Sontag’s work on Barthes in my analysis of The Golden Bowl

My analysis of Henry James in a master’s thesis reflects the semiotic ideas of Susan Sontag mentioned in my last blog. Though I delve into different genres, music and literature, I attempt to keep the kernel of the semiotic idea consistent as much as possible. Sontag is a constant influence. In “Writing Itself” from 1981, she attributes her love of sign and symbol to the writings of Roland Barthes: “Teacher, man of letters, moralist, philosopher of culture, connoisseur of strong idea, protean autobiographer…of all the intellectual notables who have emerged sine World War II in France, Roland Barthes is the one whose work I am most certain will endure” (425).  I use Barthes heavily when analyzing the work of Henry James, as I did in an MA Thesis in Literature in 2009. The Barthes I incorporate into my analysis of The Golden Bowl shows Sontag’s words -- “the would-be science of signs and structures” and “the writer organizing…the theory of his own mind” (426). In my study of The Golden Bowl, signs and symbols work together with delving into psychological and cultural issues. The Golden Bowl is psychological in character with long interior monologues and obsessions over symbols such as the titular gold bowl forming the basis of each character’s actions.

The dual natures -- signs and psychology, symbols, and culture -- arise from the central figure of the novel, the bowl made from a single quartz and gilded with gold. The object could be of immense value except that it has a hidden flaw in its structure – the quartz has an almost imperceptible crack. This symbol reflects the very class structure of the wealthy Americans and Europeans in the novel, desperately trying to hold on to the values of wealthy individuals who have virtually nothing to do in a society that appears idyllic but is riddled with a basic flaw. The less wealthy classes figure hardly at all in the novel, yet they are always there because the flaw of the golden bowl hangs over everyone, that symbol of the flawed class system that allows the frivolous behavior of the rich while the world toils around them in an unseen, ignored cry for equality.

The Golden Bowl is a story that takes place in the parlor rooms of the wealthy. It uses frivolous romances between the four major characters to show the hidden ills of a flawed society. The characters spend much time thinking inside their own heads, none more so than the wealthy patriarch Adam Verver. He wants nothing more than to collect the riches of the world; therefore he, an American, has come to Europe in the early years of the twentieth century in the first place – to buy these objects and transport them to America for display in the grandest of museums. When his daughter Maggie gets the idea to induce Adam to marry her friend Charlotte, an American living off the charity of friends in Europe, Adam does so willingly, thinking of Charlotte as yet another one of his conquest of objects. Everything in the story turns to the objectivity with which the characters view the world. Even people, such as Charlotte, become objects in the eyes of the wealthy.

The odious quality of this objectivity accounts for the decadence of the society of wealth argued over between Americans and Europeans in 1900s Europe. The need for Europeans to grab on to the wealth of Americans becomes a much-used device in the class-conscious stories of the early parts of the decade, devices still used in contemporary renditions of this much-debated class system. Everything from Upstairs, Downstairs to Downton Abbey to the class-oriented murder mysteries of Agatha Christie and P.D. James, among other queens (and kings) of crime, uses the objectivity imposed by the wealthy on the “lower” classes as fodder for the abhorrent nature of objectifying others and the devastating consequences such objectivity can bring. Stories such as these use symbols of murder weapons, opulent parlors, and all the “Golden Bowls” with all their cracks to show how class consciousness has inevitable and deadly results.

Turning from the cozy murder mystery to the parlor dramas and satires of Henry James, my intentions in studying James in the first place were to show how he could not give up the attraction to gothic elements which he had so brought to its heights with the most classic of all Victorian ghost stories, The Turn of the Screw, even after he officially turned his attention away from the supernatural. The Golden Bowl shows how James could not give up the interior monologues that betray a psychological analysis, inherently Freudian, that permeate The Turn of the Screw and other James’s ghost stories. These psychological elements make the reader question whether the supernatural exists or is only a manifestation of a mind obsessed by desire. Though the ghosts of The Turn of the Screw are presented as real from the governess’ point of view, the reader questions her need to create these supernatural elements in order to give herself a means to impress her employer, so great is her attraction to him. This question of the reality of the supernatural as opposed to Freudian psychology forms the heart of James’ ghost stories.

My thesis is that this thematic opposition is there in James’ late parlor dramas also. Yet in these works, such as The Golden Bowl, the threat comes in the form of adultery, a symbol in and of itself of the decadence of the society that pretends to abhor it, but that allows it in apparent abundance. The plot of The Golden Bowl, such as it is, concerns the gossip of the parlor room whispers that would constantly charge Adam Verver’s wife, Charlotte,  as a possible adulteress. The same is true for Maggie’s husband, the Italian prince Amerigo, who has married into the Verver family for their fortune. The reader spends enough time with Charlotte and Amerigo to know that they secretly knew each other as lovers, unknown to Maggie, before Maggie introduced Charlotte to her father. The implication arises that Charlotte and Amerigo may be embarking upon a renewal of their former relationship. This threat of adultery looms over the plot of The Golden Bowl through various symbols that betray an abhorrent atmosphere: spooky cathedral spires, black clothing in foggy shadows, costume parties with Cleopatra regalia, a trip by the two without their spouses to a country house weekend of fun and games in the dark, and, perhaps most of all, the constant array of riches collected  by Adam and studied by Charlotte to the point of her leading tours through their opulent home.

Does adultery substitute for the supernatural? I would not go as far as that. But the atmosphere of oppression and gloom that adultery brings to the story reflects the uneasy atmosphere of abjectness that inhabits the gothic. In both instances, garish opulence casts a long shadow over the individuals involved causing a psychological uneasiness that leads to the point of nervous disruption and possible mental breakdown. This neurosis, symbolized by the supernatural in the gothic and the breakdown of gender values (marriage) in the parlor drama, becomes the most poignant symbol of all.

 

The MA thesis I refer to is Harris, Nicholas. “Gothic Elements in Henry James’ The Golden Bowl: A Postmodern Perspective” MA Thesis. Union Institute & University, 2009.

Comment by Sontag, Susan. “Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes.” A Susan Sontag Reader, ed. By Elizabeth Hardwick, Farrar, Straus, Giroux. 1982.

For symbol in Henry James, I would suggest Johnson, Lee McKay. Finding the Figure in the Carpet. Vision and Silence in the Works of Henry James. New York: Universe, Inc. 2006.

For objectification in The Golden Bowl, refer to Nussbaum, Martha C. “Objectification.” in Sex and Social Justice. Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 213-239.