Henry James: Daisy Miller + Pandora · 3:37am May 9th, 2014
In interviews, writers from the early 20th century kept talking about Henry James as the master of the novel, or at least of the 19th century novel. I read Washington Square in high school, but can remember nothing about it other than that it bored me. (If I try to recall it, all I can think of is "The Cricket in Times Square".) So I had to read something by Henry James.
Fortunately, all of his many, many books are thin little things of perhaps 20,000 words. (You can get most or all of them free online from Amazon, from a publisher that has re-issued them for free, with extras available for a fee. Unfortunately Amazon has no search option that means "Show me all the books by this author".) I could've gone with The Turn of the Screw, a horror story, which I suppose would have been exciting. But his most praised novel seems to be Daisy Miller, so I began with that. I found a book, Daisy Miller and Other Stories, with four stories in it: Daisy Miller, Pandora, The Patagonia, and Four Meetings.
Each of these stories has a young male narrator who has either just come to America from Europe, or just returned from Europe, who is fascinated by a young American woman of the upper class or nearly so, of unusual vivacity. She may exemplify the "new type" of American woman, the self-made woman, or she may simply have strong goals of her own that are not quite those society expects of her. He understands European ways, not American; she perplexes him by acting bold, strong, and independent, as European women of high class must not, and he can't decide whether she is vulgar or merely American. He falls in love with her, while denying it to himself. He never obtains her. In the end, she either makes a place for herself among the upper class, or conveniently dies, since James can't imagine how she could fit into society.
( I'm again dumbfounded by the propensity of famous authors to spend their careers writing variations on the same story.)
Henry James' stories are perfect in their structure and function, every paragraph driving directly at the story's theme. The individual sentences wander and even stultify, but each story's blueprint is clearly visible. And this, I suppose, is what 20th-century writers had in mind when they said that to be about something was the kiss of death for a story.
It certainly sucks the blood out of James' stories. They contain no real people (with the exception of Daisy Miller's younger brother, who is at least a brat.) Each character has only those attributes necessary for its function. The European gentleman who is interested in the American woman is an archetypal European gentleman, but we don't know his opinions or hobbies; James may go out of his way to say that he has none. He is obsessed with the American lady, yet never entertains a lustful thought about her. He pursues her indecently into private places yet never thinks of taking the slightest advantage of her, or of what he wants to get out of this pursuit, because that is not pertinent to James's point. The American woman has aims, but in most cases they're generic ones. (I'm excepting "Four Meetings", whose heroine is obsessed with Italy and is almost interesting apart from her type.)
EM Forster's final chapter in Aspects of the Novel used the James story "The Ambassadors" to illustrate Forster's complicated notion of pattern, in which each character has a role so precise, and marches so directly from starting point to ending point, that the novel can be represented by the diagram of an hourglass, showing them trading places. Forster felt that the required precision killed James' novels:
The pattern has woven itself... wonderfully. But at what sacrifice! So enormous is the sacrifice that many readers cannot get interested in James... They cannot grant his premise, which is that most of human life has to disappear before he can do us a novel.... The characters, beside being few in number, are constructed on very stingy lines. They are incapable of fun, of rapid motion, of carnality, and of nine-tenths of heroism.... The diseases that ravage them are anonymous, like the sources of their income, their servants are noiseless or resemble themselves... Maimed creatures can alone breathe in Henry James’s pages—maimed yet specialized. ...
Now this drastic curtailment, both of the numbers of human beings and of their attributes, is in the interests of the pattern. The longer James worked, the more convinced he grew that a novel should be a whole—not necessarily geometric like The Ambassadors, but it should accrete round a single topic, situation, gesture, which should occupy the characters and provide a plot, and should also fasten up the novel on the outside.... A pattern must emerge, and anything that emerged from the pattern must be pruned off as wanton distraction. Who so wanton as human beings? Put Tom Jones or Emma or even Mr. Casaubon into a Henry James book, and the book will burn to ashes, whereas we could put them into one another’s books and only cause local inflammation. Only a Henry James character will suit, and though they are not dead... they are gutted of the common stuff that fills characters in other books, and ourselves. And this castrating is not in the interests of the Kingdom of Heaven, there is no philosophy in the novels, no religion (except an occasional touch of superstition), no prophecy, no benefit for the superhuman at all. It is for the sake of a particular æsthetic effect which is certainly gained, but at this heavy price.
