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This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

Henry James's Experiments in Characterization,
1882—1890

presented by

Judith Ellen Funston

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in English—

 

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Major professor

 

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HENRY JAMES'S EXPERIMENTS IN CHARACTERIZATION,
1882-1890

By

Judith Ellen Funston

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1982

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT

HENRY JAMES'S EXPERIMENTS IN CHARACTERIZATION,
1882-1890

BY

Judith Ellen Funston

The novels and tales that Henry James produced between 1882 and
1890 occupy an important place in his development as a writer. From
The Portrait of a Lady to The Tragic Muse, James moves from the
"painterly" novel to dramatically presented fiction. His use of the
center of consciousness as a means of characterization and narration
marks this shift, for he saw the center as essentially dramatic. This
study traces chronologically James's growing dependence on the center
of consciousness and his gradual suppression of the omniscient narrator.

In The Portrait of a Lady James perfected the painterly novel.
The presence of the omniscient narrator, however, reveals the limita—
tions of the novel construed as painting. The center of consciousness
becomes a strategy to circumvent narratorial intrusion and to project
character dramatically--characters projected through the center mirror
the manner in which actors are seen upon the stage. The tales of the-
decade, "The Siege of London," "Lady Barberina," "Pandora," "A London
Life," ”The Liar," and ”The Lesson of the Master," are James's purest
experiments with the center of consciousness where the narrator is
successfully suppressed. In contrast, the novels of the period, The

Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, and The Tragic Muse, rely to

 

 

 

 

Judith Ellen Funston

varying degrees on the traditional narrator, although they too display
James's growing confidence with the center of consciousness.

The fiction of the eighties is important: it provides a bridge
between the early novels and the later masterpieces which depend on
the center of consciousness as narrative method. James's novels and
tales of the years 1882 to 1890, however, are valuable as a distinctive
body of work: they represent a provocative synthesis of painting and

drama, tradition and innovation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright by
JUDITH ELLEN FUNSTON
1982

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank the members of my guidance committee——
Victor Howard, Linda Wagner, Cathy Davidson, Richard Benvenuto, and
William Johnsen--for their generous assistance. I am particularly
grateful to Dr. Howard, my thesis director, for his sound advice; to
Dr. wagner, for her excellent editorial suggestions; and to Dr.
Davidson, for her unstinting encouragement. To the Graduate Council
of the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State, I owe special
thanks for the 1980-81 Fellowship which enabled me to devote myself
entirely to this study. And finally, with gratitude I acknowledge the

constant support and understanding of my husband, Brian.

ii

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter
I. The Impulse to Experiment . . . . . . . . . . . 6
II. Painters and Portraits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
III. The Dramatic Side of Human Situations . . . . . . 70
IV. A Most Salient and Peculiar Tale . . . . . . . 106
V. The Penetrating Imagination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
VI. Direct Impressions of Life . . . . . . . . 169
VII. One Must Go One's Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Conclusion . . 240
. 251

Bibliography .

iii

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

The decade of the eighties marks a period of change in Henry
James's life. Many of the people closest to him--his mother, his
father, George Eliot, Gustave Flaubert, and Ivan Turgenev-—die during
these years. Moreover, James is very much aware of having reached the
midpoint of his own life. In a November 25, 1881 notebook entry, the
first in an "unspotted blank—book," he takes stock of himself: "I am
37 years old, I have made my choice, and God knows that I have now no
time to waste."1 The choice to which James refers is his discovery
that the old world is his "need" and his "life." Few ties, physical
and emotional, bind him to his native land; he impatiently notes that
"I feel as if my time were terribly wasted [in America]."2

James's sense of change, his search for new sources, and his need
for new roots pervade the fiction James produces during this decade.

With The Portrait of a Lady, published in 1882, James enjoyed a con-

 

siderable amount of fame and success. Nevertheless, James abandons
the highly popular International Theme and the American Girl to test
new material. James turns to social criticism, first in The

Bostonians--where he pokes fun at the American penchant for reforma-

 

and then in The Princess Casamassima--where he focuses on social un-

 

rest and the despair of the lower classes. Both novels, in which
James attempted to appeal to public taste, were received with apathetic
silence. The failure of the novels, and the subsequent decline in his

popularity--James complains to Howells that the two novels reduced the

 

 

demand for his work to zero3——prompts James to re-evaluate his relation-
ship to his audience. Feeling forced to choose between popularity and
artistic integrity, James deliberately pursues his own talent. "One
must go one's way," James declares to his brother William on July 23,
1890, "and know what one's about and have a general plan and a private
religion."4 James wrote these words upon completing The Tragic Muse,
a novel which traces the careers of two artists, Nick Dormer and Miriam
Rooth, who must choose between their art and the demands of the world.
The completion of The Tragic Muse marks a turning point for
James: he decides to devote his talent to writing primarily for the
stage, a long—nurtured ambition fostered by his love of the piéce bien
faite of Scribe and Sardou. As James repeatedly describes The Tragic
Mggg as his "last long novel,"5 he suggests that this novel closes a
stage in his own career. Indeed, The Tragic Mgge is James's last
Victorian novel; with it, James leaves behind the social themes, the
expansive canvases, and the varied casts of characters that distinguish
his novels up to 1890.

James's description of The Muse as his last long novel, with its
valedictory tone, hints at his concern with form and techniquem In
fact, The Tragic Muse culminates a distinctive phase in James's devel—

opment. From The Portrait of a Lady in 1882 to The Tragic Muse in

 

1890, James travels a long distance, the nature of which is indicated
by the novels' titles. The early phase of his work, which The Portrait
of a Lady caps, is influenced by the world of the studio. Always fas—
cinated by visual art, James is convinced of the kinship between the

novelist and the artist, a conviction which leads him to conceptualize

 

 

the novel as painting and to incorporate painterly rendering as a means
of characterization. Yet the "analogy" between visual art and fiction
is clearly limiting. James becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the
presence of the artist--the omniscient narrator-~who paints the char-
acters' portraits. This dissatisfaction leads James to seek a new
analogy and by implication a new technique for narration and charac-
terization. James, an inveterate play—goer and drama critic, naturally
turns to the world of the stage for inspiration. The dramatic analogy
suggests a new direction for James's technical development, which be—
comes a gradual refinement of and growing dependence on the center of
consciousness. James finds the center of consciousness essentially
dramatic. Characters and events are projected through the center,
mirroring the manner in which actors and situations are seen upon the
stage; the center of consciousness presents dramatically the objective
center of the work. Moreover, the center is a strategy to circumvent
the intrusive narrator, thus enhancing "the air of reality" of fiction.

Consequently, the fiction of the eighties is distinguished by
James's movement away from the concept of novel as painting and portrait
and toward the gradual incorporation of dramatic principles in the

novels and tales. Although the novels of this decade-—The Bostonians,

 

The Princess Casamassima, and The Tragic Muse——are firmly rooted in

 

 

the traditions of the Victorian novel, they show increasing dependence
on the center of consciousness. And many of the tales of the
eighties--"The Siege of London," "Lady Barberina," "Pandora," "A
London Life," "The Liar," and "The Lesson of the Master"—-complement
James's technique in the novels. The tales are boldly experimental,

where the omniscient narrator is suppressed while the center is

 

 

 

responsible for narration and characterization. Together, the novels
and tales of the eighties form a distinctive body of work in which
James refines his use of the center as he shifts from the art of fic-
tion to the drama of the consciousness.

It is my purpose to trace James's technical deveIOpment chrono-
logically from 1882 to 1890. Beginning with The Portrait of a Lady,
moving through the novels and tales of the eighties, and'concluding

with The Tragic Muse, this study will focus on James's use of the

 

center of consciousness for characterization and narration, and gradu-
al elimination of the omniscient narrator. Concurrently, this study
will show the manner in which James replaces the painterly novel with
dramatically presented fiction. To these ends, I will examine James's
novels and tales of this decade, as well as draw upon essays from

French Poets and Novelists and Partial Portraits, letters, and the

 

 

New York Edition Prefaces.

The fiction of the eighties reveals a James considerably differ-
ent from the MaSter of the major phase. Nevertheless, the novels and
tales written during the years 1882 go 1890 are important: these works
are transitional, still influenced by Victorian tradition, yet clearly
anticipating the use of the center in the later novels. Indeed, the
fiction of the 1880's, providing a link between the early phase and

the major phase, is valuable--and essential--in understanding the

James canon.

 

 

Notes

1 F. 0. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds. The Notebooks

 

of Hengy James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 23.

 

2 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 24.

3 Henry James, Letters, 1883-1895, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 208.

 

4 James, p. 300.

5 Percy Lubbock, ed., The Letters of Henry James (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), vol. I, p. 168.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER I

The Impulse to Experiment

Although Henry James devoted his life to writing, he is generally
thought of as a novelist. Nevertheless, James himself is proof of his
conviction that "all art is one," and although the phrase is taken from
his 1890 novel The Tragic Muse,l that conviction governs his interests
during the years before and after that novel. James‘s fascination with
the visual arts--painting and the theatre——appears early in his life.

In A Small Boy and Others, James recalls that the "terms" of his experi—
ence of life were "in the vivid image and the very scene," a descrip-
tion neatly combining painting and the stage.2 James notes, too, that
his earliest literary productions were "dramatic, accompanied by pic-

torial compositions,"

anticipating, perhaps, his mature technique of
alternating picture and scene.3

Many of James's first publications were in the service of paint—
ing and the theatre. Beginning in 1868, James contributed numerous
art reviews to British and American newspapers and journals. An in-
veterate play—goer, as Allan Wade describes him, James frequently
reviewed plays and actors.4 Yet James was not content to be just a
drama critic. In an 1878 letter to his brother William, James wishes
"to get at work writing for the stage"——an idea, he stresses, that he
has long had.5 And although the art reviews gradually tapered off
during the late eighties and throughout the nineties, James continued

to write for the theatre, as a critic and later as a playwright,

 

 

 

eventually realizing his ambition. And although James's real contribu-
tion to literature is his fiction, his love for painting and drama
remain real influences in his work. He proves that "all art is one"
in the masterful synthesis of the language of painting and drama with
the technical concerns of fiction in the Prefaces.

James chose the writing of fiction as his vocation--a vocation
which he describes as a "sacred calling."6 Yet painting and the theatre
remain real sources of inspiration because he eventually regards both
arts as fruitful analogies for fiction. 80 fruitful were they, in fact,
that James transferred their techniques and specialized vocabulary to
the art of fiction. Underlining his conviction that "the arts were
after all essentially one,"7 James habitually describes one art in
terms of another. Balzac, for example created "Dutch pictures"; "an

acted play is a novel intensified."8 James could "rhapsodize" in his

early years about drama; reviewing Tennyson's Queen Mary in Galaxy,

 

September, 1875, James proclaims that "the dramatic form seems to me

of all literary forms the noblest, and proceeds to define the nature

of that nobility:

The fine thing in a real drama, generally speaking,
is that, more than any other work of literary art,

it needs a masterly structure. It needs to be shaped
and fashioned and laid together, and this process
makes a demand on the artist's rarest gifts. He must
combine and arrange, interpolate and eliminate, play
the joiner with the most attentive skill; and yet at
the end effectually bury his tools and his sawdust,
and invest his elaborate skeleton with the smoothest
and most polished integument.9

What attracted James to drama was its requirement for a fairly
rigorous structure and for the virtual effacement of the "architect's"

presence. Lack of structure and the intrusive narrator were the main

 

 

 

 

 

criticisms James leveled against the current state of the novel. The
drama was noble precisely because of the demands it made on the drama-
tist's skill--artifice with the "tools" and the "sawdust" buried.

Yet when James wrote his first novels, he turned to painting,

not drama, for subject and technique. His early novel, Roderick Hudson,

 

 

examined the artistic temperament. The painter's craft, particularly
in terms of artistic self-consciousness, detailed background, and the
concept of "rendering," provided James with a technical vocabulary as
well as a methodology for his fiction. In the fiction of James's early

phase, from 1864 to 1882, the year The Portrait of a Lady was published,

 

painterly technique is paramount. The novels and tales of these years,

 

dominated by the International Theme and the American Girl, form a co—
hesive body of work. Influenced by Hawthorne, Sand, Balzac, and Eliot,
the novels of this period employ traditional techniques.10 Settings
are localized, elaborate, and detailed, but are not always completely
related to the narrative. And in keeping with the Victorian novelist's
habit of maintaining a palpable authorial presence, James depends on
an omniscient point of view and frequently intrudes upon the narrative
to comment upon the action, to shift scenes, or to instruct the reader.
But the most distinguishing feature of the early work, and the
one most clearly influenced by painting, is James's construction of
character. The controlling idea is that of portraiture, which affects
the characterization and ultimately the total pattern of the novel.
James's interest in painting, and especially portraiture, can be
traced back to those years when he fancied himself an artist, but as

F. O. Matthiessen demonstrates, James's appreciation of portraiture

 

 

 

has literary origins, too. Noting the manner in which, in The House

of the Seven Gables, Holgrave's daguerreotype probes the depths of

 

Judge Pyncheon, Matthiessen sees similarities in Hawthorne's and James's
use of the portrait to enhance character. Whereas Hawthorne's use of
the portrait is as a "device" or "naked allegory," James elaborates the
portrait into a method.11 James's use of the portrait as method is

most apparent in Roderick Hudson and The Portrait of a Lady. By sketch—

 

 

ing the basic attributes in the protagonist in the opening chapters,
and devoting the whole of the novel to defining and highlighting the
preliminary sketch, James successfully makes the novel serve a full-
1ength portrait. Portraiture in the novel, however, radically deter-
mines the manner in which character is developed. In the painted
portrait, the individual is fixed upon the canvas; the painter's task
is to force that image to reveal personality. Likewise, the character
in the novel of portraiture is fixed within the framework of the novel;
the novelist's task is to uncover the various facets and depths of the
established character. Rowland Mallet and Isabel Archer do not grow.
They do become clearer in their lineaments as the reader watches them
acting in consonance with the outlines presented in the opening sketch.
The other characters in the novel form the background against which

the "portrait" is rendered. In such a novel, the emphasis is on pic-
ture, and on character delineation. Rowland and Isabel discover truths
about themselves in the course of each novel, but they do not essen-
tially change. Oscar Cargill sees portraiture as James's predominant

concern during his early phase:

 

 

10

From Watch and Ward in 1871 through The Portrait of a
Lady in 1881 James's work in the novel follows a single
line of development: his object was portraiture, his
method was analytical, and his principal achievements
were the sharpening of characterization through inter-
national contrasts and the enrichment of it by concen—
tration--by making the other characters ancillary to
the central figure.12

 

 

Indeed, James brings the method of portraiture to its most re-

fined development in The Portrait of a Lady, in which the character

 

of Isabel Archer—-and James's thoroughgoing analysis of it--forms the
real subject of the novel. As James notes in the Preface to Thg
Portrait, Isabel's primary interest for both her creator and her reader
lies in what she will "do"; action is interesting as a means of gradu-
ally revealing character. When the concept of portraiture, both as
subject and method, dominates the novel, the novel itself is trans-
formed by the change of focus from plot to character. And James, with
roots in the world of the studio, deliberately uses the novel as por-
trait, thereby achieving a provocative synthesis of the aims of fiction
with the methods of painting.

The Portrait of a Lady, with its sharpening of painterly tech—

 

nique, and its typically Jamesian concerns with the International
Theme and the American Girl, is the brilliant culmination of James's

first phase. With the publication of The Portrait, James turns to new

 

themes and experimental techniques, for he is devoted to exploring the
possibilities of fiction and his practice of it. As early as 1878 he
announced his commitment to this exploration in a letter to his brother
William: while conceding to William's stress on "the importance of
subject" (James's letter was written in response to William's comments

on The Europeans-—he had pronounced the novel "thin" in subject), James

 

 

 

 

 

ll

explains his failure to exploit "big situations" because, as he notes,

"being 'very artistic,‘

13

I have a constant impulse to try experiments

James was never content to repeat old "forms,"

of form." even though
the novels written during his early phase had considerable public and
critical acclaim. Deliberately turning his back on the successes of
the seventies, James risks his popularity in his compulsion to experi-
ment with form and theme.

James's commitment to experiment is clearly manifest during the
decade of the eighties--the years between the publication of $29.
Portrait and his decision in 1890 to abandon the novel for the theatre.
These years are a transition in James's development, and they are par-
ticularly productive ones: he wrote numerous tales ("Lady Barberina,"

"The Author of ‘Beltraffio,'" "The Liar,“ and "The Lesson of the

Master" are a few of the more notable); novellas (The Reverberator

 

and A London Life); and three important novels (The Bostonians, The

 

 

Princess Casamassima, and The Tragic Muse). The novels present signifir

 

 

cant departures from his early work. Although the International Theme
continues to dominate the tales of the eighties, it does not inform
the three novels. Instead, James turns to themes arising out of the
conflict between the individual and society's demands; specifically,

The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima rely upon contemporary

 

 

social issues to provide the background for this conflict. Localized
and concretely depicted settings and an extensive variety of characters
also set these three novels apart from James's previous work. These
distinguishing features make the novels of this period the most

typically Victorian of all of James's work.14

 

 

 

12

Paradoxically, however, while James was writing his most tradi-
tional novels, he follows his "impulse to try experiments." Although
he relies on familiar devices (such as the omniscient narrator who on
occasion addresses the reader), he also works toward a new conception
of the novel. His essay, "The Art of Fiction," published in 1884 (a

year before the first installment of The Bostonians), is a crucial

 

document for understanding James's unique sense of the novel.15 As
the essay's title suggests, "The Art of Fiction" not only offers a de-
fense of the novel as "one of the fine arts"; it defines the manner
in which James conceptualizes the novel in terms of painting. The
novelist "competes" with the artist; the analogy between the two are
"complete" and provides the comparison upon which "The Art of Fiction"
is based. Although this particular aspect of the essay presents a sum—
mation of James's technical concerns to date, "The Art of Fiction" out-
lines the direction for the future Jamesian novel, or as Perosa sug-
gests, the essay directly informs the novels of the eighties.16 It is
where James defines the novel that "The Art of Fiction" anticipates
the major works of the decade:

A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, 3

direct impression of life: that, to begin with, con-

stitutes its value, which is greater or less accord-

ing to the intensity of the impression. (p. 384)

The novel is a subjective view of reality, of life; it neither
records nor imitates the sensual qualities of life. By defining the
novel as "a direct impression of life," James stresses the reciprocal
relationship between the perceiving sensibility and perceivable reality,

and implicitly dignifies the novelist's role as the prime perceiving

and shaping sensibility. James underlines the primacy of the mind's

 

 

 

 

l3

role in experience when he describes experience as "an immense sensi—
bility," likening it to "a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken
threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness . . . catching every
airborne particle in its tissue" (p. 388). His conception of experi—
ence is based on an important distinction, because his focus is not on
the stuff of experience-—the flood of sensory data--but on the con-
sciousness, or more specifically, on the impact of experience upon the
perceiving sensibility. James's stress is on that sensibility--on the
way it is shaped by experience, on the way it responds to and inter-
prets reality; "the faintest hints of life" are "revelations" for the
sensitive and imaginative mind (p. 388). James sees the consciousness
as a web which binds together perception and its object, or as Robert
J. Reilly describes it, "as a homogeneous tissue in which inner and
outer reality shaded into each other in blendings so subtle that one
could hardly specify boundaries."l7 James's vision of the novel
results from his establishing as the material of fiction the role of
the consciousness and experience's impact upon it. His interest in
the physical world arises from its influence upon "the very atmosphere
of the mind." Throughout the essay, James returns to his appreciation
of the consciousness as his true subject: "There are few things more
exciting to me . . . than a psychological reason . . ." (p. 402).
Consequently, the cultivation of the consciousness--the response to
"the faintest hints of life"——takes increasing precedence over
action--the concern with plot-—in James's fiction of the eighties.
However, James's emphasis on the consciousness seems to contra-

dict his other aims. The controlling analogy of "The Art of Fiction"

 

 

 

14

is that of painting; both painting and the novel "attempt to represent
life," and the analogy between the painter and the novelist is
"complete": "Their inspiration is the same, their process (allowing
for the different quality of the vehicle), is the same, their success
is the same" (p. 378). James's aims are those of the painter, but
unlike the painter, James sees as the novelist‘s subject not the
painter's tangible reality, but an inner reality. The novelist must
capture "the very atmosphere of the mind" upon his canvas. Although
the consciousness does not seem translatable to the concrete demands
of art, as does the subject of the painter, James sees no substantial
contradiction. In "The Art of Fiction" he confidently asserts that
"a psychological reason is, to my imagination, an object adorably
pictorial; to catch the tint of its complexion——I feel as if that idea
might inspire one to Titianesque efforts” (p. 402).

