The Golden Bowl

Content Warning: The source material uses cultural and antisemitic slurs, which are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes from the source text.

“He was practicing his American in order to converse properly, on equal terms as it were, with Mr. Verver.”

Amerigo is an Italian aristocrat. He jokingly notes that, rather than simply English, he will learn “American” to better converse with his future father-in-law. Amerigo distinguishes between American and English in a joking manner, but his jokes belies a truth: Adam and Maggie may speak English, but they are not English. From the opening pages of the novel, their status as Americans in England is made apparent, elucidating the way in which they are Outsiders in this society and the system of etiquette to which they are trying to conform.

“He developed, making her laugh, his idea that the tea of the English race was somehow their morality, ‘made,’ with boiling water, in a little pot, so that the more of it one drank the more moral one would become.”

The American and Italian characters try to navigate the social expectations and moralities of English society. In stereotypical fashion, this society is reduced to the consumption of tea. Morality, like tea, is a consumable good, something to be ingested and tasted but not necessarily something that is held as an enduring value. Morality, like tea, is a part of English society as something to be consumed, shared, and appreciated, but not necessarily understood on any abstract, fundamental level.

“He had done nothing he oughtn’t—he had in fact done nothing at all.”

Amerigo agrees to meet with Charlotte and, in doing so, strives to assure himself that he is doing nothing wrong. His actions suggest that he may not necessarily believe his assurances that he has done “nothing at all” (37).