Queer Impressions by Pigeon Elaine;

Author:Pigeon, Elaine;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2005-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Of course, the back is significant, as Madame Merle provides a dramatic turning point in Isabel’s life.

The next painting by Degas, Café Singer, focuses on a singer at the café-concert caught in mid-performance. We see her in close-up, from the bust up, standing right of centre, with her mouth open and her head tilted slightly upward as she belts out her song with her right hand dramatically raised and covered by a long, very black glove, so that her upward gesture dominates the picture. One may also recall that James emphasizes Madame Merle’s hands; in fact, he describes her as if she were a classical statue: Madame Merle, he writes, “had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow ‘classically’ and as if she were a Bust, Isabel judged-a Juno or a Niobe, and large white hands, of a perfect shape, a shape so perfect that their possessor, preferring to leave them unadorned, wore no jewelled rings” (228). Obviously James did not draw attention to Madame Merle’s hands in order to suggest the kind of work she performed; rather, in describing them as large, he may very well have been suggesting her ability to manipulate people.

Whereas these two examples alone may not be entirely convincing, the third bears an uncanny resemblance to the example James provides in “The Art of Fiction” to illustrate what he means by an impression. “A man opens a door,” Duranty writes, “he enters, and that is enough: we see that he has lost his daughter!” (44). According to James, his example was provided by an English novelist, “a woman of genius,” who was concerned with presenting an accurate impression of a “French Protestant youth” (194). While living in Paris, James relates, she once

passed an open door where, in the household of a Pasteur, some of the young Protestants were seated at table round a finished meal. The glimpse made a picture.… She had got her direct personal impression, and she turned out her type. She knew what youth was, and what Protestantism; she also had the advantage of having seen what it was to be French, so that she converted these ideas into a concrete image and produced a reality. (194)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.