ABSTRACT
All of our comments have relied on those indications of the closeness of the formal bond, but the necessity of subjection and the finality of sacrifice also accept the incongruity of what has been bonded together. The crack within the crystal has been there from the start. To create the pure and ideal world of Maggie's moral imagining that imperfection must be uncovered and transcended. There is no doubt that in The Golden Bowl this will involve the pain of sacrifice, a sacrifice that both destroys the carefully controlled community, and destroys much in the characters themselves. We must face this loss for the sake of a higher good if we are to believe in the triumph of the moral will. Such triumph is impossible without a recognition of its cost. But the final effect must hold these opposites in a newly evolved equilibrium, in which the incongruity of pain and triumph is made whole.
