The Wings of the Dove

Rating:
Summary: tough but worthwhile
Review: One of the great reads of Western literature is a beautiful love story of deceit and social requirements, containing James' most demanding narration. Travel carefully. A pure exercise in literary trickery becomes quite clear over time, even if, not every sentence will make sense. Amazing that such thick prose finally reveals a truly heartfelt story. The characters all speak like James writes: with commas in between their words. Good thing they're all fascinating enough to hold your attention.

Rating:
Summary: Love and Fortune ?
Review: The master of moral dissection, Henry James, is at his best in this novel from his final period, a period that also includes THE GOLDEN BOWL and THE AMBASSADORS. However, WINGS is probably the most accessible of the three (and, to many, that's a Good Thing!) In this deeply involving novel, James sets up an intriguing premise : two attractive young lovers, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, have everything they would seem to need...except money. Enter American heiress Milly Theale -- young, pretty, aching for life (but mortally ill), and wealthy beyond measure. A plan emerges ... Densher, on a Venetian holiday, will woo Milly and fill her final days with the love she so desperately wants ; and when she's gone, he'll inherit her fortune and embark on a life of luxury with Kate. It seems so logical, so practical, so harmless. Or is it? What if Densher truly falls in love with the dying heiress? In accord with his famous (infamous?) style, Henry James gives us layer upon layer of meaning and analysis as he tells his story, illuminating every angle of this thought-provoking moral minefield. For some, he overdoes it, leaving no room for the reader's own imagination to play -- for others, he's the unsurpassed master of human foibles. What do YOU think? Give WINGS a try : this splendid, searching novel is not to be missed. It's a love story and a suspense story entwined, and well worth the time it takes to absorb.

Rating:
Summary: The novel could never be the same again.
Review: The title is a Jamesian euphemism for 'Pulling The Wings Off Flies'. In a book that is a vortex of ironies, the most fundamental is that a novel written at the highest pitch of literary sophistication, full of high-minded exchanges and a character repeatedly compared to an angel, is really about the body, one dying, the other brimming with sexual attraction and desire (for money, status and sex). Kate Croy, impoverished with a disgraced father, is in love with Merton Densher, an impoverished journalist. Her wealthy aunt, Maud Lowder, offers to take her in, provide all the advantages of wealth and groom her for the marriage market, on the condition she abandons both her family and her marriage plans with Densher. Genuinely passionate for Densher, but reluctant to return to the degradations of comparative poverty, Kate has an idea. When she meets the dying American heiress Milly Theale, who coincidentally made the acquaintance of Densher in New York on a newspaper trip, Kate propses her fiance make love to her and so become a beneficiary in her imminent will, freeing the two lovers to get married.

Among the most difficult books in the English language, 'The Wings Of The Dove' is one of the three late novels in which James pushed the novel to a stylistic and intellectual limit, but which many readers have found awkward to read. The difficulty doesn't lie in the verbal extrvagance of a Joyce or the dictionary-defiance of a Pynchon - the individual words in these novels are familiar and accessible. It's what James does with them, the lengthy, elaborate sentences distended by clauses and sub-clauses, and compounded by a narration that emphasises qualification, euphemism, ellipis and ambivalence.

It's not, however, as if James had reached the peak of his art and decided, 'Right, I've done what I can with the conventional novel, I'm going to be virtuosically mandarin for the sake of it.' After all, the subject matter is familiar from his more accessible work - the naive American in corrupt Europe; the decline of the aristocracy; the social manoeuvring needed by women to survive a rigidly unjust system etc. The difficulty of 'Dove' is an intrinsic part of the novel's meaning, which is not just an acknowledgement of the unfathomable density of human psychology and motivation, but the difficulty in gauging and interpreting other people full stop. The conflict between witholding novelist and baffled reader is played out throughout the book, with characters creating awesomely complex and allusive plots and counter-plots, staging tableaux and theatrical stand-offs, and other characters struggling to comprehend them. Our attempts to interpret match those of the characters, with related dangers of misreading.

