The thing about the fallible narrator is that though he is fallible we think he is infallible. We think he is trustworthy and reliable, and who makes us think so. The writer. It is his skill that makes it so for us.
I want to quote in this respect from Henry James's preface to The Ambassadors to illustrate this point.
"That charming principle is always there, at all events, to keep interest fresh: it is a principle, we remember, essentially ravenous, without scruple and without mercy..."
How does Henry James keep interest fresh?
1. He tell us through Strether's fiance, Mrs Newsome, that her young son is in the 'trap' of an elderly woman from Paris.
2. This is not like drama, as Henry James states, as he makes dramatic irony stand on its head. When Strether reaches Paris and meets the "fallen woman" or the "other woman", Strether becomes convinced over a period of time that she is nothing of the sort. As he is genuinely convinced we become convinced too. He becomes infallible to us. We are as much in the dark as the character is but he is so sincere, so genuine, so well delineated in being honest we feel we can completely rely on him and trust him. This is what is great about Henry James's story-telling. He takes us consummately for a ride, as later he lets us down when Strether finds out the woman is all what Mrs Newsome says and only what she says, and this shows how much his method is removed from dramatic irony, how different he is from Shakespeare, as here the audience is not in the know about anything the characters don't know, and Henry James' mastery is he knew this kind of compositional excellence can only be created in the novel. James is a very dangerous writer in developing point of view to such an extent for unity of effect in the reader that it is good he did not turn to crime, as he could persuade us of anything, and it would have had disastrous consequences for the sensitive if it led them to action.
Does Henry James have a predecessor? Yes, of course, in Pride and Prejudice, we have a masterly reversal of point of view, that of Elizabeth's who starts out by liking Wickham and hating Darcy but ends up seeing Wickham as ruinous and loving Darcy. This is a kind of hourglass pattern in the novel and worth it for its tendency to show us how a reader can be putty in the hands of a great writer if he or she wants it.
But to come back to the preface of The Ambassadors that should have come at the end and not the beginning but which we have to come back to to the end, so that we can agree with James that he has indeed created a masterpiece.
"One’s work should have composition, because composition alone is positive beauty; but all the while—apart from one’s inevitable consciousness too of the dire paucity of readers ever recognising or ever missing positive beauty—how, as to the cheap and easy, at every turn, how, as to immediacy and facility, and even as to the commoner vivacity, positive beauty might have to be sweated for and paid for! Once achieved and installed it may always be trusted to make the poor seeker feel he would have blushed to the roots of his hair for failing of it; yet, how, as its virtue can be essentially but the virtue of the whole, the wayside traps set in the interest of muddlement and pleading but the cause of the moment, of the particular bit in itself, have to be kicked out of the path! All the sophistications in life, for example, might have appeared to muster on behalf of the menace—the menace to a bright variety—involved in Strether’s having all the subjective “say,” as it were, to himself.
Had I, meanwhile, made him at once hero and historian, endowed him with the romantic privilege of the “first person”—the darkest abyss of romance this, inveterately, when enjoyed on the grand scale—variety, and many other queer matters as well, might have been smuggled in by a back door. Suffice it, to be brief, that the first person, in the long piece, is a form foredoomed to looseness and that looseness, never much my affair, had never been so little so as on this particular occasion. All of which reflexions flocked to the standard from the moment—a very early one—the question of how to keep my form amusing while sticking so close to my central figure and constantly taking its pattern from him had to be faced...
I was more than agitated enough to reflect that, grimly deprived of one alternative or one substitute for “telling,” I must address myself tooth and nail to another. I couldn’t, save by implication, make other persons tell each other about him—blest resource, blest necessity, of the drama, which reaches its effects of unity, all remarkably, by paths absolutely opposite to the paths of the novel: with other persons, save as they were primarily his persons (not he primarily but one of theirs), I had simply nothing to do. I had relations for him none the less, by the mercy of Providence, quite as much as if my exhibition was to be a muddle; if I could only by implication and a show of consequence make other persons tell each other about him, I could at least make him tell them whatever in the world he must; and could so, by the same token—which was a further luxury thrown in—see straight into the deep differences between what that could do for me, or at all events for him, and the large ease of “autobiography.” It may be asked why, if one so keeps to one’s hero, one shouldn’t make a single mouthful of “method,” shouldn’t throw the reins on his neck and, letting them flap there as free as in “Gil Blas” or in “David Copperfield,” equip him with the double privilege of subject and object—a course that has at least the merit of brushing away questions at a sweep. The answer to which is, I think, that one makes that surrender only if one is prepared not to make certain precious discriminations.
The “first person” then, so employed, is addressed by the author directly to ourselves, his possible readers, whom he has to reckon with, at the best, by our English tradition, so loosely and vaguely after all, so little respectfully, on so scant a presumption of exposure to criticism. Strether, on the other hand, encaged and provided for as “The Ambassadors” encages and provides, has to keep in view proprieties much stiffer and more salutary than any our straight and credulous gape are likely to bring home to him, has exhibitional conditions to meet, in a word, that forbid the terrible fluidity of self-revelation.
NOTE THAT: FORBID THE FLUIDITY OF SELF REVELATION! The fluidity of third person is better!
Half the dramatist’s art, as we well know—since if we don’t it’s not the fault of the proofs that lie scattered about us—is in the use of ficelles...
The material of “The Ambassadors,” conforming in this respect exactly to that of “The Wings of the Dove,” published just before it, is taken absolutely for the stuff of drama; so that, availing myself of the opportunity given me by this edition for some prefatory remarks on the latter work, I had mainly to make on its behalf the point of its scenic consistency. It disguises that virtue, in the oddest way in the world, by just looking, as we turn its pages, as little scenic as possible; but it sharply divides itself, just as the composition before us does, into the parts that prepare, that tend in fact to over-prepare, for scenes, and the parts, or otherwise into the scenes, that justify and crown the preparation. It may definitely be said, I think, that everything in it that is not scene (not, I of course mean, complete and functional scene, treating all the submitted matter, as by logical start, logical turn, and logical finish) is discriminated preparation, is the fusion and synthesis of picture.
Henry James dismisses "today's reader", the common idea of beauty, method, autobiography and the first person, not to mention drama, more subtly, for words like unity/consistency/intensity of effect/affect, scene, picture, composition and "the figure in the carpet:. For him, the novel is THE FORM of his time. He is the last of the great, traditional logocentric writers. To achieve all this, he uses the point of view specifically, very accurately, carefully, so finely that we have to learn of him if we want to use it. Enough said. Point taken, Well learned. Please do read The Ambassadors and if not, at least the full Preface and try to understand what a great lesson he has to teach us about form, genre, topic, central theme, the 'composition' of the novel and the POINT OF VIEW.,
I am not asking for your agreement with Henry James' views but stating that if you are a real student of literature, prose, non-fiction or novel writing you would do well to familiarize yourself with his prefaces and novels.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/432/432-h/432-h.htm#preface - you can read the Preface here to get its full beauty.
Posts