By painting the consciousness of a character, James discovers a
means to capture "the very atmosphere of the mind" as well as a tech-
nique which eliminates the intrusive, omniscient author, which for
James was a flaw in the contemporary novel. In spite of James's rev—
erence for Trollope, he deplored Trollope's intrustion in his novels,
the sign of Trollope's lack of seriousness.l8 In this respect, then,
The Portrait of a Lady is a considerable achievement in novelistic
technique, for although James lapses into omniscient narration, he
does realize Isabel's consciousnesspictorially(Chapter 42, the vigil,
is the centerpiece of the method), thereby maintaining Isabel's integ—
rity as a character and James’s "seriousness" as a novelist. Moreover,
by reflecting physical reality through a character's consciousness,

thus endowing that reality with a distinct moral sense, James corrects

 

15

the shortcomings of the French realists. In James's view, the realists
failed to probe the depths of the consciousness. For example, writing
to Daudet about Sgphg, James points out that "en un mot, 1e drame ne se
passe peut—étre pas assez dans l'ame and dans la conscience de Jean
Gauvin"——and note that James describes the consciousness in dramatic
terms.19 And although James revered the French writers for their
attempts to capture the surface of life honestly and unflinchingly, he
deplored their rejection of morality and ethics.20

As James sees it, the consciousness provides both depth and moral
vision, and is therefore a challenging subject for the novelist. In
"The Art of Fiction" he exults that "there are few things more exciting

to me . . . than a psychological reason. . . ." Later, in the retro—

spective view of the Prefaces, he declares that his characters "

are
interesting only in proportion as they feel their respective situa-
tions; since the consciousness, on their part, of the complication

. . u - - . . "2]. .
exhibited forms for us their link of connex1on With it. James judges
the success of his characters in terms of the intensity of their con-
sciousness: in Isabel Archer he achieves a "maximum of intensity"
while he fails with Laura Wing, the heroine of ”A London Life," because
u - . "22
her inten31ty ruefully drops.

For all his use of consciousness as a criterion in judging char—

acter, James never explicitly defines the term, although it is a peren—
nial subject in his writing, and one he lovingly masks in metaphor.
Ross Labrie surveys those metaphors, and explores their implications

for James's "idea of consciousness." Labrie's real contribution, how-

ever, is the definition he offers of Jamesian consciousness: "James

 

 

16

viewed consciousness as the mind's dynamic and selective assimilation,
interpretation, and evaluation of its environment and of itself at any
"23 . .
one moment. Consciousness encompasses both perceiver and perceived
reality; it is neither a solipsistic exercise nor aesthetic self-
indulgence. J. A. ward glosses James's notebook objective of "complete-
. I O O I 2 o O
ness as seeing things in all their relations" 4 in .terms of consc1ous-
ness and its implications for character and reader:
Perception and intensity of awareness are of supreme
importance in James, but his enlightened vessels of
consciousness seldom exult in isolated ecstatic mo-
ments. For them as for the reader, the illumination

is an understanding of the complete pattern of re-
lationships surrounding the central situation. . . .

25

James's greatness is frequently measured by his creation of the
center of consciousness as both subject and technique, but it is impor-
tant to realize that James's interest in the "psychological reason" is
not atypical of the period. During the final decades of the nine-
teenth century, the concept of the mind underwent radical transforma-
tions, resulting from the growing science of psychology, but exerting
enormous influence upon many novelists. In place of the view of the
mind as "discrete mental states" there arose the idea of "organically-
1inked mental states"; concurrently, the representation of discrete
mental states gave way to the representation of the sequential process
of thought.26 James's contribution to the novel, at least in terms of
consciousness, is not the idea of consciousness, but his attempt to
objectify that process. For James, the consciousness, with its blend-
ing of perceiver and perceptible reality, can be reflected in the
novel, where subject imperceptibly merges into form. J. A. Ward, for

example, recognizes that "in many of James's novels and tales the

 

 

17

structure derives not from the external action, but from the developing
awareness of the central consciousness."27 The problem for James, then,
is one of form and technique, not subject. Even from the retrospective

of the Prefaces James could recapture his excitement at confronting

this challenge: "'Place the centre of the subject in the young woman's

' I said to myself, 'and you get as interesting and

28

own consciousness,
as beautiful a difficulty as you wish.'" The solution to the "diffi-
culty" was to have the consciousness of a character perform the nar-
rator's function, eliminating in a single stroke the omniscient author
James deprecated. Thus, physical reality is seen only through the
center of consciousness, which appropriately records and organizes
perception. And by shifting the emphasis of the novel from plot, the
sequence of events or actions, to the perceiving medium, the conscious-
ness, James transforms the novel.

In conceptualizing his novel, James turns to the other arts for

terminology and metaphor. During the early phase of his career, which

includes The Portrait of a Lady, the world of the studio was the most

 

familiar and accessible source. As will be shown in Chapter 2, paint-
ing provides a fruitful metaphor and suggests techniques in adapting
the novel to the demands of portraying a character's consciousness.
James's conception of the consciousness lends itself to the methods

of painting; as Ward sees it, "The synthesizing reflector pictorializes
rather than narrates: he is given not to the fluid reporting of inci-
dents but to the assimilating of all the aspects of the entire situa—
tion."29 Appropriately, James was fond of describing his novels,
especially his early ones, in terms of painting or architecture-—fixed

compositions.

 

 

18

But the problem with applying the methods of painting to the
demands of fiction was that painting was too self-conscious an art for
James. In The Portrait of a Lady, for example, James does achieve
moments of artistic integrity in Isabel's functioning as a genuine
center of consciousness, but to arrive at these moments requires the
shaping presence of the narrator who shifts scenes, telescopes time,
and educates the reader—~in short, functions as an intrusive narrator.
Throughout The Portrait of a Lady, for example, the narrator never
permits the reader to forget that the novel is a deliberately shaped
work of art; similarly, the viewer of a painting is always aware that
the picture viewed is a painting, composed by the artist. Clearly,
the novel as a work of art does not realize James's goal for the novel
as "a direct impression of life." To imitate the picture of the con—
sciousness was possible, but that picture did not capture the mind's
movement in discovering the "pulses" during which the consciousness
transforms sensory data to experience. The consciousness portrayed
in The Portrait of a Lady is a peculiarly static entity: it is cap-
tured within the framework of a portrait, and comes to the fore only
when its subject--Isabel Archer—-is at rest and isolated, as in her
midnight vigil. To reproduce the movement of the consciousness, James
had to turn to a new form, a new analogy. He chooses drama. The
world of the theatre, particularly its sense of activity and the
effacing of its creator, is eminently suitable as a vehicle for the
consciousness——so entirely appropriate, in fact, that it is a common—
place of Jamesian criticism to speak of the "drama of the conscious—

ness."

 

19

James had a lifelong interest in the theatre; as noted above,
James was a dedicated play-goer and drama critic. His letters also
reveal a project eagerly anticipated by James—~the desire to write for
the stage. James was attracted to playwriting because he saw the
theatre as a secure and comfortable source of income. Writing to his
brother, William, on July 23, 1878, James confides: "I am very im—
patient to get at work writing for the stage—-a project I have long

had. I am morally certain I should succeed, and it would be an open

30

gate to money-makin ." Yet it would be wrong to regard James's
8

motive for playwriting as purely financial. James indeed cherished
the project for a long time, but more as an ideal exercise of his ar-
tistic talents. A few months earlier, James confidently proclaims to
William:

For myself (in answer to your adjuration) it has long
been my most earnest and definite intention to com—
mence at playwrighting as soon as I can. This will be
soon, and then I shall astound the world! My inspec—
tion of the French theatre will fructify. I have
thoroughly mastered Dumas, Augier, and Sardou . . .
and I know all they know and a great deal more besides.
Seriously speaking, I have a great many ideas on this
subject, and I sometimes feel tempted to retire to
some frugal village, for twelve months, where, my
current expenses being inconsiderable, I might have
leisure to work them off. Even if I could only find
some manager or publisher sufficiently devoted to be—
lieve in this and make me an allowance for such a
period, I would afterwards make a compact and sign

it with my blood, to reimburse him in thousands.31

This letter reveals the central reason James is drawn to writing
for the stage: he admires the "well—made play" of Dumas, Augier,
Scribe and Sardou. The drama, particularly that of the Theatre
Francais, was noble precisely because it demanded rigorous form. And

in his notebook, either at the end of 1881 or at the beginning of

 

 

20

l882-—the entry is undated-~James describes drama as ”

the ripest of all
the arts, the one to which one must bring most of the acquired as well
as most of the natural."32 Again, such a description indicates the
basis of James's fascination with drama; the blend of form and "life"
presents a unique challenge to James. According to this entry, play-
writing was his "earliest" project; it is his "most cherished," giving
him bright hopes and sweet emotions.33 His intensive and "contempla-
tive" study of the French stage, together with his long—standing fas—
cination with drama, make it "clear" to James that "this is the light
by which one must work today."34 Crucial in understanding how strongly
James felt about drama, the entry is James‘s taking stock of his artis-
tic progress, having finished his masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady.
In the notebook he examines his motivations to write for the stage,

and rededicates himself to the lessons of Dumas, Sardou, and Augier.

He describes the degree to which he has incorporated their lessons:
"Ces emotions-la ne se perdent pas; elles rentrent dans le fonds meme

"35 Drama—-and

de notre nature; elles font partie de notre volonté.
the lessons of his French masters-~are truly part of his nature and
will.

Drama is the light James will work by during the eighties.
Although James does not begin writing plays until the end of the decade,
drama exerts a considerable influence on the fiction of the period.
Prior to these years, James habitually connects fiction with drama.

In a February 2, 1877 letter to William Dean Howells, discussing the
"story" that will later become The Europeans, James notes that he will

"endeavor to make it something of an 'objective,’

36

dramatic and pictur—

ESque sort." Earlier, in an 1872 essay on the Parisian stage,

 

 

 

 

21

James glosses drama in terms of the novel: "An acted play is a novel
intensified; it realizes what the novel suggests, and, by paying a
liberal tribute to the senses, anticipates your possible complaint
that your entertainment is of the meagre sort not styled 'intellec-

tual.'"37

Although James defines the play as a "novel intensified,"
the passage is important because it proves that James recognizes a
basic kinship between the novel and the theatre.

During the eighties, then, the idea of the drama-—as a lucrative
venture, but more significantly as the "ripest form"--is never far
from James's mind. Although "The Art of Fiction," with its emphasis
on the relationship between the novelist and the painter, continues as
an influence on James's conceptualization of the novel during this
period, drama has a considerable impact on the fiction of the eighties.
Along with painting, the theatre suggests method to James. Indeed,
throughout the decade there iS'a gradual and subtle movement away from
painterly techniques toward the techniques of the theatre: the painter

competes with the playwright. By the end of the period, the dramatic

analogy dominates the fiction, such that in The Tragic Muse, drama

 

provides both technique and subject. Kenneth Graham, in discussing
The Tragic Muse, notes that the interplay of form and life dramatizes
the subject of the novel and recommends that "it should be approached
as a performance and a fiction, not just as an exposition of

"38

ideas. . James's search for form during the eighties is similar

to Miriam Rooth's struggle to discover the "right spring" that opens
the locked box of her talents.39 In the three novels and in many of

the tales, James experiments with technique, trying to invest the

 

 

 

 

22

pictures of his characters—~and their consciousness-—with a dramatic
sense of life and movement.

James is committed to experiment, and the fiction of the eighties
clearly shows James's testing of new themes and new techniques. "The
Art of Fiction," which informs the novels of the period, outlines the

novelist's duties: "The advantage, the luxury, as well as the torment

 

and responsibility of the novelist, is that there is no limit to what
he may attempt as an executant——no limit to his possible experiments,
efforts, discoveries, successes"——a description particularly relevant
to James's development as a craftsman during the decade.

Despite James's words, many critics minimize James's “experiments
of form" during the eighties, preferring to place greater emphasis on
the more obvious experiments of the nineties. Sergio Perosa's treat—
ment of James's middle period (1882-1901) is typical: using James's
"dramatic years" (1890—1895) as the dividing line, Perosa distinguishes
between the experimental themes of the eighties and the experimental
techniques of the nineties--although Perosa does mention in passing
that new themes entail new techniques.40 Nevertheless, some critics
acknowledge at least implicitly that drama influences James's writing
before he actually ventured into playwriting. Francis Fergusson, in
summing up James's life "at the moment of writing his plays," notes
that "James followed the theatre all his life, and was aware that his
fiction approached the form and texture of drama."41 Charles Hoffman,
in fact, is explicit about the dramatic influence throughout James's
career prior to his writing for the stage: "The dramatic method and

scenic development, the indirect approach, the central observing

 

 

23

intelligence, pictorial representation, objectivity and consistency

of point of view~-a11 these elements of James' [sic] art of the novel
are utilized in the early short novels."42 And Oscar Cargill, while
stressing James's use of the drama after 1895, admits that the novels
of the eighties, written under the influence of Turgenev, have "objec-
43

tive and dramatic" method.

Indeed, as Dale Peterson demonstrates in The Clement Vision,

 

Ivan Turgenev's "dramatic novel" was influential throughout the period,
being highly publicized by the contemporary critics T. S. Perry and
George Parsons Lathrop. Peterson notes that "Perry's criticism, with
its militant insistence on the necessary finitude of the authorial
vision, advanced Turgenev as the exemplar of the well-made, realistic
novel of manners."44 Lathrop, in two articles on "The Growth of the

NOvel" in Atlantic Monthly, June and September 1874, also cited

 

Turgenev as the practitioner of the "dramatic method" in the novel.
Calling the novel "a portable drama," Lathrop explains that "the secret
of the dramatic effect is simply this, that in real life ultimate truth
seldom finds a pure utterance . . . [t]he involved truths of the whole
proceeding being illustrated by the partial expressions of each indi-
vidual." Lathrop demanded authorial objectivity, a controlled point

of view replacing omniscience, and the dramatization of "psychological
phenomena."45 It is easy to agree with Peterson that Lathrop's mani-
festo was "an extraordinary anticipation of the mature Jamesian point-

Of view theory."46

Or, alternatively, James had the requisite skills
and the interest in experimental forms to expand and refine contempo—

rary theories in his fiction.

 

 

 

 

24

James himself was quick to acknowledge Turgenev's genius and his
contribution to the art of fiction. In a real sense, Turgenev was
James's "Master"; James indicates that Turgenev provides the model for
James's blending of painterly and dramatic methods. He thought highly
of Turgenev, as is evident in the appreciative 1884 essay in Partial

Portraits (1888). In French Poets and Novelists (1884) James examines

 

Turgenev's work, particularly his major achievement, dramatic fiction.
Turgenev's tales are "ruthless epigram[s], in the dramatic form, upon
human happiness."47 Turgenev's novels, however, vividly capture the
essence of drama: in Héléne, "the scene, the figures are as present
to us as if we saw them ordered and moving on a lamp-lit stage; and
yet, as we recall it, the drama seems all pervaded and coloured by
the light of the moral world."48 James's conception of the dramatic
novel, as formulated by Turgenev, is comprised of several elements.
First and foremost is point of view. Turgenev, in his willingness to
let his characters speak for themselves, provides an antidote to the
authorial winking and going behind the scenes of the Victorians
Thackeray and Trollope. Turgenev preserves the integrity of character
and incident. James describes this integrity when he discusses A Nest
of Gentlefolk:

Here is a picture drawn with all the tenderness of a

lover, and yet with an indefinable--an almost un-

precedented—-respect. In this tale, as always with

our author, the drama is quite uncommented; the poet

never plays chorus; situations speak for themselves.49

Turgenev thus "effectually bur[ies] his tools and his sawdust,"

to reiterate James's early review of Tennyson's Queen Mary. James

Values Turgenev's effacing the authorial presence, and his refusal to

 

 

 

 

25

play the commenting chorus. By permitting the situations to "speak
for themselves," Turgenev reveals his sincerity and his seriousness
about the novel, qualities James regards as eminently praiseworthy.
But point of view is not the only element of Turgenev's dramatic
novel. James praises the Russian for his sensitivity and his absolute
fidelity to detai1-—in his "susceptibility to the sensuous impression
of 1ife-—to colours and odours, and the myriad ineffable refinements
and enticements of beauty-~[Turgenev] equals, and even surpasses, the
most accomplished representatives of the French school of story-
telling."50 Turgenev is faithful to the sensuous impression of life,
and by being so he again lets the situation "speak" for itself--with
the meticulous rendering of detail, with imagination guiding and modu-

lating the artist's touch, the author need not play the chorus.51

 

Effacement of author and fidelity to life--these are the basic
elements of Turgenev's dramatic novel. Yet in spite of James's stress
on Turgenev's dramatic aims, James frequently relies upon painterly
terms when discussing Turgenev's technique. Turgenev's "figures are
all portraits," James declares, and glosses those portraits: "They
have each something special, something peculiar, something that . . .
rescues them from the limbo of the gracefully general."52 In short,
Turgenev's characters are portraits of "real" human beings; they are
not types; they are individually seen, understood, and rendered.

James is justified in discussing Turgenev's portraiture, because
portraits and paintings figured importantly in the Russian's life.
Turgenev, like James, appreciated the world of the studio. In his

eulogic essay on Turgenev in Partial Portraits, James notes that the

 

 

 

26

Russian "had a great love of painting, and was an excellent critic of
a picture."53 James is quick to see that Turgenev also turned to the
studio for inspiration; Turgenev's method is painterly in that "the
germ of a story" was not plot but "the representation of certain
persons" of whom he set down a "dossier"; with this in hand, he then

asked himself, "What shall I make them do?"54

A measure of Turgenev's
influence on James can be seen when a quarter of a century later, when

James recollects the "germ" of The Portrait of a Lady, he models it on

 

Turgenev's method.55 In fact, The Portrait is, with its young woman

 

as protagonist and its emphasis on portraiture, James's most
Turgenevian novel.56 James's own rendering of Turgenev in the two
essays is illuminating. Both essays indicate the reverence with which
James regards the Russian master. But in describing Turgenev's methods
as founded upon principles drawn from the stage and the studio, James
justifies his own experiments of form during the eighties. Turgenev

is proof that "the arts were after all essentially one," but he also
suggests new directions, new possibilities for the practice of fiction.

James's essay on Turgenev in French Poets and Novelists is as

 

important in understanding his fiction of the eighties as "The Art of
Fiction." The defense of the novel in "The Art of Fiction" summarizes
James's conception of the novel as he had practiced it, including Th3
Eggtrait of a Lady. The essay also anticipates and informs the novels
Of the eighties by designating the "psychological reason" as the true
Subject of fiction. In the Turgenev essay, however, James demonstrates
his continuing fascination for the drama-—especially as applied to

fiction--and the basis of James's praise of Turgenev is the Russian's

 

 

27

achieving a sense of drama in his novels and tales.

As James implies in the essay, Turgenev's version of the novel—
istic drama depends on two central ideas: fidelity to detail is one;
but more critical is authorial objectivity, the author's willingness

to let situations "speak for themselves,"

respecting the integrity of
the objectified world. In "Ivan Turgeneiff," James defines the
dramatic novel as he will practice it during the eighties. James's
admiration for Turgenev remains strong throughout the decade--his
appreciative essay on Turgenev appears in the 1888 collection, Partial
Portraits, together with "portraits" of the French naturalists who

also influence this period of James's work. The 1884 essay on Turgenev,
however, is important in understanding James's technical aims during
the eighties, just as the French naturalists "explain" the subjects,
ideas, and themes prevalent in that decade of James's work.

H!

J. A. Ward correctly cautions that the dramatic analogy' is

imperfect."57

James does not regard drama as perfectly analogous to
the novel, but believes--especially given Turgenev's treatment of the
novel--that dramatic principles can be employed in fiction. Drama
provides an alternative method of narration to the Victorian omniscient
author. In the play, emotions, attitudes, and ideas are communicated
by the actors directly to the audience; the burden of communication is
Upon the character, not the playwright. Consequently, greater empha-
sis is also placed upon the novelist's ability to create "the air of
reality" by evoking a precise, detailed sense of atmosphere and back—

ground-—a reliance upon the individual, not the type. Again, this

sense of drama is similar to the Turgenevian ideal. And because the

 

 

 

28

novelist must "bury his tools," action in the Jamesian sense, meaning
the pattern of gradually revealing character,58 and theme originate
from character, thereby creating intensity, economy, and unity.59
Moreover, while the drama offers these aesthetic effects, it also sug—
gests method. Through dramatic presentation, alternating picture
(blocks of narrative setting the stage for the scene by the "massing
of elements")60 and scene (primarily dialogue and movement),61 James
can heighten the impact of action and intensify the relationship among
the characters and their connection with theme.

Consequently, although James's view of the painterly novel-~as
described in "The Art of Fiction"——inf1uences the novels of the
eighties, drama begins to compete with painting as a fertile analogy
for James's fiction. As the following chapters will demonstrate, after
1884 James increasingly regards "the rules of the drama" as more appro-
priate for the novel.62 The emphasis should be, however, on "rules"
rather than the actual elements of drama which are more apparent in the
novels following James's "dramatic years." In approaching the "drama"
of the novels of the eighties, it is crucial to remember both the
similarities and dissimilarities between painting——which remains influ—
ential during this decade--and drama. In short, a play is a visual
medium, like painting; unlike painting, however, a play is not a fixed
composition, but visually displays movement and tension, thereby cap-
turing the actual pulse of life. Prior to his playwriting experience,
James values dramatic principles as they are applied to fiction. For
James, dramatic presentation, in which situations are permitted to
SPeak for themselves, eliminates the author's intrusion into the nar—

rative as commentator; it enhances the objectivity that he considers

 

 

29

essential to fiction. Moreover, he sees dramatic presentation as a
means of capturing a sense of life, of movement, of growth that does
not seem possible within the fixed composition of the portrait-novel.

