(To make this a blog exclusively about the Wings of the Dove click here.)
Yes, I know, the book blogging has not been coming fast and furious. I'm reading very slowly. This is a hard to follow book and james doesn't help with subordinate clauses that lead you away into the desert and leave you there and enough uncertain antecedents for pronouns to wear out a army of editors. The last is a huge problem and is, quite frankly, bad writing on his part. You can read whole paragraphs thinking "she" is one person and then, three pages later, realize you have to go back and read these paragraphs again because "she" was probabaly some other person than the one you took her for.
I haven't been mentioning all the religious language and mentions of sacrifice in the book as I go along because there are too many of them but I do think there is one from a few chapters back that cannot go unrecorded This takes place at the end of the conversation between Susan and Milly about Maude Lowder's concerns about an unspecified "something" between Kate and Merton.
Only, is it? There is an awful lot going on here. Unless I've missed something, we've never seen any direct evidence that Milly knows she is dying. It's becoming more and more evident that she knows or suspects something but the key event—the moment when some doctor presumably told her she only has a while to live—has taken place offstage and it seems that Henry James means to leave it offstage.
Even when Milly visits a doctor in London, no actual discussion of her impending death is explicit. They talk around it.
The thing that is most prominent in this discussion is that the doctor won't answer her directly and that he wishes to give her moral advice. The gist of what Milly says is, "Will I live?" and the gist of the doctor's replies is, "I don't know, will you?", and he means by this, you won't unless you start now.
There were, for me, two telling moments that come out of this meeting with the doctor. Well, three if you count how utterly unconvincing it was as a report of a discussion between doctor and patient.
The first was the fact that the doctor challenges Milly about Kate. She has insisted that she has told no one but he remembers that she visited with another woman whom, as she confirms, she also told she was secretly seeing this doctor.
The second thing that jumps right out for me is Catholicism. On the way out from her first visit to the doctor, Milly was accompanied by Kate. And in describing how she feels to her, Mily says,
Yes, I know, the book blogging has not been coming fast and furious. I'm reading very slowly. This is a hard to follow book and james doesn't help with subordinate clauses that lead you away into the desert and leave you there and enough uncertain antecedents for pronouns to wear out a army of editors. The last is a huge problem and is, quite frankly, bad writing on his part. You can read whole paragraphs thinking "she" is one person and then, three pages later, realize you have to go back and read these paragraphs again because "she" was probabaly some other person than the one you took her for.
I haven't been mentioning all the religious language and mentions of sacrifice in the book as I go along because there are too many of them but I do think there is one from a few chapters back that cannot go unrecorded This takes place at the end of the conversation between Susan and Milly about Maude Lowder's concerns about an unspecified "something" between Kate and Merton.
"You're not—and it's vain to pretend," said dear old Susie, who had been taking her in, "as sound and strong as I insist on having you."There is a nice bit of inflation and reduction at the end of this where, immediately after Susan's extravagant offer of self-sacrifice, Milly makes such a prosaic request.
"Insist, insist—the more the better. But the day I look as sound and strong as that, you know," Milly went on—"on that day I shall be just sound and strong enough to take leave of you sweetly for ever. That's where one is," she continued thus agreeably to embroider, "when even one's most 'beaux moments' aren't such as to qualify, so far as appearance goes, for anything gayer than a handsome cemetery. Since I've lived all these years as if I were dead, I shall die, no doubt, as if I were alive--which will happen to be as you want me. So, you see," she wound up, "you'll never really know where I am. Except indeed when I'm gone; and then you'll only know where I'm not."
"I'd die for you," said Susan Shepherd after a moment.
" 'Thanks awfully'! Then stay here for me." [P 149 in my edition, chap 9]
Only, is it? There is an awful lot going on here. Unless I've missed something, we've never seen any direct evidence that Milly knows she is dying. It's becoming more and more evident that she knows or suspects something but the key event—the moment when some doctor presumably told her she only has a while to live—has taken place offstage and it seems that Henry James means to leave it offstage.
Even when Milly visits a doctor in London, no actual discussion of her impending death is explicit. They talk around it.
The thing that is most prominent in this discussion is that the doctor won't answer her directly and that he wishes to give her moral advice. The gist of what Milly says is, "Will I live?" and the gist of the doctor's replies is, "I don't know, will you?", and he means by this, you won't unless you start now.
There were, for me, two telling moments that come out of this meeting with the doctor. Well, three if you count how utterly unconvincing it was as a report of a discussion between doctor and patient.
The first was the fact that the doctor challenges Milly about Kate. She has insisted that she has told no one but he remembers that she visited with another woman whom, as she confirms, she also told she was secretly seeing this doctor.
Hadn't there been a lady with her on Wednesday?Well, there's a question? It's one of my favourite questions. It's a question that rarely arises for modern men; we generally know that our closest friends are also our rivals. But for modern women, this is always a tricky issue. We've seen a growing lack of respect for Susan Stringham from Milly and the question of whether she will be replaced as her closest friend by Kate Croy is in the air. Kate's undeniable sexual power, even though it is exercised on Merton Densher, will, as we see, make her more and more attractive as a friend to Milly.
"Yes—a different one. Not the one who's travelling with me. I've told her."
Distinctly he was amused, and it added to his air—the greatest charm of all—of giving her lots of time. "You've told her what?"
"Well," said Milly, "that I visit you in secret."
"And how many persons will she tell?"
"Oh she's devoted. Not one."
"Well, if she's devoted doesn't that make another friend for you?"
The second thing that jumps right out for me is Catholicism. On the way out from her first visit to the doctor, Milly was accompanied by Kate. And in describing how she feels to her, Mily says,
"Of course I like it. I feel—I can't otherwise describe it—as if I had been, on my knees, to the priest. I've confessed and I've been absolved. It has been lifted off."Is that a good thing? I don't think so. This is my first experience with the late period James but the early James is very anti-Catholic. That Milly puts it into these terms must, I think, be a bad omen.
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