Milly Theale and the Two Paintings in The Wings of the Dove
Kyoko
Miyabe
University
of Cambridge
In The Wings of the Dove, Henry
James makes references to two paintings in connection with the character of
Milly Theale: a Bronzino portrait whose sitter closely resembles Milly and a
Veronese picture which Susan Stringham recalls as she describes the party at
Milly’s Venetian palace. The Bronzino
in the novel has been identified as Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi,
and the Veronese as The Marriage Feast at Cana (or a conflation of this
painting with another Veronese, The Feast in the House of Levi). Past studies that discuss the significance
of these two paintings in James’s novel have based their readings on these
identifications, often finding a parallel between the plot of the story or the
portrayal of the characters involved with the pictures and the visual elements
in the actual works of art or the anecdotes behind their creation.
In this paper, I would like to suggest an alternative reading by considering the distinct ways in which James incorporates these pictures into the narrative. While the Bronzino portrait is a material object that exists in the world of the novel, the Veronese painting is an imaginary picture that is evoked by Susan Stringham’s comment. Unlike the Bronzino, it has no physical substance and exists only in the mind of the characters and the readers. Also, whereas Milly remains outside the Bronzino as its viewer, she stands, figuratively speaking, inside the Veronese as one of the elements that make up the entire picture. In these two aspects, Milly’s Veronese is reminiscent of the Lambinet painting that appears in The Ambassadors, which also exists only in Strether’s imagination and which also features Strether inside the picture frame as he thinks of himself entering his Lambinet.
In associating Milly with the Bronzino and the Veronese, James, I think, dramatizes the transactions that take place among his characters, particularly through the different ways in which they observe each other. How one participates in these visual transactions plays a crucial role in determining one’s place among other people. In her discussion of The Golden Bowl, Susan Griffin has written: ‘When the identity of the self is a function of the social environment, when knowledge is both visually acquired and displayed, seeing and being seen become strategies in the struggle to survive’.[1] In the struggle to survive in her social milieu, Milly comes to understand how other people see her and to use this understanding in formulating and presenting her self, particularly in the eyes of Kate Croy and Merton Densher. Milly starts off as the object of the Londoners’ spectacle, and while remaining so throughout the novel, she eventually learns to turn this status into a means to attain her social success – if only in her imagination. The Bronzino and the Veronese paintings are, I believe, crucial in highlighting these initial and final stages of Milly’s development.
Milly’s immediate identification with the inanimate sitter in the Bronzino portrait is often read as the moment at which she comes to confirm her imminent death and to accept her mortality. This reading accords with the traditional reception of Milly as a spiritual or martyr-like figure, who makes her ultimate sacrifice by bestowing her money on Densher despite the deception and betrayal practiced upon her by the couple. But what James does by connecting Milly with the Bronzino, I think, is to accentuate her position as the object of Londoners’ curious gaze. In the passage that immediately follows Milly’s first encounter with the painting, James sets up a highly charged exchange among the characters, when Kate and the Aldershaws join Milly and Lord Mark in the drawing-room:
She [Milly] had her back, as she faced the picture, to one of the doors of the room, which was open, and on her turning as he spoke she saw that they were in the presence of three other persons, also, as appeared, interested enquirers. Kate Croy was one of these; Lord Mark had just become aware of her, and she, all arrested, had immediately seen, and made the best of it, that she was far from being first in the field. She had brought a lady and a gentleman to whom she wished to show what Lord Mark was showing Milly…‘You had noticed too?’—she smiled at him without looking at Milly. ‘Then I’m not original—which one always hopes one has been. But the likeness is so great.’ And now she looked at Milly—for whom again it was, all round indeed, kind, kind eyes. ‘Yes, there you are, my dear, if you want to know. And you’re superb.’ She took now but a glance at the picture, though it was enough to make her question to her friends not too straight. ‘Isn’t she superb?’[2]
Here, James carefully describes the movements and the positioning of the characters, especially Milly’s position with respect to the painting. Just as Kate and the Aldershaws enter the room, Milly turns toward Lord Mark so that from the viewpoint of Kate and the couple, Milly stands almost side by side with the portrait as if to insist on their remarkable resemblance. James also skilfully depicts the way in which Kate asks, ‘Isn’t she superb?’; her glance at the portrait before posing the question leaves it uncertain whether Kate is talking about Milly or about the lady in the painting. Every little detail about how Kate directs her eyes and attention expresses her attempt to treat Milly and the picture synonymously – with the backing of Lady Aldershaw who looks at Milly ‘quite as if Milly had been the Bronzino and the Bronzino only Milly’ (WD 159). In conflating Milly with the portrait, Kate treats Milly as if she were an art object, and in doing so, she asserts her power over her.
In this scene, because the agency of defining Milly’s position within her social circle is given to Kate and the rest of the ‘viewers’ rather than to Milly herself, Milly appears to be situated in a passive state. Milly’s own thoughts ‘that she was still in a current determined…by others; that not she but the current acted, and that somebody else always was the keeper of the lock or the dam’ (WD 195-96) seems to confirm her passivity, which is further reinforced by her eventual acceptance of the role of the ‘dove’. Yet, Milly is not, I think, as passive as she may appear to be or as she takes herself to be.
