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Monday, July 22, 2024

The Golden Bowl by Henry James

 Source of book: I own this

 

Lately I have been reading one book by Henry James each year. This year, I decided to dive in and read one of his later books - with dense language and a long length. Since I already read and enjoyed The Wings of the Dove, I went with The Golden Bowl. 

 

While this book is good, it isn’t quite in the pantheon like the other. Which, well, that’s fine. Not every book by any great author is as good as the others. And a good Henry James novel is still very good. 

 

What is interesting about this book is that it has a very small cast of characters, and a very tight focus. The book takes place mostly in the same few locations. And, like most Henry James novels, particularly of the late period, people talk an awful lot without ever saying anything directly. It is all hint and nuance and assumptions and knowing smiles. The reader has to tease out the meaning and, over the course of more than 600 pages, come to an understanding of who knows what and how they will act in light of that knowledge.

 

As with any psychological drama, the plot is relatively simple and unimportant. What happens isn’t nearly as central as why it happens, and how the characters feel about it, and how they choose to justify their actions. 

 

Also, because this is Henry James, it involves relatively naive Americans and relatively sophisticated - and perhaps amoral - Europeans. But there is a twist in this one that is rare in his books. First, the designing woman is also American…just more experienced. And the naive American girl not only learns fast how to observe and act with subtlety, she is the one who takes the decisive action to protect herself and her interests. She is no victim (such as in The Portrait of a Lady.) 

 

If you want to avoid spoilers, now would be the time to grab the book, and return to the post in a month or two after you make your way carefully through the work. 

 

Maggie Verver is the naive American girl. Her father, Adam, is a widower with business interests in America and more money than is good for anyone. He and she are on an extended European trip - while he collects ancient art and artifacts - when they find another relic of old Europe to collect. 

 

Prince Amerigo is a scion of the same family that claims the guy who our two continents are named after, and, like much European royalty of the fin de siecle, he is desperately short of the money needed to live up to his family status. 

 

It is natural, therefore, that he marry Maggie. He needs money, she has it. Adam likes collecting stuff, and an Italian prince is quite the item. And, he and Maggie have some chemistry, particularly on her part. 

 

There is a problem, though, although neither of the Ververs know it. 

 

Maggie’s childhood friend, Charlotte, came to Europe years before, and spent a few years here. During that time, she became fluent in Italian, and ended up having an extended fling with….Amerigo. 

 

She could easily have become his mistress. But not his wife. She wasn’t starving, but she also wasn’t rich, and thus would never have been accepted by his family in the position of a wife. 

 

So, when Maggie and Amerigo are about to be married, Maggie’s old friend Charlotte is invited, and, well, things get a bit more complicated. 

 

All this needs a matchmaker, right? Well, enter the fifth main character, Fannie Assingham, an American matron married to a retired British officer. She knew Amerigo and Charlotte for years before they broke it off. After that, she helped bring Maggie and Amerigo together. 

 

And now, with the former lovers back in London again, she facilitates a meeting between them. They end up spending an entire day together, in part shopping for a potential wedding gift. At a quirky shop in the Jewish quarter, they find a golden bowl. But it is flawed: it has been cracked and glued back together, then covered in gold. It is all facade, but seriously broken underneath. So, totally metaphor. 

 

What else Charlotte and Amerigo do is left to the imagination - James is never explicit - but we might imagine. They promise each other to never reveal their secret to Maggie. 

 

Fast forward a few years. Maggie and Amerigo have a son together, and Adam is the doting grandfather. The problem is, Maggie feels both guilty and smothered. Amerigo has to a degree taken her away from her father, who is now left alone. Or, he would be, except that he is practically a third member of the household, leaving both Maggie and Amerigo little room for each other. 

 

Well, a solution presents itself. Maggie encourages her father to consider remarriage, but the cougars circling him are hardly acceptable. 

 

Until Charlotte returns from America. 

 

She is tired of her relative poverty, and is considering marrying for money. Adam is lonely, and feels guilty about being the third wheel. Maggie would like him to be settled. And Amerigo? Well, he can’t object without revealing his past. 

