So I used to keep The Portrait of a Lady in my bathroom for reading in the bathtub after a stressful day. And still today I think back to it with warm gratitude for putting my mind at peace night after night over one long and dark winter. In fact, there is nothing more comforting for me than James’ authorial position of absolute and minute control over each detail of his characters’ psychological and physical universe. And in their turn, his heroes are usually docile puppets that go along willingly with his benevolent patrimony. Therefore I was rather surprised about my discomfort at James’s late novel, The Tragic Muse. Looking at it more closely, I realized that there is a problem between James and his characters.
James’ publication of The Tragic Muse in 1890 was a failure. In Philip Horne’s introduction to the novel I read that the book encountered crushing criticism as “the very dreariest production” of its author. The characters in the novel were called “imbeciles in word and deed,” and the Dublin Review explained why this is so by calling James’ hero, diplomat-painter Nick Dormer, “a contemptible creature with aesthetic proclivities, who throws up a promising parliamentary career to potter over an easel” (Penguin Books 1995, xxii-xxiii). The attitude reflected in this criticism consists in absolute acceptance of the comme il faut of social norms and abhorrence of any form of transgression (even fictional or fictionalized). The life of an individual is seen not as a case where the rights and wrongs of a society are put in question, not as a venue for the critique of the general norm which defies an individual case (as is the case with the nineteenth-century Russian novel), but rather the other way around: the individual case is judged from the point of view of the status quo.
Ironically, James the critic shares this position with those who trashed his novel. Twelve years after the publication of The Tragic Muse), in his introduction to Madame Bovary , James himself would castigate in almost the same words the “unworthy” characters in Flaubert’s novels and even dismiss on these grounds L’Éducation sentimentale:
In his introduction, James tells us about Flaubert’s life and personality, his manner of dressing and communicating, his aesthetic views and style in the same way as he discusses the personalities and the behavior of Flaubert’s heroes. The major point of his criticism is that Flaubert dealt with a company of petty and unworthy people. We can infer that he himself wanted to write about “worthy” people, which for James meant social “winners” instead of Flaubert’s “losers.” Failure is an important term in James’ discussion of Flaubert. He speaks about Madame Bovary’s failure which is not, however, Flaubert’s failure because the tragic fate of the heroine allows for the possibility of a moralizing interpretation of Flaubert’s own intentions, whereas in L’Éducation sentimentale Frédéric’s social failure does not end in a tragedy and, thus, defies the moralistic exegesis that makes James consider the novel itself a failure. Frédéric’s unworthiness, so to say, does not serve a moral purpose, and this is already a shortcoming on Flaubert’s part.
James writes about Flaubert’s concern with “imagination” and suggests that Emma Bovary’s and Frédéric’s failures have something to do with them being “persons romantically determined.” But he is far from acknowledging that Flaubert’s “social” novels (differently but no less than Salammbô) mark the first steps in aestheticism’s fight with bourgeois mentality, in which the “artistic personality” is doomed to failure but defiantly announces itself in its clear opposition to the suffocating social comme if faut.
By criticizing Flaubert for choosing “such limited reflectors and registers” for his ideas, James shows his awareness of a big distance between Flaubert and his characters. And the characters’ independence from their author (their resistance to authorial intentions) angers him. James’ frustration betrays an attitude of internalized Victorian morals and success-oriented thinking. And this sounds like a displaced frustration with his own heroes in The Tragic Muse.
Strangely enough, James conceived of his own Tragic Muse as a novel about a conflict between art and society. Already in its very concept, the novel touches upon the question of “social failure,” implied in any artistic existence as an existence on the outskirts of so-called high society. James’ highly situated political upstart Nick Dormer, who leaves his social milieu in order to become a painter, represents a much more extreme case of social failure than Emma Bovary or Frédéric, who never occupied any social heights. But here the authorial intention comes with its puppet string.
Nick Dormer, who wants to become a painter, declares himself not so much on the side of art as against politics and the workings of high society. Nick’s attitude has a character of existential fatigue rather than of artistic dedication and anticipates the features of Thomas Mann’s Thomas Buddenbrook, the successful businessman who after his greatest commercial achievements experiences existential exhaustion, indulges in reading of Schopenhauer and, finally, dies destroying his family’s social prestige. Nick Dormer could easily have shared this fate considering that his resignation from politics created a situation through which the finances and social standing of his family were endangered.
