USING CARICATURES TO IMPLEMENT THEME IN FICTION: HENRY JAMES’S THE SPOILS OF POYNTON – A CASE STUDY
I wrote a paper once in graduate school called “Trapped on Stage: Caricatures in Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton. While I was a creative writer amongst very few creative writers in my program (I think there were like four or five of us in the English Department at the time), our perspective and goals were different than those of the other graduate students. While our colleagues were focused on learning about literature in English, we were more concerned about learning how to write collections and novels by learning how the authors before us had done it (I’d actually had more than one “clash” with those colleagues because it’s one think to be a critic, quite another to be a writer. We see things differently. We produce different sorts of works, even when it comes to critical works. Literature in English graduate students tend to want to teach in graduate departments and high school; creative writers may want to do that as well, but a lot of us want to write fiction and nonfiction and get our stuff published. My comeback to those folks whenever they criticized how I viewed a piece of literature “in canon” was this: You’ll be teaching my work to your students one day; I will have forgotten who you were.” A bit braggadocio, but, at the time, it worked. It was a nice FU to them, and it always ended the conversation.
While this study involves themes and caricatures, I want you to focus on what speaking and understanding other languages allows you to see when studying fiction. As I speak Spanish, I immediately noticed the use of Spanish words that non-speakers would likely miss. I know my professor didn’t catch them; she told me so. But I believe wholeheartedly that Henry James certainly knew what he was doing when it came to his use of Spanish names and terms. This is what I want you to take away from the study of caricature in the novel, because it’s something that you, as an author, can use in your own fiction as you see fit.
TRAPPED 0N STAGE:
Caricature in Henry James's
The Spoils of Poynton
The characters in Henry James's The Spoils of Poynton are caricatures built around a sequence of events dealing with Owen Gereth's rights to property under primogeniture laws, and how he attempts to execute these rights while continuing to show his mother the respect she believes she deserves. James's characters, while complex, remain caricatures throughout the novel because they cannot escape the rigidly defined labels James has structured their existences. James’s characters are caricatures in the sense that their lives (if they may be called that) within the text are predominantly governed by actions and distinct characteristics James deems necessary to advance his plot. When James's characters compromise their static selves, when they break out of the structure James has forced them into, the characters are thrown into situations which can only be described as self-damaging. The term “caricature” is used pejoratively; however, it should be thought of here as having a smoother, less abrasive definition, for James’s characters are more complex and less flat than what such a term implies.
In his novels and short fiction, Henry James has been fond of including minor characters whose roles, though seemingly inconsequential, were dramatically useful. James's most utilized minor character remains the confidant or ficelle, who acts as a mirror or reflector to one or more of the major characters within a work. These minor characters vary in the degree to which they are developed, but they remain minor in the sense that they have been incorporated to serve as catalysts for the development of the plot in relation to the major characters. The Spoils of Poynton is like other James works in that it developed and grew from an anecdote. But it differs in that it grew into a much longer piece of fiction than James had intended it to be. Because of the difficulties James encountered in the composition of what was originally to be a shorter work, his traditional characterization process appears to have suffered. Rather than painstakingly developing characters as he had done in previous works, James was forced to cut corners. James's decision to use complex caricatures rather than complex characters facilitated his need for brevity, but it ultimately damaged any real possibility of the growth of his characters. According to William Veeder, “James bases his strategy for characterization upon our knowledge of conventions, because our expectations will then be sufficiently one-sided that he can make us experience the other, ambivalent, implicating side of character, and life” (Veeder, 92).
Though James's minor characters experienced no great disruption, the major characters were in a sense set back: James's major characters were now scarcely more than complex minor characters—characters practically as flat as James's normal, more conventional minor characters. Kenneth Graham writes, “[James’s] characters, especially the secondary figures like Owen and Mona, are identified by almost surreally isolated details of appearance and attitude” (Graham, 131). And though he dismisses certain questions leading further into the flatness of James's other characters, he nevertheless posits the important question: “Should we approach [Fleda’s] extreme moral scrupulousness not at all in terms of realistic characterization, but as purely symbolic?” (Graham, 141).
