Glasses (short story)

"Glasses"
Embarrassments, 1896, first U.K. hardcover edition of "Glasses"
Author	Henry James
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Short story
Published in	Atlantic Monthly
Publication type	Periodical
Publisher	William Heinemann
Media type	Print (Magazine)
Publication date	February 1896

"Glasses" is an 1896 short story by Henry James.

Plot summary

The story centers on the vanity of a young woman, whose love of her own beauty will cost her her eyesight and it's all in pursuit of love and marriage; the narrator is an artist, once again the pretty girl comes to sit for a portrait, a favorite method of James that he used many times to put himself in his stories; this artist meets the girl in Folkestone where he has gone “for a blow” and to visit his mother; he sees the girl and is struck by her beauty; later after dinner, standing with her under the stars he becomes more fascinated, seeing her again while out walking he introduces her to his mother and asked if it is true that she has something wrong with her eyes; it brings her to tears and she claims its all a “horrid lie.”

Eventually she sits for a portrait and the artist is mesmerized by her beauty for a time, then comes to find that she has only her beauty, which he has been told by friend Mrs. Meldrum, who is known by her large unattractive glasses that she must wear as her eyesight is terrible; the young Lady, a Miss Flora Saunt has something strange about her and Meldrum says it has something to do with her eyes, they find that she has been to specialist throughout Europe who have advised she must wear corrective lenses, which in that day, late 19th century, were large and ugly frames with very thick glass; the young Lady does not because she is waiting to get married and her vanity will not allow her, she hides it from all her suitors, namely a young man from France who will become Lord Considine, a man of means, once his father dies.

The poor girl has a small inheritance but will run out of money before getting married, a Mr. Geoffrey Dawling is in love with her and falls in love with her beauty from the portraits before he ever meets her, but she finds him physically repulsive . Though he is a man of means, he is not a good looking man, though compassionate and willing to do or accept anything about Flora, she wants Lord Considine, to whom she becomes engaged; the artist goes to America to work as he is much in demand and hears nothing of what is happening with Flora while he is gone. He returns as his mother is dying there in Folkestone, where much of the action takes place, home of Meldrum; he returns from America to see his mother before she dies, then goes to see Meldrum at Folkestone, thinks he sees her at a distance because its a woman with large eyeglasses, but it is Flora and she realizes that he thought he saw Meldrum;

The girl is staying with Meldrum as her money has run out, and her eyesight has grown much worse, thinking that if she exercises by walking miles and miles every day, that will somehow heal her eyes, their talk is brief and Flora continues on, remarking sarcastically, would you like for me to sit for you now? Upon arrival Meldrum says its all a tragical belief in herself, that no amount of exercise will make her eyes better, the engagement was broken when young Lord Considine found out the truth, that she could not see her own hand before her face, he offers money but ends his proposal for marriage, she hit rock bottom and moved in with Meldrum, still refusing the hand of Dawling; the artist waits for her at Meldrum's but soon he must catch his train and return to London. His mother dies but when he returns to Folkestone, Meldrum and Flora have gone abroad; the artist heads back to America where he stays for three years

His stay is not interrupted with thoughts of Flora, he is busy with his work, returning to London he attends the opera Lohengrin arriving at the intermission before Act II; he looks thru a glass at the people in the boxes and there is Flora in a box off to the side by herself, looking more beautiful than ever, she grabs her ivory glass and appears to look at the artist and smile, he is excited and rushes out to visit her in her box, coming in she hears him and turns and says oh “here you are again!” She offers her hand and he kisses it, but she abruptly pulls back with a challenging stare, she grabs his arm and feels him and suddenly he knows, she is completely blind, she thought he was someone else, someone without a moustache; he tells her “You’re lovelier at this day than you have ever been in your life.” Dawling comes into the box and she exclaims to him what she has just heard from the artist, its all she cares about, her beauty, the comment makes her day that she has not lost her looks, forget being blind. Dawling is embarrassed and says very little about the affair. Meldrum helped them get together, but she refuses to speak of it or have anything to do with them.

So Dawling gets his girl and Flora retains her beauty, going blind in the process. It is true love for both, with the irony that as Flora cannot see the physical features of Dawling its ok to accept marriage, plus she ran out of options. Dawling has undying love for Flora and proves it by accepting the fact that he was her last choice.

Characters

• Miss Flora Saunt, a young woman of uncommon beauty and excessive vanity, orphaned
• Mrs. Meldrum, a war widow living in Folkestone within sight of the coast of France
• Mr. Geoffrey Dawling, Oxford intellectual in love with Flora
• Lord Iffield, soon to be Lord Considine, briefly engaged to Flora
• Narrator, the Artist, a James favorite

Publication history

"Glasses" first appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1896.

Its hardcover debut, in a volume titled Embarrassments, came in June 1896 from London publisher William Heinemann and the Macmillan Company in New York. Three other stories appear in the book: "The Figure in the Carpet", "The Next Time", and "The Way It Came".

"Glasses" was the only story in Embarrassments excluded from the New York Edition of 1909.

Misc

• Complete Stories 1892–1898 from Library of America^[1]
• Terence Feeley's 1974 TV series for ITV (London), "Affairs of the Heart" included a dramatisation of "Glasses", under title of "Flora". The leading woman was played by Gayle Hunnicutt (beautiful in face, but with large teeth that belie her claim to total beauty). The older, wiser woman with thick spectacles and a heart of gold, was played by Patricia Routledge (later famous for her role as "Hyacinth Bucket" in the popular comedy series "Keeping Up Appearances". The "surgical glasses" shown in the dramatisation are extremely thick, and marked by a "bar" across the centre. They are referred to as "goggles". The aristocrat was played as a Monty Python upper-class twit, with clipped words, and a terrible pronunciation. The gentle eventual-husband was played as having a strong stammer, but a heart, also, of gold, able, when relaxed, to speak freely. At the very end, in the opera-box, when the full, sad consequences are grasped - she is as beautiful as ever, and utterly blind—the husband remarks that the blindness "is irrelevant".

References

External links

• -Full Text for "Glasses"