James’s In the Cage: An Approach through the Figurative Language
- James’s In the CageAn Approach through the Figurative Language
Instructor in English, Cornell University
notes
1. “Its origin is written upon it large, and the idea it puts into play so abides in one of the commonest and most taken-for-granted of London impressions that some such experimentally-figured situation as that of ‘In the Cage’ must again and again have flowered (granted the grain of observation) in generous minds.” In the Cage, The Novels and Tales of Henry James (New York, 1907–1917), XI, xviii. All subsequent parenthetic references to the preface and text are to this edition. Initial and terminal ellipses are omitted in quotations.
2. I suggest the following interpretation of the significance of gold coins as an alternative to that proposed by Albert C. Friend in the only recent article-length interpretation of the nouvelle: “As a parallel to the modern scene runs the legend of Danae released from her prison by the love of Jove, who shows himself in the traditional shower of gold.” (“A Forgotten Story by Henry James,” South Atlantic Quarterly, LIII [1954], 100.) For Mr. Friend’s elaboration of his parallel see the same article, 103–5, For an additional comment on why it seems implausible to me, see below, p. 178.
3. This scene (in chapter XX) is the climax if one assumes that In the Cage is the telegraphist’s story and this her moment of decision. L. C. Knights has remarked that James confuses the reader in the preface by implying that he is telling Everard’s rather than the girl’s story: “If James is to be blamed for anything it can only be for a misleading phrase in the Preface, where he speaks of the ‘solution’ depending on the girl’s ‘winged wit.’ ‘The action of the drama is simply the girl’s “subjective” adventure—that of her quite definitely winged intelligence; just as the catastrophe, just as the solution, depends on her winged wit.’ The ‘solution’ is not, as this might suggest, the solution of Captain Everard’s perplexities; it is simply the Telegraphist’s recognition—her final acceptance—of the bleakness of reality.” (“Henry James and the Trapped Spectator,” Explorations (New York, © 1947), 184.) James’s centring the story in the girl’s consciousness would alone support this view.
4. “A Forgotten Story,” 108.
5. “Henry James and the Trapped Spectator,” 184.
6. “Introduction,” In the Cage and Other Tales (Anchor Books, 1958), 12.
7. F. R. Leavis describes Maisie as a high-spirited comedy written under the influence of Dickens. (Marius Bewley, The Complex Fate, introduction and two interpolations by F. R. Leavis [London, 1952], 119. This article originally appeared in Scrutiny, XVII.)
8. Picciola, by “Saintine” (Joseph Xavier Boniface), was published in Paris in 1836. It is the story of a prisoner’s devotion to a plant, “la povera picciola,” which grows in the courtyard below his window. Eventually he imagines an incarnation of the plant as a beautiful girl, who materializes as the daughter of a fellow prisoner. After his release the two marry, and the tale ends happily. In “Henry James and Saintine,” Notes and Queries, VII (1960), 266–8, I have considered the possible influence of Saintine’s romance on In the Cage.
Recently Mr. J. A. Ward has also underscored the telegraphist’s limitations and the ironic treatment of her (in The Imagination of Disaster [Lincoln, Nebraska, 1961], 63–5), but he does not suggest the humorous implications of James’s adopting this attitude.
10. I have developed the resemblance between “Brooksmith” and In the Cage in “A Probable Source for a James Nouvelle,” MLN, LXXIV (1959), 225–6.
11. Heidi Specker, in discussing The Princess Casamassima as presumably James’s “one social novel,” arrives at a similar conclusion about the direction of his interests in that book. “The preface to this much discussed sample [of the social novel] and failure seems to me to indicate…that even here the social question was rather a side issue from the beginning; that here again the author merely tried to give yet another reflection of the ever same culture, choosing the...