Forster echoes what H. G. Wells had written about Henry James in Boon:
James sets out to make his novels with the presupposition that they can be made continuously relevant. And perceiving the discordant things, he tries to get rid of them. He sets himself to pick the straws out of the hair of life before he paints her. But without the straws she is no longer the mad woman we love. He talks of 'selection,' and of making all of a novel definitely about the theme. He objects to a "saturation" that isn't oriented. ... He omits everything that demands digressive treatment for collateral statement. ... In all his novels you will find no people with defined political opinions, no people with religious opinions... or with lusts or whims... All that much of humanity he clears out before he begins his story. It's like cleaning rabbits for the table... And with the eviscerated people he has invented he begins to make up stories... The thing his novel is about is always there. It is like a church lit but with no congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg shell, a piece of string.
Kenneth Rexroth wrote about the mutual criticism between HG Wells and Henry James, and how Wells was snubbed by polite society for doing what everybody else did-- having a lover without being married-- but doing it in public, while Henry James pretended in his novels that no one in the upper class did such things: "The people in his novels behave the way the Upper Classes tell the Lower Classes they behave. But nobody has ever behaved this way, which is why there are no real people in James’s novels."
I can appreciate the structure and thematic purpose of James' stories. I'm not sure that they would have been better with more fleshed-out characters. They communicated their themes clearly and quickly. I don't think I could've stood 60,000 words about Daisy Miller or Pandora because, while the themes of the stories interested me, the topics--upper-class social scheming--did not. The concision with which they comment on European and American society of 100 years ago makes them readable, like a history book with very vivid pictures. If they had been full-length novels with realistic characters, they'd bore me to tears just like so many other 19th-century novels about upper-class social scheming. Their lifelessness enables their continued survival, since that 19th century life now actively repels us.
But I don't think I want to write like that.
The most remarkable thing to me about his stories are the women in them. Today we have an abundance of "strong female characters", but usually when that term is used, the characters are strong only where they are not noticeably female. The most we can usually hope for is that they be androgynous. (What's the difference between Pinkie Pie and Cheese Sandwich other than gender?) But James writes about women with stereotypical feminine interests and skills, who have cast off stereotypical feminine affectations and gaily, boldly, artfully, femininely defy feminine social conventions, leading themselves either to success or to destruction. James' characters aren't ones that young women looking for strong role models today would find very helpful, but they highlight the over-simplistic and, frankly, misogynistic approach we use today to create "strong female characters", which is often to tell women that they should act more like men.
I found it a decent read but with a terribly passive heroine who, when a fairly decorous and un-passionate courtship of her fails, gives up on every getting married for really no very good reason. Sadly, there are really people like that.
Agreed on the need for a little disorder in stories. A story whose characters only have the attributes and whose plots only the incidents required for the theme depicts a crystalline dead world that lacks the qualities of Life. What's more, from a functional point of view, there are no hanging plot threads which could be mined for sequels.
What about Oscar Wilde?
To be fair, the designation of certain things as male behavior and certain other things as female behavior is at least in part arbitrary. So in that respect it is fair to make a 'strong' female character who acts in some ways we associate with men.
That said, taken too far, this results in a ridiculous and reprehensible mess.
I think one reason "strong female characters" are androgynous is that the people who make them are sometimes motivated by an ideology that says there is no such thing as male or female behavior. They don't want to make the point "You can act feminine and strong"; they would rather make the point "You don't have to be feminine." If they were both strong and feminine, their creators might regard them as failures. (I'm not applying that to Faust.)
See how I pay you back for commenting...
2091362
Well, equality and the principle of the feminine complex of traits being both good and optional (much like the masculine complex of traits) are a good idea. The fact that they are a good idea, however, doesn't stop people from being wretched at implementing those ideas.
And while some may consider 'feminine and strong' to be a failure, granted, those people are imbeciles. And imbeciles can ruin any idea.
In the customary coin.
Pinkie Pie is caring and nurturing? Pinkie Pie is concerned with people not taking her seriously as a person? Pinkie Pie has a lot more depth of character than Cheese Sandwich, and I think the fact that she is a girl is relevant to her character and her interests (not to mention if she was a guy, her lack of understanding of personal space would come off as a lot creepier).
I do agree with your actual point, though: a lot of the time, we end up with STRONG female characters, when what we want are strong FEMALE characters. I've seen this rant before, and I do agree with it.
That being said:
2091362
There was a joke, long ago, about what the colors in Magic did, and the punchline was typically something along the lines of "and blue has the ability to stop anyone else from doing anything and win the game", implying that blue was the only color that mattered.
