HEIRESS OF ALL THE AGES
229
stricken Milly Theale of
The Wings of the Dove
and as the im–
peccable Maggie Verver of
The Golden Bowl,
to whom all shall
be given. These last displays of her are by far the most accom–
plished, for in them her function as "princess" ·and "heiress" is
fully defined and affirmed.
The evolution of our heroine thus gives us the measure of
James's progressively rising estimate of that American fate to
the account of which he devoted the greater part of his work. The
account opens with the simple, almost humble, instances of Mary
Garland and Daisy Miller, who are baffied and shamed by Europe,
and closes with the "prodigious" success of Maggie Verver, to
whom Europe offers itself as a dazzling and inexhaustible oppor–
tunity. What is the heiress, then, if not a character-image of
aggrandizement on every level of meaning and existence? She is
that in her own right, as the representative
Ame~ican
mounting
"Europe's lighted and decorated stage"; but she also serves James
as the objective equivalent of his own increase and expansion as
man and artist. This is all the more striking when we consider
that both author and heroine entered upon their careers under
seemingly inauspicious circumstances. At the start they are beset
by the traditional scruples of their race, by fits of enervation and
recurrent feelings of inferiority; yet as both mature he achieves
a creative dignity and consciousness of well-nigh lordly dimen–
sions, while she comes to value herself and to be valued by the
world at large as the personage appointed by history to inherit
the bounty of the ages. Francis Fergusson has aptly summed up
this entire process of growth in remarking that James "developed
a society manner into a grand manner much as he developed a
rich American girl into a larger, sober, Berenice-like stage queen."
Such exceptional prosperity is hardly to be explained in
terms of individual aptitude alone. Certain large conditions
mak~
it possible, such as America's precipitant rise as a national power
in
the late 19th century; its enhanced self-knowledge and self–
confidence; and, more particularly, the avid desire of its upper
classes to obtain forthwith the rewards and prerogatives of high
civilization. The truth is that for qualities of a surpassingly bour–
geois and imperial order James's heiress is without parallel in
American fiction. Note that this millionaire's daughter is an
heiress in moral principle no less than in material fact, and that
