JAMES'S
AIR OF EVIL
depart altogether from the rules. They would be agents in fact;
there would be laid in them the dire duty of causing the situation
to reek with the air of Evil." Finally he defines his formula for mak–
ing the situation reek to capacity with the "air of Evil." Alive, the
servants had performed sufficient
specific
harm in corrupting their
little charges; what additional outrage could they now perform that
would not be anticlimactic? The problem, as James was perfectly
aware, was a difficult one; he solved it, and solved it successfully, by
deliberate refuge to the general, the nonspecific-solved it, in other
words, by simple
omission:
"Only make the reader's general vision
of evil intense enough, I said to myself ... and his own experience,
his own sympathy (with the children) and horror (of their false
friends) will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars.
Make him
think
the evil, make him think it for himself, .and you
are released from weak specifications."
One
may well wonder how
it is possible to read all this and believe that James intended the
ghosts to
be
nothing more than mere hallucinations.
The prologue is equally unambiguous. A group of house guests
are gathered about a fire on Christmas Eve. Someone has just told
a story in which a small child is visited by an apparition.
One
of
the guests, Douglas, then remarks that he knows of a similar case
involving
two
children: "Nobody but
me,
till now, has ever heard.
It's quite too horrible. It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that
I know touches it."
The
others are naturally curious, and he tells
them he will send at once to London for the story, which it appears
has already been written down by the governess of the haunted chil–
dren, who was an actual witness.
Observe that Douglas himself riever implies for a moment that
he doubts the governess's account. On the contr.ary,
one
of James's
motives in writing the prologue is to provide her with a "character
reference" so that we may listen to her with respect. Douglas, who
knew her intimately, certainly did not think that she was emotion–
ally unstable: "'She was my sister's governess,' he quietly said. 'She
was the most agreeable woman I've ever known
in
her position; she
would have been worthy of any whatever.''' Had James's intention
been to characterize her as an irresponsible
neurotic,
what could have
been
his
motive in having
the only person who knew her,
and was
therefore able to vouch for her character, speak
in
this fashion?
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