Saturday, October 29, 2011

Religious language in The Wings of the Dove

Update: The original title was "Biblical references in ...,"

I'm noting these on the way through and will label the posts so anyone can find them all. These are all the Biblical references I find as opposed to all the ones that are there; I'm sure to miss some.

I'm using a Modern Library Edition, not the most recent. The front pages mention a 1930 and 1937 copyright by Henry James executor and 1902, 1909 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Other than that, the edition is singularly unhelpful about helping me identify it for others.

Anyway, on page 15 of said edition, comes the first Biblical reference I find (barring the title). Kate Croy and her father, Lionel Crow, have sort of reached a sort of agreement that she will accept her Aunt Maud's offer to keep her. Her aunt insists that she sever all connections with her father. He has proposed that she accept this until such time as she has a husband when, presumably free to ignore her aunt's wishes, Kate can then reconnect with her father.

Kate says,
Of course you understand that it may be for long.
He father response is this,
Her companion, hereupon, had one of his finest inspirations. "Why not, frankly, for ever? You must do me the justice to see that I don't do things, that I've never done them, by halves--that if I offer you to efface myself, it's for the final, fatal sponge that I ask, well saturated and well applied."
And the Kate gives her father one last chance to offer to take her and he lets it slide, whereupon, she takes the role of Pilate to his Christ
I'll engage with you in respect to my aunt exactly to what she wants of me in respect to you. She wants me to choose. Very well, I  will choose. I'll wash my hands of her for you to just that tune.

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