In this paper from an Aesthetic Realism public seminar, my friend Steve Weiner discusses a central character from the important novel The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James.
Aesthetic Realism is a great encourager of true care because it explains the largest hindrance to love in a man: his own conceit. A conceited person, I learned, gets to an exaggerated, lofty opinion of himself by having a low opinion of the world, and looking down on everything. This is contempt. And when a man who has this attitude has to do with a woman, he is not interested in truly caring for her, wanting to see who she is, but rather in using her to aggrandize himself. This unjust, selfish attitude makes love impossible; it also makes a man despise himself.
I tell now about the beautiful way Aesthetic Realism opposed my conceit, and changed the great coldness and loneliness it made for in me. I’m so glad to say that the education I received has enabled me to be a kinder person, and to have true love in my life.
I. Young Conceit
In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Mr. Siegel described the two ways people have tried to think well of themselves:
The first…is honestly to respect a thing, give it meaning….The second way is to diminish as much as possible, give as little meaning to things as we can; and feel the less we have given meaning to other things, the more the edifice of ourselves is substantial.
As a child, the place I respected things most was in school, as I eagerly read such books as It’s Like This, Cat, and worked on addition and multiplication problems. But I also used getting good grades, and my mother’s frequently saying how smart I was, to be conceited. I was very competitive, and made sure that everyone was aware that (as I saw it) I was so much better than other children. For instance, if another child came from a family more well-off than mine, I’d say: “Eliot may be richer but I’m in the Intellectually Gifted Class. He’s not.” And if someone in my class got higher marks, I’d tell myself: “All Alan does is study. At least, I know how to have some fun.” In the sixth grade, I was such a haughty showoff, that my teacher, Miss Jourdan, once said to me: “Stop acting as if you’re the most important child in this class—because you’re not!”
One of the pleasures of conceit is thinking that we’re so smart and keen, but I learned this can make a person stupid in many ways. In a high school social studies class, I finished a test about halfway through the period even as everyone else was furiously writing away. I didn’t question myself; I just smugly sat back, glorying in my brilliance. When our tests were returned, I got a humiliating 35—in my arrogance, I had carelessly misread the instructions and not answered all the questions.
Because conceit is based on feeling that other people and their feelings are inferior, and making them unimportant, a conceited person inevitably feels ashamed. Once, a friend came to me after he argued with his girlfriend. He felt very bad and I could have tried to be useful. Instead, I mocked him, acting as if he were ridiculous for getting so wrought up. I’ll never forget his shock and then the disgusted look on his face. It was after times like these, as I saw how unfeeling I was, that I’d call myself a “jerk” and say “Why can’t you keep your big mouth shut?” I’d then sleep for hours on end, and not want to talk to anyone for days.
I was, as Mr. Siegel once said of another person, a very painful relation of “too much confidence, too much despair.” But I never saw a connection between my inflated picture of myself and my abilities, and the resultant feeling that I was an uninteresting person who had done nothing useful in my life. In The Right Of, Mr. Siegel explains:
Once you start making yourself out better than you are, you will make yourself out worse than you are….People make themselves stupider, more criminal, more vicious than they are. One reason is that they have come to their good points too easily.
Beginning in Aesthetic Realism consultations, I heard questions—kind, critical, exact—that changed my contemptuous attitude toward people and the world. And I learned that my life had a much larger and more beautiful purpose: to value things truly, to try to have a good effect on people. I began to see meaning and wonder in things, such as a leaf, a pussycat, art; and through wanting to understand how a person felt—I thought so much better of myself without any painful kickbacks. I had an ease and pride that were new.
II. Conceit Is Perilous to Love
Once, I was in a position many men are in now: while I hoped to care for a woman, I didn’t want to give up my conceit. My purpose was not to respect a woman but to have her join me in building up the “edifice of [myself].” And when a woman was critical, I got hurt and angry, and our relationship would end bitterly. Then I’d despair and feel I was never going to have love.
I’m grateful that in a class, at a time I was in much pain about a woman, Mr. Siegel enabled me to see her objection. He asked:
ES: Do you believe you represent a tradition [in men]?
SW: Yes, the unwillingness to respect women.
ES: Do you think Ms. Chapman doesn’t like your arrogance? As soon as something good happens to you, you get arrogant.
And he explained:
An arrogant person is one who takes things unto himself that do not belong to him. You think Ms. Chapman needs you more than she needs truth.
About my arrogance, he asked: “Do you think it causes you any sorrow?” Yes, it did. I love Mr. Siegel for explaining what had hurt my whole life—how I used good things that happened to me, including a woman’s care, not to ask more of myself, but to be complacent and add to my conceit. I began to see that my arrogance, which I tried to see as a blessing, was my great enemy; it made love impossible. I’m so glad to say I have a different purpose now with my wife Frances Finch, whom I love and respect very much: to try to understand her and the very diverse aspects of her life, and to also want to learn from her about myself and the world.
III. A Great Book Tells about the Hindrance to Love
A novel I care for very much because of the way it presents a woman so differently from the arrogant way many men have had is The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James. This classic is the story of Isabel Archer, one of the finest heroines in all literature; it is also the portrayal of a very conceited man, Gilbert Osmond.
Eli Siegel is the critic who showed the tremendous importance of this great novelist. In his landmark book, James and the Children: A Consideration of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Mr. Siegel described the author’s purpose which is so against the coldness of conceit:
[James is] asking us to participate more in the lives of others. [He is] asking us to know that other things feel and that the feelings of others are things which we diminish or are not interested in at a loss to ourselves.
