Water
Both Strether and the narrator use water imagery to describe
female characters, particularly the way Strether relates to these
women. After Miss Gostrey has gone away and left Strether to digest
many significant events on his own, he finds that he no longer depends
on her help to properly understand the events he witnesses. He then refers
to her as one “pail” among many in his life, as one of the “tributaries”
from which the water of meaning he seeks to gather flows. Likewise,
he describes Mrs. Newsome as a large iceberg, as if to suggest both
her firm, stubborn, insistence on certain ideas and to accentuate
her geographic distance from the matters at hand. Finally, he refers
to Madame de Vionnet as a boat on water that attracts him. Later,
as Strether becomes more involved with Madame de Vionnet, he remarks
that if her boat sinks, he will sink as well, because he has agreed
to help her keep Chad and thus is “in her boat.” Finally, in the
climax of the novel, Madame de Vionnet and Chad appear in an actual
boat, exposing the true nature of their relationship to Strether.
In this way, water and water-related imagery coalesce to serve as
a constant reminder of Strether’s complex and varied relationships
to the women of the novel.
Virgin Mary
The similarity between the names Maria (Gostrey) and Marie
(de Vionnet) suggests that these women function as altered versions
of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ. According to the tenets
of Christianity, the Virgin Mary symbolizes life, purity, holiness,
and wisdom. Throughout The Ambassadors, Maria Gostrey
and Marie de Vionnet serve as important teachers and wisdom givers,
for Strether and for others. Miss Gostrey, for instance, makes her
living as a guide to Europe for Americans. Through her eyes, Strether
learns to properly assess the culture of Paris. Likewise, Strether
imagines that Chad’s growth as a person is due to the nurturing
influence of a motherlike figure. Strether sees Madame de Vionnet
as a paragon of virtue and thus imagines that she has been the constructive
force in Chad’s maturity. His discovery of the immoral relationship
between Madame de Vionnet and Chad so shocks Strether that he decides
to leave Europe. Strether also rejects Miss Gostrey’s offer of love.
His faith in the purity of women has been so shaken that he feels
he can no longer trust even his good friend, Miss Gostrey.
