And Was Oedipus Complex?

The first novel by Henry James, soon forgotten

Watch and Ward by Henry James

Roger Lawrence — twenty-nine, balding, physically graceless, hypochondriac and in many ways already going to pot — has just been rejected by a beautiful women whom he loved but who did not love, and could never have loved, him. I know the feeling well.

And Roger, as many a man might do, has a drastic reaction to this turn of events. A deal of men in similar situations swear off women, off love — not permanently, of course. They’ll come trudging back in time, when it’s definitely, finally too late — and they’ll suffer their diminishment, their ageing, their poor decisions. But Roger actually means to do it; and he writes a letter to a lady, the object of his adoration, to that effect.

My heart’s now shut by a steel door, he thinks and writes.

I’ll live for myself, for pleasure, for whatever small things I can wring from this sad and meagre world. And then he is approached — or perhaps he was approached before — by a raving, desperate man. The man’s sick; he’s in a great deal of trouble. And perceiving Roger Lawrence to be rich, he asks him for the use of a lot of money.

Roger says no, offers him some but not all of the total, and then leaves their brief, histrionic interview. He feels great distaste at such a man, a man likely criminal. He wants nothing to do with his many problems.

But for all that, Roger can’t escape those problems. They’re staying at the same hotel and, in the night, Roger is woken by two loud noises. They’re gunshots, and this poor maddened wretch has done two things: he’s smashed his own face to pieces with a bullet, quite naturally ending his life, and he’s taken a shot at (but neither injured nor killed) a girl, about twelve years old, who was with him at the time. She’s the suicide’s daughter; and she is, everyone soon concurs who pours into the fatal room to offer their vulgar opinion, alone and without a hope in the world.

Roger Lawrence then makes a decision. He’d turned his back on love of all kinds that very day; but perhaps he did so too soon. This girl needs a guardian; she needs educating, looking after. Roger has always wanted to be a father. But, and this is the part that strikes modern ears and eyes with at a minimum of very cold water, he also wants a wife. And he thinks — and even entrusts the awful idea to a letter — that he has a good five or six years to bring this girl up to become one. It will be his fault, he thinks and says (in a letter to the lady who rejected him) if this girl — Nora — does not become a perfect little wife to him.

And it’s upon that note of moral blackness and falsity that their association begins.

Roger is not quite a guardian to Nora; he certainly doesn’t have legal right to her. But no one else appears to claim her or to try to bring her up and so the responsibility falls to him. He’s just wealthy enough; he has a place in the country. Roger can, as if embarking on a new project, read up on child-rearing, on pedagogy. He can make her learn the piano, and drawing, and how to ride a horse. It’s within his power to have someone teach her to read and to write. And when the time comes, he can send her away to school. And soon after that, he can pack her off to Italy for a whole year: her companion the lady who rejected Roger but a little ago (as she’s now a widow, settled and content, having made and outlasted what they call a good marriage).

What strikes modern readers as Roger’s gross immorality (this rearing of a romantic partner from poverty and childhood) is laid forth in what Henry James insists is open-heartedness and generosity. He does pay for everything. He does bring her up with great care. He is never cruel to her, never expects anything from her but her own betterment, never seems to demand anything of her. And Roger even makes the case (offered, in a somewhat different from, by Humbert Humbert in Lolita), that it’s for Nora, his charge, to choose him, rather than for him to insist. If she decides to become his wife, she will do so of her own accord. There will be, he tells himself and others over and over again (as if attempting to dismiss a guilty conscience), no funny business; it will all be quite above board.

Roger’s designs are complicated, however. First, they are interrupted by the interjection of his own cousin, Hubert Lawrence, who is a trivial, immoral clergyman with a fine speaking voice and an eagerly dedicated group of female parishioners. Hubert fascinates the young girl from the age of about fifteen, when she is not yet pretty. By sixteen or seventeen, she’s getting there; but at eighteen, we’re told, fresh from Rome, she is quite devastating.

And second, Roger’s plans are apt to be foiled by the interjection of a man called Fenton, who claims to be Nora’s cousin. He turns up, fresh from the American south-west, to get some money out of her rich benefactor, and perhaps to steal her heart if it comes with dollars attached.

All the while, James hints to the reader, Roger Lawrence is the best of these men, and has the purest heart. We are told that this is a very complex story — one in which the girl’s own revulsion at what she has been groomed for from the age of twelve is real, yes, and partly justified; and she does express it forcefully, when Roger makes her his offer. But it is only one part of the picture.

And we are told, too, that growing up is, at least in part, a realisation. A realisation that the older men who do you favours and give you gifts are the ones whose hearts are purest and freest of masculine evil.

I’m not sure I agree.