A more aggravating difficulty might arise from the story itself. The reading of 'Dove' demands a monastic dedication, a concentrated devotion of months to unravelling its many mysteries and ambiguities. A reader likes to feel that there will be a worthy character or two who will help carry him/her over the many stumbling blocks. But all this intricately wrought language is expended on a horrid little tale of greed and lust in which the protagonists expend fearsome intelligence on concealing unpleasantness and spinning justifications. It might be helpful to think of the novel as an inverse 'Mansfield park', with Kate and Merton as resourceful but poor Crawfords manipulating rich outsider Fanny Price (it's significant that moral decency translates into money from Austen's to James' world). There is little nobility or spiritual refinement here (although many readers prefer the wit and energy of the lovers to sickly 'magnificence' of Milly, her very humanity reduced baldly to its material value). For which we can only give thanks, because there should be more to literature than that; the creation of real, believable, exposed characters, and their endlessly shifting psychologies being one of them, and for which the conventions and compromises of the traditional novel must be abandoned. The great reward for patient reading is that our own perception becomes monre minutely alert; we learn to hear, beneath the dense verbal grid, something that 'for the spiritual ear, might have been audible as a faint far wail', something we miss if we get stuck moaning about the superficial problems of James' style.

Such is the exhaustiveness with which James tracks down the elusive convolutions of individual psychology and social interaction, it's easy to overlook his mastery of description. The ratio between the two is probably 10:1, but in brief sketches, James is able to conjure whole worlds weighed down with all sorts of meanings, from the furniture-heavy mansions, dismal garrets and maze-like streets of London to the dangerous precipitations of Switzerland to the decadent beauty of Venice, all working their unnoticed influence on characters who think they arrange everything. These descriptions are essential to the effect of a work which, if you'll let it, is dramatic, tense, atmospheric, sinister, suspenseful, exciting, funny (yes!), and emotionally convulsive. If, as James' friend William Dean Howells suggested, it gives you a headache, well, from the books I love, I expect nothing less.

Rating:
Summary: The novel could never be the same again.
Review: The title is a Jamesian euphemism for 'Pulling The Wings Off Flies'. In a book that is a vortex of ironies, the most fundamental is that a novel written at the highest pitch of literary sophistication, full of high-minded exchanges and a character repeatedly compared to an angel, is really about the body, one dying, the other brimming with sexual attraction and desire (for money, status and sex). Kate Croy, impoverished with a disgraced father, is in love with Merton Densher, an impoverished journalist. Her wealthy aunt, Maud Lowder, offers to take her in, provide all the advantages of wealth and groom her for the marriage market, on the condition she abandons both her family and her marriage plans with Densher. Genuinely passionate for Densher, but reluctant to return to the degradations of comparative poverty, Kate has an idea. When she meets the dying American heiress Milly Theale, who coincidentally made the acquaintance of Densher in New York on a newspaper trip, Kate propses her fiance make love to her and so become a beneficiary in her imminent will, freeing the two lovers to get married.

Among the most difficult books in the English language, 'The Wings Of The Dove' is one of the three late novels in which James pushed the novel to a stylistic and intellectual limit, but which many readers have found awkward to read. The difficulty doesn't lie in the verbal extrvagance of a Joyce or the dictionary-defiance of a Pynchon - the individual words in these novels are familiar and accessible. It's what James does with them, the lengthy, elaborate sentences distended by clauses and sub-clauses, and compounded by a narration that emphasises qualification, euphemism, ellipis and ambivalence.

It's not, however, as if James had reached the peak of his art and decided, 'Right, I've done what I can with the conventional novel, I'm going to be virtuosically mandarin for the sake of it.' After all, the subject matter is familiar from his more accessible work - the naive American in corrupt Europe; the decline of the aristocracy; the social manoeuvring needed by women to survive a rigidly unjust system etc. The difficulty of 'Dove' is an intrinsic part of the novel's meaning, which is not just an acknowledgement of the unfathomable density of human psychology and motivation, but the difficulty in gauging and interpreting other people full stop. The conflict between witholding novelist and baffled reader is played out throughout the book, with characters creating awesomely complex and allusive plots and counter-plots, staging tableaux and theatrical stand-offs, and other characters struggling to comprehend them. Our attempts to interpret match those of the characters, with related dangers of misreading.

A more aggravating difficulty might arise from the story itself. The reading of 'Dove' demands a monastic dedication, a concentrated devotion of months to unravelling its many mysteries and ambiguities. A reader likes to feel that there will be a worthy character or two who will help carry him/her over the many stumbling blocks. But all this intricately wrought language is expended on a horrid little tale of greed and lust in which the protagonists expend fearsome intelligence on concealing unpleasantness and spinning justifications. It might be helpful to think of the novel as an inverse 'Mansfield park', with Kate and Merton as resourceful but poor Crawfords manipulating rich outsider Fanny Price (it's significant that moral decency translates into money from Austen's to James' world). There is little nobility or spiritual refinement here (although many readers prefer the wit and energy of the lovers to sickly 'magnificence' of Milly, her very humanity reduced baldly to its material value). For which we can only give thanks, because there should be more to literature than that; the creation of real, believable, exposed characters, and their endlessly shifting psychologies being one of them, and for which the conventions and compromises of the traditional novel must be abandoned. The great reward for patient reading is that our own perception becomes monre minutely alert; we learn to hear, beneath the dense verbal grid, something that 'for the spiritual ear, might have been audible as a faint far wail', something we miss if we get stuck moaning about the superficial problems of James' style.

