8 (p. 100) we shall really ourselves scarce otherwise come closer to her than by feeling their impression and sharing, if need be, their confusion : James’s use of this expression and his reference a few sentences later to “our young woman” illustrate the way in which he departs occasionally from the use of the unseen omniscient author and appears to inject himself into the narrative. He “shares” the confusion of the characters and “feels” their impressions.
9 (p. 105) I hasten to add: Although James’s narrator uses the personal pronoun “I” here, he never becomes an actual character in the story. Joseph Conrad in his short story The Nigger of the “Narcissus” (1897) employs a similar device. The omniscient narrator knows all; he is, in fact, on board the Narcissus when it capsizes. But the narrator never actually appears in the story. His apparently invisible presence on-board becomes known to us only when he tells us at the end of the story that he was so frightened he will never again go to sea.
10 (p. 138) of Thackerayan character: Kate presumably reminds Mrs. Stringham a little of Becky Sharp, the captivating but unscrupulous heroine of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848).
11 (p. 150) but it was clear Mrs. Condrip was ... in quite another geography: This is a good illustration of Milly’s increasing sophistication and awareness of the complexities she is encountering in London. Book fourth in its entirety is an example of the growth of Milly’s consciousness. She understands that she is in a “labyrinth,” that she teeters on the edge of an “abyss.” She revels in it, however, even though she is frightened, because this is what she understands as being more fully aware and more truly alive. She is not interested in tourism but in people and in the complexity of social circumstance.
12 (p. 169) “but mine’s several shades greener”: This scene is one of a number of memorable passages in the very rich and complex fifth book. Milly is here trying to make light of the emotional experience she has just undergone in viewing the Bronzino portrait that resembles her. She has had intimations of mortality; she feels that she will be, like the lady in the portrait, “dead, dead, dead.” Critics and literary scholars have seen Milly’s reaction as a critical turning point, a sign that she can no longer keep up a brave front.
13 (p. 177) “I shan’t trouble you again”: Milly makes a critical decision here. She adores Kate, values her friendship, and enjoys her company. But she is bothered by the fact that Kate has avoided mentioning Densher, which, to Milly, seems to suggest a degree of dissembling on Kate’s part. So Milly decides to set some limits on her friendship with Kate, not to trust her fully. This small choice propels Milly toward the isolation she will ultimately face in her struggle with her illness. Only Susan Stringham and hired servants will be with her in the end.
14 (p. 185) “you ought of course ... to get out of London”: Why does Sir Luke advise Milly to get out of London? Is it merely because London is hot and uncomfortable in August? Sir Luke is perhaps too subtle for that. Presumably he feels Milly’s privacy might be jeopardized if word got around London that she was seeing him. She could feel freer somewhere else. Besides, he might have felt she had already “done” London and might want to experience something new.
15 (p. 192) Gibbon and Froude and Saint-Simon: Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ; James Froude (1818-1894) was a historian and disciple of Carlyle; Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was a French social reformer and founder of “positivist” philosophy.
16 (p. 210) “Oh you may very well loathe me yet!”: It is impossible to tell, in this extraordinary passage, whether Kate has already conceived her scheme to link Densher and Milly. Kate does not know for sure that Milly is ill, though she surely suspects it. Milly is acute enough to be frightened by this creature who paces “like a panther,” but the die is cast. Milly, despite her unease, is sure that along this route lies life, and she will not shrink from it. In the lines that follow, Kate, perhaps misreading Milly’s mild reply, uses the dove image for the first time in the book.
17 (p. 242) “I’ll tell you another time”: Here, presumably, is a clear sign that Kate suspects the seriousness of Milly’s illness, and is laying the groundwork for her plan. Densher is not quite ready to be brought in on the scheme.
18 (p. 289) “You don’t need to see”: This dialogue strikingly illustrates how James’s narrative technique of letting us know Densher’s thoughts contrasts with the way he portrays Kate by her gestures and her spoken words. The technique reinforces the portrayal of Kate as decisive, utterly sure of herself, a brilliant psychologist, and ruthless, and of Densher as full of doubts, sensitive but weak, and so in love with Kate that she can “lead him by the nose.” She has been so completely caught up in the social “game” as to have become morally obtuse. But she does not kid herself; she knows what she is doing. Densher’s vacillations and moral evasions are perhaps even less attractive than Kate’s cynicism.
19 (p. 314) and what most expressed it: The action now shifts to Venice, where Milly has rented an expensive palazzo. It is now October. Eugenio, an Italian with a sharp eye for making money off tourists, has been hired to manage Milly’s household. Though he spends Milly’s money freely, he is an efficient manager and organizer and has a very good relationship with Milly and Mrs. Stringham. Milly sees him as taking charge of all practical matters and assisting Susan when Millv’s health worsens. That it costs a great deal of money to keep the somewhat dilapidated old villa in good repair and to staff it with an array of servants is, of course, of no concern to Milly.
