Henry James -- a masterclass in plot recycling

When I last updated this blog, I was very slowly progressing through The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. Since then, I have found a job, passed the 80,000-word mark on my novel, and seen a woodcock for the first time -- I'm undecided on which of those is the most exciting -- and I've also finished reading Wings, about which you can read below.

WARNING: This post includes spoilers for both The Wings of the Dove and The Portrait of a Lady.

Although James published Wings (1902) twenty years or so after Portrait (1881), the two plots are extraordinarily similar. A greedy woman and her lover/fiancé conspire for him to get close to, and eventually marry, a rich American heiress, in order that they might both have access to the money. In Portrait, the 'Lady' of the title, Isabel Archer, is the victim of this scheme, only realising exactly how cruelly she has been treated towards the end. Similarly, Milly Theale, the young American in Wings, upon realising that Merton Densher's attentions are motivated by money, not affection, experiences intense despair, "turn[s] her face to the wall," and succumbs to the illness which has threatened her life throughout the book.

James's preoccupation with the figure of a genial, intelligent, rich young woman suffering at the hands of others can be explained in biographical terms, especially as regards Wings. The character of Milly Theale is based on his young cousin, Minny Temple, who died of tuberculosis in her mid-twenties, in 1870. James was open about his interest in the immense potential that had been lost, and the strange fact that his affection for her increased after her death (as Merton Densher's does in the novel). The qualities of Isabel Archer and Milly Theale -- both are good-humoured and almost universally liked -- reflect the author's very personal feelings towards the young woman who inspired them.

It's interesting to reflect that, despite the similarities in the two characters and plotlines, it is only Isabel Archer, not Milly Theale as well, who has become the most famous and beloved of James's protagonists. And, despite my using the word 'recycling' in the title of this post, the two novels don't feel at all similar to read. This is partly because James's prose is extremely dense, though rich and expert, in Wings and comparatively light and fluid in Portrait -- but it is also because of a couple of key structural differences in the novel:

Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich 

in  The Portrait of a Lady (1996)

1. Point of view. The Portrait of a Lady is very substantially from Isabel's point of view. We see her handling Caspar Goodwood, her suitor who keeps popping up from America, her increasing regard for Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle, her unhappiness and disillusionment after her marriage, and, finally, the moment of anagnorisis (shocking recognition) when she realises that Osmond and Madame Merle are lovers. (She realises this, by the way, through the simple fact that Osmond is sitting whilst Madame Merle is standing -- a level of familiarity completely inappropriate to mere friends, and only possible with a truly intimate relationship. A stunning use of gesture.)

By contrast, Wings is mostly from the points of view of the couple, Merton Densher and Kate Croy, with only a few chapters entirely from Milly's. Towards the end of the novel, we follow Densher almost exclusively, which means we become more interested in his moral crisis than in Milly's cruel situation. Gilbert Osmond in Portrait has no such obvious crisis, and so the moral dynamics of Wings are far subtler.

Alison Elliott and Helen Bonham-

Carter in The Wings 

of the Dove (1997)

2. Proximity (or rather, the lack of it). Not only do we rarely see Milly Theale's point of view -- we are not even in the same city with her when she dies. Merton Densher, after Milly finds out about the plot to get her money -- which we don't see -- has one last, painful meeting with her in Venice -- which we don't see -- and returns to London, leaving Milly to die -- which we don't see. Her death is reported to Densher by other characters who have themselves merely received a telegram. James adds remove after remove to make Densher, and the reader, as detached from her death as possible. He challenges us to fill in the gaps, to imagine her despair.

For an author to kill off a main character is commonplace, sometimes even necessary, to turn up the emotional volume, to raise the stakes. (The deaths of increasingly important characters in the Harry Potter series is a particularly apt example.) But to keep the reader at such a frustrating distance from it, as James does, is phenomenally brave. James is choosing not to cash in on the tear-jerking moments, and implicitly argues that Densher's experiences are more interesting at this point. The difficulties he had in getting the book serialised, ironically, helped him here, enabling him to revise the book and structure it more freely. He chastises himself in the Preface for making Milly's background so scanty -- we know next to nothing about her life in America, for instance -- but the fact that we don't get to be in the room with her at her most crucial, devastating moments is surely deliberate.

3. Milly's illness. At the start of Portrait, Isabel Archer is healthy and happy and determined to have an interesting, full life. Milly takes a similar attitude, but it is given an edge of desperation by the fact that, as is slowly revealed, she knows that she is ill, and suspects that it might be very serious. The fact that the illness is never named, and that she only shows her weakness by her absence at various social engagements -- when she is present, she is vivacious and charming -- intensifies our sense of this threat through James's, and Milly's, teasing. The reader develops a creeping awareness that Milly will not find the happiness she deserves.

