Tuesday, January 10, 2012

The Wings of the Dove

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

Chapter 23 is short and that is a good thing because it is utterly unconvincing. It used to be said of the Ancient Greek philosophers that they had a propensity not to miss nuance but to see nuance that just wasn't there. You might make a similar observation of Henry James.

We get two conversations in this chapter the first is between Milly and Susan and in it James seems to be exploring nuance that strikes me as pointless. His sort of realism reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates in that it is driven not by a desire to really show us anything "real" so much as a desire to prevent the reader from using their own imagination or reaching their own conclusions. All possibilities will be nailed down.

But that is a trifle compared to the reappearance of Sir Luke Strett. I appreciate that medicine has changed in the 110 years since this book was written and I know little about medicine or the history of medicine. But, even at that, I am confident that no physician ever had a professional conversation like this a patient in 1902.

The sole point of the conversation seems to be to allow Milly to expand a bit and therefore give us insight into her character and story. But, and I'm sure that the ghosts of both Henry and his brother William will cry at this suggestion: Milly is not that interesting. The story is around her. Some character development is of use but the important moral aspects of the story concern Merton and Kate and that is what we need to be reading about.

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