It is not managed
by peppering the surface with animated dialogue, by making the
characters break into talk when they really have nothing to contribute
to the subject; the end of this is only to cheapen and discredit their
talk when at length it is absolutely required. The dramatic rule is
applied more fundamentally; it animates the actual elements of the
picture, the description, and makes a drama of these. I have noted how
in The Ambassadors the picture of Strether's mind is transformed into
an enacted play, even where his story, for chapters at a time, is bare
of action in the literal sense. The result, no doubt, is that his mind
emerges from the book with force and authority, its presence is
_felt_. And now I would track the same method and measure the result
in another book, The Wings of the Dove, where the value of this kind
of dramatization is perhaps still more clearly to be seen. Again we
are dealing with a subject that in the plain meaning of the word is
entirely undramatic.
Milly, the Dove, during all that part of the book in which her mind
lies open--in the chapters which give her vision of the man and the
girl, Densher and Kate, not theirs of her--is hoarding in silence two
facts of profoundest import to herself; one is her love for Densher,
the other the mortal disease with which she is stricken. It is of
these two facts that Kate proposes to take advantage, and there is
nothing weak or vague about Kate's design.
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