Isabel Archer, on the other hand, has no such doom hanging over her head. You feel that she could make a good decision, with enough perspicacity, and find a mode of living that would really suit her. But she doesn't. She marries Gilbert Osmond, and then stubbornly refuses to take any steps to lessen her own misery (until the ambiguous ending). She is complicit in her own downfall, whereas Milly makes no obvious false steps, and is simply the victim of others' schemes.

That this should lead to Isabel becoming such a cherished protagonist is surely natural, considering that she takes her place amongst Dorothea Brooke, Tess Durbeyfield, Elizabeth Bennet and so on, heroines who suffer long and hard (with or without a happy ending) because of a simple error of judgment. We like characters who make mistakes. Milly Theale is likeable, and her situation is tragic, but she is perhaps just too nice for us to get a handle on her -- compared to Merton Densher, who feels the weight of his own guilty profoundly by the end.



The Wings of the Dove takes a while to decide on its protagonist, but the sense of satisfaction I found at the end, when Densher rejects the money Milly has left him and dismisses the success of their scheme, proved to me that Henry James's choice to go back to the plot of Portrait, rearrange things a bit, and thus find a whole new area of fictive potential, is yet more evidence of a bold, masterful writer.

Reading Diary: Trollope, O'Connor, O'Brien, O'Connor again, Henry James

Since bombing my way through Death Comes to Pemberley I've been reading a rather electrifying cluster of other things ... which I will now proceed to summarise in blog-style, semi-bitesize fashion.


1. Anthony Trollope, The Warden

I had a few friends at university, and one boyfriend, who were big Trollope fans, but our tutor didn't get us to read any during the eight short weeks we 'did' Victorian literature, and, already lumbered with the bricks that were Bleak House and Middlemarch and Our Mutual Friend and so on, I left him well alone. I think it is a combination of having moved to the country and a dip back into Thomas Hardy that raised the idea of reading some Trollope in my mind, so I bought The Warden in a spanking new, very elegant Penguin edition with lovely stripes on the spine and the back. This is the first of the Barchester novels, and is also very short, so I thought it might be a good place to start.

The Warden follows the moral crisis of a quiet, cello-playing clergyman who, through generations of complacency and inflation, receives a huge income as the warden of a lodging house for poor, retired men of the parish. The sum was originally meant to give the warden a comfortable living and provide for the men's board, but whilst the warden's portion has increased, the men's daily allowance has remained the same. A young doctor, burning with the flames of righteousness, decides to stoke up the residents into signing a petition asking for their fair share, which throws the poor warden, Septimus Harding, into shock and disorientation.

Like Tolstoy and indeed Hardy, Trollope has such enormous compassion for nearly all his characters -- perhaps with the exception of Dr Grantly, the archdeacon -- that you can't help becoming rather passionate about what could be described as a dated Anglican quibble. Mr Harding tends to mime cello-playing behind his back during uncomfortable conversations, and, if things get too troubling, on his lapels -- much to the bewilderment of his interlocutors. This is a brilliant touch which encapsulates his preferment of music and emotional fulfilment rather than intellectual or public triumph. From this one gesture, you can see in an instant how the rest of the book will pan out.

Choosing an argument about the wealth of the Church, however, has larger echoes that it is important to remember when reading The Warden today. Henry VIII justified the dissolution of the monasteries partly by pointing to the vast and questionable incomes enjoyed by many abbots, and the privileges enjoyed by bishops, such as seats in the Lords, could form a modern parallel if someone were to take up the issue today. Which is not to say that Trollope is 'taking up' the issue as such. He is certainly exploring it, and also shining a light on the border between being in the right and appearing to be so -- Jeremy Hunt, take note -- but my lasting impression was not of the greed and self-satisfaction of the church; it was of the quiet anguish of the warden himself. The fact that the book is entitled The Warden, rather than, say, Those Avaricious Archdeacons, seems to indicate Trollope's intention here.


2. Short stories -- Frank O'Connor, Edna O'Brien, Flannery O'Connor.

Yes, the sudden cluster of 'O'...' in the author's names does signify a move towards Irish writing. I finally got around to reading Ulysses. A guy I was at university with was surprised I hadn't read it before -- and, frankly, so was I. But I finally did it. And it's BRILLIANT. (See the poll on your right -- if you can take a couple of seconds to vote before the end of October that would be fab!) And the gentleness, the recognisable 'Irishness' of it, pushed me to explore Irish writing a little more.

