What Maisie Knew, Henry James
I bought a copy of this book because of a fictional recommendation. In Penelope Lively's How It All Began, Charlottte, the central character, is re-reading it, and her thoughts made me want to read it too:
Actually it was not so much Henry James that she had wanted as a novel that would feed thoughts about the versatility of fiction, promoted by that conversation with Anton about the need for story. Story, yes, indeed, but the fascination of story is what it can do. Henry James can tell it through the eyes of a child, and make you, the reader, observe the adult chicanery and betrayals of which the child is unaware. Charlotte needed to remind herself of the sleight of hand whereby this is done.
I was at a bit of a bookish loose end last week when I read a mini-review of the new film version of this book in The New Yorker, which says it lacks "any approximation of James's wickedly funny voice." That sent me off to the TBR shelves in search of my copy.
The Maisie of the title is a small child when the story opens, caught in the nasty and protracted divorce of her parents, Beale and Ida Falange. The judge awards them joint custody, each parent to have the child for six months at a time, turn and turn about. He has no way of knowing that they have failed at parenting as well as marriage. Both want the child only as a weapon to use against the other parent. Each tries to make Maisie an ally, to fill her with stories about the other's crimes, to pump her for information to be used against the other. Maisie very quickly learns to defend herself against this by playing dumb, by refusing to be drawn. In reality she is very much aware of what is going on, she is bright and observant, and she knows far more than her parents realize. She knows, though she doesn't understand all the sordid implications of what she knows, of her father's new friends, her mother's constant escorts - while the reader does all too well. Maisie remains innocent, hungry for love and affection, hopeful and optimistic, smoothing over difficulties and trying to keep the peace. James managed to create this believeable and fully-realized character, one who grows over the course of his story, without making her a Pollyanna or a plaster saint.
She is however too good for her parents. Once they realize that she won't be used as a weapon in their battles, they shift tactics. Rather than trying to keep her from the other, both try instead to dump her on the other. Both parents have re-married, her father to Maisie's former governess (now known as Mrs Beale), and her mother to the younger Sir Claude. Neither marriage is happy, though the two step-parents are very fond of their new daughter. In fact, their mutual affection for Maisie draws them together and into a deeper and dangerous relationship. Eventually both her natural parents abandon not only their daughter but their second spouses as well. Maisie is left to her step-parents, but her governess Mrs Wix, is in love with Sir Claude herself, and refuses to leave Maisie with Mrs Beale, whom she considers a bad woman. Maisie, who loves all three of her protectors, must eventually choose between them. Whatever choice she makes will be a difficult one, not least because none of the three has any money.
I've mentioned before that I find James's complex language difficult. With this book, I sometimes had the feeling that I was reading in a foreign language, gathering the sense of the words without necessarily understanding their literal meaning. At other times it felt like I was wrestling with the text, trying to figure out what exactly James was saying (and I all but gave up on his Preface). Here again though the story carried me through, all the twists and turns as Maisie moved between her families. I wanted to know what came next, and that she would be safe, from her unspeakable parents and also from her step-mother. I never trusted Mrs Beale, and though Maisie believes absolutely in her love, I thought it more a means to an end - to marriage first with Beale and then Sir Claude.
This story reminded of my favorite of Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels, Early Autumn. In that book he becomes involved with the Giacomins, Mel and Patty, who are using their fifteen-year-old son Paul just like the Falanges did Maisie, first playing keep-away and then tag, you're it. Though Patty initially hired him, Spenser makes Paul his real client. He tells Paul that he needs to "Be autonomous, be free of them, depend on yourself. Grow up at fifteen," and then he helps him do that. That's not an option for Maisie, unfortunately.
Showing posts with label Henry James. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henry James. Show all posts
Monday, May 27, 2013
Friday, March 2, 2012
Accessing the Aspern Papers
The Aspern Papers, Henry James
For my introduction to Henry James last year, I started with The Turn of the Screw (which I reviewed back in December). My Penguin Classics edition includes a second novella, The Aspern Papers, and since they were paired together I was expecting another supernatural tale. What I found instead was an amazingly modern story, which though it was originally published in 1888 perfectly fits our world in 2012. Even the language feels more modern, simpler and less baroque than in The Turn of the Screw.
