Chekhov's Mistress

Reader’s Diary: On the Idle Classes

by Bud Parr

I’m having trouble reading these days. I’ve hit this patch where nothing seems to work for me and that creates all sorts of anxiety. After picking up a half-dozen books and putting them down again, I started in on James’s Portrait of a Lady. I thought turning to a classic would rejuvenate my reading spirit, but after barely making it through the Master’s own preface I slogged through the first 200 pages with little joy. Along the way I was excited to find that Carrie at Tingle Alley was reading it too, but every time I reached that point in my evening set aside for reading, I just wasn’t looking forward to it.


It’s me of course, not the book, I keep telling myself. Why am I not exalting this wonderful book with every turn of the page? There’s something that struck me along they way that sounded so silly that I dismissed it at first. There’s no action! Duh. I don’t expect Tolstoyan battle scenes or anything and I know that I’m bordering on the heretic here, but I think that I’m changing as I grow older and the lens I’m reading with now is something like one of those cultural theories that used to pass for literary criticism. Actually, not, but I do mean that I feel myself resenting the characters in the book for their idle wealthiness, but that’s only part of the problem.


So I feel my self internally protesting at the concerns of the idle classes. All they do is talk, look at pictures or occasionally play the piano or paint, as if art is a matter of course, not passion. When Isabel talks, it’s about freedom she perceives she’ll be giving up by attaching herself to a man. Certainly valid, but considering that her fear is aroused by such people as the amazingly wealthy Lord Warburton, it’s hard to parse out her psychological difficulty. She’s not dreamy, she’s not going to die (at least as far as I know), she’s not barred from anything she desires; there’s just little conflict.


The best Shakespearian betrayal so far is by the brash American (all the Americans in James’s world seem to be) Henrietta, who arranges to be away so that one of Isabel’s suitors can come beg for her hand. Poor Ralph arranges behind the scenes for Isabel to be wealthy on her own with uncertain repercussions.


It’s as though the book is an anti-drama. I’m sure that James warned about this in his preface, but I wasn’t listening, I suppose. As a comparison, I think Proust serves, but his is the idle class too, but there’s almost always a sense of desire and questioning of motivations and the truly idle are seen as such. And class issues abound in Proust.


Don’t hate me, James fans. These are just thoughts and I haven’t given up. I put it down for a while, but have just picked it up again. Isabel hasn’t even met her Gilbert yet, in my world at least.

posted February 01, 2006

comments

I have always disliked PORTRAIT OF A LADY.  Not sure why--maybe the ways that it reprises some eighteenth-century thing just reminds me that I like the eighteenth-century versions better?  (i.e. give me DANGEROUS LIAISONS, EMMA and perhaps if you must MIDDLEMARCH which is an extraordinary novel but one surely more to be admired than enjoyed, but PORTRAIT then seems one too many in the tradition.) My favorite James stuff includes the crazed early stories and novels (mmm, PRINCESS CASSAMASSIMA… now that’s a lovely novel, as if Dickens did anarchists! I am also fond of RODERICK HUDSON), some of the great/major short stories (favorite one certainly “In the Cage,” which you must read if you haven’t already) and then those big late great novels which seem to me infinitely superior to PORTRAIT, namely THE GOLDEN BOWL (my absolute favorite) and THE AMBASSADORS.  I have a strong and idiosyncratic dislike for WINGS OF A DOVE but I will concede that it is entirely irrational and not based on (de)merit.  But I genuinely believe that PORTRAIT is overrated because it seems easier/shorter than the really great ones.

    – Jenny D (02/01  at  11:06 PM)


Thanks, Jenny. If I end up putting it down, I’m going to say you made it okay!

    – Bud Parr (02/02  at  11:01 AM)


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