The Golden Bowl Book

The Golden Bowl is a wonderful novel. Through his usual beautiful but convoluted and sinuous prose that swims around itself again and again, Henry James tells us the story of four people, two men and two women, and two marriages. These two marriages, whose essence holds secrets and truths, is the heart of its plot. Yes, it seems a simple enough plot and it revolves around the most basic human shortcoming that is adultery; and the relationships that are instigated by these four individuals.

Adam Verver, a very wealthy American art collector without scruples, has acquired almost all the material possessions his heart desires. However, he then makes his most important purchase, a husband for his daughter Maggie. And in Prince Amerigo, he finds the perfect candidate: impoverished royalty. He can provide what Mr. Verver most wishes for Maggie, a title. And Maggie is delighted with her father's plans:
"…You are at any rate a part of his collection," she had explained' "one of the things that can only be got over here. You're a rarity, an object of beauty, an object of price. You're perhaps absolutely unique, but you're so curious and eminent that there are very few others like you'you belong to a class about which everything is unknown. You're what they call a morceau de musee."
"I see. I have the great sign of it," he had risked' "that I cost a lot of money."
However, this marriage upsets the harmonious balance in the father and daughter relationship. Maggie now determines that the best thing is for her widower father to remarry. So, to alleviate her guilty for having married, Maggie will suggest that her father marries her school friend Charlotte Stant - vivacious, smart and likewise poor American - unsuspecting her prior romantic relationship with Amerigo himself. So begins the play of love and marriage. And so the shrewd stage is set, and we readers are only left to enjoy its sinuosity.

Four people, two marriages and their infidelities…
As we read we glimpse the roots of The Golden Bowl's plot, as it probes deeply into the complicated issue of fidelity not only in Amerigo and Maggie's relationship but also between the widowed father and his steadily devoted daughter. Between Adam and Charlotte; between him and Prince Amerigo; and between Princess Maggie and her young childhood playmate, Charlotte. And we discover, through a dialogue between Fanny - the matchmaker - and her husband, that this plot is not simple at all but deeply complex:
"Well are you trying to make out that I've said you have? All their case wants, at any rate," Bob Assingham declared, "is that you should leave it well alone. It's theirs now; they've bought it, over the counter, and paid for it. It has ceased to be yours.
"Of which case," she asked, "are you speaking?"
He smoked a minute: then with a groan:" Lord, are there so many?"
"There's Maggie's and the Prince's, and there's the Prince's and Charlotte's."
"Oh yes; and then," the Colonel scoffed, "there's Charlotte's and the Prince's."
"There's Maggie's and Charlotte's," she went on'"and there's also Maggie's and mine. I think too that there's Charlotte's and mine. Yes," she mused, "Charlotte's and mine is certainly a case. In short, you see, there are plenty. But I mean," she said, "to keep my head."
Where lies the guilt of all these infidelities, or where does it all begin? Even after both marriages the millionaire father and his daughter remain so devoted to each other that their two sposi are left for themselves. The father and daughter relationship seem dominant while the others are abandoned to their company. What complicates this unbalance is the fact that father and daughter encourage Charlotte and Prince Amerigo's to entertain each other, which is further muddled by their previous affair.

Charlotte and Amerigo discuss exactly that:
"But things turn out'! And it leaves us"'she made the point'"more alone."
He seemed to wonder. "It leaves you more alone."
"Oh," she again returned, "don't put it all on me! Maggie would have given herself to his child. I'm sure, scarcely less than he gives himself to yours. it would have taken more than ten children of mine, could I have had them'to keep our sposi apart." She smiled as for the breadth of the image, but, as she seemed to take it, in spite of this, she then spoke gravely enough. "It's as strange as you like, but we're immensely alone."
As might be expected, consequences arise. Therefore, part of the blame must lie with Adam and Maggie who are so involved with each other and so involved in each other's lives that they fail to notice the underlying problems in their marriages.

Henry James' ethereal writing style…
The Golden Bowl might seem simpler than his other novels, but Henry James is still loyal to himself. The book is filled with ambiguity: nothing is black and white, good or bad. Nuances and innuendos are plenty in his prose. He gives nothing away, but lets the readers learn and discover for themselves about the people and their relationships; we have to learn as we usually do in normal life, by paying attention to dialogues and inferring our understanding of it all. So, we are left to our own conclusions, and so its reading is much more enjoyable for those that brave it.