Such is the exhaustiveness with which James tracks down the elusive convolutions of individual psychology and social interaction, it's easy to overlook his mastery of description. The ratio between the two is probably 10:1, but in brief sketches, James is able to conjure whole worlds weighed down with all sorts of meanings, from the furniture-heavy mansions, dismal garrets and maze-like streets of London to the dangerous precipitations of Switzerland to the decadent beauty of Venice, all working their unnoticed influence on characters who think they arrange everything. These descriptions are essential to the effect of a work which, if you'll let it, is dramatic, tense, atmospheric, sinister, suspenseful, exciting, funny (yes!), and emotionally convulsive. If, as James' friend William Dean Howells suggested, it gives you a headache, well, from the books I love, I expect nothing less.

Rating:
Summary: The Wings of the Dove
Review: There is no disputing the artistry of this novel but it is without question extremely difficultt to read. The rich Victorian language, the complicated sentence structure, and the unending paragraphs are just a few of the problems that the reader encounters.

The story is very well conceived and contains the same moral dellimas that are characteristic of other James' novels. The plot turns around a rich and naive American girl,( James seems to portray most Americans as either naive ar crude) who is dying and the schemeing couple who want to make the most of the situation. The story is further complicated by the love and respect that the deceivers have for the dying girl.

Good luck because The Wings of the Dove is both long and complicated.

Rating:
Summary: Poetic cruelty
Review: This is the most beautiful novel I have ever read. It is poetic and has a will of its own. You have to have patience with this book - otherwise it won't open up to you. I can only recommand everybody to read it - it will change your life with its beautiful cruelty.

Rating:
Summary: An Old-Fashioned Genius
Review: Two responses to previous reviews: it was written one hundred years ago, so it would of course be somewhat dated. Second, you should perhaps READ THE ENTIRE BOOK before you attempt to review the text.

The text follows the fascinating development of a manipulation: Milly Theale, an American woman, enters the London scene, endowed with prodigious wealth, youth, and beauty, and several characters vie for her affection. It's a standard James plot in that way. Much like Portrait of a Lady, the wealthy American is exploited by her European acquaintances. Kate Croy convinces her lover Merton Densher to take advantage of Milly's interest in him, and to go so far as to attempt to marry the young American for her money. She is, after all, fatally and tragically ill. James brilliantly depicts the struggle between Densher, Kate Croy, her powerful Aunt Maud, the piquant Susan Shepherd, Sir Luke, and Lord Mark, and his characteristically enigmatic ending does not disappoint. James manages to breathe life into these odd characters in a way that so few writers can: his genius is for complex character, and this book embodies that genius at its height.

The trouble with the book, however, is that it does not qualify as a "light read." The pace is incredibly slow - deliberately slow, of course. It is a novel about decisions, and the development of those decisions constitutes the bulk of the novel. James's prose does lack the terseness of a Hemingway, but the latter writer often fails to capture the nuances that James so elaborately evokes in his careful prose.

James, like Faulkner, is not for the faint of heart. Some of his work is more accessible; readers in search of a more palatable James should look to Washington Square, What Maisie Knew, or his popular masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw. This novel does not fit easily into a category, and its principal interest is that very quality of inscrutability. It's not really a "British" or an "American" novel but contains elements of both. It's not "Modern" or "Victorian" but both. Originally published in 1902, it's also not easy to include him in either the 19th or the 20th century. He appears to be writing in both.

In short, then, it's not a light-hearted novel and the prose can be challenging at times. But I believe that the effort of reading this book is well rewarded.

Rating:
Summary: An Old-Fashioned Genius
Review: Two responses to previous reviews: it was written one hundred years ago, so it would of course be somewhat dated. Second, you should perhaps READ THE ENTIRE BOOK before you attempt to review the text.

The text follows the fascinating development of a manipulation: Milly Theale, an American woman, enters the London scene, endowed with prodigious wealth, youth, and beauty, and several characters vie for her affection. It's a standard James plot in that way. Much like Portrait of a Lady, the wealthy American is exploited by her European acquaintances. Kate Croy convinces her lover Merton Densher to take advantage of Milly's interest in him, and to go so far as to attempt to marry the young American for her money. She is, after all, fatally and tragically ill. James brilliantly depicts the struggle between Densher, Kate Croy, her powerful Aunt Maud, the piquant Susan Shepherd, Sir Luke, and Lord Mark, and his characteristically enigmatic ending does not disappoint. James manages to breathe life into these odd characters in a way that so few writers can: his genius is for complex character, and this book embodies that genius at its height.

