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At this University Forum, William Veeder, Professor Emeritus of English (University of Chicago), Susan Griffin, Professor of English and Distinguished University Scholar (University of Louisville) and Editor of the Henry James Review, and Lucy LaFarge, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry (Weill Cornell Medical College) and Regional Editor for North America, the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, convened to discuss Henry James's masterpiece, The Golden Bowl (1904). Hilary Beattie, analyst and Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry (Columbia University), was the chair and moderator. Taken together, the panelists' comments focused on James's depiction of processes of not knowing, unconscious motivations underlying sadomasochistic fantasy, and consequences of forestalling internal and external knowledge, from the dehumanization of others to stagnation of the self. Dialogue among the speakers modeled the mobilization of interpretive processes by which subjects, like stories, continually reconstitute meaning.
To lay the groundwork for this discussion, I begin with a brief summary of the novel. The story opens in London with Maggie Verver, a young American woman, and her father, Adam, a wealthy financier, amid preparations for Maggie's upcoming wedding to Prince Amerigo, a handsome and charismatic Italian man of noble stock and meager means. On the eve of the marriage, the Prince encounters Charlotte Stant, a beautiful yet penniless young woman with whom many years earlier he had had a romantic relationship. Charlotte and Maggie are old childhood friends, but Maggie does not know about Charlotte and Amerigo's history. Tacitly agreeing that they will keep their past relationship a secret, Charlotte and Amerigo spend one last evening together, shopping for a gift for Maggie.