Levinas, Emmanuel 58 n. 12 Levi-Strauss, Claude 187 Lodge, David 82 n.27 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 199 Lucas, John 147 n.i2

Index McCarthy, Mary 161-2, 163 MacKenzie, Manfred 101 McLean, Robert C. 154 n. 17 Macquarrie, John 611.3, J 7 Marxism 19 meaning 4-6, 10, 53, 54-6, 57-8, 66, 73, 78-9, 81, 84, 86-8, 134, 163-4, X75 n.6, 176-7, 199, 206-7, 213, 216, 218-19, 224, 225, 228, 230, 231 'what it means to' 5, 10, 19, 118, 134, 223 memory, phenomenological modality of 82-4, 85 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 6, 7, 10, 32-3, 36, 109, 138, 226-7, 231 literary interests of 23 CONCEPTS

the 'chiasm' (intertwined complex of relationships) 26, 167-70, 171, 173-6, 179, 212-16, 227, 230 freedom 172-4, 195-6 * hyper-reflection' 171, 174, 177, 189-90, 208-9, 221 language 86-7, 174-5, !94> 206-7, 218 matrices of ideas 163

'over-determination' 92, 108 phenomenological reduction 29-30, 35, 43> 76, 177 rationality 4 style 87-8 subjectivity as temporality 172, 182, 228 truth 4, 164, 167, 174, 220-1, 227, 230 ' wonder in the face of the world' 30-1, io9, J34-5 WORKS

'Cezanne's Doubt' 35 'The Child's Relations with Others' 91 n-3 ' Eye and Mind' 169 ' Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence' 86, 87-8, 112 n. 18, 163, 206, 218 'The Metaphysical in Man' 125, 140-1, 142 ' Metaphysics and the Novel' 92 ' A Note on Machiavelli' 94-5 'On the Phenomenology of Language' 86-7 ' Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man' 58 n. 12 Phenomenology of Perception 1-2, 3-5, 30 n-5> 35> 58, 91* IQ2> 103, 104-5, IO 7 n. 15, 108, 124, 129, 170, 171-3, 228, 229-30 'The Philosopher and his Shadow' 5-6,

249

'The Primacy of Perception', etc. 106 n.12, 230-1 The Prose of the World 56 n.8, 164, 174 The Visible and the Invisible 26, 167-9, 170-1, 174-5, 2 2 7 Mitchell, Juliet 46-7 moralism 14, 16-17, 70, 150 n. 14 moralism (Versfeld's construct) 41, 43-4, 46 morality 14, 16, 36-41, 60-1, 63, 79-80, 124, 137, 139, 144, 146-8, 151-2, J 53-4> i57> 204-5, 210-12, 219-20, 229 morality as drama 39-40, 205, 229 morality (Versfeld's construct) 41-2, 44-7, 70, 125, 141, 204-5, 229 myth 122, 127, 132-3, 160, 187 New Literary History 19-20 Norrman, Ralf 227-8 novel, as philosophical 18-21, 223-31; see also story-telling Nussbaum, Martha 19-20, 205 n.21 Palliser, Charles 148 n.13 Panciatichi, Lucrezia n o n.17 Pascal, Blaise 141, 170 Pearson, Gabriel 189 n . n Peirce, Charles Sanders 18 perception 24-5, 27, 31, 47-8, 52-5, 57, 63 n.16, 68—9, 80, 84-5, 87-8, 129, 131-2, 169-70, 228, 229-30 of colour 167-9, ! 75 as perspectival 4, 53-4 Phenomenological Movement 5, 18, 28, 56 phenomenology 1-3, 8-9, 18-19, 81 distinguished from existentialism 611.3 existential phenomenology 12, 141, 152, 226-7 CONCEPTS

horizon, in conscious acts 13, 54-7, 62-3, 64-5, 68-9, 73, 78-9, 83, i n , 113, 129, 153; exterior and interior horizons 168-9, *75> J 8o, 182, 197 intentionality 30, 52-3, 57-8, 176-7; see also Husserl: intentional analysis, noesis and noema 'life-world' 15-16,51,88, 198 natural (naive) attitude 27-30, 31-33, 35-6, 37-8, 44, 46-7; see also Husserl phenomenological epoche: see Husserl phenomenological reduction 9-10, 24-5, 2 9> 35-6, 43, 47, 50, 52, 58, 89; see also Husserl, Merleau-Ponty; moral aspect of 36-8, 42 presence 8, 10, 59, 75, 129, 151, 172 n.5, 177

