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COPYRIGHT 2005 University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
In the past, criticisms lauding or condemning Milly Theale, Kate Croy, Merton Densher, and Maud Lowder, or any combination of these characters in James's The Wings of the Dove (1902), generally assume that if one or several of these characters is or are the victimized, the others are the victimizers. The most common of interpretations claiming Milly's "innocence," for example, condemn Kate, Densher, and Maud Lowder of duplicity and mercenary intent, describing them, for example, as "admirable villains" (Syndy McMillen Conger).
However, Susan Mizruchi, who sees Milly "cultivat[ing]" (234) her illness, Julie Olin-Ammentorp, who sees Milly's final bequest to Densher as "profoundly manipulative" (50), and Sharon Cameron, who contends that Milly "performs the novel's ultimate manipulation" (124), are among those who detect definite signs of intent on Milly's part and complicate, if not reverse, the view that Milly is merely the unconsciously innocent victim.
Adeline R. Tintner's framing of James's text as his "very free redoing" (125) of Milton's twin epics casts Kate in the role of seductress who contributes to the fall and education of Densher. Milton Kornfeld (346) and Leo Bersani (142-43) essentially agree with this general position when they refer to Densher as redeemed villain. In this way, demonizing Kate resurrects Densher, who, more often than not, is then cast in the role of hero.
Sallie Sears, however, labels Densher "a prig" (93), and Brenda Austin-Smith insightfully detects the language employed by Aunt Maud and Densher in Volume Two as contributing to the gradual "reification" of Milly, only to dehumanize and discredit her as legitimate player, consequently demonizing Kate as well. As Kristin King notes in agreement, making Milly ethereal and transcendent conveniently gives Densher "a symbol for his own salvation" (1). These critical positions questioning Densher serve to devillainize Kate.
Furthering Kate's resurrection in her own right is Lee Clark Mitchell who contends that "judged by consequences along," Kate "clearly does enrich others' experience" so that "deceit appears less a tool of self-interest than a mode of artful generosity, and disapproval of Kate soon seems far less appropriate than praise" (188). Incidentally, Millicent Bell--who calls Kate a "naturalist and pragmatist" (Meaning, 291)--and Douglas Paschall, see two heroines instead of one. Paschall senses that Kate and Milly are engaged in complicit maneuvers of achieving their respective ends, while Doran Larson reads the text as "Kate and Milly do[ing] things with Densher," so that the "moral economies for Densher operate within such a fixed-sum schema" (101). As can be seen, devillainizing or neutralizing Kate in combining her intent with that of Milly renders Densher's logic somewhat meager.
In this way, criticisms of The Wings have essentially been engaged in trying to identify the victim(s) and the victimizer(s), to apportion and assign responsibility and/or blame for the final outcome as depicted at the end of James's text: Milly is dead, Densher is evidently tormented, and Kate has suffered a "loss"--although neither the attitude in which Milly dies nor the validity of Densher's ongoing torment is agreed upon any more than is the specific nature of Kate's loss. In short, the scene of critical debate over The Wings is highly contradictory and unresolved.
"The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life," writes James ("The Art of Fiction," 46). As much an observer of the social scene and the behavior of individuals in it as an observer of the workings of the human mind, James, I believe, identified and illustrated those social forces identified by social psychologists that exert a powerful influence over human perception and behavior. In James's works as in real life, such forces are as much to blame for outcomes, if not more so, as human agents and their respective intents. Following this line of argument, this paper will incorporate a social psychological point of view. It aims to illustrate how the centers of consciousness in The Wings exist simultaneously on two levels of being, namely that of the "external," physical, and social world of front-stage public gatherings, backstage "private" conversations, face-to-face interaction rituals, and face-destroying moments of embarrassment, whose effects on human behavior sociologist Erving Goffman has amply elaborated on; and that of a phenomenological "internal" world of being where the self is constantly engaged in trying not only to make sense of itself but also to survive as an autonomous being in the aforementioned social, physical, and "external" world. Put differently, in the social world of The Wings, the world out there and the self within are not so much separate as they are organically connected, overlapping one another in reflexive ways, society and its "gaze" (1) comprising an essential aspect of the self, and the social self being a "real" entity of an "external" reality. Society is as much in self as self is in society, with both parts of the whole affecting and being affected by the other aspect of felt life.
More fundamental as origins of human activity than formulated "intents" are instinctive drives that give birth to them, the drive for survival being the most pressing of all. Milly, Kate, and Densher likewise exhibit a consistent pattern of perception and behavior based on the emotional and psychological instinct to survive, demonstrating the urge to be freed from the discrediting sense of humbleness, shame, and vulnerability resulting from their sense of "felt stigmatization." The dictionary definition of "stigma" here is "a mark of disgrace or infamy, a stain of reproach, as in one's reputation," or "a mark made by a branding iron on the skin of a criminal or slave." (2) Milly's felt stigmatization, for example, is comprised of her sense of American sociocultural poorness and eventually of her discrediting illness; Densher's, of his inexorable lack--of money, intellect, and volition; and Kate's, of her Croy blood which threatens to engulf, bury, and drown her, she fears, the moment she ceases to be in control of who she aims to be. Moreover, the term "felt" is used because, as Goffman notes, although a stigma is "an attribute that is deeply discrediting," a "language of relationships, not attributes" should be employed (Stigma, 3): stigma, like deviance; is largely relational, and is therefore real to the extent that it is felt in a relational context. This, then, is the nature of the "spring that move[s]" (3) James's protagonists.