Yet in "The Art of Fiction," James also proclaims his commitment
to the "psychological reason"--the consciousness-—as his pre-eminent
interest. The consciousness, however, concerning as it does a charac—
ter's perception of the physical world and being a mental process,
seems to violate the essential aspects of the dramatic method. On the
one hand, the dramatic method emphasizes, as does painting, the visual,
and captures the objectivity of life. Ideally, the method obviates
the apparent mediation of the writer, because characters and situations
speak for themselves. On the other hand, the development of a charac-
ter's consciousness, by its very nature, seems to necessitate the
presence of an intrusive and omniscient narrator to describe "the very
atmosphere of the mind" not observable. James's main interests—-char—
acterization concentrated on the consciousness and the application of
dramatic principles to fiction—-seem diametrically opposed.

But as Ward perceptively comments, "James's creative energy
thrived on the reconciliation of opposites."63 The fiction of the
1882 to 1890 period occupies an important place in James's development,
because in the tales, novellas, and novels James works toward recon-
ciling the demands of characterization based on consciousness with the
practice of dramatic presentation. The work of this period is transi-
tional because while James is writing novels in the nineteenth-century
tradition, he is increasingly interested in the potential of the inner

life as material for fiction. The Portrait of a Lady, although

 

 

 

 

 

 

30

traditional in its use of vividly detailed and varied landscapes, a
large cast of characters, and omniscient narrator, exemplifies James's
skill in employing the consciousness as a method of characterization;

later novels, like The Ambassadors, deliberately focus on the conscious-

 

ness. James's transition is gradual, and undoubtedly James's play-
writing experience helps him considerably in forging a means to depict
consciousness. But James's movement toward the dramatic novel occurs
earlier: prior to his apprenticeship in the theatre, James experiments
with methods of presenting his characters dramatically, while focusing
on their "immense sensibility."

Critics tend to ignore the experimental nature of James's fiction
of the eighties. Sergio Perosa, who divides James's middle period into
two parts--the fiction written before the "dramatic years" and that
written after-—acknowledges the "experimental themes" of the eighties,
but stresses the "experimental techniques" of the late nineties.
Admitting that the fiction of the eighties is "transitional," Perosa
nonetheless recognizes that new themes necessitate new techniques, but
examines only those methods directly influenced by James's theatrical
experience.64 Walter Isle studies James's "experiments of form"
during the years 1896-1901, and in referring to The Princess

Edsamassima and A London Life, notes that "in both these cases the

 

 

themes are treated without the experimental techniques used to sharpen
65
the development of theme in the later novels." The novels of the

' according

nineties are strongly influenced by the "dramatic analogy,’
to Joseph Wiesenfarth, whose useful study details the specific elements

James learns from the stage and brings to the novel. Wiesenfarth never

 

 

 

 

31

suggests, however, that the drama has any influence prior to the
dramatic years.66 And those critics who examine the various "analo—
gies" James applies to fiction usually simplify James's movement from
painting to the stage: Oscar Cargill and Edna Kenton, for example,

see this movement as sequential——first painting, then drama—-rather
than as a more complex intermingling of the two.67 But what is par—
ticularly intriguing about the fiction of the eighties——besides James's
use of new subjects and themes——is the subtle and complicated dialectic
between the analogies of painting and the drama.

Obviously, experimental techniques do distinguish James's fiction
of the nineties, and these techniques can be related, at least in part,
to the elements James transfers virtually intact from the stage to the
novel. In this respect, the techniques are more clear-cut and conse-
quently are easier to trace and examine. But it is the major assump—
tion of this study that dramatic principles influence James's fiction
prior to his actual playwriting experience-—an assumption that has
foundation in James's letters and essays written before his "dramatic
years." The fiction of the eighties, although undeniably affected by
James's love of the painter's craft, bears the mark of James's com—

mitment to the theatre.

 

 

 

Notes

1 Henry James, The Tragic Muse (1890; rpt. New York: Penguin
Books, 1978), p. 14.

 

2 Henry James, A Small Boy and Others in Autobiography, ed.
Frederick W. Dupee (1913; rpt. New York: Criterion Books, 1956), p. 4.

3 James, A Small Boy and Others, p. 148.

4 Alan wade, introd., The Scenic Art, by Henry James (New York:
Hill and wang, Inc., 1957), p. xii.

5 Henry James, Letters, 1875-1883, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975), p. 179.

 

6 F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds., The Notebooks
of Henry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 179. On
January 23, 1895, after the disastrous opening of Guy Domville, James
tersely notes: "I take up my dyd_old pen again—-the pen of all my old
unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles. To myself—-today-—I need
say no more. Large and full and high the future still opens. It is
now indeed that I may do the work of my life."

 

7 Henry James, Notes of a Son and Brother (1914) in Autobiogrdphy,
p. 294.

James, "Honoré de Balzac," in French Poets and Novelists
(London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), p. 94; James, "The Parisian Stage"
(1872) in The Scenic Art, p. 3.

9 Quoted by Leon Edel, introd., The Complete Pldys of Henry
iflflgg (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1949), p. 34—5.

0 Cornelia Pulsifer Kelley, in The Early Development of Henry
James (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965) provides a thorough
discussion of the influences on James during 1864 to 1881.

1

1 F. O. Matthiessen, "Henry James and the Plastic Arts," Kenyon
gEYieW, 5 (1943), 535. Matthiessen notes, however, that in
A Passionate Pilgrim" the portrait is used as a Hawthornian device.

32

 

 

 

33

12 Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry James (New York: The
Macmillan Co., 1961), p. 123.

 

3 James, Letters, 1875-1883, p. 193.

 

14 Walter Isle, in Experiments in Form: Henry James's Novels
1896-1901 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), calls the
novels of the 18803 "Victorian" and draws compariSons between James's
"Victorian" novels and those written during the nineties, which bear
many characteristics of the "twentieth—century novel" (p. 15).

 

5 Henry James, "The Art of Fiction" in Partial Portraits (1888;
rpt. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1911), pp. 375—408; hereafter
cited in text.

 

6 Sergio Perosa, Henry_James and the Experimental Novel
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978), pp. 5-6.

 

7 Robert J. Reilly, "Henry James and the Morality of Fiction,"
American Literature, 39 (1967), 13.

James has mixed feelings about Trollope. In his 1883 essay
in Partial Portraits on Trollope, James praises the novelist for his
"complete appreciation of the usual" (pp. 100-1) and compares him
favorably with the French realists (pp. 123-4). However, James accuses
him of never taking himself seriously (p. 99) and deplores Trollope's
"suicidal satisfaction in reminding the reader that the story was only,
after all, a make-believe." Tr0110pe's "slaps at credulity," his
winking behind the scenes, are "deliberately inartistic" (pp. 116-7).

 
 
   
   
 
 
 
   
   
 
  

9 Henry James, Letters, 1883-1895, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 45.

20 Reilly's "Henry James and the Morality of Fiction" provides
a thorough analysis of James's view of the morality (or lack of) of
the French Realists, particularly Flaubert and Maupassant.

Henry James, Preface to "The Princess Casamassima," in The
rt of the Novel, ed. Richard P. Blackmur (New York: Charles Scribnerhs
ons, 1934), p. 62.

James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady,’ p. 56; Preface to

'The Spoils of Poynton," p. 138.

Ernest Ross Labrie, "Henry James's Idea of Consciousness,"
erican Literature, 39 (1968), 527.

 

 

 

 

34

24 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 206.

5 Joseph A. ward, The Search for Form: Studies in the Structure
of James's Fiction (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press,

1967), pp. 40-1.

 

26 Gordon 0. Taylor, The Passages of Thought (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1969), pp. 5-6. Taylor documents the change in con-
ceptualizing the mind that was spread over three decades (1870-1900).
Prior to and at the beginning of the period, novelists focused on a
single level of awareness; during the period, emphasis shifted to a
more complex spectrum of psychological experience (the unconscious,
the subconscious, instincts, and so on); while by the end of the period,
the main interest was on the connection between interior awareness and
exterior behavior (pp. 5—6). Taylor's description of the final focus
of the period comes close to defining Jamesian consciousness.

27 Ward, p. 42.

28 James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," p. 51.

29 Ward, p. 55.

30 James, Letters, 1875-1883, p. 179.

31 James, Letters, 1875—1883, pp. 171-2.

32 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 37.

33 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 37.

34 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 38.

35 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 38.

36 James, Letters, 1875-1883, p. 97.

37 James, "The Parisian Stage," p. 3.

38 Kenneth Graham, Henry James: The Drama of Fulfillment
(London: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 81—83.

39 James, The Tragic Muse, p. 227.

 

 

 

35

40 Perosa, p. 19.

41 Francis Fergusson, "James's Ideal of Dramatic Form," Kenyon
Review, 5 (1943), 495.

42 Charles C. Hoffman, The Short Novels of Henrnyames (New York:
Bookman Associates, 1957), p. 49.

3 Cargill, p. 207.

44 Dale E. Peterson, The Clement Vision: Poetic Realism in
Turgenev and James (London and Port Washington, N. Y.: Kennikat Press,

1975), p. 18.

 

 

 

45 Peterson, p. 20.
46 Peterson, p. 20.
47 James, "Ivan Turgenieff," in French Poets and Novelists,
p. 244.
48 ll 0 H
James, Ivan Turgenieff, p. 224.
49 ll ' M
James, Ivan Turgenieff, p. 231.
50 n . it
James, Ivan Turgenieff, p. 219.
51 ll ' M
James, Ivan Turgenieff, p. 219.
52 H - M
James, Ivan Turgenieff, p. 213.
53 H o H a o .
James, Ivan Turgenieff in Partial Portraits, p. 306.
54

James, "Ivan Turgenieff" in Partial Portraits, p. 315.
55 ll ' H
James, Preface to The Portrait of a Lady, p. 42.

56 This is strikingly apparent in the essay on Turgenev in
Egench Poets and Novelists. James points to Turgenev's sympathetic
treatment of his female characters (p. 225). More to the point, how—
‘ever, James describes the story of Héléne as "all in the portrait of
lthe heroine," a young girl "of will So calmly ardent and intense"

:(p. 225)—-a woman remarkably similar to Isabel Archer. And in the
same essay James quotes a passage from Turgenev's novel Spring Torrents
which is very much like Isabel's midnight vigil. See pp. 237-8.

 

 

36

57 ward, p. 21. Ward is quoting the title of Joseph Wiesenfarth's
book, Henry James and the Dramatic Analogy (New York: Fordham
University Press, 1963).

8 Wiesenfarth, p. 23.

9 Wiesenfarth isolates these three e1ements--intensity, economy,
and objectivity--as the characteristics James's dramatic novel shares
with the play (p. xii). Wiesenfarth devotes his first chapter to
defining these qualities and listing James's comments on them.

60 James, Preface to "What Maisie Knew," p. 158.

1 Wiesenfarth describes the alternation of pictures and scene
as a "system of structures":

The typical scene treats in dialogue, inter-
personally and objectively those thoughts and
opinions, facts and probabilities that can find
outward expression; the picture typically treats
those thoughts, emotions, and desires not easily
expressed in conversation, also those actions and
situations which press in upon and affect the
consciousness. By means of scene and picture the
novel treats the social and personal events of an
action, the areas of conduct and consciousness.

(PP - 35-6)

See also R. W. Short, "Some Critical Terms of Henry
James," PMLA, 65 (1950), 667-80, for definitions of
picture and scene.

62 Edna Kenton, "The 'Plays' of Henry James,” Theatre Arts,
12 (1928), 350.

63 ward, p. 12.

Perosa, p. 5.
65 Isle, p. 13.

6 Wiesenfarth applies the "dramatic analogy" only to those
novels which follow James's actual playwriting years.

7 Cargill, p. 206; Kenton, 350.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER II

Painters and Portraits

During the fall of 1860 the James family settled in Newport,
Rhode Island, after a brief sojourn in Europe. Once in Newport,
William James began taking drawing lessons from William Merris Hunt,
and Henry, more from wanting to emulate his older brother than being
convinced of his own artistic talent, loitered around the studio,
hoping to catch the eye of the Master with sketches of plaster casts.
He gave up his drawing aspirations quite suddenly, so he relates in his
autobiography, after watching William sketch a live model and realizing
that he could never approach his brother's facility and ease in trans-
ferring life to the canvas.1 After this, Henry "pocketed his drawing
pencil,"2 but in picking up the pen, he never lost his early fascina—
tion for art, a "rounded satisfying world."3 Throughout his writing
career, James returns to that world for the material of his fiction:
numerous tales and two novels, Roderick Hudson (1875) and The Tragic
Mpg; (1890), directly address issues of art and artists.4 That
"rounded satisfying world" also provided James with an inexhaustible
source of imagery for his fiction--The Portrait of a Lady, for example,
is permeated with the images of art objects.

The world of the studio suggested method to James. He considered
the analogy between the artist's pigment and the novelist's words to be
a fruitful one: both the painter and the writer share kinship through

. 5
their attempts to capture a "direct impression of life." In an 1876

37

 

 

38

essay on Flaubert, in which he examines the novelist's concept of art,
James imagines Flaubert describing life as "before all things a spec-

tacle, an occupation and entertainment for the eyes.‘ The emphasis is

on the visual, and while James's Flaubert acknowledges "something else,

" the sensual surface of life, the novelist's task

beneath and behin
is to "represent the pictorial side of life":

We will "render" things-~anything, everything, from

a chimney-pot to the shoulders of a duchess--as

painters render them. We believe there is a certain

particular phrase, better than any other, for every-

thing in the world, and the thoroughly accomplished

writer ends by finding it. we care only for what d§--

we know nothing about what ought to be.6

The key word is, of course, "render": it implies more than
making a faithful copy; the manner in which James uses it suggests
that the imagination assists in producing an image, whether in a paint-
ing or in a verbal description. The eye of the artist is a selective
one: the impression of life "rendered" in art is personal, because
the artist's vision reshapes life even as it records it.7 James's
riticism of Balzac, in spite of his admiration for the French writer,
einforces the personal and selective facets of "rendering": Balzac
'sins by extravagance" in his superfluous "enumerations of inanimate
bjects"; "where another writer makes an allusion Balzac gives you a
. 8 . .

utch picture." Balzac, in other words, records the phy81ca1 world
nd does not employ the selectivity that can convey a personal impres-
ion of life. By contrast, Flaubert wins James's praise for insisting
hat the writer must exercise art when depicting "the pictorial side

f life." James's Flaubert sanguinely believes that the novelist is

qual to expressing any aspect of that life; it is simply a matter of

iscovering the "certain particular phrase."

 

 

 

39

Several critics, among them Lyall Powers, David Gervais, and
Philip Grover, have examined the relationship between James and the
French novelists, particularly Flaubert.9 James's own "rendering" of
Flaubert cited above, however, reveals more than just the impact of the
French realists upon Jamesian aesthetic theory; it demonstrates the
extent to which James visualizes the work of the writer in terms bor-
rowed from the painter's vocabulary. The work written during the years
of the strongest French influence-~from the mid-seventies to the publi-

cation of The Tragic Muse in 1890--is marked by the realist's attention

 

to detail and the naturalist's themes. It is in one novel, however,
that James achieves a near-perfect synthesis of the methods of the

painter with the materials of fiction, and that novel is The Portrait

 

of a Lady.

James's own description of the manner in which he first conceived
The Portrait justifies the novel's title. Somewhat apologetically,
James recounts how "the germ of my idea" consisted of "the sense of a
single character, the character and aspect of a particular engaging
oung woman" instead of the usual "subject" or plot.10 The main inter-
st--as James saw it--must be in what she will do, but in spite of the
ecessity for something to happen, the novel is a "portrait" in the
ullest sense. The Portrait of a Lady_is a detailed and intensive

'rendering" of James's "engaging young woman,‘ Isabel Archer; the
ovel's method of characterization and its structure is dominated by
he concept of portraiture.

By using the portrait as a means of shaping his fiction, James

dds a new dimension to the novel. Traditionally, the novel depicted

 

 

40

the growth or change of its protagonist, brought about by the pressure
of circumstance, experience, and other characters. The journey motif,
as a vehicle of both plot and theme,typified this conception of the
narrative controlled by linear progress. James transforms this linear
view of the novel by conceiving the novel in terms of visual art--the
portrait. In the portrait, as James applies it to fiction, the protago-
nist does not grow or change. The portrait-novel is not static, how-
ever, because its movement derives from gradual clarification of the
central character's outlines given at the novel's beginning. Joseph

Warren Beach, in The Method of Henry James, describes this technique,

 

appropriately enough, with an analogy borrowed from visual art:

You have rather a sense of being present at the

gradual unveiling of a picture, or the gradual

uncovering of a wall-painting which has been white-

washed over and is now being restored to view. The

picture was all there from the start; there is noth-

ing new being produced; there is no progress in that

sense. The stages are merely those by which the

exhibitor or the restorer of the picture uncovers

now one, now another, portion of the wall or canvas,

until finally the whole appears in its intelligible

completeness.ll

Beach's description is valuable for its emphasis on the sense of

ovement inherent in this technique. A more precise analogy, however,
ight be the process by which one's eyes become accustomed to a dimly-
it room. Vague outlines of objects are visible, but it takes time
efore the finer details are apparent. This is a more accurate illus—
ration of James's structuring of the novelistic portrait, where he
ives the character's essential qualities at the beginning; the course
f the novel shows these relatively general traits shaping that char-

cter's re3ponses to situations and other characters. In this way,

he portrait, as James uses it, is a method of characterization which

 

 

 

41

structures the novel.

The Portrait of a Lady is, as its title suggests, a full-fledged

 

exploration of this technique. But it is not James's first such

attempt. Prior to The Portrait, Which began appearing serially in 1880

 

in The Atlantic Monthly and in Macmillan's Magazine, James uses this

approach in his "first" novel, Roderick Hudson (1875).12 The early

 

 

 

novel is helpful in examining The Portrait, for it is in Roderick

 

Hudson that James can be seen trying out techniques and methods later

refined in The Portrait. In many respects, the two novels are

 

companion-pieces, and James himself seems to suggest a kinship by noting
that they were both begun in Florence.13
In the earlier novel James sketches the portrait of Roderick
Hudson, a sculptor given the opportunity to nurture his talent through
Rowland Mallet's generosity; unfortunately, Roderick disintegrates
rather than grows in the process. James freely acknowledged the fail—
ures of this novel in its Preface for the New York Edition, the most
important being the accelerated time scheme of Hudson's deterioration.
James employs a second character, Rowland Mallet, as a center of con-
sciousness; Roderick is seen through Rowland, who attempts to under-
stand and interpret Roderick's fall, eliminating the need for an omnis-
cient narrator. But because Rowland himself plays an essential part
in the novel--he is the only reason why Roderick can go to Europe-—

and because he is the center of consciousness, he competes for the main

focus. Roderick Hudson is as much about Rowland Mallet as it is about

 

the young sculptor.

James's first novel is a double portrait: the two men are seen

from different angles of vision, and they complement and contrast with

 

 

 

 

 

42

each other. James Kraft, in his study of James's early fiction, is
even willing to see Rowland and Roderick representing "two sides of
one personality," together forming "a balance in character that does

14

not seem possible in reality." But the balance in character is not

maintained in the novel's structure. Roderick Hudson splits into two

 

uneven narratives, and Mallet dominates because everything is filtered
through his sympathetic intelligence, making him more vivid than his
subject, Roderick Hudson. Joseph Warren Beach criticizes James for

devoting too many pages to Rowland‘Mallet;l5 although Mallet should be

 

regarded more tolerantly, Beach is right in noting the problems Mallet's
characterization present in the novel.

By 1880, James perfects the technique of portraiture. Isabel
Archer is very clearly the subject of the portrait, and although she is
surrounded by important if subordinate characters, she dominates Ida

Pprtrait of a Lady16 even when not actually present. The novel begins

 

'th a broad and general outline of Isabel Archer's essential traits.

  
 
  
  

In the Opening chapters the narrative alternates between scenes showing
he characters in action and blocks of description giving principle
haracters' main qualities. Chapters 3 and 6 are devoted to a detailed
'rendering" of Isabel herself. In Chapter 3, Isabel's personality is
laced before the reader; Chapter 6 focuses primarily upon her major
laws which become increasingly important as the novel progresses.

ames begins Chapter 6 with the first: she is "a young person of many
heories" (p. 46). Her theories are, unfortunately, untested by prac-
ice. Indicative of Isabel's willingness to shut out the world is the
oom she chooses in which to read: the sidelights are covered with

reen paper so that "the vulgar street" remains unseen (p. 24).

 

 

43

Isabel is also ”probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem" (p. 47);
wrongly or rightly she considers herself superior to those around her.
She is a romantic, too, for James describes Isabel as having "a fixed
determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free
expansion, of irresistable action" (p. 48). She sees the world as a
happy place, open and simplistic—-a place where "she would be what she
appeared, and she would appear what she was (p. 48). Finally, she is
presumptuous: she tempts fate for "sometimes she went so far as to
wish that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occa—
sion demanded" (p. 48).

Isabel Archer is a very "theoretical" young woman: she has a
multitude of theories untested by life. Significantly, those theories
foreshadow the major issues and events of the novel. In fact, her
movement through the novel parallels that of James, for as her ideas
are put to the test by the other characters and situations, so too is
James's general outline of Isabel fleshed out by her responding to
those characters and situations.

