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A review by fionnualalirsdottir
The Awkward Age by Henry James
In the previous Henry James book I read, the main character, Christopher Newman, visited the Louvre, and being a bit overwhelmed by the profusion of pictures, he simply sat on a bench in front of one of them for the whole afternoon.
Just as he'd been happy to ignore the rest of the paintings in the huge gallery, Newman was happy that day to ignore the major part of Veronese's 'The Marriage at Cana’, and simply focus on a little scene in the corner of the painting which satisfied his conception of what a splendid banquet should be. In the left-hand corner of the picture is a young woman with yellow tresses confined in a golden head-dress; she is bending forward and listening, with the smile of a charming woman at a dinner-party, to her neighbor...
We can easily forgive Newman his narrow focus because, at first glance, the painting is a confusion of movement and detail. Veronese depicted a huge variety of people here, all in the act of doing, listening or speaking. And though the theme is inspired by the miracle of the changing of water into wine, it is set in Veronese's own time and peopled with characters he must have known or heard of. While Jesus and his mother Mary (portrayed in contrast to everyone else as immobile icons) are in the very centre of the painting, they are not the main focus. Instead, it is the finely dressed musicians in the foreground who attract immediate attention. The group are said to represent the most noted Venetian artists of the time, Veronese himself on the left playing the viola, then Bassano fingering a flute, Tintoretto playing the violin, and Titian on the cello.
Reading a Henry James novel is like viewing such a painting section by section; the author forces us to pause and pay attention to the details. We can't skim quickly and pass on. No, we have to stop and sit on the bench day after day and give ourselves up to each section in turn. We have to be patient, to see where the perspective leads us and what can be noticed on the way. We have to guess the significance of this or that element, to follow the play of light and shadow, to notice the figure that is turned towards us, the other that is turned away, and the one that might represent the artist inserted in his own work (in this book, I recognised strong similarities between one of the main characters and James himself).
And just as Veronese offers a variety of physiognomies in his painting, Henry James offers a variety of types whose descriptions render them as clear to our eyes as if they'd been painted.
Harold: his smooth fair face where the lines were all curves and the expression all needles…
Mr. Cashmore: who would have been very red-haired if he had not been very bald, showed a single eye-glass and a long upper lip…
Edward Brookenham: seemed to bend for sitting down more hinges than most men...he had a pale cold face, marked and made regular, made even in a manner handsome, by a hardness of line in which, oddly, there was no significance, no accent. Clean-shaven, slightly bald, with unlighted grey eyes and a mouth that gave the impression of not working easily, he suggested a stippled drawing by an inferior master…
Lord Petherton: a man of five-and-thirty, whose robust but symmetrical proportions gave to his dark blue double-breasted coat an air of tightness that just failed of compromising his tailor, had for his main facial sign a certain pleasant brutality, the effect partly of a bold handsome parade of carnivorous teeth, partly of an expression of nose suggesting that this feature had paid a little, in the heat of youth, for some aggression at the time admired and even publicly commemorated…
Mr. Mitchett: had so little intrinsic appearance that an observer would have felt indebted for help in placing him to the rare prominence of his colorless eyes...Dressed on the other hand not as gentlemen dress in London, he excited [attention] by the exhibition of garments that had nothing in common save the violence and the independence of their pattern...There was comedy therefore in the form of his pot-hat and the color of his spotted shirt, in the systematic disagreement, above all, of his coat, waistcoat and trousers. It was only on long acquaintance that his so many ingenious ways of showing he appreciated his commonness could present him as secretly rare…
The Duchess: was a person of no small presence, filling her place, however, without ponderosity, with a massiveness indeed rather artfully kept in bounds. Her head, her chin, her shoulders were well aloft, but she had not abandoned the cultivation of a “figure” or any of the distinctively finer reasons for passing as a handsome woman. She was secretly at war moreover, in this endeavour, with a lurking no less than with a public foe, and thoroughly aware that if she didn’t look well she might at times only, and quite dreadfully, look good…
So, as we read this novel, we become the spectators at a parade of larger than life figures whom we observe with keen interest and frequent amusement. In the course of the novel, Henry James refers to an unknown spectator/observer who in turn watches the characters and catches the expressions that flit across their faces: Our spectator would probably have found too much earnestness in her face to be sure if there was also candour...
And this, A supposititious spectator would certainly on this have imagined in the girl's face the delicate dawn of a sense that her mother had suddenly become vulgar...
Or this, An observer at all initiated would fairly have hung on his lips...
We become that unknown spectator when we read the book just as we become spectators at Veronese's banquet while viewing his painting; we notice each and every expression that the artist has caught. However, we're not the only observers of Veronese's scene. If we look at the left hand corner again, we see that the figures in the painting are watching each other. 'He' watches 'she', and 'she' watches another 'she' who is watching someone else.
In [b:The Awkward Age|551498|The Awkward Age|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467165869s/551498.jpg|909425], the characters also watch each other constantly. The old watch the young, the women watch the men, the men watch the girls and the girls watch each other. There are important things at stake here, things like property, wealth and young girls' reputations.
And to further the parallel with Veronese's painting, the main theme of this book is marriage, and there is great emphasis placed on the need for an adequate sum of money to launch a couple on their married life with the necessary trimmings. Things like good wine for the wedding feast, for example. But this is where the comparison with 'The Wedding at Cana' ends. There are no miracles in this book. This is a Henry James work and the only miracles depicted are the depictions themselves.