Milly's felt stigmatization arises from two sources: her being a mere American in Europe and, eventually, her incapacitating illness. Regardless of what the inhabitants of Lancaster Gate make of Milly and her moneyed situation, Milly might as well not have her money, for when she lands in London, she is as vulnerable to sensations excitingly oppressive as a twenty-two-year-old without it. Taken by surprise by the fully engaging experience, it is as though Milly had "ventured on a small joke," finding "the answer out of proportion grave" (97), "grave" because at Lancaster Gate, Milly finds herself fully immersed in a sophisticated social scene: "It wasn't ... so difficult to get into the current, or to stand at any rate on the bank. It was easy to get near--if they were near; and yet the elements were different enough from any of her old elements, and positively rich and strange" (98). Milly quickly discovers she is not merely on the bank or near the current, but fully in it, required first and foremost to define herself in an alien environment.
G. H. Mead defines the self as "essentially a social phenomenon" (Mind, 133). (4) It is only through interaction with others that the self emerges. The self arises through its ability to "take the attitude of the other"--or that of the community at large--"toward himself" (Mind, 134), engaging in reflexive internal dialogue, or thought, regarding how it might successfully adjust and respond to its environment. The self thus becomes an object to itself so as to be able to act "intelligently, or rationally" (Mind, 138). Milly likewise gradually emerges as a conscious self by becoming an object to herself, viewing herself in the way she imagines others view her. Milly, too, "for ever seeing things afterwards" (102), engages in what Mead calls "delayed reaction," a necessary process for "intelligent conduct" (Mind, 99). However, Milly is not merely passive, accepting all she sees in taking the attitude of others. Rather, she is selective, for ultimately, Milly's focus of attention and interest as she interacts with the inhabitants of Lancaster Gate is her very own self.
Milly does not accept what she sees when she takes the attitude of Lord Mark, for example. He is "indifferent" to Milly, the "proof" of which she feels is "the way he crumbed up his bread." Taking the attitude of Lord Mark, she decides that he "visibly know[s]" she is "a stranger and an American," but he "none the less mak[es] no more of it than if she and her like were the chief of his diet," taking her "kindly enough, but imperturbably, irreclaimably, for granted" (101). Increasingly becoming conscious of being "popped into the compartment" (104) of his complacent, know-all assessment of her American background, Milly at breaking point flatly rejects what she sees in taking the attitude of Lord Mark, his view of herself as "a mere little American, a cheap exotic, imported almost wholesale" (108), and wishes to get away from him, or rather, "away from herself so far as she was present to him." Milly sees she is, "wonderful creature, after all, herself too" (107). Instinctively opting for survival, Milly insists on mattering.
One of the views Milly does adopt is the view provided by Kate. Milly's feelings toward Kate are those of admiration and awe. At the same time, however, Milly cannot help comparing herself with her sophisticated British counterpart, against whose qualities Milly feels her own American qualities exposed as being meager and inadequate. Milly immediately senses that Kate is different from herself, "difficult" to make out, and "a quantity" (109). Handsome, candid, and to all appearances sincere, Kate is also "the amusing resisting ominous fact" capable of "incalculable movements" (99), whom even the all-knowing, European Lord Mark, Milly discovers, fails to understand.
Milly is perplexed, disconcerted, and disappointed, for example, when Susan Stringham and Mrs. Lowder, respectively, confirm Milly's qualms about Kate's failure to mention Densher's name when it would only have been natural to do so. Milly herself has not withheld herself with Kate, so why should Kate? Is that the look Kate shows Densher? Moreover, Milly learns from Susan, and not from Kate herself, the open secret that Aunt Maud intends Lord Mark for Kate. On hearing this, Milly sees "as in a clear cold wave" that "there was a possible account of their relations in which the quantity her new friend had told her might have figured as small, as smallest, beside the quantity she hadn't" (120). Milly also wonders how Kate could fail to notice Milly's being "so taken up with the unspoken," and speculates from this that she would "never know how Kate truly felt about anything such a one as Milly Theale should give her to feel," "never--and not from ill will nor from duplicity but from a sort of failure of common terms--reduce it to such a one's comprehension or put it within [Milly's] convenience" (122). Kate, Milly concludes, must be too sophisticated for "such a one as Milly Theale" to be able to understand, for the one thing that Milly does divine is that "poor Susie" is "simply as nought" to Kate. If this be the case, it must also be "in a manner too a general admonition to poor Susie's companion" (117), Milly herself. Mightn't Milly herself also be "simply as nought" to Kate? Fearful of unwarranted discoveries vis-a-vis herself, Milly refrains from pursuing these impressionistic misgivings into a formulated thought. However, a disquieting, nagging sense of uneasiness plagues her.
At the same time, Milly finds it forbidding and base to blame Kate, so that in order "to prove to herself that she didn't horribly blame her friend for any reserve" (142), Milly decides to ask Kate to accompany her to Sir Luke's the first time she visits him. However, when the occasion to visit Sir Luke's the second time arises, and in the midst of yet "another day practically all stamped with avoidance" of Densher's name, Milly instinctively opts to decline Kate's offer to accompany her: "No, she had shown Kate how she trusted her; and that, for loyalty, would somehow do" (144). In lieu of further "alibi" (169, 170) that Milly feels she requires to prove to herself that she does not hold Kate's reserve against her, Milly then actively cultivates spontaneous but carefully controlled backstage talk with Kate. Acting on "the theory of intimate confessions, private frank ironies," Milly and Kate, "wearily put off the mask," which "puttings-off of the mask" becomes "the form taken by their moments together": "It was when they called each other's attention to their ceasing to pretend, it was then that what they were keeping back was most in the air" (261), and Densher's name,...
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