The Wings of the Dove

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

It is finished.

Somehow that seemed more appropriate than "I finished reading it." Two nights ago to be precise. I'm a slow reader but I began this baby back on October 29. Why did it take so long?

1. Partly because it's much harder to blog a book than simply reading it.
2. But mostly because there were days that I just couldn't face the thing and I'd go read something else instead.

The big problem with this book, and it is a deeply flawed novel, is Milly Theale/Minny Temple. It just dies every time she becomes the focus. There are, as it, two major female characters. One is the character of Kate Croy and she and her story are compelling and interesting. The other is the story of Milly that just doesn't work. It's hard to fault James for wanting to create a monument to a woman who hada  huge influence on both him and his brother but it just doesn't work.

I think the book would have worked much better if James had simply "flattened" Milly's character such that she became important only terms of how she interacted with Merton and kate.

Anyway, as we rip through the final chapters we have three competing story lines. One is a sort of a duel Merton Densher is having with himself. He keeps trying to tell himself that he means well and then having to prove. For example (and I'll come back to this some day) when Maud Lowder finding him walking about on Christmas day asks him if he is going to church he says that he is. A few moments later, keen to prove to himself that he is not a liar, for no one else could ever learn if he had not, he goes.

And that one thing is what is going on with him overall. For a long time now he has been acting in a  way towards Milly that many an objective person might interpret as fraud, and now he needs to shape his actions so to redeem that. You might call it moral retro-active context.

Kate is playing a similar game, insisting at one point that, the two have succeeded because, she claims, Milly went to her death believing that Merton really did love her. The problems with that are that 1) Merton knows that isn't true and B) he doesn't believe Kate is sincere.

And that brings us to the second story line which is a duel between Merton and Kate to see if Kate deliberately told Lord Mark the secret that she knew he would rush to Milly with and break her heart. Oddly enough, while Merton appears to confront Kate with this charge in Chapter 37, nothing comes of it. And that is because James the story James really wants to tell is the third story line.

And that third story line is one in which Milly dies but forgives Merton thereby leaving him feeling redeemed by her sacrifice. As a consequence, he feels that he and Kate should renounce everything they have gotten out of their scheming. This is not even remotely convincing.

Final verdict, for all its greatness along the way, fails in the end. This, of course, was Henry James' own verdict of the book.

And that is all I have to say except for the the Roman Catholic subtext that runs through this book. There is one, that is undeniable. What it means, if anything is another question. I may come back to that someday but now I just want to get away from the book for a while. I'm moving on to another book, The Reef by Edith Wharton, which handles some of the same themes as this only does it better.