This chapter suggests that one of Henry James’s three great later novels, The Wings of the Dove is an exacting study of the enormously intricate processes through which we human beings come to understand one another. This process is one in which real words—that is, not merely words as transcribed, or words on paper, but words as voiced by a person, by a character—display their power in revealing who we are, what we mean, and what we mean to each other. In the novel Merton Densher only gradually comes to realize—first through vague hints, then through ambiguous intimations, then through clarified intimation, then through non-explicit implication, then through clear implication, and finally through explicit statement—what Kate Croy’s plan is (i.e., to let the terminally ill Milly Theale fall in love with and marry Densher, leaving him her vast fortune which, after her demise, will be theirs). And James shows that the communication of meaning need not always be a matter of explicit statement, but can also be shared action that is based on, or indicative of, shared understanding of a kind that is still in its way voiced, but in these cases through a kind of Kierkegaardian indirection, where what they do voice conveys mutual understanding of content not, or not yet, propositionally encapsulated. It is true, Hagberg observes, that one may find it initially implausible to investigate voice, where voice is understood as a too-often-unappreciated determinant of meaning, within the pages of a novel (which, of course, is in the first instance read and not heard). But a closer look proves otherwise: James delivers not only words of a flatly “transcribed” kind. He captures the tone, the voice, of an important linguistic interaction—which he does not only by describing the tone with a sculpted precision, but more importantly still by fully setting out the present psychological and emotional context of an utterance and the backstory, the psychic history, that leads to, and inflects the meaning of, this present utterance and that leads that utterance to be voiced in the way that it is. Read this way, we come to see how James’s late masterpiece makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of language and to the theory of meaning of a kind that incorporates a rich awareness of the significance of voice. Hagberg suggests that what we see here is a literary presentation of the comprehension of interpersonal meaning of a kind so intricate and so truly human that it takes the length of a novel to show it.

The Kind of Thing One Would Say: Voice, Meaning, and Verbal Style in The Wings of the Dove

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2025年

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Garry L. Hagberg

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This chapter suggests that one of Henry James’s three great later novels, The Wings of the Dove is an exacting study of the enormously intricate processes through which we human beings come to understand one another. This process is one in which real words—that is, not merely words as transcribed, or words on paper, but words as voiced by a person, by a character—display their power in revealing who we are, what we mean, and what we mean to each other. In the novel Merton Densher only gradually comes to realize—first through vague hints, then through ambiguous intimations, then through clarified intimation, then through non-explicit implication, then through clear implication, and finally through explicit statement—what Kate Croy’s plan is (i.e., to let the terminally ill Milly Theale fall in love with and marry Densher, leaving him her vast fortune which, after her demise, will be theirs). And James shows that the communication of meaning need not always be a matter of explicit statement, but can also be shared action that is based on, or indicative of, shared understanding of a kind that is still in its way voiced, but in these cases through a kind of Kierkegaardian indirection, where what they do voice conveys mutual understanding of content not, or not yet, propositionally encapsulated. It is true, Hagberg observes, that one may find it initially implausible to investigate voice, where voice is understood as a too-often-unappreciated determinant of meaning, within the pages of a novel (which, of course, is in the first instance read and not heard). But a closer look proves otherwise: James delivers not only words of a flatly “transcribed” kind. He captures the tone, the voice, of an important linguistic interaction—which he does not only by describing the tone with a sculpted precision, but more importantly still by fully setting out the present psychological and emotional context of an utterance and the backstory, the psychic history, that leads to, and inflects the meaning of, this present utterance and that leads that utterance to be voiced in the way that it is. Read this way, we come to see how James’s late masterpiece makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of language and to the theory of meaning of a kind that incorporates a rich awareness of the significance of voice. Hagberg suggests that what we see here is a literary presentation of the comprehension of interpersonal meaning of a kind so intricate and so truly human that it takes the length of a novel to show it.