1. The conversations between Fanny and Bob Assingham serve a number of functions in the novel. They provide extensive background information, clarify the outsiders' view of some situations (such as the events at Matcham), and reflect on the implications of the principal characters' behavior. But their primary function is that they serve as an example of a functioning marriage in which frankness and years of familiarity produce a level of communication that neither of the other married pairs (or even of Maggie and Adam) begins to approach.
Fanny and Bob are well-matched in their differences and even their somewhat non-traditional gender roles work well together. Bob is the great manager who keeps them well, for the level of his income, while Fanny is the brilliant mind who is admired by her husband who is even, at times, incapable of following all her brilliant strokes. They view themselves as a team. And, even though she is sometimes impatient with him, the combination of her subtlety and his bluntness enables them to 'work out' the intricate implications of their friends' situation. Thus, it is long before Maggie has come to the realization of what she has done in urging the marriage of her father and Charlotte, that Fanny and Bob tease out the meanings and the dangers of what she has done. Their conversation about the Ververs' blindness and the peculiar manner in which this caused Charlotte and the Prince to be "afraid for them," is a perfect example of the benefits of such shared work (299). None of the others, since they lack the ability to communicate with complete frankness with any other character, no matter what their relationship, is capable of achieving an understanding that--had it been achieved earlier--could have avoided much of the suffering that transpires.
2. James' style in The Golden Bowl is typified by the construction of the episode in which Maggie confronts Fanny with her suspicions about Charlotte a...