But the tragedy and shame of social failure are consequences from which James wishes to save his hero. His aim is to depict a successful, powerful and socially respected artist as a politician, a bourgeois artist fully integrated into the social comme il faut. No need to say that such comme il faut in the case of Nick Dormer can be upheld only through considerable logical and psychological violence. Ironically, despite his attempts not to repeat Flaubert’s “mistakes,” James found himself accused by his Victorian critics of the same shortcomings in his own novel, that is, of depicting the social failure that the author desperately tried to repress. Repression indeed accounts for the form of The Tragic Muse in that it leads to the author’s struggle with his characters, the author’s struggle with the inner logic of his material.
Language, as is well known, is sensitive to psychological repression and tends to mirror and betray the repressed contents. Thus we can see the underlying pattern of repression in The Tragic Muse, first of all, in an idiosyncratic relation between language and plot: the verbosity of this novel clearly dominates and dwarfs the plot. The development of the plot is replaced by a continuing repetition of the novel's introductory situation. This repetition consists in talking over the same set of problems in the same constellation of characters again and again. In their turn, the characters preserve their emotions and views throughout the novel without any change or variation.
Thus everything that is going to happen in the novel is already articulated in its opening chapters. All characters are introduced not only in the whole of their personalities but in their relation to each other as well. We will always have two mothers – Mrs. Rooth and Mrs. Dormer – in search for financially and socially appropriate partners for their children in order to secure their own existence. Both will hope and try to arrange marriages again and again, disregarding previous experience of failure and the psychological awkwardness of such attempts.
Of course, such insensitivity and stubbornness on the mothers’ part can be interpreted as a device for producing a comical effect, but also a critical one by throwing into relief the same modes of behavior and, basically, the same homelessness and financial dependence on children of both the vagabond Mrs. Rooth and the “high situated Lady” Mrs. Dormer. Nevertheless, comicality and criticism seem to be rather a side effect if we consider that James’ own aspirations for settling his heroes properly are close to the mothers’. But if in the mothers’ case the children successfully resist, James as the author is much more successful in forcing his characters into psychologically and emotionally unjustified but socially appropriate, and even advantageous, marriages.
And throughout the novel we will have the same emotional relationship between the heroes: Julia Dallow will be always in love with Nick without response on his part, Biddy will be in love with Peter Sherringham without response on his part, Peter Sherringham will be always interested in theater and in Mariam Rooth without response on her part. In all these cases we will deal with an unjustified constancy or sameness of feelings.
Not the idea of a strong emotion persisting throughout the years as such but the immutability of its expression and the stasis of the psychological constellation between the characters throughout the years is symptomatic of the mechanisms of repression in the novel. For example, the second big proposal scene between Mariam Rooth and Peter Sherringham at the end of the novel repeats almost verbatim the proposal scene at the beginning. Nominally, Mariam becomes an established theater star and Peter Sherringham an established diplomat; however, this quantitative difference of their social position does not reflect any qualitative development of their consciousness which one might logically assume on the account of their years of separation and different experiences.
Both Mariam Rooth and Gabriel Nash are also characterized by a constant feature: she by her unchangeable, novice-like passion for theater; he by his unchangeable attitude of “being” instead of “doing,” which continues to be provoking, even though by the end of the novel, everybody has been familiar with it already for a long time. Again, neither Mariam’s stardom nor Gabriel Nash’s travels have any impact on their inner development.
James tries to compensate for the psychological stasis of his characters by bringing in some dynamism through changes of place: the heroes travel, come and go, change cities and countries, abandon their houses and rent new apartments. But this device helps little: their personalities stay ossified, hopelessly wedged between what they are and what the author believes they ought to be. The lack of development results in bulking-up of language as its side-effect.
Even when Nick Dormer finally gives up his parliamentary career, his “action” is swallowed by language. Although his scruples about political career and plans to leave it were articulated already early in the novel, his “action” triggers a new series of conversations with Julia Dallow, Gabriel Nash, Mr. Carteret, etc., repeating post factum everything already discussed ante factum. These swellings of discourse are symptomatic of the characters’ lack of freedom in the novel. The depiction of sexuality and gender relations goes to its core.
