The Wings of the Dove

“The fact was that the relation between these young persons abounded in such oddities as were not inaptly symbolised by assignations that had a good deal more appearance than motive. Of the strength of the tie that held them we shall sufficiently take the measure; but it was meanwhile almost obvious that if the great possibility had come up for them it had done so, to an exceptional degree, under the protection of the famous law of contraries.”

The “famous law of contraries” alluded to in this quote is a reference to the philosophical notion of the unity of opposites. Put simply, the unity of opposites posits that opposites are interdependently connected. For instance, one cannot distinguish “light” without reference to “dark.” The relationships between the characters, including Kate and Densher as referred to here, are colored by this dynamic, although they are mutually defined by their contrasts.

“Suddenly she said to him with extraordinary beauty: ‘I engage myself to you for ever.’

The beauty was in everything, and he could have separated nothing—couldn’t have thought of her face as distinct from the whole joy. Yet her face had a new light. ‘And I pledge you—I call God to witness!—every spark of my faith; I give you every drop of my life.’ That was all, for the moment, but it was enough, and it was almost as quiet as if it were nothing.”

In this dialogue, Kate agrees to a secret engagement with Densher. Densher is thrilled by her straightforward statement of affection. However, the moment ends with the observation that “it was almost as quiet as if it were nothing,” subtly hinting that perhaps Kate is not sincere in her affection for Densher, that her words are effectively meaningless.

“Mrs. Stringham was never to forget—for the moment had not faded, nor the infinitely fine vibration it set up in any degree ceased—her own first sight of the striking apparition, then unheralded and unexplained: the slim, constantly pale, delicately haggard, anomalously, agreeably angular young person, of not more than two-and-twenty summers, despite her marks, whose hair was somehow exceptionally red even for the real thing, which it innocently confessed to being, and whose clothes were remarkably black even for robes of mourning, which was the meaning they expressed. It was New York mourning, it was New York hair, it was a New York history, confused as yet, but multitudinous, of the loss of parents, brothers, sisters, almost every human appendage, all on a scale and with a sweep that had required the greater stage; it was a New York legend of affecting, of romantic isolation, and, beyond everything, it was by most accounts, in respect to the mass of money so piled on the girl’s back, a set of New York possibilities.”

This passage serves as the only detailed description of Milly’s appearance. It also exemplifies how Susan, like other characters, initially attempts to classify Milly in accordance with her “type.” She sees Milly as a classic “New York type,” as indicated by the repetition of “New York” in the second sentence. Milly will later defy this typification by acting according to her own desires, as symbolized by, for example, her exchanging her black mourning clothes for a white gown at the party in Venice.

“For she now saw that the great thing she had brought away was precisely a conviction that the future wasn’t to exist for her princess in the form of any sharp or simple release from the human predicament. It wouldn’t be for her a question of a flying leap and thereby of a quick escape. It would be a question of taking full in the face the whole assault of life, to the general muster of which indeed her face might have been directly presented as she sat there on her rock.”

Susan expresses her estimation of Milly in romantic, hopeful terms. Susan transforms her into something of a fairy tale creature, a “princess.” Her language here also prefigures how Milly will face her own imminent demise, by “taking full in the face the whole assault of life.”

“Whatever Mrs. Lowder might have to show—and one hoped one did the presumptions all justice—she would have nothing like Milly Theale, who constituted the trophy producible by poor Susan.”

This passage provides an example of the ways Milly is used as a pawn by those around her, emphasizing the novel’s thematic engagement with The Instrumentalization of Relationships. Although Susan’s perspective of Milly will later change, this initial reflection on her part illustrates that even the loyal Susan sees Milly as a “trophy” she can use to make her friend Maud, who has otherwise more wealth and status than “poor Susan,” jealous.

“It had all gone so fast after this that Milly uttered but the truth nearest to hand in saying to the gentleman on her right—who was, by the same token, the gentleman on her hostess’s left—that she scarce even then knew where she was: the words marking her first full sense of a situation really romantic.”

Structurally, Book Fourth introduces Milly’s perspective for the first time. To an outside viewer, and perhaps to some of the participants, the setting seems like a dreary dinner party, but Milly delights in it as “a situation really romantic.” She’s dazzled by the exoticism of the setting and how it relates to what she has read in books about just such a scene.

“The handsome English girl from the heavy English house had been as a figure in a picture stepping by magic out of its frame: it was a case in truth for which Mrs. Stringham presently found the perfect image. She had lost none of her grasp, but quite the contrary, of that other conceit in virtue of which Milly was the wandering princess: so what could be more in harmony now than to see the princess waited upon at the city gate by the worthiest maiden, the chosen daughter of the burgesses?”

This quote relates to the motif of paintings used throughout the work to romanticize events. Susan describes Kate as ä figure in a picture stepping by magic out of its frame,” like a character in a painting. She extends the metaphor by seeing Milly in this painted image as a “princess.”

“‘My dear child, we move in a labyrinth.’

