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The Palazzo Leporelli is the palace that Milly rents in Venice, and it symbolizes the status of Milly’s health and vitality as her illness progresses. When Milly arrives in Venice is described as brimming with “ineffaceable character,” much like Milly herself, whose personality charms everyone around her. As the novel progresses, though, Milly begins to spend more time alone in that palace, reflecting how Milly becomes more insular and less socially engaged as her illness progresses. Notably, after Lord Mark tells Milly that Kate and Merton have long been engaged (suggesting that Merton and Kate have been manipulating Milly behind her back), Milly responds not by leaving or simply by refusing to talk to Merton, but by closing the doors of her palace to him. Milly’s choice to shut the doors coincides with her further descent into her illness, underscoring how the palace symbolizes not just Kate’s personality and moods but also of her ever-progressing illness. Merton visits the palace once more but then leaves. Milly, however, stays in Venice and ostensibly dies inside the Palazzo Leporelli. During that time, she admits fewer and fewer visitors, reinforcing the palace as a symbol of Milly’s vitality, which gradually wanes as her illness takes hold, until the doors to the palace are, symbolically, shut for good.
Palazzo Leporelli Quotes in The Wings of the Dove
The The Wings of the Dove quotes below all refer to the symbol of Palazzo Leporelli. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 7, Chapter 4 Quotes
[There was] something poignant in which her visitor also participated. That was nothing verily but the perfection of the charm – or nothing rather but their excluded disinherited state in the presence of it. The charm turned on them a face that was cold in its beauty, that was full of a poetry never to be theirs, that spoke with an ironic smile of a possible but forbidden life. It all rolled afresh over Milly: ‘Oh the impossible romance –!’ The romance for her, yet once more, would be to sit there for ever, through all her time, as in a fortress; and the idea became an image of never going down, of remaining aloft in the divine dustless air, where she would hear but the plash of the water against stone. The great floor on which they moved was at an altitude, and this prompted the rueful fancy. ‘Ah not to go down – never, never to go down!’ she strangely sighed to her friend.
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Palazzo Leporelli Symbol Timeline in The Wings of the Dove
The timeline below shows where the symbol Palazzo Leporelli appears in The Wings of the Dove. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 7, Chapter 3
...Mrs. Stringham, Maud, and Kate go out. Milly relishes the time alone at her rented palace. At the end of the afternoon, Lord Mark arrives at the house, and Milly is...
(full context)
Book 8, Chapter 2
The next day, Merton and the rest of the group go to Milly’s rented palace as usual, but Milly says she is not feeling up to seeing them. Through a...
(full context)
Book 8, Chapter 3
That night, Mrs. Stringham, Maud, Merton, and Kate are at Milly’s palace for dinner. Before dining, Mrs. Stringham talks to Merton alone and says that Milly won’t...
(full context)
...some level, from her most recent bout of illness. She makes the rounds through the palace, playing the role of hostess. Kate and Merton watch her from a distance. Strett is...
(full context)
Book 9, Chapter 2
...about that relationship outright. One day, though, after those three weeks, Merton goes to Milly’s palace and is told that Milly isn’t seeing people. Merton has never been turned away from...
(full context)