Isabel's prophetic though presumptuous wish to be tried is ful—
filled by the end of the novel, and she demonstrates the sincerity of
her values by acting fully in accordance with them. Isabel does prove
her superiority. She returns to Osmond and a stultified life because
she remains faithful, purely on principle, to her marriage vows.
Isabel's need for integrity is noble, but there is also a negative
side to her final choice, because it arises from her overwhelming
sense of self, prompting Leon Edel to call Isabel "a prisoner of her

17

constituted self" and to accuse her of an egotism similar to that of

Osmond.18 Isabe1_d§ a prisoner of self. Ironically for one who

 

 

 

 

44

proclaims her independence so insistently, she is confined by romantic
ideals even though she is confronted with the realities of the world.
Although Isabel may have a clearer knowledge of the implications of
those ideals, she remains blinded by them.

Isabel is as fixed by her theories as she is fixed on James's
"canvas." The novel is genuinely a "portrait of a lady"--a detailed
"rendering" of Isabel Archer's character. Isabel does not change during

the course of the novel, yet The Portrait is not a static work because

 

the novel's movement depends upon the delineation and clarification of
Isabel's character. The novel moves from general to specific, from
theory to practice; it reveals, but does not surprise. The novel's
form is as defined and framed as a painted portrait, in keeping with
what Laurence Holland describes as the "distinctly painterly objec-

"19

tive of The Portrait.

 

That objective controls characterization. Beach examines James's

*"pictorial preoccupation" in The Portrait, noting the chiaroscuro

 

 

effect of Isabel's portrait placed against a dark background of menac-
ing surroundings and company.20 Similarly, Oscar Cargill points out
the sense of movement in this method while acknowledging the importance
of background: "Thought of as a developing portrait, Isabel's growth,

or better, definition, is rendered sharper by her successive suitors

 

and admirers."21 Isabel does not change; she shines from the dark
canvas like a Rembrandt portrait, and the interest arises from the
reader's discovery of fine details first obscured by vague outlines

and shadows. Above all, the emphasis is on the pictorial: Richard

 

, , 22
POirier calls The Portrait "a spectacle" where the reader does not

 

 

 

 

 

part
lsal

and

pai

inf

 

45

participate in discovery, but only watches the gradual revelation.
Isabel Archer and the characters who surround her have been captured
and fixed upon the "canvas" of the novel.

Other elements, in fact, contribute to the novel's "distinctly

painterly objective." At the time James wrote The Portrait he was

 

influenced by French Naturalism; this influence manifests itself in
James's use of heredity as a significant factor in defining and ulti—
mately limiting Isabel. Chapters 3 and 4, for example, relate Isabel's
family history, and although "she had a desire to leave the past behind
her" (p. 30), Isabel is very aware of her past. She had a very happy
childhood; her father kept "the disagreeable" away from her. It
happens then that her knowledge of the dark side of life is theoretical:
"It appeared to Isabel that the disagreeable had been even too absent
from her knowledge, for she had gathered from her acquaintance with
literature that it was often a source of interest, and even of instruc-
tion" (p. 31). This is crucial for Isabel's character, because it
explains why she regards the world so naively, why she is willing to
view life rather than feel it, and why she views it through the dis-
tancing medium of art. Hence, her description of Gardencourt as

"being just like a novel" (p. 16), and her rejection of the "cup of
experience" as a "poisoned drink" (p. 139).

The important point is that Isabel's character is shaped prior

:0 the events related in the novel; she must, in the words of the

?reface, "affront her destiny."23

The novel is a playing-out of
Isabel's pre-ordained destiny, a destiny shaped by her background, her

-deas, but most obviously by her creator. The artist who paints

 

 

 

46

Isabel's portrait is present in the narrative: James freely uses an
omniscient narrator despite his growing dissatisfaction with this
technique. Indeed, it is the narrator who openly shapes the novel into
a painting-—a portrait. He frequently intrudes into the narrative--

' to sketch in

especially in the first third of the novel—-to "render,'
settings and characters, and to guide the reader's interpretation of
character and event. The narrator sets the painterly tone in the very
first paragraph of The Portrait by commenting upon "the peculiarly
English picture I have attempted to sketch" (p. 6), thereby suggesting
his procedure, which entails the gradual filling-in of outlines to
create a portrait with detail, depth, and color.

The narrator also intrudes to predict. This function emphasizes
the "art" of The Portrait by indicating that the omniscient narrator
is a careful artist, who plans his work, and who possesses the sense
pf the novel as a whole which the reader must experience incrementally.
l
In Chapter 12, for example, the narrator cautions the reader "to smile

ot" at Isabel for rejecting Warburton before he proposes (itself an
xample of Isabel's habit of pre-ordaining her own destiny), and then
ontinues:

She was a person of great good faith, and if there

was a great deal of folly in her wisdom, those who

judge her severely may have the satisfaction of

finding that, later, she became consistently wise

only at the cost of an amount of folly which will

constitute almost a direct appeal to charity.

(pp. 95-96)

By predicting, even obliquely, the nature of Isabel's destiny,

ames rejects the idea of the novel as an illusion of life in place

f it as art, the artist's personal impression of life. Art does not

 

 

47

mirror life; it shapes life: a painted portrait is not a mere repro-
duction of the subject's image, but is the artist's interpretation of
that individual's character.24 To render that interpretation the
artist may select or even distort elements of the physical likeness.
But because the characters are defined or "fixed" from the start, and
because the narrator who by his intervention actively shapes the
course of the novel, the reader cannot have the illusion that such
characters are real human beings capable of stepping from the confines
of the novel. It is not by chance that the Preface to this novel con-
tains James's metaphor of "the house of fiction" where "the spreading
field, the human scene" is shaped by "the pierced aperture" through
which both artist and reader watch.25 The narrator's intrusions con-
stantly remind the reader that the novel is an illusion of life,

strengthening the kinship of The Portrait to the painter's work.

 

The narrator, however, is not the only one who is able to pre—
dict: characters speculate upon the future with surprising accuracy;
events and images seem to forecast Isabel's destiny-~all of which sup-

orts this view of the novel as a shaped and controlled work of art.

haracters' predictions play an important part in The Portrait.

 

sabel wishes to be "in a difficult position" so that she may act nobly;
er wish is granted, and she acts in accordance with her theories. But
esser characters have an uncanny ability to predict Isabel's future.
enrietta Stackpole, although James caricatures her, describes Isabel
nd her future accurately:

The peril for you is that you live too much in the

world of your own dreams--you are not enough in

contact with reality-—with the toiling, striving,
suffering, I may even say sinning, world that

 

 

 

 

 

 

48

surrounds you. You are too fastidious; you have too
many graceful illusions. Your newly acquired thousands
will shut you up more and more to the society of a few
selfish and heartless people, who will be interested in
keeping up those illusions. (p. 201)

Henrietta gives a near-perfect thumbnail sketch of the novel.
While such prediction can be accounted for as the natural result of a
long friendship between the two women, it also adds to the reader's
sense of Isabel's affronting a pre-ordained destiny. Of course, char-
acters affront destinies in any novel-~such is the nature of art--but
many novels tend to obscure that destiny by maintaining an illusion of
life-like deve10pment and linear progress. Henrietta's prediction, in
contrast, enhances the overall impression of the novel as a deliberate
work of art.

Events also function in a predictive manner. Tony Tanner calls
these "compressed analogues" which "subtly prepare" the reader for the
events that will occur as the narrative unfolds, while providing a sum—

ary of antecedent action. One such compressed analogue is Isabel's

first visit to Osmond's villa:26

The two ladies drove out of the Roman Gate, beneath
the enormous blank superstructure which crowns the
fine clear arch of that portal and makes it nakedly
impressive, and wound beneath high—walled lanes,
into which the wealth of blossoming orchards over-
drooped and flung a perfume, until they reached the
small superurban piazza, of crooked shape, of which
the long brown wall of the villa occupied in part by
Mr. Osmond formed the principal, or at least the most
imposing, side. Isabel went with her friend through
a wide, high court, where a clear shadow rested below,
and a pair of light-arched galleries, facing each
other, caught the upper sunshine upon their slim
columns and the flowering plants in which they were
dressed. There was something rather severe about the
place; it looked somehow as if, once you were in, it
would not be easy to get out. For Isabel, however,
there was of course as yet no thought of getting out,
but only of advancing. (p. 234)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

49

Isabel begins with a "fine clear" prospect, but is gradually en-
closed within a crooked piazza, high walls, and an imposing courtyard;
the "as yet" of the last sentence has an ominous ring. Even the road
to the piazza, which winds among "high-walled lanes," foreshadows the
"dark, narrow alley with the dead wall at the end" of Isabel's mid-
night meditation.

Other events contribute to the sense of the novel as an enclosed
whole rather than as a progressive narrative. The story is carefully
framed: on the obvious level, the novel opens and closes at Garden-
court; Isabel's early wish to see the ghost of Gardencourt is ulti-
mately fulfilled. Some events are less apparent: Mrs. Touchett meets
Isabel when the younger woman is disciplining her mind: "Just now she
had given it marching orders, and it had been trudging over the sandy
plains of German thought" (p. 24). After Ralph's death, Isabel tries
to read, but she is unable to "command" her mind (p. 536). Singly,
these incidents may not seem significant; together, however, they
create the sense of the novel having come full circle, and an aware-
ness of the total narrative even while the focus is upon a single in-
cident or character. The reader need only look beneath the pictorial
surface to discover the complete composition.

Visual art permeates The Portrait of a Lady. While art provides
a rich source of imagery and metaphor, it is also an essential part of
:he novel's meaning. Isabel, Ralph, and Osmond view life as a work of
art, although not in exactly the same ways; and as Philip Grover notes,
:he manner in which the characters respond to art is a significant

, 2
:lement of their characterization. 7 But visual art--the world that

 

Jame:

llOV€

espe

nove

ast

tecl

 

50

James found so "rounded" and "satisfying"--influences many of the
novel's techniques. Painterly objectives control characterization,

especially Isabel's, the subject of The Portrait, and structure the

 

novel. As shown above, The Portrait of a Lady is as enclosed and fixed

 

as the artist's canvas-~prompting Joseph warren Beach to call this

technique a radical reversal of traditional narrative methods.28 In

The Portrait James applies techniques suggested by the painter's craft,

 

and in so doing transforms the novel.
Besides the synthesis of visual art and fiction, James breaks

ground in The Portrait of a Lady by using consciousness on a large

 

scale as a means of characterization. The technique of relating a
:haracter's thoughts does not originate with James: he does perfect
:he technique, however, and relies on it as a narrative method almost
axclusively in his later work. James's refinement of this technique
Ls one of his major legacies to the twentieth-century novel.29

Use of the center of consciousness does not begin with Tad

’ortrait; again, it is helpful to return to Roderick Hudson for James's

 

:arly attempts with this technique. In that novel, Rowland Mallet is
:he center of consciousness: everything is seen through his eyes, and
e is the interpreter of the novel's events. In using Mallet, James
voids depending on an omniscient narrator to tell the story. The
uthor is careful in making sure that Mallet is present at every occur-
ence, even though James comes close to resorting to coincidence to
arrate important events (such as Mallet happening upon Roderick and
hristina at the Coliseum, where the young sculptor recklessly scales
Jme ruins to pick wildflowers). However, James does not give Mallet

distinctive voice or narrative form, and Mallet is so malleable that,

 

 

 

51

as Gordon Taylor points out, the observer's consciousness melts into
the author's omniscience.30 This is somewhat ironic, considering the
central concern of the novel. Both Mallet and Hudson speculate about
the impact of experience on the mind and character--it is Mallet's
reason for bringing Hudson to Rome. Mallet remains singularly un-
touched by his experience; James does not permit Mallet's consciousness
to be visibly affected by his relationship with Hudson.31

In The Portrait of a Ladprames refines the technique and employs

 

it to advantage for characterization and theme. James does not rely
upon a single point of view for the narrative: the story is told by
an omniscient narrator, Ralph, and Isabel.32 The shifts between these
narrators have thematic purpose. In the first six chapters, the au-
thorial narrator sketches the scene and relates the essential back-
ground facts and personality traits. Although this narrator never

completely steps out of The Portrait, his role diminishes as Ralph's

 

ecomes more prominent. Ralph, who in many respects has the novel's
ost generous, most perceptive, and finest consciousness, provides a
roader point of View than Isabel's more limited one, and enables
ames to interpret events at which Isabel is not present. As the novel
oves toward its climax, and as Isabel's distrust of her cousin grows,
lph's role as center of consciousness decreases while hers accord-
ngly increases. The narrative thus gradually depends upon Isabel,
nd the reader experiences Isabel's narrow view and her awakening to
he grim truth of her situation. Ralph's death and James's "gradual
uthorial withdrawal" suggest to Ora Segal, who has examined James's
enters of consciousness, a strategy by which "James emphasizes the

rowth of [Isabel's] tragic stature and her ultimate moralisolation."33

 

 

But 1
also
ject
View
havi
achi

ordz

cha
knc

abt

52

But Isabel's coming to the foreground as the central consciousness can
also be seen as indicative of her progressive definition: as the sub-
ject of The Portrait, Isabel dominates the novel so that her point of
view becomes the ultimate source of vision in the novel. Moreover, by
having the reader experience Isabel's limited point of view, James
achieves a degree of suspense although Isabel is acting out a pre—
ordained destiny.34

The centers of consciousness also become an important source of
characterization in The Portrait. In Roderick Hudson, characters are
known largely through dialogue: in conversations they reveal facts
about each other, or about themselves, rather than unfold ideas.35
Characters in Roderick Hudson are also conceived somewhat simplisti—
cally: characterizations rely on conventional polarization——Christina
Light, the "bad" woman, contrasts against the more angelic Mary
Garland.36 The characters of The Portrait are more subtle, sophisti—
cated creations: they have the psychic complexity lacking in the char—
acters of the earlier novel. James's increasing reliance upon the
consciousness as a means of characterization adds considerable depth
to the characters of The Portrait. Because Madame Merle and Gilbert
Osmond are known primarily through Isabel's perceptions, the reader
experiences more vividly the contrast between their cultivated surface
and the reality of their deception beneath. In this way, the reader
is nearly as blind as Isabel herself about the machinations against
her. Through the center of consciousness character is revealed gradu—
ally, in contrast to the narrator's inclusive and descriptive charac—

terization in the opening chapters of The Portrait.

 

 

 

 

53

But that consciousness is also a crucial element in the charac-
terization of the center; the manner in which Isabel perceives and
responds to the pressures of circumstance reveals her personality.

The reader knows first-hand her idealism, her blindness, and her nobil-
ity. And the fact that the center of consciousness comes to focus ex-
clusively on Isabel is important in shaping the response to Isabel:

if James had relied on only Isabel's visible actions, the reader would
have been distanced from her, and more inclined to judge her follies
harshly. By knowing Isabel from within, by seeing through her eyes,
the reader can take a more personal, if not more lenient, view of her.
James divides Isabel's physical portrait between an omniscient narrator
and Ralph Touchett, a sympathetic and sensitive observer, achieving a
balance of criticism and sympathy.37 By employing Isabel as a center
of consciousness which ultimately dominates the narrative, James is
able to render fully Isabel's personality first sketched in Chapters
3 and 6.

The vigil chapter (Chapter 42) is the most concentrated example
of Isabel's consciousness, and thus offers the deepest insight into
her character. James was proud of his achievement, because in the
novel's Preface he singles out this chapter as "obviously the best
thing in the book" and as "a supreme illustration of the general
plan."38 James's technique departs from the mainstream of nineteenth—
century fiction; it is a turning point for Isabel Archer and for the
art of fiction. The effects of this technique are several: it com-
presses time; "it throws the action further forward than twenty

rincidents' might have done."39 But James achieves more than economy:

 

 

 

 

 

 

54

1e captures in prose the movement of Isabel's mind, and anticipates

:he stream of consciousness technique of the twentieth-century novel.
?he prose of Isabel's meditation is considerably different from James's
lsual style: periodic and complex sentences are replaced by short,
frequently choppy, even disjointed ones:

But when, as the months elapsed, she followed him
further and he led her into the mansion of his own
habitation, then, then she had seen where she really
was. She could live it over again, the incredulous
terror with which she had taken the measure of her
dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived

ever since; they were to surround her for the rest

of her life. It was the house of darkness, the

house of dumbness, the house of suffocation. Osmond's
beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air. Osmond's
beautiful mind, indeed, seemed to peep down from a
small high window and mock at her. Of course it was
not physical suffering; for physical suffering there
might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she
had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite.

He took himself so seriously; it was something
appalling. (pp. 395-396)

The rhythm of this passage is feverish, making vivid the "terrors
hich crowded to the foreground of thought as quickly as a place was
de for them" (p. 391). WCrds and passages are repeated, sentences
re broken by semicolons, suggesting the rush of thought in Isabel's
ind. James uses images to picture the process of thought;40 by piling
hem upon each other--"the house of darkness, the house of dumbness,
he house of suffocation"--the author graphically creates the feeling
f dark walls rising up to imprison Isabel. The language of the medi-
ation chapter reflects the language of the mind: the flood of images

8 barely contained within the bounds of grammatical, punctuated

glish.

 

 

 

 

tity
cons
sew
sen
fro
pre

sul

 

55

Although Isabel's mind becomes vivid as a living, suffering en-
tity, Isabel's meditation does not represent the pure functioning of
consciousness. In The Language of Meditation, John Halperin discovers
several layers or strata in the vigil's language: one reproducing the
sense of Isabel's mind, "the other involving a witnessing distance
from it (signalled in the past tense and third person) Which ex-
presses . . . the reader's spectatorship and distance."41 There is a
subtle though definite shaping by the narrator, resulting in the
reader's being simultaneously within Isabel's mind and outside of it.
Consequently, although Isabel's consciousness seems to be rendered
impressionistically, the narrator detaches and distances the reader
from Isabel, guaranteeing that she remain within the confines of her
portrait. This distance, however, is not really judgmental, because
the narrator's stance and tone are sympathetic. James no longer needs
to instruct the reader to be charitable in judging Isabel, as in the
opening chapters. Because the reader directly experiences the terrors
crowding upon Isabel, a sympathetic view of Isabel's situation arises
from the very texture of the prose.

And there is an additional layer of language. Occasionally the
narrator intrudes in the first person: "that sense of darkness and
suffocation of which I have spoken" and "as I have intimated," for
example. These clauses obviously refer to things previously mentioned
in the vigil; they suggest the organizing of the "crowd" of individual

thoughts into a unified and comprehensive view of Isabel's situation;

 

ost of all, they betray the presence of a narrator constructing and

haping his character's mind. Such intrusions place the reader a step

 

 

 

further
ness, a
because

the lan

stands
a supn
approa‘
for ex
but no
is jus
marizr
her oi
the a
the t
Unif<

Straw

 

 

56

further from Isabel by acknowledging that she is, despite her lifelike-
ness, a work of art. The vigil chapter is an impressive achievement
because James blends several modes of perception within the strata of
the language.

In fact, Isabel's meditation is such an achievement that it
stands apart from the rest of the novel; although James saw it as "only
a supreme illustration of the general plan," nothing else in the novel
approaches the vigil's depth in depicting the consciousness. Taylor,
for example, calls Chapter 42 a "tour-de-force" dominating the novel
but not fully integrated into it.42 Perhaps this chapter's domination
is justifiable, considering its importance in the narrative: it sum-
marizes and intensifies Isabel's situation, and accomplishes this by
her own perceptions, giving the reader the opportunity to experience
the atmosphere of her mind. In later works, however, having refined
the technique of consciousness, James presents such passages as more
uniform parts of the narrative. Nevertheless, the vigil chapter demon-
strates both the essence and power of this technique.

For all its achievements, though, the vigil chapter does have
flaws in its depiction of consciousness, flaws which James will correct
in subsequent years. The most apparent one is the presence of the nar-
rator who steps between character and reader. In one sense, this in—
trusion is consonant with the structure of the novel; it ensures that
the reader can never ignore the artifice in the art of the novel.

Even so, the narrator's intrusion undercuts the primary purpose of
using the center of consciousness--the intense experience of a charac-

ter's perception. As close as the reader comes to knowing Isabel--

 

 

 

and Jane
always I
reader.
A
larly i
charact
James 1
of the
charac
ness 1
life"
the v
in a
rors‘
the
pact

Cirt

57

and James wants the reader to have that intimate knowledge--there
always remains the very real barrier of art between Isabel and the
reader.

Another feature of James's portrayal of consciousness, particu-
larly in the vigil, but generally throughout the novel, is that the
character must be isolated in order for consciousness to have free rein.
James pointed in the Preface to Isabel's "motionlessly seeing" as one
of the triumphs of the meditation, yet his statement implies that the
character must be separated from people and action for the conscious-
ness to function. And, despite James's avowal that Isabel's "inward
life" "remains perfectly normal,"43 the mental activity described in
the vigil is anything but normal: "Her mind, assailed by visions, was
in a state of extraordinary activity;" "her soul was haunted with ter—
rors" (PP. 401, 395). In Roderick Hudson, one of the problems with
the presentation of consciousness was the failure to register the im—
pact of experience upon the perceiving consciousness. The pressure of
circumstance brings Isabel to a point where her thoughts have a life
of their own, and it transforms her mind from the garden of Chapter 6
(p. 50) to the haunted house of Chapter 42. Importantly, however,
Chapter 42 does not represent the normal flow of Isabel's conscious-
ness: her consciousness depicted during the vigil is feverish, hyper—
active, and disassociated from the ordinary pace of life and the novel.
In the retrospective view of the Preface, James regarded the vigil
chapter as an example of the "rare chemistry" where the consciousness
is transformed into "story."44 However, the circumstances in which

James places that transformation suggest that it would be more accurate

 

 

to CO

into

of c

COHS

thou

for

cep

tel

 

58

to consider the vigil as a virtuoso performance incompletely integrated
into the novel's texture. The vigil chapter and other uses of centers
of consciousness show James trying various strategies to employ the
consciousness as a narrative and characterizing mode. Those strategies,
though, set that consciousness apart in ways that suggest the necessity
for abnormal situations for it to be functional. Nevertheless, James's

experiments in The Portrait indicate that he is moving toward new con-

 

cepts in characterization and narration.