In the preface to The Spoils, James uses the word “fixed” on numerous occasions to describe his characters and refers to one of the characters as a “moved mannikin.” Fleda Vetch, the woman James puts at the center of everything, is surrounded by “fools” with whom James had “problem[s] . . . establishing . . . the vividness of their appearance” (preface. xlix). As James clings to “simplicity,” so do his characters. The caricatures are both a product and a consequence of James’s economy of form. Though James attempts to address these characters—or at least modify them—to be more than mere caricatures of real people, his effort was not as fruitful as he might have hoped; if it had been, the story would have been less credible than it already is. Because the spoils was originally serialized in the Atlantic Monthly, because it was initially supposed to be “three short stories” (preface xliii), James wrote The Spoils (known as ‘The Old Things’ in the serialized version” differently than if he would have written within the parameters of the freer form of the novel. And James himself understood the limitations imposed by what he had been asked to do. Referring to the “natural brevity” of the short story format, James writes,
A story that couldn't possibly be long would have inevitably to be ‘short’, and out of the depths of that delusion, it accordingly began to struggle.
(Spoils, xliv).
Though James here is primarily discussing the aesthetics of The Spoils as well as of his concern with audience reception, the “struggling” also applies to the development of The Spoils’ characters. The brevity of the short story format requires the writer, and in this case James, to pluck the most important from the important and to be frugal with the inconsequential details. Creating caricatures, or representations with exaggerated, distinctive features or traits, is one way of establishing a character without squandering the valuable space it takes to develop the character. And James, as in The Portrait of a Lady, What Maisie Knew, The Wings of the Dove, and other novels, uses this same technique in the form of the confidante. James uses confidantes to further his plots, for they—the confidantes—are not passive but active agents in the lives of the protagonists who confide in them. It is important to keep in mind that James employs confidantes in his fiction because it helps to understand, or see, how the characters in The Spoils of Poynton may be viewed as caricatures whose dominant—though not sole—purpose is to help further the plot.
The first character James begins with in The Spoils is that of the obsessed, “quite single-mindedly consistent,” Mrs. Gereth. (Laitinen 85). Now that her husband has died, and according to the laws of primogeniture, Mrs. Gereth is to lose her home and possessions to her son Owen. As is clear early on, James's desire to create in Mrs. Gereth a complex character is quite evident:
She hated the effacement to which English usage reduced the widowed mother, she had discourse of it passionately to Fleda, contrasted it with the beautiful homage paid by other countries to women in that position (32).
This declaration by the narrator leads the reader to believe that Mrs. Gereth is educated and well versed not only in local social norms and practices but in international ones as well. While this declaration is noble and insightful, it does not exemplify the reality, throughout the novel, of Mrs. Gereth, for Mrs. Gereth never really explores any of the concerns mentioned in the brief descriptions of the character. James has included this statement, and perhaps a few others, to paint Mrs. Gereth in a deeper light, to make her appear to be less static than she really is. In an attempt to broaden his character while remaining true to his need for economy, James plays on the reader's imagination to fill in the gaps he leaves in the development of his character. Incorporating a few well-placed descriptions early on is James's attempt at patching up the holes he notices in his work-in-progress. Though James does a good job, the holes remain. Arguably, the only matter important to Mrs. Gereth is Poynton, and every single object of value contained within Poynton's walls. If James would have been more careful (an obviously ironic declaration considering James’s editorial habits), and spent more time on Mrs. Gereth's development throughout The Spoils rather than writing-in a few lines in the beginning of the novel to establish her character, perhaps Mrs. Gereth's character would have had more diversity. But that is not the case. In all fairness to James, however, there is a reason for Mrs. Gereth's obsession. Like all the major characters in the novel, Mrs. Gereth's character is restrained and suppressed by James's idea of what she represents, of what she stands for. Poynton and the “Old Things” within Poynton signify something much more important to her, something much more valuable than simply what their worth as objects might be. The objects within Poynton, the “Old Things” she and her late husband so carefully collected over the years, and Poynton itself, were the record of a life” (14). The objects and what they stand for are, ultimately, what Mrs. Gereth struggles so valiantly to retain. And while they—the objects and what they symbolize—may be just causes for Mrs. Gereth's insidious behavior, her frequent attempts to manipulate Fleda Vetch, and her “unwillingness to compromise” (Laitinen 83), her character is still unable to break free from her being little more than a caricature of a woman obsessed with objects and a past she can do nothing to salvage.
