Henry James and the Evolution of Consciousness: A Study of "The Ambassadors." (review)

298 The Henry James Review Courtney Johnson, Jr. Henry James and the Evolution of Consciousness: A Study of "The Ambassadors." East Lansing: Michigan State U P, 1987. 171 pp. $15.00. Courtney Johnson sets out to demonstrate die appUcability of Transcendental Meditation and twentieth-century physics, particularly Unified Field Theory, to defining the special state of elevated consciousness die hero of The Ambassadors rises to, and finds incorporated in otiier characters in the novel, particularly Gloriani and Mme. de Vionnet In this daunting task an enthusiastic preface by the noted Jamesian Lyall Powers does Johnson less service than one imagines is intended by calling it his "breakdirough" üiat "die field of pure consciousness as experienced in Strether's mind is the unified field of physics," which, once established, lets him tell us "what, in fact, die novel actually does mean." This is enough to make die reader lay the book quiedy aside. That would be a disservice to Johnson, who, while equally sanguine as to the existence of a unified field in physics, is rather more cautious in dealing with James's novel. His main argument is one proposing sources and analogues to the elevated consciousness of James's characters, starting widi the theories of William James, and he does it good service with close readings. Among these are an appreciation of the growth of the effect Stretiier has on otiiers, and Stretiier's own growing awareness of this; of the power of die images of light and motionlessness that James uses; and of die subtle ways in which the reader himself is involved in Strether's education. In order to find a move to a higher consciousness throughout that education, however, Johnson must include scenes in which Stredier is botii disconcerted and described in terms suggesting a drop rather dian a lift: when he engages Mme de Vionnet in conversation about her daughter, he feels "as if he had been tripped up and had a fall." According to Johnson, "the 'fall' resembles die process of transcendence. ... He 'falls' to the deeper ('lower') side of the mind" (89). When he takes Mme de Vionnet to the memorable lunch of the intensely white table-linen, the omelette aux tomates, and the straw-colored Chablis (mystifyingly identified here as breakfast), his "sense that the situation was running away with him" is cited as additional evidence of transcendence. Similarly, when Strether compares himself and Maria Gostrey to the Babes in die Wood, what comes naturally to mind is not that he is experiencing "enlightenment... that margin of untapped consciousness that became die beginning of his new-found independence and freedom" (109). Much of the same reservation may be felt by die reader over the chapter on The Portrait of a Lady, the revised New York Edition text of which Johnson sees as demonstrating die same evolution of consciousness that The Ambassadors does. The awful moment in which Isabel intuits her betrayal in die mutual posture of Merle and Osmond, who think themselves unobserved, is of course a prime example of die Jamesian sensitive observer at work, but is it the point where Isabel rises to a higher consciousness? She is indeed a lady, and Johnson is perceptive in seeing a parallel in her story to that of Strether, whose adventures could be called The Portrait of a Gentleman, but she is very much involved with passion and desire. She is, as James tells us, an intelligent but presumptuous girl affronting her destiny; she is to be brought low, so low as to be ground in die very mill of the conventional. If die discovery of Osmond's treachery somehow elevates her to a transcendent level where passion has no role, what do we do with the scene at the end of the book, James's most explicitly sexual, in which she is seized and kissed by Caspar Goodwood? Johnson duly notes the accompanying imagery of white lightning, drowning, and shipwreck, but insists that we have here repeated evidence of her achievement of transcendental consciousness. Johnson will not have been the first to give the impression of reducing and simplifying a complex work of art by pursuing one theme through it: in the case...