The “Cabalistic” diagram of The Awkward Age (1899) whereby James explained the novel to its original publisher (Harper's Weekly) comprised “the neat figure of a circle consisting of a number of small rounds disposed at equal distance about a central object. The central object was my situation, my subject in itself, to which the thing would owe its title, and the small rounds represented so many distinct lamps, as I liked to call them, the function of each of which would be to light with all due intensity one of its aspects.” Each of the “lamps” was a “single social occasion” in which James proceeded to exhaust, as he says, the scenic possibilities; the “occasions” corresponded, he continues, to “Acts of a Play,” and his purpose in using them as a basis of form was to achieve “objectivity” that required no “going behind” scenes to explain, as fiction so often does, and as drama does not. “To make the presented occasion tell all its story itself” was then his purpose (AN, p. 111). The careful arrangements of The Awkward Age are only slightly suggested, however, by James's diagram of circles. The following analysis will attempt to describe the mutual relationships of the order of the “circles” (the books or “acts” of the novel, each of which is named for a different character). Each of the “acts” is divided into numbered units which we may, for convenience, call “scenes.” There are thirty-eight such “scenes” rather evenly distributed among the ten character-named books of the novel.