A Misalliance: A Creator's Imagination

No wonder A Misalliance, when it was praised, as it was in the US, was called Jamesian. As the child Elinor is introduced in chapter 3 we get a flurry of literary vibrations: not just of James's Maisie but also, in her name, of Jane Austen, and in a mention of foundlings, of Tom Jones and Dickens's Esther Summerson.

Blanche finds herself thinking with 'something like a creator's imagination'. One remembers James again, The Sacred Fount, and 'the joy of determining, almost of creating results'.

It's a heady brew, and all the while there's the art: those nymphs in the Italian Rooms of the National Gallery, mocking Blanche's progress.

Tiepolo, An Allegory of Venus
with Time