Just as he'd been happy to ignore the rest of the paintings in the huge gallery, Newman was happy that day to ignore the major part of Veronese's 'The Marriage at Cana’, and simply focus on a little scene in the corner of the painting which satisfied his conception of what a splendid banquet should be. In the left-hand corner of the picture is a young woman with yellow tresses confined in a golden head-dress; she is bending forward and listening, with the smile of a charming woman at a dinner-party, to her neighbor...
We can easily forgive Newman his narrow focus because, at first glance, the painting is a confusion of movement and detail. Veronese depicted a huge variety of people here, all in the act of doing, listening or speaking. And though the theme is inspired by the miracle of the changing of water into wine, it is set in Veronese's own time and peopled with characters he must have known or heard of. While Jesus and his mother Mary (portrayed in contrast to everyone else as immobile icons) are in the very centre of the painting, they are not the main focus. Instead, it is the finely dressed musicians in the foreground who attract immediate attention. The group are said to represent the most noted Venetian artists of the time, Veronese himself on the left playing the viola, then Bassano fingering a flute, Tintoretto playing the violin, and Titian on the cello.
Reading a Henry James novel is like viewing such a painting section by section; the author forces us to pause and pay attention to the details. We can't skim quickly and pass on. No, we have to stop and sit on the bench day after day and give ourselves up to each section in turn. We have to be patient, to see where the perspective leads us and what can be noticed on the way. We have to guess the significance of this or that element, to follow the play of light and shadow, to notice the figure that is turned towards us, the other that is turned away, and the one that might represent the artist inserted in his own work (in this book, I recognised strong similarities between one of the main characters and James himself).
And just as Veronese offers a variety of physiognomies in his painting, Henry James offers a variety of types whose descriptions render them as clear to our eyes as if they'd been painted.
Harold: his smooth fair face where the lines were all curves and the expression all needles…
Mr. Cashmore: who would have been very red-haired if he had not been very bald, showed a single eye-glass and a long upper lip…
Edward Brookenham: seemed to bend for sitting down more hinges than most men...he had a pale cold face, marked and made regular, made even in a manner handsome, by a hardness of line in which, oddly, there was no significance, no accent. Clean-shaven, slightly bald, with unlighted grey eyes and a mouth that gave the impression of not working easily, he suggested a stippled drawing by an inferior master…
Lord Petherton: a man of five-and-thirty, whose robust but symmetrical proportions gave to his dark blue double-breasted coat an air of tightness that just failed of compromising his tailor, had for his main facial sign a certain pleasant brutality, the effect partly of a bold handsome parade of carnivorous teeth, partly of an expression of nose suggesting that this feature had paid a little, in the heat of youth, for some aggression at the time admired and even publicly commemorated…
Mr. Mitchett: had so little intrinsic appearance that an observer would have felt indebted for help in placing him to the rare prominence of his colorless eyes...Dressed on the other hand not as gentlemen dress in London, he excited [attention] by the exhibition of garments that had nothing in common save the violence and the independence of their pattern...There was comedy therefore in the form of his pot-hat and the color of his spotted shirt, in the systematic disagreement, above all, of his coat, waistcoat and trousers. It was only on long acquaintance that his so many ingenious ways of showing he appreciated his commonness could present him as secretly rare…
The Duchess: was a person of no small presence, filling her place, however, without ponderosity, with a massiveness indeed rather artfully kept in bounds. Her head, her chin, her shoulders were well aloft, but she had not abandoned the cultivation of a “figure” or any of the distinctively finer reasons for passing as a handsome woman. She was secretly at war moreover, in this endeavour, with a lurking no less than with a public foe, and thoroughly aware that if she didn’t look well she might at times only, and quite dreadfully, look good…
So, as we read this novel, we become the spectators at a parade of larger than life figures whom we observe with keen interest and frequent amusement. In the course of the novel, Henry James refers to an unknown spectator/observer who in turn watches the characters and catches the expressions that flit across their faces: Our spectator would probably have found too much earnestness in her face to be sure if there was also candour...
And this, A supposititious spectator would certainly on this have imagined in the girl's face the delicate dawn of a sense that her mother had suddenly become vulgar...
Or this, An observer at all initiated would fairly have hung on his lips...
We become that unknown spectator when we read the book just as we become spectators at Veronese's banquet while viewing his painting; we notice each and every expression that the artist has caught. However, we're not the only observers of Veronese's scene. If we look at the left hand corner again, we see that the figures in the painting are watching each other. 'He' watches 'she', and 'she' watches another 'she' who is watching someone else.
In [b:The Awkward Age|551498|The Awkward Age|Henry James|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1467165869s/551498.jpg|909425], the characters also watch each other constantly. The old watch the young, the women watch the men, the men watch the girls and the girls watch each other. There are important things at stake here, things like property, wealth and young girls' reputations.
And to further the parallel with Veronese's painting, the main theme of this book is marriage, and there is great emphasis placed on the need for an adequate sum of money to launch a couple on their married life with the necessary trimmings. Things like good wine for the wedding feast, for example. But this is where the comparison with 'The Wedding at Cana' ends. There are no miracles in this book. This is a Henry James work and the only miracles depicted are the depictions themselves.