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THE MYSTERY OF WHITENESS:
A STUDY OF HENRY JAMES'S THE GOLDEN BOWL
by
Richard Sever >/
A thesis
submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in the Department of English
Fresno State College
January, 1971
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. THE PRINCE . . ±
II. THE WHITENESS OF ADAM 15
III. THE WHITE MAIDEN 24
WORKS CITED oQ
I
THE PRINCE
There is a whiteness in The Golden Bowl like the
whiteness of Herman Melville's whale, which "has been made
the symbol of divine spotlessness and power . . . yet for all
these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and
honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something
in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of
panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in
blood.""' In The Golden Bowl Prince Amerigo finds it difficult
to fathom the ostensible goodness and purity of the motives
of the Americans, the Ververs and the Assinghams:
These things, the motives of such people, were obscure--a little alarmingly so; they contributed to that element of the impenetrable which alone slightly qualified his sense of his good fortune. He remembered to have read, as a boy, a wonderful tale by Allan Poe, his prospective wife's countryman--which was a thing to show, by the way, what imagination Americans could have; the story of the shipwrecked Gordon Pym, who drifting in a small boat further toward the North Pole--or was it the South?--than anyone had ever done, found at a given moment before him a thickness of white air that was like a dazzling curtain of light, concealing as darkness conceals, yet of the colour of milk or of snow. There were moments when he
^"Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or the Whale (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co. Inc., 1964), pp. 254-55.
2
felt his own boat move upon some such mystery. The state or mmd ot his new friends including Mrs. Assingham her-sel , had resemblances to a great white curtain.^
The Ververs and Assinghams, the Prince notes, with
their American good faith" (p. 22), have made a "bland,
blank assumption of [his] merits almost beyond notation, of
essential quality and value" (p. 30), taking it for granted
that he is a good prospective mate for Maggie. The Prince
knows that he is to "constitute a possession" (p. 30) for the
Ververs, as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a
purity of gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms,
mediaeval, wonderful, of which the 'worth' in mere modern
change, sovereigns and half-crowns, would be great enough,
but as to which since there were finer ways of using it, such
taking to pieces was superfluous" (p. 30). As merely a rare
"piece," Amerigo cannot see their "degree of seriousness" in
wanting to possess him--this is the element "lost there in
the white mist" (p. 30). "What was," Amerigo asks, "morally
speaking, behind their veil?" (p. 30). What did they expect
him to do as Maggie's husband in exchange for their money?
This question occupies his mind as he travels to Cadogan Place,
and at the Assinghams he feels that he has come "a little
nearer the shroud" (p. 31). Mrs. Assingham tells Amerigo
that since his marriage to Maggie is assured he is "practically
2 Henry James, The Golden Bowl, Laurel Series (New York: Dell Publishing Co. Inc., 1963), p. 29. Subsequent references are to this edition.
3
in port. The port ... of the Golden Isles" (p. 33); but
it comes, her confidence and serenity, "from behind the white
curtain" (p. 32), and worries instead of soothes him.
Like Gordon Pym, Ishmael, and his ancestor Amerigo
Vespucci, he sees himself "starting on the great voyage--
across the unknown sea" (p. 32). Instead of an American
discovering the mysteries behind the veils of Europeans—as
in the journeys of Christopher Newman, Lambert Strether, and
Milly Theale--Amerigo, an Italian, sets out to understand
Americans. He believes that in order to escape futility he
must seek out a "new world," just as his ancestor, "in the
wake of Columbus" (p. 66), had done.
Arrogance and greed, Amerigo admits, are the dominant
themes in his national history, but with the Americans he
can now begin a new life that will exclude the vices of his
native Rome. Amerigo is intrigued by Mr. Verver's extensive
bank account, yet he "humbly" commits himself to use the
money to "make something different" (p. 26). With Adam's
money, and with the old superstitions of Europe left behind,
Amerigo's life "might be scientific":
He was allying himself to science, for what was science but the absence of prejudice backed by the presence of mone}^? His life would be full of machinery, which was the antidote to superstition, which was in its turn, too much the consequence, or at least the exhalation, of archives. He thought of these things--of his not being at all events futile, and of his absolute acceptance of the developments of the coming age--to redress the balance of his being so differently considered. (P. 26)
4
Prince Amerigo recognizes that machinery, the product
of American capital, attenuates the magical powers of super
stition, ana superstition, he believes, was responsible for
much numan wickedness--the "doings, the marriages, the crimes,
the follies, the boundless betises of other people" (p. 21) —
in his antenatal history" (p. 25). Amerigo has a candid
good faith in the machinery of this new science, for "he was
of them now, of the rich peoples; he was on their side--if
it wasn't rather the pleasanter way of putting it that they
were on his" (p. 26).
But the figures who will people his new world of riches
are treating him without the amount of caution he feels should
be shown toward someone of his background, and this lack of
skepticism in the Americans makes him uneasy. His position
puzzles him, for he is to inherit a large fortune without
being subjected to close personal scrutiny—the Verver's and
the Assingham's have somehow calculated his value without
regard to his "unknown quantity," his "particular self"
(p. 21). He openly admits his pecuniary motives, seeing that
there are excellent possibilities for making his nobility
solvent, but he also sees that his prospects for fulfillment
depend upon validity of their high calculation of his value.
Will his manners, his charm, his beautiful Roman countenance,
suffice in exchange for their money? Or, if the Americans
have miscalculated, will he be required to sacrifice a part
of himself to conform to their idea of beauty?
5
Ameri0o has imagined himself afloat in an aromatic
ocean where Maggie Verver's innocence "sweetened the waters
. . . tinted them as by the action of some essence, poured
from a gold-topped phial ..." (p. 21); but he senses
that sucn a position might involve sinking as well as float
ing, and, m order to remain near solid ground, he must
correctly gauge the depth of the waters and skillfully navi
gate in the narrow straits. So Amerigo does not see himself
in port , he feels that he is faced with the consequences
of understanding the Americans or being swept out to sea,
and ne must prepare himself for a journey of discovery in
spite of the temptation, offered by Mrs. Assingham, to accept
the Verver s innocent endorsement. The Prince has promised
Ma-ggie that he does not "lie or dissemble or deceive" (p. 24),
and he intends to keep this promise.
