Performing the Everyday in Henry James's Late Novels

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

Maya Higashi Wakana

Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

For Tomoko Higashi and Yasuko Matsuoka

Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

Maya Higashi Wakana Ritsumeikan University, Japan

© Maya Higashi Wakana 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Maya Higashi Wakana has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Wakana, Maya Higashi. Performing the everyday in Henry James’s late novels. 1. James, Henry, 1843–1916. Ambassadors. 2. James, Henry, 1843–1916. Wings of the dove. 3. James, Henry, 1843–1916. Golden bowl. 4. Social interaction in literature. I. Title 813.4–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wakana, Maya Higashi. Performing the everyday in Henry James’s late novels / Maya Higashi Wakana. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6744-5 (hardback: alk. paper) – ISBN 978-0-7546-9727-5 (ebook) 1. James, Henry, 1843–1916 – Criticism and interpretation. 2. James, Henry, 1843–1916. Ambassadors. 3. James, Henry, 1843–1916. Wings of the dove. 4. James, Henry, 1843– 1916. Golden bowl. I. Title. PS2124.W29 2009 813’.4–dc22 2009015712

ISBN 9780754667445 (hbk) ISBN.V)

Contents Acknowledgements   List of Abbreviations   Introduction: Performing the Everyday, Face to Face, in Henry James   1

vii ix 1

Wanting to Want to Be Straight and Right: Strether’s Liberation in The Ambassadors  

21

2 The Stigmatized and the Normals: Milly, Densher, and Kate’s Survival in The Wings of the Dove  

57

3

Intimacy and Sexuality: Challenging the Official Story of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl  

85

4

Teams, Teammates, and Intimacy: The Unofficial Story of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl  

111

Conclusion: Civility, Freedom, and Morality in Henry James  

153

Bibliography   Index  

165 177

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Acknowledgements I owe a very special debt to Stephen Arata of the University of Virginia, who steadily accompanied me through this project since its inception over six years ago. His unwavering generosity and support with his time, comments, and practical advice was a major force in bringing this project to fruition. It was Karen Chase, by now a friend, who directed me to him, and I have been grateful to her for that and for much other invaluable advice ever since. Bryson Clevenger, a friend, historian, and publicly acclaimed librarian extraordinaire at the University of Virginia, remained informative and insistent on my retaining my voice from beginning to end. Alan Howard, David Lee Rubin, the late Perez Zagorin, Elizabeth Gargano, Greg Colomb, and Greg Zacharias are among my army of academic friends (if I may), whose feedback and encouragement kept me going. William Irwin directed me to Emily Post, John F. Kasson, and Daniel T. Rodgers, among others. Seamane Flanagan made me more aware of my writing style. Mrs Margaret Gargano sent me the late James W. Gargano’s New York edition of James’s novels at a time when things were not looking bright. (The pencil marks in the books’ margins made me feel he was present, cheering me, thoughtfully, along.) I thank my home institution Ritsumeikan University for giving me some time and research allowance to launch and then to finish this project. I also owe special thanks to the English Department of the University of Virginia that hosted me repeatedly as visiting scholar. Karin Wittenborg, Lew Purifoy, and Nancy Kenchner helped me access the U.Va. Library resources. Alderman Library’s Jared Loewenstein, Warner Granade, M. Sajjad Yusuf, Anne Benham, Alice Parra, Laura Kelly, and Debbie Kirby, to name just a few, made my days and nights in the library a pleasant experience. Thanks to Lisa Goff, and Emma and Haley Arata for their always welcoming hospitality. I also thank my sister Julie Higashi and my ex-colleague Junichi Inoue, who obstinately insisted this project could be done long before any of the real research began. A special note of gratitude goes to my better half, Susumu Wakana, who persevered through many summers and winters without me, all to quietly but actively support his enthused wife. I thank the editors and anonymous readers of Texas Studies in Literature and Language for accepting my submission to their journal, which did more for me than they could possibly imagine, as well as for their permission to reproduce in slightly modified form an article initially published there. Originally appearing as “Society in Self, Self in Society: Survival in The Wings of the Dove,” 47.1 (2005), 31–60, it now appears as Chapter Two, “The Stigmatized and the Normals: Milly, Densher, and Kate’s Survival in The Wings of the Dove.”

viii

Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

Last of all, I wish to thank my anonymous reader who read the book manuscript with a fine-tooth comb and provided me with a detailed list of frequently challenging, otherwise informative, and always helpful comments, and my editor, Ann Donahue, for—among many other things—sending the manuscript to this ideal reader. Unless otherwise stated, all references in this study are to the 26-volume New York edition of Henry James’s work: The Novels and Tales of Henry James (New York: Scribner’s, 1907–1909).

List of Abbreviations All works are by Erving Goffman Behavior Frame “Interaction” Presentation Ritual Stigma Strategic

Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings. New York: The Free Press, 1963. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. 1974. Boston, MA: Northeastern UP, 1986. “‘The Interaction Order’: American Sociological Association, 1982 Presidential Address.” American Sociological Review 48 (February 1983): 1–17. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor, 1959. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. Chicago, IL: Anchor, 1967. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963. Strategic Interaction. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1970.

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Introduction: Performing the Everyday, Face to Face, in Henry James

Henry James’s novels are centrally concerned with the stagelike quality of everyday life. As James knew, whenever human beings interact with one another they must adapt to what the overall situation seems to call for, swallow their minor and not-so-minor frustrations, differentiate between “front-stage” and “backstage” encounters, decide when it is appropriate to compromise or even to dissimulate, and generally manage the impressions they create in others. As James also knew—and demonstrated throughout his novels—successful performances of the everyday are works of art. They involve skill, practice, and conscious, imaginative effort, the goal being the realization of dignity and ease, that is, a kind of beauty. And James’s realism, I claim, portrays this everyday, artful reality. At the heart of my study are such questions as, “Why are James’s men and women so anxious?” “How much of the behavior of James’s men and women is intended or, conversely, unintended?” “Are categories such as active and passive, and masculine and feminine, adequate to describe them?” “What norms govern face-to-face behavior and are they identical with those that govern the larger world we call society?” “What, after all, are love, freedom, and morality in James?” In addressing these questions and others in my microsociology-oriented study of James’s late novels, I draw on much productive critical work that has been done on James over the past several decades, and make extensive use of the vocabulary and methods of social thinkers such as George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) and, especially, Erving Goffman (1922–82).    Critics such as Leo B. Levy, Robert Bechtold Heilman, Peter Brooks, and John A. Clair have addressed the topic of the dramatic and the melodramatic in James’s works. Christopher Greenwood has analyzed the relationship between James’s works and the stage, while John R. Bradley and others have written on film adaptations of James’s works. The theatrical, the dramatic, and the performative have always been identified as being integral to James’s fiction—and more recently, to the understanding of Henry James (1843­–1916) as an author. Critics such as John H. Pearson, Jonathan Freedman, and David McWhirter and others provide accounts of James’s performance as critic of his own work, while Joseph Litvak and Scott S. Derrick, for example, have expanded the discussion of James’s performance to include issues of gender and sexuality.   Today, the name Goffman and such terms as “theatricality,” “role,” and “performance” appear regularly in James criticism. Donald C. Irving, for example, specifically discusses



Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

In this book’s microsociological view, life—everyday life—in James’s works is what Goffman calls an “expressive order” (Ritual 9); that is, a performed arrangement. I build on the premise that everyday life is inherently theatrical and necessarily duplicitous; that is, that everything James’s characters say and do in his works, from the first scene to the last, is performed. Definitions of reality and one’s place in it need to be performed and constructed on the spot, one scene at a time. Even the performer who has his or her performance down pat can afford to be at ease and on a kind of autopilot only for as long as an anomaly does not occur. When such a perspective is adopted, what emerges is the understanding that in James, as in Goffman, character is performed—that is, generated and maintained—carefully, for blunders are capable of exposing it as fabricated, or composed, which in Goffman’s microsociological view, it necessarily is: “A status, a position, a social place is not a material thing, to be possessed and then displayed; it is a pattern of appropriate conduct, coherent, embellished, and well articulated” (Presentation 75). What we understand to be character emerges as a result of a performance as much as this performance is determined by the individual’s ability to execute the performance. As James might put it, “What is character but the determination of incident? What is incident but the illustration of character?” (“Art of Fiction” 55). In addition, the need to impersonate and then remain faithful to one’s claimed character applies to all: “Whether the character that is being presented is sober or carefree, of high station or low, the individual who performs the character will be seen for what he largely is, a solitary player involved in a harried concern for his production” (Presentation 235). The rich American Adam Verver, the wealthy Briton Maud Lowder, the not-so-wealthy American Lambert Strether, and the financially dependent Briton Kate Croy alike need to manage their performances. This, I contend, is the level at which James’s characters—as the actors and actresses who work hard to define and maintain their places in the reality that they together sense and portray—operate. In this book, I offer close, somewhat chronological, readings of James’s last three completed novels, The Ambassadors (1903), The Wings of the Dove (1902), and The Golden Bowl (1904), taking a microsociological approach. Chronology in the novels will matter, for as James wrote, “[A]s the picture is reality, so the novel is history” (“Art of Fiction” 46), a pieced-together narrative of interrelated developments that take place over the course of time. In this introduction, I locate my project in relation to recent critical discussions of James by explaining, for example, what I mean when I claim that James illustrates the various ways in which individuals negotiate and respond to the moral imperatives of the two Goffman’s usefulness in a 1983, five-page essay: “Goffman’s model,” writes Irving, can be used to “analyze any bit of social interaction throughout this novel [The Portrait of a Lady (1881)] and most other novels” as “there are more likenesses than differences between what Goffman observes and what James presents” (42). He also claims that “the real world of social interaction” and “the made-up world of literature” are “inseparably interdependent” (44).

Introduction



frequently conflicting orders of existence—the micro and the macro social orders—and the subsequent outcomes. I also provide a general outline of the microsociological perspective, which the rest of the book will illustrate in more detail by mobilizing the specific microsociological tools of comprehension to shed light on the many puzzling, indeed confounding, dilemmas that James’s men and women encounter. Important developments have been taking place in James studies during the past several decades, including those that contextualize James’s works within the historical, political, and cultural framework of his time. While Adeline R.Tintner’s numerous contributions inform us of the width of James’s knowledge vis-à-vis art, museums, literature, popular culture, and more on both sides of the Atlantic, studies on topics as diverse as dress (Clair Hughes), the Civil War (Peter Rawlings), decadence (Anna Kventsel), the visual arts (Marianna Torgovnick, Viola Hopkins Winner), the contract (Brook Thomas), race (Sara Blair, Kenneth W. Warren), class (John Carlos Rowe, Christina DeVine), the world of publishing (Michael Anesko, Mark Conroy, and Richard Salmon), democracy (Henry Nash Smith), gender relations (Alfred Habegger, Elsa Nettels, Peggy McCormack, Donatella Izzo), sexuality (Lloyd Davis, Leland S. Person), and homoerotic desire (Hugh Stevens, Scott S. Derrick), joined by a plethora of biographical (Lyndall Gordon, Sheldon M. Novick, Fred Kaplan) and autobiographical material (Rosella Mamoli Zorzi, ed.; Susan E. Gunter and Steven H. Jobe, eds), have flourished—and so the list goes on to encompass the countless ways in which critics have elaborated on how James’s works reflect and, in turn, seem to comment on the political, economic, and cultural climate of his day. Although I do not intend to go into particulars, they offer detailed descriptions and analyses of the macro context and backdrop against which James’s men and women, or James—via his men and women—perform in his fiction. I argue that everyday performance of the self, while constrained by such macro elements as nationality, cultural and political climates, social position, economics, and gender—areas that have been and will continue to be explored—also demands adherence to the requirements of other more immediate, micro face-to-face concerns, such as coherence, consistency, reciprocity, ease, honor, civility, and “face.” These concerns, in turn, influence the macrosocially defined structural dynamics that exist among parties during face-to-face encounters. My project illustrates how individual psychology is profoundly influenced or even defined by structures of macrosocial as well as microsocial relations, which individual  Some well-known contributions are The Book World of Henry James: Appropriating the Classics (1987); The Cosmopolitan World of Henry James: An Intertextual Study (1991); Henry James and the Lust of the Eyes: Thirteen Artists in His Work (1993); The Museum World of Henry James (1986); and The Pop World of Henry James: From Fairy Tales to Science Fiction (1989). 

Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels



psychology, in turn, reifies. Put differently, like Ross Posnock, Sharon Cameron, and Gert Buelens, I am interested in the structure of social relations in James’s novels, which, in my model, involves microsociological, socio-psychological factors in addition to macrosocial ones. Indeed, while my project modifies and furthers one tradition in James criticism that examines structures of interaction, the resultant modifications will supplement, reinforce and/or undermine, and even radically revise the more widespread tradition of putting James’s characters into historical and cultural—that is, for lack of a better term, more macro—contexts. One of the central claims I share with Cameron, Posnock, and Buelens is that consciousness and thinking in James is social. Cameron, for example, writes that consciousness in James is “not internal, not centered, not associated with subjectivity” (171). It is “disseminated,” “not in persons” but rather “between them.” In James’s novels, consciousness is “disengaged from the self” and “reconceived as extrinsic, made to take shape—indeed, to become social—as an intersubjective phenomenon” (Cameron 77). Posnock, in turn, refers to social thinker George Herbert Mead when discussing James’s characters, writing that “the Jamesian self is perpetually negotiating an identity out of its interaction with various others” and that the ordeal this self faces is the “experience of nonidentity, of gropingly discovering that the self is not itself alone but defined by what is outside it” (136, 137). Indeed, the Jamesian self is, in the words of Mead, “essentially a social phenomenon” (Mind 133). According to Mead, the phenomenon of the mind arises during an individual’s interaction with others. The self, in “tak[ing] the attitude of the other” or of generalized others, becomes an object to itself so that it can assess how it might act and react “intelligently, or rationally” (Mind 134, 138) in the larger world. An inner conversation—that is, thinking—then takes place as the self tries to successfully adapt to, and influence, its environment. Buelens echoes Cameron and Posnock and adds that identity in James is “so often constituted within a relationship, that we can regard it as existing, somewhat mysteriously, in-between persons rather than defining any one individual in an isolating manner” (29–30). Buelens then proceeds to claim that identity “cannot simply be equated with mastery: it is made up quite as much of surrender” and is “determined by something outside oneself to which one willingly surrenders” (30). This last point, that James’s selves want to surrender to the dictates of that something outside themselves that claims mastery over them, is important. 

 Osborn Andreas claims in 1948 that a James novel “deals with interacting characterqualities as ancient as Neanderthal man and as contemporary as this morning’s breakfast”; such “qualities necessarily wear the garment of the time and place in which James lived— but in themselves they are ageless and classless.” He writes that it “does not deal with a problem of a specific historical time or of a specific social class or even of a specific civilized area of the earth’s populated surface.” My claim is that a James novel deals with both “interacting character-qualities” (Andreas 3) and specific historical times, classes, and geographical locations.   Elaine Pigeon (113) alerted me to Buelens’s essay.

Introduction



James’s social beings are actively involved in their own subjugation. Fleda Vetch in The Spoils of Poynton (1897) wants to, as much as she is driven to, renounce all chances of happiness when she sends Owen Gereth back to his fiancé, Mona Brigstock, to lose him forever, after which Fleda actively postpones collecting a gift from him that could give her great solace—only to miss this opportunity also, thanks to the Poynton Park fire. It is Fleda’s need to remain consistent with her assumed—as in, “adopted”—virtuous character, or “face,” that drives her to engage in these somewhat illogical performances even when nobody is watching. Fleda, in short, is her own worst enemy. In order to understand Fleda’s performance, it is necessary to define what is meant by “face” as it is used in microsociology, for it is more involved than the common, everyday use of the word. According to Goffman, “face” is “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Ritual 5). In claiming a face as a result of adapting to the suppositions others make of one’s identity, one is locked into one’s face. This is because this claim to a face places “a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect,” which simultaneously exempts him from other kinds of treatment “that would be appropriate for such individuals” (Presentation 13). Thus, to be caught out of countenance is like being caught in the act of doubledealing, a disruptive event that nobody—including the audience—finds pleasant. James’s men and women are socialized to observe such microsocial norms by managing impressions, and thereby faces, for the alternative to being of a piece is to be two-faced, a sham, or else a counterfeit. Such is the power of socialization, which I will elaborate on in discussing Lambert Strether in Chapter One on The Ambassadors. I also adopt Nancy Bentley’s perspective of viewing James’s novel of manners as capable of “trac[ing] powerful, exquisitely subtle mechanisms of social force” (101). Mark Seltzer’s claim that “the historicity of [James’s] text is to be sought … in the microhistories and micropolitics of the body and the social body, in the minute and everyday practices and techniques that the novel registers and secures” also resonates with my project, for it is indeed the workings of “the microhistories and micropolitics of the body and the social body” (Art of Power 24) that I emphasize. However, my study does not totally exclude what Seltzer calls “the grand designs and teleology of an absent History” (Art of Power 24), for   For discussions on the age’s preoccupation with the issue of authenticity and counterfeits, see Karen Halttunen’s Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of MiddleClass Culture in America, 1830–1870 (1982), Miles Orvell’s Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880–1940 (1989), and Mary McAleer Balkun’s The American Counterfeit: Authenticity and Identity in American Literature and Culture (2006).    Bentley’s portrayal of James as a writer of the ethnography of manners and Philip Manning’s view of Goffman’s work as being “ethnographic” (105) also align James and Goffman with one another.



Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

its interest lies in where the macro and micro orders intersect. Where I most differ from Bentley and Seltzer, then, is in my claim that James depicts a microsocial order that has a distinctly separate set of claims from that of the larger world that we generally refer to as “society.” This microsocial order is generated by the rule of manners, that is, of everyday etiquette—theorized on by Goffman: “A central argument in much of Goffman’s work is that the ceremonial order of the encounter, the etiquette that can be found on any social occasion, is not some trivial matter, of interest solely to mothers, pedants and social climbers, but has instead a profound importance for the viability of the micro-social order” (Strong 231). I contend that it is the imperatives of this microsocial order that complicate James’s male and female protagonists’ need to be adequately accommodating as well as sufficiently dignified. This is because of another set of microsocial demands that come into play during face-to-face interaction, which Goffman calls the “rule of self-respect and the rule of considerateness” (Ritual 11)—also articulated in modified form in etiquette books. Etiquette writer Arthur Martine, for example, writes in 1866 that “a proper consideration for the welfare and comfort of others will generally lead to a greater propriety of demeanor than any rules which the most rigid master of etiquette could supply,” but that “even courtesy has limits where dignity should govern it, for when carried to excess, particularly in manner, it borders on sycophancy, which is almost as despicable as rudeness” (6). In 1887, Florence Howe Hall also writes, “The great truths on which our code of manners is founded are those of the Christian religion, —a due regard for others, humility, a sense of duty, and selfrespect” (12), and Emily Post, in the 1920s, writes that a gentleman “will never be ostentatious or overbearing any more than he will ever be servile, because these attributes never animate the impulses of a well-bred person” (2). In short, ladies and gentlemen are not to be supercilious or abject, for while the former is uncivilized, the latter is equally objectionable because it indicates one’s inability to present a respectable front. Both the male and the female subject must simultaneously put up a front while adapting themselves gracefully to the situation and to others. This requirement for gendered selves to be simultaneously “active” and “passive,” however, is not easy. This is especially so when a male character’s microsocial need to perform an adaptive self conflicts with his macrosocial need to perform an assertive, and thereby masculine, one—as is frequently the case with Densher and Strether, for example. As James Eli Adams aptly claims, “The masculine … is as much a spectacle as the feminine” (11). This is an important point, especially when, in the words of Martha Banta, “There is little or nothing going on in Henry James’s mind that is not about social relations between women

Introduction



and men; every issue is ultimately gendered” (21). Confusion is inevitable. For one, there are multiple ideals of masculinity and, to a less degree, femininity. For another, self-discipline, “a virtue open to all,” in the words of Adams (7), “perplexes the binaries of active and passive, of self-assertion and self-denial,” so that “tributes to it frequently confound traditional assignments of gender” (8). In sum, typically, a woman’s need to be adaptive will not conflict with her need to appear feminine, although conversely—as in the case of James’s governess in The Turn of the Screw, for example—a female character’s need to present a line and act decisively is highly capable of threatening her sense of femininity. Another central claim I make in this book, then, is that in James’s novels, men and women alike are ruthlessly subject to these microsocial “feminine” and “masculine” demands of face-to-face civility, with the larger society’s demand for literal masculinity and literal femininity, in their multiple versions, complicating matters considerably for both the men and the women as they engage in acts of impression management. During encounters, impressions are managed. Goffman’s division of life into a hierarchy of front-stage and backstage performances, with a wide range of degrees to which one can be front-stage or backstage in one’s behavior with or without others in “co-presence” (Giddens 255), helps us see just how intensely impressions are managed. There are problems, however. While deception, lies, and feigning are considered deviant in society at large, these very same acts of dissimulation are part and parcel of the microsocial duties of front-stage civility. As Thomas Nagel writes, “The point of polite formulae and broad abstentions from expression is to leave a great range of potentially disruptive material unacknowledged and therefore out of play” (6). Macrosocially, one must not lie; but microsocially, one is constantly obliged to be less than honest. Individuals from all walks of life must observe certain situational norms over and above the imperatives of the macrosocial order; the microsocial order, however, has a separate set of claims informed by, but by no means limited to, the claims of the larger social world. My point is that the microsocial order is not simply a micro version of the larger one.



 For some ideals of masculinity and femininity, literary and nonliterary, see Laura L. Behling’s The Masculine Woman in America, 1890–1935 (2001); Beth Newman’s Subjects on Display: Psychoanalysis, Social Expectation, and Victorian Femininity (2004); Joyce W. Warren’s The American Narcissus: Individualism and Women in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction (1984); James C. Whorton’s Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers (1982); Clifford Putney’s Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (2001); Mark Girouard’s The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (1981); James Eli Adams’s Dandies and Desert Saints: Styles of Victorian Manhood (1995); and Daniel T. Rodgers’s The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (1974).   In Goffman’s words, “In sum, to speak of the relatively autonomous forms of life in the interaction order … is not to put forward these forms as somehow prior, fundamental, or constitutive of the shape of macroscopic phenomena” (“Interaction” 9).



Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

Microsocial structures are formed alongside larger power relations, and interaction involves an intermingling, a negotiation, or else a contest of the two. To summarize, I contend that what sociologist Ann Warfield Rawls points out vis-à-vis Goffman’s microsociological model of society can also be claimed for James’s, namely that a theory of an interaction order “sui generis” can be found and that the constraints of this order “define,” “resist,” and “defy” (136) the demands of the hierarchical relations of the larger social structure. In addition to Rawls’s claim, however, I adopt the claims of sociologists Mary F. Rogers and Spencer E. Cahill, namely that face-to-face encounters also reflect the macro power/hierarchy relations when “the routinised behaviour of everyday life corresponds to and reflects the broader social patterns which intermesh to constitute a social structure” (Rogers 102); that is, when “[e]xternally relevant social statuses” are “transformed into situated advantages and disadvantages in the interactional production of persons” (Cahill 145). Macrosocial questions of gender, class, education, nationality, occupation, and economic status, factors that have a profound bearing on the individual makeup of James’s characters as well as on how they behave in the presence of others, are necessarily part of the equation of face-to-face interaction, so that power relations vis-à-vis the larger social order are “already” inherently present in the microsocial dynamics—but something over and above these is also at work. And neither one nor the other has absolute precedence over the other. To very briefly illustrate, I take up the setting of The Aspern Papers (1888),10 where the first-person narrator seeks to gain access to Juliana Bordereau, who ostensibly has the Aspern papers. The endeavor proves taxing. Not only does the narrator feel as though he is in an inferior, almost toadying position in being younger, a newcomer, and the one who needs to do the asking—Juliana and her niece Miss Tina “asked no favours and desired no attention” (4)—but also he finds himself questioning the legitimacy of his quest. While the macro backdrop of Venice helps him picture himself as a daring hunter of Truth in a romantic, historical/literary context, face-to-face interaction with the veiled “proprietress” (114) of the Juliana/ Jeffrey private papers makes him feel infinitely less self-assured. For one, as Tessa Hadley notes, the aging, ailing Juliana is “improbably disconcertingly fiercely alive” (“Aspern” 317). How legitimately literary—rather than invasive—can his pursuit be when Juliana is so evidently protective of her privacy? For another, the narrator is unable to assess his position in relation to Juliana, who is literally “impenetrable” with her “mask” that “continue[s] to cover her attitude” (27, 23, 28). What line is he to take with her? Assessing the thoughts of a veiled Juliana is 10  Although critics have traditionally linked James’s artists/writers tales as anecdotes of James position vis-à-vis these figures, I contend that these tales are, to quote myself, “not so much about the relationship between art and life” as they are about “art in life, the artful performances of socialized individuals and the infinite variety of tact, poise, and other forms of diplomatic pretending that emerge when people of different stations and faces are thrown together in inevitably embarrassing situations” (“Obsessed with James” 65).

Introduction



not possible—or so he thinks—for when the narrator instinctively tries to assess his position by putting himself in her shoes, her blankness comes to serve as a kind of echoing self-reflective mirror, the end result being an exaggerated form of self-consciousness and self-exposure. Is he “shouting” (25)? Does she “[wish] to convict [him] of fraud” (26)? Does he “appear too eager, too possessed of a hidden motive” (27)? While the romantic atmosphere of Venice promotes what the narrator wishes to view as his literary mission of pursuing the Aspern papers, face-to-face interaction with the live owner of the papers questions it. I claim that James’s characters, including this first-person narrator in The Aspern Papers, whether male or female, rich or poor, and American or European, have been socialized to want to avoid queasiness, distastefulness,11 and disapproval by appropriately fulfilling their tacitly assigned roles in specific microsocial situations—these roles, in turn, determining for them their footing in the world at large. In the midst of what Susan Winnett would call “the brilliant dissimulation of sociability” (8), the participants in a given scene do not voice every thought that passes through their minds and instead base their thoughts and behavior on tacit assumptions made spontaneously about each other in specific situations. And as tact and civility make a multitude of thoughts and emotions inexpressible, the resultant open-endedness confuses and confines rather than liberates. Problematically, although social beings must trust that some kind of foundational premise is in place in order for them to be able to function at all, such premises are in the end impossible to verify. What remains, then, is felt reality. Everything that is expressed in James’s universe—verbally or through gestures, intended or unintended—is ultimately subject to a host of interpretations not only by us as readers but also by James’s protagonists, and the element of microsocial civility only adds to the sense that reality is ultimately impossible to authenticate or place. As readers, we perform the protagonists’ very real bafflement and oscillation. We are sucked into James’s rendition of his “personal,” “direct impression of life” (“Art of Fiction” 50), which the incorporation of a microsociological perspective, I am claiming, helps untangle. However, this book will not talk about the outcome or “the definition of the situation, in the manner of symbolic interactionists,” to borrow a passage from Randall Collins as he discusses Goffman’s microsociology, because doing so “misses the multidimensional and layered nature of situations”: “It is not just that different people might have different definitions of the same situation, but that  In The Tastemakers: The Shaping of American Popular Taste (1980), Russell Lynes describes the new hierarchy that developed from the nineteenth century on, which was based not on wealth but on taste. Writes Lynes, “We are constantly called upon to make decisions that, in a sense, give our taste away. The fact is that we take it seriously, not only as an ornament of life but as one of its almost inescapable problems. Taste is our personal delight, our private dilemma, and our public façade” (3–4). Taste is an extension of our manner and manners, a call to a certain kind of performance. Should we engage in an offensive act of tastelessness, we are spontaneously deemed inferior. 11

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

each participant can be in several complex layers of situational definition at the same time” (58). James’s reality is also multilayered, multidimensional, and, more often than not, ambiguous in a duck–rabbit style.12 I agree with Posnock that Mead’s theory of the self provides the template for James’s selves, and I reiterate my claim that the self is lodged not in the body but in a kind of public sphere. This radical idea cannot be emphasized enough, for rather than locating the self in the physical body or the brain, Mead’s concept of the self looks to social processes for its origins: “And hence the origin and foundations of the self, like those of thinking, are social” (Mind 173). This is in contrast to the psychological or philosophical approach to James studies that understands human beings to be, in the final analysis, body-oriented. As Cameron points out, an “account of consciousness as psychologized understands consciousness as a phenomenon associated with subjectivity: as internal, centered, circumscribed, fixed” (170) in the body and the brain, as it were. Experience, in this view, is brought into focus in the centralized and psychologized, physical individual. That said, a human being has a physical body and selves, the immaterial outcomes of social processes. In a nutshell, it is the physical body that does the performing of the different selves that emerge during interaction with various others in diverse contexts. The two parts are differentiated only for convenience’s sake. This gives rise to problems on multiple fronts, for society acknowledges the physical body but not necessarily the microsocial, multiple selves. Take desire and sexuality, for example. According to the biological model, desire emerges from the physical self or from internal sources, such as libido. It is an urge, a drive, and an instinct of the physical body that has a life of its own. However, if impulses derive from biology, the objects of desire, according to Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, are socially and culturally, rather than biologically, determined.13 As Donald E. Hall notes, an investigation of the “differing valuations and norms concerning ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ forms of sexual desire and activity” enables us to see 12   On the origins of the duck–rabbit figure, synonymous with a brand of ambiguity, see John F. Kihlstrom, “Joseph Jastrow and His Duck—Or Is It a Rabbit?” (available online at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/JastrowDuck.htm). 13   Gerth and Mills point out that the “enormous variety of specific activities which make up the histories of biologically similar men” illustrates that “the objects and goals of behavior are not biologically given, but are derived from the environment in which men act” (9). Sociologists John H. Gagnon and William Simon, who worked for the Kinsey Institute for many years, also question the biological model of desire in Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality (1973), and their work has been taken up by Michael Kimmel and others for its radical repositioning of human sexuality within the context of social behavior: “And sex was not a realm apart, a special domain immune to social norms; in fact sex wasn’t very different from anything else we did” (Kimmel xi–xii). As sociologist Steven Epstein points out, sociologists in the ’60s and ’70s advanced the claim that “sexual meanings, identities, and categories were intersubjectively negotiated social and historical products—that sexuality was, in a word, constructed” (188).

Introduction

11

that “sexuality is thoroughly interconnected with (if never wholly determined by) religion, economics, prevailing scientific paradigms, the social sciences, aesthetics, and other flows of cultural expression and social valuation” (2). Hall is here referring mainly to the macrosocial dimensions of sexuality. I contend that in addition to this macrosocial dimension, James portrays a microsocial one with its attendant norms, which complicates James’s characters’ understanding of the various relationships they find themselves in. In accordance with the understanding that sexuality can be fruitfully understood as a social phenomenon, especially in the chapter on The Golden Bowl, I reframe sexuality within the context of sociality, for the sexual individual exists on multiple planes—the biological, the psychological, and the social, with the social including both the macro and micro levels of social existence. I view human beings as both centered and decentered, physical, psychological, and Meadian; that is, my concept of the self recognizes the confusion and fragmentation that occur when an individual engages in social interaction with others without fully understanding his or her own inevitably fragmented state of being a physical body as well as a social construct. In the words of sociologist Stevi Jackson, “Self and subjectivity … can be represented as co-existing with each other—a consciously constructed self papering over the cracks of a fragmented subjectivity lurking beneath its carefully crafted surface” (6). Writes Mead, We carry on a whole series of different relationships to different people. We are one thing to one man and another thing to another. There are parts of the self which exist only for the self in relationship to itself. We divide ourselves up in all sorts of different selves with reference to our acquaintances. We discuss politics with one and religion with another. There are all sorts of different selves answering to all sorts of different social reactions. (Mind 142)

Goffman, in turn, writes, “Each individual has more than one role, but he is saved from role dilemma by ‘audience segregation,’ for ordinarily, those before whom he plays out one of his roles will not be the individuals before whom he plays out another, allowing him to be a different person in each role without discrediting either” (Ritual 108).14 As Collins notes, the “social system, because it forces us to switch back and forth between many complicated roles, is always making us somewhat untruthful, inconsistent, and dishonourable” (50). This renders the Jamesian self impossibly fragmented and potentially dubious of itself, and this shattering apprehension of its own dishonesty and its sense of fragmentation 14  Such instances where the lack of audience segregation becomes problematic are when Strether is required to interact with Sarah Pocock and Waymarsh in Sarah’s salon— with Madame de Vionnet present; when he runs into Madame de Vionnet—in a boat with Chad Newsome—in the French countryside; and when Milly Theale runs into Merton Densher—with Kate Croy—at the National Gallery. These scenes will be analyzed in more detail in the following chapters.

12

Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

and constant displacement are what make a James character Jamesian—that is, confused and alienated from its own conception of itself. Hugh Stevens notes this multiplicity of the Jamesian self when he describes how James’s presentation of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl “invokes several notions of Maggie—Maggie the virgin, Maggie the daughter, Maggie the wife and Maggie the mother—and sets these ‘Maggies’ into conflict with one another” (56). Taking a slightly different approach, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick also locates in the institution of shame this something “outside” the self that defines the self’s identity. The self’s spontaneous relation to this institution shapes the individual character: Shame … is not a discrete intrapsychic structure, but a kind of free radical that (in different people and also in different cultures) attaches to and permanently intensifies or alters the meaning of—of almost anything: a zone of the body, a sensory system, a prohibited or indeed a permitted behavior, another affect such as anger or arousal, a named identity, a script for interpreting other people’s behavior toward oneself. Thus, one of the things that anyone’s character or personality is is a record of the highly individual histories by which the fleeting emotion of shame has instituted far more durable, structural changes in one’s relational and interpretive strategies toward both self and others. (62)

Sedgwick concludes that the “forms taken by shame” are “integral to and residual in the processes by which identity itself is formed” (63). Shame then, in effect, forms identity, the identity of an inevitably fragmented individual perpetually at war with himself or herself. What Sedgwick calls shame, Goffman calls embarrassment. For example, if I gleefully greet someone only to be ignored in return, embarrassment would ensue, with or without an audience to witness it, for my internalized audience, my self-consciousness or internalized general other, would register and react to the anomaly. My expectation of being reciprocally greeted, which reflects my idea as to who I think I am and who I believe the other person thinks I am, is thwarted: “The elements of a social encounter, then, consist of effectively projected claims to an acceptable self, and the confirmation of like claims on the part of the others. The contributions of all are oriented to these and built on the basis of them.” In short, embarrassment “has to do with unfulfilled expectations” (Ritual 105–6), so that every occasion of fulfilled expectations is, as a matter of fact, an occasion for celebration: “Each individual is responsible for the demeanor image of himself and the deference image of others, so that for a complete man to be expressed, individuals must hold hands in a chain of ceremony, each giving deferentially with proper demeanor to the one on the right what will be received deferentially from the one on the left” (Ritual 84–5). When Susan Stringham in The Wings of the Dove and Fanny Assingham in The Golden Bowl fill in the lapses and gaps during their exchanges with Densher and Maggie, respectively, they are showing

Introduction

13

their willingness to avert awkwardness for all—Densher, Maggie, and last but not least, themselves. Indeed, although society expects both men and women to pitch in when the possibility of awkwardness arises, James’s women, like James’s Americans, are generally more thoroughly conditioned to feel they must contribute to ease.15 James’s men, in turn, find that this arrangement suits them perfectly and willingly let the women take care of smoothing things over, themselves adapting to the situation where women take the initiative in the remedial process. This definition of roles for James’s men and women, however, is incomplete. In the case of Maggie and Fanny, for example, Maggie is to a “man” what Fanny is to a “woman”: more generally, the party who feels more responsible for the preservation of the interaction tends to undertake the role of the facilitator. Fanny caters to Maggie’s comfort because she feels guilty about the role she may have played in Maggie’s unhappiness. Maggie, in turn, senses Fanny’s vulnerability and thus allows Fanny to cater to her, as would a “man” with a “woman”—this posits Maggie as being in a somewhat sadistic position, being a woman. On the other hand, the gentleman Densher is to a “woman” what Milly Theale is to a “man,” while Densher—to Milly—is, literally, a man. Milly wishes to fulfill her role as a facilitator with him. If Densher caters to Milly—because of her illness, her innocence, Kate’s directives, or the need to maintain Milly’s face—Milly caters to Densher’s need to cater to her because it seems like the only beautiful, unobtrusive thing to do. Thus, Densher, for a number of reasons, feels passive and acted upon rather than the reverse. What is more, he senses he has actively chosen to be so. Because, as Judith Butler famously claimed, gender—like Goffman’s “character”—is performed, the performance, in turn, seems to determine gender.16 And this is all because of the requirements of civility, for when embarrassment occurs, “balance can be overthrown” (Ritual 100), so that shame—to use Sedgwick’s term—“is peculiarly contagious and peculiarly individuating”: “bad treatment of someone else, bad treatment by someone else, someone else’s 15   Cultural historian Andrew St. George, for example, writes that the subtitle of the American Book of Genteel Behavior expressed the “vital concept in American manners” in the nineteenth century: “Here was their comprehensive go-anywhere, suit-anyone attitude, their usefulness for the socially mobile on the threshold of new success, and their ease: American Book of Genteel Behavior: A Complete Hand Book of Modern Etiquette for Ladies and Gentlemen Embracing the Customs and Usages of Polite Society in all places and at all times. Being a perfect guide to all about to enter either public or private life, showing how to act under all circumstances with ease, elegance, and freedom” (179–80). Scott S. Derrick also points out that one ideal of masculinity for Americans during the late nineteenth century was ease (94–5). 16   Butler writes that “gender is not a noun” but is, rather, “performatively produced and compelled by the regulatory practices of gender coherence” (24). It is “always a doing, though not a doing by a subject who might be said to preexist the deed” (25). To borrow an expression from sociologist Candace West, James’s men and women “‘[do]’ gender,” they “‘[do]’ power” (359)—or the lack thereof.

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

embarrassment, stigma, debility, bad smell, or strange behavior, seemingly having nothing to do with me, can so readily flood me … with this sensation whose very suffusiveness seems to delineate my precise, individual outlines in the most isolating way imaginable” (Sedgwick 36–7). Thanks to the institutions of shame and embarrassment, self and others are not so much autonomously separate as they are organically connected. All involved in an interaction need to, indeed, want to, be right with others and with the overall situation in order to feel comfortable about themselves, for one’s face and those of others are “constructs of the same order” (Ritual 6). Interaction is based on the claims and acceptances of one another’s face, the “contributions of all” (Ritual 105–6). The flow of interaction, in which the definition of one’s self is lodged, must—all involved spontaneously feel—be maintained, and the one whose face as a facilitator is most threatened scrambles to do the work, with the others likewise pitching in to ensure that the facilitator’s labor is not for naught. Needless to say, this Jamesian laborer in the facilitator’s role can be a man or a woman. When it is a woman, she is reduced to performing, and thereby reifying, her subordinate position, and when it is a man, his performance tends to make him less than a man. While malleability in a woman, which tends to keep her in her place, is in the end not only socially acceptable but also a kind of requirement, an adaptive gentleman of taste who successfully performs the artful life is a contradictory presence in a society where he is otherwise and generally required to perform an assertive, masculine gender. In an economy of shame and embarrassment, “all for one and one for all” is therefore not just a social slogan—it is a microsocial reality. Another important claim I make, then, is that in James, self and other(s) are, on the microsocial level, inextricably linked, at times even amorphously blending into one another, rather than autonomously separate. As Patricia McKee writes, “Self and other become implicated in each other, both because the meaning of one implies the meaning of the other and because each is responsive to and responsible for the meaning of the other” (10). When Densher needs to be right with others and with the overall situation to feel comfortable about himself, the social and the psychological converge. And in such a microsocial, socio-psychological world, avoidance of shame and embarrassment becomes the unarticulated, socially mandated urmotive, so that the motive for money, fame, or sexual gratification can easily become secondary, that is, contingent on the achievement of the primary motive if only because the primary motive is beyond one’s conscious control. Put differently, inhibition and repression need not be Freudian. They may simply be functions of everyday social psychology. Surrender to one’s erotic desires is only possible with the achievement of one’s ur-motive of not having to worry about shame and embarrassment. The same can be said about the relationship between one’s urmotive and money. Money is frequently desired, but not at the cost of shame and dishonor—as Chapter 2 on The Wings of the Dove will illustrate. Money has always been a central concern among James scholars. As Georg Simmel writes, however, money “no more has an inherent objective quality than sunshine inherently has the feeling of well-being that it produces in nervous

Introduction

15

systems organized a certain way” (237). Instead, it is “the necessary intersecting point for a large number of ends” (238), including—I would claim—nonmonetary ones. Richard Waswo, in discussing Simmel’s The Philosophy of Money (1907), defines money in general society as “but the supreme abstraction that measures the relative desirability of objects, thus recording both what they mean and what they are” (26). However, this abstraction, it seems, spills over to the world of human relationships. For example, money, when it is the defining characteristic of an individual, tends to frame the relationships they become involved in in monetary terms rather than in personal ones, so that the specter of money can interfere with one’s ability to generate relations that are not based on financial considerations— as Milly Theale quickly discovers.17 When Kate Croy moves out of Aunt Maud’s house to move back in with her sister, Kate’s value is redefined by her ability to sever this particular connection to Maud, which is presumably based on multiple considerations, including, but not limited to, Kate’s commitment to her family or her disinclination to be taken under the wings of her very rich aunt—although this latter consideration is only possible with an increased conviction of an inheritance from Milly. Because money is as much a fact of life as the world of nonmonetary transactions is, confusion is inevitable. Money in James’s work and in society as a whole is thus “the supreme fiction, enabling the community that uses it to evaluate, embody, and exchange its desires” (Waswo 31), including its desire to refuse, or appear to refuse, to do these things. In this way, money generates an invisible, if omnipresent, macro framework within which, or against which, specific gestures come to assume meaning and/or generate muddle. The confusion is, again, in part caused by the conflation of the two worlds, the macro and the micro: in addition to this all-pervading monetary framework, there is the internal calculative attitude that is revealed, in James, through the use of financial language and images during micro face-to-face exchanges. It can be described as “a kind of mental bookkeeping, an extended, a finely tuned audit of the characters’ exchange relations” (Agnew 89), although the attitude in which this bookkeeping takes place in my reading is—unlike in Jean-Christophe Agnew’s— defensive. The calculations James’s men and women make are in accordance with the rule of reciprocity, and this rule has a powerful moral influence on the feelings, thoughts, and behavior of James’s characters. Marcel Mauss’s discussion on gift-giving illustrates its binding function in society: “Total prestation not only carries with it the obligation to repay gifts received, but it implies two others equally important: the obligation to give presents and the obligation to receive them” (10–11). As Mauss points out, a gift operates within an economy of reciprocity and therefore “debases” the individual  Milly’s “trusting relationship” with Eugenio in The Wings of the Dove, based on money, “makes for fiduciary relationships” (Goode 282). As this relationship between employer and employee is mutually and clearly understood to be such a one, it is unproblematic. The problem arises when Milly tries to generate personal relationships, which she comes to discover as intensely difficult. 17

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

who accepts a gift but has “not yet repaid” it (63).18 Jacques Derrida writes that because of this rule of reciprocity, gestures of giving are always contaminated by obligations to receive, not receive, pay back, or not pay back, and compromised also by the donor’s knowledge that he is engaging in the act of giving.19 What Mauss and Derrida describe is a world where gestures of giving incur obligations all around: in an economy of reciprocity, calculations to avoid moral deficiency in giving, not giving, taking, not taking, paying back, and not paying back are constantly being made, so that pure gift-giving may in the end be only a beautiful ideal. In addition, because reciprocal relations are ongoing relations, individuals are likely to lose track of who owes whom and how much, especially when the gesture of giving back typically takes place over an extended period of time. I contend that this element of indeterminacy indirectly influences James’s individuals. Like Goffman’s social being, who is “guided more by what it would avoid than by what it would attain, not a maximizer of gain but a minimizer of risk” (Schudson 633), James’s social beings, I contend, are watchful in such a way as to ensure they are morally intact, manner-wise, regarding not only their appearances and behavior but also their social conduct, reimbursing those from whom they receive and reciprocating as much as the occasion seems to demand, even if doing so proves detrimental to their own immediate interests. As Mauss explains, “We must always return more than we receive; the return is always bigger and more costly” (63). In order to avoid the heavy-heartedness that comes with being in manner/ moral debt, James’s characters practically give in advance, so as not to be in the red or in the bad. Their behavior is also geared toward nonliability rather than profit, for James’s men and women monitor themselves in the manner of Charles Horton Cooley’s “the looking-glass self” (184). Seeming is being. James’s men and women behave as though they have internalized M. F. Armstrong’s warning in On Habit and Manners (1888): “Unconsciously, perhaps to you, but still most surely, your vices and virtues are moulding with strong hands, your face, your form, your very dress, and are forcing you in spite of yourself to carry about with you an index to the manner of your life, which all the world may read” (18). When Kate in The Wings of the Dove and Strether in The Ambassadors study their reflections in the mirror, they come face-to-face with the image of themselves that they imagine others see.20 18  See Susan Bruce, who concisely summarizes the kind of internal arithmetic that social beings often engage in when giving gifts, taking up the theories of Mauss and Derrida. McKee also takes up Mauss’s treatise and points out that exchanges that take place in the novels of Richardson, Eliot, and James “tend to render characters inseparable, or bind them together, rather than distinguish them or extricate them from one another” (27). 19  See Derrida, 12–16. 20   As Seltzer explains in discussing Christopher Newman, “Self-identify is … a ‘duty’ and not a ‘given,’” and this gives rise to “the possibility of a discrepancy and not a simple correspondence between the self and its embodiments, or rather, within the self as

Introduction

17

The mirror highlights and externalizes the self-objectifying and self-monitoring in which James’s men and women incessantly engage. These characters then perform the selves they wish to present: generally unassuming, civilized, and graciously adjusted to the social demands of the moment without seeming in the least selfconscious. James’s characters behave according to what Goffman calls the “systems of enabling conventions, in the sense of the ground rules for a game, the provisions of a traffic code or the rules of syntax of a language” (“Interaction” 5) designed to avert shame and embarrassment both for self and others, for whether it is the self or others who are embarrassed, the end result is the same: shame for all. James’s characters’ situationally defined responses, however, are never the same, because each individual’s specific background and the particular situations James devises for his highly individualized characters are never exactly the same. The richly diverse variables alter the outcome of the larger equation, especially as James’s characters interact with one another, further complicating the multidimensional, ever-shifting human dynamics in James’s novels. In the following chapters, I hope to show that while the incorporation of Goffman’s theoretical models advances our understanding of James’s characters and their experiences/performances, James’s works, in turn, breathe life into Goffman’s enabling abstractions. In other words, I claim that Goffman’s work and James’s novels inform one another. Sociologist Alvin W. Gouldner suggests that the problem with Goffman’s microsociology is that it seems to “[dwell] upon the episodic and [see] life only as it is lived in a narrow interpersonal circumference, ahistorical and noninstitutional, an existence beyond history and society, and one which comes alive only in the fluid, transient ‘encounter’” (Coming Crisis 379).21 Although embodiment” (Bodies 75). Therefore, from the very outset, Kate probes the image in the looking glass that she imagines is the visual version of her self. She then determines that her inner sense of self and its outward expression jibe with one another in her refusal to be—that is, to appear—cheap: “She did n’t hold herself cheap, she did n’t make for misery. Personally, no she was n’t chalk-marked for auction” (Wings I: 6). Being and appearing feel identical to Kate. Likewise, the description of Strether standing before the “dressing-glass” (Ambassadors I: 9) in his hotel room shortly after his first encounter with Maria Gostrey illustrates how Strether imagines “what [Maria] saw, what she might have taken in with a vision kindly adjusted” (Ambassadors I: 7–8). James describes Strether’s physical appearance in minute detail so that readers can see for themselves what he imagines Maria sees. 21  As useful as Goffman’s theories are as heuristic tools of understanding, they can sometimes seem like “a long ‘shopping list’ with which to perform sociological analysis” (Lofland 34), with Goffman “sometimes rest[ing] his case with a series of definitions rather than analyses … and tend[ing] to present taxonomies and classification rather more than [seeking] to construct explanatory conceptual schema” (Peter Manning 261). Goffman’s writings can also seem “‘flat,’ lacking that vertical dimension which an enriched treatment of institutions would provide” and “in a certain sense ‘empty’ in respect of the motivation that leads actors to behave as they do in day-to-day life” (Giddens 278).

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

Gouldner’s assertion is inaccurate, for institutions, a historical background, and power relations are explicitly and implicitly present in Goffman’s writings, it does support my claim that Goffman’s tools would be better appreciated if they were specifically applied to individuals in motion and with motivations, “moral careers” (Rogers 114), and what Goffman would call “continuing biograph[ies]” (Frame 287). James’s novels describe the emotional careers of his men and women in specific institutional as well as historical contexts—and in motion, and Goffman’s analytical tools help us make sense of them. The questions I pose in reading James’s late novels have often been asked by James’s readers: “Where is Strether at the end of his trajectory in The Ambassadors?” “Who is to blame for the unhappy outcome at the end of The Wings of the Dove?” and “What is the meaning of Maggie’s final embrace with the Prince in The Golden Bowl?” I frame my chapters in accordance with these “old” questions for two reasons. First, I believe that even though James criticism no longer seems interested in the questions I revisit here, I believe the queries remain of absorbing interest to both academic and nonacademic readers of James’s novels. Second, I believe that interpretive criticism arguably involves the revival and reframing of old questions so that they might be answered anew. My hope is that by answering such questions in refreshing new ways, the validity and value of incorporating a microsociology-oriented approach into James studies should also become apparent. To borrow Paul B. Armstrong’s words, the “reasoning” for my understanding of James is “circular”: my “belief about the whole … is necessary to make sense of the parts,” but my “assumption about the whole is an inference from those parts. … [This circular process of understanding] is the hermeneutic circle that characterizes all understanding” (Phenomenology 166). My overall perspective enables me to see how the parts in James’s fiction seem to fit together, but my general understanding of James’s vision is inferred from those parts. This is the first reason I need to engage in specific readings of James’s works and why the test of my claim lies in the plausibility of the readings I present in the following chapters. Chapter 1, “Wanting to Want to Be Straight and Right: Lambert Strether’s Liberation in The Ambassadors,” presents a microsociological-oriented reading of Strether’s life. He leaves Woollett, Massachusetts, for Europe to bring the son of his benefactress home to America, only to remain in Paris for an extended time and then return home without accomplishing his mission. Strether’s behavior is puzzling. Addressing the questions “Is this a Bildungsroman or is it not?” and “Does Strether achieve transformation or does he not?” this chapter applies the question of determinism versus free will to the realm of everyday living and reveals why Strether is obliged to be so consistently inconsistent. By discussing Strether’s unofficial, emotional life that exists alongside his official one, I hope to show that Strether is highly susceptible to, but neither completely cognizant nor in control of, the norms governing the rule of reciprocity, the social organization of gatherings, and moments of embarrassment. I also show that the novel’s progression is defined by the way in which Strether manages to accomplish his personal mission of fleeing

Introduction

19

from the felt image of himself as a found and kept man of the rich Mrs. Newsome of Woollett, but without violating any of the norms regarding socially correct behavior. In the end, Strether rids himself of all sources of shame that accompany his inability to feel socially correct. However, the chapter will also demonstrate that Strether does not achieve transformation in the most essential sense. As with fluid in a container—an analogy used in the work—although the fluid may move, the container that defines the shape of the fluid remains sadly unaltered. Chapter 2, “The Stigmatized and the Normals: Milly, Densher, and Kate’s Survival in The Wings of the Dove,” analyzes this important work primarily by employing Goffman’s insights as described in Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). As a result, three distinctly different narratives emerge from a single sequence of events as Milly Theale, Merton Densher, and Kate Croy try to avoid confirming what I call their felt stigmatization. Attempting to identify the victim(s) and the victimizer(s) in James’s text and to assign responsibility and/ or blame for the final outcome is one important way in which other critics have previously approached this work. My chapter on this text questions this paradigm and illustrates how the need to save face—both one’s own and that of the other with whom one interacts—overrides otherwise important considerations, such as Kate’s need not to engage in any form of exchange, Densher’s need not to follow Kate’s directives, and Milly’s need to be treated like a live human being. Chapters 3 and 4, “Intimacy and Sexuality: Challenging the Official Story of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl” and “Teams, Teammates, and Intimacy: The Unofficial Story of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl,” consider the object of Maggie’s desire. I begin with a discussion of love and intimacy from a microsociological point of view, and go on to claim that Maggie’s desire is painfully present, but that this desire is not so much a sexual one as it is the desire to be acknowledged as an individual, the desire for intimacy and understanding, and the desire to belong, which culminates in a sensuous longing. Chapter 3 questions the almost unanimously agreed-upon story of The Golden Bowl’s central protagonist, Maggie, as a successful negotiator of appearances, with the purported adultery between her husband, Prince Amerigo, and her mother-in-law, Charlotte, holding the story together. I challenge this official reading in various ways, one of which is by reassessing Fanny Assingham’s role in forming Maggie’s knowledge of the purported adultery. I show that the narrative Maggie and Fanny realize results from the two women’s collaborative act of forging an equation that helps Fanny feel less culpable about her role in others’ unhappiness and justifies Maggie’s supposition that there is something between her husband and her young mother-in-law. In short, I will show that Maggie’s “knowledge” is inadvertently constructed rather than discovered. I then apply Goffman’s concept of “teams” and “teammates” (Presentation 77–105) to analyze the second half of the story. When Charlotte and Amerigo invite attention to their alliance by delaying their return from Matcham, the question of whether Maggie is included in, or excluded from, the teams to which she used to belong is suddenly made central. The concept of teams and teammates

20

Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

highlights the micropolitical aspect of human relationships as well as the way in which such structural dynamics define reality and one’s place in it—that is, one’s identity. Chapter 4 illustrates how Maggie fails in her quest for a community of understanding, her need for which is more pressing for Maggie than love in the conventional sense of the word. By using this approach, I radically reassess and redefine the relationships between Maggie and Adam, Maggie and Charlotte, Charlotte and Adam, Adam and Amerigo, and last but not least, Charlotte and Amerigo. The conclusion, “Civility, Freedom, and Morality in Henry James,” summarizes the revelations brought about by my book’s acts of defamiliarization. Sociologist Thomas J. Scheff observes that Goffman’s “basic method was to deconstruct the assumptive reality of our society” (54). Goffman’s microsociology has a deconstructionist effect on how we view human behavior, so that when we incorporate a microsociological perspective into our reading of James, paradoxically, James’s enigmatic works begin to make better sense. I show how the characters in James’s last three completed novels represent James’s alternate responses to the dilemma microsocial civility poses for the social individual. In reviewing those elements that alienate James’s characters from themselves and others, I also expose those normally unarticulated but nevertheless powerful beliefs that serve to confuse the Maggies—and with them, the readers—in James’s world. As for the movement of James’s novels, there seems to be no neat pattern in the progression of James’s novels. Although a repetition of sorts occurs across James’s works, such as when he designates moments of embarrassment as turning points in his novels’ development, no two moments of embarrassment are exactly alike in their macro/micro constitutional makeup or consequences. This is the second reason why a relatively thorough and close rereading of James’s texts is necessary. The following chapters offer such readings, microsociological in focus, with all the accompanying subtlety, richness, and tantalizing complications. In the end, I hope to illustrate that James understood, as did Goffman, that “The rule of behavior that seems to be common to all situations and exclusive to them is the rule obliging participants to ‘fit in’” (Behavior 11), which applies to both the men and the women, the rich and the not-so-rich, and the Americans and the Europeans. Performing the everyday, according to James and Goffman, was a defensive matter not so much of exhibition or spectacle but of how not to be caught embarrassing, or being embarrassed by, others.

Chapter 1

Wanting to Want to Be Straight and Right: Strether’s Liberation in The Ambassadors As diverse and varied as are the highly contradictory interpretations of Henry James’s The Ambassadors (1903), a work that, in the words of Richard A. Hocks, “wrote easily but published hard” (111), one essential question that readers return to is whether Lewis Lambert Strether has achieved transformation and/or liberation. Does he progress, remain essentially immobile, both, or neither? Crudely put, is he winner, loser, both, or neither? Critical readings of James’s The Ambassadors typically fall into one of two categories: those that view the text as some variation of a Bildungsroman, and those that refute this. Many insist Strether progresses in one way or another, others not, with still others contending that his nonprogression is a triumph of sorts. Even though most critics tend to agree with the sunny view that Strether gains 

  Whether Strether’s story is read as his process of discovery in Europe of “the open mind” (Joseph Warren Beech 267), his “Aesthetic education” as “an Aesthete” (Barton Levi St. Armand 142, 137), an existentialist “spiritual evolution” (Mildred E. Hartsock 415), or as Strether’s Emersonian, transcendental growth toward becoming a “romantic individualist, a Jamesian version of a self-reliant hero” who “pays dearly for his development” (David Robinson 441), all these readings see a Bildungsroman in James’s narrative. Still others in the Bildungsroman strain are Daniel Mark Fogel (“The Jamesian Dialectic”), Paul G. Beidler (92), and Paul B. Armstrong (The Challenge of Bewilderment 65), who detect dialectical processes toward various forms of higher syntheses at work. In opposition to these readings are those that see no positive change in Strether: “there has in fact been no education at all” for “this elderly child from Woollett” (Garis 307, 315); Strether “does nothing at all” to act on his awakening “to a wholly new sense of life,” thus forcing the readers to feel “his relative emptiness” (Matthiessen 39); and Strether “must … be written off as a pathetic failure” (Knoepflmacher 344). Detecting positive elements in the negative is Andre Furlani, who calls The Ambassadors an “elenchus,” with the plot showing “a shift from … false knowledge to a reinvigorating conscious ignorance” (105), while Phyllis van Slyck sees a postmodern hero in Strether when his “seeming passivity, his indecisiveness, his ‘femininity’ challenge conventional masculinity which privileges phallic potency in order to sustain the illusion of wholeness, coherence, and power” (“Knowledge and Representation” 558). Eric Haralson echoes Van Slyck’s position when he sees “this exemplar of male ‘abnormality’” “gent[ly] dissent[ing] from uniform masculinity and compulsory sexuality” (182). Maxwell Geismar identifies Strether with his creator: “Was this also a Jamesian self-portrait, all apparently unknowing here?” (266). William R. Goetz and Edgar J. Burde specifically draw on the autobiographical element and its purported effect on the way Strether is portrayed: Strether “both is and is not James” (Goetz 206).

