Summary
The narrator continues to live at the Bordereaus’, spending most of his days outside the house in the streets of Venice. He describes in detail the beautiful city with its churches, summer nights, music on the streets, and delicious food. As he considers his enjoyable days out in Venice, he pities Miss Tita for her inability to get out of the palazzo to enjoy them due to Juliana’s severe isolation and desire to stay away from society.
On one of those summer nights, around the middle of July, the narrator comes home and decides to go to the garden, where he wishes to lie down in the open air and breathe some fresh air. When he goes to the garden, to his surprise he finds Miss Tita there. Even more surprisingly, she tells him that she is glad he came; the forward nature of her statements is unexpected by the narrator, since she has remained so private up until this moment.
They begin to talk to each other in the garden, with Miss Tita confessing that she never comes out at night and has never been to the garden in the evening. The narrator teases her, and tries to insinuate that he has made the garden beautiful just for her, hoping that his flattery will make her more likely to open up about Juliana and her past. Miss Tita directly asks the narrator why he wants to get to know her and Juliana, and the narrator deflects her question, instead asking Miss Tita why she has stayed so isolated. Miss Tita explains that even though her aunt has encouraged her to go out, Miss Tita doesn’t like leaving her aunt, who she jokes is one hundred and fifty years old. Her aunt’s health is failing and getting increasingly worse.
As they continue to talk, Miss Tita begins to open up to the narrator and tell him more about her and Juliana’s life. She tells him about the past, when she and Juliana still went out into Venice and led a more sociable life, meeting people in Venice and maintaining a vibrant social circle of artists and nobility. Around midnight, Miss Tita decides to go back to the house, and asks the narrator what he plans to do after returning to his room. He tells her he plans to read, and adds that he most often reads the work of Jeffrey Aspern—the first time he has mentioned Aspern’s name to Miss Tita.
Miss Tita tells the narrator that she and Juliana have read Aspern and that Aspern used to come by to take Juliana out. The narrator fakes his surprise and forcefully tells Miss Tita that Juliana must tell him more about her relationship with Aspern. Miss Tita refuses his request and asks if he writes about Aspern, which forces the narrator to reveal that he has studied Aspern’s biography, and therefore that he “pries” into his life, as Miss Tita calls it. Juliana repeats her refusal to let the narrator speak to Juliana about Aspern or access any possible materials related to him that she may have, and runs back to the house, clearly disturbed. After this encounter, Miss Tita does not come back to the garden and returns to hiding from the narrator. He grows frustrated and stops ordering flowers for the garden.
Some time later, Miss Tita and the narrator run into each other and Miss Tita informs him that Juliana wishes to see the narrator. The narrator agrees, and is again stunned by Juliana’s extremely old age and appearance. She thanks him for the flowers and surprises the narrator by asking him to take Miss Tita out in his gondola. She then briskly dismisses him, even though he attempts to ask her more questions in order to get her to open up about her relationship with Aspern.
At the end of that week, the narrator and Miss Tita head out onto the Grand Canal in the gondola. Miss Tita begins to be more open with the narrator and tells him that Juliana is scheming to get him to stay at the house longer so that she can get more money out of him. The narrator continues to ask Miss Tita about Aspern’s letters, and Miss Tita reveals that she has never held them, but has seen Juliana take them out and read them. She tells the narrator that Juliana loved the letters very much. After the narrator continues to question her, Miss Tita agrees to help the narrator get the letters.
Analysis
As the narrator continues to live at the mansion, his obsession with the papers grows and he increasingly manipulates his relationship with Miss Tita in order to try and gain access to the letters. The narrator recognizes that Miss Tita is sheltered and aims to use her lack of contact with the outside world to his advantage by luring her outside of Juliana’s control. He flatters her by telling her that the flowers he plants are for her and asks her pointed questions that highlight how little she ventures outside, hoping to push her to reconsider her isolation.
While some of the narrator’s comments may at first seem well-intentioned, in his own narration, he reveals his lack of respect and sympathy for Miss Tita. He refers to her as simple, infantilizing her and growing irritated with her. He harshly stops ordering flowers after Miss Tita refuses to help him get the letters, demonstrating that his willingness to go out of his way for Miss Tita goes only as far as her willingness to help his search for the letters. Miss Tita is not blind to his intentions either, as the narrator perceives her “confession of helplessness” after his self-confessed attempts to “bribe” her become evident over the course of their gondola ride. It is also important to note how the conflict between the narrator’s actions and his narration impact the reader’s relationship to the narrator, making it harder for the reader to fully empathize with him as he manipulates Miss Tita.
However, the narrator does eventually succeed at getting Miss Tita to be more open and help him, as she agrees to aid him in any way she can after they take their first gondola ride. While they are in the gondola, even though she appears to understand that the narrator’s kindness is conditional, she still gives him more information about the letters and agrees to help him. Miss Tita’s behavior is often child-like, presumably due to her lack of interaction with the outside world, and she frequently appears to be unsure of herself and doubtful, questioning how much she knows or her actions.
Juliana, on the other hand, reveals herself to be a “cunning” and capable manipulator able to match the narrator’s own schemes, which makes the narrator uneasy. She allows the narrator into her room only because she thinks he will be more likely to stay at the house for longer if she permits visits, demonstrating that she knows he is not at the house simply to garden, and rather that he has an ulterior motive. Similarly, she orchestrates Miss Tita and the narrator’s outing, directly instructing the narrator to take Miss Tita out on the gondola.
Despite Juliana’s closed-off and private nature, through Miss Tita, the narrator learns more about Juliana’s former relationship with Aspern and the presence of the letters. Miss Tita reveals that Juliana used to look at the letters often and that they were very special to her, which makes the narrator even more interested in reading them and contributes to the mythology he has constructed about Juliana and Aspern’s relationship. However, the narrator’s suspicions about Juliana’s cunning nature grow and he becomes more worried about the possibility that Juliana knows more than he wants her to about his goals. The power dynamics in the house evolve as levels of knowledge—how much Juliana knows about the narrator, what the narrator knows about Juliana, Miss Tita’s loyalty to Juliana and her increasing trust in the narrator—begin to shift and become destabilized.
