The Heiress of All the Ages
Philip Rahv
HENRY JAMES is not
fully
represented in his novels
by any
one single character, but of his principal heroine it can be said
that she makes the most of his vision and dominates his drama of
transatlantic relations. This young woman is his favorite Ameri–
can type, appearing in his work time and again under various
names and in various situations that can be taken as so many
stages in her career. Hence it is in the line of her development
that we must study her. Her case involves a principle of growth
which is not to be completely grasped until she has assumed her
final shape.
This heroine, too, is cast in the role, so generic to James,
of the "passionate pilgrim," whose ordinary features are those
of the "good American bewildered in presence of the European
order." But bewilderment is not a lasting motive in this heroine's
conduct; unlike most of her fellow-pilgrims in James's novels,
she soon learns how to adjust European attitudes to the needs of
her personality. Where she excels is in her capacity to plunge
into experience without paying the usual Jamesian penalty for
such daring-the penalty being either the loss of one's moral
balance or the recoil into a state of aggrieved innocence. She
responds "magnificently" to the beauty of the old-world scene
even while keeping a tight hold on her native virtue: the ethical
stamina, good will, and inwardness of her own provincial back–
ground. And thus living up to her author's idea both of Europe
and America, she is able to mediate, if not wholly to resolve, the
conflict between the two cultures, between innocence and experi–
ence, between the sectarian code of the fathers and the more
'civilized' though also more devious and dangerous code of the
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