The Reification of Milly Theale: Rhetorical Narration in The Wings of the Dove

Abstract

There is our general sense of the way things happen--it abides with us indefeasibly, as readers of fiction, from the moment we demand that our fiction shall be intelligible; and there is our peculiar sense of the way they don't happen, which is liable to wake up unless reflexion and criticism, in us, have been skilfully and successfully drugged. There are drugs enough, clearly-it is all a question of applying them with tact; in which case the way things don't happen may be artfully made to pass for the way things do. Preface to The American