The Wings of the Dove

I mentioned that there were a couple of examples of religious language in Chapter 4 that I hadn't blogged and meant to get back to them. Here they are.

The first is pretty mild but worth noting because we have that woprd "sacrifice" popping up again. Merton Densher is in Aunt Maud's drawing room awaiting an audience with her. And we get to listen in on Merton's thinking about the possibility that he might fail through the miracle of free indirect speech:

It was not indeed that he thought of that disaster as, at the worst, a direct sacrifice of their possibilities; he imaged it—which was enough as some proved vanity, some exposed fatuity, in the idea of bringing Mrs. Lowder around. [Page 57 in my edition]

Pretty mild, as I say but it sets the mood for what follows where Maud Lowder uses Merton's own desire not to be vain as a means to make him deny the validity of his own claim all leading up to this fascinating observation just six pages later. First Merton makes the following self-debasing claim:

I thoroughly understand what I'm not, and I'm much obliged to you for not reminding me of it in any rougher way. [Page 63 in my edition]

Other than licking the bottom of her boots clean, I don't know how he could have been more humble. The important thing, though, is that his own morality drives him to this. She leaves this comment untouched and watch in amazement what he reads into that:

She said nothing—she kept that up; it might have been to let him, if he was capable of it, in the way of poorness of spirit. [Page 63 in my edition]

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