634
RICHARD POIRIER
fectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose
to wear, don't express me; and heaven forbid they should!"
"You dress very well," interposed Madame Merle, skilfully.
"Possibly; but I don't care to be judged by that. My clothes
may express the dressmaker, but they don't express me. To begin
with, it's not my own choice that I wear them; they are imposed
upon me by society."
Madame Merle's answer-"Should you prefer to go without
them?"-terminates the discussion. But meanwhile James shows
his
willingness consciously to expose
his
heroine to standards which usual–
ly embarrass those earlier American writers who share many of Isabel's
ideas and indulge themselves in many of the images she also uses. Of
course the Emersonianism here is Isabel's not James's, whose allegi–
ances were, in any case, as much to the social as to the transcendental
expressions of the self. But the passage nonetheless illustrates james's
tenderness for ideals of
self-expression
as against expression by which
the self is filtered through representative or acquired styles. This con-
FI,LM-MAKERS CINEMATHEQUE
Come see the new Am,erican cinema and
international avantgarde film-makers
FILMS BY Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Takahiko limura,
,Peter Kubelka, George and Mike Kuchar, Gregory
Mark,opoulos. Andy Warhol
125 West 41 st Street
2 Shows Nightly
8:00
&
10:00
Tel: 564-3818
New York City
