A reading of Henry James' 1902 novel The Wings of theDove is particularly fitting for this issue ofSchuylkill for several reasons. This late novel is rife withrepresentations of multiple, often overlapping subject positionsthat the close reader is forced to reckon with. These subjectpositions include, but are not limited to, James as authorand as a self-referring subject of the novel's "Preface,"who perceives and performs outside of the designation of "author."The reader must also consider James' unreliable narrator as asubject who functions as both detached observer and protagonist,and whose equivocal rendering of events includes labyrinthineaccounts of the contents of other character’s consciousness. Andfinally, we the reader, are rendered subject to our own ambivalentinterpretation of events. James complex representation of so manysubject positions has, not surprisingly, earned his late work thereputation of being "difficult." However the student of humansubject formation enjoys a uniquely Jamesian-inspired "jouissance"if he or she is persistent and enjoys a good slow read.
In this paper I hope to show how James offers the reader aparticipatory glimpse into the complex mechanics of human subjectformation. I argue that The Wings of the Dove re-presentswhat anthropological literary critic Rene Girard terms the"sacrificial crisis," an act of violence that is endorsed andenacted by a community--a bloody ritual whose sole purpose is to"restore harmony to the community, to reinforce the socialfabric...and establish order"(8).
According to Rene Girard in Violence and the Sacred,violence proliferates within a community when social distinctionsamong individuals or groups become confused or are contested. Morespecifically, when the established social hierarchy is challengedthrough rivalries, jealousies, quarrels and acts of dissent,community infighting escalates into reciprocal acts of vengeanceand retribution. Community violence is contained, says Girard, bya collectively sanctioned, climactic event--the blood sacrifice.The blood sacrifice is a unanimous yet limited act of violencevented upon that representative of the community who is deemedresponsible for the eruption of internal discord.
In other words, a "scapegoat" is selected by the group. Thissacrificial substitute is selected because murdering the individualwho is actually responsible for the escalation of violence wouldonly elicit and encourage further vengeance and retribution therebyreintensifying the violence that the sacrificial rite isspecifically designed to assuage.
The key component of any sacrifice, according to Girard, isthis scapegoat--the "sacrificial substitute." This substitutemetonymically stands in for the member of the community who isresponsible for the violence. Thus the scapegoat plays atheatrical role that requires a degree of dissimulation. First, thescapegoat must both vaguely resemble and considerably differ fromthe subject it replaces. The ambiguous characteristics of thesacrificial substitute ensures that because of its similarity tothe instigator of the unrest, violence is actually contained. Onthe other hand, the dissimilarity of the sacrificial substitute tothe original subject ensures that no retaliation, retribution orvengeance, that is, no further escalation of violence results afterthe sacrifice is performed. Through this process the scapegoat istransformed by the community into an object in which evil can beboth specified and assuaged. The sacrificial substitute"contains"--that is, it provides a space for and delimits--violenceby providing a legitimate outlet for it.
By ascribing to a scapegoat the ills of the community, andthen eliminating these ills by murdering the scapegoat, thecommunity redeems itself--it saves itself from self-engenderedannihilation by reestablishing necessary hierarchical distinctionsand power relations. In this way, community authorized sacrificialviolence "becomes" regenerative--according to Girard, communitysanctioned violence, the sacrificial ritual, is considered to be"good" violence. The awesome power of sacrifice to mysteriouslyengage regenerative violence in the service of eliminating evil, or"bad violence" is what Girard calls, the "supreme wonder" ofreligion.
However, Girard reminds the reader that, "...because thevery concept of a deity, much less a deity who receives bloodsacrifices, has little reality in this day and age, the entireinstitution of sacrifice [the containment of bad violence] isrelegated to most modern theorists to the realm of theimagination..."(6). Which brings me back to James’ own regenerativeviolence in The Wings of the Dove. In this novel Jamesperforms a ritual sacrifice in order to restore moral order to hisincreasingly, ambiguous and violent narrative.
