466
PARTISAN REVIEW
with the "poverty of Frederic's own inward or for that matter out–
ward life," but his contempt for the hero, Gervais says, "is an insula–
tion against Flaubert's irony just as his pity for Emma was an insula–
tion against his sense of tragedy." And perhaps James is less offended
by Frederic's mediocrity than by the fact that Frederic is what Ed–
mund Wilson called "a perfect Henry James character" - sensitive,
afraid of life, and convinced that he is above the common - and that
it is for these very Jamesian qualities that Flaubert mocks him. But
Frederic
is
discredited too quickly, and this tends to discredit even
his love for Madame Arnoux, so that we have the dispiriting sense of
the novel's progression as a series of events in which nothing really
counts more than anything else; the barricades and debates of 1848
and even love count for no more than the empty social dinners .
The work of James to be set against
L'Education
is his
The
Princess Casamassima,
which is closer to the French model of realism–
naturalism than anything else by the American novelist. Although
he makes no attempt like Flaubert's to give us actual history, fabri–
cating his imaginary anarchist conspiracy from the merest hint of
such things, James actually visited a prison to get his opening scene
right, took notes, and achieved a sense of the city of London and of
urban types outside his usual range - Paul Muniment, for example,
is more unforgettable, and somehow more representative of a radical
politician than any of Flaubert's republicans. Muniment may be
compared not only with Senecal but with Flaubert's Deslauriers,
especially in his exploitation of his young friend - his success with
Hyacinth's adored Princess may be an analogue of Deslauriers's at–
tempted seduction of Madame Arnoux. Hyacinth Robinson, is, of
course, like Frederic, a sensitive and ineffectual personality fenced
off from culture and ease by his poverty. But James's own interest in
this character, his centralizing stress on Hyacinth's consciousness,
gives a romantic value to everything seen through his eyes, while
Flaubert denies such an authority to Frederic.
Gervais's game of juxtapositions is subtly played; his book is a
meditative exercise that examines now James, now Flaubert, and
brings into the argument the comments of other critics from Sainte–
Beuve to Leavis. He makes special use of the reactions of D . H.
Lawrence to focus again upon the question of tragedy. Lawrence
took
Madame Bovary
to be a tragic novel without tragic actors.
Tragedy, Lawrence thought, ought to be "a great kick at misery," an
exhibition of the spirit that vindicates itself even as determining
forces crush it. Gervais is more convinced than Lawrence was that
