Katia N's Reviews > The Golden Bowl

This is the last novel James has written or rather has dictated to his stenographer. I’ve read somewhere a joke that the prolific Jamesean oeuvre can be subdivided into three periods: James I (including The Portrait of the Lady’); James II (circa Aspen Papers) and the latest novels belong to James the Pretender. I can empathise with the person coming up with this joke. I am personally a big fan of ‘James II”. I am a bit more ambivalent of his last period. Very elaborate, occasionally cryptic sentences and the pace of this novel is definitely a pinnacle of James’c creativity. However, reading it could be a painful experience. That is especially if one takes James at a face value without appreciating his sense of humour.

The one of the features of this novel is that James is in love with metaphorical language. Characters are compared with pagodas, crystals and many other things. Some of them also possess a peculiar geometrical shape (not literary of course I hope). Here for example, what the father is telling to his son in law:

You’re round, my boy,’ he had said – ‘you’re all, you’re variously and inexhaustibly round, when you might, by all the chances, have been abominably square.

There is a hidden symbolism in many objects, including of course the infamous golden bowl that appears almost magically at the right points of the novel. All of this comes across as positively baroque if not slightly indulgent.

On the other hand, I can appreciate the challenge James has put himself into in terms of the writing style. It seems he has tried to find a new way how to depict a character’s interiority without relying too much on an omnipresent narrator. Additionally, he was trying to show how a character struggled to get an indirect access to someone else's consciousness. In other words: to guess the thoughts of the other character and to act accordingly based upon these guesses. This is a philosophical issue called ‘a problem of other minds’, an epistemological question: "Given that I can only observe the behavior of others, how can I know that others have minds?" (Wiki). It is bad enough by itself. But to depict this problem in literature before the breakthrough of modernism at the beginning of the 20th century might be a formidable challenge. In this respect James has succeeded to create an interesting thought experiment with his characters. The 20th century with Joyce and Woolf and the others have simnifically advanced the tools of depicting interiority in literature. However, it seems the problem of other minds is still quite tricky to depict in a novel even nowadays.

In this novel, James keeps repeating the word ‘consciousness’ just for us not to confuse it with anything else. I’ve counted ninety times of its mentioning. Initially we are presented with a perspective of an Italian prince, the husband of an American rich girl, Maggie. And later we are stuck in her head for the rest of the novel. In Jamesian fashion many things are left unspoken. And we as a readers are told what Maggie thinks those hidden unspoken assertions might be (other minds for Maggie). Very occasionally, James himself would pop up to add a few details or make some judgement call.

However, the situation all of this applies to is kind of straightforward in a human sense. We have a rich American dad and his daughter on the one side. We have an Italian Prince and poor American girl on the other. Daughter marries Prince, the girl marries father. But almost immediately the girl and the Prince fall into each other arms, at least partly because the father and the daughter enjoy each other company for quite a bit above the average. So this ‘toxic’ dynamics is self-sustained and difficult to break. However, Maggie, the daughter, suspects infidelity and ponders how to address the issue. Apart from those four, there is also a couple who is trying to help, especially the wife. The couple for me was the best part of all of this as they provided a lot of comic relief. But everyone eventually ends up lying to everyone else to lie till we’re black in the face.. (view spoiler)[And apparently at the end this tactics saves both marriages. (hide spoiler)] That is the story. Oh sorry, did i reveal the plot? I would not recommend to read this novel for the plot in any case. So i would not apologise:-)

Here is an example that demonstrates both problem of other minds and the usefulness of telling untruth to solve family conflicts as depicted by the Master:

But Maggie at last broke it. ‘If Charlotte doesn’t understand me it’s because I’ve prevented her. I’ve chosen to deceive her and to lie to her.’ The Prince kept his eyes on her. ‘I know what you’ve chosen to do. But I’ve chosen to do the same.’ ‘Yes,’ said Maggie after an instant – ‘my choice was made when I had guessed yours. But you mean,’ she asked, ‘that she understands you?’ ‘It presents small difficulty!’ ‘Are you so sure?’ Maggie went on. ‘Sure enough. But it doesn’t matter.’

Almost at the end of the novel, Maggie finally decides to opine about truth as well:

‘It isn’t a question of any beauty,’ said Maggie; ‘it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.’ ‘Oh the quantity of truth!’ the Prince richly though ambiguously murmured.’

At that point, I’ve joined the Prince in his rich ambiguous murmuring about this opinion.

There is though something that seem to be unambiguously true in terms of the Prince and the poor girl (who has become a wife of the rich father.) It is an observation that could be contributed either directly to Henry James as a narrator or to Maggie. In the latter case, the text would come across a little more ironic, almost sinister:

The fusion of their presence with the decorative elements, their contribution to the triumph of selection, was complete and admirable; though to a lingering view, a view more penetrating than the occasion really demanded, they also might have figured as concrete attestations of a rare power of purchase

Overall, it seems this novel has stuck somewhere in transition between realism of the 19th century and the the best modernism of the 20th. It is daring in terms of its innovations but also it is quite dull unless taken with the sense of humour. There are visible ‘sprouts’ of the modern techniques such as stream of consciousness and hyperrealism - slowing time practically to the standstill to depict either a dialogue or a monologue, both internal and external, or even to transgress. However, I've struggled a bit with the banality of the situation juxtaposed with the amount of painstakingly laborious analysis of it and coloured with numerous metaphors.

I will finish with a passage from the introduction to my edition:

Edith Wharton was both an admirer of James and a good friend, but her responsiveness to the late novels evidently had its limits. ‘What was your idea in suspending the four principal characters in “The Golden Bowl” in the void?’ she claimed to have demanded one day: ‘Why have you stripped them of all the human fringes we necessarily trail after us through life?’ Though Wharton was convinced that she had pained him by the inquiry, James’s reported answer (‘My dear – I didn’t know I had!’) is susceptible, like other bits of Jamesian dialogue, to a variety of interpretations.