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In the chapter of his textbook Psychology treating human
social behavior, Peter Gray, a Boston College professor, writes:
The emergence of language … did not replace the already
existing system of nonverbal communication but, rather, added a
new layer of communication on top of it…. For social
interactions to meet the requirements of behavioral coordination
and mutual beneficence, each individual must have clues about the
intentions and desires of the others. For people …
nonverbal expressions of emotion are often the most reliable clues
available (534).
Smiling, he continues, has proven to be the most reliable evidence
of the social utility of nonverbal expression. A smile rarely
crosses our lips unless we are interacting with others. As such,
it is almost purely a form of communication, and because it
provides reliable clues about our emotions, it is one of the most
artless forms of communication. This artless form of communication
precedes language. Gray seems to suggest that these two forms are
layered, that the two exist on separate planes. This begs the
question of whether there is a tangible interface between the two,
and if so, what happens there?
Let’s consider Henry
James’s Portrait of a Lady as such an interface. In
the novel, language seems to make a claim on its ancestral form of
communication through its treatment of smiling. Gray’s
assertion that smiles are the most explicitly social form of
nonverbal expression, which provides ‘the most reliable
clues available,’ seems to support the notion that smiles
reveal our truest selves. The notion also has support in Madame
Bovary, when Flaubert writes: “the irresistible smile
she felt coming to her lips” (217).
Flaubert seems
to rely on the same notion. Not only does he suggest that the
smile is ‘irresistible,’ or involuntary, but that the
smile is not just a concern of the lips. Rather, Emma feels the
smile ‘coming to her lips,’ that is, the smile comes
from elsewhere—presumably from within her. Smiles rise from
within us and bring to the surface our true emotions. As if it one
time experienced a fall, language has long posed the problem of
disingenuousness. Freudian slips might be the closest that
language comes to reclaiming that lost ingenuousness. With the
advent of language, if smiles were supplantable as a reliable form
of communication, one would think they would become extinct. As
Gray points out, smiles, among other nonverbal expressions, are
distinct from language. It seems likely that the smile has not
become extinct and still remains distinct from language due to its
knack for ingenuousness. Then it makes some intuitive sense that
for language, an unreliable form of communication, to make a claim
on an artless one, language must necessarily make an art of it.
In one diabolical sentence, all that we take for granted
in a smile seems to unravel: “Madame Merle gave a bright,
voluntary smile” (459).
‘Give’ connotes
handling, transacting, exchanging. The word suggests that the
smile is a sort of currency. But like any currency, it would
further suggest that the smile can be inflated, debased, or even
disused. Giving also goes hand-in-hand with volition. As soon as
the smile crosses the line between voluntary and involuntary, it
loses its reliability for ingenuousness. As soon as the smile
loses its reliability for ingenuousness, it depreciates.
In
so doing, the novel makes us question the act of smiling. If we
have to consider disingenuousness as a possibility, we have to
consider the motive behind the smile. The novel, then, forces us
to ask the question, ‘Why is he/she smiling?’ This
question injects an ambiguity, and it seems unnatural when a smile
is normally reliable. Perhaps this explains the allure of the Mona
Lisa. The question that burns in our minds when we look at her
portrait is, ‘Why is she smiling?’ Her smile is
inscrutable. Her eyes look slightly askance, just enough to
suggest that the reason lies just to your right. Oh, but if we
could swivel the canvas and discover that reason! This is da
Vinci’s claim on the smile. The novel’s claim is the
claim of language on nonverbal expression. Instead of reclaiming
lost ingenuousness, the novel makes an art of smiling.
Isabel
arrives at Gardencourt ingenuous, looking for a bit of fresh air.
She ends up giving Gardencourt the fresh air it has been waiting
for, breathing a little life into the desultory place. Not long
after her aunt ferries her away from her homebound atrophy, a
remnant of home catches up to her. It is Caspar Goodwood, and
despite this unwelcome reminder of the tired life she’s
left, she remains benevolent: “'That’s a beautiful
sophism,’ said the girl with a smile more beautiful still”
(214).
The question here is whether “more beautiful
still” is the narrator’s facetiousness or admiration.
It seems to be narratorial admiration that her smile is genuine.
In response to Caspar’s next application she replies ‘with
much spirit,’ which only seems to reinforce her
ingenuousness. Further down the page, there is no question that
she is absolved of any ill will: “There was something
passionately positive in the tone in which she gave him this
advice, and he saw a shining candour in her eyes that helped him
to believe her” (218).