 

So, put aside for now the “marrying your daughter’s childhood friend” ickiness - this was all too common in the Victorian and Edwardian Eras anyway, and in the literature of the era. And, in any case, Charlotte isn’t a little girl anymore - doing the math, she’s probably closer to 30 than not. 

 

But now, you have a mess, even if Maggie doesn’t yet realize it. 

 

Problem number one: Maggie still has what seems like an emotionally incestuous relationship with her father. They are clearly closer than she is to Amerigo, and indeed spend more time together and seem to be a couple. 

 

Problem number two: Now Charlotte and Amerigo are around each other all the time. And often alone together, while Maggie and her dad are together. Hey, someone has to entertain the forgotten spouse, right? And also, Charlotte is far better at the social games in London, and functions better as that kind of spouse than Maggie does. 

 

Problem number three: No solution to any of this exists…at least a solution that doesn’t result in some sort of separation of one or more relationships. 

 

All of this comes to a head when Amerigo and Charlotte scheme to have another day alone together - and it is at least implied that they have sex. The problem is, this time, Maggie can sense something is off. 

 

She will not, however, accuse her husband. But now she is on guard. 

 

And then, a strange event occurs. She ends up in the same shop, and sees the same golden bowl. And, unlike Charlotte and Amerigo, actually buys it. 

 

The merchant, in a rare fit of integrity, feels guilty for selling a flawed item at that price to a naive American woman, and tracks her down. While at her house, he sees the pictures of Amerigo and Charlotte, and realizes he has seen them before. He tells the story to Maggie, including the fact that they talked in Italian together thinking he couldn’t understand them, and revealed their relationship. 

 

Maggie now has her proof - not so much of adultery, but of the fact that Amerigo and Charlotte have failed to be honest with her. She wants more information, however, and summons Fanny, who, under some pretty strong questioning, admits that she knew all about everything. 

 

Maggie now has some tough choices. She still has no intention of making accusations, and more than anything, she wants to protect her father from the truth. But, she has to protect herself as well. 

 

Her decision is that she will subtly let Amerigo understand she knows the truth, and then let him decide if he will reveal that the Charlotte. And, if he does, then Charlotte will have to decide whether to confess to Adam or not. 

 

These decisions all have consequences, and there is an extended game of “who knows what?”
and the sort of games about knowing without saying that make up this kind of web of propriety. 

 

James’ language in his late period is somewhat difficult, which is one reason this book took me a while. Twenty pages in an evening is enough, and exhausting even as it is rewarding. It is like a puzzle: the picture becomes clear at the end, but you have to work through it piece by piece. 

 

Not all of James’ novels have an introduction, but this one does. And oh my, if you think James’ fictional prose is dense, the introduction is even worse. I think even I, a Henry James Fanboy, have no idea what he was trying to say. It starts like this:

 

Among many matters thrown into relief by a refreshed acquaintance with “The Golden Bowl” what perhaps most stands out for me is the still marked inveteracy of a certain indirect and oblique view of my presented action; unless indeed I make up my mind to call this mode of treatment, on the contrary, any superficial appearance notwithstanding, the very straightest and closest possible. I have already betrayed, as an accepted habit, and even to extravagance commented on, my preference for dealing with my subject-matter, for “seeing my story,” through the opportunity and the sensibility of some more or less detached, some not strictly involved, though thoroughly interested and intelligent, witness or reporter, some person who contributes to the case mainly a certain amount of criticism and interpretation of it. 

 

If you got through that, congratulations, the rest of the book is easier. 

 

In the opening chapter, we see things primarily from the point of view of Amerigo, who is quite frank about his desire to marry for money. He approaches it almost scientifically, as he sees it. 

 

He was allying himself to science, for what was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of money? 

 

There is another fascinating line, this one in the thoughts of Charlotte, while out on her day with Amerigo near the beginning of the story. 