We can detect Milly’s more self-assured or
even assertive side to her nature, in the passages leading up to the Bronzino
scene. As Milly and Lord Mark proceed
from the garden to the gallery in which the portrait hangs, they are constantly
interrupted by the guests at the party, who approach Lord Mark for a brief
chat, though this is simply a pretext for taking a closer look at Milly. Milly faces an incessant stream of
inquisitive stares, but she does not find her situation threatening or
subjugating; instead she finds it somewhat amusing:
[T]hey gave her, in especial collectively, a sense
of pleasant voices, pleasanter than those of actors, of friendly empty words
and kind lingering eyes that took somehow pardonable liberties. The lingering eyes looked her over, the
lingering eyes were what went, in almost confessed simplicity, with the
pointless ‘I say, Mark’; and what was really most flagrant of all was that, as
a pleasant matter of course, if she didn’t mind, he seemed to suggest their
letting people, poor dear things, have the benefit of her (WD 155).
Milly discerns that Lord Mark is deliberately making
a spectacle out of her as they make their way through the crowd, but rather
than being offended, she oddly feels that Lord Mark ‘made her herself believe,
for amusement, in the benefit…that her present good nature conferred’ (WD 155)
his behaviour. Milly does not seem to
mind being looked at and complies with her appointed status as the object of
the gaze. Instead of being bewildered
by the stare she receives from the crowd, Milly maintains her self-possession,
as James describes:
It was, as she could easily see, a mild common
carnival of good nature—a mass of London people together, of sorts and sorts,
but who mainly knew each other and who, in their way, did, no doubt, confess to
curiosity. […] The strangest thing of
all for Milly was the uplifted assurance and indifference with which she could
simply give back the particular bland stare that appeared in such cases to mark
civilisation at its highest. (WD
155-56)
As the Londoners make a spectacle out of Milly with
their curious looks, she, in turn, perceives the crowd as ‘a mild common
carnival of good nature’ (WD 155), and makes a spectacle out of them. Milly seems to acknowledge the situation as
some sort of a ‘game’ where she must identify and appropriate the other party’s
set of terms, then, turn the table around and throw it right back at them. In doing so, she feels somewhat superior to
those who look at her with their ‘lingering eyes’, which she thinks are
possible instances of an uncivilised behaviour, while she composes herself with
the utmost social decorum. In accepting
her position as the object of the gaze not passively but somewhat willingly,
Milly affirms her sense of self-identity.
Rather than resisting the role that other people impose upon her, Milly,
subversively, accepts this role and plays up to their expectation.
With Milly, there is an element in her
that, in some way, thrives on being under other people’s eyes. As she observes the ways in which other
people look at her, Milly learns to consciously present her self in a way that
concurs with how she wishes to be seen, thereby constructing her identity and
defining her place in relation to those around her. Milly starts to conduct herself with more intentionality in the
critical scene at the National Gallery, where Milly, Kate and Densher have a
moment of unexpected and awkward encounter.
As the three characters try to make the best of their uncomfortable
situation, Milly, remembering her earlier revelation that she was to act like a
‘dove’, decides that the dovelike behaviour at this moment would be to employ
‘her unused margin as an American girl’ (WD 211). She speaks to Densher ‘not in the tone of agitation but in the
tone of New York’ because ‘[i]n the tone of New York agitation was beautifully
discounted’ (WD 211). She manages to
use her bewilderment at the situation as a kind of ‘prop’ for performing the
role of ‘an American girl’.
Milly’s concern for her self-presentation
culminates in the grand party scene at Palazzo Leporelli where Susan
Stringham’s comment invokes the Veronese painting. Milly makes a dazzling appearance at this party in her ‘wonderful
white dress’ instead of ‘her almost monastic, her hitherto inveterate black’
(WD 370), adorned with her exquisite pearls, which she holds, ‘vaguely
fingering and entwining a part of it’ (WD 373). Everything about Milly’s appearance and gesture seems to be
calculated to have a certain effect, and it certainly does on Densher, who, up
to this point, has not taken the slightest interest in her because his feelings
‘were all for Kate, without a feather’s weight to spare’ (WD 363). Densher’s resolute dedication toward Kate
starts to dwindle as he slips out of his complete alignment with her. Densher begins to observe and compare the
two women from a more disinterested point of view. He remarks that Milly looks ‘different, younger, fairer’ (WD 372)
and that ‘Kate was somehow—for Kate—wanting in lustre’ and ‘[a]s a striking
young presence she was practically superseded’ (WD 372) by their friend. Milly is at her highest point when James
describes how Kate and Densher look at her together:
She turned her head to where their friend was again
in range, and it made him turn his, so that they watched a minute in
concert. Milly, from the other side,
happened at the moment to notice them, and she sent across toward them in
response all the candour of her smile, the lustre of her pearls, the value of
her life, the essence of her wealth (WD 382).
