Prince Amerigo is descended from a noble Italian lineage that has in recent times fallen upon economic difficulties. Amerigo is a Prince in name but is seriously lacking in the financial means necessary to live the life an aristocrat deems his privilege. As a result, he has entered into the blissful state of matrimony with Maggie Verver. The bliss in this particular instance derives, alas, less from the delight found in his bride than it derives from her position as heiress to a wealthy American industrialist. Adam Verver is Maggie’s father, and he is one of those men so commonly found among the obscenely rich who managed to stumble into wealth almost in spite of his own dearth of advanced intellectual ability. Upon becoming absurdly wealthy, Adam went into self-exile in Europe primarily because it afforded him more opportunity to pursue his obsession: collecting things for the sake their being collected.
Before crossing paths with Maggie, the Prince had engaged in an exceedingly passionate love affair with Charlotte Stant. Charlotte possesses one thing which makes her eminently desirable while lacking that which makes her worth marrying. She is unquestionably more physically attractive than Maggie, but not quite as attractive as the bloated inheritance Maggie will one day enjoy all alone as a result of having no siblings, cousins, or aunt and uncles. In fact, it is Charlotte’s utter lack of economic standing that reduces her to not just a one-time paramour of the prince, but his future mistress as well. Adding to the complexity of this situation is that Maggie and Charlotte became friends as schoolgirls and have remained close ever since with the only major hole in the relationship being Maggie’s ignorance of Charlotte’s relationship with the prince before she herself entered the picture and married him. Needless to say, the renewal of the affair following the prince’s marriage is also kept secret.
The key scene in the novel occurs early on when Charlotte and the Prince are shopping together for a wedding gift to present to Maggie. Upon entering one particular store, the shopkeeper shows them a gilded crystal bowl that Charlotte is immediately drawn to, but unable to afford. The dealer promises to keep it on hold for her until she can afford it, but Charlotte is immediately confronted outside by the prince who cannot understand how Charlotte could possibly have overlooked the fact that the crystal is marred by a crack. He confesses that he demands a gift of absolute perfection to symbolize his upcoming nuptials. Charlotte decides against the purchase and the prince reiterates his contention—based upon Charlotte’s inability to afford even the relatively cheap asking price for the bowl—that she absolutely must marry well just as he is about to do.
Charlotte takes this advice to heart and remarkably so for it is not long at all before the attention she has received from Maggie’s father turns into another Verver wedding. It is only after this marriage and the subsequent consequence of the Prince and Charlotte being thrown into each company’s more often that their affair recommences and before long it is back to the same level of passion it had been before. As time goes on, the unusual quality of the foursome begins to wear upon Maggie, especially as she spends extended time alone while the prince is elsewhere.
Adding to the anxiety is that Maggie essentially went from a pampered innocent girl to becoming a princess while her father replaced her with the distinctly non-childish and not-so-innocent Charlotte. Thus, Maggie seems to have lost a father without really gaining a husband and is increasingly worried that Charlotte has gained two husbands. One day things come to a head when Maggie happens by pure coincidence to wander into the same store where the same flawed crystal bowl is still being pushed on unsuspecting customers by the same shopkeeper. She purchases the bowl and brings it home to take place on the mantel where it bears witness to the memory that the Prince and Charlotte were once intimately connected. Upon discovery that this intimacy is not merely a relic of the past, everything changes for Maggie.
From the point of discovery of her husband’s ongoing marital infidelity and the multiple deceptions by multiple parties which have kept her innocent but ignorant, Maggie proceeds to undergo a remarkable psychological change and this becomes the focus of the story until its conclusion. Gradually but relentlessly, Maggie transforms from the wide-eyed innocent into a coldly calculating creature she herself terms a “mistress of shades.” Since this section of the book is every bit as centrally located in the setting of the mind as the earlier sections, most of the acts of manipulation performed by Maggie are indeed subtle shadings of behavior rather than outright acts of Shakespearean-level villainy.
She sets for herself the purpose of willingly sacrificing the relationship with her father in order to save her marriage. While this means that Charlotte “wins” the affections of Adam Verver, Maggie orchestrates this victory at great cost to Charlotte. Adam returns from his self-imposed exile back to America which is precisely the place that Charlotte has spent her entire adult life hoping to escape forever. Not only is Charlotte thus essentially banished to America from Europe, but she must also accept the condition of this imprisonment as Maggie deems fitting punishment for her transgressions: remaining at all times subject to the will of her powerful and dominating husband. Meanwhile, the look Maggie sees in the prince’s face in the final image of the story is enough to convince her that he now finally has learned to love her and not her money.