I bought a great book called The Granta Book of the Irish Short Story -- which I mentioned in my post about Colm Toibin -- which contains thirty-one stories, along with a great introduction by Anne Enright. 'The Mad Lomasneys' by Frank O'Connor and 'Sister Imelda' by Edna O'Brien are particularly brilliant, and I've since gone out and bought a collection of Frank O'Connor stories. They're gentle, uncomplicated, and then, suddenly, more heartbreaking than you might think it reasonable to expect from such a short form.

Edna O'Brien is the next on my list to explore. She has just published an autobiography, Country Girl, and thus has been in the press and on Open Book and so on. Her story 'Sister Imelda' seems to be one of her most famous, and captures exquisitely the desperation pupils have to please their teachers, and what happens if the teacher finds herself a little too keen to be pleased. "I looked into her eyes, which seemed fathomless, and saw that she was willing me to be calm and obliging me to be master of my fears, and I little knew that one day she would have to do the same as regards the swoop of my feelings for her." Without the word "swoop," this sentence would be unremarkable -- with it, it's stunning.

Flannery O'Connor -- as you might have been muttering indignantly to yourself -- was not Irish, but was born in Georgia, USA, in 1925, and died there of lupus at the age of 39. The introduction to her Complete Stories, by her publisher Robert Giroux, paints her as an extraordinarily humble, painstaking writer, but one who knew exactly what she was trying to do -- a conviction strengthened by her Christian faith. Her stories are extremely sharp and tough, and Evelyn Waugh is reported to have said, when sent the proofs of her first story collection, "If these stories are in fact the work of a young lady, they are indeed remarkable." Whether or not you'd expect this level gaze, frequently directed at men and their pretensions and prejudices, from a female writer (if you need to be angry today, go here), I think it's fair to say you might not expect it from a writer in her early twenties, as O'Connor was when she wrote, say, 'The Geranium'. Her precocity was really exceptional.


3. Henry James, The Wings of the Dove

My experience of Henry James so far had only really encompassed The Turn of the Screw, Daisy Miller and The Portrait of a Lady. But I reread the latter earlier this year, and was struck with how lucidly and civilly and minutely he dissects the relationships between his characters, even two acquaintances striking up a conversation in a drawing room, tracing who seizes tiny advantages and triumphs over the other.

I chose The Wings of the Dove for a couple of very banal reasons. The first is that I've somehow ended up with two copies of it, so it kept thrusting itself into my field of vision -- a bit like a painting whose eyes follow you around the room. Secondly, one edition of it is a lovely Penguin classics copy -- the expensive black ones, not the cheap beige/green ones, which has a very nice font in a good size. I'm happy to admit to being susceptible to print size as a consideration given how much reading I do.

And I'm glad I gave myself a break on that score, because Wings is really quite dense and tough-going in many places. It was published nearly 20 years after The Portrait of a Lady, and James has become even more unremittingly abstract in his descriptions of relationships. Check out this passage, from the very first chapter, on the subject of Kate Croy's relationship with her father:

Yet if there was much she neither knew nor dreamed of it passed between them at this very moment that he was quite familiar with himself as the subject of such quandaries. If he recognized his younger daughter's happy aspect as a tangible value, he had from the first still more exactly appraised every point of his own. The great wonder was not that in spite of everything these points had helped him; the great wonder was that they hadn't helped him more. However, it was, to its eternal recurrent tune, helping him all the while; her drop into patience with him showed how it was helping him at this moment.

It's the kind of writing that rewards slow, thoughtful reading. Once you've got your head round what the hell he's talking about, it's brilliant. But slow really does mean slow -- no eyeslip, no skimming, none of the normal approaches I take with easier stuff. This is not, I admit, a speed I like very much, because I like to feel the thickness of the pages increase in my left hand and decrease in my right hand as I get further into a book. (This is one reason why ebooks don't do it for me.) But it makes more and more sense to me these days to slow down, to commit to writers who have clearly pumped so much time and brainpower into their work that to read it at pretty much any speed feels ungenerous. Sitting and staring at the neat ranks of books I intend to read very soon doesn't help me remember that the main thing is the actual reading of the books -- but Henry James does.



Running my eye back up the pictures of books, this does look like an advert for Penguin -- but they are on a seemingly eternal roll with their book designs, and their fonts have always been gorgeous, so if I've got the choice, it's Penguin almost every time. Other publishers are available. (But sometimes they might as well not be.)