XXXI explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Deception and Secrecy

  Fanny and the Colonel discuss the elaborate lies and secrets surrounding the marriages, including Fanny's fear of being exposed as a conspirator and Maggie's promise to maintain the pretense.

• Sacrifice and Selfishness

  Fanny frames her actions as loyal sacrifice for Maggie, but the Colonel questions whether her motives are selfish, highlighting the tension between altruism and self-interest.

• Appearance vs. Reality

  The chapter explores the gap between the public facade of innocent marriages and the private reality of an affair, with Fanny and Maggie conspiring to uphold appearances.

Characters to notice

• Fanny Assingham

  Fanny defends her loyalty to Maggie and her role in the marriages, fearing exposure and disgrace, and relies on Maggie's promise to keep up the lie.

• Colonel Assingham

  The Colonel questions Fanny's motives and the nature of her loyalty, providing a skeptical counterpoint to her justifications.

• Maggie Verver

  Maggie is central to Fanny's plans; Fanny believes Maggie will stick to her and keep up the pretense of innocence despite knowing the truth.

• Prince Amerigo

  The Prince is implicated in Fanny's narrative as the beneficiary of her machinations and as having preexisting relations with Charlotte.

• Charlotte Stant

  Charlotte is referenced as the other party in the affair and as the woman Fanny helped marry Adam Verver to keep her near the Prince.

• Adam Verver

  Adam Verver is mentioned as the father who might doubt and as the one who would let Fanny off if he knew the truth, for Maggie's sake.

Key passages

• “Being loyal to her is, more than anything else, helping her with her father⁠—which is what she most wants and needs.”

  Fanny claims that her loyalty to Maggie is expressed by assisting Maggie in managing her relationship with her father.

  Fanny justifies her actions as supporting Maggie's primary concern.

• “She can utterly dishonour me with her father. She can let him know that I was aware, at the time of his marriage⁠—as I had been aware at the time of her own⁠—of the relations that had preexisted between his wife and her husband.”

  Maggie could ruin Fanny's reputation by revealing to Adam that Fanny knew about the prior relationship between Charlotte and the Prince.

  Fanny fears exposure of her complicity in the deception.

• “It's a grand, high compact. She has solemnly promised. ... To keep up her lie so long as I keep up mine.”

  Fanny describes a solemn agreement with Maggie to both maintain the pretense that the Prince and Charlotte are innocent.

  The compact underscores the theme of mutual deception.