(To make this a blog exclusively about the Wings of the Dove click here.)
It's getting harder to write about this book because I'm reaching more and more stuff that I really shouldn't talk about so as not to spoil the pleasure of anyone who has not read the book yet.
As others have pointed out, one of the fascinating things about The Wings of The Dove, is that a lot of the action takes place off stage. We read the novel not knowing about these events and unaware that some people know things that we an other characters do not. And then we find out what was known and who knew it and that changes everything. Without saying who, one of the really electrifying moments as we reach the middle of the novel and the top of the narrative arc is the discovery that one of our characters has been aware of far more than we suspected him or her of being aware.
It's damn good stuff. It adds, a subject for future discussion, a real film noir feel to the story.
Chapter 17 is sine qua non for readers of our era hoping to get the book for it gives us something or Merton's attitude to Kate that we might have a hard time grasping. Any of our contemporaries might reasonably wonder why Merton and Kate don't simply have an illicit affair. When a movie version was made in 1997, the screenwriter simply inserted such an affair. But such a thing was unthinkable when the book was written. Not because secret affairs didn't happen but because a woman in Kate's position couldn't be part of one without risking social disaster.
In chapter 17, Merton contemplates not an affair but the possibilities for simply being with Kate. He imagines the cab pulling up in front of his place and his inviting her in. This is impossible. For Kate, not only is the invitation impossible, the simple fact of it being possible is and she directs the cab so that no such possibility could arise. This is the water our two principals must navigate.
And in the midst of this we get a fascinating Biblical allusion:
For now, Kate can only offer future promise and she makes that promise in plainly religious terms. When Merton challenges her by asking her if she would take him as he is:
It's getting harder to write about this book because I'm reaching more and more stuff that I really shouldn't talk about so as not to spoil the pleasure of anyone who has not read the book yet.
As others have pointed out, one of the fascinating things about The Wings of The Dove, is that a lot of the action takes place off stage. We read the novel not knowing about these events and unaware that some people know things that we an other characters do not. And then we find out what was known and who knew it and that changes everything. Without saying who, one of the really electrifying moments as we reach the middle of the novel and the top of the narrative arc is the discovery that one of our characters has been aware of far more than we suspected him or her of being aware.
It's damn good stuff. It adds, a subject for future discussion, a real film noir feel to the story.
Chapter 17 is sine qua non for readers of our era hoping to get the book for it gives us something or Merton's attitude to Kate that we might have a hard time grasping. Any of our contemporaries might reasonably wonder why Merton and Kate don't simply have an illicit affair. When a movie version was made in 1997, the screenwriter simply inserted such an affair. But such a thing was unthinkable when the book was written. Not because secret affairs didn't happen but because a woman in Kate's position couldn't be part of one without risking social disaster.
In chapter 17, Merton contemplates not an affair but the possibilities for simply being with Kate. He imagines the cab pulling up in front of his place and his inviting her in. This is impossible. For Kate, not only is the invitation impossible, the simple fact of it being possible is and she directs the cab so that no such possibility could arise. This is the water our two principals must navigate.
And in the midst of this we get a fascinating Biblical allusion:
She would have to stop there, wouldn't come in with him, couldn't possibly; and he shouldn't be able to ask her, would feel he couldn't without betraying a deficiency of what would be called, even at their advanced stage, respect for her: that again was all that was clear except the further fact that it was maddening. Compressed and concentrated, confined to a single sharp pang or two, but none the less in wait for him there on the Euston platform and lifting its head as that of a snake in the garden, was the disconcerting sense that "respect," in their game, seemed somehow--he scarce knew what to call it--a fifth wheel to the coach. It was properly an inside thing, not an outside, a thing to make love greater, not to make happiness less.The source, the serpent in the Garden of Eden, is obvious. But what does it do to bring it up here? Why is respect for Kate that makes the serpent raise its head? Well, because it is respect for Kate that gives Merton the knowledge of good and evil. To understand what it is to respect her necessarily entails the knowledge of what it would be to do the opposite. But it is puzzling knowledge for the things he wants to do with and to Kate out of love are precisely the things that respect forbids him. (A plight any man will grasp immediately.)
For now, Kate can only offer future promise and she makes that promise in plainly religious terms. When Merton challenges her by asking her if she would take him as he is:
She turned a little pale for the tone of truth in it--which qualified to his sense delightfully the strength of her will; and the pleasure he found in this was not the less for her breaking out after an instant into a strain that stirred him more than any she had ever used with him. "Ah do let me try myself! I assure you I see my way--so don't spoil it: wait for me and give me time. Dear man," Kate said, "only believe in me, and it will be beautiful."Hmmm.
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