What makes this sentence such
a compelling case for Isabel’s ingenuousness is that it
synthesizes two points of view, namely, those of the narrator and
of Caspar. Just as mixing tin and copper makes bronze, alloying
these two voices lends language reliability. ‘There was
something’ may suggest a lack of knowledge that the narrator
might be loathe to admit. Even then, the real starlet of
ingenuousness is ‘a shining candour,’ Caspar’s
invention. It is not ‘something.’ He does not just
believe her because it is Isabel’s. Caspar would probably
need a good deal of something to convince him after she absconded
so abruptly. But it is some thing specific that makes him a
believer: ‘a shining candour’. We ourselves can nearly
see the fleeting sparkle in her eye that surely for Caspar carries
the wealth of meaning that comes with intimacy. What is important
here is that Caspar believes in her good faith. We would have to
think him duped in order for Isabel not to seem ingenuous here.
And if Caspar, likely the person who knows her best out of any
character we’ve met so far, is actually being duped, then
the narrator must be playing a cunning trick and we shouldn’t
have any shame in being duped as well. But we canny readers may
think that ‘a smile more beautiful still’ is
suspiciously trite, that it even insinuates some ill will on the
part of Isabel. Rather, it seems to be a calculated triteness that
does not suggest ill will, but one that leaves open the
possibility for the narrator to engineer the reversal later on.
This is not to say that Isabel’s smile is warm and
cheery at all times. What seems to be true, however, is her
sensitivity to the delicacy of the smile. While she does use her
smile as a façade, finding herself affronted by overeager
suitors such as Lord Warburton, she is aware of the effect on the
smile: “‘[Henrietta]’d never approve of it,’
said Isabel, trying to smile and take advantage of this
side-issue; despising herself too, not a little, for doing so”
(187).
To discover the force of the sentence, we need to
discern what precisely she is despising herself for. Is it for
trying to smile? Or for taking advantage? Or both? The crucial
word to decipher in answering this question is ‘and’.
The word can differ subtly among several meanings. There are two
that are more common; they suggest either simultaneity or ‘in
addition to’. But neither of these readings of ‘and’
resolves the question of what she despises. A third meaning of
‘and’ does. This subtler meaning is more powerful than
the other two because it suggests a relationship between the words
it connects beyond happenstance. Here, that relationship might be
causal. Read: ‘Isabel, trying to smile in order to
take advantage’. If we read ‘and’ in this light,
Isabel is despising herself for trying to use the smile as a
deception. So even though her smile is not wholly ingenuous, she
knows the unspoken code of smiling that she is trying to break.
What’s more, she demonstrates a visceral repulsion from the
art of smiling.
Then Madame Merle enters the picture. Isabel’s
smile becomes tainted. It takes on an ambiguity that forces us to
ask, ‘Why is she smiling?’ While visiting Ralph before
he leaves Rome for good, she uses a smile reminiscent of Madame
Merle in that it cuts to the quick:
“Isabel went to
see him at the last, and he made the same remark that Henrietta
had made. It struck him that Isabel was uncommonly glad to get rid
of them all [Ralph, Henrietta, Caspar]. For all answer to this she
gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low tone, with a quick
smile: ‘My dear Ralph—!’ It was answer enough,
and he was quite contented” (549).
When Isabel
smiles “a smile more beautiful still,” (214) her smile
is but a signal of goodwill. Her smile here is laden with much
more meaning. That meaning is contained in that strange dash. If
there were no exclamation point to bring the dash to a halt, we
would think she was cut off by a sudden novel idea or by some
interruption. Nor can we simply read this as an exclamation of
surprise or shock, that meddlesome dash cannot be ignored. The
smile must bear enormous meaning. For Ralph to accuse her of being
happy to see him leave and then be satisfied by a measly
three-word explanation is suspect. The unspoken explanation that
simply must have been transmitted is wrapped up in her ‘quick
smile’. There simply has to be something to convey all the
missing meaning, and that oddly placed dash seems to be where that
meaning is hidden.
Even beyond chocking her smile with
significant ambiguity, Isabel uses it to deny Ralph as well.
Above, Ralph is, albeit strangely, appeased. But in this previous
exchange with him Isabel uses the smile as a resource for
deception:
It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and
the words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long
murmur of relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at
last the gulf between them had been bridged. It was this that made
him exclaim in a moment: ‘How unhappy you must be!’
He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her
self-possession, and the first use she made of it was to pretend
she had not heard him. ‘When I talk of your helping me I
talk great nonsense,’ she said with a quick smile (513) .
It is a remarkable occasion, that Isabel lets slip even a mere
allusion to what might be her faltering independence. That her
words have a ‘violence’ to them spells out the
significance of Isabel betraying a chink in her armor. When Ralph
speaks, he cannot help but reveal to her that he has seen deeper
than she is wont to allow. As if on cue, Isabel, having grown into
a true Mrs Osmond in that she rarely forgets herself, remembers
herself. She smiles and denies Ralph this revelation, blotting out
the bridge with a quick smile. Zeus has thunderbolts, Isabel
smiles. Her smile is the keeper of her self-possession. As soon as
she finishes forgetting herself, she bolts a smile to her lips to
reinforce her unassailability. She does not despise herself for
it. She either no longer recognizes its despicability or has quite
grown to appreciate the cold efficiency of a really well placed
smile.