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

ground and achieves some form of transformation and liberation, the controversy is far from resolved. Both the impression of Strether’s change and the haunting sense of his essential uniformity continue to register among readers. I contend that both impressions are valid. The phenomena of change and nonchange in this work by James are two aspects of a single mode of being. But Strether does seem liberated, or at least relieved, at the end of James’s novel. Strether’s sense of liberation comes about as a result of multiple shifts in his perspective, shifts that are sometimes agreeably expected, sometimes abruptly enforced, sometimes incongruously if harmoniously necessitated, and sometimes precipitously but peculiarly anticipated. In the end, Strether truly feels he is a changed man. I hope to delineate in this chapter the very possibilities and limitations, or perimeters, of human transformation, but in everyday, microsociological terms. I contend that Strether is neither a mere success nor a mere failure, nor a success in being a failure, but, if anything, a failure by being too successful at succeeding, namely a highly self-conscious and social being who, although he realizes what moves are required in order to ensure his emotional, psychological survival as a quasi-autonomous being, ultimately sees too much for his own comfort and yet not penetratingly enough for his own good. Although Strether manages to have his “illusion of freedom” as well as “the memory of that illusion,” he is indeed, as he vaguely senses, ultimately “too intelligent” and yet “too stupid” (I: 218) to achieve freedom itself, that is, psychological freedom from the plaguing sense of self-doubt, self-inadequacy, and shame that continues to disquiet him, the nature of which will be discussed in the following passages. Lambert Strether, the center of consciousness in James’s The Ambassadors, exists concurrently on two planes of existence. One is the external, physical, and social world of front-stage public gatherings, private backstage conversations, faceto-face interaction rituals, and face-destroying moments of embarrassment, whose effects on human behavior twentieth-century microsociologist Erving Goffman has elaborated upon in his diverse writings. The other is a phenomenological and pragmatistic internal world where the self is in perpetual psychological motion not only in order to gauge its position in the scheme of things but also to survive as a self-governing being in the aforementioned physical, external, and intensely social world that James’s narrative describes. In this way, the self-conscious entity that is Strether emerges and develops “within the social process, within the empirical matrix of social interactions” (Mead Mind 133). Strether is self-adjusting, highly malleable, and capable of performing different selves with different parties to ensure smooth interaction in all instances. Strether exhibits a consistent pattern of perception and behavior based on his instinct to survive. He evinces the uncontainable urge to be freed from the destructive sense of humiliation and vulnerability that arises from what I will call felt stigmatization. A stigma is “a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain of reproach, as in one’s reputation,” or in a slightly more archaic use, “a mark made by a branding

Wanting to Want to Be Straight and Right

23

iron on the skin of a criminal or slave.” Needless to say, the word “stigma” abounds in moral implications. Additionally, I employ the word “felt” because, as Goffman notes, although a stigma is “an attribute that is deeply discrediting,” a “language of relationships” and not “attributes” should be employed (Stigma 3): stigma, as is the case with deviance, is for the most part relational, and is therefore real only to the extent to which it is felt in a relational context. Strether’s felt stigmatization has its origins in his inexorable sense of failure and lack of integrity and volition, traits that are essential to Strether’s sense of being male. To begin with, it is his patroness Mrs. Newsome who has “performed the finding” (I: 166) of Strether. Taking the attitude of Woollett, Massachusetts, society and its inhabitants toward himself, Strether senses to a fatiguing degree that he may only be a poorly disguised, inapt, and found, if not downright kept, man of the rich and handsome Mrs. Newsome who leads an “[e]xtraordinarily” “admirable” (I: 55) life. He not only feels he has “a life only for other people” (I: 269) but also is weary of being unable to budge in the face of what he feels is an indefensibly ignominious situation—in addition to feeling that he has been a failure all his life. Strether describes himself as having been “one of the weariest of men” (I: 82) prior to his trip to Europe, repeatedly confessing to his friend Waymarsh of Milrose that he was “pretty well run down” and “dog-tired” (I: 28, 29). In the quiet, borrowed privacy of Notre Dame, Strether feels “what he could n’t elsewhere, that he was a plain tired man taking the holiday he had earned” (II: 5). Here, the complex root cause of Strether’s sense of fatigue requires elaboration in articulating the structure and workings of Strether’s “double-consciousness” (I: 5), or “double connexion” (I: 162) throughout the novel. Society stipulates of the moral individual that he give, receive, and repay. Twentieth-century exchange theory sociologist Alvin W. Gouldner, who writes on the “moral ” norm of reciprocity, states that in an occasion where “one party benefits another, an obligation is generated,” so that the “recipient is now indebted to the donor, and he remains so until he repays” (“Norm of Reciprocity” 174). That Strether is highly susceptible to, but neither completely cognizant, nor in control, of this norm is indicated in the scene where he recognizes his confidante Maria Gostrey “always paying for something in advance … equalled on Strether’s part only by the sense of how she was always being paid; all of which made for this consciousness, in the larger air, of a lively bustling traffic; the exchange of such values as were not for him to handle” (I: 128–9). Strether’s “mind”—“a thing that … he had always needfully to reckon with” (II: 125)—only intuits and reacts spontaneously when Maria initiates such intangible exchanges.

  Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. 1870. New York: Random. 1997.   See also Alvin W. Gouldner, “Reciprocity and Autonomy in Functional Theory.” Like Marcel Mauss, Gouldner saw the reciprocity rule as beneficially functional to turning the wheels of society in promoting an economy of reciprocal acts of giving and taking. 

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

Accordingly, Strether finds himself trying to pay up, intuitively at least, what Maria seems to make due to her, so that he wonders only “how on the day of their settlement their account would stand” (I: 129). However, Strether’s felt manner/moral account with Mrs. Newsome is decidedly outstanding. The norm of reciprocity, writes Gouldner, “so structures social relations that, between the time of Ego’s provision of a gratification and the time of Alter’s repayment, falls the shadow of indebtedness” (“Norm of Reciprocity” 174). Strether likewise categorically feels that he is in the red. As he painfully sees, his name appears on the green cover of Mrs. Newsome’s prodigious Woollett Review not because he is Strether, but rather, he is Strether only because his name is on it. As Julie Rivkin points out, “The text that advertises [Strether’s] public identity also creates it” (71)—without which text, might we add, Strether might as well not have an identity at all. Moreover, even the name on the green cover is Strether’s “one presentable little scrap of an identity” salvaged from “the wreck of hopes and ambitions, the refuse-heap of disappointments and failures” (I: 65), so that Strether’s inability to pay off his figurative debts to his benefactress adds another coating of shame to the already ignominious surface that is Strether’s felt identity. As Michael Wutz writes, Strether’s identity is, or to be more precise, he feels as though it is, “a borrowed one, existing as an extension of another person,” and a woman, at that, “not only on paper but also through paper credit” (94). His indebtedness to Mrs. Newsome thus highlights to a detestable degree Strether’s sense of passivity and his lack of male, even obscurely moral, integrity, prompting him to refer to himself as “a perfectly equipped failure” (I: 44). As a member of the late nineteenth-century society of which he is a product, Strether is inevitably influenced by, in the words of Eric Haralson, “the inner promptings of the protestant work ethic and the outer pressures of the cult of manly achievement” (181). So oppressive and suffocating is Strether’s felt situation that he cannot help imagining and describing in Europe his temporary release from Woollett air as “poor Lambert Strether” being “washed up on the sunny strand by the waves of a single day,” and feeling “thankful for breathing-time and stiffening himself while he gasped” (I: 81–2). He feels he has barely escaped drowning in Mrs. Newsome’s irreproachable, sadly irrefutable, and, from Strether’s point of view, overbearing beneficence. Strether’s complaint, however, is “a subject for silence” (I: 28). It is, in other words, furtive. Strether cannot openly identify and therefore deal with the oppressive sense of seeming very much like Mrs. Newsome’s incompetent, perhaps pleasant, but nonetheless found man because doing so would not only be highly unpleasant but also interfere with his ingrained urge to be right. Strether is genuinely indebted to Mrs. Newsome, who cannot be blamed for his sense of failure or lack of volition any more than he can accuse her of abusing him. As Strether confesses to Maria, Mrs. Newsome “has n’t sinned,” and it is Strether who has “sinned enough” to “be where” he is (I: 67). Strether feels he is merely reaping what he has sown. In addition, Strether has “never known” Mrs. Newsome

Wanting to Want to Be Straight and Right

25

to be “unpleasant” (II: 73), so that Strether has her “constantly, in the innermost honour of his thoughts, to consider” (I: 269). The problem is further compounded by the fact that he “want[s] to want to” (II: 223) be right, an expression Strether uses during an exchange with Chadwick Newsome, Mrs. Newsome’s son, when they discuss Chad’s relationship with Madame de Vionnet. This reminds us of Erich Fromm’s theory that for a given society to “function well,” its participants “must acquire the kind of character which makes them want to act in the way they have to act as members of the society or of a special class within it,” and are required to “desire what objectively is necessary for them to do,” so that “[o]uter force is to be replaced by inner compulsion, and by the particular kind of human energy which is channeled into character traits” (381). Strether is the prototypical ideal member of society, trained and socialized through and through, the Protestant ethic personified. The need for Strether to be right will require that he observe the two rules of reciprocity— namely, reciprocating aid with aid and not injuring the party to whom he is indebted (Gouldner “Norm of Reciprocity” 171). Strether feels he cannot bite the hand that has kindly been feeding him any more than he can disregard its beckon. In this way, Strether’s need to break away from a humiliating situation and the simultaneous need to be fair and grateful towards his benefactress, clash, and the two needs split Strether in two. Strether’s need to be right is a habit of his mind; in an essential sense, the Woollett mind. It makes Strether Strether, “Woollett in person” (I: 29), as he professes to Maria: “I feel it so that I certainly must look it, speak it, and as people say there, ‘act’ it” (I: 15, emphasis mine). Strether’s statement illustrates his awareness that his character and performance are linked and that his behavior is capable of giving his identity away. Indeed, Strether’s wanting to want to remain constantly straight and right in line with the Woollett manner guides and influences his every move in every sphere of day-to-day social interaction. As Goffman writes, “Rules of conduct infuse all areas of activity and are upheld in the name and honor of almost everything” (Ritual 48–9). In this sense, John Dewey’s definition of morality, namely that morals have to do with “actualities of existence” and not with “ideals, ends and obligations independent of concrete actualities” (329) is appropriate in describing Strether’s morality, the habit of his social mind. The “essence of habit”   Robin P. Hoople points out that “from the outset,” the “language of earnest spiritual striving” predominates: words and phrases such as “sacred rage,” “save,” and “not out of the whole affair, to have got anything for myself” (423) are given as examples of this language. Needless to say, this is a function of Strether’s consciousness. Sallie Sears notes that Strether has “internalized the trappings of Protestantism to the extent that his consciousness of the agreeable is continually marred by his consciousness of sin” and that “[w]hatever his other inward inconsistencies, Strether is consistent in always living by his sense of duty” (115, 116). Michael Levenson also notes the predominance of “the language of salvation,” and states that “indeed perhaps the central question of the novel is: Who will save whom?” (17).

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Performing the Everyday in Henry James’s Late Novels

is “an acquired predisposition to ways or modes of response, not to particular acts” and it “means special sensitiveness or accessibility to certain classes of stimuli, standing predilections and aversions, rather than bare recurrence of specific acts” (Dewey 42). Strether’s socially conditioned and thoroughly habitual inclinations, susceptibilities, and resultant behavior, in Dewey’s view, would “constitute the self,” and in “any intelligible sense of the word will, they are will” (25). In other words, as automatic as Strether’s habit of mind may have become, it is still an essential part of his conscious makeup. According to Dewey, Woollett, and Strether, morality—and especially Strether’s morality—is social and habitual. In a universe where manner, manners, and mannerisms are morals, Strether is indeed a manner/moral man. But Strether is a complicated manner/moral man. Ross Posnock insightfully detects that Strether has two missions, “his intended mission (he and Chad go home) and his inward revolution” (221). Indeed, desperately needing to flee from the felt image of himself as a kept man incapable of paying off his figurative debts and to remain morally inculpable while fulfilling this need, Strether lands in Europe on a personal “business” (I: 3) in addition to the official business of bringing Chad home to Woollett. It is no wonder then that Strether is “burdened … with the oddity of a double consciousness,” so that there is “detachment in his zeal and curiosity in his indifference” (I: 5). Strether cannot help feeling simultaneously detached, zealous, curious, and indifferent. Strether’s feigned indifference to Europe and to the sense of liberation it instantly provides is inadvertently betrayed by an active, irrepressible sense of curiosity and enthusiasm. At the same time, intensely felt but not quite formulated into definite thought, Strether hesitates to enjoy his liberation in Europe. This sense of reluctance comes not only from his Woollett sensibilities and inclinations but also from the fact that he cannot experience the sense of liberation without somehow being reminded of what he is being liberated from. As Strether does want to want to be right, he cannot allow himself to ungratefully and openly admit that he feels a sense of escape because he is away from Woollett and from Mrs. Newsome. This is why there is “detachment” in Strether’s “zeal” and “curiosity in his indifference” (I: 5) toward activities that promote his personal agenda. Already Strether’s desires conflict with one another and are diametrically opposed. Officially, he does not want to enjoy and be “squared” (I: 111) by Europe, but unofficially, he does. In addition, as Strether’s trip to Europe involves his having to face Chad, the son of his benefactress, the prospect is uninviting: Strether knows that in Chad’s eyes, he may very well look like a fortune hunter, standing to gain his mother’s hand in marriage and consequently “an assured future” (II: 219) by accomplishing his assigned mission. Viewing the situation from what he imagines is Chad’s point of view, Strether seems to see himself as Chad’s mother’s found and kept man, well-groomed and well-disguised, about to be legitimatized through marriage to his benefactress because Strether complies with his mother’s wishes of bringing Chad back to Woollett. Therefore, officially, he wants to see Chad, but unofficially, he does not. Such is the structure of Strether’s “double-consciousness” (I: 5), or

Wanting to Want to Be Straight and Right

27

“double connexion” (I: 162), and of the two missions, the unofficial one is the more pressing even as Strether’s need to be immaculately right prevents him from pushing it to the forefront. Strether achieves liberation from his felt stigmatization of being a found and kept man through various tactical engagements, the first of which is, innocently enough, to disengage as much as possible from everything that reminds him of his felt Woollett identity. Strether loses no time in so disengaging, or, to borrow Merle A. Williams’s term, in so “unthinking” (60). In the ship heading for Chester, Strether experiences “such a consciousness of personal freedom as he had n’t known for years; such a deep taste of change and of having above all for the moment nobody and nothing to consider.” Away from Woollett and the gazes of its inhabitants, Strether takes the attitude of nobody. Strether keeps “no appointment and renew[s] no acquaintance.” Instead, “independently, unsociably, alone,” Strether abandons himself to “the immediate and the sensible” (I: 4), with no interfering self-consciousness. The “secret principle” (I: 3) Strether thus immediately puts to work consists of yielding himself to the non-self-conscious, the sensuous, and the aesthetic, avoiding as much as possible any exposure to felt gazes that constrain him. This is why Strether does not “absolutely” want Milrose’s Waymarsh to be waiting for him at the dock. Officially and, in all fairness to Strether, sincerely, Strether very much wants to see his “dear old Waymarsh,” but unofficially and furtively, he would like to postpone it for as long as is decently possible. Though “wholly instinctive,” Strether feels “his business would be a trifle bungled” if he had to take the attitude of Waymarsh toward himself, or face Waymarsh’s “countenance … as the first ‘note,’ of Europe” (I: 3). Strether’s personal project is to rid himself of his mind’s old attitudes, perhaps even creating new relations “in the presence of new measures, other standards, a different scale of relations” (I: 114) through the mobilization of “his own prepared, his own already confirmed, consciousness of the agreeable” (I: 24). The last thing Strether wants to do is rush into taking on what he imagines is Waymarsh’s attitude, “the externalization of one of Strether’s inward voices” (Sears 106). Simultaneously, as Strether senses that actively initiating anything of his own accord in order to complete this unfeeling/unthinking process would not be right, he can only allow himself passively to “float” (I: 26), that is, to maintain a precarious, uncommitted, easy attitude and allow himself to go with the flow. This is why Strether makes no active move to avoid Waymarsh, either, and instead floats. Fortunately, the exotic unfamiliarity of Europe helps Strether by being just that: exotic and unfamiliar. The epistemological foundations of rightness, or goodness, even, seem somehow altered on foreign soil. As William Veeder writes, in the “fluid medium” of Paris, “distinctions break down” (119), so that Strether might rightfully claim his legitimacy in irresponsibly not knowing. Strether is unembarrassed about not knowing whether the performance at the London theatre is good or bad, and he is able to reply “almost gaily” to Waymarsh that he does not know “anything” after his first visit to Chad’s abode at Boulevard Malesherbes: his state of ignorance is thereby “somehow enlarging,” imbued with “the air

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of … amplitude” (I: 106). Therefore, given the unfamiliar, exotic environment and Strether’s finding himself “float[ed] into society” by “a woman of fashion” and with Waymarsh “watching the force of the current” (I: 41), how can he help but find himself in certain psychological places? It will have just happened, and “[e]verything” will have just come “as a sort of indistinguishable part of everything else” (II: 200–201). Nothing would therefore be of his active doing, goes Strether’s stealthy, camouflaged argument. Strether conveniently disregards the fact that even floating requires consent, which, Strether observes, Waymarsh refuses to give (I: 26), and that his yielding to pleasing stimuli—immediate, sensuous, and aesthetic—is an active, quasi-calculated form of passivity. As Susan M. Griffin writes, Strether’s interested form of seeing is “functional ” as “a means of adjustment to environmental conditions” and allows him to “[survive] in his environment”: by “attending actively, by selecting those perceptions which fulfill his needs” (398), Strether survives. Here, however, it is necessary to make two important modifications to Griffin’s insightful argument. First of all, as we are beginning to see, Strether is by no means what Griffin calls a “unified subject” (398). Likewise, his manner of seeing is divided, or conflicting. As has been discussed, Strether wants to, but does not want to, enjoy and be “squared” (I: 111) by Europe, and the conflicting desires affect his vision. Indeed, the desires that Strether feels are constantly contradictory, so that in the end all Strether can do is float, not so much in the manner of a disinterested fencesitter or “a man floating between two mental reactions without a center of selfknowledge or self-reliance on which to build a foundation for decision” (Wise 84) but rather of one who actively and interestedly attempts to sustain multiple modes of being, engaging in a fiercely precarious balancing act—what Strether calls an “equilibrium” (II: 133)—between two equally exacting desires, both of which demand appeasement. This is what Ian Watt detects when he writes that the “pattern” of “progressive and yet artfully delayed clarification” is “typical of James’s general novelistic method” (266), and what Ruth Bernard Yeazell registers when she calls Strether “the arch-procrastinator” who engages in “one long delaying action” (22, 21). Does Strether condone Chad’s involvement with Madame de Vionnet or doesn’t he? Does he consider them fallen or not? Whose side is he on? Does he or doesn’t he like Chad? In precariously, and at times dangerously, floating in between, Strether survives, even as it signifies his desire to have his cake and eat it, too. Second of all, and more importantly, not all seeing is achieved in the interest of the seer. Unfortunately for Strether, what “the Jamesian eye sees” is not always, but nevertheless frequently is “in the interest of the Jamesian ‘I’.” Strether responds to his “undifferentiated environment” (Griffin 398) in undifferentiated ways. His impressions of London and Paris, their general human landscapes, pleasing scenery, sensuous smells, dazzling colors, exotic sounds, and shiny surfaces, frequently give Strether the sense of liberation he very much seeks: “It was the difference, the difference of being just where he was and as he was, that formed the escape—this difference was so much greater than he had dreamed it would

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be; and what he finally sat there turning over was the strange logic of his finding himself so free” (I: 81). However, the more micro, close-up, and personal human scenes of which he is a part and which frequently consist of critical instances of face-to-face encounters are not as obliging. According to Goffman, in face-to-face interaction an individual is expected to maintain both his own face and that of the individual with whom he is interacting, for they are “constructs of the same order” (Ritual 6). Social interaction is based on the tacit claims and equally tacit acceptances of one another’s faces, the “contributions of all” (Ritual 106), so that the collapse of this order risks the collapse of the tacit assumptions that uphold the “joint ceremonial labor” (Ritual 85). All are therefore expected to employ tact in making sure the interaction does not collapse, or, when the interaction is endangered, to do their best to save the moment regardless of who is at fault: “Not, then, men and their moments. Rather moments and their men” (Ritual 3). Strether, too, with Waymarsh, Little Bilham and Miss Barrace, Chad, Madame de Vionnet, and later with Sarah Pocock, Mrs. Newsome’s daughter, is for various reasons obliged to want to want to save the faces of all involved and the moments in which their faces are invested. First, he frequently needs to avoid embarrassment for himself. Second, he needs to save the occasion in which his face is invested even when he is not the direct cause of the embarrassment. Third, he aspires to be morally noninferior, manner-wise, and to be superior if possible, which requires him to work especially hard at maintaining everybody’s faces. Strether’s prime means of survival is his Woollett morality. This becomes evident in the scene at the London theatre on the third evening of his stay in London. Strether sees a play in which “a bad woman in a yellow frock” makes “a pleasant weak good-looking young man in perpetual evening dress” behave badly (I: 53). Catching himself feeling sympathetic toward the young stranger, Strether reminds himself in connection with his own mission that he “had n’t come out … to be too kind, or indeed to be kind at all” to Chad. However, with “a thought almost startling” in his need to be right, Strether immediately reminds himself that if Chad should be complaisant—and it would be comforting if he were—and if 

 Some instances of Strether’s interested forms of seeing include Strether’s ability to use Maria Gostrey to highlight the negatives he sees in Mrs. Newsome. Strether decides he prefers Maria’s red velvet ribbon and low-cut dress to Mrs. Newsome’s Queen Elizabethstyle black satin dress and its accompanying ruche, and this realization serves as a “startingpoint for fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh lateral flights” (I: 51). He also conveniently recollects those lost opportunities he had to make something of himself and unkept promises to himself, both of which are symbolized by the dozen “lemon-coloured volumes” (I: 86) he purchases as a youth. It is no wonder, then, that he feels that his purchase of “seventy blazing volumes” of Victor Hugo a few days prior to his encounter with Madame de Vionnet at Notre Dame is so exorbitant and “so out of proportion” (II: 10) with his actual use or even desire for them. Strether registers the signs of his having desired to desire them so as to be able to reinforce the memory of what he had missed and thereby legitimize his “giving the rein for once in a way to the joy of life” (II: 7).

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Strether is to “fight [Chad] with his own weapons” (I: 54), Strether himself would also have to be mild: only a bully or a coward would pounce on a docile opponent. Likewise, Strether repeatedly has to stop himself from saying anything about Chad that is unsubstantiated even during backstage conversations with Maria, although he would like nothing better than to be definite about his own superior footing. In this way, prior to Chad’s appearance on the scene, Strether’s only prop in combating this invisible and onerous enemy (I: 163) and “definite adversary” (I: 165) is his Woollett manner/morality. Strether’s need to maintain his sense of superiority over a purportedly fallen Chad in such manner/moral terms even interferes with his enjoyment of Paris: “Was he to renounce all amusement for the sweet sake of that authority? and would such renouncement give him for Chad a moral glamour?” (I: 89). Strether is scrupulous about not undermining his sole weapon of self-defense, his unimpeachable sense of decency, Woollett style. The social ability to reciprocate in kind and to engage in tactful performances— Chad’s, for example—is part and parcel of the requirements of Strether’s manner/ moral superiority, or rather, noninferiority. An early illustration of this is the way in which Strether interacts with Chad after Chad’s sudden emergence at a Parisian theater. Needless to say, being late for a theater performance is against the rules of etiquette. Chad, however, emerges near the end of an evening performance and dares to enter their theater box, but he does so with perfect poise and gracefully holds his own. Strether is petrified to be caught off guard by a glimpse of a very different Chad from the person Strether had assumed him to be: his imagination “had faced every contingency but that Chad should not be Chad, and this was what it now had to face with a mere strained smile and an uncomfortable flush” (I: 136– 7). Suddenly faced with the realization of how wrongly and precipitously he had jumped to conclusions about Chad’s identity, and his private admission of having wronged Chad in this way, Strether is cautioned against judging Chad too hastily 

 Maria is Strether’s means of conceptualizing and formulating his innermost feelings on matters that have bearing on his relationship with the Woollett clan, including with Chad Newsome. She is his “comrade” (I: 68), who is “suggestive” (I: 36) and capable of the “free handling” of subjects “to which [Strether’s] own imagination … owe[s] so much” (I: 68). Through his frequent backstage conversations with Maria, Strether can engage in a relatively open examination of his reactions to events, simultaneously discovering how he actually feels about things. She provides a kind of private forum through which he can experiment, as well as practice, untried lines and suppositions. As Goffman writes, backstage is where “the capacity of a performance to express something beyond itself may be painstakingly fabricated,” where “illusions and impressions are openly constructed,” and where “the performer can relax” and “drop his front, forgo speaking his lines, and step out of character” (Presentation 112). Strether is enabled during these backstage interactions with Maria to reveal to himself his own intuitions, feelings, fears, and needs as well as the contours of his future dealings with the inhabitants of Paris and Woollett. In addition, although Maria is occasionally mistaken in her probings of Strether’s affairs during their moments together backstage, she is immensely intuitive, so much so that Strether refers to her as a “priestess of the oracle” (I: 133).

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during the ensuing moments. Both his moral defenses and his self-confidence are accordingly scaled down, and Strether feels so vulnerable as to believe he needs “to advance, to overwhelm, with a rush” (I: 143). Unable to contain Chad within his moral compass, Strether next pounces on the category of “Pagan” (I: 157) to describe Chad’s ability to disregard social conventions such as not entering the theater during a stage performance. Although Strether clearly wants Chad to be manner/moral enough to steer clear of gross estimations of Strether’s felt position, he confusedly wants him to cross the boundaries of polite behavior as a “Pagan” (I: 157) might, thereby ensuring Strether’s superiority. In this way, Strether again tries to survive by seeking to both have his cake and eat it, too. Although Strether inwardly sighs with relief at being able to reach such an apt label as “Pagan” (I: 157) for Chad, it does not last for very long. Strether is again obliged to stay on his moral toes when Chad accuses Strether’s party of having “a low mind” in thinking that a woman could keep Chad from returning to Woollett: “Do you think one’s kept only by women?” Strether winces when he hears the allegation, for it sounds dangerously as though Chad is accusing him personally, given Strether’s relationship with Mrs. Newsome: does Strether think men are kept only by women—as in kept men? Although he immediately “remembers the safety of their English speech” (I: 159), that is, that by “keep,” Chad means only “to prevent one from leaving (Europe),” as opposed to “being clothed and fed in exchange for services,” Strether nonetheless feels shaken, because Chad challenges, with perfect credibility, the ultimately unverified and therefore hastily reached theory about Chad and his situation in Europe that seemed so plausible when Strether and the Woollett clan conceived it in Woollett. Viewing himself through Chad’s eyes, Strether feels Chad’s retort coming “nearer drawing blood,” realizing that the inhabitants of Woollett, including himself, “had n’t a low mind— nor any approach to one; yet incontestably they had worked, and with a certain smugness, on a basis that might be turned against them” (I: 160). Strether’s having just labeled Chad, if only privately, a “Pagan” (I: 157) adds to the thrust of the blow he feels from Chad’s gesture of resistance, which makes Strether inwardly jump, only to over-rectify his prior assessment of Chad to that of “a gentleman” (I: 160). Strether’s hope of nailing Chad thus deflates to a discouraging degree. Strether’s “campaign” (I: 93) is further complicated when he gradually finds that Chad likes “his prospective stepfather” (I: 164). This takes Strether by surprise because it is distinctly contrary to his expectations. Chad’s “very appetite for Strether” is “insatiable and, when all [is] said, flattering,” so that Strether is “privately, for the time, a little out of countenance” (I: 165). Chad even “cover[s]” him “generously” and “gracefully,” and is “full of attentions to his mother’s ambassador” (I: 161, 162). Strether cannot deny the power of Chad’s amiability and propriety. Even when Chad speaks of his lady friend, Madame de Vionnet, he gracefully professes his profound indebtedness to her, which Strether can by no means contradict or question: Chad’s profession of gratitude toward his lady friend can only be proper and therefore socially correct. In this way, the bigger the disparity between Strether’s anticipation of Chad’s case and the apparent actuality,

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the more Strether feels that “his character receive[s] for the instant a smutch from all the wrong things he had suspected or believed” (I: 237). If Strether has been unfair in his private allegations, surely he needs to make up for them. Moreover, the rule of reciprocity stipulates that Strether return amiability with amiability, not with suspicion, and that if he is indebted to Chad and his tact for covering him, then he must pay him back if only to reimburse him for the unsolicited but nevertheless badly required and gratefully accepted gesture of considering Strether his “prospective stepfather” (I: 164) and “ambassador” (I: 162) rather than his mother’s sorry, elderly, errand boy. Bound and prescribed by the social norms of face-to-face interaction and reciprocity, Strether feels the need to reciprocate felt concessions with concessions, felt aid with aid, and felt wrong-doings on his part with the need to make up for them—and all because of Chad’s mere indubitable show of sincerity and congeniality. In order to maintain his defenses against Chad in moral terms, too, Strether finds himself obliged, albeit temporarily, to give Chad the full and complete benefit of the doubt, thereby ensuring that he does not mistakenly wrong him: the accused must be assumed innocent unless proven guilty. Strether is promptly “muffled” (I: 238) into doing exactly what Chad wants him to do—meet Madame de Vionnet and her daughter, Chad’s ambassadors. Tony Tanner writes that “Strether’s progress in Europe” can be understood “as an ascent to a balcony” (40). Tanner interprets the initial balcony scene as a description of Strether’s yearning for its “perched privacy” (I: 98), which would provide “that ‘distinctness of vision’” (Tanner 52). To be sure, Strether yearns to be “up and up … on a level that he found himself at the end of another moment rejoicing to think he might reach,” the realm of “perched privacy … of the only domicile, the only fireside, in the great ironic city” (I: 98). What requires emphasis here, however, is that the image of the fireside is strongly suggestive of comfort and security more so than of height, privacy, and clarity of vision. In other words, the perched position that Strether so yearns for is one that guarantees a secure sense of being in self-possession, a safe haven from exposure to self-doubt and uncomfortable self-consciousness, which, to be sure, comes with clarity of vision but signifies other, equally significant properties, such as the ability to remain calm, constant, confident, and in control of one’s own feelings and emotions at all times. Later, at sculptor Gloriani’s party, at “the click of a spring,” “all vagueness vanish[es],” and Strether sees that it is “that rare youth,” Chad, whom “he should have enjoyed being ‘like’” (I: 220), for “Chad was, oh, yes, at this moment—for the glory of Woollett or whatever—better still even than Gloriani” (I: 221). Scott S. Derrick claims that Strether’s “persistent envy of ease” in Chad “suggests an envious relation to the real and imagined privileges of conventional masculinity” (116). Indeed, what is after all so appealing to Strether about Chad are his cultivated manners, or his Dewey-Woollett composure, which enable him

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to dare to walk into a theater box at ten in the evening with perfect ease. It is also the refined air with which his grey streaks of hair seems to endow him, his attitude of being “smooth” (I: 152) and “gracefully quiet” (I: 147); “the dignity, the comparative austerity” (I: 153) he commands; and his ability to be “fundamentally and comfortably free” (I: 164). It is Chad’s cultured form of social grace, his polished and elegant style of self-sufficiency and assurance, and his sophisticated yet unassuming Woollett attitude that most enthrall the nervous and frightened Strether. Strether would like to be in manner/moral command like Chad—with so much ease and “masculine” self-assurance—so that he might not have to look up to him in ceaseless apprehension and trepidation. In this sense, Strether’s journey to Europe can indeed be understood as his struggle to achieve an ascent to a balcony, Chad’s figurative balcony, an imaginary place of psychological freedom where Strether might also be comfortably, safely, and gracefully in manner/moral command. To Strether, Chad is an object both of fear—because he seems so flawless manner-wise when viewed alongside Strether’s own felt clumsiness, inadequacies, inconsistencies, and bewilderments—and of aspiration and yearning. There is “[s]omething happy and easy, something above all unconscious, in the way” Chad is able to respond to matters in general, so that “the facility of his attitude and the enviability of his state” (II: 32) are undeniable. Chad is “the real thing” (I: 234), which Strether longs to become so as to be rid of his felt stigmatization of constantly being in the red and living haphazardly in makeshift, hit-or-miss states of mind. Coincidentally, Strether’s becoming “the real thing,” like Chad, would simultaneously enable him to no longer fear Chad.   As mentioned in the Introduction, Scott S. Derrick points out that one ideal of masculinity for Americans during the late nineteenth century was “ease” (94–5). Derrick goes on to state that Gloriani becomes “the masculine God of the text,” a “trope” that “inhabits myths, legends, histories, and works of art,” which “works best at a remove from the pedestrian clay of everyday life,” so that Gloriani “is nearly absent—yet powerfully present” (120–21) in the work.   In Book Second, Chapter Two, during a walk along the Boulevard Malesherbes, Strether chances upon a young man whom he at first mistakes for Chad but finds that it is Little Bilham, standing on a balcony: “The balcony, the distinguished front, testified suddenly, for Strether’s fancy, to something that was up and up; they placed the whole case materially, and as by an admirable image, on a level that he found himself at the end of another moment rejoicing to think he might reach” (I: 98). Such physical juxtapositions of characters looking up at a balcony or feeling as if they are being looked down on are frequently used in James’s texts to illustrate the literal sense of being placed in an inferior position. The cases of the Jamesian governess in The Turn of the Screw and Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl immediately come to mind.   Strether, during a moment of choice, sees that the “present alternative to the young man in the balcony” (I: 98–9) is “Waymarsh not only undiluted but positively strengthened,” so that his movement towards the balcony is “fairly to escape that alternative” (I: 98, 99). Strether decides he would like to be in manner/moral command in the manner of a Chad and not a Waymarsh.

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Therefore, as Laurence Holland points out, the relationship between Strether and Chad is “the main orientation of the novel” (230). William R. Goetz agrees, modifying Holland’s theory by stating that the relation of “Chad-as-seen-byStrether” is central to it, that is, that “the ‘process of vision’ represented in the novel concerns a subject and an object, an observer and an observed, taken together as a relation” (195). Modifying this definition once over, I claim that it is Chad-asseen-by-Strether-taking-the-attitude-of-Chad that is central to the novel. Because the way Chad and his situation in Europe look reflects Strether’s sense of his own vulnerabilities and susceptibilities, or conversely, his potencies, concerning his own felt position, Chad’s story is indeed the main orientation of the novel insofar as it reflects Strether’s felt state. At the same time, Chad is also an entity of flesh and blood, who exists irrespective of Strether’s inner vulnerabilities and aspirations and is capable of resisting Strether’s forms of seeing, interested or otherwise. One thing remains certain, however, which is that, as Maria discerns, “[i]t is n’t so much” Strether’s “being ‘right’” as it is his “horrible sharp eye for what makes [him] so” (II: 327) that pulls him through the maze of confusion, for better or worse—at least until Chad becomes irrelevant to Strether’s case toward the end of his European journey. What Maria observes is to the point, for Strether does have a “horrible sharp eye” (II: 327) for the conditions and opportunities he needs to take advantage of in order to ensure his rightness and emotional survival vis-à-vis Chad. If Little Bilham is one of Chad’s first ambassadors, another is Madame de Vionnet, Chad’s “interested ‘influence’” (I: 247). “[H]anded over and delivered,” “made a present of,” and “given away” (I: 209) by Chad to Madame de Vionnet at Gloriani’s party, Strether immediately, but only instinctively, becomes aware of the dangers of being drawn into the reciprocity game: Madame de Vionnet “had only after all to smile at him ever so gently in order to make him ask himself if he were n’t already going crooked” (I: 212). Cautious but nevertheless promptly taken in by the norms of face-to-face interaction in a gathering, where “the want of ceremony” on Madame de Vionnet’s part—she fails to introduce Strether to a duchess and presently “drop[s]” him to accompany an important-looking gentleman—“could fall into its place as but a minor incident of the procession” (I: 215), Strether is completely unguarded against its social force. In a gathering, according to Goffman, a “shared definition of the situation comes to prevail” (Behavior 96), so that what a participant “owes the gathering at large can at times override what he owes himself and his fellows in an encounter” (Behavior 172). That is, “[s]ituational proprieties … give body to the joint social life sustained by a gathering, and transform the gathering itself from a mere aggregate of persons present into something akin to a little social group, a social reality in its own right” (Behavior 196). As Strether is later able to see at Chad’s party when Sarah Pocock and her delegation attend it, being part of a gathering, crowd, or “an inner, a protected circle” (II: 159) is like being in “a brave blind alley, where to pass was impossible and where, unless they stuck fast, they would have—which was always awkward—publicly to back out” (II: 160). Strether “more and more marvel[s]” at

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how “things go when there was a hand to keep them consistent—a hand that pulled the wire with a skill” (II: 160–61). For example, later at Chad’s party, Strether sees that Sarah is “built in, or built out—whichever you call it; she’s packed so tight she can’t move,” and seems “bricked up” and “buried alive” (II: 176). However, whereas Strether sees Sarah as not “bribeable” after all—stiff in her determination to stick to her Woollett scenario—Strether himself is “effectually bribed” into accepting and abiding by the rules of the European situation as represented by the social occasion, although “he could n’t quite have said with what”: “It was as if he had sold himself, but had n’t somehow got the cash. That, however, was what, characteristically, would happen to him. It would naturally be his kind of traffic” (II: 69). As Strether finds out the hard way, at such social occasions as parties, the sanctity of the gathering is of utmost importance, and he, for one, is thoroughly circumscribed by the social situational proprieties of Gloriani’s bedazzling party. Enter Jeanne de Vionnet. Even as Strether senses that Jeanne’s entrance is accomplished “with a consummate calculation of effect” (I: 220), he is promptly enthralled by Madame de Vionnet’s daughter, another “real thing” (I: 277), who in effect guarantees the validity of her mother—Chad’s ambassador and provider of Jeanne’s immaculate “breeding” (I: 261). Strether promptly finds himself complying with Jeanne’s request to visit her and Madame de Vionnet. The promise is then reinforced the following day when Chad brightly agrees to sign the figurative contract of Strether’s issuing: when Strether offers to surrender himself to Madame de Vionnet and her daughter in exchange for Chad’s agreement to return to Woollett with him, Chad unexpectedly assents. Chad’s immediate response, “My dear man, you have it,” given in perfect “felicity,” embarrasses and oppresses Strether, who begins to “fidget under it for the open air and the erect posture” (I: 237). Strether’s expectations are again disrupted, and he is reminded of the myriad of mistaken assumptions that upheld them. Needless to say, Strether cannot now back out of the agreement, and he finds himself effectively in Chad’s hands rather than the reverse. Again, Strether is caught up in the social game of reciprocity, which somehow makes him feel “used” and as though he is “render[ing]” others a “service,” although try as he might, he nevertheless fails to feel “disgust” (I: 256, 257) toward his own situation, Chad’s situation, the European situation, or Chad himself. Strether’s visit with Madame de Vionnet, a turning point in Strether’s psychological career, causes an internal shift in his psychological landscape. The wondrous setting of the stage at Madame de Vionnet’s residence, her stage costumes,10 the historical sense that Maria helps Strether cultivate (I: 228–30), and Madame de Vionnet’s superior manner and manners, in combination with Strether’s need to be right, coax Strether to move toward a previously unconsidered direction of agreeing to help her vis-à-vis the Woollett clan.

10   See Clair Hughes’s “‘Muffled’ and ‘Uncovered’ in The Ambassadors” in Henry James and the Art of Dress. 115–42.

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Walking into Madame de Vionnet’s world “in the midst of possessions not vulgarly numerous, but hereditary cherished charming,” Strether “guess[es] at intense little preferences and sharp little exclusions, a deep suspicion of the vulgar and a personal view of the right” (I: 244, 245). These material objects give Strether a sense of Marie de Vionnet’s “private honour” and “air of supreme respectability” (I: 246). Madame de Vionnet’s quiet and graceful manners in combination with her personal taste, as manifest in her things, seem to convey her ostensibly irreproachable manner/moral worth for her. In addition, Marie de Vionnet places herself humbly if gracefully at Strether’s mercy: “He might have been perched at his door-step or at his window and she standing in the road,” a situation that brought out “a sadness that was like a cold breath in his face.” As a matter of course, Strether is required to tread gently. Only a brute would reject the appeal of a lady who merely asks to be allowed to “trust” him “[j]ust … for common civility” (I: 248). She pleads for his help with Mrs. Newsome, and the manner in which she entreats him influences him “more than at the moment he quite measure[s].” With her words, “Really and truly,” which she “add[s] in a tone that [is] to take its place with him among things remembered” (I: 255), Strether is caught in the microsocial trap of feeling the need to save her face—and his own—in the reciprocity-oriented scheme of things. Strether finds himself required to act as chivalric knight responding to a plea for help from a lady in distress, which is in itself embarrassing. Attempting to “get off” the mounting pressure with the “exorbitant word” “save,” Strether desperately responds, “I’ll save you if I can” (I: 255). This and Madame de Vionnet’s subsequent expression of gratitude makes Strether “feel as if he had been tripped up and had a fall”: her “Thank you,” “added with peculiar gentleness,” thus “drive[s] in by a single word a little golden nail, the sharp intention of which he signally felt” (I: 276). Strether, by stages, is literally nailed into a commitment. At the same time, beginning to weary of floating, makeshift attitudes and of constantly having to adjust his own responses to others’, Strether seeks a firm footing. Therefore, when Strether accidentally encounters Madame de Vionnet in a kneeling, devout attitude within the dimly lit, quiet sanctity of Notre Dame, he immediately goes about stabilizing his precarious felt state. Feeling as though he is “living almost disgracefully from hand to mouth” (II: 3), Strether is ready to connect the image of Marie in prayer with the phrase “virtuous attachment” (I: 180), Bilham’s description of Chad’s relationship with her. The image of a devout Marie helps him “to stick fast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had resolved that he would stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as easy to do so.” If Madame de Vionnet is able to “so carry herself,” then Marie and Chad must indeed be “[u]nassailably innocent” (II: 10), and if Strether “happen[s] to affect her as a firm object she could hold on by,” decides Strether, “he would n’t jerk himself out of her reach,” but instead “would do his best to be one” (II: 11). To “simplify” (II: 180), and in part as a result of Marie’s supreme performance— providing Strether with what Goffman calls the “setting, appearance, and manner” that comprise Marie’s “social front” (Presentation 29)—Strether finds himself,

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under the expedient, socially necessitated cover of tact, glossing over Chad’s moral standing at least in the sense that he not be considered as being in a fallen relationship with his lady friend. As with a Chinese box or a Russian doll, there are Chads within Chads, ambassadorial presences, the idea of Europe included, that together resist Strether’s impulse to find Chad morally wrong, while simultaneously, they promote and advocate Strether’s personal, if furtive, need and desire to condone Europe and its liberating influences. At Gloriani’s party, for example, Strether initially “feel[s] rather smothered in flowers.” However, he then wonders whether “this was only because of his odious ascetic suspicion of any form of beauty.” He occasionally tells himself “for his reactions were sharp—that he should n’t reach the truth of anything till he had at least got rid of that” (I: 193–4). With Strether’s social inclination to be as accepting as possible of differences, the oppressive literal and figurative flowers of Europe draw Strether into an acceptance of them so that he should not have to seem socially maladjusted or unappreciative of their aesthetic qualities. As can been seen, when Strether allows himself to float passively and somewhat hazily among undifferentiated impressions, he succeeds in entering different states of being but fails to see how the social norms of everyday behavior that he has internalized—to reciprocate trust with trust and concession with concession with Chad and Madame de Vionnet, for example—ultimately confuse, disorient, and most importantly, promote and determine his social forms of seeing as much as his otherwise purely interested acts of seeing do. That is, Strether’s seeing is not always as functional and instrumental to the promotion of his interests as it seems, and much takes place over and beyond the scope of interested vision. Societal forces assert their influence at every turn of Strether’s felt life, and his choices are defined by the microsocial norms of appropriate behavior. In unconditionally following the dictates of such morality, Strether is morally unweakened, perhaps, but this he achieves at the cost of finding himself offering to do things he had not initially intended to: Strether finds himself visiting Madame de Vionnet and then agreeing to save her. These gestures, in turn, and because of Strether’s socialized need to be self-consistent,11 eventually become his intentions. Strether thus gradually feels right in defending Madame de Vionnet and Chad, even at the cost of facing opposition from the Woollett clan and of seeming immorally ungrateful to his patroness Mrs. Newsome. That is, Strether’s socially determined behavior 11

 Robert B. Cialdini summarizes the “three sources” that promote people’s desires “to be and look consistent within their words, beliefs, attitudes, and deeds” as follows: “First, good personal consistency is highly valued by society. Second, aside from its effect on public image, generally consistent conduct provides a beneficial approach to daily life. Third, a consistent orientation affords a valuable shortcut through the complexity of modern existence. By being consistent with earlier decisions, one reduces the need to process all the relevant information in future similar situations; instead, one merely needs to recall the earlier decision and to respond consistently with it” (95–6).

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begins to take a life of its own, or, to borrow sociologist Robert B. Cialdini’s expression, to “grow [its] own legs” (84). Put differently, Strether becomes inconsistent about his public mission because he aims, legitimately, to be consistent with his internalized microsocial morality. However, from Strether’s furtive and confused point of view, his inconsistencies feel strangely consistent in that he gradually finds himself successfully promoting his private mission without feeling morally culpable for doing so. Fully intending to make Chad return with him to Woollett, Strether soon finds himself acting on behalf of Madame de Vionnet, instead convincing Chad to allow the Woollett clan to come to Paris. Wondrously, not returning to Woollett coincides with Strether’s personal need to stay away from the felt sources of his agony, Woollett and Mrs. Newsome. Thanks to Madame de Vionnet and her plea, what James would call Strether’s “psychological reason” (“Art of Fiction” 61), and what Maria much later calls “a basis” (II: 300), therefore, Strether is furnished with a relatively clear footing, which is why Strether no longer requires the presence and assistance of his confidante, Maria. In her words, Strether is no longer “where [he was],” and because he now has “momentum,” he can “toddle alone” (II: 38, 39). So it is that Strether comes to shift allegiances to ostensibly side with Chad and Madame de Vionnet. A climactic moment of Strether’s transformation occurs when Strether finally confronts Sarah Pocock, only to find that he is abruptly, unexpectedly, and miraculously quasi-acquitted of his Woollett commitments. This outcome of his final confrontation with Sarah, moreover, comes about through accidental circumstances: the lines that Sarah takes at various stages of her visit to Paris; the force of Strether’s—and others’—social need to avoid a moment of profound embarrassment at Sarah’s salon; Strether’s impressions of Waymarsh’s relationship with Sarah, and Sarah’s with him; and finally, by Sarah’s ability to stick to her Woollett guns. Prior to Sarah’s arrival, Strether “whistl[es] in the dark” (II: 46) in intense anticipation of what is to come. He intuits that with Sarah’s physical presence and his taking of her attitude toward himself, he should promptly be “recommitted to Woollett as juvenile offenders are committed to reformatories” (II: 61) through his own internalized need to be. Fortunately for Strether, however, when the Pococks do arrive in Paris, he finds that Sarah is ostensibly resolved to “play the larger game” of being “gracious and unallusive” (II: 72). Strether gratefully adopts Sarah’s line, although he realizes that he himself feels “strange” and “altered, in every way” (II: 75). His psychological landscape has undergone a change because of his experience in Europe, or so he thinks until he questions whether anybody in Sarah’s camp notices the change in Chad. Instinctively reviewing the situation from what he imagines is the point of view of the Woollett clan, now that they are physically present, Strether is again subjected to moments of uncertainty and instability, and the sense of tables turning and values shifting. Still, Strether sees “he must none the less make a choice and take a line” (II: 85). However, the stance Strether should feel comfortable adopting is inextricably

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linked to the question of his assessment of Chad’s character, for Strether’s credibility is at stake, given that he has attested to Chad’s improvement in the numerous letters to Mrs. Newsome. Moreover, Strether still requires verification of his value judgments from Woollett’s Mrs. Newsome, thanks to what Goffman calls a “paradoxical fact”: While proclamations of alienation and gestures of situational contempt are certainly means by which the individual places some approved distances between himself and the establishment in which he finds himself, there is still the paradoxical fact that these acts may be symptomatic of deep concern about the establishment. (Behavior 226)

To be sure, Strether is still at bottom concerned about the establishment, Mrs. Newsome and her Woollett clan. The more Strether feels he needs to resist this establishment, the more he acknowledges the validity of the force he resists. In taking the attitude of the Woollett clan toward himself, then, Strether can feel validated only insofar as they, and Mrs. Newsome through them, are forced to see that Chad’s change—brought about thanks to Chad’s lady friend—is as massive and undeniably authentic as Strether has claimed in his letters. Thus, when Strether’s first close-up contact with Woollett’s representative Jim Pocock fails to provide evidence that a change in Chad has been detected, Strether is extremely discouraged: “It was what he had taken his own stand on, so far as he had taken a stand; and if they were all only going to see nothing, he had only wasted his time” (II: 88). The validation of Strether’s standing is thus vexingly postponed, with his allegiance, and thereby his identity, agonizingly divided between the Chad/ Europe/Madame de Vionnet camp and the Woollett establishment camp. Strether’s suspended line is determined for him, however, the following morning at Sarah’s salon, when Strether runs into Madame de Vionnet, who has come to pay her respects to Sarah at an early hour. Before Sarah’s very eyes, Strether finds himself “publicly” drawn into Marie’s figurative “boat” (II: 94) by “a performance, the performance of ‘Europe,’” in which performance “Sarah likewise had, after all, to perform” (II: 105, 106). The important characteristic of the interaction that takes place in Sarah’s salon is the combination of the participants, Madame de Vionnet and Strether with Sarah Pocock and Waymarsh. Although Sarah provisionally treats Strether as “the valued friend of her family” (II: 73), it is obvious that Strether’s position is incongruous when both Sarah, as the daughter of his patroness, and Marie de Vionnet are there with him. Strether’s felt position with Sarah is incongruous with the position and status he has come to adopt with and for Marie, the lady in distress to whom Strether has promised his knightly assistance. As Goffman writes, everybody “has more than one role, but he is saved from role dilemma by ‘audience segregation.’” With “audience segregation” (Ritual 108) thus unavailable, therefore, Strether is automatically placed in a potentially highly embarrassing situation despite his care to avoid it.

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Interaction is based on the tacit claims and equally tacit acceptances of each other’s faces, and any disruptive anomaly needs to be tactfully covered so as to save the flow of the moment regardless of whose fault it may be that the disruption occurs. On such an occasion, what we call a person’s face “clearly is something that is not lodged in or on his body, but rather something that is diffusely located in the flow of events in the encounter” (Ritual 7). The flow of interaction, in which everybody’s “face”—that is, identity—is invested, must be protected. Additionally, to “appear flustered” is “evidence of weakness, inferiority, low status, moral guilt, defeat, and other unenviable attributes” (Ritual 101–2). Needless to say, Strether can no more enjoy sacrificing his own felt status as an unembarrassed individual than he can enjoy sacrificing Marie, who has just greeted him in the most natural and gracious manner and to whom he therefore owes a figurative and reciprocal smile: Marie is “all kindness and ease,” “smil[ing] in welcome at Strether,” greeting him “more familiarly than Mrs. Pocock,” “put[ting] out her hand to him without moving from her place,” “want[ing] to show as simple and humble—in the degree compatible with operative charm” (II: 92), and “appeal[ing]” (II: 93) to Strether for sympathy and agreement with her cordial observations. If Strether should fail to “meet her at any point more than halfway” when she seems “to take it, softly and happily, with the ease of intimacy, for granted” to be so met, he feels it “would be odiously, basely to abandon her” (II: 99). Strether’s need to not obstruct the flow of interaction with Marie by taking what she graciously offers, and reciprocating in kind, as well as his aversion to appearing embarrassed, “pusillanimous” (II: 94), or base, incriminate him: “To meet his fellow visitor’s invocation and, with Sarah’s brilliant eyes on him, answer, was quite sufficiently to step into [Marie’s] boat.” Before long, Strether finds himself “[taking] up an oar” and “pulling,” just as Marie also comes to Strether’s aid “that they might, in a common cause, have been calling together and pledged to mutual aid” (II: 94–5). By thus exercising “poise,” “the capacity to suppress and conceal any tendency to become shamefaced during encounters with others” (Ritual 9), Strether and Marie successfully avoid a moment of profound embarrassment for both as well as for everyone else present—but only at the cost of Strether finding his footing determined for him by the dictates of the interaction ritual. Not surprisingly, as just mentioned, everyone, including Sarah and Waymarsh, pitches in to allow the interaction to survive—despite inevitable disagreements— until its natural end. This is because of the “important conservative effect” of such joint enterprises: … the line taken by each participant is usually allowed to prevail, and each participant is allowed to carry off the role he appears to have chosen for himself. A state where everyone temporarily accepts everyone else’s line is established. This kind of mutual acceptance seems to be a basic structural feature of interaction, especially the interaction of face-to-face talk. It is typically a “working” acceptance, not a “real” one, since it tends to be based not on agreement of candidly expressed heart-felt evaluations, but upon a willingness

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to give temporary lip service to judgments with which participants do not really agree. (Ritual 11)

In this way, Strether, Marie, Sarah, and Waymarsh act and react in thoroughly civilized and diplomatic ways, “giv[ing] temporary lip service to judgments with which participants do not really agree” (Ritual 11). They are, without exception, all diplomatic liars, involved sincerely in a deceptive joint performance that makes sure that “a particular expressive order is sustained—an order that regulates the flow of events, large or small, so that anything that appears to be expressed by them will be consistent with his face” (Ritual 9). It is the social necessity of saving the moment and the microsocial requirements of mutual civility that circumscribe the limits of their responses, so that if anything, “[t]hose who break the rules of interaction” only “commit their crimes in jail” (Ritual 115). At this stage, one major discovery on Strether’s part that alters his psychological landscape forever is his belated discovery that he is capable of affecting others as much as they affect him. This realization comes in two doses, the first with the advent of Sarah’s ambassador, Waymarsh, who announces Sarah’s intention of coming to see Strether, and the second with Strether’s climactic meeting with her. Strether is “a prey to anxiety” (II: 144) and anticipates a “concussion” that might be cause for “a clarifying scene of some sort” (II: 145). Strether waits a full fortnight after Sarah’s arrival in Paris for some word from her, to no avail. Strether “breath[es] from day to day an air that damnably require[s] clearing” (II: 144), for his sense of allegiance has been, to his troubling discomfort, seesawing back and forth between Madame de Vionnet’s camp and Woollett’s. Although Strether is fully determined to be aligned with Marie’s camp following the morning at Sarah’s salon, the pendulum begins to show signs of swinging back toward the Woollett camp when he suddenly hears and is shocked by news of Marie and Chad arranging to marry off Jeanne de Vionnet—or at least that is how it seems to Strether. Marie’s communication of Jeanne’s betrothal to someone other than Chad “affect[s] [Strether] on the spot as a move in a game” (II: 126), for his till then fuzzily formulated assumptions of Chad’s involvement with the young Jeanne surface, only to reveal the great lengths he had been willing to go to make Chad’s attachment to Madame de Vionnet “virtuous” (I: 180). Strether feels a sense of “oppression” that is like “a weight he felt he must somehow or other immediately get rid of” (II: 129). Can it be that he has mistakenly sided with the corrupt party after all? Strether next encounters the gracefully accommodating and supremely tactful Mamie Pocock, Sarah’s sister-in-law whom Mrs. Newsome ostensibly hopes her son Chad will marry, alone on Sarah’s balcony. Mamie acts as though everything is normal despite the fact that she is technically the snubbed candidate for Chad’s future wife in opposition to Madame de Vionnet, now that Jeanne is no longer one. Whatever the facts, Mamie, who seems to Strether to wish to hide her sense of injury and is supremely composed so as not to make Strether feel the need to trouble about saving face on her behalf, behaves with poise. Strether realizes that

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for Mamie to adopt the line of normalcy “could only have cost her more than he should ever have had to spend” (II: 153). She saves him from feeling squeamish, which makes Strether nostalgic for Woollett’s ways: “She made him … homesick and freshly restless; he could really for the time have fancied himself stranded with her on a far shore, during an ominous calm, in a quaint community of shipwreck” (II: 152). In seeming to recognize Mamie’s heroic endeavors to spare Strether the trouble of attending to what seems to him her profound disappointments— endeavors that should enable Mamie to save her own face as well—Strether feels he has once again landed on familiar and safe territory. Even when discussing Madame de Vionnet and Jeanne, Mamie’s supposed rivals, Mamie “abound[s] in praise of them, and after the manner of Woollett—which made the manner of Woollett a loveable thing again to Strether” (II: 153). Weary of having constantly to attend to matters of instability, anxiety, and embarrassment, Strether appreciates Mamie’s Woollett ability to ostensibly and so tactfully do all the work for him. As he later tells Maria, Mamie will “do anything” (II: 227) for Strether, for Mamie, in the words of Goffman, “not only defends [her] own face and protects the face of the others, but also acts so as to make it possible and even easy for the others to employ face-work for themselves and [for her]” (Ritual 29). By the time Waymarsh emerges to announce Sarah’s intent to visit Strether, then, Strether’s “immediate feeling” is “all relief” (II: 183). More than anything, Strether would like to “simplify.” As Miss Barrace proclaims, and in response to which Strether “wince[s] … as at the very voice of prophecy,” Strether “can simplify,” and in fact “will” (II: 180), when cornered. Whether he should “put on record, somehow, [his] fidelity—fundamentally unchanged after all—to [his own gods]” so as to deny his affiliation with “strange gods” at “monstrous alien altars—of another faith altogether” (II: 167–8), thereby siding once and for all with the Woollett clan, or become promoter of the union between Chad and Marie by marrying Mamie off to Little Bilham, Strether wants his “dose stiff” and his “conditions unmitigated” (II: 168). Strether becomes almost unprincipled, so confused are his allegiances. However, to Strether’s great relief, Waymarsh, Sarah, and the requirements of face-to-face interaction with them, in conjunction with his need to observe the norms of propriety, again determine for Strether whose side he is to be on. Sarah and Waymarsh, as Strether predicts, do become “as thick as thieves” (II: 64). Moreover, Strether intuits that both have their vulnerabilities. Sarah’s fear of Strether begins from the moment he unthinkingly calls her “dear Sarah” (II: 99) in her salon when she first arrives in Paris. It is a form of address never used in Woollett, so that Sarah, “with an arrest of speech—with a certain breathlessness … on the score of a freedom for which she was n’t quite prepared” (II: 100), is made to hesitate. Has her mother’s fiancé’s footing shifted, which would require her footing to be likewise adjusted? Sarah is forced to wonder what kind of change, if any, has taken place in Strether. She, too, is a social being. Consequently, she waits to see what Strether’s footing is, just as Mrs. Newsome does, and Strether, too, with them—in waiting to see what their footing might be.

