XI
And now for the method by which the picture of a mind is fully
dramatized, the method which is to be seen consistently applied in The
Ambassadors and the other later novels of Henry James. How is the
author to withdraw, to stand aside, and to let Strether's thought tell
its own story? The thing must be seen from our own point of view and
no other. Author and hero, Thackeray and Esmond, Meredith and Harry
Richmond, have given their various accounts of emotional and
intellectual adventure; but they might do more, they might bring the
facts of the adventure upon the scene and leave them to make their
impression. The story passes in an invisible world, the events take
place in the man's mind; and we might have to conclude that they lie
beyond our reach, and that we cannot attain to them save by the help
of the man himself, or of the author who knows all about him. We might
have to make the best of an account at second hand, and it would not
occur to us, I dare say, that anything more could be forthcoming; we
seem to touch the limit of the possibilities of drama in fiction. But
it is not the final limit--there is fiction here to prove it; and it
is this further stroke of the art that I would now examine.
The world of silent thought is thrown open, and instead of telling the
reader what happened there, the novelist uses the look and behaviour
of thought as the vehicle by which the story is rendered.
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