Good For You

Just before I re-read this chapter of The Ambassadors, I had finished reading No god but God by Reza Aslan. Strether's thought that, in Chad, he might be 'dealing with an irreducible young Pagan' led me back to Aslan's book, in which (at page 6) he provides the following description of paganism:

Unlike Christianity, paganism is not so much a unified system of beliefs and practices as it is a religious perspective, one that is receptive to a multitude of influences and interpretations. Often, though not always, polytheistic, paganism strives for neither universalism nor moral absolutism.

Chad's attitude in the evening's conversation with Strether is certainly that of a pagan, in the sense of someone who is 'receptive to a multitude of influences and interpretations' rather than someone who subscribes to the 'moral absolutism' of Woollett. Strether, though, seems to consider Chad to be a pagan in the conventional (and, by Christian standards, negative) sense of one who (to paraphrase the definition in the OED) no longer holds to the 'true religion' (in this case, the orthodoxy of Woollett); whence Strether's confusion as to whether Chad is 'improved' and how Chad might be both a pagan (bad) and a gentleman (good), a combination that would not be inconsistent with paganism as described by Aslan.

But is Chad an 'irreducible' Pagan? I hope so; the 'Pagans' (a group in which I would include Maria Gostrey, Little Bilham and Miss Barrace) seem so much more congenial than the 'Christians' (i.e., Mrs. Newsome and Mr. Waymarsh).

Book IV of The Ambassadors might be called "The Book of Charm," because we see quite starkly that Strether is fatally susceptible to it. We could not deduce this from his fondness for Miss Gostrey, because Miss Gostrey is not an obvious menace. But Chad's charm is deadly because it confuses Strether so. In the second chapter of this Book, we will see how Strether's friends try to clear up his confusion - or not. The present chapter is taken up entirely by Strether's first real conversation with Chad, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that Strether is overwhelmed.

JKM's alighting on "irreducible young pagan" is astute, because it shows the lengths to which Strether is unable to prevent himself from being taken by Chad's hugely unexpected appeal. Strether reminds me of someone who has just removed a heavy backpack after a long hike, and who helplessly prances like a horse, lifting a load that isn't there. Strether so completely made up his mind that Chad would be a rude wastrel, a figure out of Hogarth at best, that he can make no sense of the actual man, and it is while Strether tries to get his bearings that Chad begins to work his charm offensive. The only possibility that Strether can hold onto is that Chad might inhabit an alien moral universe, as suggested by the "pagan" remark. Danger lights ought to flash when Strether entertains, alongside the pagan possibility, the thought that Chad might be a gentleman, too. It is in the supposition (however unconscious) that pagans can be gentleman that Strether cuts loose of Woollett.

"Pagan" might have meant two overlapping things to Henry James. It would have conveyed, in a vernacular sense, the idea of the sensualist, particularly the lapsed American who settled for a life of pleasure in Europe. More seriously, it might have suggested someone who had abandoned the Christian idea of an immortal soul. In the nineteenth century, "soul" was loosely equated with "true character," the ineffable unique being bound for an eternal afterlife of rapture or regret. As a pagan, Chad would be heedless of conceptions; he would live for the moment and take what he could, without, by his own lights, having done anything wrong.

All of this is embedded in the startling climax that ends the chapter - one of James's theatrical coups. Having lured Strether into betraying the opinion that he and Chad's mother and indeed all of Woollett has had of Chad, the young man audaciously feigns outrage: "I must say then you show a low mind!" Whether the maneuver would work with everyone else is doubtful, but it works with Strether.

There was no doubt that Woollett had insisted on [Chad's] coarseness, and what he at present stood there for in the sleeping street was, by his manner of striking the other note, to make of such insistence a preoccupation compromising to the insisters.

It is Strether who is turning pagan; Strether who can't help taking the splendid outer man that Chad has become for a virtuous one.

I must agree and disagree; disagreement in that I think Miss Gostrey is an obvious menace, at least insofar as Mrs. Newsome is concerned (hence Strether's desire--and maybe I'm anticipating--to explain his relationship with her to Mrs. Newsome before Chad can tell tales). On the other hand, I must agree that it is Strether who is becoming the 'pagan'--his inability to reconcile the real Chad to the Chad as understood by the conventions of Woollett is evidence that he, too, has strayed from the one true faith of Woollett.

Miss Gostrey is a menace, yes, but not as regards charm. Hers is the menace of criticism; step by step, she obliges Strether to make distinctions that expose, from time to time, the paltriness of Woollett. But doing this is the very opposite of what Chad does, which is to cloud Strether's judgment. I suppose it is not entirely out of place to find in Chad's conquest of Strether (it is almost brutal) a trace of the homoerotic that is never very deeply submerged in Henry James's fiction.