Watch and Ward. Henry James.

Watch and Ward
Henry James
New York: The Library of America
1983 (1871)

Why read it? Novel. Why read Henry James? For many reasons. His subtle expression of the intricacies of relationships is revealing of how people think and feel in relation to others. His character studies reveal the complexity of personality. He throws off ideas and memorable words almost as afterthoughts. One will find many a mot juste in his novels. And he works mainly with the relationships of unsubtle, honest and straightforward Americans against the subtle, devious, cultured Europeans. However, Watch and Ward deals only with America and is an early novel.

The idea behind the novel is bizarre. Roger Lawrence adopts a little girl and brings her up to be his perfect wife. Only he doesn’t tell her that that has been his reason until she is fully grown and then she rebels. Two young men who have courted her turn out to be complete jerks and she finally realizes that Roger is the only man she knows who has a heart and, it is assumed, she marries him.

Note: The number before the quote is the number of the page on which the quote was found.

Some sample ideas from the novel:
4. Of Roger Lawrence: “In trifling matters, such as the choice of a shoemaker or a dentist, his word carried weight, but no one dreamed of asking his opinion in politics or literature.” 7. “…but she added that the man she married must satisfy her heart. Her heart, she did not add, was bent upon a carriage and diamonds.” 9. “The injury I do you in refusing you is less than I should do you in accepting you without love.” 12. “ ‘He [her father] meant to kill her [Nora], of course,’ said the landlady, ‘that she mightn’t be left alone in the world. It’s a queer mixture of cruelty and kindness! ’ ” 13. “…looked at the child—the little forlorn, precocious, potential woman.”

18. “He showed them [portraits of Nora] to two old ladies of his acquaintance, whose judgment he valued, without saying whom they represented; the ladies pronounced her a little monster.” 22. “Plainness in a child was almost always prettiness in a woman.” 24. “In fact, Hubert had apparently come into the world to play. He played at life altogether; he played at learning, he played at theology, he played at friendship; and it was to be conjectured…he would play with especial relish at love.” 26. “She had reached that charming girlish moment when the broad freedom of childhood begins to be tempered by the sense of sex.” 34. Nora: “You must keep your journals carefully, and one of these days I shall have them bound in morocco and gilt, and ranged in a row in my own bookcase.” Roger: “That’s but a polite way of burning them up…. They will be as little read as if they were in the fire. I don’t know how it is. They seemed to be very amusing when I wrote them: they’re as stale as an old newspaper now.”

37. “…but he felt as if to settle down to an unread author were very like the starting on a journey.” 37.“Roger was forever suspecting her of a deeper penetration than his own.” 41. Nora: “What are you? Neither my brother, nor my father, nor my uncle, nor my cousin—not even, by law, my guardian.” 41. “I know that if I should run away and leave you now, you couldn’t force me to return.” 41. “…you can turn me out of your house this moment, and no one can force you to take me back.” 49. “It seemed to him an extremely odd use of one’s time and capital, this fashioning a wife to order.” 50. Nora: “He has educated me, he has made me what I am.” 52. Nora: “He has known me as a child…. I shall always be a child for him.”

56. “She awoke with a keener consciousness of the burden of life.” 63. “All this had given him a slightly jaded, over wearied look, certain to deepen his interest in female eyes.” 66. “It was a specialty of Hubert’s that in proportion as other people grew hot, he grew cool.” 72. “For a young girl it’s by no means pure gain, going to Europe. She comes into a very pretty heritage of prohibitions. You have no idea of the number of improper things a young girl can do.” 76. “Your real lover of Rome oscillates with a kind of delicious pain between the city in itself and the city in literature.” 79. “It’s interesting to hear about people one looks like.”
83. “The shrinking diffidence of childhood I have utterly cast away. I speak up at people as bold as brass. I like having them introduced to me, and having to be interested and interesting at a moment’s notice. I like listening and watching. I like sitting up to the small hours.” 83. “He wished to make Nora miss him and to let silence combine with absence to plead for him.” 85. “I have brought her up with the view of making her my wife, but I’ve never breathed a word of it to her. She must choose for herself.” 88 “To go into most of the churches [in Rome] is like reading some better novel than I find most novels.” 88 “I needn’t try to define the indefinable.”

97. “ ‘Be as good as you please,’ says Society, ‘but unless you’re interesting, I’ll none of you!’ ” 105. “…you and I, for instance, are living up to the top of our capacity, that we are contented, satisfied, balanced.” 106. “There are men born to imagine things, others born to do them.” 109. “ ‘True admiration,’ said Mrs. Keith, ‘is one half respect and the other half self-denial.’ ” Hubert: “I’ll put that in a sermon.” 113. “Mrs. Keith was primed for a ‘scene’; she was annoyed at missing it.” 113 “…his eyes flashing cold wrath.” 123. “In this strange new character of a lover she seemed to see him eclipsed as a friend.”

125 “Here, if ever, was thunder from a clear sky.” 125. “Why had he never told her that she wore a chain? Why, when he took her, had he not drawn up his terms and made his bargain? She would have kept it, she would have taught herself to be his wife. Duty then would have been duty; sentiment would have been sentiment.” 128. “It would have been a vast relief to be able to hate him.” 133. “I can’t give what he wants, nor can I give back all I have received. But I can refuse to take more.” 139. “Ah, how character plays the cards!” 145. “I was dreaming then; now I’m awake.” 145. “You’ve stirred deep waters.”

Quote: 159. “She seemed to be in the secret of the universe…and the secret of the universe was that Roger was the only man in it who had a heart.”