The Portrait of a Lady is influenced--in content, structure, and

 

technique--by James's interest in art. Besides depending almost ex-
clusively on the world of visual art for imagery and metaphor, the
novel takes as a major theme the dangers of applying art to life.
Specifically, the novel explores the effects of regarding human beings
as art objects and the problems created by treating one's life as a

work of art. Art necessarily objectifies its subject. The Portrait

 

of a Lady reveals the harm in applying the objectivity of art indis-
criminately to life. This is Osmond's sin, and to a degree, part of
Isabel's blindness as well.

In spite of the cautionary theme of The Portrait, James envisions

 

the novel itself as visual art. Although using centers of conscious-
ess to bring the characters closer to the reader, James still depends
pon an omniscient narrator,albeit in a limited manner, who makes his
resence felt-—even in scenes where the character's consciousness is
ost intense. The narrator continually underscores the fact that the
'llusion of life in the novel is just that-—an illusion——by actively

haping narrative and guiding interpretation. As a result, the reader

 

 

 

 

 

cannc

visu:
port
not
are
stat
M
the

has

 

59

cannot make Isabel's and Osmond's mistake by confusing life and art.
Characterization, especially Isabel's, is also influenced by
visual art. It is in this novel that James refines the technique of
portraiture with its "distinctly painterly objective." Characters do
not essentially change; the novel becomes a means by which characters
are gradually comprehended. At first glance, this may seem a peculiarly
static conception of the novel. But that is not the case in_The
Portrait, because interest is sustained by progressive revelation about
the subject of the portrait, Isabel Archer. And although the novel
has several points of viewe-including an omniscient narrator and Ralph,
a center of consciousness--the narration ultimately depends upon Isabel,
whose vision is limited. Isabel's limitations lend mystery to the
novel's events, although theseevents are part of Isabel's pre-ordained
destiny. More important, though, the gradual reliance on Isabel's
point of View creates an increasingly closer relationship between her
and the reader. Isabel can be seen most clearly when the reader
shares her perception of the world. Granted,nothing new is learned
:hrough this shared vision, because it merely illustrates the general,
:heoretical outlines given in Chapters 3 and 6. And a complex system
>f prediction, foreshadowing, and analogues contributes to the concept
1f the portrait by showing that everything is inherent in the character
1nd the work. In essence, The Portrait of a Lady depends upon revela-
:ion, not surprise and discovery.

While The Portrait looks backward to James's earlier fiction by

 

'irtue of its successful synthesis of painting and fiction, it also

.ndicates the direction in which James will develop his craft. In the

vigil abs
and char;
about thr
notebook
story is
death5
enough I
sciousnr
Jamsd
ness, f
movemer
work J;
scious
Isabel

the on

Canon
tused
cessf
aPPar
@
midn
be u
In 1

ram

 

6O

vigil chapter James relies on the consciousness as a means of narration

and characterization. When writing The Portrait, James was unsure

 

about the effectiveness of the consciousness as a technique. In his
notebooks, for example, he comments that "the weakness of the whole
story is that it is too exclusively psychological" without enough inci-
dent.45 Whatever the reason, James apparently does not feel confident
enough to place the burden of the narrative on a single center of con-
sciousness: he employs two centers and an omniscient narrator. Yet
James does move toward greater dependence on one center of conscious-
ness, for Isabel's point of view gradually dominates the novel. This
movement, of course, serves James's thematic purposes, but in his later
work James abandons shifting points of view for a single center of con—

sciousness, as in The Ambassadors. Significantly, James came to see

 

Isabel's meditation, the most intense presentation of the working of
the consciousness, as "obviously the best thing in the book."

The Portrait of a Lady is an important work in the Jamesian

 

canon. It signals the end of his first phase, the early novels fo-
used on the International Theme. This novel also shows James suc—
essfully applying painterly techniques to fiction: the effects are

pparent in the style, form, and content of The Portrait. But The

 

ortrait indicates new directions in method: in Chapter 42, Isabel's
idnight vigil, James demonstrates the manner in which language can
e used to communicate several levels of meaning. But he does more.

n Isabel's vigil, James develops the consciousness as a means of nar-

ation and characterization.

 

 

 

 

"T
Besant‘s
Arts," 1'
theory.
the art
the ant
m

n
"L'Art
adopts
find n

than 13
a Lamt
close
sister
a mat
his a
trait
tion
fEnsr
hora
frEe

SUE

Pai

h0\

 

61

"The Art of Fiction" (1884),46 written in response to walter
Besant's lecture to the Royal Academy on “Fiction as One of the Fine
Arts," is one of James's most explicit statements of his aesthetic
theory. And because the essay relies upon an extensive analogy between
the art of the painter and that of the novelist, it can be regarded as

the author's commentary on his aims and achievements in The Portrait

of a Lady.47

 

"The Art of Fiction" bears the imprint of James's interest in the
"L'Art pour l'Art"movement in France during the seventies. James
adopts several ideas from the movement: the tendency, for example, to
find nature represented in works of art intrinsically more interesting
than physical nature itself--Strether sees the French countryside as
a Lambinet landscape.48 More important, James shares the movement's
close association of the plastic arts with literature. James's in-
sistence in "The Art of Fiction" that the morality of art is mainly

" as does

a matter of artistic integrity comes from "L'Art pour l'Art,
is appropriating the vocabulary of art to describe literature: por-
rait, tones, values.49 In the 1884 essay, James takes this associa-
ion between painter and writer a step further by using it as a de-
ense of the writer's liberty: because there is no such thing as a
oral work of art, morality has nothing to do with the novel, thereby
reeing the novelist to choose his subject. He refuses to place con—
traints on the novelist because the novel's purpose is to "attempt

0 represent life," "the same attempt we see on the canvas of the

ainter" (p. 378).

James repeatedly stresses the similarities between painter and

ovelist. For him, the analogy between the two artists is "complete":

 

 

 

"Their
ferent
sane"
"wmm
ist co
things
relief
taclé
art 0
James
histo
paint
life.
is t
thou
air
uses
ter
ine
inc

392

 

62

"Their inspiration is the same, their process (allowing for the dif-
ferent quality of the vehicle), is the same, their success is the
same" (p. 378). But the similarity most apparent, however, is their
"community of method"; "solidity of specification" is where the novel—
ist competes with the painter "in his attempt to render the look of
things, the look that conveys their meaning, to catch the colour, the
relief, the expression, the surface, the substance of the human spec-
tacle" (p. 390). However, James does draw distinctions between the
art of the painter and the art of the novelist. Early in the essay,
James makes a comparison: "The picture is reality, so the novel is
history" (p. 379). In other words, James seems to suggest that the
painter is primarily concerned with the tangible, sensual aspects of

life, the surface of the human spectacle, while the novelist's subject

 

is the human character as revealed by spectacle--the flow of human
thought and emotion. The pictorial elements, which constitute the

' are crucial to the novelist's art, but the novelist

”air of reality,'
ses these elements as a springboard to discover the essential charac—
er beneath the surface. The pictorial surface and character are
’nextricably intertwined--"What is character but the determination of
ncident? What is incident but the illustration of character?" (p.
92). James gives two examples which demonstrate his distinctly
ainterly approach to the "illustration of character." He first
ketches the "incident" of a woman standing, her hand resting on a
able, looking "out at you in a certain way" (p. 393). It is, as

ames describes it, "an expression of character," but it is also a

icture, an image fixed in the mind. More significant,it is a portrait,

 

 

and the

charac

attack
their
life I
the n<
of an
ture
ence
ism,
coulr
Protr
the‘

fami

 

63

and the novelist's duty is to exploit the tangible surface to reveal
character, the woman who looks in a certain way.

James also returns to the novelist's use of the pictorial in his
attack upon Besant's declaration that writers must actually experience
their subjects, thus barring the young lady from describing garrison

life (p. 386). James vehemently disagrees, and emphasizes, in contrast,

 

the need for the writer to have a sensitive eye. He cites the example

"a woman of genius," who could render "the na-

of an EngliSh novelist,
ture and the way of life of the French Protestant youth." Her experi-
ence was derived from the visual: understanding youth and Protestant-
ism, she saw a French family gathered around the dinner table, and
could experience the personal impression of the character of French
Protestant youth beneath the pictorial surface (p. 389). Again, like
the woman standing beside the table, the English novelist's French
family at dinner is a portrait--both are pictures whose function is to

reveal character. Both illustrations have an inner, rather than outer,

dynamism, making them very similar to The Portrait of a Lady where the

 

elucidation of character provides the novel's primary movement.

James repeatedly stresses the importance of character--as shown
by his two portraits--in "The Art of Fiction." But he focuses his own
interest on the consciousness responding to and interpreting experience.
In fact, James defines experience pre—eminently in terms of its impact
upon the consciousness. Experience, of course, provides the essential
material of fiction. But the novelist's "subject" is the manner in

which that experience is shaped by the receptive sensibility:

 

 

In
because
sensibil
the move
Persona:
ence no
Stressi
0f expe
Portanc
the ram
Painte:
which
Struct
a11d er
this 1
AS Vi

the f.

Ptoce

Jame

 

64

Experience is never limited, and it is never com-
plete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge
spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended

in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every
air-borne particle in its tissue. It is the very
atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imagina-
tive-—much more when it happens to be that of a man
of genius--it takes to itself the faintest hints of
life, and it converts the very pulses of the air into
revelations. (p. 388)

In a real sense, each human being is an artist of experience,
because each shapes the world according to his or her perception and
sensibility. "The very atmosphere of the mind" becomes simultaneously
the novelist's subject and technique, for above all, the novel is "a
personal, a direct impression of life" (p. 385). James defines experi-
ence not just as life, but as "feeling, observation, vision" (p. 365),
stressing the role of consciousness as a necessary and essential part
of experience. In "The Art of Fiction" James clearly signals the im-
portance of the consciousness in fiction. He is not interested in just

he raw data of experience, the surface of the human spectacle, the
ainter's reality; as historian, his interest lies in the process by
hich the perceptive consciousness receives, organizes, and is itself

tructured by experience. The relationship between consciousness

nd experience is a central theme in the early novel Roderick Hudson;

 

his relationship underpins the technique in The Portrait of a Lady.
Viola Winner Hopkins suggests, the center of consciousness performs
he function of the painter confronting his subject, thus making the
50

rocess of seeing James's true subject.

In his first phase, which culminates in The Portrait of a Lady,

 

ames conceptualizes the novel in painterly terms. Specifically,

ames's approach to fiction as a work of visual art results in the

 

 

portra:
covere
consci
velopn
is int
trate
And w
pleti
thet:
indi
In t
tint
the

for

65

portrait-novel, where character is not so much developed as it is un—
covered. Moreover, he begins the process of refining the center of
consciousness as a means of narration and characterization. His de-
ve10pment of techniques and strategies to represent that consciousness

is incomplete, but Chapter 42 in The Portrait, Isabel's vigil, illus-

 

trates the possibilities the center of consciousness offers to fiction.
And while "The Art of Fiction," published three years after the com-

pletion of The Portrait, can be seen as a statement of James's aes-

 

thetic theory, it is important as a commentary on The Portrait, and

 

indicates his commitment to the use of consciousness in his fiction.

In the years following the publication of The Portrait, James con-

 

tinually explores the potential of the consciousness, an exploration
that will lead him to new methods of representation, and new analogies

for the art of fiction.

 

 

 

 

ed. Fr

rpt. h

(1866
(1873
Valet
(189s
fiat
(187
Bier

rpt.

(18

_d rain

Notes

1 Henry James, Notes of a Son and Brother (1914) in Autobiography,
ed. Frederick W. Dupee (London: W. H. Allen, 1956), p. 293.

 

2 Leon Edel, Henry James: The Untried Years, 1843-1870 (1953;
rpt. New York: Avon Books, 1978), p. 162.

James, Notes of a Son and Brother, p. 285.

Tales about art and artists include:. "A Landscape Painter"
(1866), "The Story of a Masterpiece (1868), "The Madonna of the Future"
(1873), "The Sweetheart of M. Briseux" (1873), "The Last of the
Valerii" (1874), "The Liar" (1888), "The Real Thing" (1892), "Glasses"
(1896), and "The Beldonald Holbein" (1901). Titles of James's non-
fiction also indicate his interest in art: Transatlantic Sketches
(1875), Portraits of Places (1883), Partial Portraits (1888), and
Picture and Text (1893).

 

5 Henry James, "The Art of Fiction," in Partial Portraits (1888;
rpt. London: Macmillan and Company, 1911), p. 384.

Henry James, "Gustave Flaubert," in French Novelists and Poets
(1878; rpt. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964), pp. 201—202.

7 James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 384.

8 James, "Honore de Balzac," in French Novelists and Poets, pp.
94_95 o

9 Lyall Powers, Henry James and the Naturalist Movement (East
Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1963); David Gervais,
Flaubert and Henry James: A Study in Contrasts (London: The Macmillan
Press, Ltd., 1978); Philip Grover, Henry James and the French Novel:

A Study in Inspiration (London: Elek Books, Ltd., 1973).

 

0 Henry James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," in The Art
Of the Novel, ed. Richard P. Blackmur (New York: Charles Scribner 3
Sons, 1934), p. 42. James justified putting "the cart before the
horse" (p. 44) by noting that Ivan Turgenev frequently started his
novels with the idea of a character en disponibilite, and not With a

plot or a sense of setting.

 

66

 

llJ

Albert Sai

12.

miners 1'
he descril
Avon Book:

13

14

Edwardsvi

(Cambrir

l!
P- 426.

Craft 6
\
P- 43.
Maemil
Oxfou
the p
The t

Paint
PIOpQ

67

1 Joseph Warren Beach, The Method of Henry James (Philadelphia:
Albert Saifer, 1964), p. 39.

James, Preface to "Roderick Hudson," p. 4. James wrote watch
and ward in 1870; when revising it for publication in book form in 1878
he described it as "very thin and as 'cold' as an icicle" (Leon Edel,
Henry James: The Conquest of London, 1870-1881 (1962; rpt. New York:
Avon Books, 1978), p. 45). '

13 James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," p. 40.

14 James Kraft, The Early Tales of Henry James (Carbondale and
Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), p. 68.

5 Beach, p. 190.

 

6 Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady(188l; rpt. New York:
New American Library, 1963); hereafter cited in text.

17 Leon Edel, Introd., The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
(Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1963), p. xx.

8 Leon Edel, Henry James: The Conquest of London, 1870-1881,
p. 426.

19 Laurence B. Holland, The Expense of Vision: Essays on the
Craft of Henry James (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), I
p. 43.

 

0 Beach, p. 35.

1 Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry James (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1961), p. 109.

2 Richard Poirier, The Comic Sense of Henry James (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 185.

3 James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," p. 48.

24 That the artist interprets personality instead of imitating
the physical likeness is made clear in a later tale, "The Liar (1888).
The tale describes the essential blindness of an artlst, Lyon, who.
Paints a portrait of Major Capadose which unmasks the Major 3 terrible

Pr0pensity for telling tall stories.

A

(1965)
trait
Prenti

up

Unive

of CI
scio
the

cons

mom
051111
awa
SCE
ing

n

68

25 James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," p. 46.

26 Tony Tanner, ”The Fearful Self," The Critical Quarterly, 7

(1965), 205-219; rpt. in Twentieth-Century Interpretations of The Por-
trait of a Lady, ed. Peter Buitenhuis (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968), p. 77.

 

Grover, p. 31.
8
Beach, p. 38.

Walter Isle, Experiments in Form: Henry James's Novels 1896—
1901 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 15-16.

0 Gordon 0. Taylor, The Passages of Thought (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1969), p. 81.

31 Taylor, p. 52. Taylor criticizes James's use of the center
of consciousness: "The actual movements of [Rowland Mallet's] con-~
sciousness are diluted by abstraction and by frequent blending into
the solution of James's presence as an author," and notes that Mallet's
consciousness "remains essentially unaffected by the pressure of cir-
cumstance" although a theme is "the impact of changed environment.

James also depends on other centers of consciousness, when
none of the "narrators" can be present. The meeting during which
Osmond discards Madame Merle is seen through Merle's eyes. James was
aware that this broke the unity of the narration, but included the
scene despite misgivings because he felt it essential to an understand-
ing of Madame Merle's and Osmond's natures.

33 Ora Segal, The Lucid Reflector: The Observer in Henry James's
Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), p. 54.

34 Segal, p. 40.

35 Beach, pp. 190, 195.
36 Taylor, p. 69.
37 Segal, p. 40.

38 James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," p. 57.

James, Preface, p. 57.

 

Ninete
Stockw

rpt.
titer
m

Port

Fist
his

sage
act

Bod

boy
Zol

69

40 .
John Halperin, The Language of Meditation: Four Studies in

Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Elms Court, Ilfracombe, Devon: Arthur H.
Stockwell, Ltd., 1973), p. 129.

41 Halperin, pp. 130-131.

42 Taylor, p. 72.

43 James, Preface to "The Portrait of a Lady," pp. 56-57.

James, Preface, p. 56.

45 F. 0. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds., The Notebooks

gngenry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), p. 15.

 

 

6 Henry James, "The Art of Fiction," in Partial Portraits (1888;
rpt. London: Macmillan and Company, 1911), pp. 375-408; hereafter
cited in text. "The Art of Fiction" first appeared in Longman's
Magazine in September, 1884; James subsequently included it in Partial
Portraits--note the painterly title.

 

47 For example, F. O. Matthiessen in referring to "The Art of

Fiction" notes: "Composed three or four years after he had brought
his method to maturity with The Portrait of a Lady, many of its pas-
sages, particularly those on the interrelation between character and
action, seem surely to have been written with that novel in mind"
(The James Family} A Group Biography (1947; rpt. New York: Vintage
Books, 1980), p. 349).

 

Grover, p. 124. In his study, Henry James and the French
hovel, Philip Grover details the particular influences that Balzac,
Zola, Daudet, and Flaubert exerted on James.

9 Grover, p. 121.

Viola Hopkins Winner, Henry James and the Visual Arts
(Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), p. 68.

Wi1
edge _Th_e
sents th
‘Tiner a
done."1
at portr
but as (
securit
ment."
tides t
James i
Of his

Ences (
radicaj
Turgen
litera
the pr
the in

Whole}

1881

James

 

 

CHAPTER III

The Dramatic Side of Human Situations

With some reservation, James's contemporaries generally acknowl-

ige The Portrait of a Lady as "an important work" because it repre-

 

ants the perfecting of "the analytical method in novel-writing,"
Einer and closer in workmanship than anything Mr. James had before

1 .
)ne." The Portrait secures James's reputation, not only as master

 

: portraying the "mixture of manners" on the international scene,2
it as craftsman of a new form, the psychological novel. Despite this
acurity, however, James feels more than ever "the impulse to experi-
ent." "God knows that I have now no time to waste," so James con-
ides to his notebook on November 25, 1881.3 Thirty-eight years old,
mes is acutely aware of the quickly passing years and of the changing
his personal world: George Eliot and Gustave Flaubert, major influ-
ces on James's work, died in 1881. The next few years will more
dically alter that world: James's parents die in 1882; Ivan
rgenev--friend, idol, and mentor--will die in 1883. James's past is
terally disappearing; approaching middle age, James feels not only
e pressure of time and the weight of "lost impressions," but also

" the need to dedicate himself

e impulse to "try experiments of form,
oleheartedly to perfecting his art.

During the years between completing The Portrait of a Lady in

 

81 and beginning The Bostonians, which appears in February, 1885,

 

es wrote eight tales.4 In many respects, these tales are firmly

 

 

rooted
Theme,
intrus
upon i
from t
portur
creasi
More

as a

more

tion
scior
is t
eept
aPPr
ear]
hem

Vell

avo
thr

dm

 

 

71

rooted in James's past Work: they continue his use of the International
theme, and they employ narrative techniques-—authoria1 omniscience and
intrusion, and overt manipulation of the narrative--that James depends

1pon in The Portrait of a Lady. Yet the tales represent departures

 

from that past work. The International Theme now offers James an op—
)ortunity to criticize American and British societies, and James in-
:reasingly turns to national types as a medium for this criticism.
{ore important, James refines his use of the center of consciousness
is a vehicle for narration and characterization in order to achieve a
more dramatic presentation of his material.

James employed the center for both narration and characteriza-

tion in The Portrait of a Lady. In that novel, the center of con-

 

sciousness develops the character who functions as center: when Isabel
is treated as a center, the reader directly experiences Isabel‘s per-
:eption of the world, thereby deepening the reader's understanding and
ppreciation of her as character and heroine. In the tales of the
arly eighties that do involve a center of consciousness,5 the center
ecomes the sole means by which the heroine is characterized and de-
eloped. Indeed, this objective treatment of the heroine is a hall-
rk of most of James's fiction during the eighties; he rigorously
voids "going behind" the main female characters of the tales and the
hree major novels. The center, always a male, registers the external
etails of the heroine and attempts to comprehend and explain her
ften puzzling behavior. In many cases, the observing and interpret-
ng center stands as the author's deputy, enabling James to minimize

is authorial intrusions.

