The Ambassadors (Style)

Style

The Psychological Novel

The impression that external stimuli and events make on a character or the thoughts and feelings motivating characters are the subjects of this type of fiction. In the novel's earliest days, the psychology of a character was declarative. Thus, the nervous mind of Robinson Crusoe was stated, as was the fear of death in Tristram Shandy. However, an increased interest in criminal minds brought greater psychological sophistication to the novel. Detective stories in America and Russia delved into psychological motivation and reflected current scientific theory. As the nineteenth century wore on, George Eliot and Gustave Flaubert produced psychological novels about normal people. In the twentieth century, following James, the psychological novel would reach new heights with James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf.

James contributed the technique of sustained focus on one mind to this genre. James used a device called erlebte Rede or le style indirect libre, a technique that plays with indirect speech. A standard narration, which uses indirect speech to focus on the thoughts of a character, would judge a character's thought: "he thought [blank]." In erlebte Rede, however, the narrator leads us to the judgement but without the overtness just shown. In this novel, the narrator generalizes the sentiments of what Strether thinks by cutting through the literary and metaphorical manners Strether himself would use. The reader, however, has to reach the conclusions by him or herself. For example, the narrator does not clue the reader into the obvious irony of the phrase "in the same boat" at the end of the novel. Some things are better left unsaid, and the result is a focus on the workings of an individual mind as it deals with its environment.

Realism

James and his friend Howells introduced to American fiction the nineteenth-century conceit that art could truly represent life. In this novel, James' style shows that realist techniques do not always lead to straightforward understandings. James focused on the psychological experiences of Strether and recorded them in a natural manner. There is no theoretical jargon or explanation of Strether's mind — just a play-by-play description of Strether's mind processing his experiences according to his linguistic base.

Another area where James shows his realism is in conversation. Highly educated and witty characters perform the dialogues. Thus, facts and figures obvious to the characters are never spelled out. Thoughts by one character are completed by another as each tries to beat the other to a speculation. The ability to follow the exchanges as well as the allusions contained in the descriptions of Strether's mind are rewarded by amusement:

Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in Strether's brain, into a close, rapid order. He was on the spot what had happened and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough.

Ficelle

Ficelle comes from the stage and refers to the tricks and devices now called "special effects." James uses this term as a label for characters whose function assists in firming up the structure of the novel. These characters work much in the same way a letter or other evidence in a detective novel would work; they are an opportunity to fill the reader in on elements otherwise unknown, without using an omniscient narrator or employing interior monologue. Thus, Mrs. Newsome is not a ficelle because she never appears. A ficelle must be present because verbal communication with Strether activates him or her. Miss Gostrey is the purest ficelle in the novel although Waymarsh and Bilham act as ficelles from time to time. When Strether invokes the ficelle, the reader gains information while Strether clarifies his thoughts. The ficelle exists, Strether tells Maria, "to see me through the experience."

Point of View

The perfection of the novel depends on the success of using a third-person narrator spliced with one character's point of view: Strether's. James rejects the obvious choice of first person narrative (his reasons are detailed in the novel's preface) to gain the freedom and reliability of third-person narration while creating a concentrated focus on a person's psychology. He also keeps his novel in prose without quoting letters and only alluding to other literary works. James uses many devices to succeed.

First, James alters the device of "central intelligence" so that it becomes the unifying consciousness of the entire work. Prior to this novel, an "intelligence" was simply a viewpoint or a character. In the character of Strether, James develops a viewpoint through which the entire novel is channeled. Information in the novel reveals itself solely through this intelligence. This is admitted within the novel several times. Second, the third-person narration uses "scenes" and "pictures" to aid Strether's viewpoint. A scene involves characters meeting and speaking while pictures relate Strether's thoughts without the drawbacks of soliloquies. For example, Strether's first meeting alone with Madame de Vionnet begins with a scene with Chad, then flows into a picture, and then into a scene with the lady herself. The picture relays Strether's impressions of the inventory of Madame de Vionnet's apartment in the third person. Their conversation scene is interspersed with comments like, "it gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook off." By these devices, the third-person narrative is grafted into the singular viewpoint of the main character to create a tight unity that becomes Strether's "experience."

As Strether changes, so does the information relayed by the narrator. The day after the rural outing, a picture of Strether is presented to convey the chaos of his feelings. Amidst a series of questions, the narrator suggests Strether asks himself, Strether is described as having "a deliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly than harshly." The details of the note from Madame de Vionnet are relayed without quoting it.