The Wings of the Dove

Henry James (1843-1916) was a British-American author whose works often focus on the social relationships between “old money” Europeans and “new money” Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries. Although his works are not strictly biographical, they are based on his own experiences. James was born into an incredibly wealthy “new money” family in New York City. He spent his childhood travelling between the United States and Europe. In 1875, he moved to Paris and spent the majority of the rest of his life in Europe. He became a British subject shortly before his death in 1916. James used his experiences as a new money “arriviste” within the high cultural circles of the continental European and British elite to write dense, layered novels that explore the cultural and class tensions between these groups. Some of his best-known works that draw from these experiences are The Portrait of a Lady (1881), The American (1877), and The Ambassadors (1903). The Wings of the Dove similarly explores the dynamics between the wealthy American heiress Milly Theale and the British aristocracy and ambitious upper-middle classes as they seek to take advantage of her innocence and wealth.

The character of Milly is loosely based on James’s cousin Minny Temple, who died at the age of 25 of tuberculosis. According to James, Minny, like the fictional Milly, “would have given anything to live” (Henry James. Notes of a Son and Brother. Scribner, 1914. p. 515). James’s relationship with his cousin was not romantic, although he cared for her deeply. James himself was a lifelong bachelor who is thought by many biographers to have been gay.

During the “Gilded Age,” the era from the late 1870s to the late 1890s, when James published his best-known works, the traditional dynamics of the relationship between American and European society were in the process of transformation. Many of the continental European and British aristocracy who came from titled, old-money families found themselves in financial difficulties due to a confluence of factors, including diminished power following the 1848 revolutions and economic mismanagement. Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution and financial “innovation” led to some Americans acquiring vast fortunes. Conscious of their presumptive lack of culture in contrast to their cultivated European counterparts, these upwardly mobile Americans flocked to Europe to take in the historic sights, museums, and other important markers of European history. In James’s works, although the wealthy, old-money Europeans are skeptical about these uncultured, new money Americans, they are also envious of their wealth. The Americans’ romantic view of Europe, as illustrated in The Wings of the Dove by Milly and, to a lesser extent, Susan, is somewhat bruised when it comes into contact with the concrete realism of the calculating, scheming members of British aristocracy like Maud. Milly has “a desire to see the places she had read about” (130), but what they find is “beyond any book” (393), for better or worse.

The cultural differences extend past class conflicts to encompass stereotypes (or simply, “types,” as they are referred to in the work) about each group. The British stereotype Americans as “spontaneous” and somewhat socially naïve, while the Americans find themselves confused by the coded language and social cues of the British upper classes. However, James’s characters do not always conform to these types, creating further complexity and tension in the work. For instance, the British Densher, who is difficult to “class” due to his haphazard and wandering upbringing, pushes throughout for straightforward language from Kate, defying his culture’s expectations that one not speak directly about difficult or emotional subjects.