The Wings of the Dove

I'm reading David Lodge and he discusses the opening paragraph of the book which begins as follows:

She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. It was at this point, however, that she remained; changing her place, moving from the shabby sofa to the armchair upholstered in a glazed cloth that gave at once--she had tried it--the sense of the slippery and of the sticky.

David Lodge tells us that this writing is about "consciousness". He goes on to say that "in real life we can never assert such things about anyone other than ourselves, unless others report them to us."

That's nonsense. Come with me and let's hide in a closet in the room where Kate Croy's father has kept her waiting. Can we tell that she is impatient and irritated that she finds the touch of the fabric on her father's furniture unpleasant without asking her? Of course we can. All we have to do is watch her. And Henry James knows this:

... there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation ...

There is nothing she can see in the glass that we couldn't see by looking at her face and James well knows this because he describes the face as "pale with the irritation".

There are behaviours that go with impatience and irritation or touching something that feels unpleasant and we know them well.

The temptation is to say that only the person who feels these things knows for sure. But that isn't true either. Sometimes others figure out the way we really feel before we do. We can deny that we are irritated with someone we feel responsible for and we can deny that we love someone.

The question is, does David Lodge know what consciousness is? You get the feeling that he things consciousness is some special private container that only the person having it can see. But look at another person, any other person. Can you tell that they are conscious? Or, to put it another way, could you make yourself believe they weren't given what you can see?

Consider my last post that talked about Milly entering into a conspiracy of secrecy regarding Merton Densher before Kate does.  Okay, but what is going on "inside" Milly's consciousness? Is some complicated internal manœuvering taking place where psychological forces are battling inside Milly's brain? Is the important thing something we could only see if we were inside?

If this were a certain kind of French novel or something by Dostoevsky then that would be the case. In those novels people suddenly do things that make no sense because of complicated internal psychological forces but no such thing happens in Henry James. The important thing here is the context these things are happening in and that context is social not psychological. Milly is being drawn into a culture. She is being drawn into a culture where this sort of conspiring is normal. And she is being drawn in willingly. We might even say she is jumping in with both feet.