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Protecting one’s opponent functions to protect one’s own self, provided the norm of reciprocity is accepted by the two parties involved: I protect you, so you must protect me. In other words, in order to protect oneself, it is tactically wise and rational to protect the other. This tactical move of putting the other first is akin to the gesture of what Goffman calls “reciprocal self-denial”: This “after you, Alphonse” technique works … because in depriving himself he can reliably anticipate that the others will compliment or indulge him. Whatever allocation of favors is eventually established, all participants are first given a chance to show that they are not bound or constrained by their own desires and expectations, that they have a properly modest view of themselves, and that they can be counted upon to support the ritual code. (Ritual 30–31)

Sarah figures she—and Mrs. Newsome with her—has “even to abjectness, smoothed the way for” (II: 196) Strether by sending Waymarsh before her and by informing Strether of her intentions. In so doing, however, Sarah simultaneously hopes to ensure that “sharp questions” (II: 188) are laid to rest and that she should find Strether “mild” (II: 197), that is, that she is protected by Strether as much as she believes she protects him. When Waymarsh begins to talk on Sarah’s behalf, therefore, he speaks in the manner of a deputy, or ambassador who has come to clear the way for a thoroughly civilized meeting between Sarah and Strether. It is “a genial new pressing coaxing Waymarsh; a Waymarsh conscious with a different consciousness from any he had yet betrayed” (II: 187) who is capable of a “supplicating note” (II: 193). Simultaneously, Strether finds that Waymarsh’s stoicism and rigidity is considerably weakened, as Waymarsh is unable to hide his enjoyment of Paris—with Sarah. He also has to “fib” twice on Sarah’s behalf, lending to Waymarsh’s “false note” (II: 192) and “false position” (II: 190). Strether instinctively recognizes Sarah’s vulnerability and supreme tact in sending Waymarsh before her, and he also guesses at Waymarsh’s loyalty to, and intimacy with, Sarah. With such revelatory disclosures, therefore, Strether senses that Sarah might not be as formidable or intimidating as he had initially supposed her to be: both Waymarsh and Sarah are not without their weaknesses. This knowledge helps Strether establish an unsubdued, unvanquished attitude during his ensuing encounter with Sarah. Strether’s intuitive knowledge of what Waymarsh and Sarah are doing with one another and with him—using Strether’s case as a pretext for their platonic but nevertheless adventurous intimacy, their “tribute to the ideal” (II: 136)—makes Sarah look “funny” (II: 195) to him as she walks into the room. Nevertheless, Strether soon realizes that Sarah has stiffened herself to “receive his submission” (II: 196) and nothing less, which is expressly what Strether cannot give without being “conscious,” a condition in conflict with his ability to be “mild” (II: 197). How can Strether offer his submission to a woman without being conscious about the way in which it is offered? He needs to make sure he performs submission that does not exude servility, and this consciousness already contradicts his performance

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of submission. Therefore, when the “reciprocal self-denial” (Ritual 30) bind is inevitably broken despite Strether’s general willingness to oblige Sarah, there is “as much there between them as if it had been something suddenly spilled with a crash and a splash on the floor” (II: 197). Strether is saved from becoming flustered, however. For one thing, he promptly senses that Sarah’s footing is firm and that he would not be required to worry about saving face for her: Sarah is “nobly and appointedly officious,” “acting in interests grander and clearer than that of her poor little personal, poor little Parisian equilibrium, and all his consciousness of her mother’s moral pressure profited by this proof of its sustaining force” (II: 198). For another, in being subjected to Sarah’s sore outbursts, Strether gains ground with regard to manner/ moral superiority in gentlemanly allowing his opponent to say it all: “She had already said more than she had quite expected; but, though she had also pulled up, the colour in her face showed him he should from one moment to the other have it all. He now indeed felt the high importance of his having it” (II: 199). Valiantly taking what Sarah has to give and thereby allowing her to present a face as Mrs. Newsome’s protector and Strether’s accuser gives Strether the sense of doing the right thing. Paradoxically, once Strether chooses to assume, that is, perform, the role of a martyr, he feels empowered, for the blow begins to feel more like a performance than an actual one. Pretending to pretend, Strether survives. Strether’s moment of hesitancy only comes with Sarah’s rather general admonition, which has a potential double meaning. There is “rather much to deal with at once” (II: 200) and “too many things” (II: 201) insinuated and unwittingly suggested by Sarah’s somewhat vague and confusing statements for Strether to be able to respond immediately. To whose duty is Sarah referring, Chad’s or Strether’s?: “What is your conduct,” she broke out as if to explain—“what is your conduct but an outrage to women like us? I mean your acting as if there can be a doubt— as between us and such another—of his duty?” (II: 199)

The first interpretation assumes that Sarah is talking about Chad’s duty, so that her admonition reads thus: “How can you—Strether and Chad—act as though there could be a doubt as to where Chad’s duty lies—to us or to Madame de Vionnet? Of course it lies with us!” This reading corresponds to the official line that both Sarah and Strether ostensibly take. The second interpretation, the one that makes Strether inwardly jump, assumes Sarah is talking about Strether’s duty, so that her rebuke reads thus: “How can you, Strether, act as though you did not know your duty, considering our relation with you? You owe us and not Madame de Vionnet!” When, moreover, Sarah alludes to “the most distinguished woman” who “sits [in Woollett] insulted, in her loneliness” because of Strether’s and/or Chad’s “incredible comparison,” it is not clear whether Sarah intends Mrs. Newsome to be “insulted” (II: 202–3) as Chad’s mother or as Strether’s lover, or both. Neither Sarah nor Strether, however, clarifies which interpretation they adopt because both

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must adhere to the need for tact in protecting Mrs. Newsome’s “personal dignity” (II: 203). Needless to say, officially, Sarah means only to speak of Chad’s duty and of Mrs. Newsome’s injury as his mother. However, a possible, even probable, underlying intention remains, one that refers to Strether’s duty and the insult that he, as Mrs. Newsome’s fiancé, has inflicted on her by thinking highly and well of Marie de Vionnet. As Strether rightly intuits, the Woollett clan is, albeit unofficially, quarrelling with Madame de Vionnet over Strether and not Chad. However, because such vulgarities cannot be directly alluded to, the official story is employed in the hope that it function to promote the unofficial one as well. Fortunately for Strether, Sarah “put[s] the matter more crudely than, for his own mixed purposes, he had yet had to do” when she exclaims, “Do you consider [Marie] even an apology for a decent woman?” Strether feels convinced of Sarah’s manner/moral inferiority, so that it suddenly seems to him that he does not “care.” With a “strange smile” (II: 202) and in his wish to “avoid all vulgar retorts,” Strether “softly almost wail[s] this plea,” “Ah dear Sarah, you must leave me this person here!” (II: 203). In sum, whether or not Strether is finally sure whose side he is on, thanks to Sarah’s momentary outburst of abusiveness, he finds he is able to withstand her reprobation so long as he follows the “simple” and “rudimentary” (II: 204) rule of not betraying Madame de Vionnet—or Mrs. Newsome, for that matter—in order to emerge manner/morally unblemished and undiminished. His ability to behave better, manner-wise, than Sarah during this climactic scene pulls him through. To Strether’s great relief and convenience, Sarah finally breaks with him, and he is saved the incommodious task of having to break with Mrs. Newsome, the source of his felt stigmatization. Strether can safely claim that he “has been violently pushed [to the wall]” and “[t]hrown over” (II: 238). However, Strether is not able to enjoy his newly acquired psychological freedom unconditionally, for he cannot help recognizing that Sarah succeeds in not flinching because she remains loyal to her mother, which is, after all, more than Strether has been able to manage. Sarah is clearly more constant and of a piece—in comparison to Strether, who seems even to himself to be inconclusive and muddled. As Strether confesses to Chad after parting with Sarah, he feels he is “true, but … incredible,” “fantastic and ridiculous,” and he fails to “explain [himself] even to [him]self” (II: 219). Moreover, Strether sees that Sarah acts in the way she does because she truly believes Chad’s development to be “hideous,” a “judgement” that “[rings] out so loud as to produce for the time the hush of everything else.” Hearing Sarah’s verdict, therefore, Strether “breath[es] less bravely” (II: 205). Thus, Sarah has the final word, and Strether is left with a vacant and slightly troubling sense of relief: Sarah’s clarity of vision, uncompromised and undiluted, haunts Strether, giving him a sense of her plausibility—something he feels he lacks. Could Strether possibly have been wrong in his judgment of Chad’s character and situation? Had his vision been in any degree compromised? If so, is it because he, too, is “hideous” (II: 205), somehow innocuously influenced and taken in by Europe? Sarah sticks to her Woollett guns, and Strether is conveniently dismissed

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and ostensibly liberated. Simultaneously and inconveniently, however, he is left with a lingering sense of self-doubt. Although Strether manages, once again, to survive, it is no more conclusive than it is unequivocal. As Strether earlier senses, his seesawing allegiance cannot be “clear[ed] up at all logically except by some turn of events that would give him the pretext of disgust.” Strether feels that “should it come at all, it would have to be at best inconsequent and violent.” Strether cannot intentionally choose his allegiance. His disengagement from the Woollett clan, as has just been illustrated, is facilitated by Sarah’s erratic and emotional behavior, offering Strether “the pretext of disgust” that he so yearns to find. Following their “inconsequent and violent” (I: 257) confrontation, Strether feels newly confident in his manner/moral superiority, or noninferiority, although simultaneously Strether refuses to agree to Chad’s use of the word “nasty” in referring to Sarah and, instead, merely describes her as having been “the most important thing—she was definite. She was—at last—crystalline” (II: 217). After all, Strether does not cease to want to want to be right. Strether’s abrupt encounter with Chad and Marie by the river in the French countryside is another “inconsequent and violent” occasion that offers Strether “the pretext of disgust” (I: 257). Thanks to the disruptive occasion, Strether comes to find Chad and his European influence, Marie de Vionnet, somewhat less savory and less perfect, after all—in distant agreement with Sarah’s declaration that they are distasteful—while manner/morally he remains inculpable about feeling this way, thanks to the necessary, as well as useful, social institution of tact. That is, Strether will tactfully reaffirm his theory, which is “bountifully” that “the facts were specifically none of his business” (II: 261) and that he should therefore, as Marie insightfully points out, manner/morally “not … think at all” (II: 288) about them. Strether will simply and tactfully turn the other way, never to look back. Thus will he instinctively judge and abandon Europe but just as surely do so without intending or seeming to himself that he does so, feeling safe in the knowledge that his behavior coincides perfectly with what is socially expected in any such embarrassing situations. This is to say that the next stage of Strether’s transformation begins with a violent moment of embarrassment in the Lambinet scene, which takes place in the French countryside, followed by Strether’s final encounter with Marie, and then with Chad. This final stage shows how Strether simplifies his moral footing in two stages and becomes required to disengage himself from his commitment to Marie, and then to Chad. Most importantly, the “pretext of disgust” (I: 257) that the encounter in the French countryside offers ultimately enables Strether to realize with “supreme queerness” that Chad is “none the less only Chad” and that “however admirable,” Marie’s “work” is “nevertheless of the strict human order” (II: 284). This realization, in turn, helps Strether cease to be afraid of, or to aspire to become like, Chad.

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While rambling through the French countryside, relaxing and being an anonymous traveler among French strangers, Strether has a “sense of success, of a finer harmony in things” (II: 248) and of “confidence” (II: 255) although he simultaneously feels “tired—tired not from his walk, but from that inward exercise which had known, on the whole, for three months, so little intermission” (II: 249). Thus liberated yet vaguely troubled and as weary as ever after his climactic confrontation with Sarah, Strether finds himself part of another critical scene that he hitherto had failed to imagine as possible because he had been so preoccupied with the issue of self-validation. That is, Strether chances upon an “expert, familiar, frequent” (II: 256) couple popping out as from a “picture” (II: 254), a “scene,” “stage,” or “play.” He observes the couple disinterestedly until he recognizes who they are: Marie and Chad together in a boat. Strether is thus rudely awakened from his status as observer and obliged to participate as an interested performer in his very own “drama” (II: 253). As with the embarrassing situation Strether experiences at Sarah’s salon, the one he stumbles upon by the river in the French countryside is caused not merely by the ostensibly immoral publicity of Madame de Vionnet and Chad’s private outing, but more so by the absence of “audience segregation,” that is, the “role dilemma” (Ritual 108) that both Strether and Marie feel in Chad’s presence. Although Little Bilham’s phrase “virtuous attachment” (I: 180) could have supported Strether’s tactful if convenient theory about Chad and Marie, Strether discovers that “he had been, at bottom, neither prepared nor proof” (II: 262) against any concrete evidence to the contrary. Before this jarring encounter, Strether has never had to deal point-blank with the uncertainty about Chad and Marie’s relationship, any more than he has had to deal prosaically with his own relationship with Marie. Diplomatically, tactfully, and expediently having assumed that Chad and Marie’s relationship is a virtuous one, Strether had also assumed—given the suggested, if wrongly imputed, eternal triangle between Mrs. Newsome, Marie, and himself— that he had some kind of personal relationship with Marie. As Strether recalls while wandering through the French countryside, he feels that shortly after the confrontation with Sarah he “appear[ed] to have said” to Marie that they were no longer to meet on account of Marie’s debt to him for helping her with Mrs. Newsome but that “if it’s a question of liking” him, then, she should be “for [him], please, with all [her] admirable tact and trust, just whatever [he] may show [her] it’s a present pleasure to [him] to think [her]” (II: 251). Strether recalls tacitly expecting Marie to adjust her responses to him by providing what Goffman would call “special and unique services” (Presentation 138), which Marie implicitly gives him. Needless to say, with Chad present, Marie can no more act as though she gives personal attention to Strether than he can claim to receive it. Therefore, when Strether is confronted with the literal reality of Marie and Chad—and not Marie and himself—enjoying an outing in the French countryside, Strether is inevitably embarrassed by the nature of his own muddied desires, assumptions, and disappointments. The “very question” makes Strether “feel lonely and cold” (II: 266). Moreover, under the circumstances, Strether feels he may well be the wet

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blanket who could be suspected of “having plotted this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it the semblance of an accident” (II: 259). Viewing the situation from the point of view of a general audience according to a worst-case scenario, Strether feels embarrassed on multiple fronts. Most importantly, Strether is embarrassed because he witnesses Chad and Marie waver during the first critical moments of their encounter while they decide whether they should turn tail or attempt to exercise poise in the face of awkwardness. Goffman writes that “just as the flustered individual may fail to conceal his embarrassment, those who perceive his discomfort may fail in their attempt to hide their knowledge, whereupon they all will realize that his embarrassment has been seen and that the seeing of it was something to conceal” (Ritual 103). As Strether acknowledges, there is “the element of the awkward all round” (II: 266). Embarrassment is contagious when the encounter takes place among individuals who each take the attitude of the other, or others, present during the disruptive moment. In the meantime, Madame de Vionnet is well aware that she has not informed Strether of her outing in the boat with Chad, or of any outing with him for that matter, even as she has allowed Strether to enjoy exclusive visits with her, during which she ostensibly exercises supreme tact and trust in providing him with “special and unique services” (Presentation 138). Moreover, she is well aware that Strether has, in Chad’s words, “dished” (II: 217) himself provisionally on her and Chad’s behalf, or more accurately, solely on her behalf if his purported involvement with Madame de Vionnet is understood to be the reason for his dismissal from the Woollett clan. Although Strether profits from being wrongly implicated in the Sarah Pocock/Mrs. Newsome narrative, Marie’s sense of indebtedness to Strether is irrefutable. Among other things, Marie owes Strether the decency of making sure that the relationship between Chad and herself does not fail to seem anything short of virtuous so as not to inflict on Strether anything so “tiresome” (II: 250) as the need to deal with the issue on a prosaic and literal level. If anything, Marie’s form of repayment should have been her exercise of supreme tact and “delightful facility” in “arriving at” all “tones” that might be made to “fit … occasions” (II: 250) so as to avoid for Strether all forms of bothersome worry, including embarrassment at any level and at any time. Marie, therefore, is also embarrassed on multiple fronts in thus running into Strether while with Chad, the exclusive object of her affections. In sum, when the three run into one another in the countryside, Strether is as embarrassed for himself as Marie is, and as saved by Marie’s restorative contributions as much as Marie is saved by his desperately reached remedial efforts to sustain their faces during their moment of embarrassment. When Strether finally decides to “settle their common question” by exercising poise and resorting to the safer alternative of facing the challenge of “spong[ing] over” the incident by attributing the incidence to “the mere miracle of the encounter” instead of turning tail, he calls out gleefully to the two in the boat, who in turn answer back (II: 258). Relief abounds on all sides. The integrity of the “joint ceremonial labor” (Ritual

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85) seems appropriately safeguarded, although as critics unanimously agree and Strether later feels, it is not. It is important to note that the situation could very well have been the other way around: Strether could just as easily have been caught wavering, had Marie and Chad seen him first and initiated the remedial procedure on their end before Strether had the chance to do so. For a split of a second, before a definite move is made, all three “on either side” find themselves “trying the other side, and all for some reason that broke the stillness like some unprovoked harsh note” (II: 258). Throughout this critical moment, the two parties are on a manner/moral par in that they are equally embarrassed and at a loss as to how to react to one another. However, because it is Marie and Chad who allow themselves to be seen wavering, hesitating, and agitated first, thereby failing in their “capacity to suppress and conceal any tendency to become shamefaced during encounters with others” (Ritual 9), they expose themselves to the contingency of manner/moral censure, in much the same way that Strether later furtively recalls that it is only by barely suppressing “disclaimers in respect to his own presence from rising to his lips” that he escapes being “as tactless as his presence was practically gross” (II: 259). As a matter of fact, timing and the ability to exercise unwavering poise are the only aspects of the moment that differentiate Strether’s case from the couple’s. Notwithstanding, after a sleepless night and a long time spent going over the encounter, Strether concludes, not altogether wrongly, that “there had been simply a lie in the charming affair—a lie on which one could now, detached and deliberate, perfectly put one’s finger” and that Marie’s behavior “had been a performance” (II: 262–3). He also determines that it is “the quantity of make-believe involved and so vividly exemplified that most disagree[s] with his spiritual stomach” (II: 265). To be sure, Strether fails to immediately register the awkwardness of the “charming chance” of everything, the “surface and sound” (II: 259) of pleasantries, and the “wonderful woman’s overflow of surprise and amusement … wholly into French” (II: 260), for “he but half knew at the time” (II: 262) what the occasion is all about. It is only later that he realizes he is left with “the impression, destined only to deepen, to complete itself, that they had something to put a face upon, to carry off and make the best of,” feeling—correctly—that it is Marie who, “admirably on the whole, was doing this” (II: 261). In effect, Strether feels as though his “presumed credulity” has been subjected to a “fraud” (II: 277), although microsociologically speaking, Marie is simply contributing her manner/moral share in order to normalize the interaction ritual for all present, as does Strether—as well they manner/morally should. Even Chad participates by “humour[ing] [Marie] to the extent of letting her lie without correction,” for it is “a case in which a man [is] obliged to accept the woman’s version, even when fantastic” (II: 264). As Strether later admits to himself, the “eminent ‘lie,’ Chad’s and [Marie’s],” is indeed “simply after all such an inevitable tribute to good taste as he could n’t have wished them not to render” (II: 277). In this way, just as Strether, Marie, Sarah, and Waymarsh acted and reacted in thoroughly civilized and diplomatic ways during their moment of potential

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embarrassment at Sarah’s salon, by “giv[ing] temporary lip service to judgments with which participants do not really agree” (Ritual 11), so do Strether, Marie, and Chad lie and perform on the French riverside, during their rustic meal at the country inn, and all the way back to Paris. They, too, are undeniably diplomatic liars, involved faithfully and sincerely in a deceptive joint performance. It is, again, the social necessity of saving the moment and the performance of the interaction ritual that circumscribe the participants’ responses. Again, in Goffman’s words, if anything, “[t]hose who break the rules of interaction” only “commit their crimes in jail” (Ritual 115). For Strether, however, it seems that by allowing themselves to be caught during a most private outing and by wavering first during the initial moments of the encounter, Marie and Chad are doubly guilty in some obscure way, committing their manner/moral crimes as social beings. Moreover, neither Strether nor James’s readers realize that Chad and Marie do so “in jail” (Ritual 115) and only because of “role dilemma” (Ritual 108). In the meantime, Strether incoherently feels justified in exercising full tact, lying and performing his way through what he only later considers an unsavory ordeal even while furtively finding Chad’s and Marie’s performances vaguely distasteful. In short, after trials of tactfully floating and remaining uncommitted and unaligned, during which process Strether “had really been trying all along to suppose nothing,” he finds his “labour … lost,” and instead, finds himself “supposing innumerable and wonderful things” (II: 266) in an unwittingly and inevitably quasi-double-standard manner. Henceforth, Strether continues to aspire to be manner/morally superior, or rather, noninferior, to the end. He shuns no pleas, avoids no confrontations, and harbors no grudges, while he is nevertheless determined definitely and comprehensively to disengage himself altogether from the “horribly complex” European relation that “bristled with fine points, points all unimaginable beforehand, points that pricked and drew blood” (II: 293). The first thing Strether then does to accomplish this is agree to see Marie de Vionnet when her missive arrives, fully complying with the specifications she spells out in the letter, for it is “in his preference for seeing his correspondent in her own best conditions” (II: 271). He answers her petit bleu with his petit bleu consisting “like Madame de Vionnet’s own communication … of the fewest words,” and with “a directness that almost confessed to a fear of the danger of delay” (II: 270, 269), Strether sends his response. Strether thus avoids meanness or pettiness of any kind, and he makes sure to reciprocate promptly and in kind—that is, he makes sure that his response has “as little as possible in common with the penal form” (II: 272). As Strether later clarifies to himself, he “wish[es] not to do anything because he had missed something else,” because he is “sore or sorry or impoverished,” or because he is “maltreated or desperate.” Instead, he “wish[es] to do everything” based on his ability to be “lucid and quiet, just the same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been.” Worried that he may seem to be acting for the wrong reasons, Strether makes sure to dot his i’s and cross his t’s. He needs not only to be right but also to appear right, for it “would have sickened him to feel vindictive” (II: 294–5) or to appear so.

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However, Strether ultimately succeeds in surely and unequivocally penalizing Marie—without ostensibly intending or seeming to—with his tact. As it turns out, Marie is as concerned about her manner/moral account with Strether as Strether is about his account with Mrs. Newsome. Marie cares how she appears to Strether, who, Marie notes, neither “snub[s]” her nor lacks in “beautiful patience” (II: 287)—much as Strether cannot help being “quite oppressed, haunted, tormented,” and “preoccupied with the impression everything might be making” (II: 237) on Woollett’s likewise beautifully patient and impeccably right Mrs. Newsome. Therefore, when Strether unthinkingly delivers “the truth” to Marie that she is “afraid for” her “life” (II: 285), she collapses. Above all, Strether’s statement conveys his understanding of Marie as a desperate lover, so desperate that she cannot hide her desperation. In Strether’s words, she is “a creature so exploited” (II: 284) by Chad, “the companion of mere earthly joys, of comforts, aberrations (however one classed them) within the common experience.” Especially after she breaks down in tears and “giv[es] up all attempt at a manner” (II: 284–5), she seems but as “vulgarly troubled, in very truth, as a maidservant crying for her young man” (II: 286). Taking the attitude of Strether toward herself, therefore, Marie is devastated when she fails to see an unblemished, undiminished self. Her manner/moral perfection is thus disrupted for the second and final time. Marie no longer sees herself as “sublime” (II: 288), and is stigmatized by his gaze, which Strether also sees Marie seeing—although not quite formulated into definite thought. Strether and Marie both know what the other knows, and to the detriment of the now stigmatized Marie de Vionnet and to Strether’s infinite discomfort, Marie is ultimately obliged to see herself through his vision of her, a self who, in her words, is “old and abject and hideous” (II: 288). Furthermore, since the subject is tactfully avoided, Marie is unable to defend herself, which not only keeps her feeling ashamed but also enables Strether to continue to tactfully avoid Marie’s ashamedness because it is a requirement of good taste to do so. In sum, by employing the social institution of tact as a principle to guide his final encounter with Marie, Strether is able to achieve a perfect state of irreproachability, as he quietly if strangely expediently withdraws from her presence altogether. His departure, after all, is for her, he tells himself. Marie, however, understands more: “You’d do everything for us but be mixed up with us—which is a statement you can easily answer to the advantage of your own manners” (II: 287). What Marie sees and Strether does not is the fact that tact is a double-edged sword, so that as Strether correctly intuits later, even though he visits Marie with the best of intentions, he is ultimately instrumental in shaming and stigmatizing her, so that his “evening with her had been spoiled”—and not merely on account of “the rain” (II: 304).12

12  It is because of such convenient acts of civility that some readers feel Strether is “timid, self-centred, ungenerous, over-diplomatic, untrustworthy and on many occasions untrusting” (Richards 224).

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Strether’s final confrontation with Chad is initiated by Strether’s “question about himself” that should “only be settled by seeing Chad again.” It is an “obsession” or “a ghost that certain words would easily lay to rest,” although Strether “must be there to take the words” (II: 294). What secretly worries Strether is whether he is as immorally ungrateful toward the woman he owes as Chad ostensibly seems to be in danger of becoming with the woman he owes: Strether senses his woman situation is peculiarly similar to Chad’s. Both Chad and Strether behave in accordance with their Woollett need to want to be right and thereby maintain their manner/moral superiority even as they furtively want to disengage from the women they heavily owe. With regard to the woman situation, Chad is, in short, Strether’s double. Indeed, Chad’s relationship to Marie is, after all, virtuous, but virtuous mannerwise: as Chad openly admits to Strether, he does not want to, tries not to, and has consistently tried not to, care for Madame de Vionnet and has succeeded finally in “want[ing] to want to” (II: 223) do so. Notwithstanding, Chad acknowledges that he owes Strether the decency of going through with what Chad feels has caused Strether’s fall from grace with his mother, Mrs. Newsome, and promises Strether that he will “cleave to [Marie de Vionnet] to the death” (II: 317) in faithful recognition of his indebtedness to her—and to Strether. Chad saves his face, and Strether’s, by thus promising—perhaps “giv[ing] temporary lip service to judgments with which participants do not really agree” (Ritual 11)—which, incidentally, is to the utter hopelessness of Marie’s giving affection for him. Chad remains only dutifully, and as Chad “good-humouredly” observes, “one can’t but have it before one, in the cleaving—the point where the death comes in” (II: 317). The relationship between Marie and Chad, in short, by no means consists of reciprocal giving but rather is merely a one-sided transaction, destined to continue only for as long as the giving continues, and reciprocated only by Chad’s obligatory gestures of taking and then giving back. Just how long Chad will continue to devote his energy to the gesture of “cleaving,” moreover, is highly questionable. Strether, on the other hand, only succeeds in evading the need to settle his figurative debts by promptly taking advantage of Sarah Pocock’s (and therefore Mrs. Newsome’s) declaration of credit withdrawal, as it were. They let him go. This Strether knows, and as a result, his need to want to be right again interferes. Try as Strether might, his sense of indebtedness refuses to subside and the best he can do is seek temporary “postponement,” given that “postponement in especial of the reckoning to come” is, in the final analysis, “really behind everything” (II: 293). Part of this, moreover, is because Strether knows he has managed to allow the women—Mamie Pocock, Marie de Vionnet, Maria Gostrey, and Sarah Pocock—to do all the onerous work for him. This would not be problematic for Strether were it not strongly reminiscent of what Madame de Vionnet says about Chad:

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“Ah [Chad’s] idea was simply what a man’s idea always is—to put every effort off on the woman.” “The ‘woman’—?” Strether slowly echoed. “The woman he likes—and just in proportion as he likes her. In proportion too—for shifting the trouble—as she likes him.” (I: 249)

Although both men and women are expected to adapt to the overall situation so as to avoid friction, unpleasantness, and fuss, in the end it is the woman who would be punished, were she not to function as the facilitator. She is expected to excel at exercising “face-work” (Ritual 27) especially if she aims to be desirable. This is precisely what Strether manages to have all the women do for him. Yet Strether discerns and emphasizes Chad’s ability to leave the handling of awkward situations to the women in his life—Marie, for example, during their encounter in the French countryside: “[Chad] habitually left things to others, as Strether was so well aware, and it in fact came over our friend in these meditations that there had been as yet no such vivid illustration of his famous knowing how to live” (II: 264). In Strether’s estimation, it is Chad, and not himself, who is “always letting people have their way when he felt that it would somehow turn his wheel for him” (II: 278). Strether is oblivious to the fact that he is able to identify in others what he has come to know about himself through his own experiences and his own accompanying sensibilities—although, simultaneously, he is unable to ignore the impressions of the similarities between Chad’s case and his own. Can Strether himself be as opportunistic as Chad increasingly seems to be? When Maria unthinkingly tells Strether that Chad “does really want to shake [Madame de Vionnet] off,” Strether “almost gasp[s],” and asks, “After all she has done for him?” This response that Strether is able to give Maria on the spur of the moment “remain[s] with him” and “promis[es] … in [its] character of warning, considerable help” (I: 171). Does not Strether, if truth be told, want to shake Mrs. Newsome off in the same way after all she has done for him? Furthermore, “[a]s if from the interest of his own question,” Strether again condemns his double, Chad, this time in the presence of Little Bilham, by exclaiming “with a sound that might have passed for a laugh” that if Chad should ever give Marie up, then “he ought to be ashamed of himself” (I: 286). Discussing Chad’s case in this way, Strether repeatedly differentiates his own case from Chad’s at the cost of being reminded that they—Chad’s case and Strether’s—may in fact be very similar. In short, after the disruptive moment of embarrassment by the river in the French countryside, Strether increasingly finds that he no longer aspires to become like Chad—especially in the way Chad purportedly goes about shaking off the woman to whom he is indebted—and instead, he increasingly feels the need to differentiate himself from him. Strether’s prepared admonition to Chad—“You’ll be a brute, you know— you’ll be guilty of the last infamy—if you ever forsake her”—therefore “place[s]” his final visit with Chad “immediately on solid ground” and “enable[s] him quite to play with what we have called the key” (II: 308). Strether’s taking on Chad’s

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attitude toward him and listening and watching himself say this, with Chad obliging him by listening to it, “justif[ies], as it were, his question” (II: 310). Strether is “as grave, as distinct, as a demonstrator before a blackboard,” and Chad “continue[s] to face him like an intelligent pupil” (II: 310–11). Without a doubt, Strether is the admonisher, and Chad the admonished. Strether thus succeeds in defining himself against a docile Chad, but only because Chad is resolved to carry out his “performance” of “treating” Strether as “a noble eccentric who appeal[s] to tenderness, and keeping on with him, while they walked, to the next corner and the next”: Chad is prepared to oblige Strether “up to the hilt” (II: 315) in reparation for the damage he feels he has done to him vis-à-vis his mother—and Strether does not completely not know this. Strether does not not know that Chad is obliging him, acting as Waymarsh does when Waymarsh represents Sarah Pocock. In short, Strether sees that this is, as it were, “a genial new pressing coaxing” Chad, one “conscious with a different consciousness from any he had yet betrayed” (II: 187). When, therefore, Chad tests or “bargain[s]” with Strether about his future in talking about “the art of advertisement” (II: 315), it is effectively as though Chad “had begun to dance a fancy step” (II: 316), giving Strether the impression of “an irrelevant hornpipe or jig.” Chad’s impeccable poise dematerializes and Strether accordingly pronounces Chad “restless” (II: 318), while Chad good-naturedly and obligingly accepts the label. Needless to say, Strether’s conception of Chad’s manner/moral perfection is shattered; he no longer feels the need to be afraid of, or aspire to be like, Chad. In sum, Strether successfully manages to differentiate his case from Chad’s. Fortunately for Strether, he is now able to feel—given the disruptive scene by the river in the French countryside and Chad’s almost exaggerated obliging manner during this final interview—that Chad is “none the less only Chad” (II: 284). The final question, then, is where Strether has come out. How does he assess his position in the scheme of things? Where is he headed? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to revert to the final scene between Strether and Maria Gostrey. Maria is more than just Strether’s confidante and a ficelle, and plays a standalone role in James’s story. She is attracted to Strether but is as resolved to want to want to be straight and right as Strether is, for as Strether accurately observes, Maria “had on private, difficult, but rigid, lines, played strictly fair” (II: 297) in her attempts to capture Strether’s attention. Although she is unwilling to lie for Madame de Vionnet, Maria’s “calculations” (II: 292) are such that, should she manage to conduct herself as an “intelligent niece from the country” receiving “the honours of the capital” from “a kindly uncle” (II: 291) and “offer[ing] herself for service to the end” (II: 302), she may after all inherit Strether when all the other suitors are gone. When, therefore, Madame de Vionnet tells Maria of the final break with Strether, Maria shows “a shade of sadness” that signifies “in her the close of all uncertainties” (II: 296): Maria intuits that further developments between Strether and herself are improbable. By drawing on her knowledge of Strether’s need to want to be right and of his tentative liberation from Mrs. Newsome by

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siding with Marie de Vionnet, who then is genteelly discarded without Strether going back to Mrs. Newsome either, Maria knows from deductive reasoning just where Strether has come out. She also knows what lies behind his uncommitted, floating attitude. As Strether senses, he is “out, in truth, as far as it [is] possible to be” (II: 321), meaning that he is finally unallied, unconnected, uninvolved, and floating. He is thus temporarily exempt from the requirements of face-to-face interaction and the rules of reciprocity, while simultaneously he is excluded from the community of give and take. However, for Strether, who is so thoroughly bound by his need to want to be straight and right in order to secure his peace of mind, this is a relief. Insofar as taking always exacts a giving—which if not accomplished creates a burden—the “only safe thing,” as Marie de Vionnet woefully exclaims, is “to give” (II: 283): “What it comes to is that it’s not, that it’s never, a happiness, any happiness at all, to take. The only safe thing is to give. It’s what plays you least false” (II: 282–3). That is why, as Little Bilham observes and Strether admits to doing, Strether instinctively always “give[s] too much” (I: 179) and insists on his “only logic,” which is “[n]ot, out of the whole affair, to have got anything” (II: 326) for himself. Strether fears indebtedness; that is, he shies away from taking and partaking of the boons of life for fear that he would not be able to give back accordingly, or that he would be bound and prescribed by his need to so do. Insofar as Strether is so thoroughly, almost repressively, conscientious, he is ultimately very much like Mrs. Newsome, whom he describes as “fine cold thought,” comparing her to “some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea” (II: 239, 240). Experience tells him that Mrs. Newsome only goes so far as he himself would dare to go and that she is as conscientious as he is. It is no wonder, then, that he has her “constantly, in the innermost honour of his thoughts, to consider” (I: 269). Mrs. Newsome is—as was Waymarsh—what Sears would call “the externalization of one of Strether’s inward voices” (106). Strether does “see” (II: 323) Mrs. Newsome, who, Strether realizes, must also see him. Now that he realizes he is seen, Strether feels he, too, must appear like “fine cold thought,” floating like “some particularly large iceberg in a cool blue northern sea” (II: 239, 240). In addition, Sarah’s unwavering constancy and faithfulness toward her mother also reminds him of what he is not: constant or faithful. While Sarah’s dismissal of Strether relieves him of the need to proactively disconnect himself from the Woollett clan, it also condemns him to the felt state of passivity and perpetual dishonor. Strether overcomes and survives the numerous immediate instances of felt stigmatization comprised of his inexorable sense of failure and lack of masculine integrity and volition, thanks to Strether’s manner/morally impeccable, ingenious, problematically equivocal, somersault-like maneuvers. However, the manner in which he overcomes these obstacles is as a matter of fact composed of those very elements that make him feel passive and feminine to begin with—by adapting and conforming to social norms. The limitations of his perceptions stem from both the constitutional makeup of his mind and his lack of awareness regarding those

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social institutions that make him behave in the way he does, and they threaten dangerously to engulf him in a self-made cage. Although by the end of the text, Strether feels liberated, he only does so “like one of the figures of the old clock at Berne” that comes out “on one side, at their hour, jigged along their little course in the public eye,” and goes in “on the other side” (II: 322) essentially unchanged. Strether’s melodramatic live-all-you-can speech to an attentive Little Bilham, in which he exclaims that “the affair of life” is “at the best a tin mould … into which, a helpless jelly, one’s consciousness is poured—so that one ‘takes’ the form, as the great cook says, and is more or less compactly held by it: one lives in fine as one can” (I: 218), holds as true with Strether at the end of his journey in Europe as he in Book Fifth claims it has been in the past. Figuratively speaking, the fluid in the container that is Strether’s consciousness has moved, but only within the confines of its container: the mold and constitution of his mind, idiosyncrasies and all, remain unchanged. The metaphor of the “tin mould” and the “helpless jelly” (I: 218) is James’s response to the larger question of determinism versus free will. However, what cannot be emphasized enough is that James’s picture of the affair of life is produced in excruciatingly specific descriptions of the social bindings of day-to-day, face-to-face interaction situations, which are firmly rooted in the realm of everyday microsocial reality. Thus, Strether’s “Then there we are!” (II: 327) at the end of James’s text—a mundane, nonessential, everyday phrase belonging to everyday conversation that nevertheless manages to signify closure, is only too appropriate. In Michael Levenson’s words, it is “[s]uch an assertion” that “predicates nothing, advances no argument, imparts no information” and “merely affirms what no one would care to doubt” (69). Unwilling to take anything from anyone, for taking can lead to obligations, Strether ultimately continues to give, more out of his habitual Woollett inclinations than anything else. Temporarily exempt from the requirements of the rule of reciprocity, he is still bound by the need to maintain face, both his and Maria’s. By protecting both himself and Maria, who expresses her interest in being with him, he tactfully and “tenderly” tries to be “as smoothly as possible— deterrent and conclusive” (II: 324): “Then there we are!” (II: 327). Unable either to be completely in or absolutely out, Strether, thus uninvolved, is obliged to remain manner/morally tactful to the very end.

Chapter 2

The Stigmatized and the Normals: Milly, Densher, and Kate’s Survival in The Wings of the Dove The Wings of the Dove (1902) is composed of three narratives. However, readers in the past have demonstrated a tendency to see only one narrative that progresses according to the principles of a zero-sum game wherein if one party gains, the other loses. For example, critics who laud or condemn Mildred Theale, Kate Croy, Merton Densher, and/or Maud Lowder in James’s The Wings of the Dove generally assume that if one of these characters is victimized, the others are the victimizers. Put differently, one way of looking at past readings of this engaging work is to view them as the readers’ attempts to identify the victim(s) and the victimizer(s), apportioning and assigning responsibility and/or blame for the final outcome at the end of James’s text, which consists of Milly’s death, Densher’s evident torment, and Kate’s loss—although neither the final attitude in which Milly dies nor the validity of Densher’s ongoing torment is any more agreed upon than is the specific nature of Kate’s loss. Depending on the temperament of the reader, one or another of these three is espoused and a reading constructed accordingly. I question this general paradigm.   The most common of interpretations claiming Milly’s innocence, condemn Kate, Densher, and Maud Lowder of duplicity and mercenary intent, describing them as “admirable,” “sympathetic villains” (Syndy McMillen Conger 151), for example. However, Susan Mizruchi, who sees Milly as “cultivat[ing]” (234) her illness; Julie Olin-Ammentorp, who sees Milly’s final bequest to Densher as “profoundly manipulative” (50); and Sharon Cameron, who contends that Milly “performs the novel’s ultimate manipulation” (124), are among those who detect definite signs of intent on Milly’s part, and complicate, if not reverse, the view that Milly is merely the unconsciously innocent victim. Adeline R. Tintner’s framing of James’s text as his “very free redoing of Milton’s twin epics” (“Paradise Lost” 125) casts Kate in the role of seductress who contributes to the fall and education of Densher. Milton Kornfeld (346) and Leo Bersani (142–3) essentially agree with this general position when they refer to Densher as a redeemed villain. In this way, demonizing Kate resurrects Densher, who, more often than not, is then cast in the role of redeemed hero. Sallie Sears, however, labels Densher “a prig” (93), and Brenda AustinSmith insightfully detects the language employed by Aunt Maud and Densher in Volume Two as contributing to “the gradual reification” (189) of Milly, only to dehumanize and discredit her as a legitimate player, consequently demonizing Kate as well. Kristin King agrees, noting that making Milly ethereal and transcendent conveniently gives Densher

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James was as much an observer of the social scene and the behavior of the individuals in it as an observer of the workings of the human mind. As has been illustrated in the previous chapter on The Ambassadors, he identified and illustrated those social and microsociological forces that exert a powerful influence over human perception and behavior. In James’s works as in real life, such forces are as much to blame for outcomes, if not more so, as human agents and their respective intents. Following this argument, I will illustrate how the three centers of consciousness in The Wings of the Dove exist simultaneously on two levels of being, the first of which is the external, physical, and social world, and the second, a phenomenological, internal world in which the self is constantly engaged in trying not only to make sense of itself but also to survive as an autonomous being in the aforementioned external world. Additionally, as was the case with Lambert Strether, the outside world and the inner self are not so much separate as they are organically connected, overlapping in reflexive ways, with society and its gaze being an essential aspect of the self, and the social self being a real existence in an external reality. Society is as much in self as self is in society, with both parts affecting and being affected by the other aspect of felt life. More fundamental as origins of human activity than formulated intents are the instinctive drives that give birth to them, the drive for survival being the most pressing of all. Milly, Kate, and Densher all exhibit a consistent pattern of perception and behavior based on the emotional and psychological instinct to survive. They demonstrate their urge to be freed from the discrediting sense of humbleness, shame, and vulnerability resulting from what I call their felt stigmatizations. Milly’s felt stigmatization, for example, is composed of her sense of American sociocultural poorness and, eventually, her discrediting illness; Densher’s results from his inexorable lack—of money, intellect, and volition; and “a symbol for his own salvation” (1). These critical positions questioning Densher serve to make Kate seem less of a villain. Furthering Kate’s resurrection in her own right is Lee Clark Mitchell, who contends that “judged by consequences alone,” Kate “clearly does enrich others’ experience” so that “deceit appears less a tool of self interest than a mode of artful generosity, and disapproval of Kate soon seems far less appropriate than praise” (188). Incidentally, Millicent Bell, who calls Kate a “naturalist and pragmatist” (Meaning 291), and Douglas Paschall, see two heroines instead of one. Paschall senses that Kate and Milly are engaged in “complicit manoeuvres” (13) to achieve their respective ends, while Doran Larson reads the text as “Kate and Milly do[ing] things with Densher” (101). As can be seen, devillainizing or neutralizing Kate by combining her intent with Milly’s renders Densher’s logic somewhat meager.   In Invalid Women: Figuring Feminine Illness in American Fiction and Culture, 1840–1940 (1993), Diane Price Herndl writes that “the narrative of the invalid” requires us to “examine the attraction and the repulsion of this figure for readers and for writers and analyze how the narrative power of the invalid translates into cultural power or the lack of it” (4). Athena Vrettos in Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture (1995) writes that illness meant “a breakdown in corporeal integrity, wholeness, or control” and thereby “highlighted the essential dependence and necessary publicity of the body” (5).

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Kate’s, from her unspeakably tainted Croy blood, which, she fears, threatens to bury her the moment she loses control over who she aims to be, for what can be more surely inherited than blood? This, then, is the nature of the “spring that move[s]” James’s protagonists. Milly’s felt stigmatization arises from two sources, first from her being a mere American in Europe and later from her incapacitating illness. Regardless of what the inhabitants of Lancaster Gate make of Milly and her moneyed situation, Milly might as well not have her money, for when she lands in London she is as vulnerable to the excitingly oppressive sensations she experiences there as any twenty-two-year-old, even with wealth. It is as though Milly, who is taken by surprise by the fully engaging experience, had “ventured on a small joke,” finding “the answer out of proportion grave” (I: 146), “grave” because at Lancaster Gate, Milly finds herself fully immersed in a sophisticated social scene: “It was n’t … so difficult to get into the current, or to stand at any rate on the bank. It was easy to get near—if they were near; and yet the elements were different enough from any of her old elements, and positively rich and strange” (I: 147–8). Milly quickly discovers she is not merely “on the bank” or “near” the “current”(I: 147), but fully in it, required first and foremost to define herself in a new and alien environment. Milly’s self, as was the case with Strether’s in The Ambassadors, is “essentially a social phenomenon” (Mead Mind 133). It is only through interaction with others that her sense of self emerges. Her self arises through its ability to “take the attitude of the other”—or that of the community at large—“toward [it]self” (Mind 134), engaging in reflexive internal dialogue, or thought, regarding how it might successfully adjust and respond to its environment. Milly becomes an object to herself so as to be able to act “intelligently, or rationally” (Mind 138), viewing herself the way she imagines others view her. Milly, too, “for ever seeing things afterwards” (I: 155), engages in what G. H. Mead calls “delayed reaction,” a “necessary” process for “intelligent conduct” (Mind 99). However, she is not merely passive, accepting all she sees in taking the attitude of others toward herself. Rather, she is selective, for ultimately, Milly’s focus as she interacts with the inhabitants of Lancaster Gate is her very own self. Milly does not accept what she sees when she takes the attitude of Lord Mark, for example. He is “indifferent” to Milly, the “proof” of which she feels is “the way he crumbed up his bread” (I: 152). Taking the attitude of Lord Mark toward herself, Milly decides that he “visibly know[s]” she is “a stranger and an American,” but he “none the less mak[es] no more of it than if she and her like were the chief of his diet,” taking her “kindly enough, but imperturbably, irreclaimably, for granted” (I: 152–3). Increasingly conscious of being “popped into the compartment” (I: 157) of Lord Mark’s complacent, know-all assessment of her American background, Milly at her breaking point flatly rejects what she sees in taking his attitude, his   This expression is used in reference to Lionel Croy, who ultimately bases his decision to decline Kate’s offer not on reason or logic of any particular nature, but on the fact that Kate decides to give her share of inheritance to her sister and not to him (I: 24).

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view of her as “a mere little American, a cheap exotic, imported almost wholesale” (I: 166), and “wish[es] to get away from him,” or rather, “away from herself so far as she was present to him.” Milly sees she is, “already—wonderful creature, after all, herself too” (I: 163). Instinctively opting for emotional survival, Milly insists on mattering. One of the views Milly does adopt is the one provided by Kate. Milly feels admiration and awe for Kate. At the same time, however, Milly cannot help comparing herself with her sophisticated British counterpart, against whose qualities Milly feels her own American qualities appear meager and inadequate. Milly immediately senses that Kate is different from herself, “difficult” to make out, and “a quantity” (I: 166). Handsome, candid, and to all appearances sincere, Kate is also “the amusing resisting ominous fact” capable of “incalculable movements” (I: 150), whom even the all-knowing European Lord Mark, Milly discovers, fails to understand. Milly is perplexed, disconcerted, and disappointed, for example, when on separate occasions, Susan “Susie” Stringham and Mrs. Maud Lowder confirm Milly’s qualms about Kate’s failure to mention Densher’s name when it would only have been natural to do so. It is not just that “Kate who has reflected to Milly what she (Milly) is, is now distanced and estranged from Milly through her separate knowledge of Merton—and Milly seems to be distanced and estranged from her own self-reflection which has been given to her by Kate” (Allen 162). Rather, what pains Milly is the caution Kate seems to exercise with her. Milly has not withheld herself from Kate, so why should Kate withhold herself from Milly? wonders Milly. Moreover, Milly learns from Susan, and not directly from Kate, the open secret that Aunt Maud intends Lord Mark for Kate. On hearing this, Milly sees “as in a clear cold wave” that “there was a possible account of their relations in which the quantity her new friend had told her might have figured as small, as smallest, beside the quantity she had n’t” (I: 187). Is that the look Kate shows Densher? Milly also wonders how Kate could fail to notice Milly’s being “so taken up with the unspoken,” and concludes from this that she would “never know how Kate truly felt about anything such a one as Milly Theale should give her to feel,” “never—and not from ill will nor from duplicity but from a sort of failure of common terms—reduce it to such a one’s comprehension or put it within [Milly’s] convenience” (I: 190–91). Kate, Milly concludes, must be too sophisticated for “such a one as Milly Theale” (I: 190) to be able to understand, for the one thing that Milly does divine is that “poor Susie” is “simply as nought” to Kate. If this be the case, it must also be “in a manner too a general admonition to poor Susie’s companion,” that is, to Milly. Might not Milly also be “simply as nought” (I: 181) to Kate? Fearful of unwarranted discoveries vis-à-vis herself, Milly refrains from pursuing these impressionistic misgivings into a formulated thought, but a disquieting, nagging uneasiness plagues her. Milly senses that thanks to her moneyed state, her place in the hierarchy of culture and experience is politely forgiven but that she is

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impersonally pocketed as, in Elizabeth Allen’s expression, “a dove, a pure maiden, a dying heiress—no more” (153–4). As social thinker Georg Simmel explains, money is “the absolutely objective entity, where everything personal comes to an end” (240). At the same time, Milly finds it forbidding and base to hold Kate’s attitude against her, so that in order “to prove to herself that she did n’t horribly blame her friend for any reserve” (I: 229), Milly invites Kate to accompany her to physician Sir Luke Strett’s office the first time she visits him. However, when the next occasion to visit Sir Luke arises—and she does so in the midst of yet “another day practically all stamped with avoidance” of Densher’s name—Milly instinctively declines Kate’s offer to accompany her: “No, she had shown Kate how she trusted her; and that, for loyalty, would somehow do” (I: 233). In lieu of further “alibi ” (I: 279, 280) that Milly feels she requires to prove to herself that she does not hold Kate’s reserve against her, Milly actively cultivates seemingly spontaneous, but actually carefully controlled, backstage talk with Kate. Acting on “the theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies,” Milly and Kate “wearily put off the mask,” and these “puttings-off of the mask” become “the form taken by their moments together” (II: 138): “It was when they called each other’s attention to their ceasing to pretend, it was then that what they were keeping back was most in the air” (II: 138–9), and Densher’s name, predictably, remains uncompromisingly unmentioned. Balance is the key. Under pressure of emotional survival, Milly decides to adjust her level of emotional investment to match Kate’s and withdraws from her, while simultaneously compensating for this withdrawal by actively engaging in apparently spontaneous, but again painstakingly controlled, performances of backstage intimacy with Kate. Opting to keep up a kind of double life, this maneuver keeps alive Milly’s engagement with and trust in Kate, while Milly’s footing for increased autonomy is unwittingly established: Milly is forced to become a little more self-sustaining than before. As can be seen, Milly fails to either distrust or discredit Kate, so that Kate’s opinion of her is necessarily significant. Thus, when Kate finally produces a name for what “the matter” is with Milly—“Because you’re a dove”—Milly “[catches] her breath with relief,” infinitely grateful this name is not slighting. Milly feels herself “ever so delicately, so considerately, embraced; not with familiarity or as a liberty taken, but almost ceremonially and in the manner of an accolade” (I: 283). Milly promptly adopts the image, and adapts her behavior to fit it. However, Milly’s “first approach to the taste of orderly living” (I: 236) comes only when she takes the attitude of the unobtrusive and mirrorlike “crystalclean” person of Sir Luke Strett. Sir Luke “wear[s] the character scientifically, ponderably, proveably—not just loosely and sociably” (I: 230–31). The relation that Milly establishes with his “large settled face,” therefore, becomes “an absolute possession, a new resource altogether” (I: 231), the “most thoroughly adjusted of the whole collection” (I: 230) of those reflectors that inform Milly of herself. Viewing the situation from what she takes to be Sir Luke’s point of view, Milly

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sees her own projected reflection, which is therefore “directly divesting, denuding, exposing,” “reduc[ing] her to her ultimate state” of “a poor girl—with her rent to pay” (I: 253). Society stipulates of the moral individual that he give, receive, and repay. According to sociologist Alvin W. Gouldner, who analyzes the norm of reciprocity and its role, “[i]nsofar as men live under such a rule of reciprocity, when one party benefits another, an obligation is generated. The recipient is now indebted to the donor, and he remains so until he repays” (“Norm of Reciprocity” 174). The moment an individual finds himself unable to reciprocate, therefore, the oppressive heavy-heartedness of being in debt settles in. Milly, too, is in debt. How is Milly to pay for her societal keep, “her rent” (I: 253) for her presence in the social world? Why should the inhabitants of Lancaster Gate put up with a very ill, perhaps dying, Milly Theale, and a mere American, at that? Milly feels poor. Needless to say, Milly’s estimation of what she owes the inhabitants of Lancaster Gate does not necessarily correspond with their estimation of her dues. Nevertheless, in Milly’s assessment, her terminal illness disqualifies her not only for the role of lover but also as a social participant if she should ever become a burdensome worry or be cause for a scene. To illustrate this point, we need only recall the scene in which Lord Mark, the only one to literally propose marriage to Milly, abruptly appears in Venice the first time. Milly immediately detects that he has come with an “intention,” which “chill[s] her.” Milly feels “she could have fallen to pleading with him and to reasoning, to undeceiving him in time” (II: 146), for she is afraid he will be literal and raise the issue of companionship, if not marriage, unless she informs him about the true state of her health. In merely thinking to prevent Lord Mark from proposing, that is, in mentally verbalizing her thoughts, Milly is reflexively and painfully confronted with the actuality of her state of affairs: Lord Mark “must n’t be mistaken about her value—for what value did she now have? It throbbed within her as she knelt there that she had none at all” (II: 149). Although Milly is mostly successful in avoiding addressing the issue of her value, Lord Mark’s arrival and the threat of his intention momentarily remind Milly of her fundamental irrelevancy in matters of courtship. She feels, literally, an invalid—and invalid. Sir Luke, too, seems to take Milly more seriously than she feels she deserves, even taking into consideration that she may be very ill, in which case his professional and financial interest in her would only be natural. Sir Luke’s attention, from Milly’s humble point of view, leads her to think that he “appeared indeed to speak of purchase and payment, but in reference to a different sort of cash,” “amounts not to be named nor reckoned, and such moreover as she was n’t sure of having at her command” (II: 142). The relationship between Sir Luke and Milly is felt to be somehow personal rather than merely professional. In this way, Milly suffers from the oppressive sense that she has no way of reciprocating, of being of some interest or use, to Sir Luke and the inhabitants of Lancaster Gate, given that she is simply the “poor,” ailing, and American Mildred Theale.

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Cornered, however, Milly again prevails. She takes full advantage of her assets, including her London education, her American spontaneity, and her financial resources, and begins to turn the tables on everybody. It is when Milly runs into Kate and Densher at the National Gallery that she has occasion to receive hands-on training in the art of using her assets to her advantage. By this time, Milly has become sufficiently self-conscious that when she first catches sight of Densher, she is able to reflect—on the spur of the moment—that she would rather not be caught “in the effort to prevent” (I: 293) his seeing her. Viewing the situation from what she takes to be Densher’s point of view, Milly thus exercises her ability to act with “poise,” which is “the capacity to suppress and conceal any tendency to become shamefaced during encounters with others” (Ritual 9). Milly next realizes that Kate is looking in her direction, and observes that “after a stare as blank at first as Milly’s,” Kate subsequently breaks “into a far smile.” Milly feels “handled” again, as in previous occasions, and “dealt with—absolutely even dealt with for her greater pleasure.” Milly soon sees that Kate makes her “provisionally take everything as natural,” with poise, a situation Milly imputes to Kate’s being “prodigious” (I: 293). Milly further observes that the “predicament” is not “definite nor phraseable—and the way they let all phrasing pass” seems to Milly “a characteristic triumph of the civilised state” (I: 294). Milly’s observation is to the point. This maneuver is indeed “a characteristic triumph of the civilised state” (I: 294). According to Goffman, in face-to-face interaction, an individual is expected not only to maintain his or her own face, “the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact” (Ritual 5), but also help maintain others’ faces, for both are “constructs of the same order” (Ritual 6). The “claims” and acceptances of one another’s faces—the “contributions of all”—are the stuff on which interaction is based (Ritual 105–6), so that the collapse of this order triggers the collapse of all assumptions that uphold the “joint ceremonial labor” (Ritual 85). All parties involved are therefore expected to exercise tact in ensuring its survival, or, when an interaction is threatened, to engage in remedial efforts regardless of whose fault it is: “Not, then, men and their moments. Rather moments and their men” (Ritual 3). By now it should be apparent that Kate is supremely adept at managing the interaction ritual. Just as Kate has been able to “handle” and “deal with” Milly on previous occasions so as to facilitate interaction for all involved, Kate’s “far smile” is not only a sign of her ability to gloss over the embarrassment to which Kate and Densher’s presence together gives rise, but also her way of enacting what society expects of all individuals in similar potentially embarrassing situations. Kate thus enables the rest of her party to participate in her effort to avoid embarrassment, making everyone “provisionally take everything as natural” (I: 293). Milly becomes conscious of how odd this is as she recalls Kate made no mention of this outing with Densher when the women only recently parted. Notwithstanding, Milly sees that embarrassment is thus successfully avoided,

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she and Densher having been as complicit in Kate’s project as Kate herself, as well they should have been. As Goffman notes, “few impressions could survive if those who received the impression did not exert tact in their reception of it” (Presentation 14). Milly and Densher, then, following Kate’s cue, also exert tact, which is only civilized. That is, they need to save the moment as much as Kate does—acting dutifully on behalf of everybody else present and regardless of whose fault it is that the embarrassing moment occurs. However, it should also be noted that their social need to save the moment overlaps with their personal need to gloss over the awkwardness they specifically feel they themselves have caused. Milly agrees to exercise tact for reasons of her own as much as in response to Kate’s and/or Densher’s need to do so, or in response to her internalized duty to save the ritualistic moment. That is, Milly is as personally embarrassed by the situation as Kate and Densher are, for no mention of Densher’s name has been made by either of the two women, although the rest of Lancaster Gate seems to think it inevitable and natural that it should have been. “[T]ired and nervous,” Milly is therefore as “saved” from becoming “disconcerted” (I: 294) by Kate’s efforts as Kate and Densher are by Milly’s reflexive effort: Milly proceeds to exercise her “unused margin as an American girl,” her “reserves of spontaneity” that consists of “all this cash in hand” for “employment” (I: 295–6). Milly, thanks to Kate’s endeavors to avoid embarrassment, no longer needs to face what she fears is the reason Kate never seems to tell Milly anything of personal import. In addition, much to Kate and Densher’s relief, this is a perfect opportunity for Milly to pay off some of her social debts, and Milly reflexively thinks how she might do so by “eas[ing]” Densher “off” (I: 294), “perhaps but invent[ing] the image of his need as a short cut to accommodation” (I: 295). Giving feels better—less poor—than constantly receiving, and acting on others’ behalf simplifies matters and enables Milly to be less morbidly self-conscious. Besides, how can acting for others be anything but a good thing? Groping her way through the maze of remedial social interaction, moreover, Milly, instead of feeling helpless, as she previously had in “a current determined, through her indifference, timidity, bravery, generosity—she scarce could say which—by others” (I: 274), seizes the opportunity now before her to determine the direction of that current by proposing going to lunch at her hotel—“the natural thing” to propose “as the American girl.” Measuring the success of her experiment “by the pace at which she [is] followed,” Milly thus makes Kate and Densher “take” what she gives—“even if, as they might surmise, it [is] rather more than they wanted” (I: 296). Milly observes that Densher, too, sensing that “the normal pitch” is in place, considers “what his natural lively line would be.” Deciding his line would be to assume Milly’s interest in his adventure in the States, Densher “abound[s], of a sudden—he almost insisted; he returned, after breaks, to the charge.” Milly then stops “being American—all to let him be English; a permission of which [Densher takes] both immense and unconscious advantage” (I: 299–300).

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In this way, Milly as participant witnesses that “[w]hatever the facts, their perfect manners, all round” (I: 295) pull Kate, Milly, and Densher through this potential moment of profound embarrassment. Milly thus receives hands-on training in the art of managing face-to-face interaction in the process of fulfilling her own needs, though driven, perhaps, by those of Kate and Densher—even as the need to save the social moment belongs to all. At the height of the pressing moment, Milly learns how to reactivate and mobilize her American spontaneity, her “national character” that “[makes] up her unity” (II: 255) in determining the direction of the current she moves in, thereby making others take what she gives. In short, Milly empirically learns how certain liberties can be taken in the midst of a gathering of individuals, when a certain form of group dynamics emerges to effectively control and regulate the behavior of all participants. Milly will eventually put this empirical knowledge to practical use, in Venice. Learning from this and previous experiences, and presumably after what Mead calls “delayed reaction,” a “necessary” process for “intelligent conduct” (Mind 99)—for Milly is “for ever seeing things afterwards” (I: 155)—Milly proceeds to create an environment that she can better control. Milly needs to be able to control the state of being exposed to those “kind eyes” (I: 219, 223), “the view” of Milly, which “by its sweet universality … made relations rather prosaically a matter of course.” By the end of the unexpected encounter at the National Gallery, even Densher, with whom Milly had secretly hoped to establish some kind of real relation, is “simplifyingly ‘kind’ to her,” “fall[ing] into line with every one else,” “lighting on the remedy for all awkwardness,” which Milly feels it would be ungracious to criticize. Milly here witnesses “the smash of her great question complete” (I: 300–301) and is forced to acknowledge that she is universally pitied, which, she can only assume, must be because of her sociocultural poorness. As did Susie, Kate, Mrs. Lowder, Lord Mark, and later, Eugenio, Densher “understood” and “got hold, like all the world, of the idea not so much of the care with which she must be taken up as of the care with which she must be let down” (II: 133). This acknowledgement subsequently leads Milly to behave in the manner of a typical stigmatized individual as described by Goffman in Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (1963). According to Goffman, the norm governing face-to-face behavior applies to all: both the “normals” and the “stigmatized” must attend to each other to ensure that the interaction proceeds smoothly. It follows, then, that the “stigmatized” should “make a great effort to keep the stigma from looming large” and to “reduce   I deliberately employ the terms “mobilize” and “reactivate” to match the war images James uses here and elsewhere. An example of such an image appears in the scene in which Milly wanders into Regent Park after visiting Sir Luke. Milly feels as though Sir Luke’s advice to live “as if it were in her power to live” encourages her “to take up and shoulder … some queer defensive weapon, a musket, a spear, a battleaxe … demanding all the effort of the military posture” (I: 248). Milly’s struggle for emotional survival and effective retreat is, as this paper illustrates, undoubtedly a defensive battle.