As the Prince begins his "journey" he is haunted by a
figure from the old world, the world he has vowed to leave
behind. Charlotte Stant, a woman with whom the Prince has
had an affair, comes to London. Seen by Mrs. Assingham as a
person "whose looks are most subject to appreciation"
(p. 41); Charlotte is a "tall, strong, charming girl" (p. 44),
whose life style, the Prince sees, "is irretrievably contem
poraneous with his own" (p. 45). Charlotte is "strong-
minded" (p. 44), but this trait does not correspond to the
strong-willed, English-speaking stereotype--girls from whom
Amerigo has learned to expect a negative response. The
6
Prince, rather, "has his own view of this young lady's
strength of mind (p. 44). 0f American parentage, but born
m Florence, Charlotte has "a perfect felicity in the use of
Italian" (p. 50); "her parents [are] from the great country
[America], but themselves already of a corrupt generation,
demoralized, falsified, polygot well before her" (p. 51).
So Charlotte displays none of the mysterious whiteness
attributed to the other Americans, and Amerigo insists "that
some strictly civil ancestor—generations back, and from the
Tuscan hills if she would—made himself felt, ineffaceably,
in her blood and in her tone" (p. 51). Because of this
strain or European blood in Charlotte, it is easy for the
Prince to establish a coherent attitude toward her.
When he first sees Charlotte at Cadogan Place, to
where she has just returned from a trip to America, he "saw
again that her hair was vulgarly speaking, brown, but there
was a shade of tawny autumn leaf in it, for 'appreciation'
--a colour indescribable and of which he had known no other
case, something that gave her at moments the sylvan head of
a huntress" (p. 45). Suggesting a dusky Diana--Amerigo's
"notion, perhaps not wholly correct, of a muse" (p. 46)—
Charlotte is not only strong-willed but aggressive, and she
is capable of initiating and directing a sexual relationship
with a man. Charlotte's assertive sensuality is like that of
the sexually potent European females Amerigo has known; and
in his previous affairs he has felt it necessary to recognize
7
an occult consistency in these women. Seeing Charlotte
again reminds Amerigo of this mysterious consistency:
Once more, as a man conscious of having known many women, he could assist, as he would have called it, at the recurrent, the predestined phenomenon, the thing always as certain as sunrise or the coming round of Saints' days, the doing by the woman of the thing that gave her away. ^ She did it, ever, inevitably, infallibly--she couldn t possibly not do it. It was her nature, it was her life, and the man could always expect it without lifting a finger. This was his, the man's, any man's, position and strength—that he had necessarily the advantage, that he only had to wait, with a decent patience, to be placed, in spite of himself, it might really be said, in the right. Just so the punctuality of performance on the part of the other creature was her weakness and her deep mis fortune--not less, no doubt, than her beauty. It produced for the man that extraordinary mixture of pity and profit in which his relation with her, when he was not a mere brute, mainly consisted; and gave him in fact his most pertinent ground of being always nice to her, nice about her, nice for her. She always dressed her act up, of course, she muffled and disguised and arranged it, showing in fact in these dissimulations a cleverness equal to but one thing in the world, equal to her abjection; she would let it be known for anything, for everything, but the truth of which it was made. (P. 47)
For Amerigo the woman is innately, beautifully the
sexual aggressor. As an experienced Roman lover, he believes
that the European woman's assertiveness is owing to her
incomparable fertility. Her fertility—manifest in her as a
recurrence that is in conjunction with phases of tne moon——
is mysteriously controlled by Nature. Governed by the
cyclic forces of Nature, tne woman Is instinctively a preda
tor, unable to control her animal appetites. For Amerigo
this state constitutes the woman s abjection, makes her a
8
pitiable creature, and puts the male in a fortunate position.
So Amerigo's "notion of a recompense to women--similar in
this to his notion of an appeal--was more or less to make
love to them" (p. 29)—a gentleman has an obligation to show
compassion for women by satisfying their sexual needs.
Amerigo is thus constitutionally unable to ignore Charlotte's
passionate advances, for his relationship with her has been
and muse now be "a perfect accord between conduct and obliga
tion" (p. 48).
Charlotte s intention, however, as Amerigo sees it
when he and Charlotte secretly meet in Hyde Park, is to
release him from her power. "What she gave touched him, as
she faced him, for it was the full tune of her renouncing.
She really renounced--renounced everything, and without even
insisting now on what it had all been for her" (p. 77).
Charlotte, for whom "it was impossible to get in America what
[she] wanted" (p. 54), assures the Prince that in light of
his commitment to Maggie she has only come to London to buy
a wedding present as a symbol of her self-effacement.
Confident that he is now relieved from his gentlemanly obli
gations to Charlotte, Amerigo "clutched ... at what he
could best clutch at--the fact that she let him off, definitely
let him off" (p. 79). The golden bowl, which Charlotte later
wants to buy, is rejected by Amerigo because he feels its
flawed presence would be a constant reminder of his obliga
tion to Charlotte; what Amerigo calls his "safety" (p. 93),
9
and his prospects for happiness, depend on his freedom from
tne obligations, the dark necessities of Europe.
But after Charlotte's marriage to Adam, Amerigo and
his new mother-in-law are forced "against their will into a
relation of mutual close contact that they had done everything
to avoid (p. 198), and the Prince finds himself forced to
recognize the old obligations. "Living . . . four or five
years, on Mr. Verver's services" (p. 200), Amerigo becomes
bored with the London treadmill" (p. 216), and, as Colonel
Assingham notes, is in a position in which he has nothing in
life to do" (p. 190). Before long, Charlotte appears in
Portland Place to the languorous Prince "panting ... at
the door of the room" in a "dull dress and black Bowdlerised
hat that seemed to make a point of insisting on their time
of life and their moral intention" (p. 203).
At Matcham, where Amerigo and Charlotte eventually
consummate their renewed passion, the Prince theorizes that
the adultery has been perpetrated by his wife's and his
father-in-law's apathy and ignorance. Mrs. Assingham, from
whom he had previously sought assurance and guidance in his
"journey," has failed him: she is shocked at Amerigo's
"quintessential wink" (p. 186), and she flies "the black flag
of general repudiation" (p. 185) concerning the erotic impli
cations of his and Charlotte's proximity. But Maggie's and
Adam's own renewed intimacy (epitomized by the Principino
being "converted . . . into a link between mama and grandpapa"
10
[p. 115], suggesting an incestuous relationship between Adam
and Maggie), causes Amerigo to exclaim that "the mysteries
and expectations and assumptions still contain an immense
element that [he has] failed to puzzle out" (p. 188). At
Matcham Amerigo sees that with the aid of "a bottomless bag
of solid shining British sovereigns" (p. 226), his life is
directed toward sensual enjoyment--enjoyment innocently
financed and seemingly sanctioned by his wife and her father.
