osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2019-11-30 08:34 am
osprey_archer) wrote2019-11-30 08:34 am
Book Review: A Foregone Conclusion
William Dean Howells’ A Foregone Conclusion is a weird book. The “foregone conclusion,” possibly, is that befriending Catholic priests always ends in tears, for the priest more than anyone else. At any rate, that’s certainly how things work out in the book.
Alternatively, the internet tells me the title is a quote from Othello, and there are points where the story echoes that play: the Venetian setting, the theme of jealousy. But on the whole, it’s certainly not close enough to call a retelling.
The story is a love triangle between the American consul to Venice, Ferris, who is also a painter; an American expatriate girl, Florida Vervain (named after the state of her birth); and Don Ippolito, a skeptical Venetian priest who would really rather throw over his priesthood and go to American to invent things.
If you’ve read a certain amount of 19th century fiction, then you know that no one is ever allowed to evade their vows, and if they try it they usually die for it. Usually those vows are marital; in this case, the vows are those of priesthood, but it works out the same in the end. Don Ippolito comes to the cusp of breaking free - actually plans to go to America with the Vervains to give inventing a go - but then confesses his love to Florida, who “shuddered… recoiling, with almost a shriek. ‘You? A priest!’ “
Then she is appalled to see his pain, and “A great wave of sorrow and compassion and despair for him swept through her. She flung her arms about his neck, and pulled his head down upon her heart, and held it tight there, weeping and moaning over him as over some hapless, harmless thing that she had unpurposely bruised or killed.”
If you are familiar with 19th century fiction, you will be unsurprised to know that Ferris stumbles upon this scene, and that the Vervains leave Venice before the misunderstanding can be cleared up, which leaves him with a bruised and bleeding heart and a conviction that Florida is in love with Don Ippolito. Even though Don Ippolito remains in Venice! Even after Don Ippolito himself, ill with fever, informs him that Florida loves only Ferris, and in any case Don Ippolito has repented of his apostasy and determined to be a Carmelite friar.
Howells comments, “It was perhaps inevitable from Ferris’s Protestant association of monks and convents and penances chiefly with the machinery of fiction, that all this affected him as unreally as talk in a stage-play” - and I think this comment clarifies Ferris’s attitude toward Don Ippolito all along; he finds the priest interesting, not least because he is so unlike most priests in fiction, but at the same time he never does seem to find him quite real. Hence the fact that Ferris never can get his portrait of Don Ippolito to truly look like him.
Don Ippolito is anguished by Ferris’s disbelief. He asks:
And so they take their leave of each other. Don Ippolito “took Ferris’s hand, hanging weak and hot by his side, and drew him gently down by it, and kissed him on either bearded cheek. ‘It is our custom, you know, among friends. Farewell.’”
And that very night, struck down by the inevitable fate of characters in 19th century novels who wish to evade their vows, Don Ippolito dies. The book goes on for a few more chapters; Ferris and Florida still need to get together, after all, although frankly Don Ippolito had a point when he said Ferris never really understood Florida, either. (Ferris doesn’t really seem to be thinking of Florida when he says “the same deceit has tricked us both,” but what else could he mean? But perhaps he’s talking meaninglessly to cover his confusion.)
But with Don Ippolito’s death, the story loses most of its impetus. In a sense Howells is not really interested in either Florida or Ferris: they exist to draw out new facets in the character of Don Ippolito, and become loose ends to be tidied away once he’s gone.
Alternatively, the internet tells me the title is a quote from Othello, and there are points where the story echoes that play: the Venetian setting, the theme of jealousy. But on the whole, it’s certainly not close enough to call a retelling.
The story is a love triangle between the American consul to Venice, Ferris, who is also a painter; an American expatriate girl, Florida Vervain (named after the state of her birth); and Don Ippolito, a skeptical Venetian priest who would really rather throw over his priesthood and go to American to invent things.
If you’ve read a certain amount of 19th century fiction, then you know that no one is ever allowed to evade their vows, and if they try it they usually die for it. Usually those vows are marital; in this case, the vows are those of priesthood, but it works out the same in the end. Don Ippolito comes to the cusp of breaking free - actually plans to go to America with the Vervains to give inventing a go - but then confesses his love to Florida, who “shuddered… recoiling, with almost a shriek. ‘You? A priest!’ “
Then she is appalled to see his pain, and “A great wave of sorrow and compassion and despair for him swept through her. She flung her arms about his neck, and pulled his head down upon her heart, and held it tight there, weeping and moaning over him as over some hapless, harmless thing that she had unpurposely bruised or killed.”
If you are familiar with 19th century fiction, you will be unsurprised to know that Ferris stumbles upon this scene, and that the Vervains leave Venice before the misunderstanding can be cleared up, which leaves him with a bruised and bleeding heart and a conviction that Florida is in love with Don Ippolito. Even though Don Ippolito remains in Venice! Even after Don Ippolito himself, ill with fever, informs him that Florida loves only Ferris, and in any case Don Ippolito has repented of his apostasy and determined to be a Carmelite friar.
Howells comments, “It was perhaps inevitable from Ferris’s Protestant association of monks and convents and penances chiefly with the machinery of fiction, that all this affected him as unreally as talk in a stage-play” - and I think this comment clarifies Ferris’s attitude toward Don Ippolito all along; he finds the priest interesting, not least because he is so unlike most priests in fiction, but at the same time he never does seem to find him quite real. Hence the fact that Ferris never can get his portrait of Don Ippolito to truly look like him.
Don Ippolito is anguished by Ferris’s disbelief. He asks:
“And how shall I make you believe that what you saw was not a woman’s love, but an angel’s heavenly pity for me? Does it seem hard to believe this of her?”
“Yes,” answered the painter doggedly, “it is hard.”
“And yet it is the very truth. Oh, you do not know her, you never knew her! In the same moment that she denied me her love, she divined the anguish of my soul, and with that embrace she sought to console me for the friendlessness of a whole life, past and to come. But I know that I waste my words on you,” he cried bitterly. “You never would see me as I was; you would find no singleness in me, and yet I had a heart as full of loyalty to you as love for her. In what have I been false to you?”
“You never were false to me,” answered Ferris, “and God knows I have been true to you, and at what cost. We might well curse the day we met, Don Ippolito, for we have only done each other harm. But I never meant you harm. And now I ask you to forgive me if I cannot believe you. I cannot—yet. I am of another race from you, slow to suspect, slow to trust. Give me a little time; let me see you again. I want to go away and think. I don’t question your truth. I’m afraid you don’t know. I’m afraid that the same deceit has tricked us both. I must come to you to-morrow. Can I?”
And so they take their leave of each other. Don Ippolito “took Ferris’s hand, hanging weak and hot by his side, and drew him gently down by it, and kissed him on either bearded cheek. ‘It is our custom, you know, among friends. Farewell.’”
And that very night, struck down by the inevitable fate of characters in 19th century novels who wish to evade their vows, Don Ippolito dies. The book goes on for a few more chapters; Ferris and Florida still need to get together, after all, although frankly Don Ippolito had a point when he said Ferris never really understood Florida, either. (Ferris doesn’t really seem to be thinking of Florida when he says “the same deceit has tricked us both,” but what else could he mean? But perhaps he’s talking meaninglessly to cover his confusion.)
But with Don Ippolito’s death, the story loses most of its impetus. In a sense Howells is not really interested in either Florida or Ferris: they exist to draw out new facets in the character of Don Ippolito, and become loose ends to be tidied away once he’s gone.