Summary
Following his frightening encounter with Juliana, the narrator flees Venice without saying goodbye to Miss Tita or Juliana. He leaves behind a note telling her that he will be traveling around Italy for a short while. Although he visits several towns, he finds himself distracted and disturbed, haunted by the memories of that fateful night. In particular, Juliana’s accusation against him—that he is a “publishing scoundrel”—stays with him, and he even admits that he had been too manipulative in order to try and access the letters. The narrator is also bothered by the fact that Miss Tita does not reply to his note.
After twelve days away, the narrator returns to Venice. A servant immediately notifies him that Juliana has died and that the narrator has missed her funeral. That evening, the narrator goes down to the garden and sees Miss Tita. Miss Tita, devastated with grief over her aunt’s death, cries extensively, and the narrator is surprised that Miss Tita harbors no grudge or ill will against him, even after she and Juliana found him sneaking into Juliana’s bedroom. As they walk, the narrator notes that Miss Tita is evidently at a loss as to what will become of the rest of her life now that her aunt is dead. She mentions that she wants to travel, and the narrator suggests that he would like to take her on an excursion.
That same evening, the narrator admits to the reader that Juliana’s death has not stopped his interest in the letters. Cold and calculating, he decides that if Miss Tita has not saved the letters, then he will leave her, as she has nothing left to offer him and he does not wish to keep on managing her “middle-aged female helplessness.” The next morning, the narrator questions Miss Tita about the letters. She admits that they are still in the house, but forbids the narrator from seeing them, telling him that Juliana tried to burn them before her death even as her strength and health were failing her.
Despite denying the narrator the letters, Miss Tita gives him Jeffrey Aspern’s portrait. The narrator thanks Miss Tita but tells her that he still wants the letters. After she once again refuses to give them to him, he abruptly tells her that he will be leaving Venice immediately. Miss Tita begs the narrator to stay a few days longer. She hints that if she and the narrator were “relations”—that is, implicitly, if they were a married couple—she would be willing to tell the narrator more about Juliana and the letters. The narrator disregards this offer and instead continues to pressure Miss Tita into sharing the letters. After a heated discussion in which Miss Tita recalls how much her aunt loved her, she bursts into tears and leaves the narrator, telling him how tormented she is over her remaining loyalty to Juliana and her desire to help the narrator.
The narrator is confused and repulsed by Miss Tita’s hints about marriage, calling her “deluded” and “infatuated.” He recalls how he initially proposed in his plan to Mrs. Prest that he would marry Miss Tita to get the letters, but states that he was only joking at the time. He continues to obsess over the letters, wandering through Rome and contemplating how to proceed. Desperate to get the letters, he considers how he could do so without agreeing to marry Miss Tita.
The next morning, Miss Tita requests to see the narrator. When he comes into her room, he is shocked by how “angelic” she looks, somehow much younger and more beautiful than usual. To his surprise, she turns around and bids him goodbye in what he perceives to be a “strange” tone, insinuating that she is sending him away from the house. The narrator is appalled and offended. He asks her what she is going to do now, and she tells him that she has burned the letters. In that moment, the narrator’s perception of Miss Tita shifts again, and he once more sees her as an ugly, desperate woman.
As the narrator stands in shock over Miss Tita’s burning of the letters, she turns her back on him, mirroring his own actions against her when he refused her marriage proposal and casting him just one more look before saying nothing else. The narrator leaves Venice and sells the portrait, sending Miss Tita the money but receiving no reply. He confesses to still feeling absolutely devastated over the lost letters.
Analysis
The finale of the novella contains a surprising reversal of roles between the narrator and Miss Tita. While the narrator spends much of the second half of the work speaking of Miss Tita in a highly condescending manner, ridiculing her loyalty to Juliana and apparent “helplessness,” she does what he thought her incapable of: she burns the letters. In this final act, Miss Tita seizes power from the narrator, using her agency in order to deny him the letters that she knows he is obsessed with obtaining. Miss Tita also burns the letters after the narrator rejects her implicit marriage proposal, and so her actions also demonstrate an act of retaliation against the narrator.
The final burning of the papers is one of two final “climaxes” in the novella, which uses a “double-climax” ending as opposed to a traditional single climax and denouement (falling action). The first climax is Juliana and the narrator’s encounter as he attempts to pry into the desk; the second is Miss Tita’s revelation that she has burned the papers. The novella’s plot structure concentrates a series of events towards the end, with the majority of the novella focusing on generating suspense through the characterization of Juliana, the tensions between Juliana and the narrator, and the developing relationship between Miss Tita and the narrator.
The narrator’s reaction to the marriage proposal demonstrates his unreliability. From the very beginning, the narrator is aware of how he wishes to use Miss Tita and gain her affection in order to manipulate her into giving him the letters. He flatters her, telling her that he has planted the garden for her and taking her on gondola rides through Venice. However, when she tries to imply that she wants to marry him, he is appalled. The reader becomes aware of the narrator “re-writing” his own story as he begins to deny ever having planned to marry Miss Tita or even having wanted to involve her in a romantic plot to get the letters.
The marriage proposal also pushes the narrator into displaying a more unflattering side of himself as he criticizes Miss Tita’s appearance in harsh, vulgar terms and ridicules her. Although The Aspern Papers is a shorter text, the character development over the course of the novella is complex, tracking the narrator’s increasing obsession with the papers, which leads him to resent Miss Tita as she stands between him and the papers. Likewise, Miss Tita’s character arc follows her progression towards agency, concluding with her burning the papers as a final act of resistance that symbolically rejects the narrator, just like he rejected her marriage proposal.
While Miss Tita undergoes a drastic character transformation over the course of the novella, culminating in her burning the letters, the narrator’s obsession with Jeffrey Aspern remains constant. After Miss Tita gives him the portrait, he lies and writes her a letter notifying her that he has sold it, even though he confesses to the reader and Mrs. Prest that it is still hanging above his desk. The narrator is unable to move on from the loss of the letters, and continues to be afflicted by his obsession with the letters and his grief over their destruction. His unwavering obsession demonstrates one of the novella’s central themes as it explores the ethics of biography and devotion to celebrity artistic figures.