It would seem that Isabel has learned this cold
efficiency from Madame Merle: “The lady smiled and
discriminated. ‘I’m afraid there are moments in life
when even Schubert has nothing to say to us. We must admit,
however, that they are our worst” (224).
We run into
our little friend, ‘and,’ again! And again ‘and’
seems to suggest a relationship other than happenstance. Beneath
her smile, she discriminates. As unsettling as discrimination’s
debasement of the smile may seem, it is difficult to pinpoint why
this is. Her words are unreliable, in that they gloss over the
tremendous amount of work that the first sentence does. Its
pithiness leaves us curious, and suspicious. The cold efficiency
is that the transition between epochs rests upon this sentence’s
back. Neither Isabel nor we canny readers, upon first meeting
Madame Merle, can possibly recognize what new stage these packed
words usher in.
But the layering of meaning of the
disingenuous smile culminates in Madame Merle—just after
Isabel realizes the sleight Madame Merle has played with her
large, unjeweled hands—when the two meet unexpectedly in a
momentous passage:
But she [Madame Merle] was different from usual; she came in
slowly, behind the portress, and Isabel instantly perceived that
she was not likely to depend upon her habitual resources. For her
too the occasion was exceptional, and she had undertaken to treat
it by the light of the moment. This gave her a peculiar gravity;
she pretended not even to smile, and though Isabel saw that she
was more than ever playing a part it seemed to her that on the
whole the wonderful woman had never been so natural (596).
This is a first, that Isabel and we see Madame Merle in perfect
candor. Isabel notices that she is ‘different from usual’.
Just as we asked earlier what makes Caspar believe in Isabel, we
should now ask what is it that Isabel notices that makes Madame
Merle different. The best clue we have is that ‘she
pretended not even to smile,’ which consists of several
layers of noticing that need unraveling. Isabel does not notice
merely that ‘she smiled,’ nor does she merely notice
that ‘she pretended not to smile’; there are at least
three layers of noticing, the last of which is ‘not even’.
The primary layer of noticing, ‘she did not smile,’ is
remarkable in itself. It reveals that Isabel has become aware that
Madame Merle is rarely not smiling. This small change makes Madame
Merle wholly different, it would seem, since her identity seems
wrapped up in the left corner of her mouth. The second layer of
noticing, ‘she pretended not to smile,’ suggests that
Isabel has become aware that Madame Merle’s smiles are laced
with deceit. Isabel sees that Madame Merle must make a conscious
effort to be candid. If she were in fact candid when she smiled,
Isabel would not have noticed beyond the primary layer. The
conscious effort Madame Merle musters not to smile is her
relinquishing ‘her habitual resources.’ While Isabel
does not herself make the connection, it is readily apparent to us
canny readers that these smiles are not smiles that come from
within, but smiles that are resources. The crowning layer, ‘not
even,’ is Isabel’s surprise. For the first time, even
though it has been used time and again, this inconspicuous detail
is given significance. That Madame Merle’s conscious check
of her deceit surprises Isabel implies that Isabel has not only
become aware but has come to expect not to rely on that sullied
smirk. And these three levels of noticing do more than suggest
that Isabel has become aware of Madame Merle’s art of
smiling—they make us painfully aware of Madame Merle’s
smirching the smile. That she seems to Isabel to be most natural
when she is playing a part certainly drives home her awareness of
Madame Merle’s deceit in general, but the subtle point is
that Isabel noticing that ‘she pretended not even to smile’
has forged a powerful ‘and’ between smirk and smirch.
Now that we have unveiled the practitioner and pliant
apprentice of the art of smiling, what would complete the picture
is an untouched smile, that is, a smile that remains distinctly
and artlessly human throughout the novel. There does not seem to
be an ingenuous smile that is preserved over the arc of the novel.
Perhaps it is impossible to sustain within the bourgois world.
There does, however, seem to be such a smile at the beginning of
the novel:
He had a narrow, clean-shaven face, with features evenly
distributed and an expression of placid acuteness. It was
evidently a face in which the range of representation was not
large, so that the air of contented shrewdness was all the more of
a merit. It seemed to tell that he had been successful in life,
yet it seemed to tell also that his success had not been exclusive
and invidious, but had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure.
He had certainly had a great experience of men, but there was an
almost rustic simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his
lean, spacious cheek and lighted up his humorous eye as he at last
slowly and carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the table
(61).