The Tragic Muse is not only a novel about the conflict between art and society but also a novel about love. However, it is easy to see that love is subordinate to the central social conflict and is meant to serve it by providing security for the characters in the case of their failure. In the nineteenth century marriage and inheritance were still the only ways to improve shattered social and financial position. This consideration seems to account for the fact that all major heroes in the novel are in love, but love is symmetrically distributed between their social roles: for each politician an artist.
In The Tragic Muse we can distinguish two types of love – love-passion which is closely associated with social failure and therefore has to be repressed and love-marriage which is closely associated with social prestige and security and has to be promoted. In the tension of these two types of love is situated James’ tension with his characters. I tend to see forced and highly unconvincing chastity in the relationship between passionately loving heroes not only and not so much as James’ homage to Victorian morals but rather as a way of saving his characters from failure and disaster with a secure marriage-love waiting in stock.
For example, Peter Sherringham’s liaison with Mariam Rooth would prevent him from marrying Biddy and thus from securing the position of the Dormer family. Even if broken off, a consummated affair with Mariam would make him unsuitable for marriage with Biddy because of the blemish on his social position, stunting his career and income prospective in which the Dormer family is interested. Biddy’s touching love for Peter Sherringham (despite all his demonstrations of indifference) and her refusal to marry another rich candidate (as unconvincing as it is) appear as James’ desperate attempts at mitigating the cynicism of the situation.
Nick’s psychologically forced infatuation with Julia Dallow has the same character. After several convincing expressions of indifference and even deep inner antagonism with Julia’s worldview, it is only the conversation with Mrs. Dormer beseeching Nick to marry Julia in order to rescue the family from impending financial misery that triggers Nick’s feelings for Julia – another of the author’s embellishing interventions trying to save face for his character after having forced him into a cynical compromise.
We know an analogous situation from The Aspern Papers where the narrator considers marrying an ugly old maid in order to get hold of valuable papers of the poet whose work he has spent his life studying. In this case James offers us a subtle and psychologically highly convincing picture of opportunistic self-deception on the part of the narrator who (initially disgusted by a marriage proposal by the spinster) starts talking himself into it and convincing himself of the attractiveness of family life and the virtues of his potential wife when he realizes that the undesirable union might be the only way of obtaining the desired papers.
James, usually known for refined depictions of subtle psychological dynamics, insinuates the same mechanism of self-deception in Nick but fails to make it convincing. Nick’s feelings for Julia which, despite their obvious convenience, are meant to be “true feelings,” appear too sudden and unmediated as an unambiguous consequence of the conversation with his mother. The major difference between Nick Dormer and the narrator in The Aspern Papers is exactly in the relation between the author and the character. If in the latter case James moved along with the inner logic of his character, not forcing him to the deeds contrary to his psychological situation but showing how his character psychologically works, in Nick Dormer’s case James moves against the logic of his character, forcing him into everything that is contrary to the nature of his personality and of his situation.
There are three scenes in the novel in which James’ struggle with his characters expresses itself in a shrill dissonance. These are scenes with a strong sexual dynamic which James, however, forces to remain unconvincingly and rigidly chaste. Namely, the last proposal scene between Mariam Rooth and Peter Sherringham, the portrait sitting scene between Nick Dormer and Mariam, and the engagement scene between Julia Dallow and Nick Dormer.
However, chastity in the novel is a device used to secure the characters socially via connection with the “appropriate” partner. Thus, the scene between Julia Dallow and Nick Dormer when Julia Dallow, who has been hopelessly in love with Nick for years, finally awakens Nick’s love, she gives in to a kiss only after intense inner struggle and radically refuses any expression of her passion for Nick. The fact that Julia is not very convinced by Nick’s love should not be a big obstacle in the way of her passion.
James presented Julia to us as a rich and politically influential woman who without scruples follows her goal of obtaining Nick Dormer through the financial dependence of his family and her political promotion of his carrier. His obvious indifference to her and her charity did not prevent her from persisting in her attempts. Julia Dallow’s refusal of an immediate marriage and love relationship with Nick is not very convincing psychologically against the given foil of her character but James provides her with words which explain her behavior in regard to the poetics of the novel. She wants to give Nick freedom from herself.
That a woman who, through the course of years, tried desperately (using all possible tricks) to evoke the desire of a man, would really have as her highest priority giving that man his freedom seems at best highly unconvincing. It is James himself who wants here (and in other scenes of high-minded chastity) freedom for his characters from each other and thus freedom for himself to match them up properly later on. However, in the scene with Julia, Nick’s freedom is not from Julia but for Julia because the chastity of their relationship makes it easier to repair the break, which inevitably had to follow.
