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PARTISAN REVIEW
for every one but some or three or four exalted people whom
be
envied, and for everything but half-a-dozen ideas of his own _..
he pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbints
of life ... but this base, ignoble world, it appeared, was after
all
what one was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one's
eye,
in order, not to enlighten, or convert, or redeem, but to extract
from it some recognition of one's superiority." Isabel's notioa
of the aristocratic life is "simply the union of great knowledge
with great liberty," whereas for Osmond it is altogether a
"thing
of forms," an attitude of conscious calculation. His esteem
for
tradition is boundless; if one was so unfortunate as not to be hom
to an illustrious tradition, then "one must immediately proceed
to make it."* A sense of darkness and suffocation takes hold
of
Isabel as her husband's rigid system closes in on her. She be–
lieves that there can be no release from the bondage into which
she had fallen and that only through heroic suffering is its evil
to be redeemed. On this tragic note the story ends.
Yet the heiress is not to be turned aside from her quest
by
such inevitable encounters with the old evils of history.
On
the
lighted stage the bridegroom still awaits his ·new-world bride.
In few of his full-length novels is James so consummately
in control of his method of composition as in
The Wings of
the
Dove
and
The Golden Bowl.
It
is a method all scenic and dra·
matic, of an "exquisite economy" in the architectural placing
of
incidents, which eliminates any "going behind or telling about
the figures" save as they themselves accomplish it. Indulgence
in mere statement is banned; the motto is:
represent, convert,
*The significance of Osmond's character has generally been underrated by the
critics of James. For quite apart from his more personal traits (such as
hia
depravity, which is a purely novelistic element), he is important as a cultural
type
in whom the logic of "traditionalism" is developed to its furthest limits. As a
national group the American intellectuals suffer from a sense of inferiority toward
the past, and this residue of "colonial" feeling is also to be detected in those amollfl
them who raise the banner of tradition. It is shown in their one-sided conformity
to the idea of tradition, in their readiness to inflate the meanings that may be
derived from it. Their tendency is to take literally what their European counterparts
are likely to take metaphorically and imaginatively. My idea is that James tried
to overcome this bias which he suspected in himself by objectifying it in the portrait
of Osmond. To this day, however, the shadow of Gilbert Osmond falls on many a
page of American writing whose author-whether critic, learned poet, or academic
"humanist"-presents himself, with all the exaggerated zeal and solemnity of a
belated convert, as a spokesman of tradition.