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tension” so as to allow all parties “to withdraw covert attention from the stigma and to sustain spontaneous involvement in the official content of the interaction” (Stigma 102). The individual who follows “the advocated line,” which is to see himself as perfectly normal, “like anyone else,” is considered “mature and to have achieved a good personal adjustment.” Conversely, the individual who does not is considered to be “an impaired person, rigid, defensive, with inadequate inner resources” (Stigma 115). Incidentally, this line is the one inspired by the “normals,” that is, those who take “the standpoint of the wider society” (Stigma 121), which, in the final analysis, “obliges the stigmatized” to “protect normals in various ways” (Stigma 119). Indeed, protecting the others—the normals—from being burdened by the knowledge and effect of Milly’s felt failings, including her critical illness, is the line Milly adopts as the stigmatized. Milly desires to be the mature individual who has achieved a good personal adjustment so as to carry herself as though she was neither the poor American Milly Theale nor critically ill. She does not want to create a scene, attract undue attention to her meager self, or be a burdensome bother: that is, Milly aspires to be somebody who should be “as easy” for the normals to deal with “as carrying a feather” (II: 101). Milly’s “inevitable basis” of “ease” with Susan, for example, is discovered by “turn[ing] the tables” on her and being “sorry for Susie, who, to all appearance, had been condemned in so much more uncomfortable a manner to be sorry for [Milly]” (II: 100). Milly thinks of helping Susan by facilitating Susan’s project of assisting Milly. Milly turns the tables on Sir Luke Strett, too, by thinking to “help” him “help her” (II: 124): “What was he in fact but patient, what was she but physician, from the moment she embraced once for all the necessity, adopted once for all the policy, of saving him alarms about her subtlety?” (II: 125). Densher, too, records Milly’s efforts to make things easy for everyone at Milly’s dinner party in Venice when he senses her dovelike wings “spread[ing] themselves for protection,” so that everybody, “he in particular,” is “nestling under them to a great increase of immediate ease” (II: 218). Given that Milly needs to get out of the red in terms of social indebtedness, what better way to do so than by protecting and working for others? Thinking of every possible way of “meeting the bill,” Milly is “more prepared than ever to pay enough, and quite as much as ever to pay too much” (II: 143). In this way, the poor, little, rich, American, dovelike Milly adopts the line of acting for others’ comfort, following the social dictates governing faceto-face interaction between the stigmatized and the normals. Milly thus determines to prove her maturity by adequately adjusting to her stigmatization and avoiding being a burden to the normals. In fact, she aims to “be beautiful,” so that “with

 Merle A. Williams calls Milly’s project one in which she “exercise[s] her bad faith when she reduces herself, at a stroke, to the convenient status of her ‘self-for-others’” (116). If this should be the case, then it is a function of socialization that Milly should feel she needs to exercise such “bad faith.” 

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whatever others, oh as many as the case requires,” her case is to be “a sight for the gods” (II: 101). As touching, pathetic, or admirable as Milly’s project is, however, it has one fundamental flaw of which she is not aware. It is that in following the “general formula” (Stigma 122) for “the advocated line” (Stigma 115) of seeing herself as perfectly normal and healthy, she will be expected to “reciprocate naturally with an acceptance” of her that has “not quite” been awarded her “in the first place”: “A phantom acceptance is thus allowed to provide the base for a phantom normalcy.” Milly also endeavors to act the role of a superbly normal, self-confident, healthy woman, but this she does, in Goffman’s words, before “an edgy audience that is half-watching … in terms of another show” (Stigma 122). This is thus a case of “the emperor’s new clothes,” with Milly convincing herself she is adorned in normalcy, though in truth, it is merely phantom normalcy. Densher registers signs that this is the case, that is, that Milly is fully adorned in phantom normalcy. For example, when Densher calls on Milly to join him the eighth day after his arrival in Venice only to find her indisposed, he sees that Milly’s pretense makes a definite “mark”: “the mark was in the way in which, gathered in the room of state, … they—the rest of them—simply looked at each other.” It is “lurid—lurid, in all probability, for each of them privately—that they had uttered no common regrets” and “strange” that “the hush of gravity, of apprehension, of significance of some sort, should be the most the case—that of the guests—could permit itself” (II: 191). As Milly carries on her phantom show, expecting her audience to interpret her absence as nothing more than, perhaps, a whim, and even though her audience by no means intends to openly object to her lie, it is all along nakedly apparent that Milly is what she is: too ill to present herself. Kate, too, divines Milly’s phantom case during the climactic dinner party that Milly hosts in Venice. Kate pityingly explains to Densher that Milly, with her dazzling string of pearls and her old lace, is “too nice” (II: 217) and “is n’t better” but “worse” (II: 219). Densher, moreover, describes the feel of the moment as “stand[ing] in it up to his neck.” He “move[s] about in it, and it [makes] no plash.” He “float[s],” “noiselessly [swims] in it,” and they are “all together, for that matter, like fishes in a crystal pool.” Here is the sense that despite the “beatific mildness” and the crystal-clear quality of the medium in which Densher “noiselessly” swims with the other participating “fishes” (II: 213), the situation is almost stifling, for Densher feels he must keep his head above water lest he drown, which is not what would be required were he, in fact, figuratively speaking, a fish. Milly thus puts on her show “under some supreme idea, an inspiration which was half her nerves and half an inevitable harmony” (II: 214), one consisting of the contributions by both the normals and the stigmatized Milly to respect and uphold the integrity of the ritualistic ceremonial moment. In this way, not only is a “phantom acceptance … allowed to provide the base for a phantom normalcy,” but also this mask of “phantom normalcy” obliges the others to extend to its wearer the “phantom acceptance” (Stigma 122) of it. As Densher observes, in a sense “Milly herself” does do “everything … Milly herself, and Milly’s house, and Milly’s hospitality,

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and Milly’s manner, and Milly’s character, and, perhaps still more than anything else, Milly’s imagination, Mrs. Stringham and Sir Luke Strett indeed a little aiding” (II: 239). Such is the mechanism governing face-to-face interaction between the stigmatized and the normals. In the following passage describing how everybody reacts in the face of Milly’s immanent death in the final quarter of the text, Densher summarizes the “ring” of silence surrounding the stigmatized: He had n’t only never been near the facts of her condition—which counted so as a blessing for him; he had n’t only, with all the world, hovered outside an impenetrable ring fence, within which there reigned a kind of expensive vagueness made up of smiles and silences and beautiful fictions and priceless arrangements, all strained to breaking; but he had also, with every one else … actively fostered suppressions which were in the direct interest of every one’s good manner, every one’s pity, every one’s really quite generous ideal. (II: 298)

This “conspiracy of silence” (II: 298), “a general conscious fool’s paradise, from which the specified,” or the stigmatized, is “chased like a dangerous animal” (II: 299), not surprisingly coincides in import with the description Goffman presents of what normals are exempt from having to experience when the stigmatized successfully follows the advocated line of being adjusted to his or her stigmatization: the “unfairness and pain of having to carry a stigma will never be presented to them,” “normals will not have to admit to themselves how limited their tactfulness and tolerance is,” and “normals can remain relatively uncontaminated by intimate contact with the stigmatized, relatively unthreatened in their identity beliefs” (Stigma 121). In this duplicitous project predominantly benefiting the normals, all are complicit, with either Densher or Milly heading the list—although, it must be added, none are quite aware of this in microsociological terms, as illustrated by Goffman. Likewise, the Venetian accommodation Milly “appropriate[s] and enjoy[s]” by fully mobilizing Eugenio and her financial resources, though “shameless”—that is, without shame—is in reality but a “thorough make-believe of a settlement” (II: 135), as Milly mentally observes. Milly’s freedom is therefore a “caged freedom” (II: 167), and Palazzo Leporelli is but a name to describe the figurative “tower” (II: 139) within which stigmatized Milly hopes to hide “as in the ark of her deluge” (II: 143). As Kate insightfully observes, in this tower surrounded by “the moat” of Milly’s creation, the “truth about the girl’s own conception of her validity” is “[t]hus insuperably guarded” (II: 139). Kate sees that for Milly “to be explicit” is to “betray divinations, gratitudes, glimpses of the felt contrast between her fortune and her fear—all of which would have contradicted her systematic bravado” and that “to recognise was to bring down the avalanche—the avalanche Milly lived so in watch for and that might be started by the lightest of breaths” (II: 140–41). Kate’s observation is to the point. It is the slightest disturbance of the established dynamics, the whiff of “vain sympathy, the mere helpless gaping

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inference of others” (II: 141) that inevitably brings down an avalanche. While Milly has confined herself to acting as though nothing is the matter, as though she is no different from anybody else, and as though she believes this, and while her audience in the main observes the basic integrity of her performance, ultimately she has not convinced herself that any of these adopted attitudes are truths, any more than anyone else has been convinced. In this state of affairs, “duplicities,” “deceits,” “hypocrisy,” and “lies” abound on all sides and do so in such abundance that the critics’ use of such vocabulary to describe or condemn this or that party no longer serves a useful purpose. By now it should be evident that Milly takes as much advantage of the others’ silences as Densher and the others do of hers—and are obliged to. Here is a problematic and confusing phenomenon: even should others have a well-meaning intent, a calculatingly well-meaning intent, or even a merely calculating intent to maintain their silence, the means by which they carry out their intent coincides with their social, “moral” obligation to honor the face Milly wishes them to uphold. Conversely, honoring the social rule of face-to-face interaction in obliging Milly’s wish to sustain her show of phantom normalcy, even though identical to the kinds of behavior an individual with various intents exhibits, is not in itself necessarily the result of personal intent. In other words, obliging Milly by honoring her wishes is not analogous to having a calculating motive to do so. Notwithstanding, the specific actions necessitated by the various springs of action—being obligingly polite, being obligingly polite and having knowledge of a specifically formulated motive, being obligingly polite and having a specifically formulated motive, and being obligingly polite because of a specifically formulated motive—are menacingly identical and can be mistaken for one another. Perhaps the difference can only be identified by establishing what the acting individual’s felt motives are. As Goffman writes, Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be. (Presentation 236)

This is the issue Kate will ultimately have to sort out, and the confusion into which Densher is thrown, for he is particularly susceptible to the rules governing face-toface interaction, even though he is never fully aware of these as such. In fact, Densher’s confusion is almost inevitable, with Milly determined to play the role of facilitator. Densher, like Milly, is required to adjust constantly

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to the new situations in which he finds himself. He does so by taking the attitude of the other toward himself and by adapting his behavior to that of the person with whom he is currently face to face. Given that Densher spent his “early years abroad” with “his migratory parents,” attending “his Swiss schools, his German university” (I: 91), it can easily be imagined that he has had to do this incessantly in order to accommodate the constant shifts in the human landscape surrounding him—to the extent that this has become second nature to him. He settles into English ways, but only after having been “exposed to initiations indelible,” so that “[s]omething” happens to him “that could never be undone” (I: 93). Because Densher is constantly required to be “indelibly” flexible, the “general plasticity, the fruit of his feeling plasticity, within limits, to be a mode of life like another” (II: 182), his tendency to adjust his footing to others’ becomes an essential part of his being. According to sociologist Philip Blumstein, if identities—that is, “the face[s] … publicly displayed”—are “projected frequently enough, they eventually produce modifications in the self” (306, 307): “we enact identities with great frequency and we become the person whom we have enacted.” Performances, in this way, “ossify” selves (307). Therefore, in interacting with Aunt Maud, Kate, and Milly, Densher finds himself consistently and plastically adjusting his footing in order to interact with them intelligently. The problem, however, is that Densher’s felt stigmatizations, including the very awareness that he is constantly adjusting his footing to that of others in a somewhat effeminate manner—what Julie OlinAmmentorp refers to as his passivity and femininity (40)—also arise in precisely those relational contexts, that is, with Kate, Maud Lowder, and Milly. Stigma, like deviance, is relational, and it becomes real in a relational context. Relating with Kate and Maud Lowder causes Densher’s insecurities to surface. Although Kate’s sophistication, prodigious insights, and talent for life fascinate and attract Densher, leading him to call her “a whole library of the unknown, the uncut” to which he has “a subscription” (II: 62), bringing Kate into his picture underscores Densher’s felt inadequacies and failings. For example, Densher’s “private inability to believe he should ever be rich” begins to seem forbidding and problematic only in the context of his marriage to Kate: “Only now was he having to think if it were prohibitive in respect to marriage; only now, for the first time, had he to weigh his case in scales” (I: 62, 63). The “great ugliness” of his lack of wealth seems to “rise, all shameless” (I: 62) to assume “the mark on his forehead” (I: 63) like the literal mark of a stigma. When Densher begins to think of ways to make money, moreover, he is made painfully aware of “another mark on his forehead,” his felt stigmatization of the way he “handle[s] everything” with “deplorable ease.” Densher thus becomes conscious of his easy, deplorable, and passive mediocrity, sensing that “the innumerable ways” of making money or doing anything distinguished, though “beautifully present to him,” are nevertheless “ways only for others” (I: 63–4). Taking the attitude of Mrs. Lowder toward himself also serves to highlight Densher’s general lack, and his lack of means in particular. In merely thinking of presenting himself to Kate’s Aunt “as a reason opposed to” hers for disapproving

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of him for Kate, Densher finds himself “consciously [wincing]” (I: 75). Even the “language of the house” speaks to him: “Decidedly” there is “something he had n’t enough of” (I: 78, 77). Finding that the way Aunt Maud decorates her house bothers him, Densher is “glad” to find the term “cruel” to describe it. However, it is more difficult to “laugh at the heavy horrors” than “to quail before them” (I: 78), for “their merciless difference” represents “a portentous negation of his own world of thought—of which … in presence of them” he becomes “as for the first time hopelessly aware” (I: 79). In this way, what Densher sees in viewing the situation from Aunt Maud’s perspective within the environment she has created for herself is so overwhelmingly immanent that he senses “if he did n’t take care he should understand her … only too well” (I: 80). Mrs. Lowder’s “basis, the only one in question,” thus underscores what Densher believes is “the plain truth,” namely, that he is “a very small quantity, and he did know, damnably, what made quantities large” (I: 83). In addition, when Mrs. Lowder subsequently reveals her willingness to endorse Kate’s plan to delegate Densher to Milly, Densher feels she is “putting him on his honour” and when he takes the attitude of Mrs. Lowder toward himself, “his honour wince[s] a little at the use he rather helplessly [sees] himself suffering her to believe she could make of it” (II: 67). If Mrs. Lowder trusts Densher well enough to engage in backstage talk with him, it seems only decent for Densher to reciprocate her show of confidence in him—he cannot embarrass her—by adapting himself to this backstage talk, but once he does this, Densher sees her “consistency,” her “truth” that she “believe[s] him bribeable: a belief that for his own mind as well, while they stood there, lighted up the impossible” (II: 68). Even as he wishes to fight this off, he has “the sense that he could n’t put everything off … on other people.” He feels ashamed to have to admit that Mrs. Lowder “had simply tested him, seen him as he was and made out what could be done with him” and that she “had had but to whistle for him and he had come” (II: 182). Thanks to Mrs. Lowder’s daringness, Densher’s microsocial flexibility, his ingrained unwillingness to put others in an embarrassing spot, and his perceptiveness, Densher’s felt stigmatization of being too plastic, too flexible, and too easy to be morally correct surfaces. It is Densher’s repeated exposure to Kate’s “impatience” (I: 74; II: 30, 56, 60, 92) and her repeated assurances of the general acceptability of his attentions to Milly—what amounts for Densher to a carrot-and-stick approach—that finally compels him to find a way to legitimately make his first call on Milly at Brook Street, for Kate’s plausibility makes Densher’s incomprehension look feeble and meager. When, for example, Kate speaks “with a shade of rational weariness,” Densher, in taking on what he interprets as Kate’s attitude, sees that “the want of pliancy, the failure to oblige her, look[s] poor and ugly.” This reminds him of “his deficiency in the things a man of any taste, so engaged, so enlisted, would have liked to make sure of being able to show—imagination, tact, positively even humour” (II: 94). His basic contention with regard to Kate is that she is not “stupid,” but instead “intelligent,” so that inevitably “it was he who was stupid—

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the proof of which was that he would do what she liked” (II: 30). Here, Densher not only questions his own intelligence to the extent that he feels obliged to refrain from challenging her, but also senses that refraining in this way constitutes proof of that precise acknowledgement he so wishes to shun. In this way, Kate is capable of providing such “an air of having so put their possibilities before him that questions were idle and doubts perverse” (II: 30). In Kate’s presence, therefore, Densher feels it is less onerous and taxing to pigeonhole his qualms and doubts, and instead reciprocate her “sincerity” (II: 20) and accept her passionate reassurances of everything turning out splendidly if he would only trust her, give her time, and refrain from contradicting her. Whereas Kate and Aunt Maud highlight Densher’s felt stigmatization resulting from his lack of money, intelligence, and willpower, Milly makes Densher particularly conscious of his need to avoid willfulness. Without quite knowing why, Densher feels that plasticity, flexibility, and easiness are especially called for in his dealings with Milly. Initially, Densher decides that since he likes everyone concerned—including Milly—“too much” to disoblige, he will be “generally merciful” (II: 71) and call on Milly not so much to accommodate Kate’s wishes but to honor “the old basis” he has with Milly, “their permitted and proper and harmless American relation—the legitimacy of which he could thus scarce express in names enough” (II: 70). Once Densher is in Milly’s presence, however, he finds that this footing requires modification. Milly’s willingness to turn the tables on all applies to Densher, too, so that in taking the attitude of Milly toward himself, Densher immediately feels required to modify his footing from feeling “sorry for her” to that of enabling Milly to feel “sorry for him” (II: 75) in his purported dejected state due to Kate’s not returning his attentions. In this way, in Milly’s drawing room at Brook Street, even before Milly and her entourage move to Venice, Densher’s habit of adjusting his footing to the person with whom he is interacting—in this case, Milly—and Milly’s willingness to make herself easy with him, keep the two “face to face” with each other “by a force absolutely resident in their situation and operating, for his nerves, with the swiftness of the forces commonly regarded by sensitive persons as beyond their control.” That is, as Densher obliges Milly, who in turn is determined to oblige him, their shared need to honor the faces they present effectively promotes the “current thus determined” to flow as furiously as “the rapids of Niagara” (II: 80). In fact, so willing are the two to oblige each other that they find themselves enriching, or even creating, a past that barely happens to them in New York: “It was as if they had n’t known how ‘thick’ they had originally become, as if, in a manner, they had really fallen to remembrance of more passages of intimacy than there had in fact at the time quite been room for,” it being as though their “relation” were “seeking to justify its speedy growth by reaching back to one of those fabulous periods in which prosperous states place their beginnings” (II: 79). In addition, while Densher observes a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy in his dealings with Milly, she likewise does not “precipitate [Densher’s] necessity of intervention” (II: 77), asks no literal questions, and in fact “gloss[es] over whatever might be

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awkward” (II: 96). Much to the great relief and convenience of both, the force of the interaction is allowed to predominate, and all contingencies of embarrassment are successfully avoided. However, one crucial problem exists for Densher in the unnatural fluency of his and Milly’s interaction. As has been discussed, Milly’s insistence on “phantom normalcy” requires Densher to extend to Milly his “phantom acceptance” (Stigma 122) of it. However, because Densher does not quite feel he is being straight with her, the phantom acceptance he knows he extends to Milly feels false. In short, he is more cognizant of his own lie than of Milly’s, and thereby feels he is engaged in a self-serving form of duplicity, duplicity being but another result of his lack of volition, which makes up a major part of his felt stigmatization. Engaging in phantom interaction with Milly, in short, emphasizes Densher’s felt stigmatization of not having enough willpower to reject Kate’s plan and disengage himself from Milly. Incidentally, Densher does repeatedly think of disengaging himself from Milly. However, for reasons unbeknown to him, Densher finds that he cannot very well do so, for both Densher’s face and Milly’s are “constructs of the same order” (Ritual 6)—the same phantom order. Once Densher presents a face while engaging in the self-adjusting, self-propelling mechanism of interaction with Milly, it becomes increasingly difficult for him to “[turn] tail” (II: 90) without also doing violence to her, or rather, to her face. As if instinctively knowing this to be the case even while ignorant of the specific mechanism, Densher senses the indelicacy of “challeng[ing]” Milly rather than “leav[ing] her deluded” (II: 77), and of “the peculiar brutality of shaking her off” (II: 81). Densher comes to sense Milly’s “deep dependence on him” (II: 251) and finds that he is “mixed up in her fate, or her fate, if that should be better … mixed up in him, so that a single false motion might either way snap the coil” (II: 252). Densher therefore feels obliged to remain in the current. Densher finds himself renewing his determination “to behave as a gentleman” (II: 183), “not to be a brute—in return for amiabilities,” for this rule of reciprocity seems to be the one “immediate workable law” (II: 184) he finds in the confounding situation. What he feels he needs to do is exercise “[p]erfect tact,” meaning that he must “keep all intercourse in the key of the absolutely settled” (II: 254). In sum, Densher suffers not so much because he allows Kate to manipulate him but because the power of face-to-face interaction exerts its invisible but unsparing influence on him, highly socialized as he is, and on stigmatized Milly. Although neither is aware that this is occurring, they register the specific symptoms only too well. Needless to say, Densher’s understanding of Kate’s directives complicates his footing with Milly, for actually interacting with Milly is “as simple as sitting with his sister,” and “not … very much more thrilling” (II: 173). Only when Densher pictures what Maud Lowder, Susan, and Kate have led Milly to believe in order to facilitate her interest in him—an interest Densher cannot help detecting when taking the attitude of Milly when she is directly before him—does it seem “almost

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as if the other party to their remarkable understanding [Kate] … had been hovering about, had dropped in to look after her work,” and the “value of the work” changes the moment he sees it “expressed in poor Milly” (II: 76). Generally confused as to his motives in being with Milly, Densher is troubled, harassed, and tormented. He becomes apprehensive of “having sunk so deep”: he is “sinking because it was all doing what Kate had conceived for him; it was n’t in the least doing—and that had been his notion of his life—anything he himself had conceived” (II: 174–5). Densher’s felt stigmatization of lacking volition can no longer be shaken off or denied, so that he comes to feel the dire need to prove to himself that he has some willpower left. He decides he must make Kate prove her affection for him by agreeing to come up to his room. In Robert B. Pippin’s words, the “unqualified experience both of ambiguity-ending resolution and subjective power,” “physical sexuality” will, in Densher’s view, “finally settle something between them, make finally clear where they stand, who is finally willing to do what for whom” (178). Once Densher succeeds in making Kate listen to his ultimatum that he will go no further unless she agrees to come to him, however, he inwardly heaves a deep sigh of relief. Kate’s “mere listening” makes Densher “even understand himself as he had n’t yet done” (II: 200). Densher sees by his own reaction to Kate’s feeling the force of his will that his “question” has always been “whether he had really no will left” (II: 177). Densher had felt emasculated and his sense of masculinity, threatened. It is no wonder, for as a man, Densher ought to have been able to maintain his dignity without constantly being reduced to the position of the conciliate attendant, but as a man of taste, a gentleman, he inevitably had to become such a one. Densher had necessarily been placed in an impossible position. Therefore, even before Kate literally comes to him, it is as though he is “already in a sense possessed of what he want[s],” for he sees that instead of “throw[ing] over his lucidity the horrid shadow of cheap reprobation” (II: 201), Kate “could only either deal with the question [of his ultimatum] straight, either frankly yield or ineffectually struggle or insincerely argue, or else merely express herself by following up the advantage she did possess” (II: 215–16). Taking the attitude of Kate toward himself and seeming to see what she sees, Densher is satisfied. He is content with the masculine and potent image he sees reflected in the mirror par excellence, so much so that it gives “him back the sense of his action” (II: 216): “So far [Kate] was good for what he wanted” (II: 202). Densher’s sense of volition returns, he is able to see himself as “master in the conflict” (II: 231), and the figurative mark on his forehead momentarily fades. Julie Rivkin writes that Kate “agrees to come to Densher in his rooms as much because she cannot resist his logic as because she cannot resist his passion: his demand accords with the economy she herself endorses,” the economy of reciprocity wherein “he will do what she wants only if she does what he wants” (112). On the face of things, this last is exactly how it looks. However, Kate cannot   As sociologist Jetse Sprey writes, the “alternatives in sexual interaction are few: one comes to terms, engages in conflicts, or withdraws completely” (437).

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engage in this kind of barter exchange if she is to achieve her goal of eliminating all sources of shame—and she would not accept such a bargain. At the same time, as Rivkin also senses, Kate cannot reject Densher’s insistence on her show of passion, either. If Kate delegates Densher to Milly out of her passion for the relationship between Densher and herself, she is required to be passionate. She needs to be consistent with her face as a woman fully committed to her passionate relationship with Densher. Therefore, when Kate responds to Densher’s ultimatum, she is moved to agreement because of her microsocial need to adhere to, and remain consistent with, her scripted face of a passionate lover. Kate is “framed,” in multiple senses of the word. For a fraction of a second, Densher’s footing is once again clarified. He immediately feels that he does not even have for Milly “the amount of curiosity he would have had about an ordinary friend.” He feels certain that his feelings are “all for Kate, without a feather’s weight to spare” and that he is “acting for Kate—not, by the deviation of an inch, for her friend,” so that according to his logic of the moment, his “pure passivity” in not being interested enough to inquire after Milly’s health “represent[s] his dignity and his honour” (II: 204). Densher’s motives for being in Milly’s presence as expressed in these passages describing his moment of mental clarity should be noted, however, for they contrast starkly with how he comes to feel later on. Alfred Habegger points out that when Densher presses his ultimatum on Kate, he “offers his integrity in exchange for Kate’s virginity” and transforms their dealings with one another into “a hard-driven business deal, in which each extorts all the market will bear” (“Reciprocity and the Market Place” 461). Irrespective of Kate’s reasons for participating in the act, to be sure, as Millicent Bell confirms, Densher “knows himself now engaged to Kate’s plan by an unbreakable contract” (“Being Possessed” 110), and it is indeed a conscious bargain on Densher’s end. Notwithstanding, for Densher, being caught between Kate’s and Milly’s narratives feels as though he were “walking in short on a high ridge, steep down on either side, where the properties—once he could face at all remaining there—reduced themselves to his keeping his head” (II: 175), which is ultimately far more taxing than any contract or bargain should be able to simplify for him. When he is with Kate, Milly seems insignificant enough. When he is with Milly, however, Densher’s conscience nags him, with Milly’s case weighing heavily on his mind. Merely interacting with Susan at the height of his certainty that he is “with” Kate and not “with” Milly, for example, is confusing. It “press[es] on him … that never had a man been in so many places at once” (II: 209). Does he have ulterior motives? he wonders. Seeming feels like being. Densher senses that perhaps his allegiance to Kate implies that he does, and his need to feel right with himself begins to override his need to honor his contract with Kate. It is no wonder, then, that Densher instinctively opts to retreat from Milly’s company after Lord Mark abruptly appears in Venice the second time, disrupting the strained equilibrium Milly and her entourage have worked hard to sustain, and thus finally “bring[ing] down the avalanche” (II: 141). Although Densher

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knows that it is because of Lord Mark and not himself that Milly rejects all callers, Eugenio’s powerful “gaze” makes him uncomfortably vulnerable. He cannot rid himself of the suspicion that he is accountable in some way. However, as guilty as Densher feels, it does not necessarily mean that he is truly to blame, for as Goffman explains, when the context of action implicates an actor, his awareness of the kinds of judgments viewers are capable of making, even when there is no cause for shame, forces him to feel ashamed and defensive, and this defensiveness in turn makes one look and feel like somebody who is really guilty (Presentation 236). Because Densher is caught in a context that makes him look guilty, Densher’s discomfiture refuses to go away, and his dire need to purge himself of it by disengaging once and for all from what he sees as Kate’s narrative becomes immanent. Thus Densher interacts with his environment to devise a moral synthesis that works toward his psychological survival. He is not quite aware that in doing this, he “add[s] to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty” (Presentation 236). Susan, Maud Lowder, and even Lord Mark unwittingly contribute to this self-implicating project of Densher’s. First, Lord Mark, “without in the least intending such a service,” helps Densher elude his “special danger” of upsetting the strained equilibrium by getting it “straight out of the way” for him. This provides Densher’s first means of “escape” (II: 265). Next, Densher decides to stay in Venice, disregarding what he knows to be Milly’s wishes: … he would stay in spite of [Milly], stay in spite of the odium, stay in spite perhaps of some final experience that would be, for the pain of it, all but unbearable. That would be his one way, purified though he was, to mark his virtue beyond any mistake. It would be accepting the disagreeable, and the disagreeable would be a proof; a proof of his not having stayed for the thing—the agreeable, as it were—that Kate had named. (II: 267)

Densher specifically recalls, moreover, that Kate is “for her comfort, just now well aloof” and that she is “out of it all, by her act, as much as he was in it,” and “this difference [grows], positively, as his own intensity increase[s]” (II: 268). Densher does not in the least seem to realize that he contradicts himself in yearning to claim that he did not exercise his own will in the affair, and instead creates a potential opening to a process that could culminate in laying responsibility at Kate’s door. Both Susan and Sir Luke contribute, too. They let Densher off by not questioning him about anything—which enables Densher to let himself off. Densher senses that whatever Susan may or may not know about him and Kate, she visits Densher not to “judge” but to “pity” him (II: 273). Densher thus narrowly escapes having to confront his felt guilt, thanks to Susan’s tact and her willingness to believe him “down to the ground if, to save [Milly’s] life” (II: 292), he would deny what Lord 

 See also Michael Moon, 436.

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Mark has told Milly—that Densher and Kate have been engaged all along. As Densher later realizes, Susan does “nothing but protect him” and “keep it up” (II: 339), which he is only too happy to let her do. Sir Luke, moreover, provides Densher with “relief” (II: 303) in not putting him in a position in which he would be expected to inquire after, or be asked about, Milly. In effect, it is as though Milly is already dead, and the “result” is “as of a blest calm after a storm.” Sensing that Sir Luke has not spoken with Susan and that he has been “up at night” with Milly “in person, for hours,” Densher can at once “turn cold at the image” of Milly on her deathbed and feel “a throb of his response to accepted liberation,” the “liberation” to “being let off; dealt with in the only way that did n’t aggravate his responsibility” (II: 304–5), now that Milly’s death seems all but accomplished. In this way, Sir Luke’s ability to pull off “the business of making odd things natural” and to make “nothing whatever of anything” renders the physician “more to [Densher’s] purpose” (II: 305) than anyone else is. Densher uses Mrs. Lowder, too. In receiving Densher for tea when he returns to London, Mrs. Lowder “present[s] [Densher] to himself, as it were, in the guise in which she had now adopted him,” as “blighted and ravaged, as frustrate and already bereft,” and Densher promptly finds himself adjusting to Mrs. Lowder’s narrative. It is “quickly vivid to him that were he minded” in this manner, he would be able to “‘work’ this association,” though by the end of the week, Densher stands “convicted to his own sense of a surrender to Mrs. Lowder’s view” (II: 336). The problem here is that even as he allows himself to be released from his guilt, Densher remains conscious of what exactly it is he is so relieved to be let off from. Densher’s denial of guilt requires, highlights, and reinforces precisely the same guilt that he is trying to deny, and “plain honesty” in Densher cannot condone this without a “corrective” (II: 344). Sensing Mrs. Lowder’s tact—she overdoes the camouflaging—he now needs to prove to himself that there is no such need, and engages in yet another one of those “defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty” (Presentation 236). In Densher’s efforts to “right everything that’s wrong” (II: 347), Densher proposes to Kate before news of Milly’s death reaches him, but, predictably enough, Kate quietly rejects his proposal as an act of haste. As a result, it is only a matter of time before Densher pursues the only alternative he has left to deny his guilt: placing the responsibility at Kate’s door. Sallie Sears identifies this movement when she points out that “most of Merton’s energy is devoted to rationalization” (95) and that his “sudden access to piety is accomplished with too much ease” (97). Michael McFee also elaborates on Densher’s abrupt change when he comments on the church scene in which Densher “actually resolve[s] all his complications” and asserts that this “almost accidental” resolution at Brompton Oratory is true to Densher’s “established pattern of passivity and indecision” (327). In fact, Densher only decides to head for the oratory when Mrs. Lowder, whom he just so happens to run into on Brompton Road, suggests church-going, so that true to the accidental nature of the act, Densher then reflects, “The Oratory, in short, to make him right would

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do” (II: 362). Janet Gabler-Hover, too, recognizes the unnatural shift in Densher’s footing and writes that in accordance with his line of “validat[ing] Milly’s trust in him,” Densher “applies what William James would call the selective principle of his memory to his notion of reality” (178): selectively “restructuring … historical facts,” Densher simultaneously “builds his ultimate adoration of Milly” (179) in order that “his actions” should “become commensurate with his words” (184–5). However, even these insightful observations are simplifying. As Densher tells Kate, “It is n’t so simple even as that” (II: 369). There is one last turn of the screw to Densher’s instinct for survival, what Sigi Jöttkandt calls Densher’s “elaborate ethical gymnastics” (87), or “ethical maneuverings” (90), for his felt stigma has by now become a double bind. When Milly’s letter to Densher arrives on Christmas Day, Densher finds himself “face to face with alternatives”: They were not in perspective in which they might be compared and considered; they were, by a strange effect, as close as a pair of monsters of whom he might have felt on either cheek the hot breath and the huge eyes. He saw them at once and but by looking straight before him; he would n’t for that matter, in his cold apprehension, have turned his head by an inch. (II: 351–2)

The “monster” double-bind alternatives consist of Densher’s having, in the end, to choose between Kate’s narrative and Milly’s. What is too often overlooked in examining Densher and his behavior is that choosing Milly’s narrative poses as many significantly double-binding problems for his conscience as choosing Kate’s. At a relatively early stage of Densher’s involvement with Milly, he thinks to himself, “Not to give away the woman one loved, but to back her up in her mistakes—once they had gone a certain length— that was perhaps chief among the inevitabilities of the abjection of love” (II: 77). Honor is at stake, for Densher’s acknowledgement of his commitment to be faithful to Kate occupies as much ground as all the other contradictory acknowledgements he will reflectively have to sort out in the days to come. Densher, too, constantly thinks of matters “afterwards” (II: 226). Moreover, the social rule of reciprocity is so firmly ingrained in Densher that he cannot ignore the fact that Kate, as James states in his preface to this work, “pays heroically, it must be owned, at the hour of her visit alone to Densher’s lodging” (I: xviii). Densher is indebted to Kate’s constancy in agreeing to come to his room, especially as there is “a shade of the awful in so unqualified a consequence of his act.” The impression remains with Densher that Kate’s act was unqualified and that, in contrast, he had almost tricked her into taking him seriously when he presented her with his ultimatum: “It had simply worked, his idea, the idea he had made her accept” (II: 236). With an instinctive drive to balance his moral account, therefore, Densher first offers Kate the unread missive from Milly, which Kate throws into the fire in a gesture of her confidence regarding its contents. Next, befitting Densher’s passivity, he offers Kate to effectively choose between the only two alternatives he can devise: in order for Densher to feel right with himself in his confusion, he

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can either offer to marry Kate for the sacrifice he has forced her to make in coming to his room—even though “his act, so deeply associated with [Kate] and never to be recalled nor recovered, was abroad on the winds of the world” (II: 391)—but without Milly’s money; or he can offer her “every penny” (II: 404) of Milly’s money, which, if truth be told, would constitute no sacrifice on Densher’s part to give up. This is the meaning of the final scene between Densher and Kate, from Densher’s point of view. In short, it would be to Densher’s utmost advantage in the midst of his “monster” double bind for Kate to choose Milly’s money over marriage to him, for then he would be able to rid himself of Milly’s ultimately burdensome gift and the need to fulfill his commitment to Kate, who is a constant reminder of “his act,” which can “never … be recalled or recovered” (II: 391). Densher, moreover, should also be able to take infinite comfort in the fact that such a choice on the part of Kate would not only differentiate his case from hers—he will have renounced, whereas Kate will have chosen, Milly’s money—but also exempt him from the charge that he has actively rid himself of anything: this consequence would be brought about by Kate’s choice and not his. Put differently, should Kate choose neither alternative, Densher will be plagued with a profound sense of guilt toward both women, and remain indebted to Kate as well as burdened by Milly’s infinitely heavy gift. Kate’s insights during this final interview with Densher are prodigious. Even Densher shows “a sort of awe of her high grasp” (II: 404). Taking the attitude of Densher toward herself, Kate sees that according to him, she has slept with him in order to secure his cooperation, the repayment of which he conscientiously attempts to devise. She is made newly aware that they must have moved within an exchange economy. Did she, then, in Densher’s eyes, sell rather than give herself?—but as sociologist Jetse Sprey writes, an “honorable woman … does not ‘sell’ but ‘gives’ herself” (436). And if she is to insist on having given herself, would this not mean that she chose to sleep with Densher, which choice can only belong to her? As for Milly’s money, Kate only wants it so as not to have to want it—“Comfort, which is purchased by money, is freedom from desire. One desires it in order not to have to desire anything” (Vernon 173)—to be able to author herself in an un-Croylike, tasteful and honorable way and be happy with Densher whom she thought she knew and understood. Money is a means to an end. As Simmel writes, “the rational ultimate goal is, indeed, only the enjoyment from the use of the object” (235). However, Kate now sees she can have neither the means—the money—nor her ultimate goal of an honorable life, for agreeing to have the money under these conditions goes against the very grain of her wishes, which consist of a sense of propriety and an easy conscience. Understanding why Densher is willing to either marry Kate, but without Milly’s inheritance, or give Kate Milly’s money, Kate sees Densher’s footing, the reason he needs to fall in love with Milly’s memory, and in seeing these things, she is forced into a sobering recognition of his double bind, his reasons, and his confused motives for engaging in what he yearns to see—in the final analysis—as Kate’s project, and not in any sense his. Kate also observes

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Densher’s “need to bury … the knowledge of each other that they could n’t undo” (II: 392). Seeing herself thus implicated in Densher’s narrative, Kate is profoundly shaken. Milton Kornfeld (340–41) and Kathleen Komar (477) contend that Kate is in full control of her motives throughout the novel. Kornfeld in particular contends that “Kate’s conception of herself needs no affirmation or support from anyone outside herself,” the “advantage” of which lies in “the ostensible freedom of action it provides” as well as in its “render[ing] one impervious to external or internal criticism” (340). If this were true, Kate would emerge from this experience intact. However, a careful reading of the text shows Kate repeatedly “cast[ing] about an instant” (I: 99), “turn[ing] a little pale” (II: 19), “pull[ing] … up a little” (II: 28), “falter[ing]” (II: 29), being “at a loss” (II: 197), “grow[ing] a little pale” (II: 229), “seriously breath[ing],” “turn[ing] pale” (II: 320), “hushed” (II: 324), and “rather too profusely … ladl[ing] tea into the pot” (II: 330) whenever she fears she may be acting even remotely like a dishonorable Croy. Kate, too, is vulnerable. Kate’s felt stigmatization is due to her Croy blood, her “father’s dishonor,” which she honorably refuses to disclaim, and instead, acknowledges as being “a part of” her: “How can such a thing as that not be the great thing in one’s life?” (I: 68). Kate, therefore, goes to great lengths in order to prove to herself that she is neither “shirking nor lying” (I: 4), “base,” “vulgar” (I: 72), “underhand” (I: 44), nor “wincing” or “mincing” (II: 225), all qualities that emphasize the dishonor Kate fears she may have inherited biologically from her father through her Croy blood, a situation that in Gary Kuchar’s words might be termed “Kate’s unease with the world” (172). As James writes in the preface to this work, “The image of her so compromised and compromising father was all effectively to have pervaded her life, was in a certain particular way to have tampered with her spring” (I: xiv). By involving herself in Milly’s tricky case of “sacrific[ing] nobody and nothing” and of “try[ing] for everything” (I: 73), what Kate tells Densher is true: Kate “risk[s] … everything for it” (II: 197). Kate’s choice to be with Densher arises from her wish to re-author herself, to rid herself of her felt stigmatization. By saving her father’s name, she hopes to resurrect hers, but rather than making her own personal desire the object, she makes her “narrow little family feeling,” “a small stupid piety” of family feeling her motive: she “bravely stuck to that; she made it out,” for she feels she needs to “[stick] to” this scenario and audaciously “[make] it out” (I: 71) that her family feeling is what motivates her. Likewise, Densher represents to Kate “what her life had never given her and certainly, without some such aid as his, never would give her; all the high dim things she lumped together of the mind” (I: 50). Densher’s ostensible talent for remaining airborne and thereby transcending physicality seems to be the answer to all of Kate’s humbling troubles. Densher’s “long looks,” inevitably admiring in nature, consequently, are “the thing in the world” Kate can “never have enough of.” She feels that “whatever might happen, she must keep them, must make them most completely her possession” (I: 61), for sustaining a favorable self-image is easier with a reflector that reflects the image one wants

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to see. Everything, moreover, seems beautifully possible if she remembers that everything is done in the name of decency, honor, and love. Kate’s resolve to unite with Densher, therefore, is firm—to the extent that she verbally and dramatically announces it, much to Densher’s dismay: “I engage myself to you for ever.” Kate “pledge[s]” Densher, calling “God to witness!—every spark of [her] faith.” She gives Densher “every drop of [her] life” (I: 95). In a curious way, verbally and dramatically resolving to achieve her union with Densher is for Kate analogous to a public pledge to henceforth tackle things head-on and shamelessly, for achieving an honorable life in which she would no longer feel the felt stigmatization from her Croy blood is her “everything” (I: 73). Kate, therefore, cannot afford to be dishonorable, underhand, or “wincing” or “mincing” (II: 225) in her attempts to achieve that life, and both the money and the passionate realm of thought Densher represents are imperative for its accomplishment. This is the attitude in which Kate delegates Densher to Milly. She sends Densher to realize simultaneously both her need and Milly’s, hoping to participate in a project of reciprocal giving. Kate counts on Densher’s capacity to author himself and his motives that should be sufficiently honorable and equally allencompassing. However, even for Kate, self-authoring is not easy. When Kate puts her intention into words, the sense of ambiguity in Kate’s plan re-emerges in the form of what may or may not be a Freudian slip: “I should n’t care for [Milly] if she had n’t so much,” Kate very simply said. And then as it made [Densher] laugh not quite happily: “I should n’t trouble about her if there were one thing she did have.” The girl spoke indeed with a noble compassion. “She has nothing.” (II: 52)

This passage can be read in two ways. The most frequent of interpretations is that Kate “care[s]” to “take the trouble” about Milly only because she is rich and yet has nothing. However, a closer look shows that another reading is possible. If the second statement is a paraphrase of the first, Kate would be indicating that if Milly at least had something, even if it were not “so much,” then Kate would neither “care” nor “trouble” (II: 52) about her. The ambiguity surrounding this passage, it seems, coincides with the ambiguity in Kate’s motive, for in the final analysis, she is not totally self-assured of her motives, either. When Kate is confronted by Densher’s naming of their act, for example, Densher observes how she meets it “with no wincing nor mincing” (II: 225). Flinching is the last thing Kate can allow herself to do, for that would only confirm an appearance of guilt to herself, not to mention to the rest of the world. If she is to uphold her narrative of doing her very best, with sacrifices on her part in being very kind to her “friend” (II: 320), Kate must maintain her line with utmost confidence. She must almost will herself to believe in what she is doing, shaking off any other interpretations that are possible under the circumstances—much, in fact, in the manner of Milly, Densher, or Aunt Maud, for they, too, are no different from her in their need to willfully maintain their lines. As Kate says of her aunt,

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“when she adopts a view she—well, to her own sense, really brings the thing about, fairly terrorizes with her view any other, any opposite view, and those, not less, who represent that.” It is this famous willpower, this expression of “the spirit … that dares and defies” the idea “not to prove the right one” that makes the idea “become the right one” (II: 188). Like Aunt Maud who is in the end not quite as omnipotent as Kate initially makes her out to be, Kate also struggles to push through her narrative—to no avail. When she is informed of Densher’s vision and narrative, with herself verbally implicated in the aforementioned unexpected manner, Kate’s narrative ultimately comes down as in an avalanche. Although it is not indicated which choice Kate will ultimately make, one thing is clear: Kate’s choosing from those alternatives that arise from Densher’s understanding, or framing, of their behavior vis-à-vis Milly will signify her acknowledgement and acceptance of Densher’s narrative and her thereby guilty role in it. Electing to make this kind of choice—that is, choosing to accept Densher without Milly’s money, Milly’s money without Densher, or even neither—will be devastating for Kate. She is bound hand and foot, for now that she sees what Densher sees, she can neither budge nor not budge. Kate is trapped. It is to this that Kate is referring when she “turn[s] to the door,” “her headshake” somehow signifying “the end,” and exclaims, “We shall never be again as we were!” (II: 405), for the stability and self-assurance she once felt no longer exists. Now that Milly’s missive, which may have spelled out exactly how Kate’s scheme was understood by her friend—or victim—is gone forever among the ashes, and Kate’s project has gone awry following Lord Mark’s unexpected disruptive interference, only Kate’s memories of her sincerity and compassion for Milly’s case remain to support her narrative: “It may be declared for Kate, at all events, that her sincerity about her friend, through this time, was deep, her compassionate imagination strong; and that these things gave her a virtue, a good conscience, a credibility for herself, so to speak, that were later to be precious to her” (II: 140). The support notwithstanding, Kate, like Densher, will be wondering, questioning, doubting, and oscillating between alternate visions of herself, struggling in the days to come with a renewed sense of felt stigmatization due to her dishonor. In this way, The Wings of the Dove is not so much a description of “a relationship of predators and victims, deceivers and deceived, actors and acted-upon” (Stelzig 253) as it is of Milly, Kate, and Densher’s efforts to survive and escape from their respective senses of shame and vulnerability resulting from what I have referred to as their felt stigmatization. Milly aims to author herself as a supreme producer, actor, and consumer of her own beautiful performance, “a sight for the gods” (II: 101); Densher aims to author himself as an easy, affable gentleman with Milly—and with Kate—and in his confusion hopes also to be in control of his life; and Kate wishes to author herself as Milly’s friend, who sends her the most precious possession she has as a gift, which, Kate guesses, may prompt Milly to give them her gift of riches. However, when they act in accordance with their need to put these projects into practice and thereby survive—emotionally and psychologically—they seem to become worse off, rather than better. This

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is because, as closer observation reveals, there is far less freedom for the self to mold its own identity than at first meets the eye. Whether Milly, Densher, and Kate—all incessantly engaged in attempts to salvage what dignity they can— should ultimately succeed in achieving emotional survival is far from certain. Milly dies, and we know little about the final attitude in which she does even though we know how she aims to carry herself; Densher remains tormented; and Kate, like Densher, is trapped and required to think of matters for ever afterward, for as Jöttkandt points out, there are real consequences as well: in leaving Aunt Maud’s house, Kate loses Aunt Maud, and in “giv[ing] in to Densher’s sexual blackmail,” Kate delegates herself to the position of a “‘fallen woman,’” so that Kate “now belongs to that strange world of the living dead” (96, 97). And Densher, he knows, will have driven her there.

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Chapter 3

Intimacy and Sexuality: Challenging the Official Story of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl Readers are left with a troubling impression at the end of James’s last completed novel, The Golden Bowl (1904). The book’s main character, Maggie Verver, is at long last alone with her husband Prince Amerigo. Yet when she is last seen, she has her face buried in his breast “as for pity and dread” of his eyes, which are “strangely” lit with the undeniable sincerity with which he claims that he sees “nothing but” Maggie (II: 369). Consequently, there has been much discussion among critics in an attempt to make sense of the discrepancy between the ostensibly happy outcome and the ominous tone in which this outcome is described. While Dorothea Krook, David McWhirter and Daniel Mark Fogel seem to downplay the sinister note of the scene, others, such as Sallie Sears, Ruth Bernard Yeazell, Sharon Cameron, Carren Kaston, Susan Winnett, and Phyllis van Slyck seem to emphasize its menacing, unresolved tone.



 Krook writes that “the sense of the grimness and bitterness of human life is inseparably fused with the sense of the beauty and blessedness,” with “the ambiguity … intended to express precisely this experience of their permanent, inseparable fusion” (324). McWhirter writes that James “attain[s] an affirmative, tragicomic vision,” and departs from “the seductive yet ultimately sterile magic of his desiring art” (Desire and Love 198, 198– 9), while Fogel writes, “A comedy the form of which is the dialectic of spiral return must necessarily violate generic decorum by swerving through tragic possibilities on its way to an affirmative resolution” (Structure 136).    Specific problems are noted: “A careful reading of the ending of the book does not in any way substantiate the idea of moral triumph” (Sears 192–3); “Reunited though they finally are, Prince and Princess do not speak the same language, nor see in the drama they have enacted the same ‘moral’” (Yeazell 125); the final embrace between Maggie and Amerigo seems to “perpetrate the dualism of mastery and submission” (Kaston 178); Maggie “covers her eyes because she understands that if Amerigo sees nothing but her (sees nothing, in other words, but what she has made him see), she has nothing at all” (Cameron 112); “Terror now lies in the presence of a man she has bought, coerced, and seduced, but whom she knows only through forms that no longer exist” (Winnett 233); and it may be Amerigo “who encloses Maggie in his embrace” (“An Innate Preference” Van Slyck 186).

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As pity, as opposed to self-pity, is directed outward, toward an other, and dread is primarily an inwardly focused emotion, a partial answer is immediately decipherable: Maggie fears pitying Amerigo and dreads something for herself, should she find herself looking into his obviously sincere eyes as she embraces, and is embraced by, her object of desire, Amerigo. The question then becomes, why does Maggie feel in danger of pitying Amerigo, and what is it that she dreads for herself, should she meet his irrefutably sincere eyes? Hugh Stevens writes that The Golden Bowl is James’s “most passionate novel” (46), and Tessa Hadley notes that James’s late novels are informed by “ripe worldliness, the passionate and sexual love affairs at their centres” (Imagination of Pleasure 3). Indeed, the ache and longing that subsumes Maggie in The Golden Bowl cannot be denied, nor should the power of passion and desire in this novel be underestimated. However, James was interested in passion as an integral part of everyday life, as can be seen when he discusses Gabriele D’Annunzio’s work in 1902: From the moment [sexual passion] depends on itself alone for its beauty it endangers extremely its distinction, so precarious at the best. For what it represents, precisely, is it poetically interesting; it finds its extension and consummation only in the rest of life. Shut out from the rest of life, shut out from all fruition and assimilation, it has no more dignity than—to use a homely image—the boots and shoes that we see, in the corridors of promiscuous hotels, standing, often in double pairs, at the doors of rooms. Detached and unassociated these clusters of objects present, however obtruded, no importance. What the participants do with their agitation, in short, or even what it does with them, that is the stuff of poetry, and it is never really interesting save when something finely contributive in themselves makes it so. (Notes on Novelists 292)

As sociologist William Simon writes, “The erotic is often viewed as the expression of sexual desire, when more appropriately it might be seen as the sexualized representation of desire—the costuming and posturing of desire, often, but not always, in the culturally available idioms of the sexual” (29). W. D. Howells, with whom James seems to have been in agreement, also notes “there are several other passions [than the sexual]” and “all these have a greater part in the drama of life than the passion of love, and infinitely greater than the passion of guilty love” (153). Indeed, eroticism as manifest in Maggie, I aim to show, is likewise and for the most part “the sexualized representation of desire” (Simon 29), the desire for acknowledgement, autonomy, inclusion, intimacy, and a community of understanding.

  I am indebted to Mr Arthur Collier, an ardent fan of James’s, for pointing this out to me during a casual conversation we had at the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library in August 2004.

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To illustrate, I begin by quoting a relatively long passage towards the end of Book I where Colonel Bob Assingham embraces his wife Fanny: He went to her and put his arm round her; he drew her head to his breast, where, while she gasped, she let it stay a little—all with a patience that presently stilled her. … They remained for some minutes looking at [the region of the understood] through the dim window which opened upon the world of human trouble in general and which let the vague light play here and there upon gilt and crystal and colour, the florid features, looming dimly, of Fanny’s drawing-room. And the beauty of what thus passed between them, passed with her cry of pain, with her burst of tears, with his wonderment and his kindness and his comfort, with the moments of their silence, above all, which might have represented their sinking together, hand in hand for a time, into the mystic lake where he had begun, as we have hinted, by seeing her paddle alone—the beauty of it was that they now could really talk better than before, because the basis had at last once for all defined itself. (I: 378)

Forever ready to support his idiosyncratic wife, the Colonel is finally illogically devoted to her. Her pain is his pain; her grief, his. When Fanny is adrift and in danger of sinking in her figurative sea of speculation, he is “so ready that it was quite as if the inward man had pulled off coat and waistcoat” (I: 366), fully prepared to plunge into deep waters to rescue her if necessary. This last scene, I contend, is the most loving—if precariously verging on the comic—scene in the novel. How, then, might love be defined? Philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum in Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (1990) writes, Being in love is altogether different … from being a judicious spectator; for lovers do not look around at the entirety of their world, but are exclusively wrapped up in one another. They do not enter into anyone else’s predicament; their imaginations do not see out. By the same token, if we imagine the judicious spectator looking at his world, he will not be able to find in it, no matter how fine his imagination, the passion that they feel for one another. It is a mystery to him; he can’t see into it. Lovers, then, neither see nor are seen with the judicious eye of sympathetic moral concern. (344)

Love between couples is a joint agreement to engage in mutual intoxication and romantic narrative-making, which is only possible between individuals who agree to adhere to a more or less commonly understood romantic script and to thereby perform their parts, and in such a way as to ensure that neither will lose face. What can be more shattering than closing one’s eyes during what one imagines is a critical romantic moment—to find nothing coming, and instead opening one’s eyes to find oneself being stared at in disgust for having misread the moment, or worse yet, ridiculed for being old, ugly, unattractive, or needy? Nussbaum notes

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that love is “fundamentally a relation, not something in a single person at all—a relation that involves the give and take, over time, of feeling, thought, benefits, conversations” (344). As un-sexy and everyday as it sounds, it takes two to form, negotiate, and maintain a relationship, romantic or otherwise, and the key to this relationship is mutual agreement to engage with one another in the most intimate and immediate terms. Subsequently, the norms that a couple needs to adhere to are the norms that govern a community of two. It is in this sense that an “intrinsic morality” in “sexual interaction” exists apart from the norms of the macro world, as sociologist Jetse Sprey writes. This morality “pertains to sex within and outside wedlock and to heterosexual as well as homosexual relationships” (435). There is a micro face-to-face order—an autonomous institution of sexuality (Sprey 432)—that involves exchange: sexual interaction “always constitute[s] a reciprocal person-to-person relationship, even under conditions in which it is sold or bargained for,” so that in analyzing them, it is done “within a framework of exchange” (Sprey 435). Theoretically, writes Sprey, there are three forms of such exchanges, “‘pure gift,’” “barter,” and the “‘market’ form.” Theoretically, gifts are given without an expectation of repayment; barters involve “gifts of equal value” so that the overall value of what is exchanged more or less balances out; and the “‘market’ form” involves money (Sprey 436). In the case of intimate relationships, it is “an empirical rather than analytical question” whether persons can “develop associations that are sufficiently trusting to allow for pure giving” (Sprey 438), but in general, even unconditional giving has conditions regarding when it can be safely conducted. Looking back at Milly’s case helps us see how much confusion is capable of emerging and how ambiguous this classification of face-to-face gestures of giving can be. Milly’s final bequest of money is highly ambiguous, for she may, for one, be engaged in an act of repayment rather than of giving. In addition, even in the latter case, her gift of money is only a pure gift if there is no consciousness of an exchange involved on the part of all the parties involved in the giving and taking. Milly’s act of giving could qualify as a barter or even a market exchange, especially since money is involved. Ironically, Densher rejects Milly’s money because he feels it is a gift and therefore a burden, and Kate must reject it because it is felt to be a barter or a market exchange, which makes Milly’s money unacceptable. As a rule, therefore, giving relationships including sexual ones operate under the same essential rules of reciprocity and mutuality, and only on rare occasions are such conditions successfully achieved between two parties.

  Georg Simmel senses this rule operating at the most immediate level when he talks about individuals “looking at one another” (111): “One cannot take through the eye without at the same time giving. The eye reveals to the other the soul that he or she seeks to reveal. Since this obviously occurs only during the direct look from one eye into another, the most complete reciprocity in the entire sphere of human relationships is achieved here” (112). Seeing cannot be achieved without being seen. A look, therefore, signals one’s conscious

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In addition to such rules of mutuality and reciprocity, intimate relationships involve a degree of exclusivity and privacy, as expressed by the phrase “a community of two”: Sexuality, when institutionalized, is expected to remain a very private world, one whose content lies, by cultural legitimation, outside the realm of full publicity. But it will not be a normless realm. Furthermore, it does not exist in a societal vacuum. Privacy—in the same way as secrecy—defines its own boundaries, the areas about which it is private. (Sprey 434)

This is why the mere suspicion of adultery is so shocking. Not only a public contract but also your privacy is threatened. In addition, the starring role in the performance of passion that was yours, exclusively, is abruptly handed over to somebody else. It is as though you are interchangeable. The person you thought you knew is also suddenly a stranger. Who, then, are you? Who, then, is Maggie Verver? Identity itself is at stake when a private, intimate relationship is threatened. I contend that sexuality in The Golden Bowl will be more fruitfully understood when thus viewed in the context of sociality and intimacy. As George Leonard writes, “In the very act of constraining erotic expression, the Victorians extracted sex from the matrix of social relations, made it lurid, then held it up to view as something alien, an abstraction” (99). And when relationships, sexual or otherwise, are reframed in the context of intimacy, we will find that there is considerable ambiguity in the way relationships actually are in contrast to how the related individuals intend them to be: an existential kind of confusion in the way relationships are felt to be, surfaces. It is no wonder, for microsocially, intimate reciprocal relationships exist over and above the public definitions of relationships in the macro order, even as these public definitions influence the interpersonal dynamics that exist on the face-to-face level. John R. Scudder Jr. and Anne H. Bishop note that “lover relationships are believed to be the only ones in which men and women can have deep enduring relationships” (23). Laurence Sterne, through Tristram Shandy, briefly alludes to the ambiguity in, and possibilities of, relations between a man and a woman: “Surely, Madam, a friendship between the two sexes may subsist, and be supported without—Fy, Mr. Shandy! without any thing, Madam, but that tender and delicious sentiment, which ever mixes in friendship where there is a difference or unconscious agreement to relate to another human being, charged as it is with ample ambiguity when it comes to the issue of intention and the degree of desired involvement.    Psychiatrist Lillian B. Rubin discusses the displaced status of friendships in comparison with kinship relationships: “without institutional form, without a clearly defined set of norms for behavior or an agreed-upon set of reciprocal rights and obligations, without even a language that makes distinctions between the different kinds of relationships to which we apply the word, there can be no widely shared agreement about what is a friend” (8).

