“The Figure in the Carpet” is a long-form short story by Henry James that is written in such a way that it allows for multiple interpretations. This is the very point of the story. Rather than demonstrating an unusual and atypical lack of focus on the part of James as some critics have asserted, the story is a brilliant example of how form and content come together in perfect harmony to confirm at least one interpretation.
The actual plot of the story is rather simple. The first-person unnamed narrator has written a review of a famous author’s latest novel. The author, Hugh Vereker, shocks the narrator by telling him how badly he has misinterpreted the meaning of the novel but then also goes on to say that every critic also “missed my little point.” Vereker then claims that his entire literary output is a complex web of design in which a single meaning exists much like spotting a figure woven into the design of a carpet. Unable to figure out this singular meaning, the narrator confides in a friend and the friend’s fiancée. Whereupon they both pursue the mystery without success. Until, that is, the friend, George Corvick, suddenly sends a letter from India where he claims to have figured it out. Corvick promises to relay the secret to his fiancée, Gwendolen, but only after they are married. Then he dies in a car accident right after the wedding. The narrator spends great energy trying to get Gwendolen to tell him what Corvick told her, but she refuses. Then she remarries and the narrator, thinking she must surely have confided in her new husband, approaches him after learning that she has died in childbirth. The widower, literary critic Drayton Deane, is shocked to find that Gwendolen had kept a secret of this magnitude from him. The story concludes with both men sitting alone together left to contemplate the unsolved mystery of meaning at the heart of Vereker’s novels.
The meaning of this story is left to the reader to determine with just one absolute rule. The meaning must be found in the story and not in its author, Henry James. In other words, interpretation of the meaning of a story should be grounded entirely in the story itself. Whatever the author may have intended is beside the point. When Vereker complains that no critic has been able to find the figure in the carpet of his works, as he metaphorically puts it, what he is really saying is that no critic has found the meaning he intended.
Trying to figure out what the author meant by a story is an impossibility. Even if the author himself explains what he intended there is always the distinct possibility that what he actually wrote was stimulated by unconscious thoughts. Just as it is with everything else, intentions do not always comes off as planned even in the act of storytelling.
One piece of the plot that is often the focus of this story is whether or not Corvick actually did solve the mystery. If not, then Gwendolen never knew the secret. If so, and he told Gwendolen the mystery, however, it still doesn’t really matter. This is because if Corvick did solve the mystery, it is still just his subjective interpretation. The point of the story is that whether Gwendolen actually knew the secret and never told anyone or whether she never had a secret to know is utterly meaningless. The narrator has dedicated his entire life to trying to figure out a mystery that can never be known even if Corvick did accidentally figure out what Vereker supposedly intended.
In this particular interpretation, the narrator has wasted his life trying to do the impossible. Making matters worse is that he had already come up with the answer in his original review which Vereker rejects. Vereker’s intended meaning may not necessarily actually be what the story wound up being about. In which case, the narrator’s interpretation is every bit as valid as the author’s.