The story is set in Venice. As it opens, the unnamed narrator is plotting with his friend Mrs Prest to make the acquaintance of the Misses Bordereau, aunt and niece, who live in self-imposed isolation within an ancient palazzo. The elder Miss Bordereau was once Juliana, the muse, the beloved, perhaps the mistress, of the famed American poet Jeffrey Aspern (now deceased). The narrator, more a disciple of Aspern's than a mere scholar, hopes that she has letters, manuscripts - perhaps the last undiscovered cache of his writings, which the narrator and his fellow dedicat can edit and publish.
Accepting Mrs Prest's suggestion that "the way to become an acquaintance was first to become an intimate," he succeeds in becoming their lodger, renting a set of rooms in the palazzo. He does so under a false name, prepared ahead of time with a calling card. On his first visit, he meets the younger Miss Bordereau, Miss Tina, shy and socially awkward but simple and honest. It is with her that he begins his campaign to gain access to her aunt's papers.
The narrator has no qualms about his campaign. In his view, the ends of access to this treasury of his idol's writings justify any means. Nor has he any qualms about opening every aspect of Aspern's life to the public gaze. "He had nothing to fear from us because he had nothing to fear from the truth, which alone at such a distance of time we could be interested in establishing." There is no mention of a family, parents or wife or children, who might have something to fear from such exposure. The narrator refers to Aspern as a celebrity at one point, and I could not help comparing the narrator himself to a paparazzo, worming his way into the household under false pretences, scheming to score a scoop. I was also reminded of A.S. Byatt's Possession, where the papers of two poets play such key parts. The narrator here has much in common with Byatt's American collector Mortimer Cropper, making his illicit copies of letters he cannot acquire honestly.
Juliana Bordereau's connection with Aspern dates from the 1820s, and the narrator is surprised simply to find her still alive. She is the last of his contemporaries: "we had not been able to look into a single pair of eyes into which his had looked or to feel a transmitted contact in any aged hand that his had touched." Yet there she is, living quietly for decades in Venice. "But it was a revelation to us that self-effacement on such a scale had been possible in the latter half of the nineteenth century - the age of newspapers and telegrams and photographs and interviewers." Just add the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, and you have the celebrity industry of the early 21st century.
In discussing the papers, the narrator tells Miss Tina,
For my introduction to Henry James last year, I started with The Turn of the Screw (which I reviewed back in December). My Penguin Classics edition includes a second novella, The Aspern Papers, and since they were paired together I was expecting another supernatural tale. What I found instead was an amazingly modern story, which though it was originally published in 1888 perfectly fits our world in 2012. Even the language feels more modern, simpler and less baroque than in The Turn of the Screw.
The story is set in Venice. As it opens, the unnamed narrator is plotting with his friend Mrs Prest to make the acquaintance of the Misses Bordereau, aunt and niece, who live in self-imposed isolation within an ancient palazzo. The elder Miss Bordereau was once Juliana, the muse, the beloved, perhaps the mistress, of the famed American poet Jeffrey Aspern (now deceased). The narrator, more a disciple of Aspern's than a mere scholar, hopes that she has letters, manuscripts - perhaps the last undiscovered cache of his writings, which the narrator and his fellow dedicat can edit and publish.
Accepting Mrs Prest's suggestion that "the way to become an acquaintance was first to become an intimate," he succeeds in becoming their lodger, renting a set of rooms in the palazzo. He does so under a false name, prepared ahead of time with a calling card. On his first visit, he meets the younger Miss Bordereau, Miss Tina, shy and socially awkward but simple and honest. It is with her that he begins his campaign to gain access to her aunt's papers.
The narrator has no qualms about his campaign. In his view, the ends of access to this treasury of his idol's writings justify any means. Nor has he any qualms about opening every aspect of Aspern's life to the public gaze. "He had nothing to fear from us because he had nothing to fear from the truth, which alone at such a distance of time we could be interested in establishing." There is no mention of a family, parents or wife or children, who might have something to fear from such exposure. The narrator refers to Aspern as a celebrity at one point, and I could not help comparing the narrator himself to a paparazzo, worming his way into the household under false pretences, scheming to score a scoop. I was also reminded of A.S. Byatt's Possession, where the papers of two poets play such key parts. The narrator here has much in common with Byatt's American collector Mortimer Cropper, making his illicit copies of letters he cannot acquire honestly.
