BOOKS
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proves to be "the literal church" in
The Wings of the Dove.
Mrs. Assing–
ham "may be called 'the church'" of
The Golden Bowl.
(Indeed she
may: but it
is
so much more interesting to call her an Assingham.)
One learns from Mr. Anderson that the elder James's "taste for
the unconditioned which led to an explicit denial of the reality of
sexuality and death, is present in the novelist, is, in fact, the very
ground of his marvellous capacity for creating aesthetic order." What can
be meant by "an explicit denial of the reality of sexuality and death"
-or whether denials of the two can be aligned so readily-is a neat
problem. But if such a phrase does mean anything, where in James
are we to find the evidence for it? In Catherine Sloper as an example of
life as "unconditioned"? In the fate of Roderick Hudson as an in–
stance of the unreality of death? In the radiating power of Kate Croy
as "emblematic" of the unreality of sex? Reading Mr. Anderson's em–
blematic version of
The Wings of the Dove,
one sees poor Milly Theale,
the red-haired American girl with the fatal illness and the yearning to
live and the pathetic desire to forgive, being cast as a God. It is with
some relief that one turns to F. W. Dupee's book on James, to read there
that Milly conveys "the essential pathos of all mortality by being
under special sentence."
The critic driven by an urge to schematization can become ruthless
with his materials. What Mr. Anderson succeeds in doing is to replace
James's natural sympathy for his characters with a fanatic rigor:
it might be called the wages of; monism. In
The Portrait of a
Lady,
he
tells us, "the aim of being 'exquisite' which the black Osmond quite
honestly [Quite honestly indeed!- ask Madame Merle.-I. H.] proffers
is completely congruent with Isabel's own aim as a young woman. The
point is that only the self-absorbed person can be trapped by the self–
absorbed person. . . ." Mr. Anderson's needs may be served by seeing
the aims of Osmond and Isabel as "completely congruent"; but how
violent a wrenching of the structure of the novel is required to say this,
how deep a disregard for the tone of ironic affection that James pre–
serves toward Isabel throughout the book. And how utterly without
affection is Mr. Anderson in writing this. For is it really true, and can we
suppose Henry James to have thought, that "only the self-absorbed
person can be trapped by the self-absorbed person"? One wonders
whether, in Mr. Anderson's universe, inexperience--an inexperience that
has its pathos as nothing in Osmond can have--figures at all; whether
amid the emblems and the churches and the new Jerusalems young girls
can't make mistakes through their very moral idealism.
The American Henry ]dmes
must finally be judged by the standard