Even after she is told she may be taken from Poynton by force, Mrs. Gereth does not waver; she holds onto her home (and thus her “self”), as if these things were her appendages. Though this is, and proves to be, an act Mrs. Gereth does in vain, she remains true to her character James has created for her. Tuomo Latinen, in Aspects of Henry James style, writes:
Mrs. Gereth has no legal and little moral right to try to keep the collection and to meddle in her son's marriage plans. The house of the maiden aunt at Rick's is quite adequate for her needs: indeed, she never denies that. She is simply too attached to the things. (85)
The reason she is too attached to the “things” is because James has made her so in order to build the rest of the action around this refusal to compromise, to find some sort of sensible solution. Mrs. Gereth becomes a caricature because she cannot depart from the limits James needs her to remain within to further the plot. And as we see towards the end of The Spoils, when the characters do break out of their molds, dire consequences await them.
Just as she is “too attached” to the “things” which make her whole, Mrs. Gereth is also “too attached” to the static nature which forms her character. In the preface to the New York edition of The Spoils, James calls Mrs. Gereth “a figure” who is “confined” and “false” (Spoils, xlix”). James uses the dependence on the static nature in Mrs. Gereth and in other characters as conventions. These conventions help create the relationships, as well as the problems within the relationships, between the characters. The static nature of James’s characters bind them to a cause, and this cause is, by James, easily manipulated because of its singularity. For Fleda, the cause is sacrifice—sacrifice with the intention of doing what is morally right. For Mrs. Gereth, the cause deals with keeping her semi-illustrious past intact by retaining the objects which make up the majority of those memories. For Owen Gereth, it is diplomacy; For Mona Brigstock, the cause is always the property and wealth that Owen Gereth can provide her through marriage. This is not to say that the characters absolutely, positively, have no lateral movement dash—for they do. The question is simply how much.
Owen Gereth, “weak-willed but also good-natured and well intentioned” (Latinen 90), though central to the story, remains a passive character who never really wavers much from his introduction into the novel. Like Fleda Vetch, Mrs. Gereth's unconventional vessel, Owen Gereth seems to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Like fleda Vetch, Owen wants to do what is “right” given the circumstances. But because of what is right, Owen is forced to “do things he didn't like” (34)—things such as limiting which articles, or how many of those articles, his mother was entitled to take from within Poynton’s walls. Owen's dilemma remains true throughout the novel, and though it is a detraction in the sense that it forces him to be a static character, it is a testament to his integrity. Integrity and understanding are what attract Fleda and Owen to each other, and these traits are also what make both characters agreeable to the reader. Describing Fleda's perception of Owen, the narrator writes,
“It struck our young lady that in a difficult position, Owen conducted himself with some natural art; treating this domesticated confidante of his mother's wrongs with a simple civility that almost troubled her conscience, so deeply she felt she might have had for him the air of siding with that lady against him. (12)
Civil is precisely how Owen is portrayed and how he remains, even after he weds Mona Brigstock. The conflict between Owen and his mother is not really a conflict between mother and son, but between Owen's mother and Mona. Owen is simply trapped in the middle. Because of his inability to assert himself, because of ineffectualness, Owen is forced to ride along through the novel while Mona and his mother determine what it is to become of him. Deep down, all Owen desires is to be happy. He can be happy with Mona Brigstock—as we see at the end of the novel—or Fleda Vetch, either will do, even if we are led to believe otherwise. Though at first such a happiness with Mona seems impossible, we see at the end of the novel that things change:
He had found in his marriage a happiness so much greater than, in the distress of his dilemma, he had been able to take to heart, to believe, that he now felt he owed [Fleda] a token of gratitude for having kept him in the straight path. (179)