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of sex” (29). It may very well be, then, that irrespective of their public positions and kinship relations, Prince Amerigo and Charlotte Stant/Mrs. Charlotte Verver are mutually more intimate with one another than with their respective spouses. However, given their commitments to their social contracts, which I will illustrate are strong, an actual sexual liaison is as improbable as it is possible, for the only conditions that have to be met for the latter event to take place are mutuality and the sense of rightness about their actions. Even so, as John H. Gagnon and William Simon write, the “elaboration of the erotic or its direct expression” is frequently suppressed by “an anticipation of an anticipated return to that larger social role, that more continuous sense of self” (26). The norms of the macrosocial order interfere with the claims of the microsocial one, and sex per se is frequently not that important, for not only is guilt a powerful inhibitor but also much can be lost if things go wrong—yet important enough that if the individuals involved feel it is an inevitable outcome of a perfectly natural state of affairs for which they need not feel ashamed, they may take their chances. In the latter case, however, they would make sure that their privacy is as fiercely protected as their sense of rightness, and therefore honor, about the occasion. Either the sanctity of the public self or the private one, even if lying should be involved in the latter case, needs to be safeguarded if Amerigo and Charlotte are to continue to feel intact. Empirically, morality may only be a matter of framing. In addition to the constraints of the macro order over the micro one, or requirements of the micro order impinging on those of the macro in matters of intimacy, the paradoxical relationship between intimacy and autonomy needs to be briefly discussed and noted. Social linguist Deborah Tannen employs Schopenhauer’s example of porcupines huddling together to survive the cold of winter in her discussion of the nature of human relationships. The animals need one another to survive the cold, but must refrain from getting too close, so that they do not prick one another. Tannen qualifies her comparison by stating that this illustration is misleading because for human beings, the need to achieve proximity and the need to maintain distance occur not in sequence but simultaneously: the social individual requires assurance that he is not alone in the universe at the very same time that he needs to ensure he is an autonomous and differentiated being in a faceless crowd (31–4). Wanting both to be a self-determining, autonomous individual and to lose oneself in the intimacy of a community at the same time, however, is problematic. It is wanting to have one’s cake and eat it, too, although this is precisely what the human condition entails and what Maggie, it seems, wants: “It’s not just a conflict—feeling torn between two alternatives—or ambivalence— feeling two ways about one thing. It is a double bind because whatever we do to serve one need necessarily violates the other” (Tannen 34). Involvement with others is a double-binding, double-edged sword. Still, individuals mingle with others, for doing so has rewards that counterbalance the drawbacks. On the one hand, involvement with another is the 

  Lisa Goff alerted me to this passage.

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only way intimacy—that is, a sense of unity and solidarity with others—can be achieved. In fact, when a rare moment of real or imagined mutual understanding and trust materializes, it brings about a kind of euphoric consummation—such as the ecstasy and elation that ex-lovers Prince Amerigo and Mrs. Charlotte Verver experience at Portland Place as they vow to handle their respective spouses, Maggie Verver and Adam Verver, with the utmost tenderness and care. Merle A. Williams notes the sense of exhilarating intimacy between Amerigo and Charlotte when she writes that James “shows Charlotte finding herself in the Prince, just as he finds himself in her through their embrace and their fusion of consciousness.” I contend that it is “their fusion of consciousness” (182) that makes them suspect, so that whether they literally embrace in the following passage is a relatively minor point: And so for a minute [Charlotte and Amerigo] stood together as strongly held and as closely confronted as any hour of their easier past even had seen them. They were silent at first, only facing and faced, only grasping and grasped, only meeting and met. “It’s sacred,” he said at last. “It’s sacred,” she breathed back to him. They vowed it, gave it out and took it in, drawn, by their intensity, more closely together. Then of a sudden, through this tightened circle, as at the issue of a narrow strait into the sea beyond, everything broke up, broke down, gave way, melted and mingled. Their lips sought their lips, their pressure their response and their response their pressure; with a violence that had sighed itself the next moment to the longest and deepest of stillnesses they passionately sealed their pledge. (I: 312)

Then there is the moment of complete tranquility that Maggie experiences with her father Adam during their silent communion at their sequestered bench: … what [Adam and Maggie Verver] most finally exhaled into the evening air as their eyes mildly met may well have been a kind of helplessness in their felicity. Their rightness, the justification of everything—something they so felt the pulse of—sat there with them; but they might have been asking themselves a little blankly to what further use they could put anything so perfect. (I: 167)

In the midst of these real or imagined communions of perfect coalescence, all is well. The need to deal with the outside world, with its agonizing complications of interpersonal relationships and the accompanying dangers of embarrassment, temporarily recedes. In this way, achieving a sense of oneness in both cases can almost be as gratifying, exhilarating, and as sexy as achieving the real thing. As communication theorists William R. Cupach and Brian H. Spitzberg write, “Mutuality is an ideal state,” so that these rarely achieved mutual relationships— sexually consummated or not—“can provide immense satisfaction when partners converge on some personally important expectations and meanings” (34).

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It is small wonder, then, that critics almost unanimously see an adulterous affair taking or about to take place between Charlotte and Amerigo in the first scene, and that Sears, for example, sees the father and daughter mutually bound by “a passionate attachment to each other” (165) in the second. Kaston writes that James’s language in the first instance “reflects a movement toward supremely collaborative love-making” (174), while Joseph J. Firebaugh views Maggie’s act of marrying her father to Charlotte as “a symbolic incest” (404). Robert Marks labels Maggie’s situation “an out-and-out case of father-fixation,” adding that Maggie has “remained in the Oedipus complex” (111, 112). Laurence Bedwell Holland also denounces both instances by stating that the “familial affection” between Maggie and her father after they both marry turns into “instituted incest” and that “the affair of passion” between Charlotte and Amerigo “culminates in an adulterous betrayal” (356–7). Critics must also sense that achieving a sense of oneness and mutuality in their wish to be with one another is a fundamentally consummating and pleasure-giving experience, whatever its other implications. This is the experience that James’s social beings strive to achieve: intimacy, with its accompanying sense of euphoria, harmony, and understanding with another that enables them to feel spontaneous, uninhibited, and whole. On the other hand, as Erving Goffman illustrates, being with another or among others in public—or, to a lesser degree, in private—involves conforming to an elaborate set of tacitly agreed-upon rules, and unconsciously or habitually accommodating these rules can lead to a patterned if harmoniously uniform life, what Maggie calls not leading “as regards other people, any life at all” (I: 175). Even when Adam enjoys the company of his daughter in private, their interaction is defined by unspoken rules that are as socially stipulated as they are tacitly observed by father and daughter. In short, at no point in the narrative is there a sense that anything “occurs in a near social vacuum” (Sears 165). Furthermore, once self-consciousness steps in, the same unified ceremonial order is capable of making one feel as though one were performing in public or on stage. This is how Maggie feels when she is awaiting Amerigo’s postponed return from Matcham at her own house instead of at her father’s, wearing “her newest frock” (II: 12): “It fell for retrospect into a succession of moments that were watchable still; almost in the manner of the different things done during a scene on the stage, some scene so acted as to have left a great impression on the tenant of one of the stalls” (II: 11). Maggie awakens to the sensibility of the performing individual in the theater of her life. Even in the mere act of smiling, Maggie soon comes to feel as though she were “humbugging,” which feels “very nearly convulsive” (II: 79). Hers is the instinctive awareness of a dramaturgical performance, where self-consciousness of her till-then habitual actions creates a sense of theatricality, and therefore of speciousness. What is not carried out spontaneously must be false, goes Maggie’s felt argument. Goffman explains: … ordinary social intercourse is itself put together as a scene is put together, by the exchange of dramatically inflated actions, counteractions, and terminating

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replies. Scripts even in the hands of unpracticed players can come to life because life itself is a dramatically enacted thing. All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify. (Presentation 72)

In thus facing Prince Amerigo in her budding self-consciousness, Maggie becomes abruptly aware—through the “silent look” that the husband and wife exchange in “fear”—that her relationship with Amerigo is a product of “their equilibrium,” which is “everything” (II: 17). Experiencing, as for the first time, the oppressive discomfort that comes with not being able to take things for granted, Maggie discovers that she will sink or swim, depending on whether she and Amerigo are able to keep up appearances. Even so, when Maggie later fails to control or diversify the harmonious unity that seems to bind them all, she feels manipulated. Consequently, she feels she needs to “suddenly jump from the coach” (II: 24), the figurative “family coach” that is pulled by the accommodating efforts of Amerigo and Charlotte, and that Maggie sees she and her father are “not so much as pushing” (II: 23). In fact, Charlotte and Amerigo’s “business of social representation” is “an affair of living always in harness,” a description which gives us cause to wonder whether it is Charlotte and Amerigo, Adam and Maggie, or all four who are obliged to “liv[e] always in harness” (II: 22). The very same figurative coach that Maggie devises and implements, and of which she enjoys the services by encouraging her father to propose marriage to her friend Charlotte Stant is, in the twinkling of an eye, transformed into an institution of detention and bondage, a “gilded cage” (II: 44). Oppressively constraining, the situation begins to resemble for Maggie the state of consenting to a genteel but nevertheless binding form of subjugation: “we’ve suddenly waked up in it and found ourselves rushing along very much as if we had been put in during sleep—shoved like a pair of labelled boxes into the van” (II: 69). Maggie fails to recall when she has ever consented to being put in this train, but Goffman sheds light on this felt state, too. As I have illustrated in the preceding chapters, according to Goffman, interaction is a joint enterprise, and its collapse risks the collapse of the tacit assumptions that uphold it. If it does collapse, the system of meaning lodged in the flow of interaction is jeopardized. It is no wonder, then, that during the moment of “embarrassment” (II: 15) in the aforementioned scene where Maggie awaits Amerigo at their home, Amerigo also works to preserve the structure of their relationship: [Maggie] had only had herself to do something to see how promptly it answered. This consciousness of its having answered with her husband was the uplifting sustaining wave. He had “met” her—she so put it to herself; met her with an effect of generosity and of gaiety in especial, on his coming back to her ready for dinner, which she wore in her breast as the token of an escape for them both from something not quite definite but clearly much less good. Even at that moment in fact her plan had begun to work; she had been, when he brightly reappeared, in the act of plucking it out of the heart of her earnestness—plucking it, in the

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To use an economic analogy, the performance of everyday reality is a concerted enterprise whose respective human investments, claims, and returns depend on the binding payment of all. This obliges all to give what seems to be expected and receive what is given, that is, to participate in the economy of giving and taking, which Maggie calls “the flower of participation” (II: 26). Although most critics— including Frederick C. Crews, who views James’s social world as comprised of a “bond of genteel, domestic, but quite immoral hypocrisy between all the characters of the novel” (98)—accurately register how Maggie’s world feels to her, they are inaccurate in their analysis of the situation as a whole. James’s world, including Maggie’s, is elaborate and calculated, one in which dissimulation and feigning are socially called for. The participants need to properly adjust themselves in a way contributive to the unremitting task of keeping up appearances and protecting the system of meaning lodged in them. As Maggie empirically intuits without being able to formulate it, everyday living is a precarious and demanding business, whose “equilibrium” is indeed “everything” (II: 17). This, then, is the social context of James’s narrative, within which his centers of consciousness interact. The most generally accepted reading of The Golden Bowl makes Maggie out to be a successful negotiator of appearances. Even if the reader should take issue with Krook’s claim that the “story of The Golden Bowl is even more simple, bare and melodramatic than that of The Wings of the Dove” (232), he or she is likely to agree with Sears’s claim that “the events are clear enough, the action is well defined, there is a definite describable ‘story’” and that the “ambiguity in the novel is a function of the dizzying alterations in the moral assumptions, the shifting worlds created from them” (181). The broadly accepted “story” would go thus: Maggie senses something amiss when her husband and her father’s wife are delayed in returning from Matcham. Consequently, she is newly awakened to a self-consciousness, which makes her begin to see things differently. Seeing things differently, she detects and later becomes convinced that her husband Amerigo and her father’s wife Charlotte are having an affair, but instead of exposing them, which would entail a high price for all, Maggie chooses “the most loving” and “the most intelligent” path (Krook 269), and adeptly negotiates a resolution to the situation that imputes blame on no one. In the words of John A. Clair, Maggie “protect[s] them all from the hurtful knowledge that she knows of the ‘adulterous interlude’” (101). Consequently, Maggie orchestrates Adam’s removal of Charlotte to American City in a genteel form of captivity and thereby repossesses her husband, Amerigo, so that all thenceforth manage to live more or less happily ever after. This, then, is the official story.

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What must be brought to critical attention here is that this broadly accepted reading has as its foundation the consensus on the purported affair between Charlotte and Prince Amerigo. It is the affair that motivates and legitimates Maggie’s somewhat enigmatic and obsessive words and actions in the second half of James’s narrative. Without the adultery, critics’ view of Maggie as a successful negotiator of appearances collapses. The majority of critics contend that an affair does take place between the two former lovers, Charlotte and Amerigo. However, as Clair notes, “Outside of Maggie’s suspicions and accusations there is no proof that either Charlotte or the Prince have lied about anything” (100). Moreover, as Oscar Cargill notes, James “neglects to show the lovers between the sheets … preferring to clothe the clandestine affair with that mystery and uncertainty characteristic of such affairs and succeeding so well that even careful readers have a sense (which James desired) of bafflement with the ‘facts’” (398–9). Jean Kimball notes ambiguity, writing that Amerigo and Charlotte’s “good faith should be seriously considered” (461). J. Hillis Miller also admits, “We are never told [that Maggie believes she knows Charlotte has been sleeping with her husband, under her nose, so to speak] in so many words or shown a direct representation of the event. We have only indirect signs and insinuations. The reader no more has certain knowledge than does Maggie” (271–2). Even Yeazell, who decides to understand that the purported affair does take place, writes that “by prompting us to question closely how we do ‘know’ that Charlotte and the Prince are lovers,” we are “force[d] … to confront the deepest source of our own uncertainties—to acknowledge how epistemologically unsettling the actual experience of reading James’s late fiction can be” (3). What is clear from all this is that it is unclear whether anything—as in a literal sexual liaison—takes place. With the facts unclear, proof not available, and ambiguity acknowledged all around, it seems only reasonable to trace the route by which knowledge of the purported affair reaches Maggie, for James’s narrative is essentially what Maxwell Geismar aptly calls “a detective story of the obsessed psyche” (323)—Maggie’s psyche, and, vicariously, the readers’, for they are compelled to be as absorbed in Maggie’s adventure as she is, if they are to participate at all. It is only when the shopkeeper of Bloomsbury Street comes to see Maggie that Maggie reaches the more or less final conclusion that her husband has been unfaithful. The shopkeeper comes to inform Maggie that Amerigo and Charlotte were seen together at his shop on the eve of Maggie’s wedding, discussing the purchase of a golden bowl. Maggie is shocked. She not only does not know about her husband’s visit to the shop, but also realizes that she has not been informed of the intimate relationship that existed between Charlotte and Amerigo before Maggie and Amerigo marry. The shock Maggie receives here is similar to the shock Milly Theale receives in The Wings of the Dove when her companion Susan   See William R. Cupach and Brian H. Spitzberg for how easily things can go wrong in relationships to the point of obsession.

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Stringham informs her that her friend Kate Croy is intimate with Merton Densher: Milly sees “as in a clear cold wave that there was a possible account of their relations in which the quantity her new friend had told her might have figured as small, as smallest, beside the quantity she had n’t” (Wings I: 187). Milly wonders why her friend has not told Milly about him and whether she is not worthy of Kate’s confidence. Likewise, Maggie wonders why her husband has not told her about Charlotte and whether she is not worthy of his confidence. What differentiates Maggie’s case from Milly’s, however, is that Maggie has a mental picture of Charlotte and Prince Amerigo together in intimacy even before the shopkeeper’s visit, one created through the workings of Maggie’s probing imagination, though neither Charlotte nor Amerigo has as much as hinted at their previous intimacy to Maggie. It is therefore almost as if the Bloomsbury shopkeeper comes to confirm a foregone conclusion, or, as Maggie later puts it to herself, an “acquired conviction” (II: 237). Nevertheless, “as in a clear cold wave” (Wings I: 187), which is how Milly felt, Maggie feels gaspingly overwhelmed by the mental picture of Amerigo and Charlotte in intimacy. Amerigo calmly explains that he and Charlotte were out hunting for a wedding present for Maggie, which is why they visited the shop together in secret, but since they failed to find anything appropriate, they could not produce the gift, which is why Maggie never received anything after all. Depending on how the outing with his ex-lover Charlotte on the eve of his wedding is understood, Amerigo is either guilty or not guilty. Either way, he is guilty of a significant oversight. He fails, as do most critics, to understand what lies at the core of Maggie’s shock and sense of desperation, so that no amount of matter-of-fact explanation, true or not, can mitigate Maggie’s acute sense of exclusion. Perhaps Maggie’s friend Fanny Assingham is the only one able to discern Maggie’s sense of despair even if only for a flicker of a second, and an inattentive reader might miss it altogether. Indeed, Fanny becomes very quickly lost—and readers with her—in the maze of her own complications, complicated further by Maggie’s own. Fanny plays a crucial role in forming Maggie’s knowledge. Maggie’s final “acquired conviction” (II: 237), her procured knowledge, is a synthesized one. Maggie’s “own fermentation” (II: 143) occurs in stages during the ongoing backstage talks between the two women, and the shopkeeper’s arrival triggers its completion. During the climactic moment when Fanny in her elation dashes the golden bowl against the floor as if to finalize their constructed narrative, Amerigo enters—as though the women’s discussion takes on physical form and speaks on its own behalf—saying, “And what in the world, my dear, did you mean by it?” His speech “[breaks] upon the two women’s absorption with a sharpness almost equal to the smash of the crystal.” Readers absorbed in Fanny and Maggie’s account   Maggie tells her father that she and Charlotte never discuss their love life because that would be vulgar (I: 186). Fanny, on the other hand, suggests that Charlotte did not want to diminish the Prince’s chances of marriage by speaking of their past (I: 84).

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of the situation hear the smash of the crystal. However, what is as “sharp[ly]” smashed here is the “absorption” (II: 179) of the two women who have been deep in discussion. If, as Paul B. Armstrong writes, Maggie’s thinking process is “circular,” with her having to have a “belief about the whole (the adulterous relation)” in order “to make sense of the parts (the Bloomsbury outing and her other suspicions),” while “her assumption about the whole is an inference from those parts,” then, this “hermeneutic circle that characterizes all understanding” is accomplished not on her own but with the help of Maggie’s confidante, Fanny. Together, they create the “hermeneutic circle” (Phenomenology 166) of Maggie’s understanding, that is, her knowledge. And while Fanny thinks she has finalized the issue by dramatically smashing the bowl on the floor, those who are violently startled by the act begin to wonder. Without going into a discussion of the validity or invalidity of the power of intuition, philosophical or otherwise, I would instead like to point out that one of the silent arguments supporting the validity of Maggie’s intuitive knowledge is that it is a product not only of her own conjectures and suppositions but also of input, reinforcement, and lack of resistance from an outside source of information, Fanny. With Fanny’s husband, Bob Assingham, given full attention, the formula is thus: Fanny is to Maggie what Bob is to Fanny. Critics have seldom noted Bob’s role as Fanny’s confidante, counselor, and psychotherapist. However, Bob makes Fanny, “when they were together, talk, but as if for some other person; who was in fact for the most part herself.” Fanny thinks out her thoughts with, or rather, with or without, Bob, and continues “undivertedly” (I: 278) to pursue her agenda even when factors that contradict her scenario emerge. This Maggie also does with Fanny. Maggie, too, thinks out her thoughts with or without Fanny, and continues to pursue her agenda even when unanticipated factors that contradict her line of reasoning emerge. Moreover, as is the case with Susan Stringham vis-à-vis Milly Theale, Maria Gostrey vis-à-vis Lambert Strether, and Fanny vis-à-vis Maggie, Bob is ready to embrace everything about his adopted charge, Fanny, during her moments of crisis: “[Fanny] must reassure him, [Bob] was made to feel, absolutely in her own way. He’d adopt it and conform to it as soon as he should be able to make it out. The only thing was that it took such incalculable twists and turns” (I: 371). With Bob’s support of his wife, Fanny can therefore play her tune, as it were. Says Fanny to Bob, “You give me a point de repère outside myself—which is where I like it. Now I can work round you” (I: 284). Fanny, in turn, functions as a point de repère for Maggie, who constructs her narrative around an obliging and supportive Fanny, so that Bob is responsible for and involved in Fanny’s achieved narrative, while Fanny is responsible for and involved in Maggie’s.



 See, for example, Merle A. Williams and Paul B. Armstrong (Phenomenology).

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In addition, when Fanny engages in fitful flights of observation and conjectures with Bob, she is not just gossiping, or augmenting10 or mitigating the readers’ burden with her comic relief,11 or “creat[ing], consider[ing], and discard[ing] endless possibilities, concurrently allowing the readers to test their own hypotheses against them” (Young 385).12 Fanny is more than a mere instrument of comprehension. She is a participant in her own right: her exchanges with Bob, as Sears points out, have “implications beyond the nature of their personal relationship and in the broader social context of the novel”; “[t]he setting is private, the tone intimate, the audience no one but the actors themselves, and the content an elaborate effort on Fanny’s part to divest herself of the responsibility attendant on being a tamperer” (156). Although Sears does not seem to acknowledge Fanny’s contribution to the construction of Maggie’s narrative, she insightfully points out that Fanny is engaged in a pressing agenda of her own, that of purging herself of her sense of moral culpability in the entire affair. During the process, Fanny encounters and interacts with her charge, Maggie, who has pressing agendas of her own. Their narrative is therefore a product of the two women’s need to forge an equation that helps Fanny feel less culpable and simultaneously justifies Maggie in supposing that there is something between her husband and her young mother-in-law. That is, Fanny—with Bob—unwittingly reinforces, condones, or even creates Maggie’s narrative, and therefore, that of the reader-critics’ who empathetically follow her lead. If Maggie misreads the affair, she does not do so alone. Fanny has a story of her own, and she provides valuable insights into how the social world is generally felt and experienced by the other social beings in James’s narrative. Indeed, in the private, backstage region of the theater of everyday life, Fanny very seriously engages in a full-blown—seemingly private—attempt at 10   Beyond her function as “the most significant of all the self-styled godmothers” (Lebowitz 60), Fanny Assingham as confidante, according to M. Corona Sharp, serves the purpose of “supplement[ing] the insights given the reader through the central intelligence” (216). 11   Christopher Nash, for example, views Fanny as a ficelle, who, like Maria Gostrey and Susan Stringham, is equipped with a “hyperactive, searching imagination” (298). Fanny has “only a nominal rather than a real function.” In Nash’s estimation, the “nominal” function, however, is “informed by a profound, extrinsic, compositional efficacy” to enable the reader to be relieved of the “burden of abstract disquisition, suspended on an everstrained narrative thread” by having the ficelle render it in a form of “vital substance” (299). 12  Arlene Young further elaborates on Fanny’s function by bringing in the notion of what she calls “hypothetical discourse: dialogues or monologues which are presented as quoted speech on the page, though not in fact (or fiction) ever verbalized” (382). The reader, through Fanny’s guidance as a ficelle, is to find Fanny supported by the aforementioned device of hypothetical discourse. Ora Segal, too, writes that the Assinghams’ “central function is interpretative and evaluative rather than expository and informative” (208).

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self-vindication. However, it is, after all, intensely social and therefore quasipublic in nature. According to Goffman, “backstage” is where “illusions and impressions are openly constructed,” and where “the performer can relax” and “drop his front, forgo speaking his lines, and step out of character” (Presentation 112). With standards of politeness and decorum somewhat relaxed and various liberties taken within limits, Fanny—like Strether with Maria, or Milly with Susan—is able to gradually reveal to herself her own intuitions, feelings, fears, and needs, as well as make out the contours of her future dealings with Charlotte, Prince Amerigo, Maggie, and Adam, thanks to Bob’s encouragement. Backstage is also where Maggie and Fanny have out their pressing agendas with one another, although when Fanny is with Maggie, she performs on a significantly more public level than when she is with Bob. In addition, even when Fanny interacts backstage with her husband, there are several levels of “backstageness,” depending on how comfortable she feels about exposing herself with him. The dilemma of the well-meaning, conscientious meddler is that there is no way for the meddler to ensure her or his intended outcome. If the result is good, the meddler is pleased; if not, she or he is apt to feel disastrously culpable, and Fanny, for one, will not rest until a resolution to her troubles, real or imagined, is found, for it is Fanny who first introduces Amerigo to Maggie. Fanny, in her ups and downs, dramatizes the kind of mental “arithmetic” (I: 76) in which the socialized, moral Jamesian characters are obliged constantly to engage, as she adds, subtracts, and converts into equations all related aspects of the movement contributing to the happiness or unhappiness of the foursome—Maggie, Amerigo, Charlotte, and Adam. Fanny feels morally accountable for the four’s happiness. She becomes, in Yeazell’s words, a “Jamesian double agent” (98). Moreover, she does not “want to be wrong” (I: 372), that is, for her, to blunder in such a way as to judge or understand others unfairly. This is why Fanny is obliged in her voracious conscientiousness to continue her mathematical shuffling until she can arrive at a formula that minimizes her sense of guilt without judging anyone unfairly. All Jamesian characters engage in this kind of arithmetic: they do not like to be morally poor, and would like to have a balanced moral bankbook. They work to maintain their felt worth, as does Amerigo, for example. Thanks to Adam’s tendency to, in Amerigo’s assessment, overestimate and overappreciate his Italian son-in-law, Amerigo is highly “appreciated”: [Amerigo] was being thus, in renewed instalments, perpetually paid in; he already reposed in the bank as a value, but subject, in this comfortable way, to repeated, to infinite endorsement. The net result of all of which moreover was that the young man had no wish to see his value diminish. He himself decidedly had n’t fixed it—the “figure” was a conception all of Mr. Verver’s own. Certainly however everything must be kept up to it; … (I: 325)

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As Anat Pick states, this passage is indeed “not concerned with the supposed reduction of the Prince into an object of economic exchange, but rather with the deterministic implications that a perpetuate process of installment and endorsement entails.” Indeed, everybody—Charlotte, Maggie, Adam, Fanny, Bob, and Amerigo—needs to have a clear conscience and not be in breach of any social contract. Highly aware of what is required to keep their moral account free of debt, they conduct themselves appropriately, even if they need to adapt to “the novel’s rhetoric of fixity, arrangement, and place” (Pick 124). Generosity is never to be taken advantage of, kindnesses must be repaid in kind, and sympathy must be awarded to the person in genuine distress. Moreover, all the less obvious but nevertheless equally binding rules of social behavior that govern face-to-face interaction must also be honored, for, as Fanny aptly states, “the ‘forms’ … are two thirds of conduct” (I: 390). Thanks to Fanny’s unique disposition, her predicament is rather complicated. When Bob asks how many cases there are on Fanny’s hands, plenty are provided: “There’s Maggie’s and the Prince’s, and there’s the Prince’s and Charlotte’s.” “Oh yes; and then,” the Colonel scoffed, “there’s Charlotte’s and the Prince’s.” “There’s Maggie’s and Charlotte’s,” she went on—“and there’s also Maggie’s and mine. I think too that there’s Charlotte’s and mine. Yes,” she mused, “Charlotte’s and mine is certainly a case. In short, you see, there are plenty. But I mean … to keep my head.” (I: 75)

As Fanny chooses to emphasize, her case with Charlotte “is certainly a case” (I: 75), and it begins as soon as Fanny introduces Amerigo to Maggie. With Maggie and Amerigo’s engagement, Fanny already feels culpable for Charlotte’s conceivable unhappiness, which, as Bob correctly assures her, is not her fault. However, as Charlotte recognizes, Fanny would “be disappointed if … she did n’t get something to put between the teeth of her so restless rumination, that cultivation of the fear … that she might have ‘gone too far’ in her irrepressible interest in other lives” (I: 253–4). Fanny lives on complications, and thanks to her disposition and to Bob’s “fondness, in domestic discussion, for the superlative degree” (I: 67), Fanny continues to feel responsible. She proposes to “make up” for any wrong she may have inflicted, so that in order to offset her culpability, she makes it her “duty” (I: 85, 86) to provide Charlotte with a good husband, for only then can she prove that Charlotte is “cured” (I: 87). Even after Amerigo and Maggie marry, and Charlotte and Adam marry, Fanny’s anxieties are immediately fed anew at the Ambassador’s party, and they are more complicated than meets the eye. At first, Bob’s “proved sensibility to the occasion” seems to inform Fanny that he “had been struck with something, even he, poor dear man; and that for this to have occurred there must have been much to be struck with” (I: 284). Although Bob himself “clearly, from want of habit, scarce recognised himself in the imputation” (I: 283), Fanny immediately decides

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that Charlotte and Amerigo are improperly intimate in public. However, Fanny is just as suddenly confronted with the unyielding impression that she may have been mistaken in her initial critical judgment of them, thanks to Charlotte’s quiet resistance to Fanny’s imputations. Indeed, as Ferner Nuhn points out, “the Prince and Charlotte have excellent grounds for astonishment and resentment on their own side” (134). It is important to point out, however, that neither of them openly resents or forthrightly complains, which makes them morally intact, manner-wise, so that Fanny, in sight of this, “vaguely heave[s], pant[s] a little but trying not to show it, turn[s] about, from some inward spring, in her seat” (I: 257). She feels she is confronted with “intimations of her mistake” and feels something approaching “terror” (I: 276, 277). No wonder, for Charlotte only speaks “with the noblest moderation of tone,” presenting “the image of high pale lighted disappointment … as of a creature patient and lonely in her splendour” (I: 263). Despite defensive denials and escapades, Fanny is unable to deny the impression that in her eagerness to speak on behalf of her other adopted charges Maggie and Adam Verver, she has rashly and wrongly imputed to Charlotte what she does not seem to deserve in her accommodating and noble despair. Can Charlotte, wonders Fanny, indeed be “by no merit of [her] own, just fixed—fixed as fast as a pin stuck up to its head in a cushion” (I: 256)? Is “the truth of the matter” one in which “Maggie thinks more on the whole of fathers than of husbands” (I: 257)? With Amerigo supporting Charlotte’s claim to acquiescence when he amiably explains their need to occasionally “stretch” their legs as their figurative boat is “a good deal tied up at the dock, or anchored … out in the stream” (I: 270), Fanny sees that Charlotte’s account of their fixed state, about which nothing can be done, is very possibly true. Charlotte sees that Fanny recognizes this when she witnesses “poor Fanny left to stare at her incurred ‘score,’ chalked up in so few strokes on the wall” (I: 264). Fanny does see: both Charlotte and Amerigo are only abiding by the rules of reciprocity in a give-andtake arrangement, their taking what Adam and Maggie seem to expect them to take in social payment to their benefactors.13 It is not surprising that neither Charlotte nor Amerigo complains. Both are determined to live a moral life, as are Densher and Kate with their felt stigmas. Amerigo’s “general attitude toward dangers from within” is wariness of his ancestral background, his Roman blood: “Its presence in him was like the consciousness of some expugnable scent in which his clothes, his whole person, his hands and the 13  Robert Marks discusses how Charlotte and Amerigo contribute to the formation of the arrangement that serves to fix them: “In addition, they have on their consciences some sort of return for services rendered … Their consideration, their improbable goodness, which makes so much of their value, thus works to help Maggie keep in existence the situation holding them all. And they are, every one of them, people who ‘observe the forms,’ who know what inferiority the opposite of doing so is so much an implication of” (115–16).

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hair of his head, might have been steeped as in some chemical bath: the effect was nowhere in particular, yet he constantly felt himself at the mercy of the cause.” Amerigo feels, as Kate does, the curse of his ancestral blood that threatens to engulf and consume him unless he is attentive—for what can be more surely inherited than blood? His intelligence therefore tells him “to feel quite humble, to wish not to be the least hard or voracious, not to insist on his own side of the bargain, to warn himself in short against arrogance and greed.” As was the case with Kate, he, too, wants “some new history that should, so far as possible, contradict, and even if need be flatly dishonour, the old” (I: 16). Amerigo hopes Adam’s wealth will make this possible for him. Like Kate, Amerigo is in pursuit of the honor that only money seems capable of realizing. He is willing to pay for it, and this figures as a mutually acceptable exchange for Amerigo. Fanny recognizes this when she sees that Prince Amerigo “after all visibly had on his conscience some sort of return for services rendered” (I: 268), while Adam also recognizes how hard his son-in-law works: Amerigo “really worked, poor young man, for acceptance, since he worked so constantly for comprehension” (I: 158). Indeed, far from resenting his fatherin-law, Amerigo feels grateful that Adam “took care of his relation to Maggie as he took care, and apparently always would, of everything else”: [Adam] relieved [Amerigo] of all anxiety about his married life in the same manner in which he relieved him on the score of his bank-account. And as he performed the latter office by communicating with the bankers, so the former sprang as directly from his good understanding with his daughter. This understanding had, wonderfully—that was in high evidence—the same deep intimacy as the commercial, the financial association founded, far down, on a community of interest. (I: 292–3)

Although critics such as Philip M. Weinstein interpret such passages to represent “[p]rices, advantages, other people as the currency used, chances that may be spoiled—it is all pragmatic, shrewd, detached, disturbingly close to a business deal” (187), reimbursement to those from whom one receives is socially stipulated and moral. Were it not for Amerigo making way for the father, the father would not be able to enjoy his get-togethers with his daughter, while without Adam’s taking over Amerigo’s role as husband, Amerigo would be at a loss as to how he should relate to his wife: Amerigo does not know either Adam or Adam’s daughter very well. From the beginning, Amerigo is puzzled and even vaguely troubled about the Americans. It seems enigmatic to Amerigo that Fanny should want to help him “unsolicited and unrecompensed” (I: 21) and it is as though there is “a thickness of white air that was like a dazzling curtain of light, concealing as darkness conceals, yet of the colour of milk or of snow” (I: 22). Amerigo is bewildered at what the good-natured Americans make of him with their “scale” and “measure,” which is the “shrouded object” (I: 24). To his dismay, he is constantly overpaid and over-endorsed for mysterious contributions he is not conscious of making. His

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“curves,” which his own world takes for granted and which seem nothing more than appropriate repayment for what he receives, are “unconceived,” “unexpected,” and “important” to the Ververs: “[Amerigo] was never even yet sure of how, at this, that or the other point, he would strike them; they felt remarkably, so often, things he had n’t meant, and missed not less remarkably, and not less often, things he had” (I: 139). Consequently, in Adam’s presence, Amerigo finds himself “unconfusedly smil[ing]—though indeed as if assenting, from principle and habit, to more than he understood” (I: 138). Infinitely accommodating, Amerigo therefore takes and gives whatever seems expected whether or not he fully understands. Indeed, to Fanny (I: 30–31), Charlotte (I: 309), and, toward the very end, Maggie (II: 347– 8), Amerigo personally and explicitly confesses his inability to understand the Americans. This is not to say that Amerigo is incapable of functioning with them. His “curves” (I: 139), for example, help him tremendously. From the beginning, Amerigo is described as having “always his resource at hand of turning all to the easy” (I: 40). Amerigo, like Charlotte, is highly social. Although Crews marks Amerigo’s total dependency on “the moral initiative of others”—“Fanny, then Maggie, then Adam, then Charlotte, and finally on Maggie again”—and goes on to write that “at no point in the novel does he appear to be standing on his own feet” (99), Crews fails to realize that this is actually a function of his social ability to adapt to the needs of others and to act in any required capacity on the spur of the moment. This comes only with immaculate socialization: Socialization may not so much involve a learning of the many specific details of a single concrete part—often there could not be enough time or energy for this. What does seem to be required of the individual is that he learn enough pieces of expression to be able to “fill in” and manage, more or less, any part that he is likely to be given. (Presentation 73)

Signs of Amerigo’s thorough socialization begin with his ability to detect “the principle of reciprocity” that Adam exercises with Amerigo’s “own man of business, poor Calderoni” (I: 5) in Book First of Volume One. Acknowledging his indebtedness to the wealthy Adam and his extreme fortune in “[c]aptur[ing]” (I: 4) his daughter, Amerigo is nevertheless relieved to find that his own “pecuniary situation” “so little mattered” to the Ververs that he “by that time lived deep into the sense of his advantage,” that is, the advantage of knowing that his creditors are unconscious of his felt debt. Amerigo sees “the waters in which he now floated, tinted … as by the action of some essence, poured from a gold-topped phial, for making one’s bath aromatic” (I: 10). Motivated by his need to avoid the felt stigma of his dubious ancestry, Amerigo soaks in the sweet-scented bath of indulgence that the Ververs prepare for him. Even so, he is determined to fully reciprocate. As Segal points out, Amerigo “wish[es] to curb, suppress, and if possible to exorcise those vestiges of his galantuomo past” through his “good faith, good will, and

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determination to be as ‘good’ as possible in respect of the Ververs, his benefactors” (187–8). Amerigo’s socialization is further illustrated in the way he acts in the face of potential embarrassment at Cadogan Place in the presence of Fanny and Charlotte on the eve of his wedding, and when Charlotte on the staircase at Portland Place later presses him about the one-hour appointment he promised her during the aforementioned encounter at Fanny’s. At Fanny’s Cadogan Place, Amerigo runs into his former lover, Charlotte Stant. Although he senses it is time for him to leave when he sees that Mrs. Assingham has a domestic matter to which to attend, he is overcome by the desire to know where he stands in relation to his ex-lover. The birth of an “idea” (I: 48) immediately makes Amerigo self-conscious, and he weighs and counterweighs his reasons for staying, ultimately deciding to stay and accidentally finding the necessary footing to do so. He is greatly relieved that he does not become “flurried”: “Not to be flurried was the kind of consistency he wanted, just as consistency was the kind of dignity” (I: 49). Amerigo exercises poise, and is infinitely glad he is at least able to carry himself in a socially correct manner in doing something that may appear vaguely petty or immoral: petty if he should be perceived as wary of Charlotte’s company, and immoral if he should be perceived as desiring it. Charlotte saves Amerigo from his dilemma, for “as certain as sunrise or the coming round of saints’ days,” the woman—in this case, Charlotte—works for him: She did it, ever, inevitably, infallibly—she could n’t possibly not do it. It was her nature, it was her life, and the man could always expect it without lifting a finger. This was his, the man’s, any man’s, position and strength—that he had necessarily the advantage, that he only had to wait with a decent patience to be placed, in spite of himself … in the right. (I: 49–50)

Charlotte’s ability and compulsion to exercise tact is described as being different from the kind that the men in James’s narrative exercise. For example, when Amerigo sees the women at Matcham trying to “outdo each other in his interest” (I: 351), he muses that “he had after all gained more from women than he had ever lost by them” (I: 350). What is more, they work for him “without provocation or pressure” but “by the mere play of some vague sense on their part,” which informs him “he was n’t, as a nature, as a character, as a gentleman, in fine, below his remarkable fortune” (I: 351). Here at Cadogan Place, Charlotte, too, gracefully “dress[es] her act up,” “muffl[es],” “disguis[es],” and “arrang[es]” the situation, although as Amerigo cannot help seeing, the female social being’s “dissimulations” fail to hide “her abjection” completely (I: 50). As Martha Banta writes of this scene, “the woman’s work brings profit to the man” (35), that is, the macro hierarchical relations extend to the micro relations between Amerigo and Charlotte. The “punctuality of performance” is “her weakness and her deep misfortune—not less, no doubt, than her beauty” (I: 50): the women feel poor, and would feel poorer

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still, should they fail in the socially ordained and socially acclaimed mission of facilitating the interaction ritual, incidentally and simultaneously saving the men the trouble of having to do this themselves. Although Amerigo, as a participant in any given interaction, is as responsible for upholding the interaction as the women are, he senses that the woman—in this particular instance, Charlotte—is typically “afraid of herself” (I: 51) and of her possible failure as an interactant more so than he is, so that complacently appreciative, Amerigo gladly relinquishes his duty by adapting to Charlotte’s need to fulfill her social role: He would help her, would arrange with her—to any point in reason; the only thing was to know what appearance could best be produced and best be preserved. Produced and preserved on her part of course; since on his own there had been luckily no folly to cover up, nothing but a perfect accord between conduct and obligation. (I: 50)

Thanks to Charlotte, Amerigo catches “the pitch” of meeting her on the footing of “the happiness of his wife” (I: 52). In thus adapting to Charlotte, who feels the need to adapt to him, Amerigo successfully achieves the performance of what could have been a highly awkward situation on the eve of his wedding. Conversely, when Amerigo is again confronted by the need to act tactfully during an encounter with Charlotte on the staircase at Portland Place, this time he finds himself adjusting to Charlotte’s needs. When Charlotte reminds him of the promise he made to accompany her for an hour in search of a wedding gift for Maggie, Amerigo senses that he would make Charlotte lose face—“so ready she assumed him to be” (I: 91)—should he not readily comply. As Goffman notes, “Just as the member of any group is expected to have self-respect, so also he is expected to sustain a standard of considerateness; he is expected to go to certain lengths to save the feelings and the face of others present, and he is expected to do this willingly and spontaneously” (Ritual 10). Not only is Amerigo afraid of “magnify[ing]” the case by appearing to come up with “any sort of begging-off,” he also sees that he “was making [Charlotte]—she had begged; and this, for a special sensibility in him, did n’t at all do” (I: 93). Immediately adopting “as hard as possible … the policy of not magnifying” (I: 94), Amerigo “minimis[es] ‘fuss’” (I: 95) and agrees to see Charlotte alone and in secrecy. In this way, the power of the encounter wields its force on socialized beings, men and women alike. Charlotte needs to accommodate Amerigo, Amerigo needs to avoid fuss, and both need to protect each other’s faces to avoid awkwardness for themselves. The macrosocial gender relations, which stipulate that women need to ensure the comfort of men, are thus capable of being quickly reversed in the microsocial order, when Amerigo discovers he would embarrass Charlotte unless he adapts to her. As a final illustration of the effect of socialization on Amerigo, it is necessary to note what further prompts his agreement to give Charlotte an hour with him alone and in secret. The “principle” Amerigo decides to adopt is to be “simple … with the very last simplicity.” In doing so, he promptly gives himself over to the

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idea that “what she asked was little compared to what she gave” (I: 95). Amerigo realizes that Charlotte’s request to keep their outing a secret is minimal compared to what she has done for him in the past, and he wishes to reciprocate so that his moral account is as balanced as possible. He, like Fanny, needs to be right with others in order to feel right about himself. In sum, Prince Amerigo is a highly conscientious, adaptive, and adept individual who is thoroughly socialized and fully equipped with the necessary social skills to carry out daily performances of face-to-face interaction, regardless of the situation and with whom he interacts. Although Amerigo no more understands his benefactors than they understand him, this does not prevent him from interacting with them beautifully any more than it prevents him from remaining faithful to his social contract. This is how the “images and ruminations of his leisure, these gropings and fittings of his conscience and his experience” are “set in order” in Amerigo’s “breast” (I: 319). Charlotte, too, has her felt stigma of being born of “parents, from the great country, but themselves already of a corrupt generation, demoralised falsified polyglot well before her” (I: 55). However, Charlotte is perceived as “the real thing” (I: 195), and she aims to do all she can to remain so. For example, when Adam proposes marriage to her, Charlotte acknowledges her wish to marry and frankly professes that she had guessed at his intention of proposing to her. Her wariness in accepting his proposal is also real. In fact, Charlotte candidly expresses her reluctance, explaining that she would be paying a very high price in agreeing to marry him. Although she informs Adam that her reluctance is not about Adam’s age but about “all that it is for [Adam] to do” (I: 220), neither Adam nor the readers really understand what she means. Charlotte’s meaning becomes clear when one recalls the conversation between the ex-lovers during their last walk together in London Park. The issue discussed is Maggie’s beautiful character and their need “if not for her, at least for one’s self,” to not “take advantage of” it. Charlotte warns Amerigo that because Maggie is “so modest” (I: 101) and “does n’t miss things,” and that “it takes stuff within one, so far as one’s decency is concerned, to stand it” (I: 102), the only solution would be to “absolutely refus[e] to be spoiled” (I: 103). There is the need to be “decent enough, good enough, to stand it,” which “without help from religion or something of that kind” is “terrible” (I: 102). This applies not only to Amerigo’s relationship with Maggie but also to Charlotte’s with Adam, so that indeed, it is “all that it is for [Adam] to do” (I: 220) that makes Charlotte hesitate: Charlotte would have to pay the price, “the strain” (I: 102), of having to resist for him the temptation of taking advantage of him. Therefore, when Adam suggests entrusting his daughter Maggie with the final say in the matter of his marriage to Charlotte, Charlotte is relieved. As Pick points out, through this gesture of Adam’s, “Maggie has, quite literally, replaced Adam and Charlotte as the key to the question of their own marriage” (122). Now Maggie can decide for Charlotte, and for Adam, whether the marriage is to take place or not: “Oh she wanted to be sure” she pledged Adam she would defer to what Maggie

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said (I: 226). Charlotte’s sense of having given in to the temptation of accepting a proposal of marriage from a wealthy and good man who, incidentally, has a daughter married to her ex-lover is, from Charlotte’s social inner eye, ample food for guilt. As close as Charlotte’s sense of this moment is to one of guilt, however, it does not necessarily signify the existence of impropriety itself. Goffman explains: Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be. (Presentation 236)

Charlotte’s awareness of potential causes of guilt makes her behave in a manner consistent with that of someone who might truly be guilty, which in turn makes those who see her employing these “defensive maneuvers” (Presentation 236)— the readers, for example—wonder whether she is not indeed so. Furthering readers’ unwarranted suspicion regarding Charlotte’s unwillingness to be an active determinant of her marriage, Charlotte engages in another defensive measure designed to increase her sense of legitimacy: offering Adam the chance to read the telegram from Amerigo, which, by the way, makes Charlotte change color when she first reads it. Although the content of the telegram is ambiguous enough, this act, as Charlotte later observes, could very well have jeopardized her chance at marriage, because her sense of propriety would have enlisted her to respond candidly about her past relationship with Amerigo if Adam had asked her about it: She had … forborne to call his attention to her consciousness that such an exposure would in all probability at once have dished her marriage; that all her future had in fact for the moment hung by the single hair of Mr. Verver’s delicacy (as she supposed they must call it); and that her position in the matter of responsibility was therefore inattackably straight. (I: 291)

Acting somewhat defensively because of her active social inner eye, Charlotte makes sure the social moral standards are duly met and “her position in the matter of responsibility” “inattackably straight” (I: 291), for her marriage to Adam benefits her “so much,” as she cannot help seeing and later acknowledging to Amerigo:

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Charlotte’s “rule of life, the absolute little gods of [her] worship, the holy images set up on the wall” is “to give back” (I: 318) what she receives. Likewise, as Fanny notes, Charlotte “works like a horse,” just as Amerigo works “[l]ike a Prince” (I: 398, 399). All social matters of the Ververs are, in the reciprocal order of things, entrusted to Mrs. Charlotte Verver, with her “tested facility and, not much less visibly … her accommodating, her generous view of her domestic use” (I: 317). In sum, through observation and deductive reasoning, Fanny comes to the conclusion that Charlotte and Amerigo have unfailingly observed the rules of propriety and are therefore socially and morally intact. This realization, in turn, eventually forces Fanny to at least give them the benefit of the doubt, if not go so far as to “abet them or … protect them” (I: 372). Moreover, when Fanny stops by Eaton Square to inform the Ververs of Charlotte and Amerigo’s delayed return from Matcham, she witnesses for herself the ostensible indivisibility of father and daughter, which seems to make Amerigo and Charlotte devoid of guilt: they cannot help spending so much time together. This leads her to conclude that there is “nothing” (I: 366) between the Ververs’ spouses, though she has no more proof of it than do the readers. Charlotte explains. Fanny is “helpless” and “fixed ” (I: 340, 341) because she needs for there to be nothing between Charlotte and Amerigo if she is to make sure she wrongs neither of them at the same time that she is to be responsible for the Ververs’ marriages. So long as Fanny’s moral fate depends on there being nothing, Charlotte and Amerigo are, as Charlotte says, “safe” (I: 343), for then, justly giving the two of them the benefit of the doubt amid ample circumstantial evidence to the contrary, beautifully and conveniently coincides with Fanny’s personal need to do so. In the meantime, Fanny produces various other arguments to reinforce her claim to nonguilt in the potential mess, “the chain of causes and consequences” so “definitely traceable” (II: 23). Fanny “did n’t bring [Charlotte] back” (I: 69). It is Amerigo’s fault for being so charming (I: 81) and “holding himself quiet at the critical time” (I: 282), Maggie’s fault for encouraging her father to marry (I: 280), and Adam’s fault for actually asking Charlotte to marry him (I: 281). Even Charlotte is implicated as contributing, for she “practically … helped [Amerigo] to do it himself” by “help[ing] [Fanny] to help him. [Charlotte] kept off, she stayed

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away, she left him free; and what, moreover, were her silences to Maggie but a direct aid to him?” (I: 84). However, although Fanny does not itemize this, she sanctifies the outing to Bloomsbury Street that Amerigo and Charlotte make on the eve of Amerigo’s marriage: Amerigo feels it “so express a licence from [Fanny], as representing friendly judgment, public opinion, the moral law, the margin allowed a husband about to be, or whatever” (I: 61) when she fails to object to a proposal by Charlotte, before Fanny’s very nose, of another get-together with Amerigo. In this way, through Fanny, James in effect reviews the elements contributing to the peculiar arrangement wherein Maggie and Adam carry on in much the same way they are used to doing, even after their respective marriages, while Prince Amerigo and Charlotte are left to their makeshift devices to make way for the routine meetings between father and daughter. Importantly, the superbly tactful social beings in James’s narrative describe this arrangement in noncommittal terms such as “rum” (I: 374, 375), “funny” (I: 175, 293, 330; II: 27, 68) and “quaint” (I: 397).14 Tact also contributed—and heavily. Notwithstanding, as hard as Fanny tries, she fails to reach closure “after adding up the items, the sum of a column of figures” (I: 75), and finally rushes out of the room in tears. As Bob notes, her collapse occasions a new level in the backstage arena, as she declares to him that she will not “touch any of them,” only “go on tiptoe,” and “simply watch and wait” (I: 383): … what was between [Bob and Fanny] had opened out further, had somehow, through the sharp show of her feeling, taken a positive stride, had entered, as it were, without more words, the region of the understood, shutting the door after it and bringing them so still more nearly face to face. (I: 378)

Entering “the region of the understood” (I: 378), Bob sees that Fanny realizes that he will continue to assist his dear wife till the end. Their community of two is successfully maintained by Bob’s accommodating efforts and Fanny’s acceptance of it, even though, as he jokingly says, Fanny is capable of offering theories that are not necessarily coherent or consequent: “What have n’t you, love, said in your time?” To be sure, Fanny is capable of self-contradiction and muddles, but, as she 14  The adjective “funny,” like Bob Assingham’s “rum” (I: 374), is a prime example of the tactful way in which judgments of situations are deferred or avoided, not only for the party or event in question, but also for the party employing the expression. Tact protects the party that engages in the referring as much as it does the referent. Amerigo observes other instances of the English penchant for tact, “the fathomless depths of English equivocation” (I: 353), their intolerance for “les situations nettes,” and “their wonderful spirit of compromise” of not calling things by their names, as names determine their value, so that there is “the element of staleness in all the freshness and of freshness in all the staleness, of innocence in the guilt and of guilt in the innocence” (I: 354). In short, there is an element of redeeming ambiguity in every exercise of tact, and social life could not exist without it.

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herself argues, she offers “[s]o many things, no doubt, that they make a chance for [her] having once or twice spoken the truth” (I: 384). Indeed, on several occasions, Fanny presents the readers with fleeting but valuable insights that, unless the reader is especially attentive, could easily be dismissed as hyperbole or wild conjecture. The first of these occasions occurs during a back-backstage talk Fanny has with Bob, when she remarks, “To ‘get him back’ [Maggie] must have lost [Amerigo], and to have lost him she must have had him.” With which Fanny shook her head. “What I take her to be waking up to is the truth that all the while she really has n’t had him. Never.” (I: 384).

In addition, Fanny at this juncture says that Maggie will “take it all herself,” that “she’ll find means somehow to arrive at that” (I: 380), and that Maggie will “see” Fanny “through” (I: 381). These instinctive insights of Fanny’s are valid and true. In the next chapter, I will take up Maggie’s unofficial story to further examine what Fanny means, for as was the case with Strether in The Ambassadors, Maggie has an unofficial, emotional story15 in addition to the official one, the one that has kept reader-critics forever out of gear because of its acceptance till now as the only narrative.

15   Catherine Cox Wessel views this “last completed novel” as being “the most ‘psychological’ of his books,” recognizing that through the frequently employed animal images, “it explores the Darwinistic, behavioral foundations, not the specific outward mechanisms, of human society” (578). My project aims to show that it is the combination of “the Darwinistic, behavioral foundations” and “the specific outward mechanisms, of human society” (Wessel 578) that James investigates.

Chapter 4

Teams, Teammates, and Intimacy: The Unofficial Story of Maggie Verver in The Golden Bowl It stands out almost in bold relief that, like the wealthy Milly Theale, Maggie Verver, despite her millions, feels poor—inadequate and inferior—and a careful reading reveals her specifically declaring so at every opportunity. Maggie’s felt poorness, however, is not immediately apparent to the reader, let alone to Maggie, nor is she able to deal with it openly when the shadow of it threatens to surface. In fact, it is this knowledge of herself with which Maggie is slowly forced to come to terms, and it is Charlotte and Amerigo’s mild but daring act of disruption—they delay their return from Matcham—that triggers it. With this sudden disruption in the flow of the taken-for-granted, Maggie is faced with the difficulty of dealing with her discomfiting self-consciousness. Fanny reports to Bob that Maggie is suddenly “awake,” although “she’ll give no sign” (I: 401), “throw[ing] dust” into Fanny’s “eyes” (I: 402): “It is n’t a question of belief or of proof, absent or present; it’s inevitably with her a question of natural perception, of insurmountable feeling. [Maggie] irresistibly knows that there’s something between them. But she has n’t ‘arrived’ at it, as you say, at all: that’s exactly what she has n’t done, what she so steadily and intensely refuses to do. She stands off and off, so as not to arrive; she keeps out to sea and away from the rocks, and what she most wants of me is to keep at a safe distance with her—as I, for my own skin, only ask not to come nearer.” (II: 131)

Only from “a safe distance” (II: 131) is Maggie able to deal with her unformulated impressions, although, inexorably, full knowledge ultimately closes in on her. Fanny’s theory of the real coincides with James’s, as presented in his preface to The American: The real represents to my perception the things one cannot possibly not know, sooner or later, in one way or another; it being but one of the accidents of our hampered state, and one of the incidents of their quality and number, that particular instances have not yet come our way. (xv–xvi)

Sensing the anomaly to which Amerigo and Charlotte’s late return from Matcham gives rise, Maggie feels like a “silken-coated spaniel who has scrambled out of

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a pond and who rattles the water from his ears” (II: 6–7) as she tries to shake off the unwelcome annoyance, but in vain. Maggie begins formulating a host of things for herself, one of the first being whether “her newest frock,” which she chooses to wear that evening, “would at last really satisfy Charlotte” (II: 12, 13). As insignificant as this passage about Maggie’s concern for her choice of dress seems, it is the first sign of her uncertainty among “the sight of the mass of vain things, congruous, incongruous, that awaited every addition” (II: 15): They were there, these accumulations [of the unanswered]; they were like a roomful of confused objects, never as yet “sorted,” which for some time now she had been passing and re-passing, along the corridor of her life. … So it was that she had been getting things out of the way. … What she should never know about Charlotte’s thought—she tossed that in. (II: 14–15)

As though for the first time, Maggie sees that she has all along tossed those questions that seemed impossible for her to answer into one big, undifferentiated heap of “confused objects” (II: 14), only one of which concerns her clothes: she is “rather timorous and uncertain; for the last year above all she had lived in the light of Charlotte’s possible and rather inscrutable judgement of them.” Upon reflection, two things seem self-evident. Because Charlotte is so comprehensively perfect and supremely polite and tactful about Maggie’s “material braveries” (II: 13), she should never be able to emulate her, nor should she be able to rid herself of the nagging “suspicion that these expressions were mercies” (II: 13–14). In short, as was the case with Lambert Strether vis-à-vis Chad Newsome, Charlotte reminds Maggie of her inferiority. Sallie Sears writes that Charlotte is Maggie’s “sexual rival in two senses,” with regard to her husband Amerigo and to her father Adam. To be sure, Charlotte is Maggie’s “rival”—for lack of a better word—but rather than being a “rival” in “two senses” (Sears 165), Charlotte is Maggie’s felt rival in one sense—that is, Maggie’s sense of poorness and inadequacy in relation to the two men with whom she is supposed to share an affinity. Charlotte’s unimpeachable propriety, however, only becomes problematic for Maggie once Maggie begins to be self-conscious. Self-directed consciousness, the essential nature of self-consciousness, inevitably forces Maggie to see herself objectively, although this objectivity is inescapably subjective: it is Maggie’s poor “I” that comes to see her inevitably poor “me,” to use G. H. Mead’s terminology.



 From the outset, Maggie acknowledges Charlotte’s superiority. She tells her father that Charlotte is “[g]reat in nature, in character, in spirit … in life” (I: 180). In comparison, Maggie “always by nature tremble[s] for [her] life,” “live[s] in terror,” and is “a small creeping thing” (I: 181).    George Herbert Mead defines the “I” and the “me” as follows: “The ‘I’ is the response of the organism to the attitudes of the others; the ‘me’ is the organized set of

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As an aside, and at the risk of seeming to disrupt the flow of my argument, I would like to engage in a kind of word-association game, making use of synonyms from Roget’s Thesaurus for the words “inferior” and “inferiority.” First, entries for “inferior” include adjectives such as “subordinate,” “unimportant,” and “imperfect.” Looking up these terms as well leads to such adjectives as “ineffectual,” “uninfluential,” “inconsequential,” “irrelevant,” “inessential,” “powerless,” “instrument,” and “Cinderella”—and might we add Princess Maggie and Prince Amerigo? There is another group of related phrases and terms, including “pawn in the game,” “piece on the board,” “servant,” “minion,” and “hireling,” as well as “serving,” “disregarded,” “overlooked,” “makeshift,” “substituted,” “second-best,” “bending,” and “expendable”—and shall we add Charlotte and Amerigo? A third group includes words such as “patchy,” “fragmentary,” “broken,” and “incomplete.” These terms remind us of Amerigo’s inability to feel whole in English society: “‘English society’, as he would have said, cut him … in two,” and “it was much more when he was alone or when he was with his own people—or when he was, say, with Mrs. Verver and nobody else—that he moved, that he talked, that he listened, that he felt, as a congruous whole” (I: 328). There is also “figurehead,” “low-lying,” “nonperson,” and “puppet,” such as might be applied to Adam’s felt condition as he “look[s], at the top of his table, so nearly like a little boy shyly entertaining in virtue of some imposed rank, that he could only be one of the powers, the representative of a force—quite as an infant king is the representative of a dynasty” (I: 324). Some synonyms also apply to Fanny, whose name literally means “bottom”: “overwrought,” “conscience-stricken,” “abject,” “insignificant,” “crestfallen,” and “downhearted.” And Fanny feels all these things in her dealings with Amerigo, Charlotte, Maggie, and Adam. In short, the issue Maggie tackles is one that applies to all the characters in James’s social world. There are even such words as “cracked,” “flawed,” “unsound,” and “imperfect,” so that the golden bowl itself may represent the social individual: exquisite on the surface, but flawed and imperfect on the inside. In sum, felt inadequacy, or what I call poorness, is a state that all James’s social beings frequently experience in one way or another. Maggie’s newly awakened sense of inconsequence is highlighted by her sense that Charlotte is enviably superior in everything she does, including her ability to form “teams” and become a “teammate” (Presentation 79, 82) with the two men in Maggie’s life, her father Adam and her husband Amerigo. This Maggie explicitly acknowledges when she refers to the various “pairs and parties” (II: 39) that function in her world. However, in both cases, the issue of sexuality is secondary. Charlotte is Maggie’s felt rival, but more so as a usurper of her roles attitude of others which one himself assumes. The attitudes of the others constitute the organized ‘me,’ and then one reacts toward that as an ‘I’” (Mind 175).    Multiple thesauruses were investigated and the findings were very similar. I list two in particular: Top Pocket Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases and Roget’s International Thesaurus.

