What Strether Sees: The Ending of The Ambassadors

WHAT STRETHER SEES: THE ENDING OF THE AMBASSADORS Robert Merrill Despite the voluminous body of criticism on The Ambassadors, it seems to me that the novel's ending is often misunderstood. Important critics such as Matthiessen, Dupee, and Leavis have seen Strether's rejection of Woollett as the climax of his growth,1 but this rejection has been achieved by Book Fifth, where Strether makes his famous speech to Little Bilham in Gloriani's garden. Presumably James intended another, more "conclusive" meaning at the end of his novel. It is seldom remarked how thoroughly Strether reexamines his "adventure" in the light of his discoveries concerning Chad and Madame de Vionnet. Those critics who have seen this change in Strether have overstated the case and found in him a disappointing reversion to the puritanism of Woollett.2 But at the end of The Ambassadors Strether neither "rejects" nor "embraces" Woollett. Rather, he rejects his former ways of looking at the world—both the way of Woollett and the way of his first months in Paris. His resulting vision is of course complex. It is this vision —what Strether sees, as he tells Maria Gostrey3—that finally counts in The Ambassadors. Early in the novel we witness the sabotage of Strether's imexamined allegiance to the life of Woollett, Massachusetts. In his speech to Little Bilham, Strether gives voice to his new sense of things, his expanded vision of life: * 'Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? Do what you like so long as you don't make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!'" (1,217-18). Tnis affirmation of life has seemed an appealing climax to Strether's—and James's—confrontation with reality. But we should remember that fully two-thirds of the book remains to be accounted for. In the truly climactic events of Books Eleventh and Twelfth, the sentiments of Strether's speech in Book Fifth are tested and found wanting. This is as it should be, for Strether's speech derives from his first impressions of Chad and Chad's "innocent" relationship with Madame de Vionnet. In Book Eleventh Strether discovers that his impressions were in fact illusions. In Book Twelfth he faces the problem of how to deal with 'See F.O. Matthiessen, Henry James: The Major Phase (New York: Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 39; F.W. Dupee, Henry James (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Co., 1956), p. 243; F.R. Leavis, The Great Tradition (New York: New York University Press, 1963), p. 161. 2See Robert E. Garis, "The Two Lambert Strethers: A New Reading of The Ambassadors," Modem Fiction Studies, VII (Winter 1961-62), 305-316; U.C. Knoepflmacher, "? rare for Stretherl': Antony and Cleopatra and The Ambassadors," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, XLX ( 1964-65), 333-344. sSee Henry James, The Ambassadors (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909), ?, 323. All references to The Ambassadors will be to this, the New York Edition. Volume and page numbers will be mcorporated into the text. 45 46RMMLA BulletinJune 1973 the realities of his situation. If we are to determine James's ultimate meaning in The Ambassadors, we must come to terms with Strether's final revelations. To do this we must examine Book Twelfth in some detail. Book Twelfth is divided into five chapters: an interlude where Strether ponders the implications of his discovery that Chad and Madame de Vionnet are lovers, then a series of final interviews with the people he has embraced in rejecting Mrs. Newsome and her representatives. In these final scenes Strether's position is radically different from his stance in Book Fifth. The knowledge that all the while he has been used by those he idealized—that he has dressed up the affair of his friends "as a little girl might have dressed her doll" (II, 266)—shadows all his perceptions. Here we get Strether's undeceived recognition of his friends and the quality of life they really oppose to his defunct world of Woollett. James prepares for...