The image of Milly saluting her friends ‘from the
other side’ registers a clear distance between Milly, who is inside the
Veronese, and the couple, who stand outside it and watch her with a mixed
feeling of admiration and envy and chagrin.
In this Veronese scene, although Milly continues to be the object of
other people’s gaze, she is no longer the passive recipient of their curious
looks as she was in front of the Bronzino portrait. Because she is simultaneously the creator and the creation of
this painting, Milly gains the agency to define her own position as the
observed; subsequently, Kate and Densher are forced into the position of
the observer, and are left feeling powerless at the sight of Milly who
represents the object of their desire – the financial wealth that would allow
them to marry each other.
I mentioned earlier that Milly’s Veronese
and Strether’s Lambinet are alike in that they are both imaginary
paintings that have no physical existence in the world of James’s fiction. But the two paintings are diametrically
opposed to each other in terms of how James treats the distance between the
protagonist associated with this picture and his or her what might be called
‘counter-couple’, who acts as a kind of foil to this character. With the Lambinet, Strether allows – or he
is unable to stop – Chad and Madame de Vionnet’s entrance into his
painting. The sight of the couple on a
boat becomes integrated into the image as a visual element that does not simply
make up but perfects Strether’s imaginary painting; it is, as Strether
says, ‘exactly the right thing’ which ‘had been wanted in the picture, had been
wanted more or less all day’.[3] This ‘permeability’ of the Lambinet
expresses Strether’s more reserved or self-effacing temperament, which leads
him to accept painfully yet willingly – and one might even say, heroically –
the revelation about the true nature of the couple’s ‘virtuous
attachment’. By contrast, with Milly’s
Veronese, the distance between the viewer and the picture is never
transgressed; it keeps Kate and Densher outside the picture frame, and by
maintaining this distance, it operates as a means by which Milly asserts her
personal and financial power over the two spectators. That Milly’s Veronese gains its ‘real’ significance only when
seen by Kate and Densher is another element that distinguishes this picture
from Strether’s Lambinet, which exists autonomously without the need for an
external viewer. The importance of the
presence of others is already implicated in the fact that it takes another
person to recognise the painting; it is not Milly herself but Susan Stringham
who makes the association between Milly’s Venetian party and the Veronese. The Lambinet, which functions as a site of
self-reflection for Strether, never comes under the eyes of another being;
Strether is both its sole creator and its sole viewer.
But whether Milly actually has
power over the couple becomes questionable when we consider that at the Veronese
scene, Kate and Densher are still on their course of successfully acquiring
Milly’s money; it is in this scene that the couple makes a pledge on their
scheme as they watch their friend. This
sight of Milly brings the two lovers together ‘with faces made fairly grave by
the reality she put into their plan’ (WD 382).
The imaginary Veronese painting, then, depicts the illusion of Milly in her ideal state, at the height of her life, acting as the perfect hostess adorned in a beautiful white dress and a lavish pearl necklace. Ultimately her ‘success’ in becoming integrated into the social world in which she had wished to take part remains a fantasy; it is a fantasy that lasts only while she is kept away from the reality of her predicament. Her illusion is shattered when she discovers the secret engagement between Kate and Densher, and their plot to obtain her money. By representing the attainment of her ideal in the form of an imaginary painting devoid of material substance, James conveys the ephemeral nature of her fantasy – that it is, as Strether says of his imaginary Lambinet, ‘essentially more than anything else a scene and a stage’ (A 386). The collapse of her illusionary world sets off Milly to shut others out of her personal world – or to use the famous expression, she turns ‘her face to the wall’ (WD 410). This expression aptly encapsulates Milly’s nature that thrives on other people’s gazes and seeks them as a means to sustain her self. Milly produces and affirms her identity by seeing herself through the eyes of others. When she loses the will to stay under those eyes, her life slips away.
Just before she dies, Milly manages to present her self one last time. When she makes her final appearance to Densher, she receives him as before ‘in that glorious great salone, in the dress she always wears, from her inveterate corner of her sofa’ (WD 453). Until the very last moment of her life, Milly is concerned with how she is seen – and how she will be seen in Densher’s memory. Accordingly, she creates and presents an image of herself just as she had done at her grand party. This final image, like her imaginary Veronese, leaves a strong impression on Densher and a powerful influence on the fate of the couple.
In associating Milly with the Bronzino and the Veronese, James not only enhances the aesthetic ambience of the novel but also conveys his thoughts about the various visual transactions, which shape and express the dynamics of human intercourse. His use of the two paintings attests to what he memorably said in 1905, that ‘all life comes back to the question of our relations with each other’.
[1] Susan M. Griffin, The Historical Eye: The Texture of the Visual in Late James (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991) 20. The quote is from her discussion on The Golden Bowl.
[2] Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902; New York: Oxford
University Press, 1998) 158. Further
references to this book will be made in the text and will be abbreviated as
WD.
[3] Henry James, The Ambassadors (1903; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 388. Further references to this book will be made in the text and will be abbreviated as A.