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as an intimate soul mate to Adam and an equal partner to Amerigo. As Maggie gradually comes to see, being able to admit to her jealousy of Charlotte, who suddenly seems closer to Amerigo than she is, by indicating a specific and definite cause—an adultery or love affair, for example—would be face-saving, but this is a luxury in which she is unable to indulge for a long time. Without an identifiable external cause on which to lay the blame for her unhappiness, Maggie can only suffer in silence, for if she were to openly admit her sense of misery to others, she feels she would only advertise and draw attention to her felt shabbiness and want, which, in taking the attitude of others toward herself, could only be boring. As Fanny says, and Maggie instinctively guesses, Maggie’s felt rival, Charlotte, “never on any pretext bores [Prince Amerigo]. Not Charlotte!” (I: 376). Therefore, the idea of indulging in jealousy, romantic or otherwise, “figure[s] nothing nearer to experience than a wild eastern caravan” (II: 236–7). To be able to “give herself … to the vulgar heat of her wrong … the straight vindictive view, the rights of resentment, the rages of jealousy, the protests of passion” (II: 236) would have been “bitter-sweet” for Maggie in “their freshness” (II: 237). Instead, Maggie sees that the issue at hand is age-old and stale, that is, that the “prime source of her haunted state” (II: 81) is simply her sense of being abjectly inferior. Who is Maggie with? Is she with anyone? When Charlotte and Amerigo, intentionally or unintentionally, invite attention to their alliance by delaying their return from Matcham, the question as to whether Maggie is counted in or out, is included or excluded, and whether she is essentially valuable to anyone is suddenly placed on the line. In awakening, she also awakens to the existence of the different “teams” functioning in her world. According to Goffman, a “team” is “a grouping, but it is a grouping … in relation to an interaction or series of interactions in which the relevant definitions of the situation [are] maintained” (Presentation 104), the definition, in this case, of Maggie’s identity—and face. Michiel Heyns writes that power in James is “often a matter of assuming control of signification in situations that have become linguistically vulnerable; and nowhere more so than in his last completed novel” (228). Value is “determined in relation to other things, other values, other interests” (Heyns 235). Involuntarily beginning to assess her position, her value, in relation to teams and teammates, therefore, Maggie immediately does the most deliberate thing she feels she has ever done; it is “a poor thing, but it had been all her own” (II: 10), waiting “in her own drawing-room at the hour when she would most properly be there” (II: 16). Maggie sees Amerigo react to this with a “shock,” and is herself shocked at his being shocked, so that it is only much later that she is “at last” able to “talk to herself of ‘the shock’” (II: 103). What critics have frequently failed to understand about this scene in which Maggie and Amerigo clumsily act as though nothing is out of the ordinary is that Maggie is not shocked by her husband’s irregular behavior per se, but rather by the irregularity of her husband’s having to be shocked at finding “his wife in her own drawing-room at the hour when she would most properly be there” (II: 16). Forced to see the unnaturalness of Amerigo’s having to consider this most natural of situations as unnatural, Maggie catches her first remote glimpse into the

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strangeness of the arrangement that she can only very gradually admit to having had a hand in creating. “The hesitation had been at the first, and she at present saw that he had surmounted it without her help; for if on the one hand she could n’t speak for hesitation, so on the other—and especially as he did n’t ask her—she could n’t explain why she was agitated” (II: 17). As Fanny predicts during her back-backstage talk with Bob, Maggie will indeed gradually accept her culpability in the whole affair, beginning with her involvement in advising her father to marry Charlotte, and ending in her deliberately bringing her husband and mother-inlaw together when she knows how uncomfortable they feel when they are forced together in this way. Obsessively, Maggie will test Amerigo and Charlotte, which testing is what occasions the rendezvous. Thus will Maggie ultimately save Fanny from having to accept any blame, so that Maggie will indeed “see” Fanny “through” (I: 381). As for teams, Maggie cannot help seeing that Charlotte and Amerigo are clearly working as a team, as she and her father are—or are they? Although Maggie seems not to want to think about it too much, her father and Charlotte, too, are somehow a team. And when Maggie tries to bring Adam and Amerigo together to form a team and she and Charlotte into another by arranging to send the two men off to travel by themselves, Maggie fails not only in her attempt but also does so because of Charlotte: Amerigo wants to ask Charlotte to suggest the plan to her husband, Adam, while Adam expresses his wish not to be away for such an extended period of time from—again—his wife Charlotte. In short, both Amerigo and Adam bring Charlotte into Maggie’s scheme. At this juncture, Maggie is more her father’s daughter than her husband’s wife. Maggie wonders why Charlotte has to interfere “in a question that seemed just then and there quite peculiarly their own business” (II: 75). Unable to see the naturalness of Amerigo’s asking his mother-in-law Charlotte to suggest Maggie’s plan for the trip to his father-in-law Adam, or the further naturalness of Adam’s wish not to be away from his wife Charlotte for so long, what Maggie constantly comes back to is the sense that Charlotte and Amerigo are a team, as are Charlotte and Adam—to the exclusion of Maggie’s poor self. Maggie repeatedly sees the way Charlotte and Amerigo work together to pull the “family coach” that she and her father are “not so much as pushing” (II: 23). Realizing that she and her father are heavily indebted to their spouses, and eager not to create any undue waves, Maggie at first merely thinks of “sharing with [Amerigo]” and “sharing also for that matter with Charlotte” (II: 26) the experience that Charlotte and Amerigo seem to have shared at Matcham. Perhaps the three might form a team. Maggie thus suddenly feels like “an actress who had been studying a part and rehearsing it, but who suddenly, on the stage, before the footlights, had begun to improvise, to speak lines not in the text” (II: 33). She is now a conscious performer in the theatre of her life. Try as Maggie might to influence the structure and unity of the arrangement, however, she has the “consciousness of being beautifully treated” (II: 34) by Amerigo, who acted “quite as if a sense for the equilibrium was what, between

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them all, had most power of insistence” (II: 39), the insistence of the power of the interaction order, might we add. Like the two faces on the two sides of “a medallion” (II: 35) that Maggie might wear around her neck, Charlotte and Amerigo seem to “[take] their cue” not from Maggie but “from each other,” and do so “with a depth of unanimity, an exact coincidence of inspiration” (II: 41). To Maggie’s exclusion, “her husband and his colleague” Charlotte are conjoined and are “directly interested in preventing her freedom of movement,” “so as not to disarrange them” (II: 45)—as well they should be, for Charlotte and Amerigo only work to “ensure that a particular expressive order is sustained—an order that regulates the flow of events, large or small, so that anything that appears to be expressed by them will be consistent with [their] face[s]” (Ritual 9). Charlotte and Amerigo are intimate, observes Maggie, for “they moved slowly through large still space; they could be silent together, at any time, beautifully, with much more comfort than hurriedly expressive,” and “they might have been talking ‘at’ each other when they talked with their companions” (II: 77). Maggie is able to reach this observation because of her own experience of secluded intimacy with her father, which also takes place in silence. This leads us to ask whether both cases of intimacy are only expressions and/or functions of the microsocial order— with Charlotte and Amerigo, and Maggie and Adam, adjusting to each other in adjusting to the unity of their relations—or whether this intimacy exists apart from the microsocial order, for both or either of the teams. That is, are Charlotte and Amerigo merely adept interactants, or supremely socialized and intimate in spite of themselves? Conversely, are Adam and Maggie socialized beings and intimate, or merely socialized father and daughter? Even during the dinner party at Portland Place where Maggie plays the leading role of hostess, Maggie finds Charlotte, Amerigo, Adam, and herself forming “a quartette” and not simply “a pair of couples—this latter being thus a discovery too absurdly belated” (II: 69). There seems to be an absolute “conspiracy” on everybody’s part to make Maggie the party’s “heroine” (II: 70). Writes Goffman, Some social occasions … have a fairly sharp beginning and end, and fairly strict limits on attendance and tolerated activities. Each class of such occasions possesses a distinctive ethos, a spirit, an emotional structure, that must be properly created, sustained, and laid to rest, the participant finding that he is obliged to become caught up in the occasion, whatever his personal feelings. (Behavior 18–19)

During such occasions, Maggie is required to act out the part of the successful “heroine,” while the others are required to give her “some special intention of encouragement and applause” (II: 70). This is what Fanny, who is on Maggie’s team, in particular does. In short, what Maggie senses is the power of the situation, which obliges everybody, not just Maggie, to act in accordance with it, although she is not able “definitely” to “have said how it happened” (II: 70). Instead, she feels helpless, manipulated, and excluded “in a solid chamber of her helplessness

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as in a bath of benevolence artfully prepared for her, over the brim of which she could but just manage to see by stretching her neck” like “a patient of some sort, a nervous eccentric or a lost child,” trapped in some kind of “gilded cage” (II: 44). The bath of indulgence that earlier humored Amerigo, oppresses Maggie. Thinks Maggie, “Ah! Amerigo and Charlotte were arranged together, but she—to confine the matter only to herself—was arranged apart,” and this realization makes Maggie feel “very much alone” (II: 45). In the meantime, even as Maggie finds verification of her worth when she is with her father, the sense of stability makes Maggie “[know] … that she must never intermit for a solitary second her so highly undertaking to prove there was nothing the matter with her.” Here, in hearing her own verbalized thoughts, Maggie may very well have had to hesitate in acknowledging that she should feel the need for “so highly undertaking to prove there was nothing the matter with her” at all. Is there something “the matter” with her that she has to “so highly” (II: 79–80) undertake disproving? The moment Adam is out of her sight, moreover, she becomes aware of the loss of confidence in their “old freedom” (II: 80), which spreads its disrupting influence to other areas of Maggie’s relation to Adam. Subtly and in small doses, affecting Maggie only in hindsight or through impressions that only reveal their full import well after the immediate danger passes, Maggie is confronted with impressions of her father that she now sees she had “tossed” into the “accumulations of the unanswered” (II: 15, 14). She is also confronted with signs that Adam may have switched teams in order to align himself with Charlotte. In short, Maggie begins to discover how she really used to feel about her father as well as where she really stands in relation to him now. “Consciousness,” according to G. H. Mead, “is selective; we see what we are looking for” (On Social Psychology 65). The social individual’s “attention” “is an organizing process as well as a selective process,” and in this, the individual can be said to be “acting and determining its environment” (Mead Mind 25). Maggie, too, actively determines her environment in selectively seeing, but as she does so, the real also manages to stake its claim, subtly and relentlessly, in little and not-so-little doses. For example, before and during their second sojourn in Fawns, Maggie formulates the relatively clear impression that she and Adam are no longer on the same team. One such occasion arises on the eve of their departure to Fawns, and Maggie’s discovery centers on the issue of whether or not the Assinghams are to be invited. This is also when Maggie discovers that she is capable of behaving toward Fanny distinctly more freely than she does with her father. When Fanny intimates her anxiety about the Assinghams’s welcome at Fawns, Maggie becomes suddenly aware of how she may use Fanny: Maggie senses that Fanny feels responsible for her hand in the formation of the “funny” (I: 175) 

 See I: 10.

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arrangement. Although Maggie cannot not acknowledge her own responsibility, she instinctively knows—from viewing the case from what she takes to be Fanny’s point of view—that Fanny requires and may even prefer to right herself by so being used: “[Fanny] struck [Maggie] in truth as ready for almost anything; … as wanting with a restlessness of her own to know what [Maggie] wanted” (II: 102). Maggie senses Fanny’s felt debt toward her even though it does not necessarily coincide with what Maggie, as her creditor, has the right to claim, if literally confronted. However, because Maggie by this time has “no small self at all as against her husband or her father and only a weak and uncertain one as against her stepmother,” she is ready to see Mrs. Assingham’s “personal life or liberty sacrificed without a pang” (II: 101). The freedom Maggie sees she has with Fanny, compared with her lack of freedom with her father and Amerigo, also fleetingly brings home to her the sense of littleness, or poorness, she has always had to accept in being with the men in her life. Perhaps Fanny and Maggie might form a team in opposition to Charlotte, thinks Maggie. Perhaps by combining their forces, they can “[hold] out” (II: 105). In merely thinking this, however, Maggie freezes: What would become of her father, she hauntedly asked, if his wife … should begin to press him to call his daughter to order, and the force of old habit—to put it only at that—should dispose him not less effectively to believe in this young person at any price? (II: 106)

Which “young woman”? Would Adam back Maggie or Charlotte “at any price”? Instinctively not able to designate herself the “young woman” Adam might “believe in … at any price,” Maggie realizes the precariousness of her position. It also becomes clear to Maggie that she has always known it to be “the force of habit,” old or new, “to put it only at that,” that “dispose[s]” (II: 106) Adam to place his faith in the entrusted female attendant of the moment. During their walk in Regent    When Maggie first suggests Charlotte as a candidate for his wife, Adam asks Maggie whether they would not be “mak[ing] use of” Charlotte if she were to be invited to “improve” them. The question “pull[s] the Princess up … but an instant,” and she professes that she “should always, even at the worst … admire her still more than [she] use[s] her” (I: 181). Maggie is from the very beginning aware of the dangers of using her friend.   This knowledge comes from Maggie’s vaguely formulated awareness that Adam’s lack of intent to control her is what enables her to make him do things: “She kissed him, she arranged his cravat, she dropped remarks, she guided him out, she held his arm, not to be led, but to lead him, and taking it to her by much the same intimate pressure she had always used, when a little girl, to mark the inseparability of her doll” (II: 83). When Maggie observes Adam’s behavior with Charlotte during the last tea gathering at Portland Place, Maggie instinctively ascertains as much: Adam “resort[s] to his habit … expressed with a certain sharpness the intention of leaving his wife to her devices” (II: 358). Maggie sees that whether he is with Maggie or with Charlotte, her father’s rule is to place his full faith in the female attendant of the moment.

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Park, Maggie listens to Adam talk about his “lack of any eagerness to put time and space, on any such scale, between himself and his wife”; his contentment with Charlotte because he and she “perfectly rub on together” (II: 89); his happiness at “hav[ing] made Charlotte so happy” (II: 92); and his being thoroughly “taken with” (II: 93) Charlotte. Maggie is left with the residual impression that Adam is on Charlotte’s team, and Charlotte on his—as well they should be, for they are husband and wife. Besides, Maggie intuits, in all public decency, Mrs. Verver has every right to choose whom to invite to Fawns and whom not to, so that Maggie is “all round, imprisoned in the circle of the reasons it was impossible she should give—certainly give him” (II: 106) for opposing Charlotte about anything: Maggie feels that Adam would be able to see through to and understand her sense of abjectness and exclusion, should she as much as insinuate her emotional reality to him. Maggie is partially correct in assuming that Adam should understand her tormented, poor state. In order to see Maggie’s instinctive understanding of her father’s ability to understand, Adam’s variety of poorness must be investigated. We see Adam’s variety of poorness when he equates his “application of the same measure of value to such different pieces of property as old Persian carpets, say, and new human acquisitions” (I: 196). The things and valuable people with which Adam surrounds himself only attest to his sense of lack, for “the more the individual is concerned with the reality that is not available to perception, the more must he concentrate his attention on appearances” (Presentation 249). Because Adam is also, at bottom, poor, he wishes to surround himself with things and people alike that might speak of his “enriched” (I: 196) tasteful worth, as should his museum, “a monument to the religion he wished to propagate, the exemplary passion … for perfection at any price” (I: 146). As historians John Styles and Amanda Vickery write, taste is “undoubtedly about power,” “the power of the metropolitan over the provincial, of men over women, of mistresses over slaves, of landladies over tenants, of shopkeepers over customers (and vice versa)” (19)—and, might we add, the Old Money regime over the nouveau riche. Inside the nouveau riche Adam is a “poor man who shivers inside every newly rich one” (Aldrich, Jr. xvi), which the persona of a deliberate snail-like “Patron of Art” (I: 150) helps diffuse: the image of the snail “mark[s] what he like[s] to mark, that he needed … instruction from no one on earth” (I: 146). It gives Adam the much-needed pretext under which he can feel legitimately in possession of a right to stand, hold, and maintain his ground, unharassed and unhurried. In the words of Thomas J. Otten, “The Jamesian text 

  Without Adam’s, that is, “New Money’s,” “envy” (Aldrich, Jr. xvi) of Amerigo’s heritage, Amerigo’s value would only be, in Amerigo’s very own estimation, like “some old embossed coin, of a purity of gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful, of which the ‘worth’ in mere modern change” amounts to mere “sovereigns and half-crowns” (I: 23).

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overloads the bodily periphery with significance, making heavy investments in a coiffure or an Andalusian fan, and then denies the separability of outside and inside. Peripheral matter … becomes central” (18), central to the question of the self. Additionally, as Heyns writes, The Golden Bowl “deals exclusively with the years of light,” in contrast to which exist the unarticulated “years of darkness” and “the methods Verver must have used to amass a fortunate as stupendous as his apparently is” (240)—methods that threaten to be as tastelessly humdrum as they do to be exploitative. This, too, speaks to Adam’s variety of poorness. He needs to flood himself with people and artifacts that bespeak his present taste and abundance so as to keep inconspicuous, those unspeakable “years of darkness” (Heyns 240) that Adam needs to keep hidden in the peripheries of his, and the others’, consciousness. Adam’s social character makes him vulnerable. Because of a “fundamental democracy that is usually well hidden” that affects individuals of all ranks (Presentation 235), one that requires individuals to realize a “status, a position, a social place” (Presentation 75), Adam feels his place must likewise be realized. It is no coincidence, then, that when readers are first introduced to Adam in Volume One, Book Second, in the scene at Fawns, he is shown trying to catch some solitary moments in the billiard room. Even this need for a quiet moment alone— the outcome of Adam’s need to be away from the constraining eyes of others so expressive of “that element of obligation” (I: 128)—is for Adam prohibitive, for it feels as though he is “caught in the act of handling a relic of infancy—sticking on the head of a broken soldier or trying the lock of a wooden gun” (I: 126–7). Thanks to his inadvertently active self-consciousness, Adam is forced to admit to his felt state of being childish. In this way, as Maggie notes, it “costs” Adam “so much to be liked” (I: 179). Adam, like Maggie, is perpetually paying, not able to take others’ acceptance of him quite for granted, which is the cause and effect of his sense of poorness. Maggie senses this about Adam, which is why she feels he may see through to, and understand, her. Taking the attitude of her father taking the attitude of her—  For all the characters in The Golden Bowl, things and people are extensions of each other by virtue of the law of association. Maggie feels as though the early Florentine painting Adam leaves behind is like his “leaving her a part of his palpable self” (II: 359); Charlotte feels that the people of her childhood memories are all a part of her (I: 55); the shopkeeper at Bloomsbury Street wants to sell his things only to people who have taste, those who might appreciate his extended self (I: 106); and Amerigo, looking at Charlotte, feels that it is “strangely, as a cluster of possessions of his own that these things in Charlotte Stant now affected him; items in a full list, items recognized, each of them, as if, for the long interval, they had been ‘stored’—wrapped up, numbered, put away in a cabinet” (I: 46). Things and people are expressions of the selves in James’s novels, and the additions, modifications, and losses of those “material” or “social” selves (William James 280–83) are felt as changes occurring to those very selves. 

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for if Maggie can see Adam’s poorness, surely Adam should be able to see hers, goes Maggie’s spontaneous argument—Maggie sees her father seeing her. Maggie therefore feels “paralysed” when she thinks of “the note” she might betray: “the note” (II: 76), she feels, “would have reached her father’s [ear] exactly in the form of a cry piercing the stillness of peaceful sleep” (II: 77). However, whether Adam can truly understand others—notably Maggie—in such an imaginative way is highly suspect. After the birth of his grandson, the Principino, Adam is described as feeling that there is “henceforth only one ground in all the world … on which the question of appearance would ever really again count for him,” which is that “a work of art of price should ‘look like’ the master to whom it might perhaps be deceitfully attributed; but he had ceased on the whole to know any matter of the rest of life by its looks” (I: 146–7, emphasis mine). Since he knows how others are capable of being deceived into mistaking his appearance and belongings as representations of the real thing, he also knows how he could be similarly deceived in his judgment of others—hence Adam’s refusal to pretend “on the whole to know any matter of the rest of life by its looks” (I: 147). In comparison with Maggie, whom Amerigo describes as “deep” (II: 201) and Fanny describes as having the “nature to think too much” (II: 332), Adam refuses to exercise the kind of probing imagination that would enable him to assess other people’s behavior according to an understanding of his own behavior, or conversely, to base his own behavior on his judgment of others’. Adam’s refusal and inability to assess other people’s behavior, however, is problematic, for it prevents him from determining his own. Consequently, Adam’s ability to put forth a line with sufficient confidence is compromised, so that constant anxiety is only to be expected. Adam is constantly forced to remain insecure and unsure—that is, poor. This does not immediately or necessarily guarantee, however, that Adam—or indeed, any of the others—is in any intrinsic sense ethical or moral. Writes Goffman, Our activity, then, is largely concerned with moral matters, but as performers we do not have a moral concern with them. As performers we are merchants of morality. Our day is given over to intimate contact with the goods we display and our minds are filled with intimate understandings of them; but it may well be that the more attention we give to these goods, then the more distant we feel from them and from those who are believing enough to buy them. (Presentation 251)

However, when Prince Amerigo sees something of Adam’s “simplicity” in his being “the man in the world least equipped with different appearances for different times,” Adam’s innocence may very well be authentic: “He was simple, he was a revelation of simplicity, and that was the end of him so far as he consisted of an appearance at all—a question that might verily, for a weakness in it, have been argued” (I: 323). Adam’s simplicity is the outcome of society’s general praise of the quality, and his policy of losing a trout to catch a fly: Adam comprehensively

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wants to be on the safe side of things by remaining poker-faced, wearing what Peggy McCormack calls Adam’s “mask of formlessness” (Rule of Money 80). Therefore, Maggie’s understanding of her father is correct in that he is, like her, essentially poor despite his millions, but she is wrong in her assessment of the nature of his self-consciousness. Whereas Maggie’s self-consciousness is not merely self-directed, but also other-directed because of her willingness to assess other people’s behavior based on her spontaneous, subjective understanding of her own feelings and behavioral patterns, Adam’s self-consciousness stops with himself; rather, he refuses as much as possible to even admit to being selfconscious, as can be seen in the following description of Adam’s mindset prior to his marriage to Charlotte: His real friend, in all the business, was to have been his own mind, with which nobody had put him in relation. He had knocked at the door of that essentially private house, and his call, in truth, had not been immediately answered; so that when, after waiting and coming back, he had at last got in, it was, twirling his hat, as an embarrassed stranger, or, trying his keys, as a thief at night. He had gained confidence only with time, but when he had taken real possession of the place it had been never again to come away. All of which success represented, it must be allowed, his one principle of pride. (I: 149)

As is suggested by the description of Adam’s “neat colourless face,” which looks like “a small decent room, clean-swept and unencumbered with furniture” (I: 170), he is, or determines to be, simple—unlike Maggie.10 Therefore, Maggie’s assumption that Adam could see through and understand her, were she to betray her sense of insecurity to her father, is mistaken. Adam is not Maggie. Even if Maggie feels that she is able to see through and understand Adam, the same cannot be said of Adam with regard to Maggie: Adam is all tact,   Richard Sennett discusses how respect for authenticity was used as a powerful weapon in class conflict (26), so that a general repressive culture emerges in Victorian society: individuals feared that their characters might be unwittingly exposed to the public by the way they looked and sounded (194). One way to counter this was to deny emotion and try to maintain silence and a poker face. Subsequently, “withdrawal from feeling” (Sennett 26) and “[s]ilence in public” became a “right.” Adam’s power, I claim, comes from his habit of resorting to this right to hide behind “an invisible shield” (Sennett 27). 10  Adam’s simplicity consists of a set of habits. Adam has “a little habit—his innermost secret, not confided even to Maggie, though he felt she understood it, as she understood, to his view, everything,” and it consists of “the innocent trick of occasionally makingbelieve that he had no conscience, or at least that blankness, in the field of duty, did reign for an hour” (I: 126). This lack of conscience, however, amounts to no more than assuming a blank face or hiding in the billiard room. Out of his “general theoretic respect for” his daughter’s “right to personal reserves and mysteries” (I: 177), it is also his habit not to press Maggie for clarification of matters he does not understand, and “when he really amused himself,” to “let consistency go” (I: 188).

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and he does not see through, let alone understand, Maggie. If Adam and Maggie feel poor, they do so separately, in different ways, about different things. Mistaken as Maggie is about Adam’s ability to understand her, Maggie is capable of sensing the relationship between her father and herself. Before joining Adam and his wife at Fawns, for example, Maggie thinks of her “unpenetrated parent” “alone”: “She thought of him as alone with them when she thought of him as alone with Charlotte.” Maggie here verbalizes her view of Adam as “unpenetrated” (II: 137), echoing her earlier assessment of him as “all indulgent but all inscrutable” (II: 105) when with his daughter Maggie. In wanting to view Adam as unaligned with his wife, Maggie looks into Adam’s ways when he is with his daughter and she is the female attendant of the moment. Maggie’s spontaneous argument reveals that if Adam had been so unaligned, “unpenetrated,” and “all indulgent but all inscrutable” (II: 137, 105) with Maggie, so must he likewise be with Charlotte. What Maggie does not fully realize is that by unaligning Charlotte and Adam, she verbally, and therefore consciously, admits to her own unaligned state with her father when they are together. Realizing also that there is nothing more unnatural and ungracious than insisting on Adam’s unaligned state with his wife, and recalling that she ought to mind her own business, Maggie “pull[s] herself up repeatedly by remembering that the real ‘relation’ between her father and his wife was a thing she knew nothing about and that in strictness was not of her concern; but she none the less failed to keep quiet, as she would have called it, before the projected image of their ostensibly happy isolation.” Could they be happy in their isolated state, or rather, might they be isolated together in their happiness? Maggie also irresistibly thinks to herself, “If Charlotte, while she was about it, could only have been worse!” for the thought of her stepmother “as lavish of fifty kinds of confidence and twenty kinds, at least, of gentleness” worries her—as well it should, for it may signify that Maggie, for her part, is deficient of “fifty kinds of confidence and twenty kinds, at least, of gentleness” (II: 138). In the meantime, as Maggie searches for a gift for her father, she comes to realize that she had always felt that her gifts to him were only obligingly appreciated: “[Maggie and Adam] had always, with his pleasure in her pretence and her pleasure in his, with the funny betrayal of the sacrifice to domestic manners on either side, played the game so happily.” Could she and Adam have only been pretending to be intimate, “play[ing] the game so happily” (II: 157), thereby managing to adjust to each other in adjusting to the unity of their relation as adept interactants? Maggie’s nagging suspicion that her bond with Adam may only have been an illusion hovers threateningly on the horizon. Even such a seemingly little event as Adam’s announcement that he likes Lady Castledean seems to reinforce Maggie’s suspicions that she and her father do not really understand one another: this is “the first case she could recall of their not being affected by a person in the same way” (II: 96–7).

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So insecure does Maggie begin to feel about her alliance with Adam that she feels the additional company of Fanny is required to counterbalance the “scale” against Charlotte and Amerigo, three to two: Adam and Maggie alone do not suffice to maintain the “equilibrium” (II: 97) against the other pair, who seem increasingly and authentically intimate. Indeed, on the eve of their departure to Fawns, Maggie—like Strether looking up at the figure on the balcony in Paris— finds herself looking up at Charlotte and Amerigo in perfect unity as they await the arrival of Adam and Maggie at Portland Place: The group on the pavement stared up as at the peopled battlements of a castle; even Miss Bogle, who carried her head most aloft, gaped a little, through the interval of space, as toward truly superior beings. … Maggie’s individual gape was inevitably again for the thought of how the pair would be at work. (II: 99)

It is in the midst of these circumstances that Fanny unwittingly “suppl[ies]” Maggie “with the stuff of her need” (II: 158)—an outside source of complaint to give legitimate expression to Maggie’s pent-up, secret anxieties vis-à-vis Charlotte, her sense of poorness. Maggie says to Fanny, “If there was so much between [Amerigo and Charlotte] before, there can’t—with all the other appearances—not be a great deal more now” (II: 167–8). With Fanny’s help, she at last has what she has been seeking: Maggie has “the time of her life—she knew it by the perpetual throb of this sense of possession, which was almost too violent either to recognise or to hide. It was as if she had come out … of a dark tunnel, a dense wood, or even simply a smoky room,” giving her the “advantage of air in her lungs” (II: 207). According to Robert Bechtold Heilman, the psychological structure of the melodramatic heroine or hero is one of “monopathy,” which “spare[s]” the melodramatic being of “all contradictions and contingencies” (95) and enables her or him to experience “the wholeness or oneness of being” (97) that is necessary for her or him to generate a course of action. Maggie, for example, “cannot act,” to use Heilman’s expression, if she is “beset by guilt or by conflicting impulses that make choice exhausting or impossible” (98), so that when she indulges in the melodramatic role, Maggie finds what Heilman calls “a sanctuary from the stresses of personality, with its confused clamor of No and Yes” (133), and feels fantastically elated. Taking full advantage of the unsubstantiated official story of Charlotte and Amerigo’s purported infidelity, Maggie’s “conviction,” therefore, “budge[s] no inch, only planting its feet the more firmly in the soil,” while her capacity for “action” seems infinite: “It would be free, it would be independent, it would go in—would n’t it?—for some prodigious and superior adventure of its own” (II: 186). Temporarily, Maggie’s life is melodramatically simplified. Fanny, on the other hand, is so momentarily afraid of Maggie’s “stab of reproach” and “straight denunciation” for having introduced Amerigo to Maggie, not having informed Maggie or Adam of Charlotte and Amerigo’s previous intimacy, and having had Charlotte stay with her at the time of Maggie’s marriage, that all she is able to do is stick to Maggie and Fanny’s “strange and exalted bargain” of

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Fanny’s seeing Maggie through in exchange for Maggie’s seeing Fanny through. With the prior intimacy between Charlotte and Amerigo exposed via the “proof” (II: 162) of the golden bowl—which, logically speaking, is no proof at all, for as Lynda S. Boren writes, “What, after all, does a crystal bowl have to do with the past?” (14)—Maggie finally has an outside source of complaint for her jealousy. Furthermore, as Fanny is the sole audience in Maggie’s backstage life, Maggie feels secure in the knowledge that she “should n’t be judged—save by herself; which was her own wretched business” (II: 160). The ever more obvious reality of Charlotte’s superiority as a teammate for Maggie’s husband Amerigo, and the now confirmed image of the two in happy confidence, however, increasingly heightens the sense that Maggie is not only excluded, but also excluded for a very real reason: “Verily it towered before her, this history of [Charlotte and Amerigo’s] confidence” (II: 192). Ironically, if Amerigo is teamed up with another, Maggie now needs to be of relevance and value to somebody other than Amerigo—to Adam, for example. So begins Maggie’s deliberate and conscious attempt to forge a team with a father who does everything “for” (II: 170, 173) his daughter. It is not easy for Maggie to go back to her alliance with Adam. Mrs. Charlotte Verver is on two teams, Adam’s and Amerigo’s, both of which increasingly seem closed to Maggie. James’s narrative is “almost a classic study of the wounded ego; … of the desperate manipulations of the self and of others in order to restore the favorable self-image” (Geismar 321), or face, so that if Amerigo and Charlotte are truly as intimate as their appearance together on the balcony at Portland Place seems to prove, then Maggie must resolve her predicament by making as undeniable as possible her alliance with Adam, in order to counter her sense of abandonment. A good offense is, after all, the best defense. At Fawns, therefore, Maggie is prepared for action, equipped with a “heroic lucidity.” Fanny describes her as being “in her full uniform, like some small erect commander of a siege, an anxious captain who has suddenly got news, replete with importance for him, of agitation, of division within the place” (II: 214)—except for one problem: the opportunity for action is not readily available. Amerigo is generally quiet and tactfully reserved, and Maggie feels like “the small strained wife of the moment in question as some panting dancer of a difficult step who had capered, before the footlights of an empty theatre, to a spectator lounging in a box” (II: 222). Amerigo “repli[es] to nothing, deni[es] nothing, explain[s] nothing, apologis[es] for nothing,” but also somehow “convey[s] to her that this [is] not because of any determination to treat her case as not ‘worth’ it” (II: 220). Even in recalling how she had told Amerigo what had happened between her and the Bloomsbury shopkeeper, during which Maggie had repeatedly mentioned that the shopkeeper had “liked” her (II: 196, 223, 225), Maggie remembers how Amerigo “had uttered an extraordinary sound, something between a laugh and a howl” (II: 223). Maggie fears that she is the object of Amerigo’s suppressed ridicule even though he may very well have scoffed at the shopkeeper’s potentially

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dubious motives for claiming to like the wealthy Maggie. That is, although Maggie can now point to the purported adultery between Charlotte and Amerigo as the cause of her jealousy and “should have now to arrange, to alter, to falsify nothing” (II: 186), she increasingly finds herself unable to deny feeling poorer and poorer with her irreproachable, obliging, and yet unapologetic Amerigo.11 Such is the context of Maggie’s encounter with Charlotte in the card game scene that delivers the final blow to her sense that she may not be on the same team with Adam, either. At Fawns, Maggie excuses herself from a game of cards and wanders into the garden. From a distance, she silently observes the group playing cards. She reasons that even though she may appear temporarily isolated, she is somehow connected to everybody—Adam, Amerigo, Fanny, Bob, and Charlotte—who seem to be “conforming alike, in the matter of gravity and propriety, to the stiff standard of the house,” or to the power of the situation, might we add. Thinking of her father, who is “a high adept, one of the greatest,” Maggie finds herself remembering that she “had been ever, in her stupidity, his small, his sole despair.” Again, Maggie is reminded of how little “adept” (II: 233) her father used to make her feel. In comparison, there is Charlotte, “as always, magnificently handsome and supremely distinguished” and the strain becomes so intense that she can only refute it by imagining how she might make or break the scene before her as would an “author” (II: 235) of “a drama” (II: 236). Maggie is spontaneously aware of the fictive construct of gatherings, which she is capable of destructing at a moment’s notice. However, simultaneously, she knows that to “give them up” (II: 237) by disrupting the unity is unthinkable. It is a community—a context—that provides meaning: she can only verify the validity of her self, what Maggie earlier calls “her own simple certainty” (II: 182), through her dealings with it, and to be the cause of an embarrassment, a chaotic disintegration, would only broadcast to the world her felt inferiority, and ruin her chances of ever achieving it. This is when Charlotte approaches, looking for Maggie. Maggie finds herself instinctively “dodging and ducking,” and this reaction informs Maggie “vividly, in a single word, what she had all along been most afraid of”: the clarification of Charlotte’s and therefore her own position vis-à-vis Adam. Maggie senses that should she confront Charlotte with a definite accusation of any kind, Charlotte is capable of taking Adam “into her confidence as she could n’t possibly as yet have done” (II: 239). Maggie is forced to acknowledge that if such a thing should happen, it would not be Maggie’s word “that would most certainly carry the day” (II: 240). Putting together “reasons of experience and assurance impenetrable to others but intimately familiar to herself,” Maggie is confronted with the clear knowledge that Charlotte’s position vis-à-vis Adam is superior to hers and that as

11  This is the Amerigo he has become by continual engagement in the “long lesson, this unlearning, with people of English race, all the little superstitions that accompany friendship” (I: 348), which Charlotte unknowingly embarks him on at Matcham.

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the others are intact, it must be her attitude that is “deform[ed]” (II: 240). Her felt eccentricity, brittleness, and moral weakness seem increasingly real.12 Maggie’s displacement seems to be even more vividly presented to her when Charlotte and Maggie stand outside the window of the smoking room looking in at Adam playing cards. Face-to-face with Charlotte, and in the presence of Adam, Maggie is concretely reminded of the fact that Adam is Charlotte’s husband after all: “[Maggie] was looking at him by Charlotte’s leave and under Charlotte’s direction; quite in fact as if the particular way she should look at him were prescribed to her” (II: 244). Notwithstanding, Maggie is overcome with a “wild wish” for Adam to “look up” and make “some sign” of his “preference” for her, so that she might know that she has a special place in his affections. Maggie feels it would “save her, save her from being the one this way to pay all” (II: 245), which would make her feel poor. Maggie wonders to herself whether Adam should be able to play the role of Maggie’s father in addition to that of Charlotte’s husband. It is during this critical moment that Maggie also seems to hear her father tell her “this extremity of her effort for him was more than he asked” (II: 245). Taking the attitude of Adam toward herself and thereby acting out both her part and her father’s, Maggie glimpses how her desperate claim to his attention during this intense moment of wistfulness is an anomaly. Indeed, she has never before valued him so highly. If Charlotte’s “liaison with the Prince has increased [Amerigo’s] value” in Maggie’s estimation (Porter 146), Charlotte’s liaison with Adam, it seems, has increased his. Confused and miserable, Maggie all the same feels poor, for Charlotte seems to be “naming … a sum of money that she properly was to find” (II: 245), and 12

  Constructing and maintaining a relationship is “tricky business” (8), as communication theorists William R. Cupach and Brian H. Spitzberg write. “[M]utuality” (2) and the clear knowledge that the relationship is mutually agreeable are necessary conditions. Cupach and Spitzberg’s discussion on “disjunctive and dysfunctional relationship[s]” (ix) reminds us of how fraught relationships are with opportunities for confusion, misunderstanding, and tension. Not only do two people need to want to be in the same kind of relationship—even while “relationship prototypes exhibit fuzzy, overlapping boundaries”—but also “any two individuals’ schemas for a particular relationship type are not likely to be isomorphic” (Cupach and Spitzberg 22). Boundaries are, after all, socially constructed. Add to this that “[v]irtually all relational partners must balance the conflicting dialectical tensions of closeness and distance, candor and restraint, novelty and predictability” (Cupach and Spitzberg 20). As a matter of fact, as Cupach and Spitzberg illustrate, “many of the ordinary behaviors that serve to initiate, escalate, or maintain everyday relationships are exhibited in disjunctive relationships by obsessive relationship pursuers and stalkers” (34). When Maggie probes, tests, secretly watches, and covertly gathers information on Charlotte and Amerigo, she begins to look somewhat like the obsessive stalker that Cupach and Spitzberg describe, especially as the “exact point of passage from normal to excessive persistence is often gray and indefinite” (27). My aim here is not to label Maggie a stalker. Rather, my point is that Maggie’s felt self may very well resemble one.

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the sense that Maggie is the poor party who is correspondingly required to pay is accentuated. Charlotte thus seems to be the creditor, with Maggie as the debtor, in the creditor/debtor arrangement of things: “Soon enough … Maggie found herself staring, and at first all too gaspingly, at the grand total to which each separate demand Mrs. Verver had hitherto made upon her, however she had made it, now amounted” (II: 246). In the cold of the garden at Fawns, Maggie “clutch[es]” at her shawl and looks “out as from under an improvised hood—the sole headgear of some poor woman at somebody’s proud door; she waited even like the poor woman,” pauperlike, and “afraid” (II: 247)—afraid of the unknown, or rather, only because it is unknown. After all, Maggie in reality lacks the knowledge of what her mother-in-law should so want from her that she should so deliberately follow Maggie out into the garden. The specific, when it comes, however, is easy, for Charlotte, as plaintiff, seems unconscious of her right to press charges against the defendant, Maggie, but while this relieves Maggie of her immediate “fear,” it does not as easily release her from her sense of shame: “If she could but appear at all not afraid she might appear a little not ashamed—that is not ashamed to be afraid, which was the kind of shame that could be fastened on her, it being fear all the while that moved her” (II: 247). Maggie’s fear of Charlotte and of all that Charlotte seems capable of sensing, and her shame in half-knowing that she has superimposed her narrative onto another, refuses to go away. Contrary to Maggie’s expectations of a perfectly legitimate complaint from her young mother-in-law—of interfering with the life Charlotte is entitled to live with her husband—all Charlotte asks is whether Maggie feels Charlotte has failed her in any way to make her so evidently unhappy. Successfully denying Charlotte’s suspicion that she should be in the least unhappy with her mother-in-law, Maggie manages to tide this moment of emotional survival over by “not by a hair’s breadth deflecting into the truth” (II: 250–51). As a matter of fact, there are three truths that Maggie is simultaneously forced to deal with on the spot: the truth of Maggie’s real fear of being confronted by Charlotte about Adam, on the unofficial level; the truth of Maggie’s harboring an unsubstantiated complaint against Charlotte, which forces her to consciously “meet” Charlotte’s eyes “long” so as to “[avoid] at least the disgrace of looking away” (II: 248) in shame; and the purported truth on the official level regarding Charlotte’s supposedly adulterous alliance with Amerigo, which is also the issue that Charlotte should fear. What requires emphasis is that for Maggie, all three truths must be avoided not so much to officially protect Charlotte, but rather to protect Maggie. As Segal aptly notes, Maggie’s “lucid little plan spares and saves not only them but also herself—indeed, saves herself by saving them” (181). Tactful performances protect those who exercise tact as much as those on whom tact is exercised.

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In addition, Maggie finds the perfect opportunity to imagine herself in some kind of telepathic secret alliance13 with Amerigo by “protecting” Charlotte during this encounter: [Amerigo] had given her something to conform to, and she had n’t unintelligently turned on him, “gone back on” him, as he would have said, by not conforming. They were together thus, he and she, close, close together—whereas Charlotte, though rising there radiantly before her, was really off in some darkness of space that would steep her in solitude and harass her with care. The heart of the Princess swelled accordingly even in her abasement; she had kept in tune with the right …. (II: 250)

The most widely accepted reading of this scene is that Maggie is “swept aloft by the feeling that it is now they who are together and Charlotte off alone, isolated and harassed in the darkness,” and she is “not to blame if certain fringe benefits accrue to her in the process: such as having her husband helpless in a new alliance with her, such as the anguished humiliation and solitude of her enemy” (Sears 215). However, what must be noted is that in thinking she is conforming to Amerigo’s way of protecting Charlotte from the truth, which is “in tune with the right” (II: 250), Maggie kills three birds with one stone: imaginatively aligning herself with Amerigo, doing the right thing, and, most importantly, instinctively protecting herself by avoiding all contingencies of confrontation. To further the irony, Maggie’s image of Charlotte alone in the dark is a projection of how Maggie used to feel. Just as Maggie felt “very much alone” in thinking about how Amerigo and Charlotte were “arranged together” (II: 45), so she imagines Charlotte would probably feel, this time with Maggie and Amerigo purportedly bound together in their secret alliance. As Maggie admits, the “cage” is “the deluded condition, and Maggie, as having known delusion—rather!— understood the nature of cages” (II: 229). Charlotte is Maggie’s projected former self, and as such, Maggie’s Charlotte is a product of her present “I” looking at her projected past “me,” to use Mead’s terminology (Mind 175). Maggie thus instinctively works for both Maggie-Charlotte—that is, Charlotte as Maggie imagines her—and herself. In sum, while Maggie increasingly fears she is on nobody’s team—neither Amerigo’s nor Adam’s—she encounters paradoxical signs that perhaps a possible alignment between her and Amerigo vis-à-vis Charlotte is hovering on the horizon after all. This development is important, for Maggie now begins to pursue a definition of herself as Amerigo’s wife rather than as Adam’s daughter. In the process of pursuing the possibility of forming a team with Amerigo, and with the knowledge that Maggie feels she has against her husband and her mother-in13  A team “has something of the character of a secret society,” and its members “form a secret society, a team, in so far as a secret is kept as to how they are co-operating together to maintain a particular definition of the situation” (Presentation 104, 105).

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law, however, Maggie cannot help feeling tormented by two equally unsavory impressions: the impression that the purported affair between Charlotte and Amerigo seems to bring her husband and her mother-in-law closer to one another, and the impression that she is Amerigo’s—and Charlotte’s—jailer. Although not immediately obvious, there are clear advantages to Maggie’s defining herself—in silence—as the wronged party. As Carolyn Porter notes, “it is by not speaking that [Maggie] systematically forces others to rearrange themselves in accord with her wishes” (133). If Maggie is wronged, she is, at least in theory, granted the right to accuse. She also reserves the right to inform Adam of Charlotte’s purported infidelity or at least of her former intimacy with Amerigo, which Maggie deduces that Amerigo would want to prevent her from doing, although she does not formulate for herself why she believes he would want this: whether for his own sake, which would make him merely self-saving; for Charlotte’s sake, which would render her innermost fears about Amerigo’s feelings for Charlotte undeniable; for her own sake, which would make Amerigo a potential number of things, such as civilly being protective of Maggie’s face or honoring his social contract toward Maggie—or for a combination of these motives. In fact, Maggie tactfully leaves this aspect of the question unanswered, saving the faces of everybody involved, above all hers. At any rate, as Carren Kaston notes, in a variety of contexts, “silence [does] the emotional work of speech” (139), and this occasion is one such context. Maggie’s silent declaration of herself as the wronged party preserves a felt relation on her part to Amerigo—and to Charlotte—that casting all aside would not. Maggie becomes aware, in taking the attitude of Amerigo toward herself, that “her husband would have on the whole question a new need of her, a need which was in fact being born between them in these very seconds,” and he “would indeed absolutely by this circumstance be really needing her for the first time in their whole connexion” (II: 186). Thanks to the power of silence, Maggie forges a desperate form of relation to Amerigo by adopting the footing of one who accuses without literally accusing and who engages in an unspoken act of blackmailing without having to be held accountable for having intended, let alone done. Maggie uses tactful silence to achieve felt avoidance, felt self-preservation, and a curious relation to her Amerigo. Even as Maggie thus pursues the possibility of teaming up with Amerigo, however, she cannot help wondering how it is possible that she could be with Amerigo as “in the steel hoop of an intimacy compared with which artless passion would have been but a beating of the air” (II: 141) and be in opposition to him, “working against an adversary who was a master of shades too and on whom if she did n’t look out she should presently have imposed a consciousness of the nature of their struggle” (II: 142). Maggie experiences a maddening double vision, seeing herself as both an aggressor and a sympathizer toward her felt victims, Charlotte and Amerigo. Sears, Catherine Cox Wessel, and Margery Sabin are among those critics who detect the very definite sadistic element of Maggie’s dealings with Charlotte—

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and with Amerigo—in the latter part of James’s narrative. While its power and problematic nature are most apparent in the second scene of confrontation between Maggie and Charlotte in the garden at Fawns, they also affect Maggie’s vision when she is face-to-face with Amerigo. The optimistic, or positive, reading of the second garden confrontation between Maggie and Charlotte goes thus: Maggie has decided that if Charlotte is to be exiled to American City, she would like to ensure that Charlotte’s exit takes place in the most dignified and graceful manner possible. Consequently, Maggie succeeds in performing exquisitely when she protects both Charlotte and herself from the purported truth till the end. Sears, however, in a fashion somewhat typical of the opposite camp of critics, who do not view Maggie quite so favorably, interprets the scene in the following way: The kindness Maggie has performed for her thus reduces itself to the ambiguous charity of allowing [Charlotte] to save face, while having to know that she is being so allowed. Yet Charlotte must grope in the dark right to the end: no matter what she knows intuitively she is not to be told, Maggie makes this explicit, and her exile must take place under conditions of permanent uncertainty without the solace of a real farewell or confrontation with Amerigo, exchange of facts and settling of things. The beauty of this state of affairs from Maggie’s point of view is that she can continue to pretend that her final vengeance on Charlotte is an act of compassion, protection, even love. (221)

In light of this reading, Maggie is inevitably a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or else a kind of hypocrite. In sum, and in taking both these diametrically opposed readings of Maggie’s behavior into consideration, the difficulty critics face concerns how to make Maggie more than just an angel, a hypocrite, or a prig. Maggie’s wish to be gentle—despite the fact that “the aggressiveness” seems to be “all Maggie’s” (Matthiessen 99)—seems irrefutable. Sabin, for example, goes on to emphasize “Maggie’s sadomasochistic rapture with Charlotte in the garden,” claiming that it “surpasses any moment of passion with Amerigo,” and because “Charlotte is the one who brutally breaks decorum[,] Maggie in her ecstasy of pain can believe that she is herself in control” (220). Sears writes on Maggie in the garden scene in considerably harsher tones, stating that it “is a tour de force of masochistic selfmanipulation and disguised sadism, the mixture of innocence in guilt and guilt in innocence, that dazzling curtain of white light that conceals the opposite of what it shows” (219). She claims that Maggie’s “consciousness is the consciousness of the martyr and the saint, in which personal sacrifice is the paradoxical measure of personal triumph,” although admittedly, “the sadism is real, and Maggie is a false saint; that is, she is much more human than she knows” (219–20). Wessel agrees with Sabin and Sears regarding the sadomasochistic nature of the scene, but claims that Maggie’s “virtues themselves, her sensitivity and her empathy, serve as her keenest weapons; her sympathetic consciousness of the pain she is inflicting

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magnifies the aggressive nature of her acts”: “Maggie suffers for her victim, but she doesn’t leave off” (584). In order for these statements to be valid, however, two pivotal facts must be in place: first, that Charlotte is in fact exiled to American City in a kind of genteel form of captivity with the manipulator of “the silken noose, his wife’s immaterial tether” (II: 331), Adam; and second, that Maggie’s reading of Charlotte is in line with how Charlotte actually feels, especially regarding whether the state of not knowing indeed constitutes a torturous state of being. During the second scene between Maggie and Adam at their sequestered bench at Fawns, Maggie is barely able to deny that Adam leaves for American City because he truly and personally wants to. Not only does Adam as much as say so, resisting Maggie’s imputation that he has never done anything for himself in sacrificing all for his daughter (II: 93, 266), but also Maggie catches a vague but definite glimpse of Adam “doing what he had steadily been coming to; he was practically offering himself, pressing himself upon her, as a sacrifice—he had read his way so into her best possibility; and where had she already for weeks and days past planted her feet if not on her acceptance of the offer?” Adam is not pretending; he is pretending to pretend, just as Maggie is pretending to pretend: Cold indeed, colder and colder she turned as she felt herself suffer this close personal vision of his attitude still not to make her weaken. That was her very certitude, the intensity of his pressure; for if something dreadful had n’t happened there would n’t for either of them be these dreadful things to do. (II: 269)

Maggie realizes that Adam is indeed doing a “dreadful” (II: 269) thing, just as Maggie is. The conventional and official reading of this scene is that Maggie pretends to give Adam up in order to facilitate her father’s lie about wanting to go to American City to enjoy more intimacy with his wife. In so doing, Maggie helps her father help her dispose of her sexual rival, Charlotte. However, as Hugh Stevens writes, “In assuming agency Maggie will abandon her father for her husband, allying herself with the cultural forms of sexuality” (57): This is Maggie sacrificing her father to repossess Amerigo, and Adam sacrificing Maggie to enjoy Charlotte’s company to his heart’s content, although neither confesses to their true motive in their instinctive exercise of perfect and beautiful tact, which protects both themselves and the other with whom they exercise it. This is tellingly illustrated when Maggie feels the temptation of so sacrificing Adam, who on his end, seems to ask to be sacrificed by her, “all conscious and all accommodating, like some precious spotless exceptionally intelligent lamb” (II: 83) so as to facilitate her project—or is it his project? While this may be so, by mentally enacting for herself the official story of Adam’s sacrificing himself according to Maggie’s directions, Maggie achieves a

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host of let-offs. First, Adam is not leaving Maggie for his own benefit, nor for Charlotte’s, but “all for” (II: 272) Maggie, so that Maggie does not need to feel rejected or sacrificed for her rival. Second, the intimacy between Amerigo and Charlotte is not openly discussed or suspected, so that Maggie’s felt sense of inadequacy vis-à-vis Charlotte does not have to surface. Third, because Maggie is the one to suggest the act of self-sacrifice—that is, giving up Adam and suffering on his behalf—the real story of Maggie sacrificing him—that is, of dropping her father for Amerigo, which would jeopardize the fiction of unity between father and daughter—does not surface, either. Last but not least, because Maggie is the one to suggest this, she is able to sustain the fiction that it is she who makes Adam do this, in much the same way that she has made him do everything else in life, which serves to propagate the fiction of perfect affinity between father and daughter. It is small wonder, then, that the official story has to be in place, for with it, Maggie is not required to acknowledge the fact that her father is happy—possibly happier— with Charlotte, nor does she have to openly admit to herself that she is, by now, ready to sacrifice her father to save her own marriage, which she can no longer deny is in desperate need of saving. Maggie’s sense of “the real,” “the things one cannot possibly not know, sooner or later, in one way or another” (Preface to The American xv–xvi), catches up with her. And typically—as a woman and as Adam’s female attendant of the moment— Maggie does much of the work for Adam, saving him the trouble of initiating the topic of moving with Charlotte to American City so that they might be able to enjoy a more normal life, while Maggie, also, in this backbreaking acrobatic maneuver of pretending to pretend, saves both his face and her own—as well she should, not only because her own face is in such desperate need of saving, but also because it is her social duty to save his. It is a win–win situation: Adam “enjoy[s] feeling” that he is “generally, quite systematically, eased and, as they said, ‘done’ for” (I: 201), and Maggie, thanks to her multitudinous impressionistic reflections as to how she really feels about Adam, is now more than ready to drop her father, especially if he will take Charlotte with him to American City. If truth be told, really told, Maggie would like “to be free, to be free to act other than abjectly for her father” (II: 142). The only remaining problem, then, is Maggie’s semiformulated awareness that there are those let-offs, conveniences, and mercies that she is required to achieve by pretending to pretend: in order to see the need for her to pretend to pretend, Maggie must know what she is pretending to pretend for. Maggie cannot not know indefinitely that Adam drops Maggie for his life with Charlotte in much the same way that Maggie chooses to drop him for her life with Amerigo. For example, Maggie explicitly verbalizes her understanding that “her father could from experience fancy what [Maggie] meant” when she tells him that Amerigo is her “motive—in everything.” Maggie here expresses her understanding that Adam, “from experience,” his experience with Charlotte, is able to understand how one’s companion is capable of becoming the “motive—in everything”: beyond the

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shadow of a doubt, Maggie sees that Charlotte has superseded her in becoming Adam’s “motive—in everything” (II: 262). As John A. Clair, Robert Marks, and Merle A. Williams note, Adam is genuinely charmed and enamored by Charlotte: Marks notes that Maggie “blinds her eyes from seeing that her father really cares for Charlotte” (129), while Clair—mentioning Marks—contends that Adam “desires, no less than the Prince and Charlotte, a separation between himself and Maggie in order to secure her, and his own, future happiness” (94). Williams also states that Adam “is quite unashamedly attracted by [Charlotte’s] amenability, her practical competence, and her consideration; moreover, Charlotte meets an unfulfilled need in him for the comfort of a deep personal relationship in which his worth and achievement may be suitably recognized” (192). However, Adam only gradually reaches, that is, looks for and finds, the logic to legitimatize his choice to marry Charlotte. This he manages to do on a sleepless night when he feels that “he should never sleep again till something had come to him; some light, some idea, some mere happy word perhaps, that he had begun to want, but had been till now, and especially the last day or two, vainly groping for” (I: 203–4). The “strange delay” (I: 207) with which the consideration for his daughter comes to him as a legitimating reason for him to choose to remarry attests to the fact that Adam wants Charlotte even before he knows “what she could contribute to” (I: 208). As Madame de Vionnet in The Ambassadors notes, insofar as taking always exacts a giving back that, if not accomplished, creates a manner/moral burden, the “only safe thing” is “to give”: “The only safe thing is to give. It’s what plays you least false” (TA II: 282–3). For Adam, too, it is a general habit of his mind not to budge unless it is a form of giving. Only with the “service to his daughter” (I: 208) in place, does Adam feel he has the official pretext to do what he personally wants to. Luckily, this official pretext prepares him for the personally embarrassing challenge of proposing marriage to a beautiful, young, and clever Charlotte, who is only as old—or as young, rather—as his daughter. It is to be noted that even with an official mission that coincides so beautifully with his personal preference, Adam finds it impossible to hide his agitation during his moments of vulnerability. Adam, in asking for Charlotte’s hand in marriage, is nervous. Although Adam realizes that in Charlotte’s presence, it is “a new and pleasant order, a flattered passive state that might become—why should n’t it?—one of the comforts of the future” (I: 212), at Mr. Gutermann-Seuss’s where he goes with Charlotte to look at beautiful tiles, Adam finds himself “thinking so much less of wares artfully paraded than of some other and quite irrelevant presence,” Charlotte. His mind “wander[s] like one of the vague” (I: 214). He finds himself “thinking, to his enjoyment, of so many other matters than the felicity of his acquisition and the figure of his cheque, quite equally high” (I: 215–16). Adam even comes up with another legitimizing reason for why he should have to proceed with his battle of proposing to Charlotte: he tells himself that a “man of decent feeling did n’t thrust his money, a huge lump of it, in such a way, under a poor girl’s nose—a girl whose poverty was, after a fashion, the very basis of her enjoyment of his hospitality—

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without seeing, logically, a responsibility attached” (I: 217). Logically, therefore, Adam proceeds to fulfill his responsibility, profusely “burning his ships” (I: 215, 216, 218, 221) and playing the part of the patient, thoughtful man he would like to be able to be seen as, “thinking it out in advance” (I: 218). In addition, when Maggie responds in the affirmative to Adam’s letter of inquiry about his marriage to Charlotte, Adam “rejoic[es] with a certain inconsistency” (I: 229). “Adam’s willingness to marry,” therefore, is not, as Pick claims, “the recognition of his fundamental bond with Maggie, of their intertwined happiness, a happiness which exists only in the form of their relation itself” (123). Adam does not in the least marry Charlotte for Maggie, but rather—despite Charlotte’s (I: 262) and Maggie’s understanding to the contrary, thanks to Adam’s superior ability to make himself misunderstood in all quarters—Adam very much wants to marry the beautiful, resourceful Charlotte, with whom he knows he will always be at ease. As Adam tells Maggie, Charlotte “never used to cost [him] anything” (I: 179): he never feels he has to pay, to feel anxious, inadequate, or poor when he is with Charlotte. Adam is not Charlotte’s victimizer, either. Although Adam is universally acknowledged as being enigmatic—Ruth Bernard Yeazell specifically refers to him as “at once a moral and an intellectual mystery” (123)—his inscrutability stems predominantly from the “polished old ivory” of the “inattackable surface” he adopts in sustaining “the perfection of his outward show” (II: 299). This face that Adam presents for the world to respect and agree to uphold is what Robert Ezra Park would call a “mask”: “It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first meaning, is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a rôle” (249): In a sense, and in so far as this mask represents the conception we have formed of ourselves—the role we are striving to live up to—this mask is our truer self, the self we would like to be. In the end, our conception of our role becomes second nature and an integral part of our personality. We come into the world as individuals, achieve character, and become persons.14 (Park 250)

Adam’s blank face is performed and put on, and we have Maggie as witness. The careful reader sees Maggie observing that the ostensible “spell” Adam casts and the web that he weaves are, upon closer scrutiny, merely the result of a habitual performance. To Maggie’s “initiated conscience,” Adam only has the “appearance of weaving his spell” (II: 290, emphasis mine) or fingering “the silken noose, his wife’s immaterial tether” (II: 331). Maggie notes that he presents an “indescribable air of wearing his spell, weaving it off there by himself” (II: 284) “by the force of habit, not less patiently than if his wife had been present” (II: 301), and sees him “still simply weave his web and play out his long fine cord, knew  Also quoted in Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 19–20.

