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The Wings of the Dove (Signet Classics)
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Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Author: Henry James
Publisher: Signet Classics
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Our Price: $6.95
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Author: Henry James
Publisher: Signet Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The Wings of the Dove (Signet Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.4
EAN: 9780451527288
ISBN: 0451527283
Label: Signet Classics
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 512
Publication Date: 1999-04-01
Publisher: Signet Classics
Studio: Signet Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.4
EAN: 9780451527288
ISBN: 0451527283
Label: Signet Classics
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 512
Publication Date: 1999-04-01
Publisher: Signet Classics
Studio: Signet Classics
Editorial Review of The Wings of the Dove (Signet Classics)
With a penetrating introduction by Brenda Wineapple, a top biographer of the American expatriates, this 100th Anniversary edition celebrates James' masterwork of love, death and greed.
Customer Reviews of The Wings of the Dove (Signet Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Exhausting
Review: I'm a seasoned reader of the classics and have enjoyed other novels by James. This book took me four months to read and nearly killed me. After having read great literature almost non-stop for 10 years, I took a year's break from reading after this book. Enough said. I spent time reflecting on it - surely the hard slog was worth it? What was I missing? Other reviewers seemed to find depth to the book...But no, I wasn't touched or transformed, I learned nothing from the characters and felt no sympathy towards them. I felt empty and exhausted at the end. Perhaps that was the intended impact of the novel? If so, I give it 2 stars for achieving at least that.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Kudos to all Valient Readers...
Review: The reader tries valiantly to appreciate this work of psychological fiction from a century ago. Henry James is rightly celebrated as an author, both as a weaver of words and as a caster of characters, and so the reader valiantly tries. But even though James is a master of his craft, the way here is hard going.
In this work dating from 1902, Henry James writes favoring obscurity over clarity, circuitousness instead of directness and vagueness rather than subtlety. When the reader struggles valiantly onward, it is much as if one were to attempt to hack one's way through the trackless Amazonian rain forest using only tweezers and butter knife, all the while, wondering whether is it worth so much to learn so little. It is a question each reader must answer for herself or himself.
The reader longs to appreciate and honor the characters, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, to honor their love as well as their concern about marriage on less of an income then they might wish; however, the reader who looks upon the heart is tempted to wonder what kind of a love this might be, that hesitates to move forward on a pathway of insufficient pounds and pence, or that plans and proposes underhanded pragmatic methods to acquire such means. The reader longs to appreciate and honor the character of Milly Theale, the dove, the extraordinarily wealthy heiress who had previously met and fallen in love with Dresher, yet has kept her feelings to herself. This tragically romantic figure, based on James' cousin Minny, can bring the reader to the point of tears, but only if the reader cuts through some inordinately thick pea soup verbiage.
The underling plot is engaging enough, but, critics aside, even the most valiant reader is daunted by James' relentless surge of fifty-word sentences, such as:
"The fact of the adventure was flagrant between them; they had looked at each other, on gaining the street, as people look who have just rounded together a dangerous corner, and there was therefore already enough unanimity sketched out to have lighted, for her companion, anything equivocal in her action."
Why this jumble of words, why these awkward turns of phrase? A diagrammer's despair, to be sure. To have to read a steady succession of such sentences is something akin to having molasses poured all over one's body and then being set down over a nearby fire ant's nest.
James found his most famous (memorable and thankfully short!) phrase from "Dove", "To turn one's face to the wall", in Scripture, in Hezekiah's action in Isaiah 38:2. The meaning of the phrase, a turning away from everything and everybody, with nothing to look forward to but death, was highlighted in a sermon by the Rev. Thomas Bradbury, published in 1877 (see page 565 of "Grove Chapel Pulpit" of that sermon preached on Nov. 4, 1877), and was generally quite familiar to the scripturally literate reader of James' day. Later generations sometimes think it James' invention, but the source from whom he borrowed is, as it were, the Almighty. If one must borrow, why not the best?
One longs to see what other great authors would have done, given the same plot, settings and characters. No doubt, Trollope would have told the story just as leisurely, but with fewer lapses and greater finesse--and more love for the protagonists. Dickens would have enriched the descriptions of place and made more ironic/comic use of most of the supporting characters. Austen would have given us a tale replete with bon mots, tender and surprising scenes, and characters that even when they are at their worst, are deeply loved by their creator. Fitzgerald would have given us more visual and aural delights, and pared the prose to pithiness. Well, we are left with the ponderous mind of Mr. James, who at times had no idea how very amorphous his work could be.
