"My Cleverness, I Assure You, Has Grown Infernal": Playing Stupid with Henry James

Bruno Penteado
2018 Remate de Males  
This article reads Henry James's bias against his native America ironically. I offer a two-fold reading of the staging and performance of stupidity: it is both a strategy of resistance and a rhetoric of disavowal of responsibility. I contend that Henry James offers Milly Theale, the American rotagonist of "The Wings of the Dove", the possibility of playing up to European assumptions about the New World through a performance of stupidity. I also argue that feigning ignorance is also renouncing
more » ... sponsibility, as exemplified in Merton Densher's conduct. James abstains from conclusions, allowing stupidity to rule in the end.
doi:10.20396/remate.v38i1.8650290 fatcat:3fbt4c2khzeydcytdh7hnb5txq