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herself in presence of this tacit process very much as she had known herself at Fawns” (II: 358). Maggie here dramatizes her quiet knowledge of how her father habitually uses his nonattitude and silence to make others comply with what he seems to want. Likewise, as Porter notes, “Adam’s mystification in the eyes of others derives from the inference they automatically make” (132). Crews also writes that Adam’s “raw power—that is to say, the other characters’ estimation of his power—is sufficiently eloquent in itself” (89), but as Adam himself would reply, his “greatest inconvenience” consists of his “finding it so taken for granted that as he had money he had force,” and this “attribution of power” “press[es] upon him hard and all round assuredly” (I: 130–31). Adam senses that it is the others that author him as being powerful, although he does nothing to contradict it. Dean MacCannell and Juliet Flower MacCannell would say that this phenomenon is created by “the feminine beauty system” (208). Although they explain this unofficial institution primarily in terms of gender relations, it is also “related to systems of class, status, and power in society” (218): The female beauty system covers the social fact that men are not supposed to have to show or represent themselves in any way in order to be accepted as men. They are originally and authentically men in the first place. Men are real. Women are “made up.” But this alleged authenticity of the male gender hides behind and is entirely dependent upon feminine self-characterization as fake, false, superficial, artificial, and the like. (212)

When the lower in hierarchical social relations in the macrosocial world cater to the higher—that is, to the men, the rich, or the powerful—the latter are automatically guaranteed their positions. Adam is automatically assumed to be powerful without having to establish himself as such. However, as MacCannell and Flower MacCannell observe, “Female insecurity which takes the form of ‘beauty’ is only male insecurity displaced” (235). Indeed, as James illustrates, male insecurity is also abundantly present. Amerigo, for example, adheres to the demands of the beauty system vis-à-vis Adam and Maggie because these two characters seem to command deference,15 thanks to their economic power and his sense of indebtedness to them. Maggie pays tribute to the beauty system vis-à-vis Amerigo and Adam because they are men, while Charlotte also seems to command deference even before she marries her father because she is felt to be superior in taste to Maggie. When Charlotte marries Maggie’s father, moreover, Charlotte is felt to be even more superior, for now Charlotte is equipped with the means to realize her taste and is no longer 15

  “Deference,” according to Goffman, is “that component of activity which functions as a symbolic means by which appreciation is regularly conveyed to a recipient of this recipient,” and these “marks of devotion represent ways in which an actor celebrates and confirms his relation to a recipient” (Ritual 56–7).

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economically vulnerable. Charlotte, in turn, embraces the system vis-à-vis the men, especially Adam because she feels indebted to him, and to some extent with Maggie because she is her husband’s daughter. Fanny, in turn, feels superior to none except, perhaps, her accommodating Bob, who reveres and cherishes his wife out of habit and because she commands deference. In this way, the values of the macro world—economic, cultural, and gender-related—affect the structural dynamics of face-to-face interaction but not in any single-dimensional way. The “psychic economy of sado-masochistic male–female relations” that Leland S. Person discusses frames the relations in The Golden Bowl in terms of what he calls “the sadistic and masochistic economies” (164, 154): based on “a variation on the theory of spermatic economy” (Person 159), Adam places Amerigo in the vexed position of a Strether-like “kept” position, although the “Prince’s manhood, his recurring subject position as a man, will be constructed reflexively—and sadistically—at the site of woman’s weakness” (Person 163). Adam’s “power and male identity” is also maintained by “female construction and confirmation—Maggie and Charlotte’s coincidentally cooperative efforts,” but by allowing them to make those efforts, he “retains the capitalist’s privileged position of seeing others work in his behalf” (Person 154). In this way, hierarchical relations are multilayered. They are also a product of assumptions and performances, and Maggie comes to sense this vis-à-vis her father, and eventually herself. When Maggie last sees her father, she senses that Adam’s enigmatic façade is put on, and his artfulness, she sees, is as much an artifice as Adam’s collection of art: The “successful” beneficent person, the beautiful bountiful original dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate collector and infallible high authority he had been and still was—these things struck her on the spot as making up for him in a wonderful way a character she must take into account in dealing with him either for pity or for envy. … His very quietness was part of it now, as always part of everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable incalculable energy; and this quality perhaps it might be—all the more too as the result, for the present occasion, of an admirable traceable effort—that placed him in her eyes as no precious work of art probably had ever been placed in his own. (II: 273)

In this way, Charlotte is no more a victim of Adam than Adam is Charlotte’s victimizer. Charlotte’s “interest in [Adam’s] rarities, her appreciation of his taste, her native passion for beautiful objects and her grateful desire not to miss anything he could teach her about them” is “all the ground, the finest clearest air and most breathable medium common to them” (II: 286), so that the “sposi ” at Fawns are “so together yet at the same time so separate” (II: 287). Adam and Charlotte manage their relationship in the reciprocal order of things and are a respectable, relatively happy team, which Maggie does not not know.

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While Charlotte claims familiarity with Adam’s ways during a backstage conversation with Amerigo, she denies being able to understand Maggie: “‘I understand my husband perhaps,’ she after an instant conceded. ‘I don’t understand your wife’” (I: 310).16 If Charlotte does not understand Maggie—that is, if Charlotte’s claim that she “can’t put [herself] into Maggie’s skin” is true— should the reverse be possible? Should Maggie be able to put herself in Charlotte’s skin and be able to “breathe in it” (I: 311)? For this is what Maggie effectively does in empathetically imagining Charlotte’s state during their final face-to-face encounter at Fawns. The final direct encounter between Maggie and Charlotte is, as critics have noted, intense. However, it is more intense for Maggie than it is for Mrs. Charlotte Verver because of the multiple roles Maggie spontaneously takes on in her attempt to emerge from the encounter morally unblemished.17 During Maggie’s second and final encounter with Charlotte, Maggie projects her understanding of Charlotte’s felt state in order to interact with her successfully, so much so that she unwittingly overworks both for herself and for her projected version of Mrs. Verver—her Maggie-Charlotte—at a significantly higher level of both other-directed and selfdirected consciousness than before. As the self is “a process in which the individual is continually adjusting himself in advance to the situation to which he belongs, and reacting back on it” (Mead Mind 182), this self-adjustment process that constitutes Maggie’s self takes place here between Maggie’s “I,” Maggie’s “me,” Maggie-Charlotte’s “I,” and MaggieCharlotte’s “me.” As Maggie and Maggie-Charlotte then proceed to interact with one another, Maggie is required to adjust the behaviors of both Maggie and Maggie-Charlotte in accommodating the subtly shifting relationship between herself and her Maggie-Charlotte. So as not to become obsessive about what takes place, an exceedingly short glance at the scene will be braved: Maggie reacts to Maggie-Charlotte reacting to Maggie, who reacts to Maggie-Charlotte reacting to Maggie, who reacts to Maggie-Charlotte reacting to Maggie—and so continues the hall-of-mirrors-like self-duplicative, interaction process. Suffice it to say that it is effectively as though Maggie is grappling with a ghost who resembles herself, fighting mirror images of her felt self. When Maggie approaches Charlotte, for example, it is “to feel her own heart in her throat, [is] to be almost moved to saying to [Charlotte]: ‘Hold on tight, my poor dear—without too much terror—and it will all come out somehow’” (II: 284). Maggie imagines that the confrontation is terrifying to Maggie-Charlotte who responds to Maggie, who responds to Maggie-Charlotte responding to Maggie—who is ultimately and simultaneously

16

 Amerigo also reiterates this statement when he tells Maggie that Charlotte does not understand her (II: 347). 17   James, for example, uses the expression, “Maggie’s version of Mrs. Verver” (II: 301), while he has Fanny describe Maggie as “the overworked little trapezist girl” (II: 302).

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the aggressor, aggressee, and sympathizer. Indeed, as James ironically comments through Maggie, “Yes, she had done all” (II: 318). This explains the sadomasochistic rhetoric. It is Maggie who inflicts agony by not informing, suffers by not being informed, watches the uninformed suffer, suffers the watching of the uninformed victim who suffers, and who triumphs in knowing that she is perceived as suffering in such a sympathetic way. There then remains one question, the question as to whether not knowing is indeed, from Charlotte-Charlotte’s point of view, as oppressive, terrorizing, and tortuous as Maggie, along with a host of critics, claims it is. Maggie’s torment begins and ends with her state of not knowing. As Maggie tells Fanny, “I’ve often wondered … what Charlotte really understood. But it’s one of the things she has never told me” (II: 175). Maggie wants to know how Charlotte really sees her, how Amerigo and Charlotte together really are, how she really is with her father, what Amerigo really goes through after the destruction of the golden bowl, and how Amerigo really feels about Maggie. So universally poised, tactful, and resourceful are the social beings in The Golden Bowl that their civility can hardly be distinguished from their bluffing. The vocabulary of game theory—specifically, bluffing—is deliberately employed here because interaction involves information, and insofar as social individuals require information on which to base their behavior, social interaction is after all like a game.18 Goffman likewise calls “the calculative, gamelike aspects of mutual dealings” “strategic interaction” (Strategic x). Although I do not propose to analyze James’s narrative according to game theory or any of its variations, it is helpful to note, “Life may not be much of a gamble, but interaction is” (Presentation 243). It is no wonder, then, that Maggie feels as though she is constantly reduced to groping in the dark for information. Without the information she seeks, not knowing can only be oppressive, torturous, and disabling for Maggie, which is why, in imagining what Charlotte may be going through, Maggie exclaims to Fanny, “with tears in her eyes,” that it can only be torturous for Maggie-Charlotte to be in “ignorance” (II: 336). To revert to the question at hand, however, is not knowing so terrible for Charlotte-Charlotte? Amerigo—whose “moral sense,” he claims, is “slow and steep and unlighted” in comparison to the Americans’, which “works by steam” (I: 31)—makes Maggie “a lucid enquiry”: “Why do you speak of the unhappiness of your father’s wife?” (II: 346). Amerigo assures Maggie that Charlotte is not, as Maggie insists on making her out to be, “unhappy,” and further inquires, “Why is [Charlotte] unhappy if she does n’t know?” (II: 348). Amerigo’s question is not as dull as Maggie, Fanny, and many critics make it out to be. Although more than a few critics claim that not knowing will continue to torment and plague Charlotte,  For an insightful essay on game theory and The Golden Bowl, see Jonathan Freedman’s “What Maggie Knew: Game Theory, The Golden Bowl, and the Possibilities of Aesthetic Knowledge.” See also Philip Fisher’s The Vehement Passions (2002), p. 130, with which Freedman opens his essay. Nancy Morrow also writes on games and James. 18

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what she does not know cannot hurt her, while what one imagines, whether true or not, can inflict torment and misery, as James’s narratives abundantly illustrate.19 As Fanny says to Bob, “One’s punishment is in what one feels, and what will make ours effective is that we shall feel” (II: 136). Conversely, if they do not feel, they are not punished, and if they do not know, they cannot feel, so that if this logic is faithfully followed, there is no punishment for those who either cannot know or cannot feel. Indeed, it is Maggie rather than Charlotte that suffers during this final encounter. Maggie’s interaction with Maggie-Charlotte exposes Maggie to Maggie’s abject self. As Goffman notes, interaction with another involves a degree of selfexposure: “Each individual can see that he is being experienced in some way, and he will guide at least some of his conduct according to the perceived identity and initial response of his audience. … Ordinarily, then, to use our naked senses is to use them nakedly and to be made naked by their use” (Behavior 16). Taking the attitude of Maggie-Charlotte, who takes the attitude of Maggie taking the attitude of Maggie-Charlotte, Maggie is curiously beset by the sense that she is not really pretending when she pretends “to appear” to be a “poor little person”: Our young woman was to have passed, in all her adventure, no stranger moments; for she not only now saw her companion fairly agree to take her then for the poor little person she was finding it so easy to appear, but fell, in a secret responsive ecstasy, to wondering if there were n’t some supreme abjection with which she might be inspired. (II: 313)

Maggie’s pretended poorness is strangely both natural—because it coincides perfectly with the real thing—and sublime—because it is temporarily felt to be a magnificent performance on Maggie’s part when she takes the attitude of Maggie-Charlotte toward herself, and it is Maggie who does all the watching. Should Maggie be able to “be inspired” by further “supreme abjection,” MaggieCharlotte, too, would inevitably see Maggie’s poorness that would appear supreme and abject. Thus, as Ronald Wallace insightfully observes, “when [Maggie] thinks she is lying to Charlotte, she is actually merely being truthful. She has tried to keep Adam for herself, she has ‘worked against’ Charlotte … and she has ‘failed’” (145). And Maggie’s pretended pretending to be abject helps Maggie ride out this climactic moment of confrontation. As was the case with Strether during his confrontation with Sarah Pocock, Maggie’s blow feels more like a performance than an actual one. Consequently, when Maggie watches Charlotte walk off at the end of their conversation after informing her daughter-in-law that she would like to claim her husband back immediately, Charlotte-Charlotte may indeed have been 19

  The so-called Thomas theorem stipulates that “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Thomas 572). See also “The Thomas Theorem and the Matthew Effect” by Robert K. Merton, which discusses, among other things, the history of the idea, dating back to Epictetus’s time (382–3).

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felt by Maggie-Maggie to be “splendid and erect” (II: 318), but in an existential kind of way: pretending to pretend, Maggie unwittingly acts out the truth, to which Charlotte-Charlotte also reacts truthfully—and Maggie involuntarily registers the truthfulness of both parties somewhere in the back of her mind. This forces Maggie to begin the process of gradually acknowledging the reality of their situation. Wallace’s insight that the truth is enacted during this second encounter between Maggie and her young mother-in-law is magnificently, accurately true—except that Maggie is not unaware of what takes place between them.20 Amerigo is not as stupid as he seems. Although Amerigo is described from Maggie’s point of view as looking like a simpleminded rooster “with his head erect and his happy idea perched in its eagerness on his crest” (II: 356) when he inquires, “Why is [Charlotte] unhappy if she does n’t know?” (II: 348), he may in fact have affected the wisest piece of strategic action conceivable for Charlotte vis-à-vis Maggie if, as she surmises from the situation, Amerigo “had reassured and deceived her” rather than alarm her (II: 227). Maggie sees that intentionally or not, by acting as he does, Amerigo saves Charlotte more surely than any intimate reunion and disclosure of facts could ever accomplish. Take the example of a fire breaking out in a theater full of people. Just as one would never scream “Fire!” under such circumstances, so Amerigo could be wisely acting as though nothing is the matter when he discovers the Bloomsbury shopkeeper has come to see Maggie. Although Maggie and critics alike reach different conclusions regarding Amerigo’s ostensible decision not to talk to Charlotte about his wife Maggie’s discovery of the ex-lovers’ walk together to Bloomsbury Street, his possible decision to resort to bluffing is similar to what the owner of the aforementioned movie theater on fire would quietly do: perhaps announce that the projector is out of order so as to have moviegoers exit the burning building in a calm manner, and proceed to suffer complaints in order to ensure the safety of the moviegoers. This possibility is at least that, a possibility, and Maggie knows this. The ensuing question, then, is whether Charlotte requires saving at all, and since it has been demonstrated that Adam is no more a domineering, tyrannical figure than Charlotte is a mere helpless victim, we only have Maggie’s purported wrath to contend with. It is well to remember that by now, Maggie needs to have “done all” (II: 318): pairing Adam with Charlotte, making him marry Charlotte for Maggie’s sake, pairing Charlotte with Amerigo, and exiling Charlotte to American City with a tyrannical Adam. In order for Maggie to be able to reject the theory that it was Adam’s idea to marry Charlotte and subsequently to go with her to American City so that he might better enjoy her company and the theory that it was Amerigo’s idea to go off with his ex-lover Charlotte if the opportunity arose, that is, in order for Maggie to avoid her felt stigma of being the superseded self that she increasingly feels she is vis-à-vis Amerigo and her father, Charlotte cannot be the cause of 20   Wallace claims that Maggie is not aware of her actions and is incapable of knowing that she has enacted the truth.

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Maggie’s unhappiness. Logically speaking, Maggie cannot—in theory, if not in practice—resent a Charlotte who needs to be incapable of culpability. Notwithstanding such denials, Maggie is gradually confronted with a multitude of truths, those things she had “tossed” into one big, unsorted heap of “confused objects” (II: 15, 14), as her self-awareness and her awareness of those around her increase in clarity and emphasis. Taking the attitude of Adam, Charlotte, Amerigo, and Fanny toward herself, Maggie by now clearly begins to sense the truth about her and Adam’s father–daughter relationship, Charlotte and Amerigo’s intimacy, her and Charlotte’s relationship, and finally, her and Amerigo’s husband-and-wife relationship. With Maggie superseded by Charlotte in both Adam and Amerigo’s lives, her felt poorness is hopelessly accentuated. For example, Maggie senses that her relationship with her father ultimately lacks the backstage quality she is able to indulge in when she is with Fanny. Unlike Maggie’s embrace with Fanny, in whose arms Maggie is able to indulge in a fit of tears (II: 120), Maggie’s final embrace with Adam is “august and almost stern,” which “for all its intimacy” “produce[s] … no revulsion and [breaks] into no inconsequence of tears” (II: 275). Their embrace is a clean-cut farewell ritual, much as Charlotte’s final hour with Amerigo at London Park was meant to be. Compared with the “august and almost stern” (II: 275) ritualistic farewell embrace between father and daughter, the farewell scene between Charlotte and Amerigo during their last outing together before their respective marriages to the Ververs is, in a sense, clumsily and thereby indistinctly enacted, although as Susan Winnett writes, Charlotte’s “brilliant performance” of farewell at London Park is meant to serve as a full stop to her lingering attachment to Amerigo: “The way [Charlotte] stages their meeting in the Park is supposed to ensure that no elements of the past survive into the future” (191). Therefore, just as in real life we would be slightly embarrassed to run into somebody with whom we have just engaged in an elaborate ritualistic farewell, the readers also feel mildly let down when both Charlotte and Amerigo respectively, irrelevantly, and inconsistently propose gifts for one another at the Bloomsbury Street shop: inconsequentially, Amerigo proposes to buy a broach for Charlotte although he calmly declines when his soonto-be ex-lover, Charlotte, asks to be allowed to do the same for him, that is, give him a gift. Charlotte explicitly objects to and even complains about Amerigo’s gesture of wanting to give her a gift, and Amerigo reluctantly backs down. Amerigo is here reluctant because agreeing with Charlotte’s request of withdrawing his offer of a gift implicates him in Charlotte’s—and the readers’—interpretation of his gesture, that is, her estimation of his motives. With the dubious Bloomsbury Street shopkeeper looking on “with his eyes on them,” Charlotte, for example, feels that it is a “comfort … that their foreign tongue covered what they said,” because in discussing what they can or cannot agree to take, “they might have appeared … to be discussing a purchase” (I: 109). Although neither Charlotte nor Amerigo is engaged in a barter or a market exchange of any kind, the social context complicates and makes problematic their willingness to give one another a gift. As Charlotte rightly tells Amerigo, officially, “A ricordo from you—from you

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to me—is a ricordo of nothing. It has no reference” (I: 108). Indeed, Amerigo does not have any consciously acknowledged ulterior motives. He merely wants to give her something. Although Amerigo cannot articulate why he wants to do so, his proposal of a gift to Charlotte is the result of his unthinking urge to do so in spite of himself, perhaps as is the case with Charlotte when she offers the unspecified gift to Amerigo. However, as giving cannot be accomplished without the other party’s agreement to receive, and as Charlotte cannot condone receiving a gift from Amerigo unless he is able to bring himself to receive from her as well—which indeed he, officially, cannot honestly and respectably do—no exchange takes place. Thus, neither giving nor taking, Charlotte and Amerigo muddle through their final moments together as former lovers, and clumsily part. Jonathan Warren writes that during this occasion, the nonexchange of gifts is in itself “a document”: “Their hunt serves in lieu of any physical gift as a gift” and “the non-transaction they finally pursue generates its own references and yields its own trace” (272). Indeed, the decision of both Charlotte and Amerigo not to do anything that feels like a barter or a market exchange even though both want to give something to the other is an event in itself. It is a tribute to Charlotte and Amerigo that they subsequently manage their inadvertent understanding of each other and involuntary intimacy so resourcefully after Charlotte becomes a Verver. They excel in what communication theorists William R. Cupach and Brian H. Spitzberg call “relationship management skills” (xii). Charlotte’s company makes Amerigo feel of a piece. Only “when he was alone or when he was with his own people—or when he was, say, with Mrs. Verver and nobody else” does Amerigo feel “as a congruous whole” (I: 328). Charlotte, too, acknowledges her understanding of Amerigo and herself when discussing the “strain” involved in resisting the temptation to take advantage of the Ververs’ benevolence: “We happen each, I think, to be of the kind that are easily spoiled” (I: 102). Admittedly human, nakedly honest, and profoundly interested in the preservation of their moral standing, both Amerigo and Charlotte are able to engage profusely in back-backstage talk with one another as soon as they are alone together. They are intimate, so that the moments of real and perfect mutual understanding between them repeatedly allow them to experience a sense of euphoric consummation—such as when Charlotte and Amerigo passionately vow to handle the Ververs with utmost care (I: 312) or when at Matcham, Amerigo and Charlotte together manage to avert Mrs. Assingham’s invitation to return to town with the Assinghams, thereby delaying their return to make a secret detour trip to Gloucester for the day and enjoy their borrowed moments together: They had these identities of impulse—they had had them repeatedly before; and if such unarranged but unerring encounters gave the measure of the degree in which people were, in the common phrase, meant for each other, no union in the world had ever been more sweetened with rightness. What in fact most often happened was that her rightness went, as who should say, even further than his

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Williams writes, “This episode, in particular, conjures up the curiously ‘scripted’ quality of the relationship between Charlotte and Amerigo. James portrays them as dissembling, acting and conspicuously staging performances” (186). However, the point to note is not that they are performing but that they are capable of performing together according to a common romantic script. When Amerigo cries, “It only wants a moon, a mandolin and a little danger to be a serenade,” Charlotte, in responding, spontaneously takes “a rich white rosebud” (I: 357) from the front of her dress and dramatically flings it down to him. As it takes two individuals to successfully synchronize and perform this script that is so pleasing to both, Amerigo and Charlotte are a perfect match: when Amerigo points to Gloucester, Charlotte “[knows] just where to look” (I: 358). If, as sociologist Simon claims, the “pleasuring capacities of the sexual event are the result of effective performance of the actor’s interpersonal script and its embodiment of elements of the actor’s intrapsychic script”—“a script of the erotic” (30, 29)—then it is highly likely that Amerigo and Charlotte would be as compatible as romantic partners as they are as intimate friends: … the image of myself which I try to create in my mind in order that I might sustain sexual excitement is different than the image which I try to create in the mind of others in order that they may respond to me in ways that I desire. The issue of maintaining sexual excitement comes under the heading of what can be called “intrapsychic scripting”, while the problem of eliciting desired responses from others is labeled “interpersonal scripting”. A third influential element is “cultural scenarios”, i.e. the actions, objects, persons, contexts, and costumes that are defined as having erotic meanings by the surrounding world. (Simon 33–4)

When everything falls into place, as it does this specific gloriously beautiful afternoon in Matcham for the two ex-lovers, anything can happen. While Amerigo finds in this occasion the perfect adventurous opportunity to try his hand at going against the stream, being a little more assertive, less overcivil, less overattentive, and thus less unfree, all to let Fanny and Charlotte do the work for him, what he simultaneously senses is that the coincidence—what Charlotte calls “these harmonies” (I: 361)—“had a meaning—a meaning that their associated sense was to drain even as thirsty lips, after the plough through the sands and the sight, afar, of the palm-cluster, might drink in at last the promised well in the desert” (I: 346). If anything were to happen, this would not be entirely their fault, either: Nothing stranger surely had ever happened to a conscientious, a well-meaning, a perfectly passive pair: no more extraordinary decree had ever been launched against such victims than this of forcing [Amerigo and Charlotte] against their

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will into a relation of mutual close contact that they had done everything to avoid. (I: 289)

Maggie senses this. Taking the attitude of Amerigo and Charlotte toward each other, observing them, and thinking against, with, and without, Fanny, Maggie involuntarily and accurately senses Charlotte and Amerigo’s inadvertent, spontaneous, and abundant intimacy, which may or may not have culminated in a sexual liaison. Problematically, if Maggie is aware that Charlotte and Amerigo are intimate, she is after all an aggressor and intruder, for she brings to pass the separation of two very close people. As Maggie has already sacrificed her father for Amerigo, or rather, has been sacrificed by Adam and replaced and superseded by Charlotte, she feels poorer than ever, with even fewer alternatives to choose from than before. Now all she has is Amerigo to make amends for everything that is impossibly wrong. The most crucial of the multitude of truths Maggie “tossed” into one big, unsorted heap of “confused objects” (II: 15, 14) is that Maggie has “[n]ever” (I: 384) had Amerigo. That is, Maggie vaguely senses that it is Charlotte, not Maggie, who has always had him, and this haunting knowledge seems to glare out at her at every turn. When Amerigo goes off to London for the day and the night at Portland Place during the final days of the elder Ververs at Eaton Square, through observation and deductive reasoning, and by imaginatively looking at Amerigo’s situation from his point of view, Maggie seems to realize how Amerigo “like[s] better than anything in the world just now to be alone with his thoughts,” which also seems “a good deal as if he were alone with her” (II: 293–4). But alone with whom, Charlotte or Maggie? As much as Maggie would like to imagine that she is the one with whom he is alone during his most private moments, she instinctively and involuntarily feels it is truly Charlotte whom Amerigo thinks about. Objectively true or not, Maggie feels like Amerigo’s jailer: It was like his doing penance in sordid ways—being sent to prison or being kept without money; it would n’t have taken much to make [Maggie] think of him as really kept without food. He might have broken away, might easily have started to travel; he had a right—thought wonderful Maggie now—to so many more freedoms than he took! (II: 294)

Also expressed here is the sense that Maggie keeps her husband under her control only because he has been tricked into believing he should be. In addition, Maggie sees that he is attempting to “[do] penance in sordid ways,” but in recognizing this, she is required to give some thought to what he is doing “penance” (II: 294) for. Is he repentant toward Charlotte for having abandoned her, or toward Maggie for feeling repentant toward Charlotte? Viewing the situation from what she imagines is Amerigo’s point of view, and feeling emotions both for Maggie-Charlotte and herself, Maggie requires Amerigo to feel multiple ways.

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Viewing the situation from what she understands to be Charlotte’s point of view, however, Maggie seems to hear Charlotte saying, “You don’t know what it is to have been loved and broken with. You have n’t been broken with, because in your relation what can there have been worth speaking of to break? Ours was everything a relation could be, filled to the brim with the wine of consciousness; and if it was to have no meaning, no better meaning than that such a creature as you could breathe upon it, at your hour, for blight, why was I myself dealt with all for deception? why condemned after a couple of short years to find the golden flame—oh the golden flame!—a mere handful of black ashes?” (II: 329–30)

Maggie’s Maggie-Charlotte, “the woman who could no longer help herself” (II: 330), plagues her. Sensing that Amerigo’s “idea could only be to wait, whatever might come, at her side,” Maggie may very well have wondered, at whose side would Amerigo wait, “whatever might come”—Charlotte’s or Maggie’s? If it is to “her buried face that [Maggie] thus for a long time felt him draw nearest,” to whose face, Charlotte’s or Maggie’s, does he “draw nearest,” and what is behind Amerigo’s “pale hard” felt “grimace” (II: 295)? During the final back-backstage discussion between Maggie and Fanny before the elder Ververs’ departure to American City, Fanny provides support for Maggie’s assessment of Amerigo’s somewhat enigmatic, quiet acquiescence. Amerigo does not “funk,” they agree. Moreover, he stays “to take anything that comes or calls upon him” “for high decency.” What is not clarified, however, is for whom Amerigo stays in “high decency”—himself, Charlotte, or Maggie. Does Amerigo stay for his personal honor, refusing to “funk” (II: 326) in the face of Charlotte’s departure, or is he staying for Charlotte so as “to wait, whatever might come, at her side” (II: 295), that is, at Charlotte’s side; or can it be that Amerigo stays for Maggie, when he could very well leave and do as he pleases, because of his sense of indebtedness to her—“for high decency” (II: 326)? Regardless of specifics, what cannot be denied about Maggie’s understanding of her relationship with Amerigo is her acknowledgement of his decency. Amerigo is highly decent. However, what is as undeniably, glaringly true—although Maggie does not specifically formulate it as such—is the fact that if Amerigo stays with Maggie for this reason, Maggie becomes, like Madame de Vionnet, a woman burdened with the sad knowledge that her man only stays with her because of his sense of obligation. If this is true, then Amerigo remains only out of duty, and as Chad observes vis-à-vis Madame de Vionnet, “one can’t but have it before one, in the cleaving—the point where the death comes in” (TA II: 317). In Maggie’s understanding, the relationship between her and Amerigo would be only a one-sided transaction destined to continue only for as long as Maggie’s giving continues, her giving reciprocated by Amerigo’s tactful if grateful taking, followed by his gesture of giving back: Maggie will remain forever poor—and Amerigo poorer still.

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Incidentally, Charlotte understands something of Amerigo’s decency when she tells him on the eve of his wedding, “Well, I would marry, I think, to have something from you in all freedom.” This—“to have something” from Amerigo “in all freedom”—is precisely what Maggie cannot have by marrying him: so long as Amerigo feels indebted to Maggie, it will not be possible for her to have anything from Amerigo “in all freedom.” However, Charlotte, in having by then no claim to repayment of any kind, may very well have received “something” from Amerigo “in all freedom” (I: 121) when he bids farewell to his former lover, comrade, and mother-in-law in silence—which Maggie is capable of imagining as being the case. On the eve of Charlotte and Adam’s departure for American City, Maggie does all she can to restore the unity of her relationship with Amerigo. When Amerigo only half-answers her inquiries, for example, she waits until his vague response “had had time somewhat to settle like some handful of gold-dust thrown into the air,” so that Maggie might “[show] herself as deeply and strangely taking it”: “‘I see.’ And she even wished this form to be as complete as she could make it. ‘I see’” (II: 350). Then, when Amerigo asks Maggie to “wait” until Maggie and Amerigo are “really alone,” Maggie seems to understand perfectly what he means, for Charlotte has not yet left them. She is able to feel “the thick breath of the definite—which was the intimate, the immediate, the familiar as she had n’t had them for so long” (II: 351), and Maggie experiences a sense of oneness with Amerigo that makes it difficult for her to leave him both literally and emotionally. Maggie and Amerigo seem, finally, to be talking in the same language and performing from the same script. Suddenly, therefore, Maggie is overwhelmed by “her weakness, her desire,” which “so long as she was yet not saving herself, flowered in her face like a light or a darkness” (II: 352). Maggie’s temptation to give in to the impulse to lose herself in the guilty intimacy that Amerigo’s presence seems to offer becomes almost insurmountable, and whether such a state should be for her “a light” or “a darkness” is not certain: “He was so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him, kiss him, hold him; he almost pressed upon her, and the warmth of his face—frowning, smiling, she might n’t know which; only beautiful and strange— was bent upon her with the largeness with which objects loom in dreams” (II: 352). This is a pivotal moment, during which several things take place. For one, as Yeazell points out, “sexual surrender becomes identical here with the loss of all conscious control” (19), which Maggie finally rejects. The need for autonomy and conscious control of the situation overrides her need for intimacy or her temptation to join Amerigo in the enacting of a common script, sexual or otherwise. For another, caught between having consciously to choose between the long-awaited chance for intimacy with Amerigo—as guilty as it may be—and social correctness, this time, Maggie desperately blurts out the first word that comes to her mind, “Wait!” which is “the word of his own distress and entreaty, the word for both of them, all they had left, their plank now on the great sea”

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(II: 352–3). Although with this, Maggie feels she “had saved herself and she got off” (II: 353), what is not quite recognized is that the choice Maggie’s “top-heavy” head (Yeazell 17) makes at this crucial moment expresses her unwittingly gained understanding that both Amerigo and she require at this juncture what Goffman calls “audience segregation” (Ritual 108). Amerigo needs this, supposes Maggie, because it could only be a matter of bad taste not to. He cannot be both Charlotte’s lover and Maggie’s husband. So, too, does Maggie need it, since viewing the situation from what she takes to be Charlotte’s point of view, she cannot help feeling that it is inappropriate and immoral for her to make him hers just yet. In sum, Maggie manages to remain socially correct but only at the expense of fully acknowledging that for which she needs to be so. Maggie thus implicates both Amerigo and herself in an incriminating narrative consisting of a seemingly genteel husband and his artful wife who will try to make up after she sends the husband’s ex-lover into exile. Ironically, Maggie’s desire to keep the situation under conscious control backfires to bring Maggie’s knowledge of herself—and perhaps of Amerigo—out into the open: “Maggie knows more than she knows she knows, and her metaphor” (Yeazell 44), in this case, that of “their plank now on the great sea” (II: 352–3), “mediates between conscious knowledge and deeper modes of awareness” (Yeazell 44). Maggie is now semi-aware of the perilous state of affairs she has managed to place herself in. The final “visit of Royalty” (II: 354) is performed with appropriate ceremony, and Maggie is conscious that Mr. and Mrs. Verver are “making the occasion easy”: “They were somehow conjoined in it, conjoined for a present effect as Maggie had absolutely never yet seen them” (II: 357), as well they should be, for they are behaving according to the rules of situational propriety. Maggie also experiences “the fact of a felt sincerity in her words,” a “sincerity absolutely sound,” which she later recalls to have been “one of the happiest words of her life” when she tells her father, “Because Charlotte, dear, you know … is incomparable” (II: 363). Instead of alluding to her own superseded state, Maggie decides that all can be overcome by focusing their attention on Charlotte’s absolute beauty: “They could close upon it—such a basis as they might immediately feel it make; and so they stood together over it quite gratefully, each recording to the other’s eyes that it was firm under their feet” (II: 364). Maggie and Adam, without saying exactly what they might, “[part], in the light of it, absolutely on Charlotte’s value” (II: 365). Maggie does not express her relief that all is about to end once Charlotte removes to American City, away from her and Amerigo; nor does Adam express his happiness at being able to “know [Charlotte] better” (II: 364). As Maggie claims, “It’s success, father” (II: 366): it is success, success of supreme tact on everyone’s part, with all conjoined to carry out a farewell ritual without alluding to a shred of truth.21  Heyns writes, “Seeing becomes more and more a matter of pretending not to see, of taking the form for the content. This preservation of forms is most triumphantly demonstrated in the famous closing scenes of the novel” (260). Another name for this preservation of forms is tact. 21

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After Mr. and Mrs. Verver’s departure, there is tension. “Stillness … might have been said to be not so much restored as created” (II: 366). Rather than Maggie and Amerigo’s finally finding themselves at ease, it is as though Maggie is awaiting the outcome of an expensive gamble: “[Maggie] had thrown the dice, but his hand was over her cast.” Maggie’s awareness that she—officially—is “the creature to be paid” makes her afraid, for this would confirm her suspicions regarding the ex-lovers’ relationship, and she is kept in suspense, waiting for ten minutes to learn how Amerigo should determine “the certification of the amount” (II: 367). Will she be rewarded for overlooking Amerigo’s breach of social contract and allowing Charlotte to move on unscathed? Unofficially, however, Maggie is not sure whether she should be paid at all: she cannot help feeling that she does not deserve payment of any kind, feeling, as she does, that she is somehow Amerigo’s jailer. Maggie is as afraid of not being paid and of finding herself on the paying end as she is of being paid. Either way, Maggie’s poorness cannot be denied. Whether she should ultimately find herself in the position of Amerigo’s perpetual creditor, and only his creditor, or find herself infinitely in debt, owing Amerigo his right to freedom, Maggie feels poor. When Amerigo finally joins Maggie, she sees that his “presence alone … somehow made [the amount] the highest, and even before he had spoken she had begun to be paid in full.” Amerigo has opted to stay—in reciprocation, so Maggie supposes, for her tactful handling of Charlotte’s departure for American City. Simultaneously, however, in imagining how he must see her at that moment, Maggie also “sense[s] that she must strike him as waiting for a confession. This in turn charged her with a new horror; if that was her proper payment she would go without money.” Officially, perhaps, Amerigo owes her an explanation, but unofficially, Maggie owes him one. Maggie feels poorer and poorer—so that as “far as seeing that she was ‘paid’ went he might have been holding out the moneybag for her to come and take it” (II: 368). He seems to offer her the payment, but it is effectively as though he dares her to extort it from him. Maggie, therefore, attempts to tactfully present the case to Amerigo by making—as she did with her father—“Charlotte’s value” (II: 365) their common basis, so that they might avoid all discussion of anything literal such as their respective poorness: “Isn’t she too splendid?” she simply said, offering it to explain and to finish. “Oh splendid!” With which he came over to her. “That’s our help, you see,” she added—to point further her moral. (II: 368)

Maggie thus attempts to convey to Amerigo that she understands—as does he, she hopes—what they are doing by focusing on Charlotte’s exquisiteness rather than discussing anything literal. In addition, Maggie alludes to Charlotte’s splendid exercise of tact in performing the part of the unconscious, which, they should know, helps them carry everything out in perfect “harmony” (II: 358). However, contrary to Maggie’s expectations, Amerigo seems not to understand, and instead,

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he “trie[s], too clearly, to please her—to meet her in her own way” (II: 368–9) by holding her close to him and saying, “‘See’? I see nothing but you.” And the truth of it had with this force after a moment so strangely lighted his eyes that as for pity and dread of them she buried her own in his breast. (II: 369)

Amerigo sees “nothing but” Maggie. Maggie sees that Amerigo either does not, or chooses not to, understand her meaning, so that the one thing she knows is that they are not performing from the same script. All seems suddenly clear: Amerigo’s all-around simplicity, innocence, and tact, or his prodigious capacity to lie. But Amerigo is with Maggie, and Charlotte is gone. Consequently, Maggie cannot help feeling “pity” for the caged Amerigo as well as “dread” for herself, as she inevitably glimpses herself as his jailer, forever trapped herself by having to account for Amerigo’s imprisonment and—perhaps—his need to lie. When Maggie senses that she could be outrageously wrong and unjust, “the dire deformity of her attitude toward them” (II: 240) looms large. Therefore, as she physically embraces and is embraced by the object of her desire, Maggie knows that no two beings could be more apart. Indeed, Person’s vision of Amerigo “put[ting] the whip and the chair, as well as the third hand of his invisible, or ‘pocketed,’ manhood, in Maggie’s hand” (174) is Maggie’s very own felt position vis-à-vis Amerigo. Postscript During one of Maggie’s back-backstage talks with Fanny, Maggie professes she is able to “bear anything” (II: 115) for love: “Oh ‘bear’!” Mrs. Assingham fluted. “For love,” said the Princess. Fanny hesitated. “Of your father?” “For love,” Maggie repeated. It kept her friend watching. “Of your husband?” “For love,” Maggie said again. (II: 116)

What Maggie calls love in this passage is a state in which both intimacy and autonomy coexist. It is also a state of mutual understanding and reciprocal giving in which the sense of duty and obligation to pay back the other is not involved. Love, in Maggie’s definition, must be unconditional. Not finding it with Adam, Maggie tries to find it with her husband, Amerigo—but in vain. Sadly, neither intimacy nor autonomy is found, let alone both in coexistence, any more than is mutual understanding or reciprocal giving. Love, it turns out, is social—in the sense that mutuality and reciprocal relations need to exist between two people, both of whom must be capable of synchronizing their macro-/microsocial

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performances according to a tacitly and commonly understood script of intimacy. Perhaps Maggie would do well to ask Bob and Fanny Assingham, or Amerigo and Charlotte, about it—or rather, perhaps not. They would most likely not be able to explain.

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Conclusion: Civility, Freedom, and Morality in Henry James

In the preceding chapters, I have illustrated how James’s realism—his fiction— reflects life’s fictional quality. As James famously wrote, “The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life” (“Art of Fiction” 46), artful life. James’s social beings engage in delineative performances— rehearsed, habitual, or gropingly improvised—for whether the clumsy or adept performers are acting front-stage or in the wings, “life itself is a dramatically enacted thing” (Presentation 72). I have also tried to show how incorporating a microsociological perspective into the reading process helps to make sense of James’s characterization of his protagonists and their trajectories, and that the theme of faces and impression management brings together other areas of inquiry, such as performance, theatricality, subjectivity, gender relations, money and money images, love, and shame. In James’s world, manner and manners are morals. The attitudes of reciprocity, self-discipline, self-monitoring, self-censorship, and selfsacrifice in their constant computational efforts to not be in the red—only to have their thoughts, feelings, actions, and reactions controlled by the internalized effects of socialization—are so thoroughly ingrained in James’s characters as to be almost habitual. These unformulated, instinctively held defensive attitudes, more so than formulated intents, control the behavior of James’s poor—in the sense of feeling inferior—men and women. Indeed, James’s protagonists are generally poor, constantly wondering where they stand, “paying”—that is, catering, attending, and adjusting to others’ felt needs almost in advance—so as to ensure they do not owe others, irrespective of how much literal money they may or may not have. And as one’s own comfort is literally contingent on the comfort of others, self and others are bound, though not necessarily in any inherently ethical way. In sum, in James’s world, there are myriads of invisible forces that compel individuals to want to act in ways they do not necessarily “intend.” In this conclusion, I bring together my various microsocial readings of James’s late novels vis-à-vis the dilemma of civility, for civility, it turns out, is complicated. I elaborate on Jamesian poverty, the freedom James’s poor men and women seek, and what the gesture of renunciation in such a context signifies. I also summarize the multiple hierarchical relations that emerge during face-to-face interaction and show how the conflation of the macrosocial world and the microsocial one makes the achievement of Jamesian freedom tantalizingly difficult, and instead, generates alienation. Lastly, I offer my reasons for having focused on civility, my

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understanding of what James’s morality looks like, some suggestions for future research, and a view of James that emerges from this project. In the preceding chapters, I have analyzed the different ways in which James’s social beings become enmeshed in their various forms of complications and obsessions. In The Ambassadors, Lambert Strether begins his journey to Europe in search of freedom, seemingly from his patroness, Mrs. Newsome, but this, it turns out, is merely a manifestation of a more fundamental kind of bondage in which he finds himself: socialization. Strether’s ongoing need to ensure that he gains nothing from the entire affair—which, incidentally, coincides with his desire to steer clear of further involvement with anybody, including Maria—indicates that Strether acknowledges the power the rule of reciprocity has on him, were he to choose to become involved with someone, whoever that may be. His choice not to commit himself to anyone is therefore an act of avoidance, and his evasion testifies to his failure to neutralize the effect socialization has on him. Because Strether only senses that he needs to be right with others in order to be right with himself without being able to fully pursue the ramifications of this impression, he remains shackled to his habit of adjusting his behavior to fit the overall situation—or else he must avoid interaction altogether. The Wings of the Dove, on the other hand, presents us with three very distinctly different narratives that emerge from a single sequence of events. The reader thus wonders how well Milly, Densher, and Kate understand one another. Even when they talk to each other, do they speak the same language? However, when Milly turns her face to the wall toward the end of the narrative and resolves to show nothing to Susan, Densher, Kate, or Aunt Maud—who in turn, do not wish to see what Milly might be capable of showing—everybody, in essence, gets what they want. No one, including Milly herself, would like things to be otherwise, for the don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy is not only more expedient, but also, sadly, more socially desirable. This unarticulated arrangement ostensibly protects the vulnerable, as well as those who are aware of the vulnerable party’s vulnerability, and the former party would truly rather not have others notice: tactfully, then, everybody does understand one another. As both James and Goffman penetratingly saw, tactful understanding is simultaneously kind and cruel, considerate and terrible. It traps, as much as it protects, the stigmatized by allowing nothing to be articulated, and in The Wings of the Dove, it is not only Milly who feels stigmatized. Densher and Kate also feel trapped, although no discussion of such feelings occurs. If someone were to implicate Densher in a heinous act, Milly becomes a victim and Kate his accomplice, and neither woman wants such labels attached to her. Therefore, neither Milly nor Kate will even suggest Densher’s potential culpability, for as the chapter illustrates, his culpability is not at all certain. Nor will Densher deny his sense of guilt for fear that such a denial could instead appear to confirm his suspected dishonor. And he cannot condemn Kate, for he senses he has no right to: Kate herself does almost

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nothing worthy of censure. In addition, Densher remembers the bargain he made with Kate in exchange for his conscious agreement to follow her general advice. Under these circumstances, Milly is possibly the “happiest” of the three. She at least is able to be right with Kate and Densher in order to be right with herself, by being able to play the benevolent heiress who helps her friends by leaving them money, simultaneously saving her own face by managing to become more than just a poor, dying American girl. However, she may have felt like a poor, dying American girl after all despite the front she puts up for her audience, for in the end, nobody, including the readers, knows in what state of mind Milly dies. At any rate, Kate and Densher are trapped. Because Milly dies, they will never be able to be right with her in order to be right with themselves—if they are indeed guilty. Again, their guilt is not necessarily set in stone. Indeed, many things are not clear and cannot be clarified about what takes place either because discussions of such issues are prohibitive for the characters or because the information is not available. Just as nobody asks Kate about her father—“It has made the world seem at times more decent. No one has so much as breathed to me. That has been a part of the silence, the silence that surrounds him, the silence that, for the world, has washed him out. He does n’t exist for people” (I: 67–8), says Kate—so nobody will talk about Milly, nor will people confront Kate or Densher about this issue. In this way, tact leaves questions unasked, and so, unanswered. The Golden Bowl consists of at least five narratives—that of Maggie, Prince Amerigo, Charlotte, Adam, and Fanny—and each is distinctly different. While it cannot be claimed that these characters understand one another well, they do not not understand one another, either. Understanding is always available to some extent. For example, Charlotte partially understands Adam, as Adam does Charlotte; Fanny partially understands Maggie, as Maggie does Fanny; and so the list continues. Lastly, Maggie suspects she understands her Amerigo—but does she? Perhaps she might be better off if she did not try to, for among other things, Maggie is capable of discovering that her husband fails to understand his formidable American wife or that he is capable of lying—for Charlotte or for himself, and not just out of tact. In this narrative, as in others, tact facilitates social interaction but blurs and confuses, rather than promotes, full knowledge and real understanding, which, by the way, may be a blessing in disguise. If Maggie were less cognizant, like Fanny and Bob Assingham, she may have enjoyed a happier ending to her story when she and Amerigo embraced. Maggie asks questions, and the answers she seems to find imprison her in a cage of suspected guilt, shame, betrayal, and alienation. To demonstrate how James’s late novels represent the author’s responses to the dilemmas civility poses, I would like to revisit a scene from The Golden Bowl that takes place between the Bloomsbury shopkeeper, Charlotte, and Amerigo on the eve of Maggie’s wedding. Charlotte and Amerigo are trying to find a wedding gift for Maggie, and they discover an exquisite crystal golden bowl with a flaw—an invisible crack—that Amerigo immediately suspects and Charlotte muses over. When the crystal “split[s],” explains the shopkeeper, it splits “[o]n lines and by laws

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of its own” (I: 117). In the end, Charlotte and Amerigo do not buy the bowl, but the deliberation over whether they should buy it makes the scene disproportionately detailed and involved for James to have intended for the bowl or its purchase to be the true focus of the scene. And as highly charged with potential significance as this scene is, in the past, critics have not quite been able to decipher its implications. One haunting line from the scene occurs when the Bloomsbury shopkeeper asks Charlotte, “But if [the crack is] something you can’t find out is n’t that as good as if it were nothing?” (I: 114). To this, Amerigo later privately points out to Charlotte that the bowl’s exquisiteness is “the danger” (I: 119). Charlotte then goes on to say, “Thank goodness then that if there be a crack we know it! But if we may perish by cracks in things that we don’t know—!” And she smiled with the sadness of it. “We can never then give each other anything.” (I: 119–20)

Life, James seems to say, is one exquisite golden bowl, a beautiful performance crafted through the creative efforts of similarly exquisite actors and actresses with their own felt flaws, though to all appearances both the performance that is life and the actors and actresses performing in it look, at least on the surface, intact. Should a crack exist, it would not be visible, and even if it were to become visible, thanks to artful tact, it would effectively remain invisible. Charlotte would buy the imperfect golden bowl and take her chances with a life in which a fissure may at any time surface. She would go about giving gifts as well as receiving them, choosing to participate in community’s imperfect giveand-take. Some, like Strether, however, would choose not to buy the bowl because they intuitively sense the flaw and feel that it is a bad sign. Strether has opted to neither give nor receive gifts, although contrary to his intentions, in the end, he gives—just in case, and out of habit. As for Amerigo, because his socialization is so complete and his level of awareness limited—he “liked all signs that things were well, but he cared rather less why they were” (I: 138–9)—he habitually takes the business of life on credit. Giving and adaptive till the end, Amerigo willingly pays for what he believes he has bought, and feels better for doing so. Amerigo participates in the community of give and take, giving and taking what seems to be expected of him. Fanny and Maggie, on the other hand, literally choose to dash the flawed golden bowl against the floor and witness how it splits “[o]n lines and by laws of its own” (I: 117), with readers observing, as Maggie follows the implications of the breakage. In The Wings of the Dove, the figurative crack in life’s tactful arrangement is carelessly betrayed by Lord Mark, and try as they might, Milly, Densher, and Kate are ultimately unable to disregard this rift. Should all truth be revealed, then, or should it not? When what has been taken for granted is no longer so, when the familiar is defamiliarized, then the “lines and laws” (I: 117) of social interaction that form the fabric of everyday living—with its maddening complications, oscillations, and misunderstandings—also become glaringly apparent. When one is aware of the dynamics of civility—and without such

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awareness life can become a long series of semihabitual responses—interaction becomes complicated and confusing. Is it better, then, to be more aware—as seems to be the case with Strether—or less aware—as would be the case with Maggie— of what occurs during encounters? While tact and civility enable all members of society to coexist in a relatively civilized manner, they are only able to do so in the midst of beautiful misunderstandings, apprehensive, anticipatory performances, and unexpressed dread. And among the host of unresolved questions that cannot be answered is the question of how James’s social beings will proceed from where they leave off—to which James does not offer an answer. In all three novels, however, the golden bowl—the exquisite, creatively enacted performance that is life—is quietly flawed, just as those enacting it feel flawed, haunted and tormented by their socially created, socially maintained felt stigmatizations. We can thus confirm anew that Jamesian freedom is not so much physical as intensely psychological in nature. Paul B. Armstrong writes that “James the moral dramatist never tires of exploring the conflict between freedom and necessity in his fictions,” describing this “dilemma” as being “of defining importance to his moral vision”: How are we free, and how are we constrained? And what is the relationship between our will and our fate, our possibilities and their limits, our freedom and the demands of necessity? (Phenomenology 99)

While Armstrong discusses the conflict between free will and necessity in the context of philosophical considerations, choices, and spiritual morality, I have, in this book, dealt with this concept in the context of everyday, face-to-face encounters, psychological survival, and a more materialistic, social kind of morality. How free, indeed, are we to think, say, and do as we please? My understanding of the freedom James’s characters seek is that they wish to be able to think, say, and do as they please, but myriads of obstacles stand in their way. Even before the plot begins, James’s protagonists are programmed to feel poor, or stymied and constrained, because everyday living requires social beings to be civilly adaptive: paucity of information and dependency and contingency on others’ responses in giving an opinion or initiating an action all contribute to the characters’ fundamental sense of poorness. Will they look right in saying or doing a certain thing? What is the other party’s line? Overcoming this sense of poorness, this sense of being in a disadvantaged, incommodious position,   As Sigi Jöttkandt writes, if the concept of ethics must recognize “a concept of universality” (34), a postmodernist ethical community can be “formed around a central impossibility in relation to which every individual is equally distant.” James’s novels enable the creation of such a community among his readers. If an ethical community is one that is “dedicated to maintaining the limit that prevents us from making an unwarrantable totalization,” the readings in this book, I hope, “[mark] the place” or at least a place “of impossibility within the system” (Jöttkandt 37).

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however, is a Sisyphean challenge, endless and unrewarding, James seems to say. For one thing, interaction is a succession of adaptive behavior that knows no end. For another, hierarchical relations in the everyday world, imagined or real, oblige James’s characters to be meticulously adaptive, because no hierarchical relation is completely final. And because tactful performances are, literally, tactful, one can never be quite sure what the real story was or is, and without this information, one also cannot make judgments about the future with sufficient confidence. Consequently, one is frequently stuck in a state of oscillation and indecision. This fluidity is due not only to the instabilities that accompany the dawn of modernity, but also to the changes in how individuals are socialized to react to them in light of the increasingly sophisticated modes of civility that the age demands. Christopher Lasch writes, “Every society reproduces its culture—its norms, its underlying assumptions, its modes of organizing experience—in the individual, in the form of personality.” Citing Émile Durkheim’s definition of “personality” as “the individual socialized” (34), Lasch produces the rationale for examining an individual as a means of achieving insight into the historical and cultural factors that create him or her. James, I claim, works within a similar paradigm. Although James’s characters frequently seem to inhabit a small, insular, private kind of world even when publicity is involved, James effectively exposes the contradicting and often problematic macro/micro forces that inevitably render his male and female characters agonizingly anxious. James, I claim, foresaw the arrival of the twentieth-century, anxious American that Goffman portrays in his writings. This is why resorting to the line of renunciation becomes an infinite source of relief for James’s characters during critical moments of vacillation and uncertainty. Sacrifice and renunciation simplify things, and are ostensibly capable of wronging no one except, perhaps, the one engaged in the act of self-denial. In short, James’s protagonists’ acts of renunciation are as much acts of flight from fallibility and indeterminacy as they are acts of disinterestedness, and whether his characters ultimately succeed in achieving psychological liberation by refusing to stake a claim is not in the least clear. 

 I contend that Goffman’s theories have been particularly helpful in making sense of James’s characters because the kinds of developments taking place when James was writing—modernization, urbanization, and the rise of the corporate market economy and egalitarianism from mid-nineteenth century on, for example—brought about the various phenomena Goffman saw all around him in America in the late ’50s, the ’60s, and the ’70s. C. Wright Mills describes this anxiety in White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951). He first outlines a world in which “every man’s claims for prestige are balanced by the prestige he receives, and both his expression of claims and the ways these claims are honored by others” (239) coincide. He then details a world in which this can no longer be taken for granted: “All the controlling devices by which the volume and type of deference might be directed are out of joint or simply do not exist. So the prestige system is no system, but a maze of misunderstanding … and the individual, as his self-esteem fluctuates, is under strain and full of anxiety” that “puts men and women in a virtual status panic” (240).

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Jamesian freedom is thus a defensive kind of freedom. The goal is, simply, to be exempt from angst about one’s behavior appearing somehow wrong and therefore inferior. Because definitions of reality are not fixed but rather are malleable depending on the framing or the line of reasoning adopted, one’s every move becomes a gamble. Acting on a hypothetical basis involves risks. James’s characters hunger for liberation from this kind of anticipatory anxiety, for so liberated, they would then be empowered to present a line of their own with a sense of security and humble pride. Only then could they feel they are in moral command of their behavior and be free. As I have shown, the achievement of this defensive kind of Jamesian freedom is rendered even more difficult because of the effects of the intersecting hierarchical relations between the macrosocial world and the microsocial one. Hierarchical power relations are neither one-dimensional nor absolute. Multiple hierarchies are at work in James’s world: economic, cultural, and gender-oriented, to name just a few. These hierarchies are ideal types, in Max Weber’s sense, in that they almost never exist in “pure” form but, rather, coexist with other hierarchical factors. Adam Verver is both a man and rich, but he, too, has vulnerabilities: Adam feels culturally exposed to those who have always had old money and/or the cultural heritage that such money enabled. Additionally, while some men may be pursued and desired—as Strether, Chad, and Amerigo are—Adam is reduced to the position of suitor when he proposes to the young, cultured, and resourceful Charlotte. In the end, there is always the question of who wants what and how badly, which is a potent if unarticulated determinant of power dynamics in a relationship. Relationships are not necessarily complementary, either, which seems to be a vaguely formulated piece of knowledge among James’s men and women: “Alter can refuse to acknowledge Ego’s rights as his own duties” and “Ego may not regard as rights that which Alter acknowledges as duties” (Gouldner “Norm of Reciprocity” 172). When James’s rich or poor, American or European, men and women—plain or attractive, smart or dull, naïve or intensely self-conscious, young or old—interact with one another, hierarchical relations become complicated. This frequently vexes James’s social beings when they try to be gracefully adaptive as well as sufficiently dignified in maintaining both their own and others’ faces in the ever-shifting, unreliable topography of human relations. In addition to the endless number of such macro economic, cultural, personal, and situational factors that influence the overall dynamics of a given flow of interaction, face-to-face interaction, as I have tried to illustrate, has a separate set of claims that operates according to its own rules. For one, rules of etiquette are leveling forces, which generate a separate hierarchy among individuals even if only in the form of a temporary working agreement: in the language of Emily Post, who paraphrases E. B. Pusey, “others [are] preferred to self, pain [is] given to no one, no one [is] neglected, deference [is] shown to the weak and the aged, and unconscious courtesy extended to all inferiors” (xv–xvi), so that the “superiors” must be ever gracious to “all inferiors,” for example.

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For another, the rule of reciprocity, as I hope to have shown, tends to limit the range of responses an individual can comfortably give: Strether must repay courtesy with courtesy, and Maggie cannot legitimately fight back before a transgression occurs. Add to this the many ways in which a situation can be framed, and how the formation of what Goffman calls “teams” and “teammates” can promptly alter the power dynamics in the microsocial order, so that under certain conditions, hierarchical relations can not only be quickly reversed but also become tantalizingly ambiguous. And so, as James would say, “Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so” (Preface to Roderick Hudson vii). When James’s individuals interact with one another in units of two, three, four, or more, and in a social and microsocial medium where all these various types of hierarchies intersect, anomaly can easily become the norm. Civility, in sum, is by no means merely facilitating. In emphasizing the role of civility and etiquette in this book, I have also tried to highlight the less conspicuous but nevertheless important aspect of the rise of the money economy, which is the world of nonmonetary values and transactions. Georg Simmel briefly alludes to it when he writes that “there is nothing other than money that I am willing to give to just anyone else” (240). Civility has it that personal exchanges are meant to be personal and exclusive, so that when money is explicitly not the issue, overtly offering it constitutes an insult. In other words, a separate sphere of exchange exists alongside the monetary one, one that is ostensibly not money oriented, and whether a transaction is framed as one or the other makes all the difference—as Kate Croy and Merton Densher discover. But these classifications are also ideal types, for the perception of an exchange as being of one kind rather than the other is frequently only a matter of framing. A gift often involves money or values subject to calculation and one’s gesture is generally “worth” his or her trouble, for example. Calculative attitudes emerge during activities purportedly noneconomic in nature, while the human element manages to stake its claim during public transactions that are understood to be strictly business in nature. The conflation of the two spheres of exchange and our tendency to view negatively the calculating gestures we are socialized to make in daily life is thus horribly confusing. But how can we help it? While the rule of reciprocity conditions us to maintain an internal account of what we owe to whom and who owes us what, experience and wisdom tell us that one-sided giving, and one-sided taking, for that matter, are risky: unless the other party is as giving or as taking as we are to in effect balance the equilibrium, our positions as self-respecting individuals could be undermined. In general, the line between the generous giver of gifts, the condescending one, 

 According to Simmel, money, for good or ill, neutralizes human qualities and facilitates exchange by standardizing, as it were, the terms under which commercial exchange might take place: the “impersonal” nature of money promotes exchange between persons “without regard for who or what [they] might otherwise be” (240).