This freedom provided by Adam's money is a state that
Amerigo relishes with amusement:
Being thrust, systematically, with another woman, and a woman one happened, by the same token, exceedingly to like, and being so thrust that the theory of it seemed to publish one as idiotic or incapable--this was a predicament of which the dignity depended all on one's own handling. What was supremely grotesque, in fact, was the essential opposition of theories--as if a galan-tuomo, as ha at least constitutionally conceived galantuomini, could do anything but blush to go about at such a rate with such a person as Mrs. Verver in a state of childlike innocence, the state of our primitive parents before the Fall. (P. 227)
Amerigo does not have anything like a guilty conscience
in regard to his affair with his mother-in-law; his situation
is rather so extreme, to his mind, that if he failed to take
advantage of it he would be branded as ungracious or sense
less. Underlying his amusement is a "resurgent unrest"
(p. 227), an irritation at his wife's near transcendent
stupidity, for "it has taken poor Maggie to invent a way so
extremely unusual" (p. 227), to relieve him of his boredom.
In addition to this amusement and irritation is a constitutional
11 fear of being ungrateful to or incompetent with a woman.
The Prince's honor is at stake, for "deep in the bosom of
this falsity of position glowed the red spark of his inex
tinguishable sense of a higher and braver propriety" (p. 227)
a woman like Charlotte wants, even demands, to be sexually
fulfilled, and Amerigo is forced by his European sense of
chivo.^.ry lo oolige h er. "There were situations that were
ridiculous," Amerigo concludes, "but that one couldn't yet
help" (p. 227).
After the Assinghams have left Matcham and have become
irrelevant to the scene" (p. 237), Amerigo allows Charlotte
to arrange their sexual encounter down to specific times on
a train schedule. I go, as you know, by my superstitions"
(p. 243), says Amerigo, and he accepts her dominance of him
"as from the mere momentary spell of her" (p. 245). The
Prince accordingly satisfies Charlotte by allowing her to
act out her predetermined scheme, and he feels afterward that
he has "gained more from women than he had ever lost by
them . . . what were they doing at this very moment, wonderful
creatures, but combining and conspiring for his advantage?"
(p. 237). Maggie had definitely arranged Adam's marriage to
Charlotte, and now she has ostensibly arranged Amerigo's
adultery, precipitating Charlotte's "arranging"; and so, as
to his present state of extramarital bliss at Matcham,
Amerigo says "no union in the world has ever been more
sweetened with rightness" (p. 241).
12 The Prince's adultery has been candidly committed (on
a train, in the daylight) in contrast to "the droll ambiguity
of English relations" (p. 239). The British, the Prince
notes, "didn't like les situations nettes ... it was their
national genius to avoid them at every point" (p. 239); yet,
as m the case of Lady Castledean and her lover Mr. Blint,
they also deceitfully indulge in adultery (they directly
condone it in Amerigo's case). So the permissive English
attitude toward adultery is one of outright hypocrisy because
it is a violation of their professed moral code--a code which
Amerigo openly dispenses with. Amerigo has previously observed
L.his moral sopnistry, but it was at the same time precisely
why even much initiation left one, at given moments so puzzled
as to the element of staleness in all the freshness and of
freshness in all the staleness, of innocence in the guilt and
of guilt in the innocence" (p. 240).
Unlike the British, the Americans are innocent, so
their acquiescence is not hypocritical--their misconduct is
a result of attempting virtuousness in abject ignorance.
They are incapable of adultery themselves and consequently
unable to even suspect it in anyone else; and the fruition
of their innocent idealism is that Amerigo is able to trans
late their apathy into "a vicarious good conscience, culti
vated ingeniously on his behalf (p. 226). He can only
conclude that the ostensible moral rectitude of the Americans
has worked very well toward the satisfaction of his sexual
appetite, as "he hadn't struggled nor snatched; he was taking
but what had been given him" (p. 242).
So Amerigo, in trying to see behind the whiteness of
the Americans, is confronted with "a mere dead wall, a lapse
of logic, a confirmed bewilderment" (p. 240). In an attempt
to choose the most reasonable alternative as to what they
expect of him in exchange for their financial support, he
repays them by committing adultery with his mother-in-law,
thinking that this is what they want him to do. He accordingly
feels an exquisite sense of complicity" (p. 228) with
Charlotte, based upon his assumption that, intellectually,
the Ververs are simply "good children, bless their hearts,
and the children of good children; so that verily, the
Principino himself, as less consistently of that descent,
might figure to the fancy as the ripest genius of the trio"
(pp. 226-27).
Charlotte, the passionate, corrupt, sensual woman,
becomes the willing consort for Amerigo's voyage into white
ness; but because of the enigmatic quality of the American
attitude, the two adventurers become, in their own way,
innocent--they are innocent in their apparent disregard of
the evil that lies hidden behind the white mist of American
money and innocence ; and at the same time they are given no
real choices, for "a single turn of the wrist of fate"
places Amerigo and Charlotte "face to face in a freedom that
partook, extraordinarily of ideal perfection, since the
magic web had spun itspTf *. ui pan itself without their toil, almost without
their touch" (pp. 203-204). They become, in the face of the
encompassing white mist, as Mrs. Assingham states, "mere
helpless victims of fate" (p. 263).
II
THE WHITENESS OF ADAM
The mysterious whiteness which the Prince attributes
to the Americans, and the ambiguous system of American morals
that allows virtuousness to condone adultery, are both
exemplified by the visionary Adam Verver. Mr. Verver intends
to build a temple of art in a remote American city which is
presently smothered by ignorance. He describes his planned
place of worship as a structure where "the highest knowledge
would shine out to bless the land" (p. 108); but he admits
that his vulgarly amassing a fortune was necessary for his
supreme idea: "the years of darkness had been needed to
render possible the years of light" (p. 107)--during these
dark years he admittedly "had wrought by devious ways" (p. 108).