Kudos to all valiant readers who persist to the end.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Henry James fan
Review: Skimming through the reviews here, I don't seem to find any by people who love and enjoy Henry James's last three novels. I do. The prose takes getting used to (and critics of James's own time, including H. G. Wells, said it was like a hippopatomus trying to pick up a pea), and all the characters are rich and so, by American standards, can't have any problems and must never have done anything wrong. Even the "poor" protagonists have jobs and aren't starving: they just want to be very wealthy indeed.
But once you get used to the prose it's brilliant and witty, and nobody in the history of fiction has done people trying to kid themselves about how rotten they are better than James does. Milly Theale, the absolute angel who gets exploited by everybody and doesn't even mind, is not the kind of character who would be believable in an ordinary novel. But James makes her acceptable, because we see how complex her thoughts are, and how difficult her situation AS SHE HERSELF SEES IT, is. No other writer can do this sort of thing, and it takes James's sort of prose to do it this well.
Some people prefer earlier James works, and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is a brilliant and intense novel that isn't quite so hard to read as THE WINGS OF THE DOVE. But the good woman in that book gets utterly crushed (James had guts and almost never sold out to what his readers might want by way of a happy ending); she never knows what hit her until it's too late. The good woman in WINGS knows everything, and finds a way to forgive her torturers, while at the same time torturing them back again with that very forgiveness. And does she know all that? Does she know that being nice will hurt her tormenters even worse than they hurt her? In the later Henry James, even the good characters know everything. That's why these novels are hard to read, in every sense. But my goodness how they pay off, and how a real James fan can find passages in them to treasure forever.
He writes about people who are trying to think while suffering deeply. He's one of the very very few writers who do, or can.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: To Betray Others Is To Betray Yourself
Review: By the time Henry James had written WINGS OF THE DOVE in 1902, most of his best work was behind him. In many of these novels and short stories, James had shown a fascination with the theme of the new world American bumping into the old world European. Just as James himself seemed unable to label himself definitively as one or the other, so do many of his characters muck about with some Americans coming off as country bumpkins while other Americans have old-world fineness and grace hardwired into their genes. In WINGS OF THE DOVE, Milly Theale is an American heiress whose inner qualities James deliberately obscures. She is wealthy, beautiful, good-hearted--and dying. Milly seems too good to be true, and of course she is; she suffers not only from the dread disease of cancer but the equally dread disease of emotional blindness. Milly decides to take a trip to Europe, where she encounters her doppleganger, Kate Croy. Millie sees Kate as having a feral aggressiveness that Millie admires but can never duplicate. Yet, both Kate and Millie soon discover points in common: they like and admire one another, and more disturbingly they both love the same man, Merton Densher. James complicates the plot in a manner worthy of a soap opera. Kate discovers that Millie is dying and hatches a plan breathtaking in its audacity. Merton, who is both poor and secretly engaged to Kate, must worm his way into the affections of Millie, whom he will marry. Then, after her expected demise, he will inherit Millie's fortune, and thus be free to marry Kate.
The problem with this plan becomes clear when we find out that it is one thing for two otherwise honorable people to contemplate deceitful actions and quite another for them to actually have the mental toughness to carry it out. James keeps the reader involved in this unlikely plan by shifting focus from victim to plotter. Millie is so good so kind that her only flaw is her inability to see what is right in front of her nose and yet this is quite enough to cause her undoing. If Kate were no more than a heartless backstabber, then the novel would have a huge hole in the plot where there ought to be some convincing motivation. James sidesteps this dilemma by making both Merton and Kate fully rounded characters, both of whom are fully aware of what they are doing and why, but unable to come up with another scenario that would permit them to marry. Kate is now the dramatic center. It is she who sizes up her own unhappy situation. It is she who correctly assesses Millie's feelings for Merton. And it is she who weighs cost versus benefit and decides that the latter outweighs the former. Of course, their plans go predictably awry when Millie discovers their plan and breaks up with Merton. Millie dies, and astoundingly, her will yet provides money for Merton. And it is here that James allows the moneyed world of the obtuse American to meld with that of the flawed but decent European. Kate and Merton then must ponder whether their consciences will permit them to accept the largesse of a woman who has forgiven them from beyond the grave.
WINGS OF THE DOVE is a superb novel that explores what it means to be kind and decent. For those who might be inclined to these noble qualities, Henry James suggests that decency and self-interest need not be mutually exclusive so long as one can be honest enough with all concerned. Such difficult questions are not limited only to a Kate and Merton who must stare at an envelope and decide whether it holds their future or their past.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A real slog
Review: I know H. James is considered one of the "Greats" of American literature and I question my taste for hating most of his writing. With few exceptions I think he is a pretentious purveyor of obscurantism. I read Wings of the Dove many years ago in the days when I would not allow myself to set aside books I did not enjoy. I recently picked up a collection of his short stories and remembered why I disliked him so much. Now in my old age I had no pangs of conscience when I happily closed the book before finishing it. If more of the stories had been like Daisy Miller I would have proceeded further but unfortunately much of the writing reminded me of Wings. I am currently seeking relief from Henry's turgid prose by reading Hemingway. I'd trade in a Henry for an Ernie any day. It's also difficult to like Mr. James' snobbish, shallow and unsympathetic characters. The more sympathetic ones were obscured by his heavy hand and my impatience with his style.