Owen, the character with the least amount of fidelity to a cause, and thus the least developed character and the foil to Mona Brigstock, is seen by the narrator as having been kept in line by Fleda, a fact Owen acknowledges with gratitude, for it turns out to be the proper and most rewarding conclusion to the drawn-out dilemma he endured. At the beginning of the novel, it appears either woman will do, even if we are led to believe otherwise until the last few pages. Of the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Owen is seen alternating his walks with the three women in his life—a pleasantry which radically changes the more complex his situation gets. Owen’s character does what it can to satisfy his desire for happiness given the limited tools James supplies it with. But Owen is, unfortunately, like Fleda, handcuffed by the need to do what his character is assigned to do, trapped, in a sense, to cause the least amount of ripples in the water by not deviating from the limits laid out for him. Even in the heat of emotion, when Fleda and Owen professed their love for one another, and Owen is said to be “free,” Owen is shown to be out of his element. Fleda asks if Owen can “take such pleasure in [Mona's] being finished,” to which Owen responds, “I don't think I can have really loved her (128). Here, Owen is being diplomatic. He says what he feels and what he thinks Fleda wants to hear, and Fleda “br[eaks] into a laugh that g[ives] him a surprise as visible as the emotion it represented” (128). And a few sentences later, to substantiate Owens having wandered into unfamiliar territory, Owen is described as being “baffled.” It seems even Fleda is aware of Owen's character limitations.
When characters break out of their molds, it is odd and distracting, and almost as if an actor in a play accidentally walked too far to one side, comically landing or intruding into another production. It simply does not work. This motif applies to characters in their own distinct fashions, and the consequences weigh heavily and accordingly.
Because James wrote The Spoils around the time he was interested in the theater (Guy Domville opened in 1895 to a terrible reception), it is tempting to analyze the characters in The Spoils against James's intention while writing the play. The Spoils was written with the idea of economy of form permeating James's creative process, a process he borrowed from his experience writing plays. F.W. Dupee, writes, James tried to “convert” . . . his playwriting experience to use as a novelist so that the exertions and sufferings of those years should not be wasted” (Dupee, 185). It is possible, if not likely, that James did not separate himself fully (while writing his novel) from the need to economize the way he would have while writing his plays. There appears to be a direct correlation between the development of his characters and The Spoils and the development of a character through his or her dialogue and actions in the more economical form of the play. Perhaps James was experimenting with form, as many critics claim, or perhaps James could not separate himself enough from his various projects. In fact, not long after Guy Domville bombed at the theater, James gave up writing plays forever and entered into the next stage of his writing career.
Fashioned after the static character, Mona Brigstock’s first and last names may be read as character names for how James wished her character to be perceived. In Spanish, though the definition varies slightly from dictionary to dictionary, the word “Mona” is defined as a female monkey,” an “ugly person,” a “silkworm,” or a “mimic”—all definitions which, in one way or another, and with a little imagination, can be applied to Mona Brigstock. The name Brigstock, if broken down, may in turn be read as Mona being labeled the “stock of a brig,” or, in other words, James’s clever way of referring to Mona as a “jail” or “prison” or “guard house.” It is interesting to note, though perhaps a bit of a stretch, that both Fleda Vetch's name and Mona Brickstock's name, if read as charactonyms, are, at least partially, related to two nautical terms, brig and fetch. Briggs are jails or prisons onboard vessels; the word fletch, On the other hand, if also thought of in nautical terms, may be defined as “to hold a course.” Though it is possible that James did not intend for this to be the case, it is not probable, given his education and extensive travel across the oceans, that James was not aware of the significance of his characters’ names. If the characters are read, as I suggest, as caricatures, then it is easy to make the connection between their names and the static or fixed behavior each character represents. Though cases may be made for the other characters of importance within the book, it is Fled Vetch and Mona who are easiest to read in this light. And Mona, the least developed of the four crucial characters, the one character who is undoubtedly a caricature, is thus represented by the most obvious charactonym.
