Henry James's Last Portrait of a Lady: Charlotte Stant in The Golden Bowl

Abstract

>&$ T ELL OVER A DECADE ago Ferner Nuhn speculated at length about unexamined and unexploited area' in The Golden Bowl, upside-down story which would surely emerge if of novel were considered from Charlotte Stant's point of view. Mattliessen gently dismissed this view as an ingenious conjecture, and Mr. Nuhn himself backed away from any claim that upside-down story was a part of author's intention. Nevertheless, I should like in this essay to consider evidence in novel and in author's preface that James intended that Charlotte's predicament, drama of her struggle, be focus of interest in The Golden Bowl. In contrast to detailed examination of motive and structure in prefaces to other major novels, preface to The Golden Bowl is notably sparse in comment on subject matter of novel. Only first four pages of preface, which is primnarily a discussion of New York Edition as a whole, concern novel at all, and these are devoted to James's method of presentation. He tells how he has presented his story, but not what is about. He is particularly impressed, he says, with the still marked inveteracy of a certain indirect and oblique view of my presented action [I, vl2 and recognizes in The Golden Bowl yet another example of his preference for dealing with my subject-matter . . . through opportunity and sensibility of some more or less detached . . . though thoroughly interested and intelligent, witness or reporter [I, v]. He reminds reader that he has constantly inclined to idea of particular attaching case plus some near individual view of it and that he has progressively moved toward view of his case which will give me most instead of least to answer for.