Proxy Narrative in The Ambassadors: Reconfiguring James’s Ending

This article discusses what I call the proxy narrative, a type of narrative in which a key scene or plot sequence can be read most meaningfully as a substitute for a counterfactual alternative that cannot otherwise be narrated. Building on existing critical applications of possible world semantics and counterfactual reasoning to narrative theory, I offer several case studies culminating in an extended discussion of The Ambassadors—and, particularly, of its critically contested final scene—to illustrate the extent to which recognition of the proxy narratives embedded in traditional plots can enrich our readings of even the most familiar texts. Unable plausibly or ethically to depict a renunciation scene between Strether and Madame de Vionnet, James uses the final encounter between Strether and Maria Gostrey, I argue, to enact a discursively necessary outcome that the logic of story otherwise precludes.