James
an artistic purpose. I do not know just how it should be stated
of two such noble and generous types of character as Dorothea and
Isabel Archer, but I think that we sympathize with the former in
grand aims that chiefly concern others, and with the latter in
beautiful dreams that primarily concern herself. Both are
unselfish and devoted women, sublimely true to a mistaken ideal
in their marriages; but, though they come to this common
martyrdom, the original difference in them remains. Isabel has
her great weaknesses, as Dorothea had, but these seem to me, on
the whole, the most nobly imagined and the most nobly intentioned
women in modern fiction; and I think Isabel is the more subtly
divined of the two. If we speak of mere characterization, we
must not fail to acknowledge the perfection of Gilbert Osmond.
It was a profound stroke to make him an American by birth. No
European could realize so fully in his own life the ideal of a
European dilettante in all the meaning of that cheapened word; as
no European could so deeply and tenderly feel the sweetness and
loveliness of the English past as the sick American, Searle, in
"The Passionate Pilgrim."
What is called the international novel is popularly dated from
the publication of "Daisy Miller," though "Roderick Hudson" and
"The American" had gone before; but it really began in the
beautiful story which I have just named. Mr. James, who invented
this species in fiction, first contrasted in the "Passionate
Pilgrim" the New World and Old World moods, ideals, and
prejudices, and he did it there with a richness of poetic effect
which he has since never equalled.
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