ELIZABETH DALTON
It was a sharp fantastic crisis that had popped up as if in a dream, and
it had had only to last the few seconds
to
make him feel it as quite
horrible.... he had ... to settle their common question by some
sign of surprise and joy ... agitating his hat and stick and loudly
calling out - a demonstration that brought him relief. ... The boat
went a little wild.... Chad turned round, half springing up; and his
good friend ... began gaily to wave her parasol. ...
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The impression here is of something dreamlike, "sharp," "horrible,"
language quite out of proportion to the actuality of an awkward social
situation, but perhaps not to the "sharp fantastic crisis" symbolically en–
acted. The child interrupting or imagining a sexual scene sees something
that "pops" or springs up, something "wild," full of "agitation." This
incomprehensible activity is likely to strike the child as "quite horrible."
Its sharpest threat - castration - is suggested a few lines later by Strether's
"odd impression as of violence averted - the violence of their having
'cut' hiITI.... "
As if to guard against this danger, phallic gestures abound. Madame
de Vionnet's pink parasol, thrice mentioned and gaily waved, is perhaps a
denial of the dreadful idea that the woman is castrated, and Strether feels
better after agitating his hat and stick. The connection between sex and
violence may even be hinted at in the place from which Strether watches
the scene, the "primitive pavilion testifying, in its somewhat battered
state, to much fond frequentation." Oddly enough, although Chad and
Madame de Vionnet have been compromised, it is Strether who feels
guilty, who has "the worrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspect–
ing him of having plotted this coincidence...." In the unconscious,
such coincidences, however they may be produced, are not accidental;
their occurrence fulfills an unconscious intention and thus creates a dis–
quieting effect of the uncanny . Strether's reiterated amazement suggests
this: "it was too prodigious, a chance in a million." Of course, the odds
against such a chance meeting with friends are much diminished if one has
spent three months speculating about their activities.
Strether has pursued his interest in Chad and Madame de Vionnet
with the relentless curiosity of the oedipal child. Maria tells him that his
friends may leave Paris for a time. " 'Do you mean in order to get away
from me?' " he asks, and she replies, " 'Don't find me rude if I say I
should think they'd want to!' " But they can't get rid of him. Strether
finds their hideaway with the child's unerring instinct for interrupting the
sexual life of its parents. Stated broaclly, his wish is to understand the na–
ture of the relationship between a man and a woman. This is a recurring
pattern in James's work. The innocent protagonist looks on in wonder
at the alluring and repellent spectacle of adult passion. At the end of this