It was a joke, but it was also kidding on the square; Blue (and to a lesser extent black) had gobbled up all of the best abilities and left the other colors the pickings, which was an issue which persisted for many years (and, to some extent, persists to this day, though to a much lesser extent). The only way to bring the pie back into balance and make all the colors relevant was to shift around powers and power levels, as well as give the other colors more things to do.
Thus, while it is certainly the case that women do have some positive attributes, there are some attributes which have been historically given to men simply because men are dominant, and they are dominant attributes, and therefore, men should have those attributes and women should not. Ambition and competitiveness are both seen as male traits, for instance, when in fact they are really human traits.
You missed the speaker at BronyCon who did the Girl's Cartoons panel, didn't you? If so, that's a shame, because I would have loved to hear your thoughts on it.
One thing she pointed out, that I find it hard to unsee, is that the mane six represent an evenly divided spectrum of traditionally-masculine to traditionally-feminine archetypes, with AJ and Dash towards the former, Rarity and Fluttershy towards the latter, with Twilight and Pinkie being in the androgynous middle as the intellectual and the comedian (pointing out that those are both roles where women are encouraged to leave gender "out of the picture" as it were.)
In terms of strong, feminine female characters, I find Rarity particularly interesting because in many ways she's a positive reclaiming of the femme fatale. We see her use feminine wiles to get what she wants with stallions (and Spike), or try to, but that's not shown as an inherently bad thing to do-- she's never made to seem sneaky or evil for it. I'm not sure if that's because the show is from such a heavily female perspective (after all, femme fatales have never been all that fatal to other women) or if this is one of those subtle, unintended things that writers don't notice they're doing when they're writing jokes for the characters.
One can relate this to masculine behavior, Rarity is competitive and ambitious, but as Titanium Dragon pointed out those are most likely gender neutral traits that men took because they liked them-- the prevalence of a lot of female villains who acted like Rarity seems to indicate that men were aware women had these traits, they just didn't like it when they did. The key with Rarity and those villains, what makes them feminine archetypes, is that they prefer to use manipulation as a weapon, especially manipulation based on beauty and (usually pretend) powerlessness.
James' female characters sound like 1990s/2000s Disney heroines.
2091325
I regret to inform you that Mr. Wilde is not in the house.
2091325 I haven't read any books of that sort by Oscar Wilde. If he wrote one, I'd guess it was making fun of social games rather than asking us to care about their outcome.
Henry James was fascinated and repelled by Oscar Wilde, according to Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and Aesthetic Culture by Mich`ele Mendelssohn. Wilde liked James' writing, but didn't get on with him in person.
2091815 I missed that panel. I think it was one of those that was full before it started. But I was only there for a small part of the con, because I came too late Friday & lost my con badge on Sunday.
Interesting! But I think you'd agree that Dash and AJ are the strongest of them, and Rarity and Fluttershy the weakest.
IMHO she seems sneaky and evil for it. Rarity can be strong for her friends, but she's a selfish bitch when relating to stallions (and drakes). James' character Pamela manipulates men, but not in the simple cock-tease way Rarity manipulates Spike. She entertains them, flatters them, and brightens their day with her wit, charm, and grace, without suggesting that she find them attractive, or that she's helpless, or that they have any hope of getting anything more than that out of her. It's an equal exchange in their eyes, or, better, they are patrons of the arts, and would be negligent not to reward a social artist. She does all this to take care of her parents and get a good position for her fiancee. She defies convention not in her goals, but in accomplishing this despite having a "common" working-class (but very wealthy working-class!) background, by setting out deliberately on a six-year plan to educate herself in all the right things, see all the right places, meet all the right people, and win then over with the force of her then fully-developed personality. One could look back from our position today and imagine that it was people like her who finished democratizing America, breaking down the walls of the old aristocracy, melting them with smiles rather than with rifles. (And Henry James takes part of the credit, by citing his own book as one reason why people have begin to accept that such things can happen.)
Is that a good thing? Kind of, but I think Disney princesses act more like little girls than like women.
2092903
I have a very hard time seeing Rarity as weak, either power-wise or character-wise. In terms of power, that was kind of the point of A Dog And Pony Show-- Rarity's manipulation is equally as effective as direct physical strength. And Suite and Elite did paint her similarly to how you describe Henry James' heroines, she was able to be the "pony everypony should know" more through her charm than her flirtations.