‘Of course we do. That’s just the fun of it!’ said Milly with a strange gaiety. Then she added: ‘Don’t tell me that—in this for instance—there are not abysses. I want abysses.’”

This dialogue between Susan and Milly highlights James’s use of Indirect Communication Through Implication, Insinuation, and Silence. Susan acknowledges and warns Milly that their British counterparts are drawing them into a scheme not explicitly stated. Milly recognizes this and describes these silences as “abysses,” recalling the imagery of the cliff she overlooked while in Switzerland.

“The great historic house had, for Milly, beyond terrace and garden, as the centre of an almost extravagantly grand Watteau-composition, a tone as of old gold kept ‘down’ by the quality of the air, summer full-flushed but attuned to the general perfect taste.”

This quote combines two different motifs—paintings and the seasons. Milly romanticizes the garden party by seeing it like a painting, specifically one by the French Rococo artist Antoine Watteau, recalling perhaps a work of his like The Pleasures of the Ball (1715-17). The garden party takes place during the “summer full-flushed,” or in other words, at the high point of Milly’s life before she succumbs to illness.

“She was before the picture, but she had turned to him, and she didn’t care if for the minute he noticed her tears. It was probably as good a moment as she should ever have with him. It was perhaps as good a moment as she should have with anyone, or have in any connection whatever. ‘I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I’m very glad therefore you’ve been a part of it.’”

Milly is moved to tears by the sight of (most likely) The Portrait of Lucrezia Panciatichi by Bronzino (1545). The difference between Milly’s reaction and that of Lord Mark’s shows the difference between “romanticism” and “realism.” For Milly, the work is a reflection of her own mortality in spite of her desire to live life fully. For Lord Mark, the work is a reflection of wealth.

“Directness, however evaded, would be, fully, for her; nothing in fact would ever have been for her so direct as the evasion.”

This observation by Milly about Aunt Maud goes to the heart of the complexity of indirect communication through implication, insinuation, and silence in the work. She recognizes that people’s indirectness communicates just as much, if not more, than things they directly state.

“She was to wonder in subsequent reflection what in the world they had actually said, since they had made such a success of what they didn’t say; the sweetness of the draught for the time, at any rate, was to feel success assured.”

In the moment after Milly runs into Kate and Densher together at the National Gallery, she is mollified by their reactions and interprets it as favorable to her; she believes Kate does not love Densher as much as Densher loves Kate. It is only on later reflection that she realizes they never actually stated anything forthrightly; she had simply interpolated it. This is illustrative of how indirect communication through implication, insinuation, and silence in the work creates room for misunderstandings.

“It would have been open to her, no doubt, to reply that to have him with her again, to have him all kept and treasured, so still, under her grasping hand, as she had held him in their yearning interval, was a sort of thing that he must allow her to have no quarrel about; but that would be a mere gesture of her grace, a mere sport of her subtlety. She knew as well as he what they wanted; in spite of which indeed he scarce could have said how beautifully he mightn’t once more have named it and urged it if she hadn’t, at a given moment, blurred, as it were, the accord.”

This passage illustrates how difficult Kate is to understand as a result of her indirect communication. Densher is desperate for her to confirm their engagement in direct terms, but instead she “blurred, as it were, the accord.” In the face of her lack of direct statements, Densher falls into romanticizing and interpreting all of her actions and statements, as when he decides that her lack of openness about her feelings is a sign of her “grace.”

“The long embrace in which they held each other was the rout of evasion, and he took from it the certitude that what she had from him was real to her. It was stronger than an uttered vow, and the name he was to give it in afterthought was that she had been sublimely sincere. That was all he asked—sincerity making a basis that would bear almost anything.”

A tacit, unstated element of the dynamic between Densher and Kate, and subsequently between Densher and Milly, is sexual desire. The language here subtly signals it as Densher describes his embrace with Kate as a “rout of evasion.” The word “rout” can mean “defeat,” as it is literally used here, but it can also be used metaphorically and informally to mean sexual intercourse.

“You’re right about her not being easy to know. One sees her with intensity—sees her more than one sees almost anyone; but then one discovers that that isn’t knowing her and that one may know better a person whom one doesn’t ‘see,’ as I say, half so much.”

This statement from Kate about Milly is revealing of the parallels between the characters. Milly elsewhere remarks to Densher that Kate is difficult to truly know. Here, Kate reflects a similar feeling about Milly. The interiority of both characters illustrates how similar they are despite their surface-level differences in class, appearances, and personality.

“When Kate and Densher abandoned her to Mrs. Stringham on the day of her meeting them together and bringing them to luncheon, Milly, face to face with that companion, had had one of those moments in which the warned, the anxious fighter of the battle of life, as if once again feeling for the sword at his side, carries his hand straight to the quarter of his courage.”