"This amiable man" (p. 95) has acquired great wealth at such
an early age that
it argued a special genius; he was clearly a case of that. The spark of fire, the point of light, sat somewhere in his inward vagueness as a lamp before a shrine twinkles in the dark perspective of a church; and while youth and early middle age, while the seitr American breeze of example and oDportunity were blowing upon it hard, haa made of the chamber of his brain a strange workshop of fortune. This establishment, mysterious and almost anonymous, the windows of which, at hours of highesu pressure, never seemed, for starers and won erers, per ceptibly to glow, must in fact have been during certain years the scene of an unprecedented, a miraculous
16
practicallv Produ"ng which it was have communicated ® ^St" °f ChG forSe could not (p! 96) ™ "lth the best of intentions.
In this passage there is a mingling of images of
machine-age technology ("chamber," "pressure," "white-heat,"
"forge") with the metaphor of a church. The above explana
tion of Adam s rise to power is admittedly vague, for it is
called a dim explanation of phenomena once vivid" (p. 97);
but the importance of this explanation, as it applies to
Amerigo s contemplation of the American mystery, is its
suggestion that in Adam's obscure American background a
passion for the pursuit of money was miraculously transformed
into a religious fervor. Since it is a product of Amerigo's
world, and consequently, the "miraculous white-heat" has
forged in Adam a chilling, machine-like reserve and refine
ment :
The essential pulse of the flame, the very action of the cerebral temperature, brought to the highest point, yet extraordinarily contained—these facts themselves were the immensity of the result; they were one with perfection of machinery, they had constituted the kind of acquisitive power engendered and applied, the necessary triumph of all operations, (f. 97)
Adam's inhuman reserve causes him to be inscrutably
monotonous behind an iridescent cloud,' a white misu that is
"his native envelope" (p. 97). He is now a retired American
millionaire in Europe, but his religious fervor will have,
in application, a machine-like efficiency and power to
somehow transform artifacts oi ru-ope in-o a new
17 "civilization condensed
' -onc^ete, consummate" (p. 108); furthermore, he expects ua
that hls new temple will surpass, as a disseminator of aestl-ief-i^ <- i aesthetic beauty and practical wisdom,
anything yet achieved by the great seers who have come before
him: "He was a plain American citizen ... but no Pope, no
prince of them all had read a richer meaning, he believed,
into the character of the Patron of Art" (p. 111).
As an enlightened American, then, Adam Verver aches to
release his countrymen from "the bondage of ugliness" (p.
108), but he is s een by Amerigo as shrouded in whiteness
because his dedication to aesthetic beauty leads to a moral
inconsistency. For Adam, from behind his shroud, is so
monotonously efficient that he finds it necessary to treat
human beings as commodities:
Nothing perhaps might affect us as queerer, had we time to look into it, than Adam's application of the same measure of value to such different pieces of property as old Persian carpets, say, and new human acquisitions; all the more indeed that the amiable man was not without an inkling, on his own side, that he was, as a taster of life, economically constructed (p. 141).
Mr. Verver's former, religious pursuit of money,
where he saw "acquisition of one sort as a perfect preliminary
to acquisition of another" (p. 107), is easily accommodated
to his present vision of aesthetic perfection. Adam has
purchased Amerigo for his daughter in conjunction with the
Bernadino Luini he had happened to come to knowledge of at
the time" (p. 141), and this confusion of the human and the
artistic has replaced his former concern for high profit.
18 Adam now "dreaded the imnnt-ai-4^ e , imputation of greed" (p. 99), for he does not act from self— i"nt~P7~AQt- *k +- jz i interest, but for his daughter and his country. So Mr. Verver'q Q1-nn.lA • , , £r s smg 1 emmdedness, his strict
dedication to a vision, "his accepted monomania" (p. 151),
makes him appear in Amerigo's superstitious mind as a kind
of modern wizard who, having been "struck with Keats's
sonnet about stout Cortez in the presence of the Pacific"
(p. 105), plans to "rifle the Golden Isles" (p. 105), as a
modern Alexander furnished with the spoils of Darius" (p. 27).
The resultant evil, this rifling and spoiling Amerigo
sees, does not stem from arrogance and greed; it is rather
that Adam s idealistic passion does not take into considera
tion the true essense of the culture he wishes to exploit--
Adam does not realize that his purchases include ugliness
and sin along with beauty and virtue, and that the applica
tion of a monetary value to human beings, regardless of
benevolent intent, Is morally wrong.
This moral inconsistency Amerigo has observed in Adam
is therefore a result of Adam's innocence, and this kind of
innocence appears to the Prince as simplicity. The Prince
says Adam "was the man in the world least equipped with
different appearances for different hours. He was simple,
he was a revelation of simplicity, and that was the end of
him so far as he consisted of an appearance at all (p. 220).
Being abjectly innocent and having the authority imposed on
him by his money, Adam is like a child ruler who unfortunately
wields great power over the destinies of men:
He was meagre and modest a-nrl n i r if they wandered without fear ^ hiS eyGS' ance; his shoulders were not b^Ia 5ayed wlthout defi-high, his complexion wL ™t fr^h' and ̂ ™ ̂ head was not covered- in < =„••- .e crow of his at the top of his table P °I 3U °f which he lo°ked> shyly entertaining in virtnp116!' a llttle bo^ he could only be one of the no ^ ;mP°Sed rank' that of a fnrrp-mnh powers, the representative of a dynasty In th'^ lnj~ant kln§ is the representative 1 -y y* hls generalised view of his father-in-law, intensified to-night but always operative Amerieo hac now for some time taken refuge. (p. 220) ' &
The Prince feels that Mr. Verver looks at him as if
his son-in-law were "the figure of a cheque received in the
course of business a nd about to be enclosed to a banker"
(p. 221). In spite of his innocence, Adam retains the power
to give Amerigo a value; and since the Prince is himself the
beneficiary of this attribution, he takes refuge in the
enjoyment of the apparently high value that has been placed
on him--Amerigo feels himself as a bank draft, subject "to
repeated, to infinite endorsement" (p. 221)--and so is
reluctant to quibble about the moral consequences of Mr.
Verver1 s actions.
