The Mode of Presenting Consciousness:The Modernness of Wings of the Dove

Through an analysis of Henry James’ later novel The Wings of the Dove, this article denies that James’s later novels belong to modernist fictions. Though modern social life has required innovations in novelistic form, James was still heavily influenced by traditional realist fiction. He tried to combine the traditional form with the modern content. The transition of his writing from realism to modernism has as its sign the transition of authorial consciousness towards figural consciousness. This paper views James’s novel from the perspective of modern theory of novel, and discusses such related concepts as “presenting of consciousness”, “stream of consciousness”, and “psycho-reality”.