The narrator takes a long, hard look at Mr Touchett’s face
as he very simply returns his teacup to the table. Mr Touchett’s
simplicity preserves him as an uncorrupted individual. He has been
able to become successful in England, to learn the English
mannerisms, all the while staying American, bred, tried, and true.
His smile is a token of that unthumbed ‘rustic simplicity.’
He may even act as ballast for the novel insofar as he is a vessel
uncompromised. Even though we see in his lifespan the beginnings
of conflict in the applications of Caspar and Lord Warburton and
the brashness of Henrietta, once he passes on, these manageable
problems pitch and heave until they subsume his faded simplicity.
This is certainly a grand claim, maybe too grand a claim, to speak
of Mr Touchett as the novel’s center. Regardless, his
passing is a powerful juncture. And if it is too grand to claim
that Mr Touchett’s passing unleashes the conflicts, at least
Isabel seems to find smooth sailing in his presence. Her smile,
especially, seems to have a pure quality under the ruddy sky of Mr
Touchett’s setting smile:
‘Are you talking about Mrs Touchett?’ the old man
called out from his chair. ‘Come here, my dear, and tell me
about her. I’m always thankful for information.’
The
girl hesitated again, smiling. ‘She’s really very
benevolent,’ she answered; after which she went over to her
uncle, whose mirth was excited by her words.
Lord Warburton
was left standing with Ralph…. (74)
She smiles, relieved to retreat from the overly intrigued
gentlemen, who couse use a leash in when female company’s
over. Mr Touchett remains her sanctuary, in which Isabel smiles
her first and most composed smile of the novel:
She had seated herself and had put away the little dog; her white
hands, in her lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was
erect her eye lighted, her flexible figure turned itself easily
this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she
evidently caught impressions. Her impressions were numerous, and
they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. ‘I’ve
never seen anything so beautiful as this’ (72).
The
description is guarded on either side by Mr Touchett’s
genial conversation. This is, if ever the novel was painting a
picture, Isabel’s portrait. Mr Touchett’s ‘faint
smile’ is the novel’s first. It is telling that the
original bearer of this smile is the first to fade. Rather, the
smile is driven off, and by none other than the invidious Madame
Merle: The lady smiled and discriminated (224).
We run
into our little friend again. This time, to understand what it is
that she discriminates. The answer lies in what Isabel says to the
lady just prior to this. Madame Merle has just stopped strumming
the piano. Isabel and she are left alone as their hosts tend to
the fading Mr Touchett: ‘I hope my uncle’s doing
well,’ Isabel added. ‘I should think that to hear such
lovely music as that would really make him feel better.’ The
lady smiled and discriminated (224).
The lady
discriminates because she knows that if Mr Touchett were to hear
her playing, he would be undone. At least symbolically, her
arrival at Gardencourt might be the very cause of his death. And
the lady smiles because she knows that Isabel has no idea. From
the start, Madame Merle’s smile is tied by the insistent
conjunction ‘and’ to ulterior motive. And as Mr
Touchett disappears from the novel, taking his smile along with
him, Madame Merle wastes no time seizing her opportunity to fill
the vacancy. As one pair of guiding hands passes her on, another
seamlessly picks up what the other left off. The transition, the
transaction of epochs, is so smooth, however, that it sneaks by.
Isabel, for one, misses it. Thereafter, she bends to Madame
Merle’s handling. But perhaps the ultimate supplanting of Mr
Touchett’s smile comes later in the novel when Madame Merle
is ensuring Mr Rosier’s failure with Osmond: Madame Merle
dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. ‘He’s a
gentleman, he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of
forty thousand francs’ (424)!
Insidiously conniving,
she exacts her price. She claims and perverts the faded smile. She
simply looks down and suddenly has Mr Touchett’s
smile. It is as if she looks down, reaches into her pocket, and
comes out with Mr Touchett’s smile in hand. All this seems
to transpire within the space of the semicolon. She looks down and
voila! She has his smile. Madame Merle plucks from the
novel’s forbidden tree the one unthumbed smile and spoils
it.
On a certain level, the novel is making a claim on
lost ingenuousness. Because of the dominance of Madame Merle’s
brand of smile, the prospect of this reclamation is dismal. But in
making a claim on smiling, language could not help making an art
of it. The novel cannot avoid its unreliability as it dips into
the plane of nonverbal expression. Language has at least this
homage to do its forebear. But there does seem to be a refuge amid
the chiaroscuro: Isabel’s ‘clear, still smile’
(72). Clear in its meaning, still in the constancy of its
reliability—what we trust a smile to be. Why is she smiling?
For in this moment the answer to Mr Touchett’s question, ‘I
don’t know that I understand what you mean by behaving
picturesquely,’ is manifest in Isabel in propria persona.
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