But the seriousness of the moral defects in Adam's
religious fervor and innocence are revealed by his marriage
to Charlotte Stant. Regardless of Adam's benevolence and
his honorable intentions the marriage becomes a matter of
tiatrimonial merchandising, as a passionate, sensitive woman
is relegated to being just one more or Adam's important
Pieces." The marriage involves a "transaction" that directs
Adam's religious fervor toward both sterlUty ̂
for Adam buys a wife Just as he wQuld ^ ̂ ̂
His commitments in his m are to his daughter and to
his mission in American Citv Tt-
* Xt 13 the suggestion of Maggie ohat Adam de cides to wed Char! oft-;=> • n cnariotte, he assumes that
such an arrangement will relieve Maggie of the responsibility
she feels toward him by her having married and deserted him.
His taking a wife, he says, is only "decently humane"
(p. 148) for Maggie, and he feels a woman like Charlotte
will further enhance his collection.
So Adam, "the great American Collector" (p. 151),
takes Charlotte to Brighton. In this "bright" setting, in
the fresh Brighton air on the sunny Brighton front" (p. 149),
Adam is elated with the "merits of his majestic scheme"
(p. 149), and he brazenly shows off his wealth to impress
Charlotte.
He was acting--it kept coming back to that--not in the dark, but in the high golden morning: not in precipitation, flurry, fever, dangers these of the paths of passion properly so called, but with the deliberation of a plan, a plan that might be a thing of less joy than a passion, but that probably would, in compensation for that loss, be found to have the essential property, to wear even the decent dignity, of reaching further and of providing for more contingencies. (Pp. 149-50)
In much the same way that the golden bowl conceals
its flaw to the unwary, the golden atmosphere of Brighton
conceals the sins that will result rrom Adam s wedding, Adam
is blind to the danger of his engendering a passion that will
make him a cuckold. Adam's religious fervor and his innocence
are now seen as a fatal Ma. 21
and good faith; and after theT ̂ SCh°0l"b°y «*"»"<*«>
- - Brighton, the ensu g 7 ~ D~°~ & xtua1' complete with "the
heavy cake and port wine " hoi nS' tak6S on Charlotte "the touch
0l some mystic rite of old Jewry":
^Ikeftogether^Jn^hr"6 fr0m her aS th^ wal1^ away-breezy sefand the bus"lTani2S afte™oon, back to the 7 and the flutter and the n? ' back to the ™™ble the erin of hS m shlnln8 ̂ ops that sharpened were walking thus ̂ as Lhe °f ̂ '' They
he should see his shin^ k ' aa]fer and nearer to where him quite i , P bUm' and it: was meanwhile for
red glow would impart at the har-moniou^hour, a lurid grandeur to his good'fJith
The image of burning ships, coming from his linking
himself with Cortez, is Adam's romantic idea of his marriage
proposal. His plan is envisioned as a great sacrifice for
-ia^gie, but the "transaction" that coincides with Adam's
proposal is overcast by a subtle mask of temptation and evil.
The transaction is followed by an illicit ceremony to sanc
tion Adam's cold, machine-like approach. The ritual that
Charlotte has participated in is a diabolic fusion of a
monetary transaction with a wedding rite--a potentially evil
blending of suppressed sexual passion and money that compro
mises a young, beautiful woman and leads to the sterility of
its designer. During the ritual, Adam and Charlotte are
surrounded by the twelve members of the Guterman-Seuss family,
tut, ironically, after Charlotte is "in truth crowned
(P. 171) with the Verver jewels, it is brought out that Adam
22 is sterile, and Charlotte win n
be overheard complaining that Adam s relationship with Maggie is »
ls the greatest affection of which he is canab]p
. . m spite of my having done all I could think of to makp v.-;™
hlm caPable of a greater" (p. 181).
Charlotte later tells Amerigo that the conception of a child
by her and Adam, "poor duck," would make a difference, but
this "will never be," and "It's not at any rate," she goes
on, my fault (p. 209). The dire consequence of Adam's cold
transaction, then, is to "give [Amerigo's] wife a bouncing
stepmother" (p. 163), as Charlotte phrases it. Adam is
giving Amerigo a mistress for a mother-in-law, and the love
between Adam and Maggie, a guiltless, asexual, filial passion,
misdirects human sexual passion and precipitates the evil
of adultery.
Described as a "small, spare, slightly stale person"
(p. 123), Mr. Verver "had lost early in life much of his
crisp, closely-curling hair" (p. 123); but ironically, his
last name has the connotation of freshness, vigor, and spring
time. This curious mixture of freshness and staleness is
finally the blending of Adam's religious fervor, his innocence,
his idealism, his singlemindedness--it is this mixture that
is the source of evil in The Golden Bowl. Adam s idealism
is a ruthless religious passion, because the religion he
wished to propagate" is "the exemplary passion, the passion
for perfection at any price" (p. 108); as his religious
fervor leads to treating human beings as objects and to
23 condoning adultery, Adam's apparent virh pparent virtuousness is in actuality a culpable innocence. Sinr.^ Am^ •
Amerigo is such an embroiled ageni,, hopelessly enmeshed in the t-^noiori -. tangled situation Adam has pi.ecipitated, he is unable to predict tto c pieaict the consequences of
Adam's ruthlessness and impotence, and Amerigo postulates
that Adam "might be, at the best, the financial 'backer,'
watching his interests from the wing, but in rather confessed
ignorance of the mysteries of mimicry" (pp. 123-24). The
ruthlessness of this innocent "producer" stems from an ignor
ance of real human passion while providing the finances for
that passion to be acted out.
In his marriage to Charlotte, Adam's innocence (an
innocence comparable to that of his namesake in Genesis)
provides for the tragic predicament of the two marriages and
produces the moral dilemma in the novel. But, as Amerigo
has observed, Adam never directly acts--his form is static--
and the resolution of the dilemma, which will give Amerigo
his sought-after understanding of the whiteness, is left to
Maggie, a hereditary representative of the asexual elements
in her father's ambiguous ethics.
