The danger of viewing morality as provisional rather than permanent is explored in my fourth chapter, on The Wings of the Dove. I read the various promises in the novel as challenging rather than confirming J. L. Austin’s theory of the speech act. The promise is Austin’s most celebrated example of a statement that performs an action rather than offering a description. In The Wings of the Dove, however, description is itself an action, a means of shaping the world rather than merely reporting on it. As a result, the distinctive status of the promise dissolves, producing in James’s antihero Merton Densher a damaging crisis of faith.

Nicola Bradbury’s chapter on Henry James notices the force that comes from simple diction even as it expresses subtle, complicated thoughts, feelings and occasions in The Wings of the Dove (1902) and What Maisie Knew (1897). At times in these novels, a bold, clear style plays against the more verbose, analytical style we expect from late James. A style such as this repeatedly gestures towards an apprehension that is not fully expressed, something that goes behind and beyond the immediate statement. Here, style is measured at the level of the sentence and it is shown to comprise of a range of devices including alliteration, assonance, diction, syntax, rhythm, and cadence.