Osmond, as character, is useful in showing not only how much a man’s conceit robs him of the love he’s hoping for; it makes him mean, even sinister. These words of Mr. Siegel in The Right Of usefully describe what conceit, like Osmond’s, does to the person having it:
Conceit can make one satisfied where one shouldn’t be, but also can make one dissatisfied where one shouldn’t be. Persons would rather be dissatisfied with the world than dissatisfied with what they take to be themselves.
An American expatriate living in Italy, Osmond is described by James as “indolent” and a “dilettante” who acts like a “prince.” He is smugly self-satisfied, seeing himself as vastly superior to the rest of what he calls “dingy” humanity. Osmond is a snob and uses his taste in art to build up the “edifice of [himself]” and be in a “state of disgust” with nearly everything else. As James writes:
[Osmond] was certainly fastidious and critical….His sensibility had governed him…[,] had made him impatient of vulgar troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a…sifted, arranged world.
Aesthetic Realism says definitely: if we take an aspect of the world—it can be music, sports, computers, or cars—and use it for self-importance, we’ll be dissatisfied with that thing and ourselves. We see this in Osmond when, after being complimented on the furnishings in his home, he says “I’m sick of my adorable taste.” And James shows that Osmond, under all his seeming self-assurance, has misgivings about himself: he knows he doesn’t have enough feeling, isn’t pleased enough by things:
[Osmond]…was too often—he would have admitted that—too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the fertilizing dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended upon his spirit.
IV. How Should a Woman Be Seen?
In Self and World, Mr. Siegel explains what every man is hoping for in love:
To know and feel the self of another is a beautiful thing. To see another person as having meaning and beauty and power is a lovely procedure.
And he also shows how conceit corrupts this:
But to see another person as having meaning, having beauty, having power because one can use that person as an argument in behalf of one’s self-love—that is really to despise a person; to hate him; to deindividualize him.
In his seeing of Isabel Archer, an American young woman living in Europe, James sees and shows her as standing for some of the best qualities in a woman. He sees Isabel as “having meaning,…beauty,…power.” In prose that is lovely, he says of her:
Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a [fine] mind…; to have a [large] perception of surrounding facts, and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar….She spent half her time thinking of beauty, and bravery, and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action.
Isabel wants to like the world and have a great emotion about it.
At first, Osmond is interested in Isabel because of her large fortune. But as he comes to know her, he is affected by her loveliness and depth of mind. Despite himself, he cares for her and for a while has less ugly dissatisfaction. James writes: “Osmond was in love, and he had never deserved less the harsh criticism passed upon him.” Osmond says to Isabel:
It has made me better, loving you…; it has made me wiser and easier…and even stronger….Now I’m really satisfied, because I can’t think of anything better.
But there are two great mistakes Osmond makes: one, he is too satisfied, and is not ambitious enough to have a greater emotion about Isabel and the world she stands for; and, two, he feels that in thinking so much of her, he has lessened himself. So he does what other men, including myself, have done: he turns the very qualities that moved him in Isabel into what Eli Siegel showed is “an argument on behalf of self-love,” to add to his conceit. Writes James:
[Osmond] was immensely pleased with his young lady. What could be a finer thing to live with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness be all for one’s self?…What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which reflected one’s [own] thought on a polished, elegant surface?
Osmond says that Isabel has only one fault: she has “too many ideas” which he says “must be sacrificed”. The only purpose of her intellect, he feels, should be to adorn his own being.
During their courtship, Osmond shows a humility and nobility that impress Isabel very much. But as admirable as she is, Isabel’s desire to find in Osmond the large qualities she is hoping for in a man runs ahead of seeing who he actually is, including where he is unjust. Despite the warnings of her family, she accepts his proposal of marriage. It is a fatal mistake. And when we next see them three years later, Osmond is furious because Isabel has refused to become an extension of himself. James writes: “He had thought at first he could change her,” but saw with chagrin that he could not.
V. The Difference of the World That a Woman Represents
Like many men, Osmond felt he had the right to mold a woman to fit in with his arrangements. I was greatly fortunate to learn about this ugly, conceited purpose in myself. In a class, I said I was too jumpy in my thought about a woman I was hoping to care for. Ms. Reiss asked:
ER: What do you think is the interference to knowing a woman?
SW: I can feel I want something to happen in my life now, and I’m looking for someone who fits the bill.
ER: To have your plans is all right. But what has to be present? The thing one is looking for has to be beautiful enough, and there has to be a large enough desire to know that person before deciding whether or not that person “fits the bill.” Otherwise, we are looking for someone to fulfill a function of ours. If we have to do with a person and are not interested in knowing her, what are we interested in?
SW: Someone to make us important.
ER: As much as we don’t want to know another person, it is self-love. Meanwhile, how much true satisfaction do you think you can get from knowing a woman?
The answer is, happily, much, much more than I knew. I thank Ellen Reiss so much for her questions.
In the novel, Osmond had expected his wife to join him in his scorn for the world. But Isabel, because she still hopes to care for things, won’t become a partner in this. In fact, she is a critic, despising the ugliness in him. Writes James:
[Osmond] had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon his own conception of things—this was a danger he had not allowed for….When one had a wife who gave one that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.
There is much in this great book I can’t discuss, but throughout, James shows how Isabel tries to remain true to herself despite Osmond’s sinister ill will, and we feel she is beautiful.
Because of the great truth and kindness of Aesthetic Realism, men today do not have to be run by conceit; they can learn how to be kind. And they can learn too from what Eli Siegel describes so powerfully in Self and World about how true love is always a means of honestly thinking better of reality and ourselves. I end my paper with his beautiful words:
A self can say to another being, “Through what you do and what you are and what you can do, I can come to be more I, more me, more myself; and I can see the immeasurable being of things more wonderfully of me, for me, and therefore sharply and magnificently kind and akin.”