20 (p. 315) Palazzo Leporelli : The fictional palazzo is modeled on the actual Palazzo Barbaro, built in the fifteenth century and owned by friends of Henry James. In 1887 Henry James stayed there with his friends the Daniel Curtises and wrote the short story “A London Life.”
21 (p. 347) dusky labyrinthine alleys and empty campi, overhung with mouldering palaces: This image conveys James’s sense of the decadence that affects European civilization. The physical decay—empty public squares, crumbling palaces, deserted banquet halls—parallels the moral corruption of a London society dominated by money grubbing, of the grasping servants led by Eugenio at the Palazzo Leporelli, and of the trio of Kate, Mrs. Lowder, and Densher maneuvering to fleece Milly.
22 (p. 348) complications might sometimes have their tedium beguiled by a study of the question of how a gentleman would behave: Densher’s self-exculpatory reasoning puts him in an unfavorable light here. He is justifying himself on the ground that he didn’t start the whole scheme and that he will always be a “gentleman.” He realizes that being a gentleman is not always easy to define and that being as passive as he has been is not a great thing. He wants to assert himself, but he is not sure how. He can’t run; he is in too deep. When he does assert himself, it is in a most unfortunate way. He compels Kate to come to his apartment to consummate their relationship, a crude trade of sex for his full cooperation that cheapens his relationship with her.
23 (p. 362) “It’s a Veronese picture”: Scholars have concluded that James is here referring to the Venetian painter Paolo Veronese’s Marriage at Cana (1562-1563), which depicts a banquet scene of great richness and prodigality.
24 (p. 364) he shouldn’t have liked a man to see him : This exchange with Mrs. Stringham is one of Densher’s least appealing moments. He suddenly feels ashamed of being a sensitive man, and, under the guise of honesty, displays a degree of male chauvinism that is even worse than Lord Mark’s. His perfidy seems to be gender-neutral. For a discussion of Densher’s dilemma from the perspective of gender relations and the complexities of gender issues in The Wings of The Dove, see Julie Olin-Ammentorp, “ ‘A Circle of Petticoats’: The Feminization of Merton Densher,” Henry James Review 14 (1993).
25 (p. 420) “Oh!” he simply moaned into the gloom: This agonizing tête- à-tête between Densher and Mrs. Stringham shows James at his masterly best in posing the central moral questions of the novel: From what depths of hatred does Lord M
ark act? Is he beyond mere cynical exploitation of the situation? Does Densher perceive, to his horror, that he was doing essentially what Lord Mark was trying to do? Should Densher lie to Milly—as Mrs. Stringham, in essence, urges—to give her some happiness as death approaches? Did Kate, in fact, reveal to Lord Mark her relationship with Densher as a way to stave him (Lord Mark) off and/or to confound her aunt? That Densher can only moan into the gloom at least shows him more favorably than than he has appeared to this point. He begins to appreciate more fully what he has done; his “conversion” has begun.
26 (p. 440) “She never wanted the truth.... She wanted you.... For that was your strength, my dear man—that she loves you with passion”: Kate poses a key question: Is she correct in thinking Milly would have been comforted by Densher’s lying to her even though she knew it was a lie? And is Densher more concerned with his own honor than with Milly’s feelings?
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Henry James’s The Wings of the Dove through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
WILLIAM JAMES
I have read The Wings of the Dove (for which all thanks!) but what shall I say of a book constructed on a method which so belies everything that I acknowledge as law? You’ve reversed every traditional canon of story-telling (especially the fundamental one of telling the story, which you carefully avoid) and have created a new genre littéraire which I can’t help thinking perverse, but in which you nevertheless succeed.
—from a letter to Henry James (Fall 1902)
J. P. MOWBRAY
In trying to form anything like a comprehensive estimate of Mr. James’s mature work, the effeminacy of it has to be counted with. One cannot call it virile, and—with the best examples still with us—hardly Saxon. —from Critic (November 1902)
—from Critic (November 1902)
SATURDAY
[The Wings of the Dove] consists of 576 closely printed pages. We were curious to know the average number of dashes, commas and semi-colons on a page; and we found the calculation entirely beyond our powers. Suffice it to say it is enormous; and most of these interruptions serve no purpose save that of making the reading more difficult. The effect is irritating: what might have been clean prose is broken, finicked, piffled away. Yet we see plainly enough that such lame writing is essential to the effect Mr. James wished to get. He wanted to make us feel all those artificial, subtle, trifling or meaningless changes of mood; and the more he makes us feel them the more artificial, trifling, meaningless we find them, and the less inclined we are to read on. We even suggest that the achievement of such a prose has become with Mr. James somewhat of an end in itself. The incessant ‘perhaps’ -es, and ‘consciousness of something deeper still,’ and ‘clearly, as yet, seeing nothing’—these not only give that effect of blurred vision and lack of definite intention, but weave into a word-tissue which Mr. James seems to like and which we heartily dislike. It is a word-tissue that hides the author’s thought—that gives one a sense of his reserve, aloofness. There is no energy, passion, color, and because there is no motion, there is no rhythm in this prose. The prose becomes as trivial as the trivial moods aroused by trivial middle-class things it is meant to express; and not from Mr. Henry James nor another do we require 576 pages of such prose fine-spun out with such an object.
