The Ambassadors Language and Communication Quotes

When Strether tells Chad that he's been through a lot, Chad replies that there's still much more to come. Ominous. But still, once again we have a character saying something without saying anything at the same time. Chad's words point to something, but we have no clue what it is.

Strether tries his darnedest to get the truth out of Madame de Vionnet about her relationship with Chad. But Madame's language is just as evasive as Bilham's and Maria's. She knows full well what Strether is trying to ask her, but insists on hiding the truth without exactly having to lie. If Strether were able to ask her, "Are you having sex with Chad?" she'd be forced to lie. But instead, she just keeps angling Strether away from the truth.

Now it's Strether's turn to be vague. After his first private meeting with Madame de Vionnet, he promises her that he'll try to "save her." Strether himself has no clue of what he means by this. The only purpose this claim serves is to put him in the driver's seat and give him power, even though he's the only person in this book who doesn't know what's going on with Chad and Madame de Vionnet.

Longish, eh? We told you this got complicated. Strether has no clue what to make of Chad when he first meets him in Paris. He tries to communicate with Chad through silent looks, but it's impossible for Chad to know what these looks mean because Strether himself has no clue.

Geez, what's with the varying long-ness of looks? Here, Strether tries his best to resist the charm of Madame de Vionnet. But when she mentions Chad's transformation and the fact that she is the person behind it, Strether has no choice but to meet her eyes and tell her he gets it. In many moments like this, Strether would happily play dumb and pretend not to understand what the person was saying. But here, he respects Chad so much that he has to acknowledge the truth of what Madame is trying to tell him.

Strether asks Bilham on more than one occasion whether or not Chad's relationship with Madame de Vionnet is sexual. But Bilham always replies by throwing out vague adjectives like "virtuous" or "fine" or incomprehensible garble like "that's the point." Strether's Victorian prudishness lets him interpret this to mean "non-sexual," but it's this crucial mistake that leads him to misunderstand Chad's situation for the entire length of the book.

Here's another gem of Bilhamian perplexity. When Strether insists that Chad's relationship with Madame de Vionnet must not be "vulgar," Bilham heartily agrees. Of course, Strether means that it can't be sexual. But Bilham doesn't automatically associate sexual with "vulgar." So even though he knows Chad and Madame are having sex, he believes that their relationship is beautiful. So he agrees with Strether's claim, although not for the reasons Strether thinks.

Sarah Pocock is full of little mind games, probably because she learned from the best, Mrs. Newsome. For example, she knows that the longer she makes Strether wait to speak to her, the more anxious he'll get. This postponement of communication is just one of the many tricks Sarah has up her sleeve for times when she needs to make men do what she wants.

Throughout the book, Strether has never gotten a clear answer from Sarah on what she makes of Chad's transformation. Up to this point, she's just been silent on the issue. But now that he's being direct with her, she's forced to say that she thinks Chad has changed for the worse—for the hideous, in fact. It's only when he finally hears this that Strether decides there is no longer any common ground between him and the Newsomes.

At the end of The Ambassadors, Maria Gostrey realizes that she's in danger of losing Strether forever. So she puts her heart on the line and tells him she'd do anything for him. What she doesn't say, though, is "I love you" or "please stay and marry me." Even at the biggest moment of the book, she can't be totally direct. Which is sad, because it's vague communication that leads to almost every problem in this book.