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The Wings of the Dove – a study guide

plot, characters, resources, video, further reading

The Wings of the Dove (1902) is one of James’s late, great masterpieces. Quite apart from the famous baroque prose style, it features many of his recurrent themes. American innocence pitched against European cunning. The plot is a complex love triangle which strains at the limits of what is morally acceptable. Even for modern readers, the scheming and motivations will seem quite shocking.

The heroine Kate Croy is in love with a man who hasn’t enough money to offer her a fashionable marriage. She thinks she can enhance her lover’s financial prospects by pushing him into the arms of a rich American heiress who is dying – but she doesn’t count on the unexpected results.

The setting is a Venice that includes the usual correlatives of disease and death. And a social depth which is more-than-usually concerned with issues of money, social status, and class mobility. Be prepared for long and complex sentences which strain many readers’ patience.

Plot summary

Kate Croy and Merton Densher are two engaged Londoners who desperately want to marry but have very little money. Kate is constantly put upon by family troubles, and is now living with her domineering aunt, Maud Lowder. Into their world comes Milly Theale, an enormously rich young American woman who had previously met and fallen in love with Densher, though she didn’t reveal her feelings. Her travelling companion and confidante, Mrs. Stringham, is an old friend of Maud’s. Kate and Aunt Maud welcome Milly to London, and the American heiress enjoys great social success.

With Kate as a companion, Milly goes to see an eminent physician, Sir Luke Strett, because she’s afraid that she is suffering from an incurable disease. The doctor is noncommittal but Milly fears the worst. Kate suspects that Milly is deathly ill. After the trip to America where he had met Milly, Densher returns to find the heiress in London. Kate wants Densher to pay as much attention as possible to Milly, though at first he doesn’t quite know why. Kate has been careful to conceal from Milly (and everybody else) that she and Densher are engaged.

With the threat of serious illness hanging over her, Milly decides to travel to Venice with Mrs. Stringham. Aunt Maud, Kate and Densher follow her. At a party Milly gives in her Venice palazzo (the older Palazzo Barbaro, called “Palazzo Leporelli” in the novel), Kate finally reveals her complete plan to Densher: he is to marry Milly so that, after her presumably soon-to-occur death, Densher will inherit the money they can marry on. Densher had suspected this was Kate’s idea, and he demands that she consummate their affair before he’ll go along with her plan.

Aunt Maud and Kate return to London while Densher remains with Milly. Unfortunately, the dying girl learns from a former suitor of Kate’s about the plot to get her money. She “turns her face to the wall” and grows very ill. Densher sees her one last time before he leaves for London, where he eventually receives news of Milly’s death.

Milly does leave him a large amount of money despite everything. But Densher won’t touch the money, and he won’t marry Kate unless she also refuses the bequest. Conversely, if Kate chooses the money instead of him, Densher offers to make the bequest over to her in full. The lovers part on the novel’s final page with a cryptic exclamation from Kate: “We shall never be again as we were!”

Study resources

The Wings of the Dove – Oxford World Classics edition

The Wings of the Dove – Wordsworth Classics edition

The Wings of the Dove – Penguin Classics edition

The Wings of the Dove – Norton Critical Editions

The Wings of the Dove – 1997 film adaptation on DVD

The Wings of the Dove – eBook version at Project Gutenberg.

The Wings of the Dove – authoritative text

The Wings of the Dove – audioBook at LibriVox

Henry James – biographical notes

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

Film version

1997 film adaptation

This is a lush and beautiful film version of the novel from director Iain Softley. His London scenes are successful, but the film really comes alive visually in Venice, though it has to be said that the explicit sexual content is somwhat at odds with Jame’s original text, where everything is implied and suggested rather than made overt. Helena Bonham Carter gives a typically pouting and sexy performance as the emotionally scheming Kate Croy, and Alison Elliot is convincingly consumptive as the heiress Milly Theale. Even the costumes were nominated for an Academy award in this outstanding production which captures faithfully the spirit of the original novel.

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Principal characters

Henry James’s study

Further reading

Biographical

Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

a Henry James manuscript

This is an example of what’s called ‘criss cross’ writing. To save paper, and because the postal service once charged by the sheet, many people wrote their letters in two directions on the page, perpendicularly to each other. It was not unusual to use both sides of the page, and thus get four pages of writing onto one sheet of paper.

The writing is not so difficult to read as you might imagine. We are accustomed to reading English language from left to right and from top to bottom on the page. Writing going in another direction becomes like ‘wallpaper’ in the background.

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel – the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian father. She has a handsome young suitor – but the father disapproves of him. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant town house. Who wins out in the end? You will be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, with a sensitive picture of a woman’s life.

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.

The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. She develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go exactly according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against selfless high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.

Roderick Hudson (1876) was the first of James’s novels to be published in book form. It’s the story of a young man transplanted from a lawyer’s office in Massachusetts to a sculptor’s studio in Rome. Unable to make the adjustment between the new world and the old, he fails in both art and love, and meets a tragic end in Switzerland. This is one of many of James’s works which deals with tensions and differences between Europe and America.

Daisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Her innocence and her audacity offend social conventions and she seems to compromise her reputation. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. A great study in understatement and symbolic power.

The Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette. Pulling her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, to whom she becomes attracted. The dramatic contest to possess her is played out with some witty and often rather sardonic touches, and as usual James keeps the reader guessing about the outcome until the very last page.

What Masie Knew (1897) A young girl is caught between parents who are in the middle of conflict, adultery, and divorce. Can she survive without becoming corrupted? It’s touch and go – and not made easier for the reader by the attentions of an older man who decides to ‘look after’ her. This comes from the beginning of James’s ‘Late Phase’, so be prepared for longer and longer sentences. In fact it’s said that whilst composing this novel, James switched from writing longhand to using dictation – and it shows if you look carefully enough – part way through the book.

The Ambassadors (1903) Lambert Strether is sent from the US to Paris to recall Chadwick Newsome, a young man who is reported to be compromising himself by an entanglement with a wicked woman. However, Strether’s mission fails when he is seduced by the social pleasures of the European capital, and he takes Newsome’s side. So a second ambassador is dispatched in the form of the more determined Sarah Pocock. She delivers an ultimatum which is resisted by the two young men, but then an accident reveals unpleasant truths to Strether, who is faced by a test of loyalty between old Europe and the new USA. This edition presents the latest scholarship on James and includes an introduction, notes, selected criticism, a text summary and a chronology of James’s life and times.

The Golden Bowl (1904) is the climax of James’ late period. The writing is mannered, baroque, complex, and focused intently on the psychological relationships between his characters. There is very little ‘plot’ here in the conventional sense. The bowl in the title is a gift from one couple to another – but there’s a lot more to it than that of course. It will not be giving away too much of the story to say that it concerns an American heiress as she becomes aware of the secret affair between her new husband and her father’s young wife.

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James is intended to provide a critical introduction to James’ work. Throughout the major critical shifts of the past fifty years, and despite suspicions of the traditional high literary culture that was James’ milieu, as a writer he has retained a powerful hold on readers and critics alike. All essays are written at a level free from technical jargon, designed to promote accessibility to the study of James and his work.

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