Juliana Bordereau's connection with Aspern dates from the 1820s, and the narrator is surprised simply to find her still alive. She is the last of his contemporaries: "we had not been able to look into a single pair of eyes into which his had looked or to feel a transmitted contact in any aged hand that his had touched." Yet there she is, living quietly for decades in Venice. "But it was a revelation to us that self-effacement on such a scale had been possible in the latter half of the nineteenth century - the age of newspapers and telegrams and photographs and interviewers." Just add the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, and you have the celebrity industry of the early 21st century.
In discussing the papers, the narrator tells Miss Tina,
"It isn't for myself, or that I should want them at any cost to any one else. It's simply that they would be of such immense interest to the public, such immeasurable importance as a contribution to Jeffrey Aspern's history."I can't share his easy assumption that the public's interest outweighs everything, or that every aspect of Jeffrey Aspern's history must be made public (or acquit him of wanting his idol's papers for himself). Yet as an archivist, and a student of history, I know how vitally important letters and other personal papers can be, as primary sources. In one of the volumes of Queen Victoria's letters that I read last year, her daughter the Crown Princess of Prussia asked permission to burn their letters, which her mother refused. Except for purely personal letters that might embarrass individuals, she wrote, "I am very much against destroying important letters, and I everyday see the necessity of reference" (March 1874). As a Janeite, I mourn the loss of so many of Jane Austen's letters, particularly those sent to her sailor brothers, as well as those her sister Cassandra destroyed. But what would Jane Austen think of her letters being read almost two centuries after her death? She did not write with an eye to history, as Queen Victoria may have done. Where do we draw the line? It's not always easy to decide. But in the case of the Aspern papers, while I can sympathize with the narrator, I must side with Miss Bordereau.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
My introduction to Henry James
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
I have never read Henry James before. I knew his books, but I was a little intimidated by his reputation for dark, complex stories, told in baroque language. As with George Eliot, though, several things lately have pointed me toward his books. The first was Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which connected The Turn of the Screw and What Maisie Knew to the Constance Kent case. (Fortunately I'd forgotten that it gives away the ending of The Turn of the Screw.) The second was seeing James' books on various blogs this year, particularly Audrey's posts on The American at books as food. The last was reading Penelope Lively's How It All Began, in which What Maisie Knew plays an important part. I decided it was time to try one of his books, but I also decided to start with one of the shorter works.
I have been putting together a mental list of holiday-themed books to read in December, but I realized pretty quickly that while this story opens on Christmas Eve, it would not be a holiday story. I was just as quickly drawn into the story, the familiar scene of people sitting around a fire late at night, telling ghost stories. According to a note in my copy, this is a traditional Christmas eve pastime, which explains A Christmas Carol's ghosts. After a story involving a child and a ghost, one of the group, Douglas, claims to have the ultimate ghost story, one with two children. "It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it," he says, "For dreadful - dreadfulness." But he can't tell the story that night. He has to send to town for a manuscript. And like the people gathered around the fire, we have to wait a little, anticipating the story.
In this story within a story, Douglas is reading an account of the experiences of a young woman, never named, the daughter of a clergyman, who accepts a position as governess to two young children. Their parents are dead, and their guardian, an uncle who does not wish to be bothered with them, has sent the boy, Miles, to school; and the girl, Flora, to a country home. He makes it a condition of employment that the governess have no further contact with him, only his solicitor, that she take complete responsibility for the children.
And so she arrives at her isolated post, this new and inexperienced governess. There she finds a pastoral scene and an angelic young girl, a dark old gothic house and an ally in the housekeeper, Mrs Grose. But then a letter arrives, saying that the boy Miles has been dismissed from his school, for unstated reasons. The governess's question, "Is he really bad?" becomes one of the central questions of the story. Like his sister, Miles has an almost unearthly beauty. But with his return come other, eerie arrivals, and the governess learns about two former members of the household, one the previous governess. Both are now dead, but are they gone? Are they the mysterious figures that the governess sees? More importantly, what do the children see?
The image of a tightening screw is a perfect metaphor for this story, with its heightening tension. The governess's first-person narration adds to this, though as with George Eliot, I found that James's verbose language and confusing constructions sometimes took me out of the story. Yet the final chapter builds to one of the most unexpected, shattering conclusions I have ever read, and I turned the last page unable to believe that the story had ended.