Ill
THE WHITE MAIDEN
xWior .o ins marriage, Amerigo tells Charlotte that
Maggie is unusually happy; but "it's almost terrible, you
know, the happiness of young, good, generous creaturls. It
rather frightens one. But the Blessed Virgin and all the
Saints . . . have her in their keeping" (p. 49). Maggie's
innocent, virginal qualities that have frightened Amerigo
become apparent when she begins, in Book Second, to approach
in her mind an element in the marriage arrangement which was
for her previously unapproachable. The situation appears to
her as a "tall tower of ivory . . . with silver bells that
tinkled, ever so charmingly, when stirred by chance airs"
(p. 273); and she fearfully contemplates "one's paying with
one's life if found there as an interloper" (p. 274).
Maggie's tower has "risen stage by stage" (p. 275) as
a result of her deepening perception of her husband's and
her stepmother's sexual relationship. Maggie's reaction to
her shocking discovery, being "no mere crudity of impati
ence" (p. 284), is, instead of remaining in Eaton Square with
her father, to confront the Prince in Portland Place upon his
return from the country estate of Matcham, where his stay
with Charlotte has been improperly lengthy. This is the first
move in a game that for Margie wil 1 • " 8 U maintain "the equilib-
rium . . . the happy balance" (D 009 \ u' zazJ, amounting to her
winning back Amerigo from Charlotte w-H-n <-. tG wlLhout translating "all
their delicacies into the gross™*** c o ncss of discussion" (p. 297)
or exposing the adultery to her father.
her
ion
Ironically, m this first confrontation with
husband, Amerigo appears to Maggie exhausted from his stay
with her step-mother at Matcham; and Maggie notes that "if
he had come back tired, tired from his long day, the exert
had been, literally, in her service and her father's" (p.
285). But Amerigo's sexual exploits have not only tired him
but have created for him a new awareness of his wife. At
dinner with Maggie, Amerigo
had possession of her hands and was bending toward her, tVcr so kindly, as if to see, to understand, more or possibly give more--she didn't know which; and that had the effect of simply putting her, as she would have said, in his power. She gave up, let her idea go, let every-thing go; her one consciousness was that he was taking her again into his arms. It was not till afterwards, that she discriminated as to this; felt how the act operated with him instead of the words he hadn't uttered --operated, in his view, as probably better than any words, as always better, in fact, at any time than anything. Her acceptance of it, her response to it, inevitable, foredoomed came back to her, later on, as a virtual assent to the assumption he had thus made that there was really nothing such a demonstration didn t anticipate and didn't dispose of, and that the spring acting within herself moreover might well have been, beyond any other, the impulse legitimately to provoke it. It made, for any issue, the third time since his return that he had drawn her to his breast. ... (P. Z^J
26
Le need to
is
Characteristically, Amerigo's im> • i . , initial counter to
Maggie s move, as he suspects a nge ln ller attitude, is
to appeal to her biological needs p r , , needs. For he instinctively feels that with a woman the only real r
niy real communication possible
is through a recognition of the inescapable femal
satisfy animal appetites-the biological, for Amerigo
the most profound kind of experience. But Maggie correctly
regards this need as a weakness-it is a weakness that she
knows will destroy any scheme of restoration. In order for
Maggie to maintain the "equilibrium," she instinctively
knows that she must draw Amerigo away from Charlotte; but
her initial move, which was to show her husband with an
unusual amount of warmth "that she adored and missed and
desired him" (p. 2S3), has been met with what she calls his
infinite tact" (p. 284); she thus sees that the usual mode
of female action, the sexual possession of the male, is not
open to her, as this would be playing right into Amerigo's
hand. To be victorious, Maggie must assume a prelapsarian
attitude--she must refuse to recognize animal passion as an
element of experience, to reject, in her mind, the fact of
her husband's adultery--thereby forgiving him and forcing
him to accept her love.
So, like an actress on the stage who must neroi^ally
improvise" (p. 293), Maggie uses all her virginal will to
sublimate sexual passion. Her overwhelming capacity foj.
sublimation is shown when she and the Prince leave after i_he
Easter dinner at Eaton Square pD 27
- H e r n u n - l i k e a b i l i t y i n s t i l l s in her as never before a feeling •
g °f lmmense P°w« over Amerigo* Strange enough was this sense for * the sense of possessing, by miracu^P altoSether new, tage that, absolutely then and 1- helP. some advan-as they rolled, she might eShefS^ no ""riage, inexpressibly strange--so distinct^ n °r p" .stranSa. did give it up she would somehow - Saw tbat she
ever. And what her husLnd' f for
very bones registered, was that she should meant; h6r
it was exactly for this tha- hP ~ - glve lt: UP:
magic. He tahw to reso^ L "2°^^ occasion, as she had lately more rt.n COUd-d be» on munificent a lover- all of whirh learned, so Of the character she ^re^'i* fT
geniusnfoiychLmarfo?f'htS md beaut«ul aaaa. his ° Lor nnarm, for intercourse. . . . (p. 308)
True to his idea of the male sexual role, Amerigo is
not aggressive with Maggie; he simply says and does the
things that will arouse her desire, and, as with Charlotte,
he waits for her to act. But Maggie is only briefly tempted
L° yield to the ancient magic of sexual desire, for to give
ner selr over to passion would betray her innocent vision of
i-he ideal she can attain--winning her husband back without
recognizing his adultery as a betrayal. So Maggie resists,
and finally rejects, the Prince's sexual overture. She
refuses to possess him,
keeping her head and intending to keep it; though she was also staring out of the carriage-window with eyes into which tears of suffered pain had risen, indistin-^ guishable, perhaps, happily, in the dusk. She was making an effort that horribly hurt her, and, as ̂ she couldn t cry out, her eyes swam in her silence. With them,^ al the same, through the square opening beside her, tbr°ugl the grey panorama of the London night, she ac leve i_ne feat of not losing sight of what she wanted;; ^nd her ^ lips helped and protected her by being o (P. 309)
i • . 28 T.iis victory over her mm
has created for her a new kind of pow^Tp^8" diSC°V°rS' . P - , a power that will
separate Amerigo from his mistress a no , . , ess, a power that strengthens
asexual bonds with a machine-like rft,- • . efficiency akin to the power
of the fantastic reservp reserve and refinement of her father.
Maggie becomes, like Charlotte, predatorv « a i>J-eaatory and aggressive,
but Maggie's power, unlike Charlotte's is i ) is asexual. Amerigo
cannot simply give up Maggie for Charlotte, in spite of
Maggie's sexual rejection, because of his innate chivalry,
his gentleman's agreement to honor the marriage bond-the
same impulse that forced him into adultery in the first place.
