“Disconcerting Poetry”: James’s Use of Romance in The Wings of the Dove

Abstract

“ D I S C O N C E R T I N G P O E T R Y ” : J A M E S ’ S U S E O F R O M A N C E IN T H E W I N G S OF T H E D O V E P A U L W . H A R LA N D Camrose Lutheran College H e n r y James’s innovative use of romance in The Wings of the Dove is a sophisticated result of a long career’s consideration of that form. Recent criticism, for instance, suggests that James’s respect for Nathaniel Hawthorne paralleled an increasing admiration for the romance genre. James’s early condescending approval for Hawthorne’s romances — the reality of which he considered slight but sufficient — later gives way to a more thorough affirma­ tion: “It is as difficult. . . to trace the dividing-line between the real and the romantic as to plant a milestone between north and south.” One also notes that while James’s appreciation for Hawthorne and the romance increased, so did his impatience with contemporary practitioners of realism, with whom he allied himself, for their lack of moral acuity.1 Ultimately, in his late novel, James reveals the manner in which a moral, psychological fiction may also be an aesthetic and structural success. In The Wings of the Dove, James introduces deliberately stylized romantic elements into realistic narrative to enhance those qualities of moral value which he felt lacking among contem­ porary realist writers. This novel may thus be seen as a landmark in the rehabilitation and appropriation of the romance in James’s literary practice.2 James’s critical biography Hawthorne, written, as Matthiessen records, “at that very period when James was most determined to abandon ail traces of romance for realism,” helps to define what James means by romance and fore­ shadows James’s later reassessment of his predecessor and of the romance genre itself.3 In that work, James continually faults Hawthorne for indulging in romance at the expense of realism. For instance, in Hawthorne’s historical stories there is “a little vagueness about certain details” ; The Scarlet Letter unfortunately reveals “a want of reality and an abuse of the fanciful element — of a certain superficial symbolism” ; the individuals portrayed in The House of the Seven Gables “are all figures rather than characters — they are all pictures rather than persons,” and Holgrave “is not sharply enough charac­ terized ; he lacks features; he is not an individual, but a type.”4These implied dichotomies between romance and realism illustrate James’s sensitivity about the use of romance. E n g l is h Stu d ie s in Ca n a d a , x iv , 3, September 1988 However, if Hawthorne’s interest in romance betrays his weakness, it also reveals an area where he is strong, though, it would appear, not strong enough: the romance element may create a moral dimension within a work. Unlike the masterful French realists who could only depict a precise surface reality, Hawthorne “has all the ease, indeed, of a regular dweller in the moral, psychological realm” (H, 72).5 Hawthorne repossessed the New England Puritan sensibility, with its emphasis on good and evil, by transmuting “this heavy moral burden into the very substance of the imagination” (H, 67). Nonetheless, Hawthorne’s limitation lies in the fact that he treated the human conscience “objectively” : “He played with it and used it as a pigment” (H, 67). Hawthorne presents a moral atmosphere, but lacks a commitment to a particular moral perspective. After all, James pronounces, much later in his life, “The great question as to a poet or novelist is, How does he feel about life? what, in the final analysis, is his philosophy?”6 Thus, the last sentence of James’s biography pinpoints where Hawthorne fails, and implies where James himself may put romance to good use: “Man’s conscience was his theme, but he saw it in the light of a creative fancy which added, out of its own substance, an interest, and, I may almost say, an importance” (H, 166). The moral atmosphere of Hawthorne’s stories...