The Wings of the Dove

Yikes, it seems to be six days since I last posted on this. Time flies.

(To make this a blog exclusively about the Wings of the Dove click here.)

I just picked up the movie version, which has long been unavailable, and it is fascinating to compare. The most notable difference is that the movie was created by drastically simplifying the story. In the movie, Milly is innocent and Kate exploits her. In the book, Milly is not so innocent.

When, for example, Kate becomes aware of Milly's extreme wealth and the way she takes it for granted, she accuses Milly of lacking imagination:

It was not moreover by any means with not having imagination of expenditure that she appeared to charge her friend , but with not having the imagination of of a conscious dependence on others. [P 130 in my edition]

The important part is what comes after the comma (and if James has a general fault it is of saying too much before the comma). It's a fair charge. With qualifications, but James never fails to make qualifications.

And thus we can see that James is describing a very complex interaction here. Consider, for example, the way he describes a week early in their friendship:

A week of her society in these conditions—conditions that Milly chose to sum up as ministering immensely, for a blind, vague pilgrim, to aid and comfort—announced itself from an early hour as likely to become a week of presents, acknowledgments, mementos, pledges of gratitude and admiration that were all on one side.

Okay, first we need to decipher this for this is bad writing. People complain about the length of James's sentences but the real problem is that so many of them are badly constructed. In this case "her society" means a week in Milly's society for Kate meant getting showered with gifts and kindnesses. But although it felt that way to Kate, Milly talked about it to her as if Kate were doing an act of charity. (And it is not insignificant here that Milly cals herself a pilgrim.)

Now that we have the picture, we shouldn't be entirely surprised that Milly gets used in the end. By the way, I don't think we should assume that because Milly sums up her relationship this way that she actually believes this. Not yet anyway.