Review Summary: Exhausting
Review: I'm a seasoned reader of the classics and have enjoyed other novels by James. This book took me four months to read and nearly killed me. After having read great literature almost non-stop for 10 years, I took a year's break from reading after this book. Enough said. I spent time reflecting on it - surely the hard slog was worth it? What was I missing? Other reviewers seemed to find depth to the book...But no, I wasn't touched or transformed, I learned nothing from the characters and felt no sympathy towards them. I felt empty and exhausted at the end. Perhaps that was the intended impact of the novel? If so, I give it 2 stars for achieving at least that.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Kudos to all Valient Readers...
Review: The reader tries valiantly to appreciate this work of psychological fiction from a century ago. Henry James is rightly celebrated as an author, both as a weaver of words and as a caster of characters, and so the reader valiantly tries. But even though James is a master of his craft, the way here is hard going.
In this work dating from 1902, Henry James writes favoring obscurity over clarity, circuitousness instead of directness and vagueness rather than subtlety. When the reader struggles valiantly onward, it is much as if one were to attempt to hack one's way through the trackless Amazonian rain forest using only tweezers and butter knife, all the while, wondering whether is it worth so much to learn so little. It is a question each reader must answer for herself or himself.
The reader longs to appreciate and honor the characters, Kate Croy and Merton Densher, to honor their love as well as their concern about marriage on less of an income then they might wish; however, the reader who looks upon the heart is tempted to wonder what kind of a love this might be, that hesitates to move forward on a pathway of insufficient pounds and pence, or that plans and proposes underhanded pragmatic methods to acquire such means. The reader longs to appreciate and honor the character of Milly Theale, the dove, the extraordinarily wealthy heiress who had previously met and fallen in love with Dresher, yet has kept her feelings to herself. This tragically romantic figure, based on James' cousin Minny, can bring the reader to the point of tears, but only if the reader cuts through some inordinately thick pea soup verbiage.
The underling plot is engaging enough, but, critics aside, even the most valiant reader is daunted by James' relentless surge of fifty-word sentences, such as:
"The fact of the adventure was flagrant between them; they had looked at each other, on gaining the street, as people look who have just rounded together a dangerous corner, and there was therefore already enough unanimity sketched out to have lighted, for her companion, anything equivocal in her action."
Why this jumble of words, why these awkward turns of phrase? A diagrammer's despair, to be sure. To have to read a steady succession of such sentences is something akin to having molasses poured all over one's body and then being set down over a nearby fire ant's nest.
James found his most famous (memorable and thankfully short!) phrase from "Dove", "To turn one's face to the wall", in Scripture, in Hezekiah's action in Isaiah 38:2. The meaning of the phrase, a turning away from everything and everybody, with nothing to look forward to but death, was highlighted in a sermon by the Rev. Thomas Bradbury, published in 1877 (see page 565 of "Grove Chapel Pulpit" of that sermon preached on Nov. 4, 1877), and was generally quite familiar to the scripturally literate reader of James' day. Later generations sometimes think it James' invention, but the source from whom he borrowed is, as it were, the Almighty. If one must borrow, why not the best?
One longs to see what other great authors would have done, given the same plot, settings and characters. No doubt, Trollope would have told the story just as leisurely, but with fewer lapses and greater finesse--and more love for the protagonists. Dickens would have enriched the descriptions of place and made more ironic/comic use of most of the supporting characters. Austen would have given us a tale replete with bon mots, tender and surprising scenes, and characters that even when they are at their worst, are deeply loved by their creator. Fitzgerald would have given us more visual and aural delights, and pared the prose to pithiness. Well, we are left with the ponderous mind of Mr. James, who at times had no idea how very amorphous his work could be.
Kudos to all valiant readers who persist to the end.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Henry James fan
Review: Skimming through the reviews here, I don't seem to find any by people who love and enjoy Henry James's last three novels. I do. The prose takes getting used to (and critics of James's own time, including H. G. Wells, said it was like a hippopatomus trying to pick up a pea), and all the characters are rich and so, by American standards, can't have any problems and must never have done anything wrong. Even the "poor" protagonists have jobs and aren't starving: they just want to be very wealthy indeed.
