Movies - The Golden Bowl

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	Movies - The Golden Bowl

The Golden Bowl is a 1904 novel by Henry James. Set in England, this complex, intense study of marriage and adultery completes what some critics have called the "major phase" of James' career. The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of interrelationships between a father and daughter and their respective spouses. The novel focuses deeply and almost exclusively on the consciousness of the central characters, with sometimes obsessive detail but also with powerful insight.

Plot summary

Prince Amerigo, an impoverished but charismatic Italian nobleman, is in London for his marriage to Maggie Verver, only child of the fabulously wealthy American financier and art collector, Adam Verver. Amerigo meets Charlotte Stant, a former mistress of his, and they go shopping for a wedding present for Maggie. They find a curiosity shop where the Jewish shopkeeper offers them an antique golden bowl. But the rather anti-Semitic Prince declines to purchase the bowl because he suspects it contains a hidden flaw.

After Maggie's marriage she is afraid that her father has become lonely. She persuades him to propose to Charlotte, unaware of her past relationship with Amerigo. Charlotte accepts, and soon she and the Prince find themselves thrown together because their respective spouses seem more interested in their father-daughter relationship than in their marriages. The Prince and Charlotte finally consummate an adulterous affair.

Maggie eventually begins to suspect Amerigo and Charlotte. This suspicion is intensified when she accidentally meets the shopkeeper and buys the golden bowl. Uncomfortable with the high price she paid for the bowl, the shopkeeper visits Maggie and confesses to overcharging her. At Maggie's home he sees photographs of Amerigo and Charlotte. He tells Maggie of the pair's shopping trip on the eve of her marriage and their intimate conversation in his shop. (They had spoken Italian, but he happens to understand the language.)

Maggie now confronts Amerigo, and then begins a secret campaign to separate the Prince and Charlotte while never letting her father know of their affair. She lies to Charlotte about not having anything to accuse her of, and she gradually persuades her father to return to America with his wife. Amerigo appears impressed by Maggie's delicate diplomacy, after he had previously regarded her as rather naive and immature. The novel ends with Adam and Charlotte about to depart for America, while Amerigo can "see nothing but" Maggie and embraces her.

Major themes

In the broadest sense of the term, The Golden Bowl is a novel of education. Maggie gradually sheds her childish naivete and grows into a capable woman who saves her marriage with dexterous handling of a potentially explosive situation. She realizes that she can't remain forever dependent on her father but must accept adult responsibilities in her marriage.

The Prince is portrayed as a thoroughgoing snob and far from overly scrupulous. But he comes to respect Maggie as she works cleverly and effectively to save their marriage. He had previously regarded Maggie and Adam as little more than "good children, bless their hearts, and the children of good children."

While it's never certain exactly how much Adam knows of the situation, he finally appears wise and understanding of his daughter's plan for the two couples to separate. Charlotte is a dazzlingly beautiful woman, but she may be a little "stupid" as the Prince pronounces in a harsh final judgment. She ultimately appears more bewildered than self-possessed.

The Golden Bowl's intense focus on these four characters - almost to the exclusion of everything else in the whole wide world - gives the novel both its tremendous power and its peculiar feeling of claustrophobia. While the book delves deeply and often brilliantly into the consciousness of Amerigo and Maggie, readers may sometimes feel that the novel loses its way in a maze of over-analysis.

Critical evaluation

There's always been a fairly strong negative case against this novel, beginning as far back as Rebecca West's assertion that "winter had fallen on genius in The Golden Bowl." The naysayers have criticized the heavy symbolism of the golden bowl, which is eventually broken in a scene that may not quite come off effectively. They've also disliked the space given to Fanny and Bob Assingham, a couple acquainted with the four central characters and given to much discussion of them. (The pun is probably intended, though nobody can be sure.) Finally, the general closed-in feeling of the novel has been decried as suffocating and unrealistic, and the book's style has been considered too ornate and figurative.

The favorable case asserts that the novel is a superb dramatization of the stresses inherent in any marriage and the sometimes circuitous methods required to overcome them. James' presentation of Maggie's subdued but desperate struggle is much admired for its insight and precision. The dialogue is often brilliant in its delicate indirection, and many scenes are realized with the full impact of James' most mature technique.

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