The Wings of the Dove

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A bit of a potpourri this time.


Aunt Maud meets Densher when his return becomes known and we get this sentence from JAmes:

She welcomed him genially back from the States, as to his view of which her few questions, though not coherent, were comprehensive, and he had the amusement of seeing in her, as through a clear glass, the outbreak of a plan and the sudden consciousness of a curiosity. (p 248 my edition)

The reference here to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians is obvious:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

The meaning is not so clear. James has reversed the reference—made Merton get it wrong as Shakespeare does with Bottom in Midsummer Night's Dream.  Merton Densher may feel he is now seeing this clearly but he is hardly in heaven. A point hammered home a few lines later when Kate enters the room and Merton read the asssessment in her Aunt's facial expression:

It took her in from head to foot, and in doing so it told a story that made poor Densher again the least bit sick: it marked so something with which Kate habitually and consummately reckoned.

That was the story—that she was always, for her beneficent dragon, under arms; living up, every hour, but especially at festal hours, to the "value" Mrs. Lowder had attached to her. High and fixed, this estimate ruled on each occasion at Lancaster Gate the social scene; so that he now recognised in it something like the artistic idea, the plastic substance, imposed by tradition, by genius, by criticism, in respect to a given character, on a distinguished actress. As such a person was to dress the part, to walk, to look, to speak, in every way to express, the part, so all this was what Kate was to do for the character she had undertaken, under her aunt's roof, to represent. It was made up, the character, of definite elements and touches—things all perfectly ponderable to criticism; and the way for her to meet criticism was evidently at the start to be sure her make-up had had the last touch and that she looked at least no worse than usual. Aunt Maud's appreciation of that to-night was indeed managerial, and the performer's own contribution fairly that of the faultless soldier on parade.(pp 248-249 my edition)

This is really great stuff. You can't help but think of the discussion of role-playing in Alasdair MacIntyre  and wonder just how much MacIntyre owes to Henry James. MacIntyre has never, to be clear, hidden his debt to James but it seems pretty extensive.

Anyway, there is the old virtue. To be virtuous you must fill a certain role and your inner life matters little except for how it might get in the way.

We get the flip side, the modern moral predicament, about twenty pages later. Kate and Merton are considering Milly and her illness and wealth and Kate appears to think this:

She looked at him now a moment as for the selfish gladness of their young immunities. It was all they had together, but they had it at least without a flaw--each had the beauty, the physical felicity, the personal virtue, love and desire of the other. Yet it was as if that very consciousness threw them back the next moment into pity for the poor girl who had everything else in the world, the great genial good they, alas, didn't have, but failed on the other hand of this.

In modern terms what they have is all you need to marry:"each had the beauty, the physical felicity, the personal virtue, love and desire of the other". In a society driven more by a sense of appropriate roles based on status and honour, they would need what Milly has to be happy and the qualities listed for themselves might seem not to matter. Here we have the old and the new morality confronting one another.

Here's an interesting touch. When Maud, Kate and Merton are discussing Milly over dinner Susan finds herself feeling a little uneasy about the way Milly is being talked about.

... Milly's anxious companion sat and looked--looked very much as some spectator in an old-time circus might have watched the oddity of a Christian maiden, in the arena, mildly, caressingly, martyred. It was the nosing and fumbling not of lions and tigers but of domestic animals let loose as for the joke. (p 255)

And we, knowing more than Milly's anxious companion,  must begin to fear that it is not such a joke, especially as we know that the book has been full of references to various people being sacrificed.

More to come