 

Thi
Siege of
(18806--
these tal
techniqur
techniqul
niques,
ness inc
strives
themsely
ter, tht
is seen
ines of
charaet
But bee
heroine
Possibi
aster ;
endows
Wt th
natuye
CLUB i
tales
not p,
gethe
that

In "I

72

This use of the center of consciousness--particular1y in "The
Siege of London" (1883), "Lady Barberina" (1884), and "Pandora"
(1884)6-—gives James's fiction dramatic immediacy. It is true that in
these tales James still turns to traditional methods of narration; the
techniques of the tales do not represent radical departures from the
techniques of James's past work. Despite this reliance on old tech—
niques, these three tales reveal James giving the center of conscious-
ness increasingly greater rolesin narrating and characterizing. James
strives for Turgenev's dramatic ideal to let "situations speak for
themselves." Because the heroine is projected through another charac-
ter, the center, rather than being sketched by the author, the heroine
is seen in a manner similar to that of an actress on stage. The hero-
ines of these tales--and of most of the fiction of the eighties—-are
characterized through external details——clothing, speech, actions.
But because characterization is accomplished through a center, James's
heroines assume greater depth and richness of character than ordinarily
possible with objective portraiture. Moreover, because the main char—
acter is projected through another character in the narrative, James
endows the heroine's characterization with dramatic tension: through—
out the tale, the reader remains in suspense about the heroine's true
nature. In contrast to Isabel Archer, whom James sketched in a single
£232 in the opening chapters of The Portrait, the heroines of these
tales are developed gradually, almost haphazardly. The center does
not possess full knowledge of the heroine; he must gradually piece to~
gether and make sense of her; it is only until the end of the tale
that both the reader and the center can fully comprehend the heroine.

In "The Siege of London," "Lady Barberina," and "Pandora," James

 

 

preset

the d:

lishe

Londo

specu

with

hero:

moti

subt

II

 

 

73

presents his heroines dramatically, that is, in a manner which mimics
the development of character on the stage.
Drama pervades the 1883 tale, "The Siege of London." First pub—

lished in Cornhill Magazine, January-February 1883, "The Siege of

 

London" continues James's examination of international manners. Edel
speculates that "The Siege" is symptomatic of James's "disenchantment
with English society" and his su8picion that he was taken up, like his
heroine Nancy Headway, because he was entertaining.7 Whatever James's
motives, it is clear that he is critical of English society: the tale
subtly questions whether or not gaining admission to a society which
is "'bad manners organized'" is much of an achievement.8

The International Theme provides a background of dramatic con-
trast;9 the tale's basic issue concerns a gentleman's duty to "tell"
on a lady, leaving aside for the moment Mrs. Headway's dubious claim
to being a lady. James's emphasis is on the conflict that occurs in
the minds of the tale's two observers, Littlemore and Waterville, when
they are called upon to defend Mrs. Headway's respectability. The
observers' "moral dilemma" is, of course, not terribly complex, arising
as it does from a comedy of manners. However, "The Siege of London"10
is an important tale, not only for its treatment of international con-
trasts, but for James's use of the consciousness as the stage for the
tale's conflict.

The tale depicts Nancy Headway's "siege" of London society, which
takes the concrete form of her determination to marry into an aristo—
cratic family so that Mrs. Headway can "snap" her fingers at New York,

heresfluahas been snubbed. But Nancy Headway is not respectable: she

 

 

 

 

has be
sister
Headw.
who k
tions
for l
to ul
Mrs.

regr

have

Edh
"Le
SUC

DOS

 

74

has been divorced so often that "there was one winter when [Nancy's
sister] didn't know herself who was Nancy's husband" (p. 24). Mrs.
Headway's siege gradually involves the tale's two observers--Littlemore,
who knows Mrs. Headway's past, and waterville, who regards her aspira-
tions ambivalently—-particularly when they are called upon to vouch
for her respectability. In the end, Littlemore recognizes "the need
to utter the simple truth" (p. 109), but his avowal does not hinder
Mrs. Headway's campaign. Nancy Headway, now Lady Demesne, has only one
regret: "If she had only come to London five years sooner she might
have married a duke" (p. 91).

"The Siege of London" is inspired, as James notes in the New York
Edition Preface, by the 1877 performance at the Theatre Francais of

"Le Demi-Monde" by Dumas fils, a piéce bien faite delineating the un-

 

successful siege of Madame d'Ange, an actress who is ultimately ex-

posed by the hero, Olivier de Jalin.11 Not mentioned in the Preface

is another source, Augier's "L'Aventuriére,' a piECe bien faite with a

 

similar plot. Both plays figure prominently in James's tale; not only
do they supply the basic plot, but they provide the American observers
with standards against which they measure their own gentlemanly be-
havior. Yet James diverges from his French models, for Augier's and
Dumas's plays focus upon the fate of the disreputable woman who seeks
admission to respectable society. Instead, James stresses the "moral"
situation of the two Americans who know Mrs. Headway's past and must
decide whether or not to use that knowledge.

"The Siege's" relationships to thepiéce bien faite in general

 

and Dumas's and Augier's works in particular are examined by Alfred

 

 

Habeggl
of Jan
recogn
obser\
James
ever

SUCCG

.\

REESE
plifi

fict

 

75

Habegger in the only study of this tale—-for "The Siege," like so many
of James's tales, has been ignored by critics and scholars. Habegger

recognizes that James shifts the focus of his tale to the minds of his
observers, prompting Habegger to conclude "how little the muse of Henry

' and to wonder "why James

James had in common with the arts of Scribe,‘
ever supposed that his own siege of the London stage could possibly

succeed."12 Habegger's speculations aside, James's linking of the

piEce bien faite with his interest in the "psychological reason" exem-

 

plifies his dedication to applying dramatic principles to methods of
fiction.

The influences of the French models are apparent from the tale's
Opening. Littlemore and waterville are attending the Comédie Francaise
to compare Augier's treatment of the adventuress with Dumas's, which
they had seen earlier. It is at the Comédie Francaise that they meet
James's adventuress, Nancy Headway, who perhaps recognizes her own
affinities with Madame d'Ange because Mrs. Headway wants "to see what
becomes of that woman" (p. 21). By initiating his tale with references
to the two French plays, James forecasts the movement, though not the
outcome, of Mrs. Headway's siege and his own comedy of manners. And
at the end of the tale, when the success of Mrs. Headway's campaign is
virtually assured, the two Americans turn to the French plays when they
debate preventing Mrs. Headway's breach of respectable society.
waterville, for example, urges Littlemore to play the part of Olivier
de Jalin or Don Fabrice (Dumas's and Augier's heroes, respectively),
and to "step in and push her back" (p. 101). Waterville himself,

despite his earlier sympathy with Mrs. Headway's ambitions, sounds

 

 

 

 

 

like t
oughtr
pathy
as if
he "h

tone,

twoy

clos
unii
sate
whh

MUS

for
Do

on

 

76

like the two French heroes when he convinces himself that "Mrs. Headway
oughtn‘t really to be allowed to pass"(p. 101). And in abandoning sym-
pathy for his countrywoman, Waterville assumes distance and detachment
as if he views her situation from a balcony of the Theatre Frangais:

he "had the air of looking at the thing from a great elevation; his
tone, the expression of his face, indicated this lofty flight" (p. 101).

James uses the French plays as framing devices: mention of the

 

two plays encloses the tale in the same manner that "that solemn piece
of upholstery, the curtain of the Comédie Francaise" (p. 13), opens and
closes each act. The French dramas do more, however, than serve as
unifying structural devices. As Rupert waterville's convictions indi—
cate, the two Americans adopt the plays as moral yardsticks against
which they measure their obligations as gentlemen. The two Americans

must look to European sources for a code of conduct, for the chivalry

 

 

of America, where a gentleman never "tells" on a lady, is insufficient
for European situations. Both Littlemore and Waterville, like Mrs.
Dolphin, Littlemore's sister who has become Anglicized, feel they must
protect British society from the incursions of the Nancy Headways.

Thus, in the end Littlemore, like his French model Olivier de Jalin,
must denounce Mrs. Headway, if only to vindicate Lady Demesne. "Le
Demi—Monde" and "L'Aventuriére" provide the Americans with a moral
code, and in doing so emphasize James's ironic attitude toward American
and European manners. America, although it creates characters like
Nancy Headway, whose "Americanisms" entertain British aristocracy, can
also produce gentlemen more chivalrous and gallant than Europe. In
contrast, European behavior, despite the outward appearance of mannerly

forms, is governed by the most basic sense of self-preservation, thinly

 

 

masker

obser

ianis

Headw

IEVGE

thei

SEIV

Jame

tale

win

nor

the

end

COU

 

77

masked by manners. Ironic, too, is the quickness with which James's
observers adopt European values in spite of their American egalitar-
ianism, so that in the end both see it their duty to "tell" on Nancy

Headway. "The Siege of London,"

although primarily a comedy of manners,
reveals how thin the veneer of manners is; it exposes the hypocrisy of
the forms of polite behavior.

The French plays, by providing the characters' code of conduct,

serve James's purpose in criticizing society, but they also reveal

James's admiration for thepiéce bien faite. Although James strips his

 

tale of outward, visible action—~Habegger compares the tale's inaction
with the stalemate of a besieged cityl3--the observers' mental and‘
moral conflict animates the tale. James focuses that conflict within
the consciousness of the diplomat Rupert Waterville, and by doing so,
endows "The Siege" with a dramatic quality. Yet James does not depend
completely upon the center of consciousness for his narrative method;
he relies upon authorial omniscience as well as intruding himself into
the narrative. Indeed, the treatment of these two observers offers a
comparison of James's use of omniscience and the center of conscious-
ness, because James develops Littlemore omnisciently while he casts
waterville as center. In Chapter 1 of the tale, the author summarizes
Littlemore's past and his acquaintance with Mrs. Headway. This is

similar to the opening chapters of The Portrait, where Isabel's char-

 

acter is sketched in full; in the tale, of course, it is not so lengthy,
but it serves as providing a fairly complete sketch of the character
from the author's viewpoint. James merely records Littlemore's re~

actions; in describing the contrast between Waterville, new to Paris

 

 

 

and fill

impress
horeove
does nc

time be

Rupert
vited

scribe

935s
New
ness
tic:
Peer

Vio

 

 

78

and filled with curiosity, Littlemore is blasé:
He rarely indulged in these optical excursions; he
had been a great deal in Paris and had ceased to
care about it, or wonder about it, much; he fancied

that the French capital could have no more surprises
for him, though it had a good many in former days.

(p. 14)

James describes Littlemore's attitudes, not immediate and fresh
impressions, but the result of experience acquired throughout the years.
Moreover, these are rather generalized observations--the passage above
does not contain any detail, any specific reference; it foreshortens
time because it precisely is a summation of Littlemore's feelings.

Compare James's treatment of Littlemore's attitudes with that of
Rupert Waterville. Nancy Headway and Rupert Waterville have been in-
vited as weekend guests at Lady Demesne's; the following passage de-
scribes Mrs. Headway's shock at seeing waterville at the dinner table:

Mrs. Headway gave Waterville no greeting; she evidently
had not seen him till they were seated at table, when
she simply stared at him with a violence of surprise
that for a moment almost effaced her smile. It was a
copious and well-ordered banquet, but as waterville
looked up and down the table he wondered whether some
of its elements might not be a little dull. As he
made this reflection he became conscious that he was
judging the affair much more from.Mrs. Headway's point
of view than from his own. (p. 71)

In contrast to the description of Littlemore's thoughts, this
passage shows waterville in the act of registering impressions; the
movement of the passage reflects the movement of Waterville's conscious—
ness as it observes and interprets. More important, the mental func-
tions recorded in this passage are used as a vehicle to reveal an as-

pect of Mrs. Headway's character--"she simply stared at him with a

violence of surprise that for a moment almost effaced her smile."

 

 

Clearly
Watervil
ments of
ward wit
content
treatme
tices t

omnisci

he tre
She is
differ
each (
Headw:
Spect
this
Sultj

Name}

ness
more
rea¥
3PM
obs
Sit

"he

 

 

79

Clearly James is not the speaker in this passage: the observations are
waterville's. It is true that in comparison with James's later refine-
ments of the center of consciousness, the passage quoted above is awk-
ward with the preponderance of verbs denoting mental process--wonder,

reflect, become conscious, judge. But it is equally true that both the

 

 

content and method of the passage is quite different from James's
treatment of Littlemore's thoughts. In Rupert Waterville, James prac-
tices the center of consciousness technique, while he tends to rely on
omniscience for developing Littlemore.

James "goes behind," one way or another, his two observers, but
he treats Nancy Headway, the "heroine" of "The Siege," dramatically.
She is rendered through the two observers, and each of them illuminates
different facets of her character depending on James's approach to
each observer. Littlemore, developed omnisciently, fills in Mrs.
Headway's background and supplies proof of the heroine's lack of re-
spectability. And because James relies on omniscience for Littlemore,
this character's rendering of Mrs. Headway is somewhat impersonal re-
sulting in his offering a detached, though not objective, view of
Nancy Headway,

Rupert Waterville, whose point of view as center of conscious-
ness dominates the tale's middle (Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7), offers a
more sympathetic treatment of Mrs. Headway's character. First of a
respectable line of Jamesian diplomats,l4 Waterville as newly-
appointed secretary of the American legation is more sensitive and
observant than the jaded Littlemore. Waterville demonstrates his sen-
sitivity: Littlemore is impatient and frustrated with Mrs. Headway—-

"he was tired to death of her past" (p. 93)--while Waterville feels

 

that "
fierce
a gene

end wt

sciou
most
vokes
bold
lack

in J;

enha
vhos
her

11kt

 

80

that "he at last, in the light of that smile, the flash of that almost
fierce question, understood Mrs. Headway" (p. 58). waterville provides
a generally sympathetic view of Mrs. Headway, sympathetic until the
end when Lady Demesne reveals how crude and provincial Nancy really is.

Because the heroine is characterized through the center of con-
sciousness and James's omniscient treatment of Littlemore, she is the
most intriguing character in "The Siege of London." Her presence pro-
vokes a mixture of feelings from her observers--they almost admire her
bold plan to conquer London society though they deplore her glaring
lack of sophistication. Indeed, through Nancy Headway Habegger detects
in James ambivalent feeling which exemplify his complex relation to
America.15 But the method in which Mrs. Headway's character is cast
enhances the interest created by her. Unlike the male observers,
whose thoughts are accessible, Mrs. Headway is seen from the outside:
her feelings must be inferred from her words and actions; the reader,
like the two Americans, must try to understand her from external evi—
dence. Mrs. Headway is presented dramatically. In the tale, she is
literally on stage; the two Americans watch to see if her siege will
be successful. Her character, too, develops in much the same way an
actor creates character, for James rigorously avoids "going behind"
her. Yet, because she is projected through the sympathetic conscious-
ness of Waterville, Mrs. Headway assumes a richer dimension of charac—
ter than possible on stage.

Moreover, by developing Mrs. Headway's character through the
perceptions of other characters, James endows his heroine with dramatic

tension--tension because her character is not quickly sketched in and

 

 

develope
narrator
gether v
acters r
creates
basical
of her
attenti
central
Waterv:

is the

it pre
upon n
In so
intri;
it as
Ratio
Plore

for 1

Sieg
than
Wins
inpr
fai

Yet

 

81

developed--as is Littlemore, whose past is described by an omniscient
narrator. Instead, knowledge of Mrs. Headway is gradually pieced to-
gether with evidence derived from several sources which include char-
acters with limited perspectives. This method of characterization
creates a sense of complexity and interest within a character who is
basically simple; it gives more importance to that character by virtue
of her place within the narrative—-the focus of all the characters'
attention-—rather than by personality. Mrs. Headway "becomes" the
central character because she is the subject of Littlemore's and
waterville's speculations; she is the central character because she
is the focus of their moral dilemma.

In this tale, then, the center of consciousness has two functions:
it presents Nancy Headway's character dramatically, and it is the stage
upon which the moral question of the tale is dramatized and decided.

In so using the center of consciousness, James enriches the typical

intrigue plot, a standard form of the piéce bien faite,l6 by casting

 

it as a dilemma of manners within the framework of "emphasized inter-
nationalism." And by using the center to develop character, James ex-
plores, at least partially, the dramatic potential the technique offers
for his fiction.

One interesting aspect of the society James depicts in "The
Siege of London" is the sense that the women are stronger characters
than the men. Mrs. Headway, loud, crude, and provincial, nonetheless
wins her siege with a native vigor suggested by her name. The other
important woman in the tale, Lady Demesne, "a woman still young and
fair, with a good deal of height, gentle, tranquil, plainly dressed,

yet distinctly imposing" (p. 59), embodies the dignity of the old

 

 

landed
cause
lemma
contra
Sir in
women
weakn

Headw

firsI
orat
thei
made

aboL

Lem

wif

the

 

82

landed aristocracy implicit in her title. She, too, is powerful, be-
cause she forces Waterville and Littlemore into their gentlemanly di-
lemma by asking them to vouch for Mrs. Headway's respectability. In
contrast to these vivid women, the male characters are pallid and weak:
Sir Arthur, Mrs. Headway's baronet, is quiet, short, controlled by
women; Waterville and Littlemore, whose pejorative names bespeak their
weakness, are indecisive and ultimately ineffectual in stopping Mrs.
Headway.

17

Women are in control of the societies shown in "Lady Barberina,"

first published in Century_Magazine, May-July 1884. The men are "elab-

 

orately decorative," but the women, with "[t]heir hard little helmets;
their neat, compact heads; their straight necks; their firm, tailor-
made armour; their blooming, competent physique" look like "amazons

about to ride a charge" (p. 200). That the women are characters to

 

be reckoned with is borne out by the events of the tale. Jackson
Lemon, hero of "Lady Barberina," discovers himself at the mercy of his
wife and his mother-in-law, despite his determination to be firmly in
the saddle.

"Lady Barberina" continues James's exploration of "emphasized
internationalism" by portraying a variation of the international mar—
riage. Instead of the American girl marrying into European society,
Jackson Lemon, a wealthy American doctor, marries Lady Barberina,
daughter of the Cantervilles and "product of the English climate and

the British constitution" (p. 251). In its day, "Lady Barberina" was

 

influential: it provoked Oscar Wilde to write "The Canterville Ghost"

in 1887; in William Dean Howells's A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890),

 

 

 

the c

to at
glecl
Spri
exam
that

alsc

the
Jan

Mar

 

 

 

83

the characters debate opening a salon "'like poor Lady Barberinai'"l8
In spite of the tale's contemporary popularity, it has failed

to attract extensive critical attention, although it has not been ne-

glected to the degree that "The Siege" has. Ora Segal and Mary Doyle

Springer, for example, devote chapter-length discussions to it: Segal

examines the minor characters as reflectors while Springer demonstrates

that "Lady Barberina" is "an inductive kind of fable."19 The tale has

also inspired two recent articles, by Elsa Nettels and Adeline Tintner,

' which figures prominently in "Lady

on James's "idea of race,‘
Barberina."20 Tintner's article in particular is a valuable study of
the tale, because she sees the horsemanship metaphors as vehicles for
James's criticism of English and American societies--a view which both
Mary Doyle Springer and Leon Edel ignore.

Indeed, the tale focuses upon the limitations of both societies,
and in doing so continues James's critique of and disenchantment with
the notion of "getting into society" investigated in "The Siege of
London." Through "horsey" metaphors, James depicts British society
as superficial, materialistic, and intellectually narrow, and exposes
American society, with its need to acquire the "look of race," to be
equally shallow and grasping in its attempt to spend new fortunes
buying vitiated traditions.21 James's treatment of characterization
supports his aim of social criticism. Lady Barb, who gives her name
to the tale, is virtually reduced to a type; as James explains in the
New York Edition Preface:

The contrast in "Lady Barbarina" depends altogether
on the immitigable Anglicism of this young woman.. .

She has her personal qualities, but the very interest,
the very curiosity of the matter is that her imbroglio

 

 

 

 

James
Sheldr
reali:
the w
Lemon
Prefa
carir
quem
ting
robu
anti
had
str:

muc

Bar
Pat

Lar

 

84

is able to attest itself with scarce so much as a

reference to them. It plays itself out quite con-

sistently on the plane of her general, her in-

stinctive, her eanperatedly conscious ones.22
James casts Lady Barb as a one-dimensional character; Springer, using
Sheldon Sacks's terminology, calls her an apologue, a character whose.
realism is developed just short of the dominant didactic emphasis of
the work.23 Lady Barb is seen primarily through the eyes of Jackson
Lemon, her suitor and ultimately her husband. James explains in the
Preface that the one "fine-drawn" quality of her character is her
caring for Lemon;24 otherwise, her characteristics are simple, fre—
quently approaching an almost animal dumbness. Lady Barb's most dis-
tinguishing physical trait is a revealing beauty which is "simple and
robust," having "the quietness of an old Greek statue;" "her head was
antique" (p. 223), but her quiet eyes "were as beautiful as if they
had been blank, like those of antique busts" (p. 290). She is not
strikingly clever (p. 223), that "so long as she didn't hunt, it didn't
rmuch matter what she did" (p. 267). Animal-like, she is "filled with
a dumb, insuperable, ineradicable purpose"--for her husband, Lady
Barb's "antique beauty" is "but the magnificent expression of a dense,
patient, imperturbable obstinacy" (p. 227). Beyond these descriptions,
Lady Barb is little characterized; indeed, in the tale James so finely
draws Barb's "caring" for her husband that it is barely perceptible.