I do understand where you're coming from, power derived from that kind of manipulation just seems dishonorable (which is one of the reasons I dislike RariJack shipping. The idea of Rarity emotionally manipulating AJ makes my skin crawl.) At the same time, and what I think the show is going for with Rarity, social/emotional manipulation is just a weapon, and one that can be used rightly or wrongly. If you feel like it's inherently dishonorable, you have to ask if that's because it's been painted that way since Eve because for a long time it was one of the only paths for women to power.
Another question to ask is if you also consider Fluttershy to be a selfish bitch. Several times, most recently in Filli Vanilli, Fluttershy has knowingly manipulated ponies into doing what she wants using her weakness and frailty. For some reason, this is often seen as more harmless or even noble for women than using sexuality, possibly because it allows the person being manipulated to feel that they're doing something good by giving into her. So, is Rarity being judged more harshly because she's using the form of manipulation she can access without making herself pitiful, or is there really a moral difference in the two approaches?
So, I do see Rarity as being as strong as Applejack and Rainbow Dash, and stronger than Twilight or Pinkie. And if people don't, it suggests to me that the reason there are fewer feminine, strong female characters it's because we're using a very narrow view of acceptable ways for expressing feminine strength.
That depends on the character. Ariel and Jasmine act more like girls, but they're also both cloistered princesses at the beginning of the movies (and Ariel is stated to be 16). I see Belle, Esmerelda, and Tiana as women, even if Belle and Tiana are still living with parents. I've personally never had a problem with Disney princesses, but I also think that most people misunderstand what a "princess" is to little girls-- a feminine reward for honor and nobility. So from what you describe, Henry James' heroines would be right at home.
Social exchange--for instance, being nice to someone in the hope that they'll be nice to you--is a tool. Social manipulation--implying repayment that you've already decided not to make--is what Rarity does to males, and is inherently dishonest.
A weapon can be used rightly against things that should rightly be destroyed. There's no way for Rarity to use a "weapon" rightly against Spike.
2093479
Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet, you can’t win.
I usually hate people who quote Heinlein like he was Chairman Mao, but, nu?
2093479
I can agree with that, and do find it selfish of Rarity when it's clear that she's using Spike. But given Spike's behavior in Simple Ways it seems that Spike is fully aware of the reality of his current position (at least by now.) It's not right to manipulate someone against their will, but you can't really fault Rarity if Spike has offered himself up as target practice.
2093510 Mu.
I have no idea what you mean to say.
Why not? I'd fault her for it even if he were a stranger.
2093523
I mean don't insist that the playing field be perfectly level before you put the ball in pl--
What I meant to say is, don't demand a true cloth and an untwisted cue before you...
Oh never mind.
(P.S.--"What's said in jest is often meant in earnest." I am trying to say: keep trying, and do not be afraid of trying, even though the odds are against you. The odds are always against you. But you can't beat them if you don't try)
(P.P.S.--Or be afraid, but try anyway. That's how it usually works.)
2093523
In Simple Ways, Spike can clearly see that Rarity has no real interest in him, because she's actively pursuing and crying over someone else. If, after that, he's still willing to kiss her hooves and carry her suitcases... well there's not much dishonesty in her manipulation at that point. The terms are pretty clear: "You will be my special little dragon and carry my luggage, and I will be looking for a real stallion." If Spike is okay with those terms, or delusional enough not to believe them after she was literally crying at her shrine to another pony in front of him, at that point I'm willing to clear Rarity of charges.
Rarity only has so much responsibility to protect Spike from himself. Her treatment of background stallions (in Best Night Ever and Putting Your Hoof Down) is less defensible
If your friend is an alcoholic, and you advise him to stop drinking, you can only do so much to protect him.
But if you're the one he buys alcohol from, that's different.
2093784
That implies that you believe he's an alcoholic.
In Rarity's case, she has a perfectly good reason to believe that Spike might want to wait on her despite her having made it clear that he's getting nothing out of it: he does the same thing for Twilight already.
Whether that's healthy for him in either case is something we'll all have to headcanon for ourselves.
2093479
What repayment does Rarity imply with Spike? Favors aren't exactly traded among friends or complete strangers, they're just given. Rarity is pulling along Spike, but being obvious and honest with him really would risk their friendship, and Rarity knows this (as seen in Secret of My Excess).
I'm also with the camp that thinks it's not sane to expect an intimate relationship in exchange for favors. If Rarity is using her weapon against anything, it's this.