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the powermonger, and the dupe is a fine one, as is the line between the gracious recipient, the thick-skinned one, and the greedy hoarder. We need only recall the regret that can come from mindless giving—or taking. In this way, keeping track of giving and taking is not only socially mandated but also a function of everyday wisdom. And James’s men and women, Charlotte and Prince Amerigo heading the list, engage in it. The confusion generated by the conflation of the two spheres of exchange also has affinities with the muddle we experience when we consider the private backstage spheres of life, namely our homes and intimate relationships. T. J. Jackson Lears describes how the Victorian home came to symbolize “an oasis of tenderness and affection in a desert of ruthless competition.” The Victorian home came to be perceived as the ultimate backstage, where men could expect intimacy and comfort in a carefully guarded, humane world, away from the world of monetary transactions. The problem, writes Lears, is that “a genuine ‘privatization’ of family life never occurred,” and that, instead, men and women were expected to assume contradictory roles: ideal Victorian women were “submissive helpmates but pillars of strength in times of trouble and repositories of moral and cultural authority,” while men were to be equipped for “autonomous competition” outside the home, simultaneously ready “to conform to domestic models of social harmony” within it (Lears 16). In short, as Lears wrote, “the Christian Gentleman and the True Woman faced rigid and contradictory sexual roles; both faced the rivalrous claims of autonomy and dependence” (17). The domestic backstage, it turns out, was also only backstage in a relative sense, for it proves “impossible for the home to remain altogether isolated from the market society” (Lears 16). So it was with the home and family, as it was with private, intimate relationships—as Maggie Verver soon discovers. No wonder, then, that Maggie is confused. When Maggie awakens to an awareness of herself and attempts to become an autonomous, self-authoring individual, she may have fallen victim to the image of the “Promethean self-made [wo]man” whose faith in “autonomous selfhood” (Lears 18) leads her to believe that autonomy is to be achieved by all means, the pursuit of which alienates her from a more spontaneous, more compromising—albeit rewarding—community of mutual intoxication, mutual performance, and irrational, illogical reciprocities. She searches for a love that may not exist to begin with, except as a script and a superimposed ideal. Love, too, may very well be social and constructed, with general scenarios to be enacted, conditions to be met, and interpersonal rules to be followed. James, it seems, knew this. I contend that the Jamesian selves—and we along with them—tend to be driven to inhabit alienating psychological places because of the messiness inherent in frequently misleading, socially constructed norms and expectations. The truth of the matter is that the private sphere is as social as the public one and that the world of nonmonetary values is by no means exempt from calculative attitudes and gestures. As Thomas Nagel, referring to Goffman, writes, “All interpersonal contact goes through the visible surface,

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even if it penetrates fairly deep, and managing what appears on the surface—both positively and negatively—is the constant work of human life” (5). This brings us to the third aspect of James’s universe that I wanted to highlight by emphasizing the role of civility and etiquette in James’s works, which has to do with Jamesian morality, a microsocial, operational morality for specific contexts in face-to-face situations. As different rules of etiquette apply to different situations, what is right in one context may not necessarily be so in another. This morality is even more social and micro than the one Robert B. Pippin identifies. According to Pippin, James’s morality is possible whenever “a certain sort of social relation among subjects” (173) emerges. It is “self-consciously historical and social” (Pippin 5): “a promise [to keep trust apart from one’s own interest or fear of consequences] in one society, at one time, within a certain community, is one thing; in another, at another time, among other communities, another thing” (Pippin 27). My view of James’s understanding of morality, however, is inclusive of smaller groups within communities, the smallest typically being a community of two—or even one, for even when alone, James’s characters seem bound by the need to act well before an invisible audience—and the term “historical” would apply to temporal units as short as a fraction of a second. I do, however, agree with Pippin when he writes that James was “no moral skeptic or nihilist” (14). Morality for James exists on multiple levels. In addition to social and microsocial morality, I must underline the moral obligation for individuals to maintain face, that is, the morality that is inherently expressed in the everyday gesture of self-presentation: … when an individual projects a definition of the situation and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a person of a particular kind, he automatically exerts a moral demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect. He also implicitly forgoes all claims to be things he does not appear to be and hence forgoes the treatment that would be appropriate for such individuals. (Presentation 13)

Maintaining consistency in appearances, that is, managing the impressions one gives to others, is also a moral obligation. Morality, in the words of sociologist Gregory W. H. Smith, is “built right into the detail of interaction,” “not something that is diffusely located in ‘society’ but is rather mediated and renewed in everyday social encounters” (100). Both Goffman and James detect this worm’s-eye view of morality at work in everyday life that consistently interferes with, and complicates, the achievement of a moral or an ethical life. Finally, at least one other level of morality is present in James’s novels: artistic morality. As Martha C. Nussbaum writes, “The artistic task is a moral task”: The Jamesian artist does not feel free to create just anything at all: he imagines himself as straining to get it right, not to miss anything, to be keen rather than

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obtuse. He approaches the material of life armed with the moral and expressive skills that will allow him to ‘squeeze out’ the value that is there. (163)

Philosopher Irving Louis Horowitz would call this ethics: Ethics is the investigation of alternative theories and modes of conduct. Its primary concern is not with the resolution of moral controversy as such, but the reduction of indeterminacy in explaining how people … come to make valuative choices; the social and ideological basis upon which these choices can and are made; and the possible range of consequences of one frame of value decisions over another. In short, ethics is the empirical science of human conduct. (105, italics in original)

Ever truthful to what he saw, James describes the dilemma, confusion, tragedy, and comedy that arise when individuals are in copresence. With novelistic faithfulness and sincerity, then, James depicted social and microsocial moments, gatherings, allegiances, and careers that to this day speak to us and remain fresh and alive. As James writes, “If there are exact sciences, there are also exact arts” (“Art of Fiction” 50). Here, I must immediately acknowledge that the microsociological readings I provide in this book have only touched on the treasure of insights that James’s novels are capable of disclosing. I hope that more is done to augment, modify, and expand on this study. Whether it is Americans who visit Europe, as is the case in The Aspern Papers (1888) and The American (1877), or Europeans who visit America, as in “An International Episode” (1878) and The Europeans (1878), the need for all parties to adhere to the norms governing civility is at least as important as where James’s protagonists come from, the nationality of the party by whom they are greeted, or the scene of action. These latter macro factors are part of the equation of face-to-face interaction, but depending on their relational circumstances and situational factors, Americans and Europeans alike are equally subject to feelings of vulnerability and disfranchisement. This area requires further elaboration and investigation. Masks, veils, issues of authenticity, front-stage and backstage behavior, moments of embarrassment, stigma, and the phenomenon whereby definitions of reality depend on a micropolitical kind of dynamics, are found everywhere in James. In addition, because the need to manage appearances emerged gradually and did not suddenly begin just in the nineteenth century— Lord Chesterfield’s Letters (1774) repeatedly instructs his son to attend to the way he dresses, talks, walks, and moves—the methodology I employ may be equally useful in reading works by other writers such as Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. But why read James according to this kind of microsociological perspective? First, an understanding of James who saw that the microsocial order had a separate set of claims apart from that of the macrosocial order even while reflecting it, is illuminating and exciting. It helps us to make better sense of much that has

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continued to baffle us. Second, in furthering our understanding of James’s socioliterary texts, we further our understanding of ourselves as readers both of James’s works and of our own social worlds. In this regard, James’s contributions, I would claim, are still profoundly underestimated. An artist of artful life, James also had the makings of a social scientist. His works continue to invite us to see what he saw and then described, and insofar as this is the case, we glimpse James as the consummate artist and empirical scientist of human conduct who doggedly kept at it. However, in order to understand what he accomplished as a writer, ultimately, we need to specifically and closely read each of his texts just as we would read society by incorporating a microsociological perspective in addition to the macrosocial one, for although similar motifs emerge, no two of James’s works can be read in exactly the same way. In fact, each one is distinctly different. Only James could have so successfully combined repetition and innovative creation with such multidimensional complexity, power, and subtlety when he presents—in my view—his exhaustive study of the hidden dynamics of civility, in which James’s social beings, men as well as women, are convinced to willingly part with their autonomy and simultaneously become, in a word, alienated both from themselves and from one another. Is James conservative for detecting such forces of civility at work and not condemning them, or daring for making them the subject of his art? I will borrow Bennett Berger’s passage from the foreword to Goffman’s Frame Analysis to summarize what I believe is James’s general footing on this question. We need only substitute Goffman’s name with James’s in the following passage: In pursuit of le mot juste, Goffman’s brilliant excursions often end with a shrug, a twisting of the corners of the mouth through closed lips, an upturned palm of powerlessness: almost as if he were saying, in effect, I don’t particularly like it, but that’s the way it is. Granted, the fear of humiliation or embarrassment may not be among the noblest motives of human beings. But one doesn’t read Goffman for inspirational purposes or to have one’s emotional batteries charged or to get one’s humanistic sentiments affirmed. One goes to Goffman for the truths of close-up human interaction. (xvii–xviii)

To the extent that neither Goffman nor James writes to inspire us with sunny messages or uphold our humanistic convictions, James is an artist of the “art for art’s sake” strain. He paints what he sees with his verbal brush and leaves his readers to make what they will of the final picture. On the other hand, the amount of emotional and analytical work that is required before readers are able to discern the felt picture of everyday living that James presents is tremendous, and insofar as this is the case, his art is finally profoundly educational—or, shall we say, moral.

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Index

active vs. passive 1, 5–7, 13, 27–8, 55, 61, 79, 107, 117 actors and actresses 2, 82, 98, 115, 156; see also performer; performance Adams, James Eli 6–7, 7n.8 adultery 19, 89, 95, 114, 126; see also affair aesthetics 11, 21n.1, 27–8, 37 affair 86, 92, 94–5, 98, 114–5, 130; see also adultery agenda Fanny Assingham’s 97–9 Lambert Strether’s 26 Maggie Verver’s 97–9 Milly Theale’s 65–7 Agnew, Jean-Christophe 15 Aldrich, Nelson W. see Old Money, New Money allegiance 163; see also Erving Goffman’s team/teammates and Merton Densher 75 and Lambert Strether 38–9, 41–2, 46 Allen, Elizabeth 60, 61 Alter and Ego 24, 159 ambassador Jeanne de Vionnet as Chadwick Newsome’s 32 Lambert Strether as Mrs. Newsome’s 31, 32 Little Bilham as Chadwick Newsome’s 34 Marie de Vionnet as Chadwick Newsome’s 32, 34–5 Waymarsh as Sarah Pocock’s 41, 43 The Ambassadors 2, 5, 16, 18, 58–9, 110, 134, 154; Chapter 1 The American 111, 133, 163 American Book of Genteel Behavior 13n.15 American City 94, 131–3, 141, 146–9 Americans 9n.11, 13n.15, 20, 33n.7

and Amerigo 102–3, 139, 155 James’s 2, 9, 13, 158–9, 163 Milly Theale as an American 58–60, 62–6, 155 Amerigo, Prince 19–20, 155–6, 159, 161; Chapter 3, Chapter 4 and Americans 102–3, 139, 155 anxiety of ancestral background 101–2 bargain with Adam Verver 102–4 with Maggie Verver 94, 129–30, 146 Charlotte Stant/Verver as former lover 91–2, 104, 106–7, 144, 146–7 Bloomsbury outing 96, 141–3, 155–6 gift exchange 142–3 suspected affair 95, 96, 114, 125, 130, 148, 149 comfort 99, 116 confidence 96 conscience 101n.13, 102, 106 consistency 104, 142 debt to Adam Verver 103, 106, 136, to Maggie Verver 106, 136, 146–7, 149 decency 146–7; see also proper dependency 103 discomfort 115 ease 103 embrace with Maggie Verver 18, 85n.2, 86, 150, 155 face 105, 116 intimacy with Charlotte Stant/Verver 91, 143–5 lie 95, 150, 155 money 102, 145, 149 nonexchange of gifts with Charlotte Stant/Verver 143

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as object of Maggie Verver’s desire 19, 86, 147, 150 poise 104 poorness, or felt poverty 101–2, 113 shock 114 silence 91, 116, 147 simplicity of 105, 150 as victim 130, 144–5, 149, 150 Andreas, Osborn 4n.4 Anesko, Michael 3 anxiety 1, 158–9, 158n.2 Adam Verver 121, 135 Amerigo 102 Charlotte Stant/Verver 106–7 Fanny Assingham 117 Lambert Strether 41–2 Maggie Verver 124–5 Milly Theale 62 Armstrong, M. F. 16 Armstrong, Paul B. 18, 21n.1, 97, 97n.9, 157 artistic morality 162–3 The Aspern Papers 8–9, 163 Assingham, Colonel Bob 87, 97–100, 109–10, 115, 126, 137, 151, 155 as confidante 97 embrace with Fanny Assingham 87 Assingham, Fanny 12–13, 19, 87, 96–104, 106, 108–10, 111–18, 121, 124–6, 137–40, 142, 144–6, 150–51, 155–6 agenda 97–9 anxiety 117 bargain with Maggie Verver 19, 96–8, 124–5 as confidante 97, 98n.10 conscience 113 culpability 19, 98–100 dependency 99 embrace with Bob Assingham 87 with Maggie Verver 142 as facilitator 13 poorness, or felt poverty 99, 101, 113 vulnerability 13 Austin-Smith, Brenda 57n.1 autonomy 14, 58, 161, 164 Goffman 7n.9

and intimacy 90, 150 Lambert Strether 22 Maggie Verver 86, 147, 150, 161 Milly Theale 61 and sexuality 86, 88, 147, 161 awkwardness 13, 34, 48–9, 53, 64–5, 72–3, 105 back-backstage talk 110, 115, 143, 146, 150 backstage 99, 142, 161, 163 backstage conversations 22, 30, 30n.6, 61, 71, 96, 138 backstage interaction 1, 30n.6, 99 backstage performance 7, 30n.6, 98, 125 backstageness, levels of 99, 109 Balkun, Mary McAleer 5n.6 Banta, Martha 6, 104 bargain 88 between Amerigo and Adam Verver 102–4 between Chadwick Newsome and Lambert Strether 35, 54 between Fanny Assingham and Maggie Verver 19, 96–8, 124–5 between Maggie Verver and Amerigo 94, 129–30, 146 between Merton Densher and Kate Croy 74–5, 78–82, 154–5 Beech, Joseph Warren 21n.1 behavior see conduct Behling, Laura L. 7n.8 Beidler, Paul G. 21n.1 Bell, Millicent 57–8n.1, 75 Bentley, Nancy 5–6, 5n.7 Berger, Bennett 164 Bersani, Leo 57n.1 Bishop, Anne H. 89 Blair, Sara 3 blame 18, 19, 57, 58; see also condemnation and Fanny Assingham 115 and Maggie Verver 94, 114, 129 and Merton Densher 76 and Milly Theale 61 and Mrs. Newsome 24 Bloomsbury Street outing 97, 109, 141, 142

Index shopkeeper 95–6, 120n.8, 125, 141, 142, 155–6 bluffing 139, 141 Blumstein, Philip 70 body 5, 10–11, 12, 40, 58n.2 Bordereau, Juliana 8–9 Boren, Lynda S. 125 boundaries 31, 89, 127n.12 Bradley, John R. 1n.1 bribes 35, 71 Brooks, Peter 1n.1 Bruce, Susan 16n.18 Buelens, Gert 4 Burde, Edgar J. 21n.1 Butler, Judith 13, 13n.16 cage 56, 68, 129, 150, 155; see also captivity; exile; jail; prison gilded 93, 117 Cahill, Spencer E. 8 Cameron, Sharon 4, 10, 57n.1, 85 captivity 94, 132 Cargill, Oscar 95 cash 35, 62, 64; see also payment Castledean, Lady 123 catering 13, 136, 153 ceremony 6, 12, 34, 61, 67, 92, 148; see also Erving Goffman’s “joint ceremonial labor” character 2, 5, 12–13, 25, 135; see also Goffman, Erving: character Adam Verver 119–22, 122n.9, 122n.10, 137 Chadwick Newsome 39, 45 Fleda Vetch 5 Lambert Strether 25–6, 32 Maggie Verver 106 Milly Theale 65–8 and performance 2, 13 Sir Luke Strett 61 Chesterfield, Lord 163 Christianity 6, 7n.8, 161; see also Protestant Cialdini, Robert B. 37n.11, 38 Civil War 3 civility 3, 4n.4, 6, 17, 41, 49, 63, 130, 139; Conclusion and adaptation13, 157–8

179

dilemma posed by 20, 153, 155 dynamics of 156–7, 164 and embarrassment 13 and felt reality9 front-stage 7 Clair, John A. 1n.1, 94, 95, 134, class 3, 4n.4, 8, 25, 122n.9, 136, 158n.2 coherence 2, 3, 13n.16, 21n.1, 50, 109 Collins, Randall 9, 11 comfort 6, 32, 79, 160, 161; see also discomfort of Amerigo 99, 116 of Chadwick Newsome 33 Charlotte Stant/Verver as Adam Verver’s 134 of Charlotte Stant/Verver 116, 142 of Fanny Assingham 87, 99 catering to Maggie Verver 13 of Kate Croy 76 of Lambert Strether 22, 29, 33, 38 of Maggie Verver catered to by Fanny Assingham 13 of Marie de Vionnet 51 of Merton Densher 14, 79 by Milly Theale 13 of Milly Theale 66 by Merton Densher 13 of others for one’s own comfort 14, 66, 105, 153 of women by catering to men 13, 105 complaint 24, 101, 124–5, 128, 141–2 concession 32, 37 condemnation 57, 57n.1, 69, 164; see also blame Charlotte Stant/Verver 146 Kate Croy 154 Lambert Strether 53, 55 Susan Stringham 66 conduct as behavior 44, 54 Erving Goffman 2, 25, 140 and ethics 163 George Herbert Mead 59, 65 rules of 25 sexual 10n.13 social 16, 37n.11, 100, 105, 164 confidante Bob Assingham as 97

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Fanny Assingham as 97, 98n.10 Maria Gostrey as 23, 38, 54 Susan Stringham as 97 confidence 158; see also trust self-confidence Adam Verver’s 121, 122 Charlotte Stant/Verver’s 123 Lambert Strether’s 31, 32, 46, 47 Kate Croy’s 80–82 Maggie Verver’s 96, 123 Merton Densher’s 81 Milly Theale’s 60, 67 trust and backstageness between Adam Verver and Charlotte Stant/Verver 126 between Adam Verver and Maggie Verver 117 between Amerigo and Charlotte Stant/Verver 125 Amerigo’s toward Maggie Verver 96 Kate Croy’s toward Milly Theale 78, 96 Maud Lowder’s toward Merton Densher 71 Milly Theale’s toward Kate Croy 61 Conger, Syndy McMillen 57n.1 Conroy, Mark 3 conscience 100 Adam Verver 122n.10 Amerigo 101n.13, 102, 106 Charlotte Stant/Verver 101n.13 Fanny Assingham 113 Kate Croy 79, 82 Maggie Verver 135 Merton Densher 75, 78 consistency 3, 11, 35, 37n.11, 41, 116, 162 of Adam Verver 122n.10, 135 of Amerigo 104, 142 of Chadwick Newsome 52 of Charlotte Stant/Verver107, 142 of Fleda Vetch 5 of Kate Croy 58, 75 of Lambert Strether 18, 22, 25n.4, 33, 37–8 of Maud Lowder 71 of Merton Densher 58, 70

of Milly Theale 58 conspiracy 68, 116 constancy 32, 45, 55, 78, 153 conviction 15, 96, 124 Cooley, Charles Horton 16 costume 35, 144; see also mask countenance 5, 27, 31; see also face counterfeit 5, 5n.6, 136; see also the real thing credit 24, 52, 156; see also creditor; debt creditor see also credit; debt Adam Verver as Amerigo’s 103 Charlotte Stant/Verver as Maggie Verver’s 128 Maggie Verver as Fanny Assingham’s 118 as Amerigo’s 103, 149 Crews, Frederick C. 94, 103, 136 Croy, Kate 2, 11n.14, 13, 15–16, 16– 17n.20, 19, 88, 96, 101–2, 154–6, 160; Chapter 2 anxiety of Croy blood 59, 80–81, 102 bargain with Merton Densher 74–5, 78–82, 154–5 condemnation 154 confidence 78, 80–82, 96 conscience 79, 82 consistency 58, 75 dependency, financial 2 desires 79–80 emotional survival 79–83 engagement to Merton Densher 81 face 75 as facilitator 63 felt stigmatization 19, 58, 80–83 gift 82, 88 lie 69, 80 mask 61 money 79, 81–2, 88, 160 poise 63 poorness, or felt poverty 59, 80–83 poverty (monetary) 2, 15 pretend 61 shame 58, 74–5, 81, 82 silence 69 smile 63 unease 80 as victim 82–3

Index as victimizer 82, 154 virtue 82 vulnerability 58–9, 80, 82 Croy, Lionel 59n.3, 155 culpability see also guilt Charlotte Stant/Verver 142 Fanny Assingham 19, 98–100 Lambert Strether 26, 38, 46 Maggie Verver 115 Merton Densher 154 Cupach, William R. 91, 95n.7, 127n.12, 143 Darwinism 110n.15 Davis, Lloyd 3 death 52, 146 Milly Theale’s 57, 68, 77, 83, 155 debt 23–4, 25, 62, 100, 160; see also credit; creditor Amerigo’s to Adam Verver 103, 106, 136 to Maggie Verver 106, 136, 146, 147, 149 Chadwick Newsome’s to Lambert Strether 54 to Marie de Vionnet 31, 52, 53 Charlotte Stant/Verver’s toward Adam Verver 137 Fanny Assingham’s to Maggie Verver 118 Maggie Verver’s to Charlotte Stant/Verver 115, 128 to Amerigo 115, 149 manner/moral 16 Marie de Vionnet to Lambert Strether 47, 48 Merton Densher’s to Kate Croy 78, 79 to Milly Theale 78, 79 Milly Theale’s toward inhabitants of Lancaster Gate 62, 64, 66 Lambert Strether’s to Chadwick Newsome 31–2, 35 to Mrs. Newsome 23–6, 52, 55 debtor see credit; creditor; debt decency 119, 155 Adam Verver 122, 134 Amerigo 104, 146–7

181

Chadwick Newsome 52 Charlotte Stant/Verver 106, 108 Kate Croy 81 Lambert Strether 27, 30 Marie de Vionnet 48 Merton Densher 71 defendant 128 defensive maneuvers 69, 76, 77, 107 deference 12, 136–7, 158n.2, 159 Goffman 136n.15 Densher, Merton 6, 11n.14, 12–14, 19, 88, 96, 101, 154–6, 160; Chapter 2 allegiance 75 bargain with Kate Croy 74–5, 78–82, 154–5 comfort 13, 14, 79 conscience 75, 78 consistency 58, 70 culpability 154 debt to Kate Croy 78, 79 to Milly Theale 78, 79 discomfort 76 ease 66, 70, 77 emotional survival 76–9, 82–3 engagement to Kate Croy 76–7, 81 face 72–3 as facilitator 13 felt stigmatization 19, 58, 70–74, 78, 82–3 gift as burden 79, 88 lie 69, 73 poorness, or felt poverty 58, 70–72, 82–3 poverty (monetary) 58, 70, 72 power 72, 74–5 shame 58, 70, 71, 76, 82 as victim 78, 82–3 as victimizer 82–3, 154 yearning 76, 79 dependence 58n.2, 136, 157, 161 Amerigo’s on others 103 Fanny Assingham’s 99 financial Kate Croy’s 2 Lambert Strether’s 2 Milly Theale’s on Merton Densher 73

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and reality 1–2n.2, 94, 159, 163 Derrick, Scott S. 1n.1, 3, 13n.15, 32, 33n.7 Derrida, Jacques 16, 16n.18, 16n.19 desire 15, 25, 86, 159 Amerigo as object of Maggie Verver’s 19, 86, 147, 150 erotic 14 homoerotic 3 and sexuality 10, 10n.13, 19, 86, 144 desires15, 43, 79 Adam Verver’s 134–5 Amerigo’s 104 and consistency 37n.11 Kate Croy’s 79–80 Lambert Strether’s 26, 28, 29n.5, 37, 47, 154 Maggie Verver’s 19, 147, 148 Milly Theale’s 66 determinism 18, 56, 100 deviance 7, 23, 70 DeVine, Christina 3 Dewey, John 25–6, 32 dilemma 3, 157, 163 Amerigo’s 104 of civility 20, 153, 155 meddler’s 99 of role 11, 39, 47, 50 taste as a 9n.11 discipline see self-discipline discomfort see also comfort of Amerigo 115 of Charlotte Stant/Verver 115 of Lambert Strether 30, 32, 41, 51 of Maggie Verver 93 of Merton Densher 76 of Susan Stringham 66 disgust 35, 46, 87 dishonor 14, 55, 80–82, 154; see also honor double agent 99 double bind 78–9, 90 double consciousness 23, 26–7 drama 1n.1, 47, 56, 81, 85n.2, 86, 92–3, 97, 124, 126, 144, 153, 157 dress 3, 16, 29n.5, 35n.10, 112, 163 dressing-glass see looking glass; mirror duty 6, 7, 150, 159 Adam Verver’s 122n.10

Amerigo’s 105, 146 Chadwick Newsome’s 44–5, 52 Charlotte Stant/Verver’s 105 Fanny Assingham’s 100 Kate Croy’s 64 Lambert Strether’s 25n.4, 44–5 Maggie Verver’s 133, 150 Merton Densher’s 64 Milly Theale’s 64 self-identity as 16n.20 ease 1–3, 13 and Adam Verver 133, 135 as American ideal of masculinity 13n.15, 33, 33n.7 Amerigo 103 and Chadwick Newsome 32–3 lack of 80, 149 and Lambert Strether 40 and Marie de Vionnet 40 and Merton Densher 66, 70, 77 and Milly Theale 66 economics 3, 100, 136–7, 158n.2, 159; see also economy and sexuality 11 and status 8 economy 160; see also economics exchange 79, 94 of participation 94 of reciprocity 15–16, 23n.3, 74 of shame and embarrassment 14 “spermatic economy”137 ecstacy 91, 131, 140 education 8, 21n.1, 57n.1, 63, 164 embarrassment 8n.10, 12, 17, 20, 163–4 and The Ambassadors 18, 22, 29, 35–6, 38 in Lambinet scene 46, 48–50, 53 with Mamie Pocock 41–2 in Sarah Pocock’s salon 38, 39–41 and civility 13 and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s shame 12–14 and The Golden Bowl 91, 93, 104–5, 122, 126, 134, 142 and The Wings of the Dove 19 at the National Gallery 63–5, 73 and ur-motive 14

Index emotional survival 58, 157 Merton Densher 76–9, 82–3 Kate Croy 79–83 Maggie Verver 128 Milly Theale 60, 61, 65n.4, 82–3 Lambert Strether 22, 28–9, 31, 34, 44, 46, 55 environment 4, 10n.13, 28, 59, 65, 71, 76, 117 envy 32, 119n.7, 137; see also jealousy Epstein, Steven 10n.13 equilibrium 28, 44, 75–6, 93–4, 115, 124, 160 erotic, the 14, 86, 89, 90, 144; see also homoerotic ethics 78, 121, 153, 157n.1, 162, 163 etiquette 6, 13n.15, 30, 159, 160, 162; see also manners euphoria 91, 92, 143 European 9, 34, 35, 46, 50, 60, 159 Europeans 20, 163 The Europeans 163 exclusion of Lambert Strether 55 and Marie de Vionnet 36 of Maggie Verver 19, 96, 114–6, 119, 125 exile 131, 132, 148 façade 9n.11, 137 face 3, 5, 8n.10, 14, 40, 70, 153, 159; see also countenance Adam Verver 122, 133, 135 Amerigo 105, 116 Chad Newsome 49, 52 Charlotte Stant/Verver 105, 116, 131 Erving Goffman 5, 14, 29, 40–41, 63, 105, 116, 162 Fleda Vetch 5 Kate Croy 75 Lambert Strether 48, 49, 52, 56 Maggie Verver 114, 125, 130, 133 Maria Gostrey 56 Marie de Vionnet 36, 48 Merton Densher 72–3 Milly Theale 13, 69, 72–3, 154–5 Sarah Pocock 44

183

saving 19, 29, 36, 40, 41–42, 44, 52, 87, 105, 114, 125, 130, 131, 133, 155 Sir Luke Strett 61 face-to-face behavior 1, 65 civility 7 concerns 3 encounters 3, 8, 29, 109, 138, 157, 162 exchange 15, 89 gestures 88 interaction 6, 8, 9, 22, 29, 32, 34, 42, 55–6, 63, 65–6, 68–9, 73, 100, 106, 137, 153, 159, 163 order 88 talk 40 facilitator 13, 14, 53, 105, 155 Adam Verver as 132 Charlotte Stant/Verver as 105, 108 civility as 160 Fanny Assingham as 13 Kate Croy as 63 Maggie Verver as 132 Marie de Vionnet as 48, 53 Merton Densher as 13 Milly Theale as 13, 66, 69 money as 160n.3 tact as 155 faith 42 Adam Verver’s 118, 118n.6 Amerigo’s 95, 103 Charlotte Stant/Verver’s 95 Kate Croy’s 81 Maggie Verver’s 161 Milly Theale’s 66n.5 faithfulness 2, 140 Amerigo’s 106 Chadwick Newsome’s 50, 52 Lambert Strether’s 50 lack of, Lambert Strether’s 55 Marie de Vionnet’s 50 Merton Densher’s 78 novelistic 163 Sarah Pocock’s 55 fake see counterfeit farewell 131, 142, 147, 148 Fawns 117, 119–20, 123–8, 131–2, 136–8 feminine, the 1, 6, 7, 21, 55, 70, 58n.2, 136

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“feminine beauty system, the” 136–7 ficelle 54, 98n.11, 98n.12 Firebaugh, Joseph J. 92 Fisher, Philip 139n.18 Fogel, Daniel Mark 21n.1, 85, 85n.1 free will 18, 56, 157 Freedman, Jonathan 1n.1, 139n.18 freedom 1, 13n.15, 22, 27, 33, 42, 45, 68, 79, 80, 83, 116, 117–8, 147, 149; Conclusion Freud 14, 81 Fromm, Erich 25 front-stage 1, 7, 22, 153, 163 “funny” 43, 109, 109n.14, 117, 123 Furlani, Andre 21n.1 Gabler-Hover, Janet 78 Gagnon, John H. 10n.13, 90 game theory 139, 139n.18 Garis, Robert E. 21 Geismar, Maxwell 21n.1, 95, 125 gender 1n.1, 3, 6–8, 13–14, 13n.16, 136–7, 159; see also gender relations gender relations 3, 105, 136, 153; see also gender Gereth, Owen 5 Gerth, Hans 10, 10n.13 Giddens, Anthony 7, 17n.21 gift 160–61; see also gift-giving to Adam Verver from Maggie Verver 123 between Amerigo and Charlotte Stant/ Verver 142–3, 147 as burden 79, 88 to Fleda Vetch from Owen Gereth 5 to Kate Croy from Milly Theale 88 for Maggie Verver’s wedding 96, 105, 155 to Merton Densher from Milly Theale 79, 88 to Milly Theale from Kate Croy 82 nonexchange of 143 obligation to repay 15–16, 23–4, 62, 88, 103, 142–3, 156 gift-giving 15–16, 16n.18, 156, 160–61; see also gift Girouard, Mark 7n.8 Gloriani 32, 33n.7, 34, 35, 37

Goetz, William R. 21n.1, 34 Goffman, Erving 1, 34, 47, 158, 164 “audience segregation” 11, 11n.14, 39, 47, 148; see also “role dilemma” Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the Social Organization of Gatherings 20, 34, 39, 116, 140 character 2, 6–7 “deference and demeanor” 12, 136n.15 as ethnographic 5n.7 and etiquette 6 “expressive order” 2, 41, 116 “face” 5, 14, 29, 40–41, 63, 105, 116, 162 face-to-face interaction 29, 63, 65–6; see also face, face-to-face front-stage and backstage 7, 22, 30n.6, 99 “face-work” 42, 53 general vocabulary and tools 1, 17–18, 17n.21, 20 “‘The Interaction Order’: American Sociological Association 1982 Presidential Address” 7n.9, 17 Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-toFace Behavior 2, 5–6. 11–14, 25, 29, 39–44, 47–50, 52–3, 63, 73, 105, 116, 136n.15, 148 “joint ceremonial labor” 29, 48, 63; see also ceremony “lip service” 40–41, 50, 52 morality 121, 162 “phantom normalcy” 67, 73 “poise” 40, 48, 63 Presentation of Self in Everyday Life 2, 5, 19, 30n.6, 36, 47–8, 64, 69, 76–7, 93, 99, 103, 107, 113–14, 119–21, 129n.13, 135n.14, 139, 153, 162 “reciprocal self-denial” 43–4 “role dilemma” 11, 39, 47, 50 “stigma” 23, 65–68 Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity 19, 23, 65–8, 73 teams/teammates 19–20, 113–19, 125–6, 129–30, 129n.13, 137, 160; see also allegiances

Index The Golden Bowl 2, 11, 12, 18, 19, 33n.8, 155; Chapter 3, Chapter 4 golden bowl, the 95, 96, 113, 125 as a metaphor 155–7 Goode, John 15n.17 Gordon, Lyndall 3 Gostrey, Maria 16–17n.20, 23–5, 29n.5, 30, 30n.6, 34–5, 38, 42, 52–6, 97–9, 154 as confidante 23, 38, 54 face 56 lie 54 Gouldner, Alvin W. 17–18, 23–4, 23n.3, 25, 62, 159 Greenwood, Christopher 1n.1 Griffin, Susan M. 28 guilt 32, 40, 69, 76, 86, 90, 109n.14, 124, 131 Chadwick Newsome’s 50, 53 Charlotte Stant/Verver’s 107 Fanny Assingham’s 13, 99, 108 Kate Croy’s 81–2, 155 Maggie Verver’s 147, 155 Marie de Vionnet’s 50 Merton Densher’s 76, 77, 79, 154, 155 Gunter, Susan E. 3 Habegger, Alfred 3, 75 Hadley, Tessa 8, 86 Hall, Donald E. 10–11 Hall, Florence Howe 6 Halttunen, Karen 5n.6 Haralson, Eric 21n.1, 24 Hartsock, Mildred E. 21n.1 Heilman, Robert Bechtold 1n.1, 124 Herndl, Diane Price 58n.2 hero/heroine 21n.1, 42, 57–8n.1, 78, 116, 124–5 Heyns, Michiel 114, 120 Hocks, Richard A. 21 Holland, Laurence Bedwell 34, 92 homoerotic 3; see also erotic honor 3, 25, 78, 79–81, 90, 102, 146; see also dishonor Hoople, Robin P. 25n.4 Horowitz, Irving Louis 163 Howells, W. D. 86 Hughes, Clair 3, 35n.10

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inconsistency see consistency indebtedness see debt; credit inheritance 54, 59, 59n.3, 80, 102; see also money Milly Theale’s 15, 79 inhibition 14, 90, 92; see also repression insecurity 70, 121, 122, 124, 136 intimacy 19, 40, 43, 86, 89–92. 116, 150–51, 161; Chapter 4 invalid 58n.2, 62 Irving, Donald C. 1–2n.2 Izzo, Donatella 3 Jackson, Stevi 11 jail 41, 50; see also cage, prison jailer Maggie Verver as 130, 145, 149, 150 James, Henry, specific works The Ambassadors 2, 5, 16, 18, 58–9, 110, 134, 154; Chapter 1 The American 111, 133, 163 The Aspern Papers 8–9, 163 The Europeans 163 The Golden Bowl 2, 11, 12, 18, 19, 33n.8, 155; Chapter 3, Chapter 4 The Spoils of Poynton 5 The Turn of the Screw 7, 33n.8 The Wings of the Dove 2, 12, 14, 15n.17, 16, 18, 19, 94, 95, 154, 156; Chapter 2 James, William 78, 120n.8 jealousy 114, 125, 126; see also envy Jobe, Steven H. 3 Jöttkandt, Sigi 78, 83, 157n.1 Kaplan, Fred 3 Kaston, Carren 85, 85n.2, 92, 130 Kihlstrom, John F. 10n.12 Kimball, Jean 95 Kimmel, Michael 10n.13 King, Kristin 57 Knoepflmacher, U.C. 21 Komar, Kathleen L. 80 Kornfeld, Milton 57n.1, 80 Krook, Dorothea 85, 94 Kuchar, Gary 80 Kventsel, Anna 3

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Larson, Doran 57–8n.1 Lasch, Christopher 158 Lears, T. J. Jackson 161 Lebowitz, Naomi 98n.10 Leonard, George 89 Levenson, Michael 25n.4, 56 Levy, Leo B. 1n.1 lie 7, 49–50, 69, 90 Adam Verver 132 Amerigo 95, 150, 155 Chadwick Newsome 49–50 Charlotte Stant/Verver 95 Lambert Strether 50 Kate Croy 69, 80 Maggie Verver 140 Maria Gostrey 54 Marie de Vionnet 49–50 Merton Densher 69, 73 Milly Theale 67, 69 Waymarsh 43 Litvak, Joseph 1n.1 Lofland, John 17n.21 logic 29, 46m 55, 57–8n.1, 58, 74, 75, 125, 134, 135, 140, 142 lack of 5, 59n.3, 87, 161 longing 19, 33, 86; see also yearning looking glass 16–17, 16–17n.20; see also mirror love 1, 19, 20, 86–8, 150, 161; see also intimacy as pretext for Kate Croy 80–81 as pretext for Merton Densher 79 lover 44, 51, 62, 75, 87, 89 Amerigo and Charlotte as former 91–2, 104, 106–7, 144, 146, 147 Bloomsbury outing 96, 141, 142–3 suspected affair 95, 96, 114, 125, 130, 148, 149 Lowder, Maud 2, 15, 57, 57n.1, 60, 65, 70–73, 76–7, 81–3, 154 Lynes, Russell 9n.11 MacCannell, Dean and Juliet Flower 136 make-believe 49, 68; see also pretend manners 6, 9n.11, 13n.15, 16, 26, 32, 35, 36, 51, 65, 123, 153; see also etiquette

Manning, Peter K. 17n.21 Manning, Philip 5n.7 Mark, Lord 59–60, 62, 65, 75–6, 82, 156 Marks, Robert 92, 101n.13, 134 Martine, Arthur 6 Matthiessen, F. O. 21n.1, 131 masculine, the 1, 6–7, 7n.8, 14, 33, 33n.7, 55, 74 mask 163; see also costume Adam Verver 122, 135 as ideal self 135 Juliana Bordereau 8 Kate Croy 61 Milly Theale 61 of phantom normalcy 67 Maud, Aunt see Lowder, Maud McCormack, Peggy 3, 122 McFee, Michael 77 McKee, Patricia 14, 16n.18 McWhirter, David 1n.1, 85, 85n.1 Mauss, Marcel 15–16, 16n.18, 23n.3 Mead, George Herbert 1, 4, 10–11, 22, 59, 65, 112, 112n.2, 117, 129, 138 “I” and “me” 112, 112–3n.2, 129, 138 memory 22, 29n.5, 78, 79 Merton, Robert K. 140n.19 Miller, J. Hillis 95 Mills, C. Wright 10, 10n.13, 158n.2 mirror 9, 16–17, 61, 74, 138; see also looking glass mission 9, 105, 134 Lambert Strether’s 18, 26–7, 29, 38 Mitchell, Lee Clark 57–58n.1 Mizruchi, Susan L. 57n.1 money 14–15, 61, 79, 88, 153, 160, 160n.3; see also Georg Simmel; inheritance; New Money; nouveau riche; Old Money; wealth Adam Verver 119, 134, 136, 159 Amerigo 102, 145, 149 as basis for relationship 15n.17 Charlotte Stant/Verver 127, 134 Kate Croy 79, 81–2, 88, 160 Milly Theale 59–60, 79, 82, 88, 155 Maggie Verver 127, 145, 149 Merton Densher’s lack of 58, 70, 72, 81–2, 88 monopathy 124; see also renunciation

Index Moon, Michael 76n.7 Morrow, Nancy 139n.18 mutuality 15n.17, 40–41, 87–92, 102, 127n.12, 150, 160 Nagel, Thomas 7, 161 Nash, Christopher 98n.11 nationality 3, 8, 163; see also Americans; Europeans Nettels, Elsa 3 New Money 119n.7 see also Old Money Newman, Beth 7n.8 Newsome, Chadwick 11n.14, 25–39, 41–2, 44–54, 112, 146, 159 bargain with Lambert Strether 35, 54 consistency 52 debt to Lambert Strether 54 debt to Marie de Vionnet 31, 52–3 duty 44–5, 52 ease 32–3 face 49, 52 as Lambert Strether’s double 52–4 lie 49–50 poise 30, 48–9, 54 relationship with Marie de Vionnet 47, 48, 52 shame 49, 53 Newsome, Mrs. 19, 23–6, 29, 29n.5, 31, 36–9, 41–5, 47–8, 51–5, 154 and Lambert Strether 26, 44, 45 nonmonetary transactions 15, 160, 161 Notre Dame 23, 29n.5, 36 Novick, Sheldon M. 3 Nuhn, Ferner 101 Nussbaum, Martha C. 87–8, 162–3 obsession 8n.10, 95n.7, 154 Lambert Strether’s 52 Maggie Verver’s 95, 115, 127n.12 Oedipus complex 92 Old Money 119, 159 see also New Money Olin-Ammentorp, Julie 57n.1, 70 Orvell, Miles 5n.6 Otten, Thomas J. 119 Park, Robert Ezra 135 Paschall, Douglas 57–8n.1

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payment 16, 24, 48, 62, 79, 88, 94, 101, 103, 147, 149–50; see also cash Pearson, John H. 1n.1 performance 1–3, 5, 7, 8n.10, 9n.11, 13–14, 17, 25, 27, 30, 30n.6, 36, 39, 41, 43, 44, 49–50, 54, 61, 69–70, 82, 89, 92, 94, 104–7, 128, 135, 137, 140, 142, 144, 151, 153, 156, 157, 158, 161; see also actors and actresses; performer performer 2, 30n.6, 47, 99, 115, 121, 153; see also actors and actresses; Erving Goffman’s character Person, Leland S. 3, 137, 150 petit bleu 50 Pick, Anat 100, 106, 135 Pigeon, Elaine 4n.5 Pippin, Robert B. 74, 162 pity 68, 86 for Adam Verver 137 for Amerigo 85, 86, 150 for Merton Densher 76 for Milly Theale 65, 67, 68 self- 86 plaintiff 128 Pocock, Mamie 41–2, 52 Pocock, Sarah 11n.14, 29, 34–5, 38–50, 52, 54–5, 140 emotional behavior of45–6 face 44 poise 40 poorness, or felt poverty 42–4 weakness 43 poise 8n.10, 139 Amerigo’s 104 Chadwick Newsome’s 30, 48–9, 54, Kate Croy’s 63 Lambert Strether’s 40–41, 48–9 Mamie Pocock’s 41 Marie de Vionnet’s 40, 48–9 Milly Theale’s 63 Sarah Pocock’s 40 Waymarsh’s 40 poker face 122, 122n.9, 122n.10, 135 poorness, or felt poverty 99, 104–5, 113, 153, 157 Adam Verver’s 113, 119–23, 135 Amerigo’s 101–2, 113

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Fanny Assingham’s 99, 101, 113 Kate Croy’s 59, 80–83 Lambert Strether’s 23–4 Maggie Verver’s 111–12, 113, 115, 118–19, 123–4, 126–8, 140–42, 145–6, 149 Merton Densher’s 58, 70–72, 82–3 Milly Theale’s 58, 60, 62, 64–6, 155 Sarah Pocock’s 42–4 Porter, Carolyn 127, 130, 136 Posnock, Ross 4, 10, 26 Post, Emily 6, 159 poor see poverty poverty (monetary) Charlotte Stant/Verver’s 134, 136–7 Kate Croy’s 2, 15 Lambert Strether’s 2, 23 Merton Densher’s 58, 70, 72 pretend 8n.10, 148n.21; see also makebelieve Adam Verver 121, 123, 132 Kate Croy 61 Lambert Strether 44 Maggie Verver 123, 131, 132–3, 140–41 Milly Theale 61, 67 prison 119, 145, 150, 155; see also jail; jailer proper 6, 10, 12, 42, 43, 94, 101, 107, 116, 126, 148; see also decency Amerigo 108 Chadwick Newsome 31 Charlotte Stant/Verver 107–8, 112 Kate Croy 79 Lambert Strether 72 Maggie Verver 114, 127, 149 situational 7, 10, 17, 35, 39, 148, 159, 163 Protestant 7n.8, 24, 25, 25n.4; see also Christianity Pusey, E. B. 159 Putney, Clifford 7n.8 Rawlings, Peter 3 Rawls, Ann Warfield 8 real, the 111, 117, 133, 141 realism 1, 153 real thing, the 33, 35, 91, 106, 121, 140

renunciation 5, 79, 153, 158; see also monopathy repression 14, 55, 122n.9; see also inhibition Richards, Bernard 51n.12 right, the 36, 44, 104, 129 risk 16, 29, 80, 93, 159, 160 ritual farewell 142, 148 interaction 22, 40, 49–50, 63, 105 Rivkin, Julie 24, 74, 75 Robinson, David 21n.1 Rodgers, Daniel T. 7n.8 Rogers, Mary F. 8 Roget’s Thesaurus 113, 113n.3 Rowe, John Carlos 3 Rubin, Lillian B. 89n.5 rules 17, 20, 35, 45, 108, 118n.6, 159, 161 of conduct/interaction 20, 25, 41, 50, 69, 92, 100, 159 of etiquette/manners 6, 30, 159, 162 of propriety 108, 148 of reciprocity 15–16, 18, 23–4, 23n.3, 25, 32, 34–5, 43, 55–6, 62, 73, 74, 75, 78, 88–9, 88n.4, 101, 103, 154, 159, 160 of self-respect 6, 105, 160 Sabin, Margery 130–31 sadism 13, 130–31, 137; see also sadomasochism sadomasochism 131, 137, 139; see also sadism St. Armand, Barton Levi 21n.1 St. George, Andrew 13n.15 Salmon, Richard 3 salvation 25n.4, 36, 37, 57–8n.1 Scheff, Thomas J. 20 Schopenhauer 90 Schudson, Michael 16 Scudder, John R., Jr. 89 Sears, Sallie 25n.4, 27, 55, 57n.1, 77, 85, 85n.1, 92, 94, 98, 112, 129–31 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky 12–14 Segal, Ora 98n.12, 103, 128

Index self 3–7, 10–12, 14, 16–17, 16–17n.20, 22, 26, 58, 59, 70, 83, 90, 119–20, 120n.8, 135, 138 self-discipline 7, 153 self-doubt 22, 32, 46 Seltzer, Mark 5–6, 16n.20 Sennett, Richard 122n.9 sexuality 1n.1, 3, 10, 10n.13, 11, 14, 74n.6, 86, 90, 91, 144, 147, 161; Chapter 4 between Amerigo and Charlotte Stant/ Verver 95, 144, 145 between Amerigo and Maggie Verver 147 constructed 10n.13 and desire 10, 10n.13, 19, 86 and intimacy 89 Lambert Strether 21n.1 macrosocial dimensions of 11 Maggie Verver 112, 113, 132 Merton Densher 74, 83 microsocial dimensions of 88 and morality 88 and privacy 89 shame 12–14, 17, 69, 76, 107, 153 Adam Verver 134 Chadwick Newsome 49, 53 Charlotte Stant/Verver 107 Kate Croy 58, 74–5, 81, 82 Lambert Strether 19, 22, 24, 40 Maggie Verver 128, 155 Marie de Vionnet 49, 51 Merton Densher 58, 70, 71, 76, 82 Milly Theale 58, 63, 68, 82 and money 14, 70 and sex 14, 90 as ur-motive 14 Shandy, Tristram 89 Sharp, M. Corona 98n.10 shock 89 Amerigo 114 Lambert Strether 41 Maggie Verver 95–6, 114 Milly Theale 60, 95–6 silence 68–9, 122n.9, 130, 155 Adam Verver’s use of 136 between Adam Verver and Maggie Verver 91, 116

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between Amerigo and Charlotte Stant/ Verver 91, 116, 147 between Bob Assingham and Fanny Assingham 87 between Charlotte Stant/Verver and Maggie Verver 108–9 conspiracy/ring of silence 68 Kate Croy’s use of 69 and Lambert Strether’s complaint 24 and Lionel Croy 155 Maggie Verver’s suffering in 114 Maggie Verver’s use of 126, 130 Merton Densher’s use of 69 Milly Theale’s use of 69 and tact 155 taking advantage of others’ 69 Simmel, Georg 14–15, 61, 79, 88n.4, 160, 106n.3 Simon, William 10n.13, 86, 90, 144 simplicity Adam Verver’s 121–2, 122n.10 Amerigo’s 105, 150 smile 68 Charlotte Stant/Verver 156 Kate Croy 63 Marie de Vionnet 34, 40 Lambert Strether 30, 40 Smith, Gregory W. H. 162 Smith, Henry Nash 3 socialization 5, 8n.10, 9, 66n.5, 99, 103–5, 116, 153–5, 156, 158, 160 Amerigo’s 105, 106, 116 Lambert Strether’s 25, 37 Merton Densher’s 73 Spitzberg, Brian H. 91, 95n.7, 127n.12, 143 Sprey, Jetse 74n.6, 79, 88, 89 Stant, Charlotte see Verver, Charlotte status 8, 89n.5, 136, 158n.2 economic 8 Erving Goffman 2, 120 Lambert Strether’s 39, 40, 47 Milly Theale’s 66n.5 Stelzig, Eugene L. 82 Sterne, Laurence 89 Stevens, Hugh 3, 12, 86, 132 stigma 22–3

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stigmatization see also poorness, or felt poverty felt 19, 22–3, 68, 157; Chapter 2 Kate Croy 19, 58, 80–83 Lambert Strether 22, 23, 27, 33, 45, 55 Marie de Vionnet 51 Merton Densher 19, 58, 70–74, 78, 82–3 Milly Theale 19, 58–9, 66–8, 82–3 Strether, Lewis Lambert 2, 5–6, 11n.14, 16–19, 58–9, 97, 99, 110, 112, 124, 137, 140, 154, 156–7, 159–60; Chapter 1 agenda 26 allegiance 38–9, 41–2, 46 as ambassador31, 32 anxiety 41–2 autonomy of 22 bargain with Chadwick Newsome 35, 54 character 25–6, 32 comfort 22, 29, 33, 88 condemnation 53, 55 confidence 31, 32, 46, 47 consistency 18, 22, 25n.4, 33, 37–8 credit 24, 52 culpability 26, 38, 46 debt to Chadwick Newsome 31–2, 35 to Mrs. Newsome 23–6, 52, 55 dependency, financial 2 desires 29n.5, 154 conflicting 26, 28, 37, 47 discomfort 30, 32, 41, 51 duty 25n.4, 44–5 ease 40 emotional survival 22, 28–9, 31, 34, 44, 46, 55 exclusion of 55 face 48, 49, 52, 56 felt stigmatization 22, 23, 27, 33, 45, 55 lie 50 longing 33 mission 18, 26–7, 29, 38 obsession 52 poise 40–41, 48–9

poorness, or felt poverty 23–4 poverty (monetary) 2, 23 pretend 44 sexuality 21n.1 shame 19, 22, 24, 40 shock 41 silence 24 smile 30, 40 as victimizer 51 vulnerability 22, 31, 34, 76 weakness 37 yearning 32–3, 46 Strett, Sir Luke 61, 66, 68 Stringham, Susan (Susie) 12, 60, 65–6, 68, 73, 75–7, 95–6, 97, 98n.11, 99, 154 Strong, P. M. 6 Styles, John 119 sympathy 68–9, 87, 100 Lambert Strether’s 29, 40 Maggie Verver’s 130, 131, 139 tact 8n.10, 9, 29, 40, 63–4, 109n.14 as confusing 155, 157–8, 160 as cruel 51, 68, 154 as expedient 37, 45–7, 51, 64 as face-saving 128, 130, 132 as facilitating 56, 64, 73, 148, 148n.21, 154–5, 157 as pleasing 31–2, 41–2, 48 as protective 76–7, 130, 133, 149, 154, 156 Tannen, Deborah 90 Tanner, Tony 32 The Philosophy of Money 15 Theale, Mildred (Milly) 11n.14, 13, 15, 15n.17, 19, 88, 95–7, 99, 111, 154–6; Chapter 2 agenda 65–7 as American 58–60, 62–6, 155 anxiety 62 autonomy of 61 character 65–8 comfort of 13, 66 confidence 60, 61, 67 consistency 58 death 57, 61, 62, 68, 77, 83, 155 debt 62, 64, 66 dependence on Merton Densher 73

Index desires 66 duty 64 ease 66 emotional survival 60, 61, 65n.4, 82–3 face 13, 69, 72–3, 154–5 as facilitator 13, 66, 69 felt stigmatization 19, 58–9, 66–8, 82–3 gift 79, 82 as repayment 88 inheritance 15, 79 lie 67, 69 as lover 62 mask 61 money 59–60, 79, 82, 88, 155 pity for 65, 67, 68 poise 63 poorness, or felt poverty 58, 60, 62, 64–6, 155 pretend 61, 67 shame 58, 63, 68, 82 shock 60, 95–6 as victim 57n.1, 82–3, 154 vulnerability 58–9, 82, 154 wealth 59, 111 theatricality 1n.2, 92, 153 thinking as social 4, 10 circular 18, 97 Thomas theorem, the 140n.19 Thomas, William I. and Dorothy Swaine Thomas see Thomas theorem Thomas, Brook 3 timidity 51n.12, 64, 113 Tintner, Adeline R. 3, 57n.1 Torgovnick, Marianna 3 tranquility 91; see also silence trust 9, 37, 88, 91, 118, 162; see also confidence Adam Verver 106 Charlotte Stant/Verver 108 Eugenio 15n.17 Lambert Strether 51n.12 Marie de Vionnet 36, 47, 48 Maud Lowder 71 Merton Densher 72 Milly Theale 61, 78 The Turn of the Screw 7, 33n.8

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ur-motive 14 Van Slyck, Phyllis 21n.1, 85, 85n.2 Veeder, William 27 veil 8–9, 163 Vernon, John 79 Verver, Adam 2, 20, 91–4, 99–103, 106–9, 112–50, 118n.6, 119n.7, 122n.9, 122n.10, 155, 159 anxiety 121, 135 character 119–22, 122n.9, 122n.10, 137 comfort of 134 confidence 121, 122, 126 conscience 122n.10 consistency 122n.10, 135 desire134–5 ease 133, 135 economic superiority of 136–7 embrace with Maggie Verver 142 face 122, 133, 135 as facilitator 132 lie 132 Maggie Verver’s pity for 137 marriage to Charlotte Stant 93, 106–8, 134–5, 159 mask 122, 135 money 119, 134, 136, 159 poorness, or felt poverty 113, 119–23, 135 power 122n.9, 136–7 pretend 121, 123, 132 shame 134 silence 91, 116, 136 simplicity of 121–2, 122n.10 as victimizer 135, 137 virtue 113 vulnerability 120, 134, 159 wealth 102, 103, 107 Verver, Charlotte 19–20, 90–96, 99–101, 103–9, 155–6, 159, 161; Chapter 4 Amerigo as former lover 91–2, 104, 106–7, 144, 146, 147 Bloomsbury outing 96, 141–3 final farewell visit 148 gift exchange 142–3 suspected affair 95, 96, 114, 125, 130, 148, 149 anxiety 106–7

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comfort of 116, 142 confidence 123, 125, 126 condemnation 146 conscience 101n.13 consistency 107, 142 culpability 142 debt 137 discomfort 115 face 105, 116, 131 as facilitator 105, 108 guilt 107 intimacy with Prince Amerigo 91, 143–5 jailed by Maggie Verver 130 lie 95 money 127, 134 as Maggie Verver’s creditor 128 marriage to Adam Verver 93, 106–8, 134–5, 159 nonexchange of gifts with Amerigo 143 poverty (monetary) 134, 136–7 sexuality 95, 144, 145 silence 91, 108–9, 116, 147 as victim 130, 135, 137, 141, 144–5 virtue 108 weakness 104, 137 Verver, Maggie 12–13, 18–20, 33n.8, 155– 7, 160–61; Chapter 3, Chapter 4 agenda 97–9 anxiety 124–5 autonomy 86, 147, 150, 161 bargain with Fanny Assingham 19, 96–8, 124–5 character 106 comfort of 13 confidence 96, 117, 123 conscience 135 as creditor 103, 118, 149 culpability 115 debt to Charlotte Stant/Verver 115, 128 to Amerigo 115, 149 desire for Amerigo 19, 86, 147, 150 discomfort 93 duty 133, 150 ease, lack of 149 economic power of 136

embrace with Adam Verver 142 emotional story 110, 128, 149 exclusion of 19, 96, 114–16, 119, 125 face 114, 125, 130, 133 as facilitator 132 freedom 116, 117–18, 133, 147 gift to Adam Verver 123 as jailer 130, 145, 149, 150 lie 140 longing 19, 86 love 19, 20, 86–8, 150, 160 money 127, 145, 149 obsession 95, 115, 127n.12 poorness, or felt poverty 111–12, 113, 115, 118–19, 123–4, 126–8, 140–42, 145–6, 149 power 130, 136–7 pretend 123, 131, 132–3, 140–41 sexuality 112, 113, 147 shame 128, 155 shock 95–6, 114 silence 91, 93, 108–9, 114, 116, 126, 130 as stalker 127n.12 as successful negotiator 19, 94, 95 as victim 139, 161 as victimizer 130, 132, 139, 144–5 wealth 111, 126 weakness 118, 126–7, 132, 147 wounded ego 125 Vetch, Fleda 5 Vickery, Amanda 119 victim 19, 57, 82–3 Amerigo as 130, 144–5, 149, 150 Charlotte Stant/Verver as 130, 135, 137, 141, 144–5 Kate Croy as 82–3 Maggie Verver as 139, 161 Marie de Vionnet as 51 Merton Densher as 78, 82–3 Milly Theale as 57n.1, 82–3, 154 victimizer 19, 57 Adam Verver as 135, 137 Kate Croy as 82, 154 Lambert Strether as 51 Maggie Verver as 130, 132, 139 Merton Densher as 82–3, 154 Vionnet, Jeanne de 32, 35, 41, 42

Index Vionnet, Madame/Marie de 11n.14, 25, 28, 29, 31–2, 34–5, 146 and Chadwick Newsome 32, 34–5, 47, 48, 52 ease 40 and exclusion 36 face 36, 48 as facilitator 48, 53 lie 49–50 as lover 51 poise 40, 48–9 shame 49, 51 smile 34, 40 as victim 51 virtue 7, 16 Adam Verver 113 Charlotte Stant/Verver 108 Fleda Vetch 5 Kate Croy 82 Merton Densher 76 “virtuous attachment” 36, 41, 47, 48, 52 Vrettos, Athena 58n.2 vulgarity 36, 45, 51, 80, 96n.8, 114 vulnerability 58, 114, 154, 163 Adam Verver’s 120, 134, 159 Charlotte Stant/Verver’s 137 Fanny Assingham’s 13 Kate Croy’s 58–9, 80, 82 Lambert Strether’s 22, 31, 34, 76 Merton Densher’s 58–9, 76, 82 Milly Theale’s 58–9, 82, 154 Sarah Pocock’s 43 Waymarsh’s 42–3 Wakana, Maya Higashi 8n.10 Wallace, Ronald 140–41, 141n.20

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Warren, Jonathan 143 Warren, Joyce W. 7n.8 Warren, Kenneth W. 3 Waswo, Richard 15 Watt, Ian 28 Waymarsh 11n.14, 23, 27–8, 29, 33n.9, 38–43, 49, 54, 55 lie 43 poise 40 as Sarah Pocock’s ambassador 41, 43 vulnerability 42–3 wealth of Adam Verver 102, 103, 107 of Maggie Verver 111, 126 of Maud Lowder 2 of Milly Theale 59, 111 Weinstein, Philip M. 102 Wessel, Catherine Cox 110n.15, 130, 131 West, Candace 13n.16 Whorton, James C. 7n.8 Williams, Merle A. 27, 66n.5, 91, 97n.9, 134, 144 The Wings of the Dove 2, 12, 14, 15n.17, 16, 18, 19, 94, 95, 154, 156; Chapter 2 Winner, Viola Hopkins 3 Winnett, Susan 9, 85, 85n.2, 142 Wise, James N. 28 work ethic 7n.8, 24, 25 Wutz, Michael 24 yearning 32–3, 46, 76, 79; see also longing Yeazell, Ruth Bernard 28, 85, 85n.2, 95, 99, 135, 147, 148 Young, Arlene 98, 98n.12 Zorzi, Rosella Mamoli 3