The trouble with the book, however, is that it does not qualify as a "light read." The pace is incredibly slow - deliberately slow, of course. It is a novel about decisions, and the development of those decisions constitutes the bulk of the novel. James's prose does lack the terseness of a Hemingway, but the latter writer often fails to capture the nuances that James so elaborately evokes in his careful prose.

James, like Faulkner, is not for the faint of heart. Some of his work is more accessible; readers in search of a more palatable James should look to Washington Square, What Maisie Knew, or his popular masterpiece, The Turn of the Screw. This novel does not fit easily into a category, and its principal interest is that very quality of inscrutability. It's not really a "British" or an "American" novel but contains elements of both. It's not "Modern" or "Victorian" but both. Originally published in 1902, it's also not easy to include him in either the 19th or the 20th century. He appears to be writing in both.

In short, then, it's not a light-hearted novel and the prose can be challenging at times. But I believe that the effort of reading this book is well rewarded.

Rating:
Summary: Wings of the Duck
Review: Yes, it's a great novel. Yes the language is rich, the story is subtle, and the psychology is complex. And yet, I didn't like it.

Of course, who am I to review Henry James? Granted, I read more books and watch less television than most of my peers, but still I think I might be too "late Twentieth Century" for this book. Maybe despite my strict avoidance of video games I just can't help detesting the millipede pace of this book. I've never had much affinity for drawing room conversations to begin with, and unlike my father I don't believe that wit must be meted out in tortuous sentences.

But it isn't my background or personal prejudices that make me recoil from "Wings of the Dove". There is something about the deliberate quality of Henry James that bothers me. He knows perfectly well what he's doing with his fat succulent sentences. He won't feed you a meal of lean pork and vegetables. He'll serve you tons of tiny truffles and oil-oozing, crispy skinned duck.

To read "Wings of the Dove" is like encountering a cookbook that decided to include as much of the delicious fatty foods as possible. Of course its a rare meal and quite wonderful in its way. But some how, it made me a little nauseous at the end.

Rating:
Summary: Worth it if you work for it
Review: You really have to work for what you get out of this book. The thick prose is difficult, and the long, rambling sentences and page-and-a-half paragraphs require the whole of the reader's attention. This is certainly not a book that I would be able to read on a trip, in a public place, or when I'm tired. That having been said, this is a great piece of literature that demonstrates an interesting contrast in European and American society. The story revolves around a conspiracy by two individuals, Kate Croy and Merton Densher (both Londoners), against a young, rich American girl named Milly. The ultimate goal of these two is to get the dying Milly's vast fortune for themselves when she dies. Densher, who is not a wealthy man, would by gaining Milly's fortune to gain enough social standing to gain the consent of Kate's rich aunt Maud for Kate's hand in marriage.

The motives of the pair are not completely selfish. Milly is dying, it is true, but as long as she enjoys life she does well, and the doctor pronounces that the more joy she can have, the better. Kate is a good friend of Milly's, and knows (or at least thinks) that her last days will be happy with even the artificial love of Densher.

The contrast between American and European society comes in the question of social standing. As Maud puts it, and as everyone understands it, Densher is not 'good enough' for Kate. Milly, though many times more wealthy, has no such scruples, and the common Densher is plenty good for her, even though she's also being pursued by a nobleman named Lord Mark. Milly sees Densher's personality as the core of her fondness for him, and cares nothing for his social standing. Maud, though she really likes Densher, will not consent to Kate's marriage to him for the simple fact that he is, essentially, nobody.

The ultimate distinction between Europe and America is the fact that the Europeans, especially Aunt Maud, will do nothing for anybody unless it will somehow benefit themselves. Maud is a grand hostess, and a generous woman, but only when it works to her advantage. The climax of the novel is when Milly proves herself the stronger in character, by committing an act so charitable, though she knows of the plot against her, that only Densher can truly understand it, and Kate is left at a loss. Densher and Kate have a chance to redeem themselves, and the truly climactic finish of the novel is an interesting look at how the Londoners (Kate and Densher), so different in social standing, deal with this chance.

Overall this is a very good book. I would not call it an enjoyable read, because of the complex and often confusing prose, but it nevertheless is worth reading, both for the message it conveys and for the fascinating and multifaceted characters.