Good For You

I don't quite know how to begin here, as there are many things in this chapter that I simply cannot completely comprehend--for example, the exchange between Strether and Maria at the end of the chapter regarding Waymarsh, freedom and the 'sacred rage.' I am hopeful that at some point later on, something else will trigger the 'muffled thud of memory' that RJ referred to in his comment on chapter 1, which will make it all clear (unless someone would care to enlighten me now).

There are, however, two things about this chapter that I find particularly interesting. The first is the tension James creates between Maria and Waymarsh, leaving poor Strether in the in the midst of something akin to a religious tug-of-war. Strether sees Maria as a 'Jesuit in petticoats,' seeking to recruit him into a congregation that he, it seems, feels he cannot join unless he abandons the tenets of Waymarsh's anti-European church.

Then there is the irony of Waymarsh's behavior: where Strether is captivated by tailors, Waymarsh is interested (or feigns interest) only in the shop-windows of the 'useful trades;' Strether fears that his behavior and conversation with Maria are viewed by his friend as frivolous and perhaps wanton; yet when Waymarsh makes his break for freedom, he goes to a jeweler and apparently makes a purchase, behavior that is at least as frivolous as Strether's desire for smart neckties (unless, of course, Waymarsh needed to replace his watch or some other such practical item).

What, exactly, is the "sacred rage'? The following blurb from an Olin Center/University of Chicago Web page makes a very interesting implication.

Robert Dawidoff, Claremont Graduate University, will open the series Wednesday, Oct. 17, with a lecture on two essays from George Santayana’s The Genteel Tradition. Dawidoff, who wrote The Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage: High Culture vs. Democracy in Adams, James, and Santayana, will lead a discussion Thursday, Oct. 18, on the 1935 film Top Hat, following its screening. Dawidoff is the author of four books, including Making History Matter, which was published last year.

Sacred rage: furious contempt for the antidemocratic, unsystematic old world. Waymarsh's response, in other words, both to the antiquities of Chester and to the sophistication of Maria Gostrey. It might be a good idea to launch a thread on the "sacred rage," and that's what I'll do if pertinent comments pile up.

The final chapter of Book First has the air of a gentle comedy of manners, but for readers who have see the show before, it is nothing less than ominous. Waymarsh, the ostensible figure of fun, makes a gruff and unappreciative tourist, and he appears, to Strether, to have sized up Miss Gostrey as an enemy agent - the enemy's being "exactly in short Europe." As Strether joins in worldly conversation with Miss Gostrey, he senses his old friend's worried disapproval, but he has no sense whatever of the menace that frightens Waymarsh. He is like a man drifting along in a rowboat, cheerful and oblivious, his back to the waterfall just ahead. Waymarsh still doesn't know the purpose of Strether's trip to Europe, but he knows that Strether has been commissioned by Mrs Newsome, a lady who as yet remains little more than a name but who, as we shall see, is an utterly American woman. Whatever this definition may allow, it certainly, to Waymarsh's view of things, prohibits the comfortable accommodation to Europe that Miss Gostrey seems to be arranging for her new friend.

The conversation at the end of the chapter, between Strether and Maria Gostrey, is about Waymarsh, who has vanished into a jeweler's shop. It is something of a warm-up for the much longer conversation in the next chapter, which is about Mrs Newsome.