 

It was as if it had been waiting for her, as if she knew it, placed it, loved it, as if it were in fact a part of what she had come back for. So far as this was the case the impression of course could only be lost on a mere vague Italian; it was one of those for which you had to be blessedly an American - as indeed you had to be blessedly an American for all sorts of things: so long as you hadn’t, blessedly or not, to remain in America. 

 

There is also another line that notes Charlotte’s awareness of what her lower class allows her to see - and what Amerigo cannot. 

 

Charlotte had more than once, from other days, noted, for his advantage, her consciousness of how, below a certain social plane, he never saw. One kind of shopman was just like another to him - which was oddly inconsequent on the part of a mind that where it did notice noticed so much. He took throughout always the meaner sort for granted - the night of their meanness, or whatever name one might give it for him, made all his cats grey.

 

James has a knack for unusual and perceptive descriptions. He doesn’t spend that much time on them compared to the inner life, but when he does decide a description furthers his vision, they can be really striking. In this case, I want to contrast two descriptions of shops, the first from the point of view of Charlotte, and the second, from Maggie near the end. (These are the two bookended visits to that certain shop.) 

 

The main in the little shop in which, well after this, they lingered longest, the small but interesting dealer in the Bloomsbury street who was remarkable for an insistence not importunate, inasmuch as it was mainly mute, but singularly, intensely coercive - this personage fixed on his visitors an extraordinary pair of eyes and looked from one to the other while they considered the object with which he appeared mainly to hope to tempt them. 

 

While this sort of shop is more rare than it used to be, you can still find them in cosmopolitan cities, at least after you get off the main drag. Which is what Maggie notes later. 

 

To wander a little wild was what would truly amuse her; so that, keeping clear of Oxford Street and cultivating an impression as of parts she didn’t know, she had ended with what she had more or less been plotting for, an encounter with three or four shops - an old bookseller’s, an old print-monger’s, a couple of places with dim antiquities in the window - that were not as so many of the other shops, those in Sloane Street say; a hollow parade which had long since ceased to beguile. 

 

There are so many fascinating conversations in this book, particularly those involving Fanny, who enjoys the conspiracy until she finds herself in far too deep. This bit with Charlotte is interesting. Whatever Charlotte’s feelings for Amerigo are, she also feels that her husband has bandwidth only for his daughter. 

 

“For yourself personally of course,” Charlotte went on, “you only know the state of neither needing it nor missing it. Your husband doesn’t treat you as of less importance to him than some other woman.”

“Ah don’t talk to me of other women!” Fanny now overtly panted. “Do you call Mr. Verver’s perfectly natural interest in his daughter - ?”

“The greatest affection of which he’s capable?” - Charlotte took it up in readiness. “I do distinctly - and in spite of my having done all I could think of to make him capable of a greater.” 

 

Although it is in a different context, I know exactly what is described there - my mother has very much that sort of an emotionally incestuous relationship with my sister, where other people never can matter in the same way. The eventual severance - at least modification - of the unhealthy relationship between Maggie and her father is ultimately for the better for everyone, and is the greatest sign that she has chosen to grow up. 

 

On a more humorous note, a line stood out to me for unexpected reasons. I am at the tail end of Generation X, and one of the touchstones of our generation is the term “latchkey kid.” You know, the kid who comes home from school to an empty house - they let themselves in using a key. 

 

But, to find that term - and roughly the same meaning - in a Henry James book written in 1905? Well, that was unexpected. Fanny and her husband return in their carriage to their home, at a late hour. 

 

Their conveyance, as she spoke, stopped at their door, and it was on the spot another fact of value for her that her husband, though seated on the side by which they must alight, made no movement. They were in a high degree votaries of the latchkey, so that their household had gone to bed; and as they were unaccompanied by a footman the coachman waited in peace. 

 

After so many discussions (poor Bob Assingham, by the way - he has to listen to Fanny’s endless drama), Fanny finally decides that the only thing to do is just keep hands off and let Maggie figure things out for herself. This actually turns out to be a wise choice, but it comes too late for Fanny to save face. And yes, poor Bob, who occasionally tries to say something, but gets shot down. 

