The Ivory Tower

Infobox Book |
name = The Ivory Tower


image_caption =
author = Henry James
country = United Kingdom
language = English
genre = Novel
publisher = W. Collins Sons & Co.
release_date = 6 September 1917
media_type = Print (Hardback & Paperback)
pages = 348 pp
isbn = NA

"The Ivory Tower" is an unfinished novel by Henry James, posthumously published in 1917. The novel is a brooding story of Gilded Age America. It centers on the riches earned by a pair of dying millionaires and ex-partners, Abel Gaw and Frank Betterman, and their possibly corrupting effect on the people around them.

Plot summary

Graham ("Gray") Fielder returns from Europe to the wealthy resort of Newport, Rhode Island to see his dying uncle Frank Betterman. Rosanna Gaw, the daughter of Betterman's embittered ex-partner Abel Gaw, is also at Newport. She has succeeded in bringing about a partial reconciliation between the two elderly men.

Gaw and Betterman both die, and Fielder receives a large inheritance from his uncle. Gray is inexperienced at business, so he entrusts the management of the fortune to the unscrupulous Horton Vint. At this point the novel breaks off. From his extensive notes it appears that James intended Vint to betray Fielder's trust much as Kate Croy did with Milly Theale in "The Wings of the Dove". Fielder would then magnanimously forgive Vint, but it's not certain if he would marry Rosanna, who is definitely in love with Gray.

Major themes

James clearly meant this novel as an attack on the gigantic wealth of the Gilded Age plutocrats. He presents Abel Gaw with almost Gothic intensity as a predatory financier, "with his beak, which had pecked so many hearts out, visibly sharper than ever." James shows Betterman, as his name suggests, in a slightly more favorable light if only because he has repented somewhat for his past financial sins.

The younger people are just as reprehensible, with the possible exceptions of Rosanna and Gray. "We're all unspeakably corrupt," says Vint, and the reader won't have much trouble agreeing. Vint and his lover Cissy Foy seem much like Amerigo and Charlotte in "The Golden Bowl" in their love of wealth and pleasure.

According to James' notes Fielder eventually comes to recognize "the black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions" and how those possessions have been "so dishonored and stained and blackened at their very roots, that it seems...they carry their curse with them." Which is probably as definite a statement of the novel's import as can be found.

Critical evaluation

Even in its fragmentary state "The Ivory Tower" has received high, sometimes extravagant praise. Much of the praise, though, appears politically motivated. Critics are so happy with James' attack on excessive wealth and laissez-faire capitalism that they're willing to overlook the very slow pace of the novel and the extreme density of its prose.

The negative case also quibbles with James' sometimes stilted, unnatural dialogue, and his grossly unsubtle harping on Rosanna's overweight physique and tobacco addiction. All in all, no definite verdict can be reached on a novel left mostly incomplete. An interesting footnote is the large advance that Scribner's paid to James for the novel. He was a little suspicious of the money, with good reason. His friend Edith Wharton had secretly provided the cash.

References

* "The Novels of Henry James" by Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1983) ISBN 0-8044-2959-6
* "The Novels of Henry James" by Oscar Cargill (New York: Macmillan Co., 1961)

External links

* [http://www.henryjames.org.uk/itower/ Text of "The Ivory Tower" with the author's notes (1917)]