Maggie recognizes this, for she can withold sexual affec
tions from him with a sense that is "absolutely closed to
the possibility in him of any thought of wounding her" (p. 414).
Amerigo has been totally wrong about Maggie's "native
complacency" (p. 397); instead of a lack of intelligence and
imagination, Maggie's reaction to the adultery and her subse
quent scheme of keeping up appearances comes to be a complex
strategy that puts both Amerigo and Charlotte on the defen
sive. And the quality in Maggie that brings about this extra
ordinary reversal is her imagination, for in the slightly
cynical words of Mrs. Assingham, "there's no imagination so
lively, once it's started, as that of really agitated lambs.
Lions are nothing to them, for lions are sophisticated, are
dlgjes. are brought up, from the first to prowling and
Ruling" (p. 355). In the face of Maggie's power, Amerigo
"lth "*«" "•»>- — .ho "
" Sh* - -•»'"« "« ».«, .o, . / cause; and the labour of thi. i , , . , KlS detachment, with the labour of
^ keePln§ th£ P"Ch °f " ^ld them together ln che
steel hoop of an inti^cy compared with which artless passion
would have been but a beating of the air" (p. 364). Maggie.s
indignation is further "no challenge of wrath, no heat of
the deceived soul" Cd "37^ • r.-, . tp. d/b), and in this chilling context
taerigo is rendered powerless. He finds himself, after
Maggie discovers the golden bowl and accuses him of adultery
with Charlotte, in a "labyrinth" (p. 394), a "proud man
reduced to abjection" (p. 420).
Maggie pictures Charlotte as a caged animal, "a
prisoner looking through bars . . . bars richly gilt" (p.
421); and in Chapter XXXVI Maggie has a confrontation with
this sensual adversary. At Fawns in the smoking room, the
erotic view of the adultery and the possibility of verbaliz
ing her anguish "assaulted her, within, on her sofa, as a
beast might have leaped at her throat" (p. 424). And her
vision of "a wild eastern caravan, looming into view with
crude colours in the sun, fierce pipes in the air, high
sPears against the sky, all a thrill, a natural joy to mingle
with, but turning off short before it reached her and plung
ing into other defiles" (p. 425) illustrates Maggie's ability
to withdraw, to withhold sexual release at the crucial
Point.
Her subsequent confrontation with Charlotte in the ̂
night amounts to an initial victory over her sexual rival.
Charlotte, the huntress, "the snle-ndiH v. • • splendid shmmg supple crea
ture" (p. 427), makes a symbolic bid fn c y one bxd freedom by leaving
the card-room and joining Maggie outside at the window.
Maggie's plan to save the marriages is that she will now not
reveal her knowledge of the adultery to Charlotte, as she did
to Amerigo. Consequently, Maggie feels, this maneuver will
bring herself and the Prince "together ... he and she,
close together" (p. 434).
Maggie s innocent diplomacy becomes what James calls
"something like a new system" (p. 428). Operating in the
midsL of old world corruption, represented by the betrayal
of Amerigo and Charlotte, this "system" becomes a kind of
moral blackmail whereby Amerigo has incredibly been forgiven
and Charlotte is held, tormented, as Maggie says, "by her
ignorance" (p. 490). Utilizing her innocence as a kind of
shield (metaphorically, her "improvised hood" [p. 432]),
Maggie is now capable "of braving, of fairly defying, of
directly exploiting, of possibly quite enjoying under cover
of an evil duplicity, the felt element of curiosity with which
Charlotte regarded her" (p. 304). Maggie tells Charlotte
dramatically, "'I accuse you—I accuse you of nothing
(p. 434), but Charlotte, aware of the Prince's new attitude,
cannot be certain. So "not, by a hair's breadth," does
Maggie deflect "into the truth" (p. 434), relegating
Charlotte to "some darkness of space that- i ̂ pace that would steep her in
solitude and harass her with care" (D aqan VP. 434)— m this way-
Maggie transfers her own nrevinn^ xi previous ignorance and uncertainty to Charlotte.
Maggie tells Mrs. Assingham her "system" requires
"the golden bowl-as it was to have been ... the bowl with
all the happiness in it . . . the bowl without the crack"
(p. 412). Like Adam's vision, her plan demands perfection.
And it has been the example of her father that has sustained
her; it has been "the so possible identity of her father's
motive and principle with her own" (p. 404); it has been
Adam's machine-like efficiency and reserve that Maggie imi
tates to successfully win back her husband.
In Chapter XXXVII Adam and Maggie meet again in their
garden and pledge "their mutual vigilance" (p. 445); this
mutual, unnatural love has been the reason for Maggie's
consistency. Adam's moral placidity as he appears to Maggie
"with the unfathomable heart folded in the constant flawless
freshness of the white waistcoat" (p. 470), is the image that
now sustains her amid the devastation she causes: "she might
have been for the time, in all her conscious person, the very
form of the equilibrium they were, in their different ways,
equally trying to save" (p. 446). And Adam's willingness to
take Charlotte to America
had the effect, for her of a reminder-a reminder °f a*1
he was, of all he had done, of all .aboY* ̂ £?m !js being her perfect little father, she mig . pn representing, take him as having, qui e
32 the eyes of two hemispheres, been canati r , therefore wishing, not--was it?--in J" ' as
her attention to. The 'successful • b~ 1f":ely' to caI1
the beautiful, bountiful, original' dff person' "reat citizen the rgmal, dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate collector and infallible high authority he had been and still was His very quietness was part of it now, as always'plrt of everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable, incal-culable energy. ... (p. 449)
As the "child of his blood" (p. 450), Maggie sees
herself, as conforming to Adam's religious ferver for perfec
tion. For the Ververs, life must be purged of all traces of
human corruption; their mission is to achieve the ideal and
repudiate the image of flawed humanity suggested by the
cracked golden bowl. This religious quest, beautifully exe
cuted, as Amerigo might be thinking in his brooding state at
Fawns, forces perfection onto a corrupt and imperfect world.
