The Wings of the Dove

Chapter 33

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

People have been saying how much this novel resembles film noir for decades before I got to it. It's fascinating that many of the standard conventions and scenes and even character types show up here. William Gass has suggested, and I think he is right, that James is concerned with what happens when people abandon moral realism. When that happens, all distinction between moral argument and moral manipulation disappears and people become, as Gass puts it, "consumers of persons".

That is certainly what Merton Densher and Kate Croy have become. But so has Lord Mark who cared nothing for the risks he took by revealing Merton and Kate's secret to Milly. And I'm not sure that Susan Stringham would fare much better if we examined her closely.

How much influence did Henry James have on film noir? Well, with the caveat that Lillian Hellman is not always a reliable source, she reports that Dashiell Hammett told her that he figured out how to write mystery stories by reading Henry James. And I'm inclined to believe her in this case as Hellman tended to lie out of vanity and there is nothing to prop up her vanity in that story.

In any case, this chapter opens with a brilliant scene in which the two partners in crime meet after Merton has returned. Not immediately afterwards for Merton has tarried in re-establishing contact. And we have a classic noir scene in which the male lead is meeting the femme fatale and neither can be sure what or how much the other knows and neither is sure they can trust the other.

"Then it has been--what do you say? a whole fortnight?--without your making a sign?"

Kate put that to him distinctly, in the December dusk of Lancaster Gate and on the matter of the time he had been back; but he saw with it straightway that she was as admirably true as ever to her instinct--which was a system as well--of not admitting the possibility between them of small resentments, of trifles to trip up their general trust. That by itself, the renewed beauty of it, would at this fresh sight of her have stirred him to his depths if something else, something no less vivid but quite separate, hadn't stirred him still more. 

And in those two sentences describing Merton's response to Kate's remark is everything. Kate is impressive and this sort of thing has always inspired Merton in the past. But now he has another vision that troubles him. We don't know exactly what that is for the crucial meeting between Merton and Milly after Lord Mark's bombshell took place off stage.

Here is what Merton knows:

• He knows that stupid Lord Mark rushed to Venice with the awful secret in an attempt to win Milly for himself.  (By the way, what pathetic, horrid excuse for a man Lord Mark is. )
• He knows that he didn't tell anyone the secret so the only source for Lord Mark's knowledge of it is Kate Croy.

But then there is a whole lot he doesn't know. It may be, for example,

• That Lord Mark, thinking his chances with Milly ruined, proposed marriage and, because of the tenor of her refusal, he has guessed what was up.
• Or, it may be that he guessed what was up and accused Kate directly and she fessed up.
• Then again, maybe Kate was so careless of Milly's interest that she simply confessed the facts to Lord Mark.
• But in the darkest places of his soul, he must also be wondering if Kate, tired of waiting for Milly to die didn't tell Lord Mark knowing full well that he would do the stupid thing he did do and thereby hasten Milly's death.

And we have a whole chapter in which the two feel one another out. It's brilliant, brilliant writing so just go read it.