The Golden Bowl

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Golden Bowl, The, novel by Henry James, published in 1904.

Charlotte Stant, a daring, intelligent, but penniless American, has a brief affair in Rome with Prince Amerigo, an impoverished Italian aristocrat. They recognize that life together without money would be fatal to their love, and Charlotte returns to America. The Prince then falls in love with Maggie Verver, who, with her wealthy father, Adam, represents the best qualities of American culture: enthusiasm, moral fineness, the ability to assimilate new values, and a refreshing innocence and delicacy of outlook. Charlotte, a close friend of Maggie, returns to London, and, while shopping one day with the Prince, considers as a possible gift for Maggie a certain gilded crystal bowl, perfect except for an invisible flaw. She is persuaded not to buy it, but the bowl becomes a symbol of the Prince's character and the various flawed relationships in the narrative. Maggie, after her marriage, realizes that she has ended the happy relationship with her father, who, when he finds her worried about him, marries Charlotte. In England Maggie is happy with her reunited father, husband, and friend, as well as in the care of her son, but gradually she becomes aware of the renewed liaison of Charlotte and her husband. But when by chance she buys the golden bowl as a birthday present for her father, Maggie learns something from the shopkeeper that makes her suspect the Prince's infidelity. However, her friend Fanny Assingham declares that her theory is as cracked as the bowl, which she dramatically dashes to the floor. Maggie therefore proceeds cautiously, concealing her suspicions, and quietly works to restore the proper grouping of the couples. The Prince senses that she knows the truth, and is touched by her generosity and delicacy. Adam too realizes that she has learned that his wife and son‐in‐law are lovers; with the same tact and self‐sacrifice that she has exhibited, he takes Charlotte to America, never to return. The Prince understands that, by losing his mistress, he has gained a new depth of character and a wife whose value he has only begun to appreciate. The process of “conversion,” which began with the smashing of the golden bowl, is thus completed.

Golden Bowl, The, the last completed novel of H. James, published 1904.

The widowed American Adam Verver is in Europe with his daughter Maggie, who has all the innocent charm of so many of James's young American heroines. She is engaged to Amerigo, an impoverished Italian prince who must marry into money. The golden bowl, first seen in a London curio shop, is symbolic of the relationship between the main characters and of the world in which they move; its perfect surface conceals a flaw.

Also in Europe is an old friend of Maggie's, Charlotte Stant, and Maggie is blindly ignorant of the fact that she and the prince are lovers. Maggie and Amerigo are married and have a son, but Maggie remains dependent for real intimacy on her father, and she and Amerigo grow increasingly apart. Maggie decides to find her father a wife and her choice falls on Charlotte. The affair with the prince continues and Adam Verver seems to Charlotte to be a convenient match. When Maggie finally comes into possession of the golden bowl the flaw is revealed to her, and, inadvertently, the truth about Amerigo and Charlotte. Fanny Ashingham (an older woman, aware of the truth from the beginning) deliberately breaks the bowl, and this marks the end of Maggie's ‘innocence’. Abstaining from outcry and outrage, she takes the reins and manoeuvres people and events. She realizes that to be a wife she must cease to be a daughter. Adam Verver and the unhappy Charlotte are banished forever to America, and the new Maggie will establish a real marriage with Amerigo.