Henry James's Gentle Heretics and the Old Persuasion: Roman Catholicity in The Golden Bowl

Henry James's Gentle Heretics and the Old Persuasion: Roman Catholicity in The Golden Bowl by Edwin Sill Fussell, University of California, San Diego Isabel Archer is the gentle heretic. The other phrase comes by way of Christina Light, the Princess Casamassima: "She showed Hyacinth everything: the queer transmogrified corner that had once been a chapel; the secret stairway which had served in the persecutions of the Catholics (the owners of Medley were, like the Princess herself, of the old persuasion)" (PC II, 16-17). Isabel Archer is not a problem. Even Christina Light is only a small problem (James's inconsistency, easily shoved off on her). But Maggie Verver and Adam Verver and Charlotte Stant (Verver) together with Prince Amerigo constitute a very large problem, Roman Catholics all, and three of them American. Even if Charlotte Stant be slightly discounted for expatriate birth and upbringing in Tuscany (but Tuscany never brought Gilbert Osmond into the church) and Prince Amerigo written off as a pro forma Italian, we have a curious remainder of two American Catholics, two ail-American Catholics, as one might say, a phenomenon almost, but not quite, unheard of in the works of Henry James. Finally, then, Henry James is the problem, and specifically what would seem to be the sudden shift of religious allegiance for his major characters (by no means for himself!) in The Golden Bowl. (The choric Assinghams are not Catholic but almost certainly Church of England, as we see in the passage that first reveals the Ververs' religion.) As it seems to me, the problem of Roman Catholicity is insoluble within the covers of The Golden Bowl, but it may be soluble—it can certainly be brought to preliminary focus and talked about—within the oeuvre of Henry James; that is to say, as a thematic consideration, Roman Catholicity appears to be minor and extrinsic and inorganic to the text of The Golden Bowl, but retrospectively it illuminates a whole set of related texts, chiefly the big international novels. For The Golden Bowl, Romanism provokes mainly questions: why is it there at all, and why is there so little of it, and why is so little made of that little? On the one hand, it might have been made essential to character and action in this bizzare narrative of marriage and family; on the other hand, it might have been omitted altogether (I sometimes have the uncanny feeling that the Catholic matter was "inserted," but that cannot be right). Surely it is no intention of our esteemed author to insinuate that it is common practice for American Catholic daughters to love their fathers overmuch, at the expense of their Catholic husbands, and at the James's Gentle Heretics 31 risk of their Catholic marriages. The contention that Maggie must be Catholic so that she may marry a Catholic, even though in one place it seems to be urged by James, does not stand up, as we shall see. The contention that the characters must be Catholic so that they cannot divorce and remarry, and so that they will "put up with" a certain amount of adultery, having no choice, is only slightly better. It does not make much sense, but it is probably what James's readers might be supposed vaguely to think, and it is certainly supposable that James was willing to let them so suppose, assuming that the supposition led to "interest," mystification, appreciation, admiration, and sales. But all things considered, the significance of the old persuasion, its very presence in the novel, is hardly accounted for by any such dubious wisps of folklore about the peculiarities of Catholics. The presence of the old persuasion in The Golden Bowl is neither self-evident nor self-explanatory. And Roman Catholicity attributed to a whole trio of leading American characters (the Americanizing Italian completes the quartet) is in fact as apparently inconsistent a piece of behavior on James's part as the explanation by Christina Light of her Catholic conversion. Yet in James's inconsistency may well lie an explanation, once we understand why in the serial order of the chief international novels The Golden Bowl's Catholicity makes such an anomalous appearance...