Mona's being a caricature becomes even more apparent if one analyzes the way the narrator describes her and the other Brigstocks throughout the novel. Not only does this help to outline her aesthetic nature, it also lends to the idea of her name being symbolic, or a reference to, Mona being less than human—her being, in essence, a monkey, a slave to the limits James gives her character. Already, at the outset of The Spoils, the simian imagery is unmistakable. Describing the way Mrs. Gereth views the interaction between Owen and Mona, the narrator writes, “She had seen Mona in her appropriate setting and had seen Owen handsome and heavy, dangle beside her” (4). Though his description is of Owen, the scene takes place in Waterbath, The Brigstocks home. Other references to animals and animal-like behavior occur within the same scene. For example, the Brigstocks souvenirs are “smelly” and “smeared” with “acres of varnish,” and they, the Brigstocks, are pictured by Fleda as “applying” the varnish onto the souvenirs with “their own hands and hilariously shoving each other.... on rainy days” (4). Here, Owen is also said to be sitting and talking to a “Mrs. Firman” (note the resemblance to the word “vermin”), “who was as dreadful as all the rest” (4). To further highlight James’s restricting Mona to her character name, here are a few allusions, taken from the novel, depicting Mona and her family through simian imagery:
Mrs. Brigstock had been... romping. Open. (5)
Long limbed... She stood there without a look in her eye of any perceptible intention of any sort in any other feature. She belonged to the type in which speech is an unaided emission of sound. (5)
Brutally Ignorant. (17). Caught a bad cold in the company of a stuffed cockatoo... On a tropical bough. (22)
The knowing but alarming raps administered by her big knuckles. (23)
This animal imagery helps the reader understand why the Brigstocks are seen through Mrs. Gereth’s eyes as people unsuitable to marry into. And then there is the surname itself, “Brigstock,” which accordingly hints toward Owen—and thus both Gereths’—entrapment into a union with a family less than suitable to their own. Mona Brigstock is the most reliable, the most consistent and unwavering character in The Spoils, and it is because she is the most static, the most completely caricatured character of the novel. Mona is not much more than an extended outline of a character; She is “all will,” as James designates her in his preface, and this, of course, is also why she is the least seen of the four central characters.
On the opposite side of the Mona Brigstock coin, and a static character in her own right, is Fleda Vetch, who James describes as the only “good” thing in The Spoils in a letter to his brother William. Fleda Vetch is a complex version of James’s signature confidante. Fleda is a caricature of nobleness, of social/political correctness, which is appealing because it is the ideal, the picture of moral/social perfection. Almost impossible to self-duplicate. It is not that Fleda is a great and complex character; in fact, it is that she is just the opposite. Fleda is a dull and plain character, ultimately ineffective because of her goodness, a goodness that is clearly a weakness. Her static nature, though ethical and honorable, prevents her from obtaining her own happiness. John P O'Neill believes that “Fleda is James’s portrait—whether fully intended or not, we do not know—of ethical absolutism” (O'Neill, 71). Further stressing her two-dimensional nature, O'Neill writes,
In the process of intensifying Fleda’s heroic selflessness, James reiterates, it leaves the reader with the uncomfortable, unintended feeling that his heroism belongs not to human beings but rather to an abstract struggle with an equally hypothetical selfishness. (O'Neill, 72).
