Post CR, he doesn't go on a revenge spree (although he does deem Smersh a worthy target) where his primary motive is finding those who blackmailed Vesper.
How does that show he's hardened? Isn't it more like softened? After the first couple of chapters, he completely forgets about his threat to hunt down the spies behind the spies, and Vesper isn't even mentioned in the books, either by name or by implication, until ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. If you mean by hardened that for several years he seems to have completely forgotten Vesper ever existed, well, yes.
He goes on his next assignment and his thoughts are not dominated by Vesper. He has learned to suppress his emotions.
I think that's reading into it somewhat! Fleming's copy of LIVE AND LET DIE had the following note by him on the fly-leaves:
'Michael Arlen told me to write my second book before I had seen the reviews of the first and this was written in January and February 1953 at Goldeneye, Jamaica.'
I think, apart from a few cursory nods to CASINO ROYALE in the opening chapters, Fleming largely ignored the events of his first novel in his second, simply because he wasn't sure how successful it would have been and so how many people would have read it and understood such references. I don't think there's meant to have been any pyschological development shown in LALD, and this is hardly evidence for it if there is. He does develop as the series goes on, but I can't see what you mean by him hardening, I'm afraid. He's a much more hardened character in CR than in any of the other books, to my mind.
Before her betrayal he was contemplating both marriage and retirement. I don't see any indication that he falls, stupidly or otherwise for Solitaire, who does in fact help him and is herself a prisoner of Mr. Big.
He doesn't
know she is a prisoner, though, before she comes over to his side: she could be trying to deceive him - as Vesper recently did. He makes an 'unpardonable gamble' to believe her, and I think he definitely develops feelings for her, even if he doesn't ask her to marry him. I don't see him in any way as a more hardened character in this novel than in the previous one: can you point to a passage that shows it?
I also don't visualize her as a dead ringer for Vesper although it's not surprising that Bond is attracted to a particular physical type.
‘The eyes were blue, alight and disdainful, but, as they gazed into his with a touch of humour, he realized they contained some message for him personally. It quickly vanished as his own eyes answered. Her hair was blue-black and fell heavily to her shoulders. She had wide cheekbones and a wide sensual mouth which held a hint of cruelty. Her jawline was delicate and finely cut.’
Without checking the books, who would you guess that was a description of?
It's Solitaire, but it really is remarkably similar to what we were told of Vesper. She also had blue eyes, which gazed at Bond with ‘ironical disinterest’; black hair; a wide and sensual mouth; and a ‘beautiful and clear’ jawline. The only significant difference is that Vesper had shorter hair. And yet Bond doesn't even think for a moment of the woman who, just a few months previously, he had been about to propose marriage. Is this because he has been hardened by the experience? I really don't think so, and there just isn't anything in the text itself to support that idea.
By the next book, MR, he is making love with a cold passion to three similarly disposed married women.
True - but it's no more hardened than the man who before Vesper's death was weary of the traditional arc of love affairs.
My point is that following Vesper's death he becomes more focused on being an agent and whatever feelings he represses for her do not affect how he does his job.
I think you're assuming more about Fleming's motives with the character than can be seen in the books themselves. I don't think Fleming worked like that at all: the books are littered with inconsistencies, he wrote them very fast, and in many cases the events (and often the girl) of the last adventure are swiftly dealt with in the first two chapters and then forgotten. I don't see that he's any more focussed on being an agent because of Vesper, either: after a couple of glancing references, he completely forgets all that stuff about the threat behind the spies - it is simply not delivered on.
Vesper's death and betrayal makes him a better agent both in the movie and the book. Tracy's death in the books almost destroys him (in contrast to the movies where it's almost ignored) but he is an older more world weary Bond (who is actually in France to visit Vesper's grave, which shows he is sentimental but not in a way that interferes with his job).
I think even in the books, Tracy's death is really skirted over pretty fast. A couple of chapters of great writing about it, but then he's out in Japan and he barely thinks about her again until... oh, look, what luck! There's the chap who killed my wife. I think Fleming was defiantly not a writer who was considering his character's development or 'arc' in anything like as clear or coherent a way as you're making out.