James positions Milly as a heroine whose bravery is not defined by her acts of valor but by her dedication to acting with grace and courage in spite of her terminal diagnosis. Here, he uses martial language like “the anxious fighter of the battle of life” to illustrate The Heroism of Kindness and Courage that Milly embodies as comparable to more “masculine” forms of bravery.

“Not yet so much as this morning had she felt herself sink into possession; gratefully glad that the warmth of the Southern summer was still in the high florid rooms, palatial chambers where hard cool pavements took reflexions in their lifelong polish, and where the sun on the stirred sea-water, flickering up through open windows, played over the painted ‘Subjects’ in the splendid ceilings—medallions of purple and brown, of brave old melancholy colour, medals as of old reddened gold, embossed and beribboned, all toned with time and all flourished and scolloped and gilded about, set in their great moulded and figured concavity (a nest of white cherubs, friendly creatures of the air) and appreciated by the aid of that second tier of smaller lights, straight openings to the front, which did everything, even with the Baedekers and photographs of Milly’s party dreadfully meeting the eye, to make of the place an apartment of state.”

This sentence describes the palazzo where Milly stays in Venice with the precise imagery and detail one commonly associates with ekphrasis, or the description of a work of art in literature. This illustrates how Milly transforms her very real surroundings into a romantic painting, such as how her realistic palazzo becomes “an apartment of state.” This contributes to the motif of Paintings throughout the work.

“Her welcome, her frankness, sweetness, sadness, brightness, her disconcerting poetry, as he made shift at moments to call it, helped as it was by the beauty of her whole setting and by the perception at the same time, on the observer’s part, that this element gained from her, in a manner, for effect and harmony, as much as it gave—her whole attitude had, to his imagination, meanings that hung about it, waiting upon her, hovering, dropping and quavering forth again, like vague faint snatches, mere ghosts of sound, of old-fashioned melancholy music.”

As Milly’s health begins to decline, Densher begins to see her in more romantic terms. In this passage, Densher describes Milly’s appearance not in concrete terms, but in figurative terms that relate to works of art, comparing her to a form of “poetry” set to “old-fashioned melancholy music.” He recognizes that she is dying, but he does not state it in absolute terms.

“‘Why not have done with it all and face the music as we are?’ It broke from him in perfect sincerity. ‘Good God, if you’d only take me!’”

Densher speaks with “perfect sincerity” that runs counter to Kate’s tendency to speak with ironic distance and ambiguity. His desperation breaks the surface here. His words, however, despite their sincerity, are laden with potential meanings. There is the literal interpretation that he wishes Kate to “take” him openly as her partner, and there is a secondary interpretation: Densher wishes to be “taken” in the sense of sexual intercourse. His declaration to God can also be read as a reference to Milly. He wishes God would “take” his life, instead of Milly. This ambiguity points to how Densher has begun to see Milly in a new, more amorous light that conflicts with his love for Kate.

“‘Don’t think, however, I’ll do all the work for you. If you want things named you must name them.’

He had quite, within the minute, been turning names over; and there was only one, which at last stared at him there dreadful, that properly fitted. ‘Since she’s to die I’m to marry her?’”

In this dialogue between Kate and Densher, the bare facts of Kate’s scheme are finally explicated, both for Densher and the reader. This is close to the end of the novel, illustrating how much is hidden from Densher until near the end of Milly’s life.

“It had simply worked, his idea, the idea he had made her accept; and all erect before him, really covering the ground as far as he could see, was the fact of the gained success that this represented.”

Densher feels momentarily elated after having finally consummated his relationship with Kate. Like in Important Quote #15, this sexual language is hinted at subtly through the use of the term “erect.” It is also illustrative of The Instrumentalization of Relationships. Although Densher is happy to finally be sexually satisfied, he also feels gratified because he has finally extracted something of value from Kate.

“‘Oh who can ever force you?’ he asked with his hand-to-mouth way, at all times, of speaking for her encouragement. ‘You’re the least coercible of creatures.’

‘Because, you think, I’m so free?’

‘The freest person probably now in the world. You’ve got everything.’

‘Well,’ she smiled, ‘call it so. I don’t complain.’”

This dialogue between Densher and Milly illustrates how all of the characters throughout speak in implications and insinuations. For instance, when Densher states, “you’re the least coercible of creatures,” it has an ironic element, as he is, of course, attempting to coerce Milly. Her response that she doesn’t “complain” is a tacit admission of her terminal illness, which she has heroically determined to bear with good humor.

“It was a conspiracy of silence, as the cliché went, to which no one had made an exception, the great smudge of mortality across the picture, the shadow of pain and horror, finding in no quarter a surface of spirit or of speech that consented to reflect it. […] So then it had been—a general conscious fool’s paradise—from which the specified had been chased like a dangerous animal.”

This reflection of Densher’s encapsulates the theme of indirect communication through implication, insinuation, and silence, and its function throughout the work. He recognizes that there are silences on all sides, both in the sense of Kate and Densher’s scheme and in the sense that no one has spoken openly of Milly’s illness and impending death, “the great smudge of mortality across the picture.”