For the most part, James projects Lady Barb's characterization

through the consciousness of Jackson Lemon; what the reader sees and

 

learns of Lady Barb is from Lemon's point of view. However, in the

tale James uses a variety of narrative modes, and perhaps one of the

more interesting features of the tales is that whatever Lady Barb's

 

limits
During
Lady‘
Barb'
"salo
thoug
of ii

"sal

 

85

limitations, she does function briefly as a center of consciousness.
During the first half of part 6, when Lemon brings up the subject of

Lady Barb's opening a "saloon, the reader glimpses briefly into Lady

Barb's mind. This glimpse underscores her limitations: regarding the

" "she had never seen one, and for the most part she never

"saloon,
thought of things she had not seen" (p. 288). Along with her poverty
of imagination, Lady Barb's conception of social skills regarding a
"saloon" is peculiarly lacking:

Conversation, in Lady Barb's experience, had never

been continuous; in such a case it would surely have

been a bore. It had been occasional and fragmentary,

a trifle jerky, with allusions that were never ex—

plained; it had a dread of detail; it seldom pursued

anything very far, or kept hold of it very long.

(p. 288)
The last sentence quoted above, in fact, vividly captures the texture
of Lady Barb's mind; it is "a trifle jerky," lacking continuity and
detail, and it does not--nor cannot--pursue anything very far.

Although Lady Barb's functioning as a center emphasizes her

limitations, it also becomes a vantage point for James's criticism of
American society. Again, in reference to Lemon's wish for an "Anglo-
American saloon" Lady Barb envisions "familiarity, high-pitched
talk . . . and exaggerated laughter" (p. 287). That vigorous crudity
of New York and America, for Lady Barb, is embodied in the "brilliant,
bristling Mrs. Vanderdecken" who is "young, pretty, clever, absurdly
pretentious (Lady Barb thought), and had a wonderfully artistic house"
(p. 289). Mrs. Vanderdecken establishes herself as Lady Barb's rival:

"Ambition, also, was expressed in every rustle of her garments; and

if she was the first person in America (this had an immense sound),

 

 

it was pl
America

her char
perspect
intrudir
shortcor
Barb, e

a chara

tions a
thus cr
cal of
more d
whose
acteri
t0 the
he ho]
Barb
Crusa
his 0
the I
"very

deck

tifu
fine

Jam

 

86

it was plain she intended to remain so" (p. 288). Lady Barb views
America simplistically, but her limited perspective is appropriate to
her characterization as a type. And, the simplicity of Lady Barb's
perspective enables James to criticize American society without his
intruding satire in the text. The picture of American society and its
shortcomings is dramatically presented through the character of Lady
Barb, even while those shortcomings reinforce her own limitations as

a character.

Lady Barb's consciousness, briefly employed in the tale, func—
tions as an important part of James's critique of American society and
thus contributes to balancing the reader's sympathy: James is criti-
cal of both the Americans and the English. But James provides an even
more devastating portrait of the two societies through Jackson Lemon,
whose perspective dominates the tale. Indeed, Lady Barberina's char-
acterization is achieved through Lemon's View of her, and what he sees
to the exclusion of all other qualities is her "look of race" which
he hopes will be apparent in his brood (p. 223). Lemon reduces Lady
Barb to a type, and because he sees her only as a "daughter of the
Crusaders” (p. 250), "a flower of an ancient stem [to] be worn upon
his own breast" (p. 268), and "a product of the English climate and
the British constitution" (p. 251), it is consistent that he would be
"very much astonished" at Lady Barb's "irritation" at Mrs. Vander—
decken's ambitions (p. 289)-—that Barb would feel anything.

Despite Jackson Lemon's tendency to regard Lady Barb as a beau—
tiful specimen and possession, James's protagonist is one of the more
finely drawn characters in the tale. Lemon's characterization worried

James. In the notebook entry for the tales James decided that "the

 

 

thing is
to my he:
Preface,
tor. Be
tion, Ja
woman,"
parative
this prr
through
comscio
Moreove
sions t
ate wit
Freer‘:
cessfu
Americ
in the
he mus
Barb‘s
"Embl;
Becau
his c

Posse

Lady

AmEr

 

87

thing is to make the marriage with Lady B. seem natural and possible

"25 Again, in the

to my hero, without making him appear snobbish.
Preface, James acknowledged the focus of his tale to be the young doc-
tor. Because "shades" would not be part of Lady Barb's characteriza-
tion, James "somehow quite took for granted the getting of [the] young
woman," but "Jackson Lemon and hg§_shades, comparatively, and his com—
parative sense of shades" most interested James.26 James dealt with
this problem, at least in part, by projecting the tale primarily
through Lemon's consciousness. Because he functions as a center of
consciousness, Lemon necessarily assumes more depth of character.
Moreover, Lemon's situation continually forces him into making deci-
sions between contradictory impulses: he initially refuses to cooper-
ate with the Cantervilles' condition of a marriage settlement, yet Mrs.
Freer's regarding his marriage as "unnatural" and unlikely to be suc—
cessful motivates Lemon to acquiesce to the Cantervilles. Again, in
America Lemon is determined to plant his "flower of an ancient stem"
in the New World. He is forced, however, to return to England because

he must not appear to be on the newspapers' side when Lady Agatha,

Barb's sister, elopes with Mr. Longstraw and her coup de tete is

 

"emblazoned in enormous capitals" in the Western papers (p. 299).
Because Lemon is confronted with conflicting interests and impulses,
his character becomes more complex than that of Lady Barb, who is
possessed of a dumb and obstinate single—mindedness.

Yet, to a certain degree Lemon is as much a type as his wife,
Lady Barb. One of the central motivations of his character is typical

American acquisitiveness: he desires to make Lady Barb his possession

 

 

precise
America
millior
"heir r
all th
the Qu
Lemon'
the va

an exe

"Lady
of th
narra
well.
anced
reade
subor
(The
Free
is d
riag
auti

Wher

inv

Yea

 

88

precisely because she exemplifies venerable traditions lacking in
America. In his own way, Lemon is proud; he is determined that his
millions can buy him anything, even race-—he considers himself the
"heir of all the ages" (p. 259), an idea suggesting that America, with
all the benefits of the ages but without its drawbacks—-"the fogs and
the Queen" (p. 294)--epitomizes human civilization. And as Segal notes,
Lemon's manner of viewing the question of the marriage settlement "has
the value of an American criticism of an English tradition but is also
an exemplification of the fatal American 'simplicity.'"27

James's use of the center of consciousness in this tale marks
"Lady Barberina" as one of the more interesting technical experiments
of the early eighties. James depends upon the center as his primary
narrative mode, although typically be includes a variety of methods as
well. Because James's purpose in "Lady Barberina" is to provide a bal-
anced critique of both societies, these methods carefully control the
reader's sympathy and judgment. An omniscient narrator paints the
subordinate characters, particularly the "Greek chorus" of the Freers.
(The Freers themselves, by the way, divide their sympathies:' Mr.

" while Mrs. Freer

Freer encourages Lemon in his "international project,
is distinctly pessimistic about the prospects for an "unnatural" mar-
riage.) James also directly intrudes into the narrative, yet his
authorial presence is confined to the tale's beginning and conclusion,
where he addresses the reader. James's intrusions are functional:

at the opening of the tale, direct address is a device that quickly

involves the reader with the narrative. By this means James leads the

 

reader into the perspective of the individual character, moving from

 

observers,
Barberina
tancing tl
different
sume a to
national
society c
ago in Er
during t]
and the ‘
the bala
end, "La
society
Je
of his (
Critica
0f the
through
employj
"”3 6x2
reader
race a
critiC
can un
Vander

again

 

 

89

observers, the Freers, to the participants, Jackson Lemon and Lady
Barberina. At the end of the tale, James intrudes again, to begin dis-
tancing the reader from his characters. Yet James's intrusion here is
different from that at the tale's beginning. The final paragraphs as-
sume a tone that mixes the impersonal newspaper report--"the inter-

national project has not . . . received an impetus"--with the gossipy

 

society column--"Lady Agatha Longstraw and her husband arrived a year
ago in England, and Mr. Longstraw's personality had an immense success
during the last London season" (pp. 300, 301).28 James's intrusion
and the resulting distance between narrative and reader contribute to
the balance James wishes to strike between the two cultures. In the
end, "Lady Barberina" exposes the tradition—bound emptiness of English
society and the acquisitiveness and competitiveness of American society.
James dramatizes this critique by depending upon the perspective
of his central characters. It is not the author who articulates the
critical perSpective on the two societies; rather, the shortcomings
of the American wealthy and the English aristocracy are presented
through the characters' viewpoints. In this tale, James's strategy in
employing this method in the critique is immensely effective. Lemon,
for example, takes his ideas about "race" most seriously--and the
reader is depended upon to judge both the shallowness of the English
race and the foolishness of Lemon's ideas. James thus achieves pointed
criticism without having to be intrusively satirical. Likewise, James
can unmask American society simply by projecting the predatory Mrs.
Vanderdecken through Lady Barb's bewildered consciousness, a tactic

again obviating the author's need to editorialize.

 

 

At I
cally thr<
Lady Barb
than it (it
the autho
"screechi
her chara
a type.
of Lady I
impersonz
using tht
cast cha
sonally

Simply a
but who
Ir
eighties
trast u
sciousnt
his Ski
Charact
"Lady B
Stioum
the cer
a new ,

the pr

 

90

At the same time James criticizes, he also characterizes dramati—
cally through the center of consciousness. Lemon's need to acquire
Lady Barb for her look of race reveals more about Lemon as a character
than it does about the constituents of the English aristocracy-~without
the author explaining and organizing. Similarly, Barb's revulsion at
"screeching" American women and her lack of imagination further develop
her character, although well within the limitations of her portrayal as
a type. Segal notes that with the dramatic passages—~the consciousness
of Lady Barb and Jackson Lemon--James invites the reader to view the
impersonal international "experiment" as a personal entanglement; by
using the center of consciousness, James manages to humanize his type-
cast characters so that to a certain degree the reader can become per-
sonally involved.29 In this manner, then, "Lady Barberina" is not
simply a parable. James creates characters who are essentially types
but who can also function simultaneously as individuals.

In this tale, one of the longer ones written during the early
eighties, James employs a variety of narrative methods. But in con-
trast to "The Siege of London," James depends upon the center of con-
sciousness as his major narrative mode in "Lady Barberina." Such is
his skill with this method that James is able to dramatize his major
characters and his critique of English and American society. Indeed,
"Lady Barberina" attests to James's refinement of the center of con—
sciousness as a means of dramatically presenting character and theme.

James continues both his social criticism and his refinement of
the center of consciousness method when he attempts, in 1884, to reach
a new audience by writing tales for the newspapers. Two tales were

the product of this effort: "Georgina's Reasons,‘ a sensationalistic

 

 

tale of
latter 1
tunatelj
from cr
self, w
gesting
"the Pa
exclusi
Leon E(
last t
and it
Bonnyc

of its

tinues
than‘
going
Indee
consc
tompa

Mille

"Dai:
thei
turn

Pens

 

 

91

tale of bigamy and child-neglect, and "Pandora,' which ran in the New

York Sun June 1 and 8, 1884.30 James thought highly enough of the
latter tale to revise and include it in the New York Edition. Unfor-
tunately, however, it has suffered, as many of James's other tales,
from critical neglect. Perhaps critics take their one from James him-
self, who dismisses the tale in his Preface to "Daisy Miller" by sug—
gesting that the American girl's evolution has passed Pandora by:

"the Pandora Days can no longer . . . pass for quaint or fresh or for
exclusively native to any one tract of Anglo-Saxon soil."31 Yet as
Leon Edel notes, it is important in the Jamesian canon, for it is the
last tale in James's international series of the seventies and eighties,
and it contains cameo appearance by Henry and Clover Adams in the

32 "Pandora" repays study; it merits attention by virtue

Bonnycastles.
of its content, form, and technique.

As the last tale in the long international series, "Pandora" con-
tinues James's critique of society-—albeit in milder, more genial vein
than "The Siege of London" and "Lady Barberina"--as well as his on—
going develOpment of the center of consciousness as a narrative method.
Indeed, the extent to which James has refined his use of the center of
consciousness is vividly apparent when "Pandora" is approached as a
companion-piece to James's first famous international tale, "Daisy
Miller."

James himself suggests the comparison by playing off features of
"Daisy Miller" with the 1884 tale. Count Otto Vogelstein, diplomat to
the German Embassy in washington and the tale's center of consciousness,

turns to American literature to educate himself about America; it hap-

Pens that he reads "a Tauschnitz novel by an American author whose

 

pages, he
“Tauschnit
who plants
(p. 363).
to "that I
candy-10v
"was what
369). "D
In
to "Daisy
American
forward I
is a new
silver s
tion" (p
Successe
new to 1
and the
Geman .
l'Daisy ‘
tours t
CaPito]
lar th(
Daisvt
rOman:
from m

Ciety,

 

 

 

92

pages, he had been assured, would help to prepare him" (p. 361). The
"Tauschnitz novel" treats "of a flighty, forward little American girl,
who plants herself in front of a young man in the garden of an hotel"
(p. 363). Vogelstein compares Pandora Day, whom he meets on the ship,
to "that unfortunate maid" by seeing Pandora's older brother as "a
candy-loving Madison, Hamilton, or Jefferson"—-deciding that Mr. Day
"was what the little Madison would have grown up to at nineteen" (p.
369). "Daisy Miller" is, of course, Vogelstein's American tale.

In many ways "Pandora" is both a commentary on and counterpoint
to "Daisy Miller." written six years after the tale that made the
American Girl famous, "Pandora" examines the evolution of the "flighty,
forward little American girl." Pandora Day, the heroine of the tale,
is a new type-~the "self-made girl"; "she had not been born with the
silver spoon of social opportunity; she had grasped it by honest exer-
tion" (p. 397). The tale records the rise of Pandora, and her social
successes are registered by Count Otto Vogelstein, who as a diplomat
new to the United States, is making serious study of the New WOrld
and the American Girl. Vogelstein is a transmutation of the "neat
German waiters, who look like secretaries of legation" mentioned in

"Daisy‘Miller."33

There are other points of comparison: Daisy Miller
tours the castle of Chillon with Winterbourne, while Pandora tours the
Capitol building with Vogelstein. Indeed, these two incidents, simi-
lar though they be, reveal the extent of the American Girl's evolution.
Daisy Miller, flighty, forward, capricious in her innocence, is a
romantic figure made tragic through society's rejection and her death

from malaria. She is thus a victim of both her innocence and her so-

ciety, and as such assumes a romantic aura similar to that of

 

 

 

 

 

Bonnivar
Daisy Mi
cyuosure
she has
of peopl
appropr
made me
tion wh
America
is embc
]
earlie
Miller
hearte
hmmr,
is on]
dent!‘
Count
class
also
Pandc
humor
Pandt

Outs

Jame

the

 

93

Bonnivard, the prisoner of Chillon. Pandora Day is the antithesis of
Daisy Miller; rather than being victimized by her society, she is its
cynosure: there are articles about the new type in the newspapers;

she has the power to extract promises from "the ruler of fifty millions

of peOple,' as Vogelstein quaintly calls the President (p. 389). It is
appropriate then that Pandora tours the capital of the nation of self-
made men, men who traditionally have transcended their origins in a na—
tion where fortune is not inherited but is grasped by "honest exertion."
American evolution—-or "American Revolution" as Vogelstein calls it--

is embodied in the character of Pandora Day.

Like "Daisy Miller," "Pandora" is a critique of society. In the
earlier tale, James exposes the society that creates and destroys Daisy
Miller. In "Pandora" social criticism is present, but it is light-
hearted. At its most obvious form, James's criticism becomes broad
humor, when, for example, Alfred Bonnycastle exclaims "'Hang it, there
is only a month left; let us have some fun—~let us invite the Presi-
dent!'" (p. 383). James most trenchant criticism is effected through
Count Vogelstein, who is bewildered by the existence of invisible
classes in a society that proclaims its inherent classlessness. James
also shows American society controlled by the young; from the President
Pandora wheedles a diplomatic mission for her fiance. James's good-
humored criticism of America is apparent in society's response to
Pandora's rise and in the manner in which Vogelstein, observer and
outsider, sees that society.

Technically, "Pandora" is significant because it represents

James's most consistent use of the center of consciousness in all of

the tales of the early eighties. Comparing "Daisy Miller" with

 

 

 

"Pandora
techniqt
cience 1

Miller:

portraj
dress
the pa
specif
There
the pa
sonalz
What 1
think
WhOSe
timer
the (
hint,
deft

ter‘

 

94

"Pandora" clearly shows the extent to which James has refined this
technique in the 1884 tale. In "Daisy Miller," James relies on omnis-
cience to characterize. Here is James's first description of Daisy
Miller:

The young lady meanwhile had drawn near. She was

dressed in white muslin, with a hundred frills and

flounces, and knots of pale—coloured ribbon. She

was bare-headed; but she balanced in her hand a large

parasol, with a deep border of embroidery; and she

was strikingly, admirably pretty. 'How pretty they

are!‘ thought Winterbourne, straightening himself in

his seat, as if he were prepared to rise.

It is the author who intrudes, albeit not in the first person, to

portray Daisy. The description, though focusing on details like the
dress and the parasol, remains fairly general and detached; although

" James

the parasol, for example, has a "deep border of embroidery,
specifies neither the colors of the fabric nor of the needlework.
There is nothing graphic about this description. And the language of
the passage is not individualized; it bears no idiosyncracies of per—
sonalized thought or speech. Moreover, James distinguishes between
what he is recording in his role of author and what Winterbourne is
thinking. James describes Daisy as "admirably pretty;" Winterbourne,
whose thought is set off in quotation marks, echoes the author's sen-
timents: "'How pretty they are!‘ thought Winterbourne," Clearly,
the description that precedes Winterbourne's thought is not a part of
Winterbourne's perceptions-—both language and punctuation draw clearly
defined boundaries between the author's information and the charac-
ter's response to it.

By contrast, in "Pandora" James gives little information in his

own voice, and instead reflects description of the characters,

 

 

 

particularl

EL

5"
H100,
HH

m

n-r

rn

In this de
focus is 1
count's p.
having se
the Ameri
tion and
in James‘
"Seemed 1
all of W]
'10 bits .
fixed he
details
Sewerr S
to than.

oules f

 

95

particularly that of Pandora, through Vogelstein's consciousness:

His glance was arrested by the figure of a young lady
who had just ascended to the deck, and who paused at
the mouth of the companion-way. In itself this was not
an extraordinary phenomenon; but what attracted Vogel—
stein's attention was the fact that the young person
appeared to have fixed her eyes on him. She was slim,
brightly dressed, and rather pretty. Vogelstein remem—
bered in a moment that he had noticed her among the
people on the wharf at Southampton. She very soon saw
that he was looking at her; whereupon she began to move
along the deck with a step which seemed to indicate
that she was coming straight towards him. Vogelstein
had time to wonder whether she could be one of the
girls he had known at Dresden; but he presently re—
flected that they would now be much older than this.

It was true they came straight toward one, like that.
This young lady, however, was no longer looking at him,
and though she passed near him it was now tolerablyclear
that she had come upstairs simply to take a general
survey. (p. 362)

In this description of Vogelstein's first sight of Pandora Day, the
focus is upon the German's mental activity. After registering upon the
count's perceptions, Pandora induces a train of memory: he recalls
having seen her board the ship at Southampton, and she reminds him of
the American girls he met at Dresden. More important, sheer observa—
tion and interpretation inextricably mingle. This mixture is apparent
in James's choice of language: "appeared to have fixed," "remembered,"

" "wonder," "reflected," "now tolerably clear"--

"seemed to indicate,
all of which denote thought processes, and all of which are attached
to bits of physical observation——"the young person appeared to have
fixed her eyes upon him." In this manner, the communication of actual
details about the observed character assumes the quality of the ob—
server's thought, so that those details reveal the observer's response

to them. The process of observing and interpreting occur simultane—

ously, and thus the prose captures the very movement of the mind.

 

 

 

Verbs such 4
size Vogels
"It was tru
pure functi
James as au
and the rea
Vogel
Pandora's (
Pandora, at
from the o
the newspa
to Winterb
into his e
his lack c
minimum of
eminently

type," J

This Pas:

James in

 

96

Verbs such as wonder and reflect are James's obvious attempts to empha-
size Vogelstein's active mental processes, but occasional sentences--
"It was true they came Straight toward one, like that"-—exemplify the
pure functioning of Vogelstein's consciousness. In such a sentence,
James as author does not intervene between the observing consciousness
and the reader.

Vogelstein, as center of consciousness, is the vehicle of
Pandora's characterization. The young German Count is fascinated by
Pandora, and it is through him that James reveals Pandora's divergence

from the old type, Daisy Miller. Pandora is, as the Bonnycastles and

 

the newspapers explain, a new type, the self-made girl. In contrast
to Winterbourne, who is bewildered by Daisy because she does not fit
into his experience of American girls, Vogelstein is bewildered by
his lack of experience. Because Vogelstein comes to America with a
minimum of preconceptions and an observant, "scientific” mind, he is
eminently suited to reveal Pandora's character, as both person and
"type." Vogelstein captures Pandora‘s revolutionary qualities:

It was not customary to disturb the President, even
simply to shake hands, when he was sitting on a sofa
with a lady, and Vogelstein felt it in this case to
be less possible than ever to break the rule, for the
lady on the sofa was none other than Pandora Day. He
had recognized her without her appearing to see him,
and even in his momentary look he had perceived that
she was now a person to be reckoned with. She had an
air of elation, of success; she looked brilliant in
her rose—coloured dress; she was extracting promises
from the ruler of fifty millions of people. What an
odd place to meet her, Vogelstein thought, and how
little one could tell, after all, in America, who
people were! (p. 389)

This passage is Vogelstein's—-not the author's response to Pandora Day.