In The Wings of the Dove James’ unreliable narratortraces the birth and destruction of a particularly brilliant andmagnificently diabolical "plan" authored by tragic heroine KateCroy. Her clever strategy, which becomes the pivot of the largerplot, emerges from the following complications: Kate Croy ischaracterized by the narrator as a beautiful, clever, vital youngwoman of meager financial means, who is possessed by a "strangegrace." She is also the last financial hope of her selfish, petty,and impoverished extended family, and expects to eventually receivea generous inheritance from her aunt and custodian, Maud Lowder.Complications ensue when Kate Croy is forbidden by her Aunt tomarry the man she loves, journalist Merton Densher, because thenewspaperman has no wealth to bring to the union.
However, in heroic resistance to her aunt's interdiction inthe romance, Kate Croy reveals her brilliant strategy. Her plan isto temporarily marry off her fortuneless lover to a terminally illfriend, Millie Theale, an American heiress. According to Kate’splot, after Millie Theale dies, Merton Densher will inherit thedead heiress’ fortune and thus be sufficiently endowed to marryKate Croy. However, Kate's scheme ultimately fails when MertonDensher "comes to conscience" and rejects her plan on ethicalgrounds.
Despite the failure of Kate's brilliant plan, many of James'critics have denounced the plot of The Wings of the Dove asmorally bankrupt. For example, an early critic, Van Wyck Brooksmistakenly accuses James of proffering the "fruits of anirresponsible imagination" in his late work, thus "abrogating hismoral judgment," and writing in a style that shows clear evidenceof "the gradual decomposition of [James'] sense of humanvalues"(124).
As ethically suspect as Kate Croy's enterprise mightappear--that is, to temporarily marry off her lover to a terminallyill woman in order to inherit her fortune-- there is a noble aspectto her plan which makes any determinate moral evaluation difficult,if not impossible to render. For example, Kate's project isperfectly justifiable from not only her particular perspective, butfrom her "society's" perspective as well. The successfulimplementation of her plan would reap multiple benefits for allconcerned. First, Kate would eventually fulfill her very realfinancial obligation to her impoverished extended family. Secondly,and more obviously, she could marry the man she loves because shewould have secured the money necessary to make the marriagepermissible. Moreover, Kate’s resourceful scheme would serve as anact of altruism since she would be responsible for orchestratingthe dying Millie Theale's first and last romance. In other words,an elaborate, diabolical, ingenious means of subjective agencyfalls right into Kate's lap--she is given an opportunity to succeedby her own hand and take measurable control of her life despite itscontingencies.
So, from a certain perspective, Kate's plan appearsjustifiable. On the other hand, not unlike the quintessentialpolitician or the exceptionally talented actress, Kate voluntarilyand enthusiastically attempts to shape other people's perceptionsthrough carefully calculated deception and manipulation. This isparticularly evident in Kate's fabrication of the "romance" betweenthe dying Millie Theale and Merton Densher. Kate's compassion forMillie is clearly rooted in deception; certainly the truth of realpassion would be preferable to the fiction of romance, thesimulated passion that Kate, through Densher, gives to Millie.
My concern, however, is not with whether James' plot ismorally justifiable or not. The larger question, which refers meback to Girard and the sacrificial crisis, is, why does Jamesdeliberately undermine Kate's plan after rendering so perfect ascheme? Why does James have Densher "come to conscience" andultimately reject Kate's plan as unethical? The reason is, I think,that Kate Croy's design represents what Girard calls thesacrificial crisis, the ultimate elision of differences. Theproblem with Kate's plan is its beauty, its perfection. It isvirtually impossible to decide unequivocally whether Kate's plan ismoral or immoral, and the reader finds herself abandoned, left tohover in ethical limbo.
Other elisions of difference abound in James' narrative. Forexample, who exactly "authorizes" Kate Croy's elaborate strategy,Henry James or his increasingly autonomous character Kate Croy? Theroles of author and character gradually become conflated as Kate’splan moves to center stage and her design moves closer and closerto fruition. In other words, after creating his own imagined rivaland turning the story over to her, James begins to lose control ofthe narrative. Like the moral ambiguity of the plot, this"smudging" of authorship mimics the kind of rivalry that triggersthe Girardian sacrificial crisis. More specifically, both James andhis character vie for the same authority. To reinstate his creativeascendancy, James must prevent Kate from following through with heringenious plan. Thus James sacrifices Kate's plan, that imaginaryspace where James' authority and Kate Croy's autonomy, and thedistinction between good and evil, become blurred. In other words,to sacrifice Kate's plan is to sacrifice Kate's character--and Iuse the term "character" in both senses of the term--a fictionalrepresentation of an agent in a narrative and human ethical"substance."
