The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2
Henry James weaves a devastating portrait of love and desperation in Victorian London. Kate Croy, brilliant and impoverished, is bound by familial duty to her feckless father and domineering aunt while secretly engaged to the equally poor Merton Densher. Into their constrained world arrives Milly Theale, a naive American heiress who carries a secret: she is dying, and she is in love with Densher. What unfolds is a ruthlessly calculated scheme Kate orchestrates with cold clarity: Densher must win Milly's hand, so that upon her death, the inheritance will free Kate and Densher to marry. But James layers this cynical plot with unbearable irony, for Milly's love is genuine while Kate's is pragmatic, and the reader watches a young woman walk toward her death with grace she does not know she possesses. The wings of the dove become a cruel joke, a symbol of innocence devoured by those who circle above. This is James at his most psychologically acute, exploring what people sacrifice and what they pretend not to know about themselves.