Fleda, Throughout the novel, is never allowed to waver from the goodness or dignity of her character, which James utilizes as a contrast to the rest of the characters within the novel. Even though Fleda has an interest in what will ultimately become of Poynton and “the things,” she remains unselfish “because of her heroic fineness of conscience.” (Bell ringer 90.) There is never really a moment where Fleda is capable of sacrificing her beliefs—her character, if you will—in order to advance her own station (her moving is with Mrs. Gereth is about as close as she gets). In this sense, Fleda is, then, as Christopher Stewart writes,
Consistent with earlier James [characters in] works like Portrait and The Princess Casamassima, where the central character relinquishes her or his own opportunity for a life of love, passion, and wealth in the name of principles maintained by “civilized” European society which forbids divorces and broken engagements. (HJR. 19:2)
Though she ends up alone, and though Poynton and the objects within Poynton are lost, Fleda knows she has remained true, dignified, moral, good, and altruistic—even though the price was high and, save her own conscience, possibly all for naught. That she cannot sacrifice her beliefs, that she is unable to compromise between what she considers right and wrong for her own benefit, while admirable, renders her impotent. If Fleda’s character was more diverse, if she was able to be something other than James's ideal from which to compare the other characters, it would be quite feasible to assume that her life, her existence, would not only be more credible, but much more interesting and much more real. Fleda’s character travels along the plot twists and turns, but her “good nature” chains her to an unfruitful track.
By the end of the novel, James has made absolutely certain that none of his characters emerged victorious with regards to The Spoils. By burning Poynton to the ground, James is teaching his characters a lesson: “that a rigid ethical code and excessive self-restraint can result in disaster” (Stuart 167). By not allowing his character's mobility, by barring them from the option of choice, James is limiting them to a deterministic existence, i.e., a static life, predictable and mechanic. He furthers his plot in The Spoils because the static nature of one character stands at the opposite pole of the other. Once there is this motivation/conflict relationship, once it is established that one character wants something and that another wishes to retain that something, the story is ready to be told. Adding to the idea that James's characters in The Spoils are less than real, James Gargano explains that:
James's study of character is his single aim, but it is invariably study pursued with no idea of giving the shallow entertainment; with no dwelling upon eccentric traits humorously, with no tenderness for the weak... yet scarcely tangible. The most appreciative reader... will lay The Spoils down with no definite idea in the mind of the identity of Mrs. Gereth, Owen, Fleda Vetch, or Mona Brigstock (Gargano, 29-30.)
Whether or not the static nature of his characters does damage to the overall story may simply be in the eye of beholder. In fact, many critics would argue that the characters in The Spoils of Poynton are not static, which of course is easiest to argue if one puts Fleta Vetch up to the podium. But the facts—if read super subtly—remain, and they remain in Henry James’s own pen. James explains in his preference to the New York edition the constraints weighing down the ideas from the “germ” he picked up one night at dinner, and which would grow into the stories that would eventually become The Spoils of Poynton. These constraints have to do with the novel’s first being serialized, and with the limits of space that are a product of that serialization. While other factors are relevant to understanding the main characters in The Spoils, highlighting James’s use of the caricature is important because of the direct relationship of his characters to the confidante, which is itself a caricature in such a prominent figure in many of James’s other works.
Hopefully Using caricatures to implement theme in fiction: Henry James’s the Spoils of Poynton – a case study, will help you understand the options available to you in terms of theme, caricature, and how you can use it for your own writing.
WORKS CITED
1. Bell, Millicent. "James, the Audience of the Nineties, and The Spoils of Poynlon." The
Henry James Review 20.3 (1999): 217-226.
2. Bellringer, Alan W. Henry James. New York: St Martin's Press, 1988.
3. Dupee, F.W. Henry James. Greenwood Press, 1973.
4. Gargano, James W. Critical Essays on Henry James: The Late Novels. Boston: G.K. Hall
& co., 1987.
5. Graham, Kenneth. Henry_ James, The Drama of Fulfillment: An Approach to the
Novels. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.
6. James, Henry. The Spoils of Poynton: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982.
7. Laitenen, Tuomo. Aspects of Henry James's Style. Helsinki, 1975.
8. O'Neill, John P. Workable Desi n: Action and Situation in the Fiction of Henry James.
Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1973.
9. Stuart, Christopher. "The Spoils of Poynton: 'What can you call it. . . if it ain't really
Saved?"' The Henry James Review 19.2 (1998): 166-182.
10. Veeder, William. Henry James—The Lessons of the Master. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1975.
Cully Perlman is author of a novel, THE LOSSES, a substantive editor (reach out with you completed novel if you need help!), and a human being. He can be reached at Cully@novelmasterclass.com
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