250

Index

non-presence 230 Proust, Marcel 1, 23 Quinn, Patrick F. 150 n. 14 relationship, concepts of 26, 87, 94-5, 106-7, " S " ^ , 140-1, 167, 180-7, 190-3, 196-205, 207, 209-12, 215-16, 218, 220-1, 227, 228; see also MerleauPonty: the 'chiasm' Ricoeur, Paul 176-7 CONCEPT

appropriation 216-18 WORK

' Phenomenology and Hermeneutics' 176-7, 216-18 Rimmon, Shlomith 227-8 Rivkin, Julie 59 Rorty, Richard 9, 231 Rose, Alan 194 n. 13 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 21 o Rowe, John Carlos 19,224-5 Saint-Exupery, Antoine de 170 Samuels, Charles Thomas 144 n.io Santoni, Ronald E. 114 n. 19 Sartre, Jean-Paul 6, 14, 23, 25, 223, 227, 231 CONCEPTS

Absurdity 21 bad faith ('lying to oneself) 113-22, 123-4, 128-9, 130, 135, 155 facticity 114-15, 172 freedom 99-100, 114-15, 118, 172 good faith

114, 121

Nausea 21-2 transcendence 99, 114-15, 118 WORKS

Being and Nothingness 21-2, 99-100, 114-15, 119 Nausea 21

Saussure, Ferdinand de 86 Schmitt, Richard 29 Sears, Sallie 100-1, 128 Segal, Ora 213-14 Seltzer, Mark 188 n.io, 223 n.4 Shakespeare, William 53 Antony and Cleopatra 71-2 Cymbeline 38

Hamlet 53, 72, 79 Sonnets 53 sign 7-9, 86-7 silence 185, 201, 206, 208, 210, 211, 213, 216 Silverman, Hugh J. 175 n.6, 228 social role 5, 25, 71, 90, 99-102, 104, n o , 112, 116-19, 127, 132, 134, 167

Socrates 153 Socratic irony 148 Socratic techniques in Kierkegaard 138-9 Spiegelberg, Herbert 13 Stevens, Richard 57 n. 11 story-telling, as philosophical 17, 21-6, 50, 52, 76-81, 89, 90-1, 96-7, 107, 112-13, 118, 134-5, J36> !38-4o, 143, 162, 163, !73-4> 197 Stowell, H. Peter 64, 82 n.27 subjectivity 3, 6, 25-6, 137-8, 141, 152-3, 157, 161, 163; see also Merleau-Ponty as embodied 4, 58, n 4-15 transcendental 58 Swedenborg, Emanuel Swedenborgian idealism in Henry James (Jr) 189 n. 11 Swedenborgian principles in Henry James (Sr) 11-12, 16 Tallis, Raymond 8 n.5, 115 Tanner, Tony 31, 32, 36, 43 Temple, Minny 113 text 10, 20-1, 174, 187, 194, 203 n.19, 206, 216-18, 219, 221, 223, 228 Thompson, Warren K. A. 139 n.4 Tilford, John E., Jr 60 n.15 Todasco, Ruth Taylor 219 Torgovnick, Marianna 211 n.23 truth 3, 6, 25-6, 113, 121, 132, 137, 141, 143, 151, 155, 158-9, 161, 163, 164-5, 171, 197, 198, 219-20; see also William James, Kierkegaard, Merleau-Ponty existential truth 26, 137-8, 140, 144, 149-50, 186, 194, 229 Twain, Mark 32 Valery, Paul 1, 23, 229-30 Versfeld, Marthinus 41-2, 125 n.26, 141, 229 Ward, J. A. 106 Watt, Ian 60 n.15 Wegelin, Christof 106 n.13 Weinstein, Philip M. 42 n.15 Wild, John 12 n.12, 13, 15, 143 n.9 Wilshire, Bruce 12 n.12, 15, 57 Wilson, Edmund 227 Winner, Viola Hopkins 68 n.19, 82 n.28, 209 n.22 Wright, Walter 195 n.15 Yeazell, Ruth Bernard 194 n.14, 213 n.24, 214, 215