"The point was that in this young woman it was a beauty in itself, and almost a mystery: so, certainly, he had more than once felt in noting, on her lips, that rarest, among the Barbarians, of all civil graces, a perfect felicity in the use of Italian."
The narrative voice in this novel is that of the third-person omniscient storyteller who is capable of penetrating directly into the thoughts of characters as well as offering external observation. Although James was hardly averse to using first-person narrators, The Golden Bowl simply could not have been sustained for its epic length had that choice been made. This is not a novel of action, but of thoughts. This quote reflects the particular thoughts of Prince Amerigo toward Charlotte Stant. Although the lineage has taken an economic hit from its former glory, the prince is of noble blood. Amerigo is a prince without principality who possessed a taste for the finer things without the ability to afford before his recent marriage to a wealthy woman. His description of a young woman reflects the hyperbolic aesthetic of the aristocratic class which was already at this time beginning crumble. It also reflects the passion still lingering from an earlier affair between the two.
"Amerigo was away from her again, as she sat there, as she walked there without him — for she had, with the difference of his presence in the house, ceased to keep herself from moving about; but the hour was filled nevertheless with the effect of his nearness, and above all with the effect, strange in an intimacy so established, of an almost renewed vision of the facts of his aspect."
Maggie Verver is the wealthy heiress whom Prince Amerigo has married. This, naturally, makes her a princess. The relationship between Maggie and her father Adam Verver is complicated to say the least, but the point as it relates to this quote is that Maggie’s life has essentially been one in which she was Adam’s daughter before becoming the prince’s wife. This obsession with feeing Amerigo’s presence when he is not physically there is a constituent of a life lived as somebody’s “something.” Maggie is the very portrait of a personality defined entirely by her external relationships to others. Such an existence naturally tends toward engendering an unusually long-lasting innocence. Amerigo is her husband, but to a much greater extent, he is merely a replacement for her father. Thus, the feeling of emptiness when he is not in the flesh is reflected in the undertones of anxiety permeating this quote. Such innocence rarely lasts forever, however, and as Amerigo’s absence serves to intensify her anxiety, Maggie is placed on a path inexorably heading toward a loss of innocence related to the reasons behind her husband’s prolonged absences.
"She was learning, almost from minute to minute, to be a mistress of shades since, always, when there were possibilities enough of intimacy, there were also, by that fact, in intercourse, possibilities of iridescence; but she was working against an adversary who was a master of shades too, and on whom, if she didn’t look out, she should presently have imposed a consciousness of the nature of their struggle."
It should perhaps be clear by now that this is a novel in which what passes for action are thoughts taking place inside a character’s mind. It is also a novel almost comprehensively lacking in real character development. For the most part, the characters in this story are essentially the same people they were at the beginning. There is one very crucial exception, however. It is Maggie only who undergoes the kinds of evolutionary steps necessary to be defined as a developed rather than “flat” character. The quote above penetrates deeply into the psyche of Maggie after her innocence has been lost. She has been betrayed not only by her husband, but by her own complicated emotional state toward the man her husband was intended to replace. The Maggie who admits to becoming a “mistress of shades” is an almost comprehensive rejection of the childish woman she has been for most of this long novel’s first half. She is no longer a little girl who “wasn’t born to know evil.” The bulk of the latter half of the story shifts the focus to the Maggie who has come to know a certain sort of evil.