The ending left me with so many questions unanswered (and I'm moving into spoiler territory here): what happens to Flora? Removing her from the house doesn't seem to be the answer, or at least it didn't work in Miles' case, given what happened at school. And what happens to the governess? How on earth does she explain what happened, particularly after Flora's accusations? What does the children's uncle do now? Presumably the governess doesn't stay with Flora; is she dismissed without a reference? We know from the first that she did go on to other situations, since Douglas himself met her when she was governess to his sister.
It turns out that I read this under a major misapprehension, which colored my reading and confused me. I thought I remembered from The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher that the Kent case had inspired The Turn of the Screw, so I went into the story expecting the children to be guilty of something, even murder. Still confused as I am by the ending, I think now that they were themselves innocent, but possessed by evil spirits. I will need to read this again. My copy includes a second novella, The Aspern Papers, which seems to be about a family archives, always an intriguing setting to an archivist, and I plan to read that as well as What Maisie Knew.
I have never read Henry James before. I knew his books, but I was a little intimidated by his reputation for dark, complex stories, told in baroque language. As with George Eliot, though, several things lately have pointed me toward his books. The first was Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which connected The Turn of the Screw and What Maisie Knew to the Constance Kent case. (Fortunately I'd forgotten that it gives away the ending of The Turn of the Screw.) The second was seeing James' books on various blogs this year, particularly Audrey's posts on The American at books as food. The last was reading Penelope Lively's How It All Began, in which What Maisie Knew plays an important part. I decided it was time to try one of his books, but I also decided to start with one of the shorter works.
I have been putting together a mental list of holiday-themed books to read in December, but I realized pretty quickly that while this story opens on Christmas Eve, it would not be a holiday story. I was just as quickly drawn into the story, the familiar scene of people sitting around a fire late at night, telling ghost stories. According to a note in my copy, this is a traditional Christmas eve pastime, which explains A Christmas Carol's ghosts. After a story involving a child and a ghost, one of the group, Douglas, claims to have the ultimate ghost story, one with two children. "It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches it," he says, "For dreadful - dreadfulness." But he can't tell the story that night. He has to send to town for a manuscript. And like the people gathered around the fire, we have to wait a little, anticipating the story.
In this story within a story, Douglas is reading an account of the experiences of a young woman, never named, the daughter of a clergyman, who accepts a position as governess to two young children. Their parents are dead, and their guardian, an uncle who does not wish to be bothered with them, has sent the boy, Miles, to school; and the girl, Flora, to a country home. He makes it a condition of employment that the governess have no further contact with him, only his solicitor, that she take complete responsibility for the children.
And so she arrives at her isolated post, this new and inexperienced governess. There she finds a pastoral scene and an angelic young girl, a dark old gothic house and an ally in the housekeeper, Mrs Grose. But then a letter arrives, saying that the boy Miles has been dismissed from his school, for unstated reasons. The governess's question, "Is he really bad?" becomes one of the central questions of the story. Like his sister, Miles has an almost unearthly beauty. But with his return come other, eerie arrivals, and the governess learns about two former members of the household, one the previous governess. Both are now dead, but are they gone? Are they the mysterious figures that the governess sees? More importantly, what do the children see?
The image of a tightening screw is a perfect metaphor for this story, with its heightening tension. The governess's first-person narration adds to this, though as with George Eliot, I found that James's verbose language and confusing constructions sometimes took me out of the story. Yet the final chapter builds to one of the most unexpected, shattering conclusions I have ever read, and I turned the last page unable to believe that the story had ended.
The ending left me with so many questions unanswered (and I'm moving into spoiler territory here): what happens to Flora? Removing her from the house doesn't seem to be the answer, or at least it didn't work in Miles' case, given what happened at school. And what happens to the governess? How on earth does she explain what happened, particularly after Flora's accusations? What does the children's uncle do now? Presumably the governess doesn't stay with Flora; is she dismissed without a reference? We know from the first that she did go on to other situations, since Douglas himself met her when she was governess to his sister.
It turns out that I read this under a major misapprehension, which colored my reading and confused me. I thought I remembered from The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher that the Kent case had inspired The Turn of the Screw, so I went into the story expecting the children to be guilty of something, even murder. Still confused as I am by the ending, I think now that they were themselves innocent, but possessed by evil spirits. I will need to read this again. My copy includes a second novella, The Aspern Papers, which seems to be about a family archives, always an intriguing setting to an archivist, and I plan to read that as well as What Maisie Knew.
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