Maggie's scheme effectively alienates Amerigo from
Charlotte; he is drawn back to Maggie and finds he must some
how accept her love. But Amerigo must pay the ultimate
stakes in this marriage for his acceptance. In Maggie's
world of ideal love Amerigo is reduced to something less than
a passive agent, for without the advantage of being able to
anticipate and satisfy Maggie's sexual appetites their
relationship will be a sterile Platonic love. With Maggie,
Amerigo waits, but the old certainty, "the predestined
Phenomena," which was his source of strengtn with European
women, never materializes in his American wife. Amerigo u
grasped" (p. 475). Amerigo's former mistress is doomed to a
sterile life of subjugation, for the cage that Maggie has
fashioned has made Charlotte a slave to Adam Verver and his
mission. As Adam and Charlotte make their "daily round" of
artistic inspection at Fawns, Maggie imagines that "their
connection would not have been wrongly figured if he had
been thought 01. as holding in one of his pocketed hands the
end of a long silken halter looped round her beautiful neck"
(p. 458).
A kind of peace, an equilibrium, has been established
at Fawns, but it is a fearful stalemate rather than a com
promise, for Maggie "knew accordingly nothing but harmony and
diffused, restlessly, nothing but peace—an extravagant,
expressive, aggressive peace, not incongruous, after all, with
the solid calm of the place; a kind of helmeted, trident
shaking pax Britannica" (p. 407). The images that reflect
this peace are of terror and imprisonment. The sposi at
Fawns are "like a party of panting gold-fish . . . they
learned to live in the perfunctory; they remained in it as
many hours of the day as might be; it took on finally one
likeness of some spacious central chamber in a haunted house,
a great overarched and overglazed rotunda, where gaiety
might reign, but the doors of which opened into sinister
circular passages" (p. 459). Prince Amerigo now plays the
Part of Maggie's eunuch, sentenced to the boredom Of pacing
about his room and completely under the sway o gg*
3 r
will. When Maggie brings a telegram from Adam and Charlotte
announcing their departure to America, it is "as if she had
come to him m his more than monastic cell to offer him light
or toot" (p. 491). The significance of this telegram, which
signals Charlotte s final meeting with Amerigo, is that his
condition is only a prelude to a final execution, as "it was
every moment more and more for [Maggie] as if she were wait-
ing with som<_ glea m Oj_ reme morance of how noble captives in
the French Revolution, the darkness of the Terror used to
make a feast, or a high discourse of their last poor resources"
(p . 49 3 ) .
Imagining that Amerigo, from behind his prison bars in
Portland Place, is awaiting his own execution, it is under
standable that he m akes a final pathetic bid for his freedom.
At the end of Chapter XLI, alone with the Prince before her
father's final visit, Maggie feels "the thick breath of the
definite--which was the intimate, the immediate, the familiar,
as she hadn't had them for so long" (p. 499). Amerigo was
so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him,
kiss him, hold him" (p. 500); but Maggie, with her "endless
power of surrender" (p. 500), of withdrawal, can postpone
again any sexual advances by her husband. Amerigo can only
comply with her desires, as she "saved herself and she go
off" (p. 501), by admonishing him to wait. So Amerigo is
shown the price he must pay as Maggie's husband; he sees
that her power to resist his sexual advances is limitless,
36 and her love is "abysmal and unutterable" (p. 442)
Knowledge ot this love is responsible for the terror
reflected in Amerigo s eyes when he embraces Maggie in the
final paragraph of the novel. In the last chapter, prior to
Amerigo's acceptance of Maggie, the images are of dying and
decay. The time was stale, it was to be admitted, for
incidents of magnitude; the September hush was in full pos
session ac the end or the dull day, and a couple of the long
windows stood open to the balcony that overhung the desola
tion (p. 501). In the final scene, a farewell banquet for
Adam and Charlotte, Adam's and Maggie's vision of perfection
has prevailed; Charlotte and Amerigo sit "as a pair of
effigies of the contemporary great on one of the platforms
of Madame Tussaud" (p. 505). Deprived of their bodies, their
sexual powers are totally diminished; they are reduced to
ancient artifacts in the Verver museum:
Mrs. Verver and the Prince fairly placed themselves, however unwittingly, as high expressions or the kind of human furniture required, aesthetically, by such a scene. The fusion of their presence with the decorative elements, their contribution to the triumph Oi. selec tion, was complete and admirable; though, to a lingering view, a view more penetrating than the occasion really demanded, they also might have rigured as concrete auu tations of a rare power of purchase. (j-• - >05)
This surrender to Maggie's power is the final
quence of Amerigo's journey into whiteness. The whi
ultimately produces a terrifying stillness which "might have
been said to be not so much restored as created,
whatever next took place was foredoomed to remarkabl
37 salience" (p. 509). Finally, Amerigo tells Maggie: "I
see nothing but you" (p. 511), and this vision is the real
ization that Maggie's innocence has its own subtle associa
tion with human guilt and evil. At the end of the novel
Amerigo has acquired the moral sense that was lacking when
he began his journey. He has found that innocence is not
immune to guile; Maggie and Adam have not committed an overt
wrong, yet their manipulating of human destinies has lead
to suffering, and they are just as guilty of wrongdoing as
he and Charlotte.
Amerigo is a modern hero lost between two worlds--
his old world of tradition and superstition and certainty,
and Maggie's world of innocence and uncertainty and a
machine-like power that establishes an unnatural, inhuman
order. For Amerigo, Maggie's world is a purgatory where
dullness, staleness, and sterility are dominant; her system
has sought perfection for imperfect humanity and tnis has
destroyed the former imperfect love of the sposi, aborting
his plans for a beneficent new world. ihe more mature
Prince can only admit that "everything's terrible . . . m
the heart of man" (p. 498). To love this white maiden or
Portland Place, Amerigo must "meet her in her own way" (p.
5U), and this has required a bloodless but appalling loss
°f his sexuality. At the end of his journey, Ame-i0 is
"shivering and half shipwrecked," for i r > •LOr instead of rainbows
speaking hope and solace to his misery, he views what seems
a boundless church-yard grinning upon him with its lean ice
monuments and splintered crosses.
^Mo by -Dick, p. 262.
WORKS CITED
James, Henry. The Art of the Novel, Critical P-r^ Edited by R . P. Blackmur. New York: Charles Scrib-ner's Sons, 1962.
The Golden Bowl. Laurel Series. New York: Dell Publishing Co. Inc., 1963.
Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick or the Whale. New York: Bobbs' Merrill Co. , Inc., 1964.
