Magic and Metamorphosis in The Golden Bowl (1965)

Abstract

It is an intriguing paradox that Henry James measured his most essential realism by the world of magic. He meant his readers to see behind the appealing pictures of the innocent rich American girl in Europe the image of Cinderella and Miranda, but the image reflects on the ease of fantasy. The metamorphosis is gradual, painful, and in only one of James’s major novels completed. Only in The Golden Bowl is a princess allowed to live in the world of romance, but she does not earn her palace and her prince until her mind and her heart have gone beyond the powers of magic. James had always been fascinated with the way in which the idea of magical manipulation of life could throw into relief the anguish of moral responsibilities. When Henrietta Stackpole, in The Portrait of a Lady, begins to worry about the tarnishing image of her American princess, Isabel Archer, she playfully, but significantly, escapes to the world of magic in the hopes of recomposing her cherished portrait. In a conversation with Ralph Touchett she says of Isabel: ‘She’s not the same as she once so beautifully was.’ Ralph asks: ‘As she was in America?’ ‘Yes, in America,’ answers Henrietta. ‘Do you want to change her back again?’ queries Ralph. ‘Of course I do, and I want you to help me,’ states Henrietta. ‘Ah,’ replies Ralph, ‘I’m only Caliban; I’m not Prospero.’ ‘You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become,’ returns Henrietta.

Near the royal castle there was a great dark wood, and in the wood under an old linden-tree was a well; and when the day was hot, the King’s daughter used to go forth into the wood and sit by the brink of the cool well, and if the time seemed long, she would take out a golden ball and throw it up and catch it again, and this was her favourite pastime. Now it happened one day that the golden ball, instead of falling back into the maiden’s little hand which had sent it aloft, dropped to the ground near the edge of the well and rolled in. The King’s daughter followed it with her eyes as it sank, but the well was deep, so deep that the bottom could not be seen. Then she began to weep, and she wept and wept as if she could never be comforted. And in the midst of her weeping she heard a voice saying to her, ‘What ails thee, King’s daughter? Thy tears would melt a heart of stone: And when she looked up to see where the voice came from, there was nothing but a frog stretching his thick ugly head out of the water. ‘Oh, is it you, old waddler?’ she said. ‘I weep because my golden ball has fallen into the well.’

‘The Frog Prince’, Grimm’s Fairy Tales