After all, this kind of writing, crabbed, finicking, tedious in its struggle to be exact about nothing, marks a strong reaction against the kind that prevailed until twenty years ago or even later.
—January 1903
JOSEPH CONRAD
One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James’s novels. His books end as an episode in life ends. You remain with the sense of the life still going on; and even the subtle presence of the dead is felt in that silence that comes upon the artist-creation when the last word has been read. It is eminently satisfying, but it is not final. Mr. Henry James, great artist and faithful historian, never attempts the impossible.
—from North American Review (January 1905)
GEORGE MOORE
I’ve read nothing of Henry James’s that didn’t suggest a scholar; so there shall be none of the old taunts—why does he not write complicated stories? Why does he always avoid decisive action? In his stories a woman never leaves the house with her lover, nor does a man ever kill another man or himself. Why is nothing ever accomplished ? In real life murder, adultery, and suicide are of common occurrence; but Mr. James’s people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition. Suicide or adultery has happened before the story begins, suicide or adultery happens some years after the characters have left the stage, but in front of the reader nothing happens.... Is there really much to say about people who live in stately houses and eat and drink their fill every day of the year? The lady, it is true, may have a lover, but the pen finds scanty pasturage of the fact; and in James’s novels the lady only considers the question on the last page, and the gentleman looks at her questioningly.
—from Confessions of a Young Man (1916)
VIRGINIA WOOLF
How consciously Henry James set himself to look for the weak place in our amour of insensibility it is not necessary to decide. Let us turn to another story, The Friends of Friends, and judge whether he succeeded. This is the story of a man and woman who have been trying for years to meet but only accomplish their meeting on the night of the woman’s death. After her death the meetings are continued, and when this is divined by the woman he is engaged to marry she refuses to go on with the marriage. The relationship is altered. Another person, she says, has come between them. ‘You see her—you see her; you see her every night!’ It is what we have come to call a typically Henry James situation. It is the same theme that was treated with enormous elaboration in The Wings of the Dove. Only there, when Milly has come between Kate and Densher and altered their relationship for ever, she has ceased to exist; here the anonymous lady goes on with her work after death. And yet—does it make very much difference? Henry James has only to take the smallest steps and he is over the border. His characters with their extreme fineness of perception are already half way out of the body. There is nothing violent in their release. They seem rather to have achieved at last what they have long been attempting—communication without obstacle. But Henry James, after all, kept his ghosts for his ghost stories. Obstacles are essential to The Wings of the Dove.
—from Times Literary Supplement (December 22, 1921 )
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Henry James had turned his back on one of the great events in the world’s history, the rise of the United States, in order to report tittle-tattle at tea parties in English country houses.
—from Cakes and Ale: or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930)
Questions
1. What does the prose style of The Wings of the Dove accomplish that a more direct style does not? What can it not accomplish that a more direct style can? How would you formulate a description of James’s late style? He himself in an offhand moment described it as “sub-aqueous.”
2. Of James’s late fiction George Moore asks, “Why does he always avoid decisive action? ... Why is nothing ever accomplished? ... Mr. James’s people live in a calm, sad, and very polite twilight of volition.... Is there really much to say about people who live in stately houses and eat and drink their fill every day of the year?” Has George Moore got it right? Is he being fair? And what do you think about Somerset Maugham’s observation that what James does is “report tittle-tattle at tea parties in English country houses”?
3. Some readers of
The Wings of the Dove have found in the novel a sense of doom, a sense of a civilization in a decline and about to crash. Do you see this in the book? How is this sense or atmosphere created?
4. In spite of the somewhat rarified milieu of the novel, do the characters seem to you to be motivated by the same ambitions, emotions, fears, and desires as, say, a group of average Americans? Or a group of movie stars, factory workers, or Appalachian Amish—in spite of the differences in circumstances? In other words, are James’s characters fully human?
5. What would you say is an accurate characterization of Merton Densher? He thinks too much? He’s weak? He has flaws but is essentially a good man? He begins ill and ends well? He is despicable? Instead of doing what he did, what should he have done?
For Further Reading
Bibliography and Reference
Edel, Leon, and Dan H. Laurence. A Bibliography of Henry James. 1957. Third edition, revised with the assistance of James Rambeau. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Foley, Richard Nicholas. Criticism in American Periodicals of the Works of Henry James from 1866 to I916. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1944.