The reader's inability to specify the "real" author of theplan, or determine what the plan means ethically, foregroundsKate's scheme as the perfect scapegoat or sacrificial substitutefor Kate Croy herself, James own offspring. Following Girard, thedouble-edged quality of Kate's clever plan ensures that because ofits metonymic association with her, violence can be contained. Onthe other hand, the plan’s objective distance from Kate ensuresthat no "blood" is shed--James avoids committing "parricide" andany further escalation of violence is prevented. Kate's plot istransformed by James and his readers into a scapegoat--thetransitional object through which evil can be both specified andassuaged. The destruction of the plan "contains"--that is, itprovides a space for and delimits--violence by providing alegitimate outlet for it.
James’ disposal of Kate's plan is an arbitrary consequencethat has nothing whatever to do with judgment, one way or theother, of the ethics of the plan as a plan. Value judgmentsare bracketed as purely arbitrary. The reader is thus forced tostruggle with the stubborn viability of both perspectives, not tochoose between them. For example, late in the novel there is ascene where the dying Millie tells Merton Densher that a rivalsuitor, Lord Mark, has exposed to her the details of Kate's scheme.Later Kate interrogates Densher about his response to Millie:
"Wouldn't it have been possible then to deny thetruth of the information? I mean Lord Mark's."
Densher wondered. "Possible for whom?
"Why for you."
"To tell her he lied?"
"To tell her he's mistaken."
Densher stared--he was stupefied...nothing was stranger thansuch a difference in their view of it. (358)
Now the careful reader has to make the distinction between LordMark's "lie" and Kate Croy's "mistake." What exactly is the "truth"of the information Lord Mark imparts to Millie? Why does Kate usethis particular phraseology? From Kate's perspective Lord Markdid make a mistake--he mistook (misperceived, misunderstood,had deficient knowledge of) the integrity of Kate's plan andconstrued it as being purely self-gratifying and malicious inmotive.
Recalling Girard, sacrificial violence reaches its feverpitch when our ability to render distinctions is eroded. Thus, whenconfronted with Kate's slippery plan, the reader's subjectiveidentity as one who can make informed, determinate, ethicaldecisions is directly threatened. But by sacrificing Kate's plan,James reestablishes distinctions between author and character. Hisact of violence is therefore regenerative. More specifically, thesocial purpose of James' destruction of Kate Croy's beautifullywicked plan is twofold. On the one hand, he reveals to the readerthe vicissitudes of human judgment and the indifference of theviolence that grounds the social order. On the other hand, he"protects" the reader from bearing witness to and participating inthe destructive violence provoked by the scheme's sublation of goodand evil, author and character, reality and fiction.
James doesn't sacrifice Kate's plan because he judges it toowicked. His does not finally embrace the "correct" or moral side ofthe story as many of James' critics maintain. Rather, James' novelscrutinizes the process of making ethical distinctions rather thanthe meanings signified by those distinctions (Allen 177). Heaccomplishes this by sacrificing his own imaginative creation inorder to assuage the reader's horror, to mitigate the madnessevoked by so much ambiguity. In Girard's terms:
"the formidable effectiveness of the [sacrificial]process [of James' sacrifice of Kate's scheme] derives from itsdepriving men of knowledge: knowledge of the violence inherent inthemselves with which they have never come to terms....the processof finding a surrogate victim constitutes a major means... by whichmen expel from their consciousness the truth about their violentnature...(82-83).
The "bad" violence inherent in Kate’s enterprise has notactually been eliminated--the potential for someone else to deviseand successfully execute a similarly ambiguous plan still existsafter we close the book (in fact such a plan is executed by MaggieVerver, the heroine of James last novel The Golden Bowl--thenovel which has been called "the novel to end all novels"). But inThe Wings of the Dove James contains and controls theviolence temporarily, thus taking the place of and serving the sameancient function as the primitive blood sacrifice.
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