Aestheticism: The Religion of Art in Post-Romantic Literature (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 111 in the apprehension of truth: "In the Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl, MuIy Theale and Maggie Verver bodi use the powers of imagination spiritually to intuit a better world. ... In both novels, die reality of experience is temporarily suspended—not denied—until the experiment of a spiritualized conception of trudi... has die opportunity to redeem die corrupt world and make it 'true.'" By comparison, in The Bostonians, James "cannot see beyond die helplessness of a spiritually conceived notion of truth to transform the corrupt world." To compensate for tiiis presumed fadure, James, in the later novels, "confers an authorial dispensation to suspend temporarily this world" so mat die trudi can be brought about in it by die "faitii" of women with "good heads" and "sound hearts." Would that die impUed example of Huckleberry Finn (in itself more problematic than Gabler-Hover is wtiling to acknowledge) could be appUed so directly. But the more important point lies in Gabler-Hover's understanding of James's fadure in The Bostonians, an understanding mat is based upon die entry of die novel into the "poUtical world" and die consequent "failed interaction between tiiat world and die transformative power of virtuous rhetoric." As a result, she claims, James changes the "battleground" in die later works by "retreating from the world of the public into the personal" so that "the trudi is not tied to any ancillary poUtical ideology." I find these assertions astonishing—not only as, again, one-sided readings of die texts but, more urgently, as so lenient toward die always troublesome matter of textual suppressions on behalf of both fiction in general and James in particular (the James who, in the old but important distinction, invariably "shows" rather than "teUs" a story). It is surely not accidental tiiat die ease with which Gabler-Hover wields die terms "pubUc" and "personal" is precisely on behalf of a dichotomy tiiat is so strongly questioned by The Bostonians itself as a major component within James's analysis of contemporary consumerism. Truth in American Fiction is to be welcomed for its punctilious reminder of a rhetorical tradition that has been neglected of late by die commentaries. But we must regret its absoluteness of argument If The Scarlet Letter is about selflessness, an etiiical self-regulation "through our emotional apprehension of the common bond of humanity," then such selflessness has to be considered widiin the complex of law and authority in the novel. If The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is about the ethos of honesty, then that etiios is most usefuUy recognized within those forms of artifice that provide its structure. If MiUy Theale and Maggie Verver mark James's reconstruction of "the virtuous American girl as a rhetorical argument in herself," they mark also the dangers wimin the transcendental apprehension of morality. And if Gabler-Hover, rightly, finds a potent source for her equation between rhetoric and trudi in Emerson's lecture of 1867 on "Eloquence," she might also remember his earlier concern about the complexities of the social world (in the lecture on "Politics" of 1840 and die essay on "Experience" of 1844, for example) which profoundly problematizes the directness of that equation. Ian F. A. BeU University of Keele Leon Chai. Aestheticism: The Religion of Art in Post-Romantic Literature. New York: Columbia U P, 1990. 269 + xiv pp. $32.50. The Aesthetic Movement of die late nineteentii century is still too often associated widi showy props and languid postures, with sunflowers and peacock feadiers and all die stained glass attitudes of die haggard and lank young man that Gilbert mocked in Patience. But nodiing so facetious enters Leon Chai's Aestheticism, which presents a serious philosophy of art as a sober quest for meaning and value, a substitute in effect for 112 The Henry James Review a declining or rejected religious orthodoxy. Chai attempts no broad inteUectual history tracing ideas or assumptions to their Romantic or neo-classical origins. He offers instead a concentrated analysis, often phrase by phrase, of short passages selected to typify diverse aspects of the aesthetic sensibiUty. Although his focus is narrow and sharp, he assembles a considerable range of exhibits drawn from...