The same can be said about the Mariam – Peter Sherringham scene at night in the living room of her villa when Peter Sherringham at the height of his desire, fired up with Mariam’s success during the premiere, instead of embracing the woman of his passion demands that she give up acting, the very thing that makes her fascinating for him, and become his wife. The tension and absurdity of the conversation betrays the tension of repressed sexual desire no less than a scene from one of Strindberg’s plays.
The central scene of the novel, betraying the sexual subtext, but also ironically chaste, is, of course, the scene between Mariam and Nick Dormer. Certainly, these two characters are drawn towards each other and their love story has to be the central relationship of the novel. Nick Dormer, who used to suffocate in his social milieu, encounters in Mariam for the first time in his life not only spiritual affinity, but also inspiration. Nick Dormer evokes Mariam’s interest and admiration only after his courageous confirmation of his seriousness about art. The meeting of these two major characters is essential for the development of the plot and is foreshadowed in the very beginning of the novel when Peter Sherringham suggests that Nick paint Mariam’s portrait as the tragic muse. The meeting of Nick and Mariam has the clear character of sexual sublimation instead of repression. The dynamics, choreography and conversation between the characters in this scene are sublimated into the act of painting. The reaction of Julia Dallow shows the jealous outrage not only of a woman against a woman but also of a prop-lover against the real lover in the novel.
From this point on, the novel had to take another course. A relation with Mariam would have meant for Nick a real commitment to the world of the arts and a non-bourgeois destiny, but at the same time it would have meant a real break with the Dallow family, leading to social decline and tragedy for Nick’s family. Thus, the appearance of Mariam in Nick’s life is the appearance not only of a muse but also of incipient tragedy. And exactly this aspect of Nick’s destiny had to be repressed so that the Dormer family does not suffer the fate of absolute social failure which James associates with “unworthy” people like the Bovary family. Following the logic of social security, the meeting between Mariam and Nick does not have any consequences besides a temporary rupture between Nick and Julia Dallow.
In the scene between Nick and Mariam, all the repressed moments of the novel – the tragic, artistic existence as social failure, sexuality, visual art and the freedom of the gaze – are sublimated in an ecstasy of freedom and creativity, a triumph of the characters over the author. Julia Dallow, as the incarnation of all James’ values accounting for the repression mechanisms in the novel, logically and understandably does not have a place in this world and runs away with outrage and indignity. James will return her to fulfill her social duty of rescuing the Dormer family from financial ruin and pulling Nick Dormer back into the sphere of conformity and mediocrity establishing his existence as a painter for high society. Everything that happens after this scene between Mariam and Nick Dormer can, thus, be considered James’ revenge on his characters.
One more hero deserves mentioning in relation to the pattern of repression in The Tragic Muse, the character in charge of the central scene between Mariam and Nick. It is Gabriel Nash who represents the oriental mentality of contemplation and being in opposition to the western drive of doing. It is certainly not a coincidence that he arrives from Samarkand at the beginning of the novel and disappears into India at its end. His attitude to life is absolutely foreign to all the other characters, artists and politicians alike. In both his latent exoticism and in his world view he betrays an affinity to Flaubert, evoking the exoticism of Salammbô and of the life attitude of Frédéric Moreau. Thus the figure of Gabriel Nash appears to me as a way of smuggling Flaubert’s sensibility into James’ novel.
Of course, this character does not receive the development he deserves. His function is limited to bringing together Mariam and Nick. In this he shows himself a major strategist in the characters’ struggle with their author. After Nick and Mariam have come together, momentarily triumphing over the author’s intentions, James starts his counter-attack, correcting and repressing all of the wrongs which have been done, and drives Gabriel Nash back into the orient.
However, James’ victory in the battle with his characters is an illusory one entailing the failure of the novel. James’ The Tragic Muse has its merit exactly in this failure, which signals an impending new epoch in the history of Western literature, an epoch of changed relation of the author to his material, of the author’s withdrawal from the battle with his characters by assuming the more restricted function of managing a discourse instead of censuring it. In any case, I removed this novel from the edge of my bathtub.
Printculture members can review, edit, and delete their comments, create a member page, and don't have to fill in the silly form below. Sign up or log in.