As we read a dialogue between Fanny and the prince, we are exposed to James's powerful and ethereal writing, where the symbols are not always effortless:
The 'boat,' you see"'the Prince explained no less considerably and lucidly'"is a good deal tied up at the dock, or anchored, if you like, out in the stream. I have to jump out from time to time to stretch my legs, and you'll probably perceive, if you give it your attention, that Charlotte really can't help occasionally doing the same. It isn't even a question, sometimes, of one's getting to the dock'one has to take a header and splash about in the water. Call our having remained here together tonight, call the accident of my having put them, put our illustrious friends there, on my companion's track'for I grant you this as a practical result of our combination'call the whole thing one of the harmless little plunges off the deck, inevitable to each of us. Why not take them, when they occur, as inevitable'and, above all, as not endangering life or limb? We shan't drown, we shan't sink'at least I can answer for myself. Mrs. Verver too, moreover'do her justice'visibly knows how to swim.
But the beauty of his prose conquers the most attentive reader:
They learned fairly to live in the perfunctory; they remained in it as many hours of the day as might be; it took on finally the likeness of some spacious central chamber in a haunted house, a great overarched and overglazed rotunda, where gaiety might reign, but the doors of which opened into sinister circular passages.
And the author confesses his ambiguity:
Charlotte was in pain, Charlotte was in torment, but he himself had given her reason enough for that; and, in respect to the rest of the whole matter of her obligation to follow her husband, that personage and she, Maggie, had so shuffled away every link between consequence and cause, that the intention remained, like some famous poetic line in a dead language, subject to varieties of interpretation.
Through a prose that is highly introspective, a kind of interior monolog that overwhelms the reader and prefers to sail upon a vast ocean of impressions that we never know where is leading us; and a style of dialogue, to which James is committed, that has the virtue of realism but does not define. I would imagine that James uses Fanny frequently in these conversations, for she is the most neutral character, through whom he can explore the main character's consciousness. As we can read in a dialogue between Maggie and Fanny, that infers but fails to define:
"My dear child, you're amazing."
"Amazing'?"
"You're terrible."
Maggie thoughtfully shook her head. "No; I'm not terrible, and you don't think me so. I do strike you as surprising, no doubt'but surprisingly mild. Because'don't you see?'I AM mild. I can bear anything."
"Oh, 'bear'!" Mrs. Assingham fluted.
"For love," said the Princess.
Fanny hesitated. "Of your father?"
"For love," Maggie repeated.
"Of your husband?"
"For love," Maggie said again."
The metaphor of the golden bowl itself is most fitting to develop the author's characteristic symbolic prose: it is the bowl itself that leads Maggie to the startling realization that both her husband and her friend have been deceiving her, and James prose and plot are amply fulfilled here:
"Well, what I want. I want happiness without a hole in it big enough for you to poke in your finger."
"A brilliant, perfect surface'to begin with at least. I see."
"The golden bowl'as it WAS to have been." And Maggie dwelt musingly on this obscured figure. "The bowl with all our happiness in it. The bowl without the crack."
Through his vague dialogues and perplexing prose, James leads the reader to discover by himself or herself the family dynamics, the sacrifices made; he leads the readers to judge each character and to determine where and if there is any sin being committed. James' clear deep understanding of the human condition, and of how humans interacted, is enthralling and drives the plot to its ultimate resolution.
Fanny Assingham took in deeper'… "He's splendid then."
"Ah, that as much as you please!"
Maggie said this and left it, but the tone had the next moment determined in her friend a fresh reaction. "You think, both of you, so abysmally and yet so quietly. But it's what will have saved you."
"Oh," Maggie returned, "it's what'from the moment they discovered we could think at all'will have saved THEM. For they're the ones who are saved," she went on. "We're the ones who are lost."
"Lost'?"
"Lost to each other'father and I." And then as her friend appeared to demur. "Oh, yes," Maggie quite lucidly declared, "lost to each other much more, really, than Amerigo and Charlotte are; since for them it's just, it's right, it's deserved, while for us it's only sad and strange and not caused by our fault."
Why I prefer Portrait of a Lady and why a lower rating for The Golden Bowl
The Golden Bowl is a fascinating book, but I have to make it clear that my favorite Henry James remains The Portrait of a Lady. I hope to be able to explain my preference by the end of this review.

Since The Portrait of a Lady is the only other Henry James novel I read, it is my only parameter. Compared to this book, I found The Golden Bowl more direct in format and thus easier to follow. It's focused on the characters, their communications and somewhat less on their personal feelings and influence of the scenes. I don't think the prose is quite as tortuous as it is in The Portrait of a Lady, and the plot straighter forward, and James here seems to require less of the reader.

While The Portrait of a Lady concerns the internal anguish of Isabel Archer, here we are facing two characters, Prince Amerigo and Maggie Verver, or possibly three, if we include Charlotte Stant. While reading The Golden Bowl, I could not wholly sympathize with its most compelling character, Maggie, for her role as the betrayed is in part the result of her actions. While in The Portrait of a Lady, I felt earnestly for Isabel Archer, despite her naiveté. Thus, I was much more involved in the reading of the latter.

It seems fair to say that Maggie asserts herself; she did not appear to become a victim if we consider her marriage. But to the end, she believes that she and her father have lost the most. So, what option did she have but to choose her marriage, could she have chosen her father in detriment of that? Not in her time. Thus, in a sense, she resigns herself to her fate much as Isabel Archer did in The Portrait of a Lady. Of course, Maggie's actions are what will define how The Golden Bowl ends, as Isabel Archer likewise leads her novel to its closing. Their choices, regardless if we agree with or dislike them. Isabel's decision we could say was more moral, and Maggie's more expedient.

I hope to have explained fairly well my choice here, but deep down it is a question of preference, and I liked Isabel Archer better and enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady more. Despite its 4-star rating, I relished reading The Golden Bowl, and strongly recommend it.
_____