 

“Ah then we must back her!”

“No - we musn’t touch her. We mayn’t touch any of them. We must keep our hands off; we must go on tiptoe. We must simply watch and wait. And meanwhile,” said Mrs. Assingham, “we must bear it as we can. That’s where we are - and it serves us right.”

 

Well, it serves Fanny right, but Bob, not so much. Later in the book, Fanny realizes just how much she has fucked this all up, and how vulnerable she now is as a result. After all, she depends on her reputation for her social status, and now Maggie knows she lied by omission - and she can tell others.

 

“She can utterly dishonor me with her father. She can let him know that I was aware at the time of his marriage - as I had been aware at the time of her own - of the relations that had pre-existed between his wife and her husband.”

 

And this applies to everyone else in this little social drama. 

 

“They’ve only to agree about me,” the poor lady said; “they’ve only to feel at one over it, feel bitterly practiced upon, cheated and injured; they’ve only to denounce me to each other as false and infamous, for me to be quite irretrievably dished.”

 

But, as James makes clear, it is a bit unfair to Fanny, who actually was trying to make some good matches. After all, Maggie is a great fit for Amerigo as far as marriages go, and finding someone who wasn’t a vicious gold digger for Adam was a bit of a coup - Charlotte is certainly no monster.

 

“Conspiring - so far as you were concerned - to what end?”

“Why to the obvious end of getting the Prince a wife - at Maggie’s expense. And then to that of getting Charlotte a husband at Mr. Verver’s.”

“Of rendering friendly services, yes - which have produced, as it turns out, complications. But from the moment you didn’t do it for the complications, why should you have rendered them?”

 

Here is another gem of a conversation, about Charlotte and Amerigo:

 

“What did you mean some minutes ago by his not caring for Charlotte?”

“The Prince’s? By his not ‘really’ caring?” She recalled, after a little, benevolently enough. “I mean that men don’t, when it has all been too easy. That’s how, in nine cases out of ten, a woman is treated who has risked her life. You asked me just now how he works,” she added; “but you might better perhaps have asked me how he plays.”

Well, he made it up. “Like a Prince?”

“Like a Prince. He is profoundly a Prince.” 

 

The book is divided into two parts. The first is ostensibly the perspective of the Prince, but that is an oversimplification, because it also has a lot from Charlotte’s point of view, and even more from Fanny’s perspective. The second is from Maggie’s viewpoint, for the most part. The second part picks up chronologically where the first part ends, however, so it isn’t exactly the same events seen twice. 

 

I did find Maggie’s reflection on her naivete when it came to marriage and relationships to be interesting. It is worth quoting at length. 

 

She had surrendered herself to her husband without the shadow of a reserve or a condition and yet hadn’t all the while given up her father by the least little inch. She had compassed the high felicity of seeing the two men beautifully take to each other, and nothing in her marriage had marked it as more happy than this fact of its having practically given the elder, the lonelier, a new friend. What had moreover all the while enriched the whole aspect of success was that the latter’s marriage had been no more measurably paid for than her own. His having taken the same great step in the same free way hadn’t in the least involved the relegation of his daughter. 

 

Ah, that perfect appearance. Too bad reality wasn’t the same. But also, this “perfect” arrangement wasn’t healthy for any of them. 

 

This was a fascinating book, if rather dense and long. I still think The Wings of the Dove is my favorite James novel, although there is strong competition. I would say this is probably not the best book to start with if you want to discover Henry James - I would vote for The Turn of the Screw as the best first experience - but once you get the feel for James’ style, this is an interesting personal drama, with arguably James’ most dynamic female protagonist, one who is allowed to win in the end, despite being female, naive, young, and American. 

 

***

 

The Henry James list:

 

  The Aspern Papers

     The Bostonians

     Eight Novellas and Short Stories (includes The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller)

     A London Life

     The Portrait of a Lady

     The Reverberator

     The Sacred Fount     

     The Turn of the Screw (Jeffrey Hatcher Play)

     Washington Square

     The Wings of the Dove





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