But once you get used to the prose it's brilliant and witty, and nobody in the history of fiction has done people trying to kid themselves about how rotten they are better than James does. Milly Theale, the absolute angel who gets exploited by everybody and doesn't even mind, is not the kind of character who would be believable in an ordinary novel. But James makes her acceptable, because we see how complex her thoughts are, and how difficult her situation AS SHE HERSELF SEES IT, is. No other writer can do this sort of thing, and it takes James's sort of prose to do it this well.
Some people prefer earlier James works, and THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is a brilliant and intense novel that isn't quite so hard to read as THE WINGS OF THE DOVE. But the good woman in that book gets utterly crushed (James had guts and almost never sold out to what his readers might want by way of a happy ending); she never knows what hit her until it's too late. The good woman in WINGS knows everything, and finds a way to forgive her torturers, while at the same time torturing them back again with that very forgiveness. And does she know all that? Does she know that being nice will hurt her tormenters even worse than they hurt her? In the later Henry James, even the good characters know everything. That's why these novels are hard to read, in every sense. But my goodness how they pay off, and how a real James fan can find passages in them to treasure forever.
He writes about people who are trying to think while suffering deeply. He's one of the very very few writers who do, or can.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: To Betray Others Is To Betray Yourself
Review: By the time Henry James had written WINGS OF THE DOVE in 1902, most of his best work was behind him. In many of these novels and short stories, James had shown a fascination with the theme of the new world American bumping into the old world European. Just as James himself seemed unable to label himself definitively as one or the other, so do many of his characters muck about with some Americans coming off as country bumpkins while other Americans have old-world fineness and grace hardwired into their genes. In WINGS OF THE DOVE, Milly Theale is an American heiress whose inner qualities James deliberately obscures. She is wealthy, beautiful, good-hearted--and dying. Milly seems too good to be true, and of course she is; she suffers not only from the dread disease of cancer but the equally dread disease of emotional blindness. Milly decides to take a trip to Europe, where she encounters her doppleganger, Kate Croy. Millie sees Kate as having a feral aggressiveness that Millie admires but can never duplicate. Yet, both Kate and Millie soon discover points in common: they like and admire one another, and more disturbingly they both love the same man, Merton Densher. James complicates the plot in a manner worthy of a soap opera. Kate discovers that Millie is dying and hatches a plan breathtaking in its audacity. Merton, who is both poor and secretly engaged to Kate, must worm his way into the affections of Millie, whom he will marry. Then, after her expected demise, he will inherit Millie's fortune, and thus be free to marry Kate.
The problem with this plan becomes clear when we find out that it is one thing for two otherwise honorable people to contemplate deceitful actions and quite another for them to actually have the mental toughness to carry it out. James keeps the reader involved in this unlikely plan by shifting focus from victim to plotter. Millie is so good so kind that her only flaw is her inability to see what is right in front of her nose and yet this is quite enough to cause her undoing. If Kate were no more than a heartless backstabber, then the novel would have a huge hole in the plot where there ought to be some convincing motivation. James sidesteps this dilemma by making both Merton and Kate fully rounded characters, both of whom are fully aware of what they are doing and why, but unable to come up with another scenario that would permit them to marry. Kate is now the dramatic center. It is she who sizes up her own unhappy situation. It is she who correctly assesses Millie's feelings for Merton. And it is she who weighs cost versus benefit and decides that the latter outweighs the former. Of course, their plans go predictably awry when Millie discovers their plan and breaks up with Merton. Millie dies, and astoundingly, her will yet provides money for Merton. And it is here that James allows the moneyed world of the obtuse American to meld with that of the flawed but decent European. Kate and Merton then must ponder whether their consciences will permit them to accept the largesse of a woman who has forgiven them from beyond the grave.
WINGS OF THE DOVE is a superb novel that explores what it means to be kind and decent. For those who might be inclined to these noble qualities, Henry James suggests that decency and self-interest need not be mutually exclusive so long as one can be honest enough with all concerned. Such difficult questions are not limited only to a Kate and Merton who must stare at an envelope and decide whether it holds their future or their past.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A real slog
Review: I know H. James is considered one of the "Greats" of American literature and I question my taste for hating most of his writing. With few exceptions I think he is a pretentious purveyor of obscurantism. I read Wings of the Dove many years ago in the days when I would not allow myself to set aside books I did not enjoy. I recently picked up a collection of his short stories and remembered why I disliked him so much. Now in my old age I had no pangs of conscience when I happily closed the book before finishing it. If more of the stories had been like Daisy Miller I would have proceeded further but unfortunately much of the writing reminded me of Wings. I am currently seeking relief from Henry's turgid prose by reading Hemingway. I'd trade in a Henry for an Ernie any day. It's also difficult to like Mr. James' snobbish, shallow and unsympathetic characters. The more sympathetic ones were obscured by his heavy hand and my impatience with his style.