The Imp of the Perverse: Metaphor in The Golden Bowl

This essay argues that The Golden Bowl is marked by the perverse as such, by a constant turning from the direct, the accepted, expected, proper ways of being, acting, speaking and writing to the indirect, improper, incorrect and unexpected. This movement, which drives the narrative of James's fictional world and is the source of its remarkable energy as well as its theory of representation, is most apparent in metaphor with the locational uncertainty that it generates. The essay seeks to describe and uncover the implications of that uncertainty in James's text.