James imbues the language with a vivid sense of Vogelstein's character.

Moreover, b
cific--elat
the essence
response tc
Vogelstein'
Vogelstein'
passage gr:

The '.
also learn.
the Presid
Vogelstein
dent. Yet
esting, be

humor intc

.....—(w .

Vogelstej
with an e
and SOCie
Vogelste;
paSSage ;

Janes' s

 

97

Moreover, by focusing on a few qualities of Pandora, general and spe-
cific——e1ation, success, brilliant, rose—coloured dress-~James captures
the essence of Pandora's personality while reproducing Vogelstein's
response to her impact upon him. The language simultaneously records
Vogelstein's vision of Pandora and his response to her. And although
Vogelstein's vision of Pandora contains little specific detail, the
passage graphically conveys Pandora's personality.

The reader sees PandorathroughVogelstein's consciousness, but
also learns much about the center himself. For example, describing
the President as the "ruler of fifty millions" reveals more about
Vogelstein's personality and prejudices than it does about the Presi—
dent. Yet James's treatment of the center of consciousness is inter-
esting, because the author still intrudes through gentle satire and
humor into a character admittedly humorless:

In America, when one fell in love with a girl, there

was nothing to be done but marry her, and what should

he say, for instance, to finding himself a near rela-

tion of Mr. and Mrs. P. W. Day? . . . Vogelstein felt

the peril, for he could immediately think of a dozen

men he knew who had married American girls. There ap-

peared now to be a constant danger of marrying the

American girl; it was something one had to reckon with,

like the rise in prices, the telephone, the discovery

of dynamite, the Chassepat rifle, the socialistic

spirit; it was one of the complications of modern

life. (p. 370)
Vogelstein prosaically equates involvement with the "American girl"
with an escalating scale of revolutionary menaces—-telephones, rifles,
and socialism. These are Vogelstein‘s observations, of course, but
Vogelstein's seeing the American girl as a serious threat gives the

passage a humorous, even satirical cast-—and in so doing dramatizes

James's attitude toward the diplomat. As a result, the center of

consciousne
record of t
satirical j
of conscior
tive: tha‘
ward his ct

Alth
rative mod

"Lady Barb

H‘s—an—‘l

.ii_._.¢ene

James him
Daring fc
tale's °l
treatment
Jallies's (
of humor
tained s
1ight br
James in

Stein:

 

98

consciousness operates on two levels in the text: first, the actual
record of that functioning consciousness; and second, James's mildly
satirical judgment of Teutonic literalness. James's use of the center
of consciousness in "Pandora" results in the reader's double perspec—
tive: that of the character himself and of the author's attitude to—
ward his center.

Although James permits the center to function as the primary nar—
rative mode in the tale, he still intrudes into the narration. As in
"Lady Barberina," James opens the tale speaking in his own voice:

To watch from a point of vantage the struggles of

late comers—~of the uninformed, the unprovided, the

bewildered-—is an occupation not devoid of sweetness,

and there was nothing to mitigate the complacency with

which our young friend gave himself up to it; nothing,

that is, save a natural benevolence which had not yet

been extinguished by the consciousness of official

greatness. For Count Vogelstein was official, as I

think you would have seen from the straightness of his

back, the lustre of his light, elegant spectacles, and

something discreet and diplomatic in the curve of his

moustache, which looked as if it might well contribute

to the principle function, as cynics say, of the lips--

the concealment of thought. (p. 357)
James himself sets the scene and sketches Vogelstein's character, pre—
paring for Vogelstein's taking over the narration as center. In the
tale's opening, James also relies upon omniscience-—at least in his
treatment of Vogelstein, which quickly establishes character and
James's own satiric tone. In describing Vogelstein's lack of a sense
of humor, for example, James mentions that the German's mind "con-
tained several millions of facts, packed too closely together for the
light breeze of the imagination to draw through the mass" (p. 358).

James interjects mild humor in straightforward descriptions of Vogel—

stein: "He inquired with his eyes (that is, with his spectacles),

 

with his e2
organs" (P1
"Pandora" 1
Vogelstein
dons Vogel
notes, for
meditation
consciousn
from the t
Jame
addressing
the incidl
acquainta‘
remains t
°Penly.
Occurring
emigrants
Would not
Striking
(n. 359)
"thought
James ex
JameSIS
of cOnsc
the €le
Cannot; :

reader 1

 

 

99

with his ears, with his nose, with his palate, with all his senses and
organs" (p. 358). James's light-hearted tone at the beginning of
"Pandora" prepares the reader for his less than serious rendering of
Vogelstein's consciousness. And, at the end of the tale, James aban-
dons Vogelstein as center of consciousness and speaks authorially; he
notes, for example that Vogelstein walked home "in some intensity of
meditation" (p. 412). By retreating from the intimacy of the center of
consciousness and returning to omniscience, James distances the reader
from the tale.

James also intrudes by directly manipulating narrative movement;
addressing the reader, James mentions that he "must pass briefly over
the incidents that immediately followed [Vogelstein's making Pandora's
acquaintance]" (p. 365). Despite his use of the center, James still
remains the author who structures and engineers the tale, and does so
openly. Moreover, on occasion he professes ignorance about what is
occurring in his center's mind--when Vogelstein is watching German
emigrants board the steamer, he "doubtless said to himself that they
would not improve [America's] quality. Their numbers, however, were
striking, and I know not what he thought of the nature of this evidence"
(p. 359). Obviously, James does not wish to examine what Vogelstein
"thought of the nature of this evidence," but the manner in which
James excludes it from the tale is unwieldly. Although awkward,
James's admissions of ignorance do focus the narrative on the center
of consciousness, and eliminates extraneous material that would blur
the emphasis on Vogelstein and Pandora. When James confesses that he
cannot see into his characters' minds, he implicitly suggests that the

reader must rely on Vogelstein's point of view. Thus, the author sets

his center
stein is cr
view. And
of narrati
cially Pan
"Pan
reveal mar
pervade hi
for exampi
ment with
the fore
devastati
cism is j
of the t;
to types
311W; n
traits J
figures;
the Cent
Center C
It
is the 1
and Cha
this te

ally aw

 

100

his center of consciousness apart from the other characters: Vogel—
stein is central and special because he provides the personal point of
view. And because James relies upon Vogelstein as the dominant means
of narration, James achieves a dramatic rendering of character, espe-
cially Pandora's, for she is seen only through the German count's eyes.

"Pandora," as well as "The Siege of London" and "Lady Barberina,"
reveal many of James's interests, both thematic and technical, that
pervade his writing during the eighties. These tales are concerned,
for example, with social criticism, reflecting James's own disenchant—
ment with American and English society. This criticism will come to
the fore in his two 1886 novels, The Bostonians and The Princess

Casamassima, which expose the deterioration of American ideals and the

 

devastating inequities of stratified society. Ancillary to this criti—
cism is James's use of type characters, another feature characteristic
of the tales and much of the eighties' fiction. He frequently turns
to types, the purest example being Lady Barberina, to exemplify nation—
ality; the relative flatness of the character embodies and magnifies
traits James wishes to attack. Yet even his types are not cardboard
figures; James humanizes and personalizes his type characters by using
the center of consciousness technique, having them function either as
center or as the object of the center's observation.

Indeed, one of James‘s major technical concerns in these tales
is the refining of the center of consciousness as a means of narration
and characterization. Although these tales reveal hesitation in using
this technique——James continues to rely on omniscience and occasion—

ally awkward manipulations of the narrative—~they also show the center

 

gradually 2
moves away
dramatic p‘
and observ
Jame
London," "
oblivion t
James's wi
of the so:
his short
however,

work of t

 

 

101

gradually assuming more control in the narrative. In short, James
moves away from the picture actively rendered by the author to a more
dramatic presentation realized through a character who is both actor
and observer.

James's tales of the early eighties, particularly "The Siege of
London," "Lady Barberina," and "Pandora," do not deserve the critical
oblivion to which they have been consigned. These tales exemplify
James's witty and often humorous treatment of the follies and foibles
of the social and international scene; they are among the finest of
his short stories. While these tales possess intrinsic importance,
however, they are also significant for the light they shed upon James's

work of this period--a light which reveals both subject and theme.

 

 

l Ur

Critic, 1.
(1882), 2.

Heritage,-
pp. 113,

 

of Henry

4 r

(1883); '
"Pandora
(1884); .
Edel rep.
DaviS, 1|

5

'Beltraf
USE the
degrees,

6

lOgical
letter I
W
the plat
ifl$t
at erl]
James m
(there
during
thEme.
tion of
1884,

 

 

Notes

Unsigned review, Nation, 34 (1882), 102; unsigned review,
Critic, l (1881), 333; unsigned review, Lippincott's Magazine, 29
(1882), 213. These reviews are reprinted in Henry James: The Critical

 

 

Heritage, ed. Roger Gard, (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1968),
pp. 113, 107, and 118 respectively.

Henry James, Preface to "Lady Barbarina," The Art of the Novel,
ed. R. P. Blackmur (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), p. 202.

 

3 F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds., The Notebooks

of Henry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 23.

 

 

"The Siege of London" (1883); "The Impressions of a Cousin"
(1883); "Lady Barberina" (1884); "The Author of 'Beltraffio'" (1884);
"Pandora" (1884); "Georgina's Reasons" (1884); "A New England Winter"
(1884); "The Path of Duty" (1884). This is the order in which Leon
Edel reprints the tales in The Complete Tales (London: Rupert Hart-
Davis, 1963), vols. V and VI.

 

5 Of the eight tales noted above, only three-~"The Author of
'Beltraffio,'" "The Impressions of a Cousin," and "The Path of Duty"--
use the first-person narrator. The remaining five contain, to varying
degrees, examples of centers of consciousness.

6 . . . . .
The three tales in this chapter are discussed in their chrono-

logical order. In an April, 1883 notebook entry, James transcribes a
letter to J. R. Osgood, his publisher, describing the plan for THE
Bostonians. In the same letter James notes that he "gave a sketch of
the plan of a short story of the 'international' family (like Daisy
Miller, the Siege of London, etc.). 'The name of the thing to be Lady
Barberina.'" (Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 49). Obviously, "Siege"

was written before "Lady Barberina." By a strange lapse of memory,
James misdates "Lady Barberina" in the Preface to the New York Edition
(there called "Lady Barbarina"), dating the tale 1888, when in fact
during that year James was little concerned with the international
theme. In an entry dated May 17, 1883 James gives a detailed descrip-

tion of the tale which ran in Century Magazine from May through July,
1884 O

 

 

At the end of the May entry, James notes: "'The self-made girl'
--a very good subject for a short story. Very modern, very local;
much might be done" (Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 51). James returns
to this idea, the seed of "Pandora," in January, 1884, setting up the
tale as a deliberate rival to "Daisy Miller" (Matthiessen and Murdock,

102

 

p. 56). .12
these three

7Lt

rpt. New Y:

8E.

ence .

91

London," J
by pointin
sibility c
we turn be
tinctively
James, cor
situation:

10 1

Leon Edel
cited in

11

12

-\ .
M

l3

l4

"Pandora
secretar'
bewilder-
self-mad
Lambert
0f the 1
BeSt the
must fur
dillomat
attemptj

llthe di‘
freedorh
and m
B-

%

 

 

103

p. 56). James's notebook, therefore, establishes the order in which
these three tales were written, James's Preface notwithstanding.

7 Leon Edel, Henrnyames: The Middle Years, 1882—1895 (1962;
rpt. New York: Avon Books, Inc., 1978), pp. 50-1.

8 Edel, p. 50. Edel quotes James, but does not supply a refer-

ence o

In the Preface to Volume XI, which includes "The Siege of

London," James defends his reliance on "em hasized internationalism"
by pointing to its value as a contrast: James is "struck with no pos-
sibility of contrast in the human lot so great as that encountered as
we turn back and forth between the distinctively American and the dis-
tinctively European outlook" (The Art of the Novel, p. 198). And for
James, contrast is the essence of drama: "The dramatic side of human
situations subsists of course on contrast" (p. 199).

 

Henry James, "The Siege of London," The Complete Tales, ed.
Leon Edel (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963, V, pp. 13-110; hereafter
cited in text.

 

11 James, Preface to ”Lady Barbarina," p. 210.

12 Alfred Habegger, "'The Siege of London': Henry James and the
Piéce Bien Faite," Mbdern Fiction Studies, 15 (1969), 230.

 

3 Habegger, 229.

James's "ambassadors" are both literal and figurative. In
"Pandora," also discussed in this chapter, Count Otto Vogelstein,
secretary of the German legation in washington, is the observant and
bewildered center of consciousness through whom Pandora's rise as the
self—made girl is projected. And James's most famous ambassador is
Lambert Strether, whose center of consciousness forms the very tissue
of the 1901 novel. James's choice of "diplomats" for his center sug-
gest that he saw these men as intrinsically more sensitive since they
must function tactfully in alien cultures. James might have also seen
diplomats as emblematic of his own situation, an expatriated American
attempting to understand the "mixture of manners."

5 Habegger sees the perplexity of the two observers mirroring
"the divided mind of Henry James himself, who admired the vigor and
freedom of Americans at the same time that he deplored their rudeness
and provinciality" ("'The Siege of London': Henry James and the Piece
Bien Faite," 221).

6 Habegger, 221.

 

l7H

Edel (Lond
in text.

l8A

Barberina '

me.“

on these c

190

Fiction (E
Springer,
(Chicago:
sees Lady
American 2

the Europe
, traditions
Leon Edel,
the incomp
ties, and
The Middle
m
article p]

20]

Mn

21.

“Etaphors
bred With
Barb is a
Ville bri
eState, i
a gray he
hatChing
Cantervil
the stand
devilish

22
altered t

to Emphas
man or

23
She hots:
leg of cl
acters, I
the desi:

 

 

 

104

7 Henry James, "Lady Barberina," in The Complete Tales, ed. Leon
Edel (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963), V, pp. 195—301; hereafter cited
in text.

 

l8 Adeline Tintner's article, "Lady into Horse: James's 'Lady
Barberina' and Gulliver's Travels, Part IV," Journal of Narrative Tech-
nigue, 8 (1978), 79—96, brought to my attention the tale's influence
on these contemporary works.

 

19 Ora Segal, The Lucid Reflector: The Observer in HenryiJames's

Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 56-73; Mary Doyle
Springer, A Rhetoric of Literary Character: Some Women of Henry James
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 129-39. Springer
sees Lady Barberina as an apologue in a fable which shows that the
American aristocracy-of—wealth cannot make a successful marriage with
the European aristocracy-of—blood until the American aristocracy has a
traditional and superior sense of self. Springer shares this view with
Leon Edel, who sees the point of the tale as being James's analysis of
the incompatibilities between aristocracy of blood and its inflexibili-
ties, and an aristocracy of wealth and its pretensions (Henry James:
The Middle Years, p. 85). Neither Springer nor Edel do justice to the
tale for they ignore James's emphasis on race. Adeline Tintner's
article provides a more thorough and balanced treatment.

 

20 Elsa Nettels, "Henry James and the Idea of Race," English

Studies, 59 (1978), 35-47, and Adeline Tintner, "Lady into Horse."

Tintner offers a detailed catalogue of James's horsemanship
metaphors. The Barb, she notes, is a breed of thoroughbred horse inter-
bred with the Arabian and brought to England by the Crusaders [Lady
Barb is also called "a daughter of the Crusaders" (p. 250)]; Canter-
ville brings to mind a horse's gait, while Pastern, the Canterville's
estate, is named after part of a horse's leg. Lord Canterville sports
a gray beard and his "big fist" is "gloved in pearl-gray" perfectly
matching "the coat of his admirable steed" (pp. 203, 202). Lord
Canterville appreciates Jackson Lemon's profession as doctor only from
the standpoint that the lord "used to have a horse named Doctor, and a
devilish good one too" (p. 242)-

Henry James, Preface to "Lady Barbarina," p. 200. James
altered the spelling of Barberina to Barbarina in the New York Edition
to emphasize, so Springer explains, the original Latin meaning of bar-
barian or invader (Springer, p. 133).

Springer, p. 127. In explaining Sacks's view of character
she notes that "all literary characters, when compared with the vagar-
ies of characters in real life, are type characters, or partial char-
acters, in that we get only those parts of the character that will aid
the design of the work" (p. 232). In an apologue, however, a character

is an unab
almost of
required f

the Shape

nia Press,

his Ameri
29

30

(London:
text .

(Philade

31

 

 

105

is an unabashed type: "What is revealed about any major character is
almost of necessity and almost ruthlessly,1imited to qualities directly
required for their role in the apologue" [Sheldon Sacks, Fiction and
the Shape of Belief (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor-
nia Press, 1964), pp. 59-60].

 

 

24 James, Preface to "Lady Barbarina," p. 205.

25 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 50.

James, Preface to "Lady Barbarina," p. 205.

7 Segal, p. 59.

28 Mr. Longstraw probably entertains English aristocracy with

his Americanisms in much the same way that Nancy Headway did.

9 Segal, pp. 66-67.

Henry James, "Pandora," in The Complete Tales, ed. Leon Edel

(London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963), V, pp. 357-412; hereafter cited in
text .

31 James, Preface to "Daisy Miller," p. 271.

32 Leon Edel, Introduction, The Complete Tales, V, p. 10.

 

33 James, "Daisy Miller,” in The Complete Tales, ed. Leon Edel
(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1962), IV, pp. 141-2.

4 James, "Daisy Miller," pp. 144-5.

 

 

The
Pandora I
novel, ll
novel‘s ]
culine t
hysteric
delicacy
290). "
backgrot
18853-18:
Women."

ies‘ ta
increas
§9§E233
of the
0f Pur:
"Witch.

@- 7)

of one
Englal

radio;

 

 

CHAPTER IV

A Most Salient and Peculiar Tale

The women of the early tales—-Nancy Headway, Lady Barb, and
Pandora Day--are strong and manipulative; the women of James‘s 1886

. l .
novel, The Bostonians, seem to control the very country, prompting the

 

novel's hero to protest: "The whole generation is womanized; the mas-
culine tone is passing out of the world; it's a feminine, a nervous,
hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false
delicacy and exaggerated solicitudes and coddled sensibilities" (p. A
290). "The most damnable feminization" of American culture forms the

background of The Bostonians, first serialized in Century Magazine,

 

1885-1886, James's most "American tale" about the "situation of
women."2 As such, the novel continues the subjects of the early eight—

' tales: James's exploration of strong women characters and his

ies
increasingly sharp criticism of American society and culture. .229
Bostonians, according to James's own admission, examines "the decline
of the sentiment of sex,"3 but it also scrutinizes the deterioration
of Puritanism and Transcendentalism into the half-baked notions of
"witches and wizards, mediums, and spirit—rappers and roaring radicals"
(p. 7).

The novel, whose action spans two years of the 18703, is "a study
of one of those friendships between women which are so common in New

England."4 Olive Chancellor, a wealthy Boston spinster and "roaring

radical" dedicated to the women's movement, takes up Verena Tarrant,

106

 

 

 

 

a charisma
ship, most
Verena frc
desirable
the young
nights st
who posse
from then
nately, C
to start
missing 1
"to keep
ever" (p
ment. H
0f Veren
becomes
ll
fitters :
Sion of
hides h
in a Sp
In an i
this f;
desolaI
for by

marria

 

 

107

a charismatic though naive daughter of a mesmeric healer. The friend—
ship, mostly on Olive's side, is intense and possessive: to protect
Verena from the onslaught of interested young men and the less-than-
desirable influences of her bohemian parents, Olive literally purchases
the young woman from the Tarrants. Together, the women spend winter
nights studying the history of women's sufferings to prepare Verena,

" to win Boston and

who possesses a gift for "inspirational speaking,
from thence the nation to the cause of women's liberation. Unfortu-
nately, Olive's distant cousin, Basil Ransom, a Mississippian trying

to start a law practice in New York, falls in love with Verena, dis-
missing her impassioned speeches as "pretty moonshine." Ransom vows
"to keep [Verena] at home and have a better time with [her] there than
ever" (p. 291); to this end, he is determined to "squelch" the move-
ment. He is unalterably Opposed to Olive's ideals and her possession
of Verena, and so the relationship between the two cousins rapidly
becomes a "war to the knife."

The battle is seriously engaged during the summer all three char-
acters spend in Cape Cod, where Basil and Olive fight over the posses-
sion of Verena. Verena capitulates, agreeing to marry Basil; but Olive
hides her friend, who is to address a "Boston mob" at the Music Hall,
in a speech which promises to launch Verena fairly upon her career.

In an intense and melodramatic conclusion, Basil "rescues" Verena from
this fate by abducting her moments before her grand debut. Olive,
desolate and humiliated, achieves the martyrdom she has always hoped
for by facing the thwarted crowd. Although Basil wins Verena, his

marriage falls short of the ideal: "But though [Verena] was glad,

 

[Basil] p1
It is to l
which she
to shed"
and affir'
qualified
usually t
Jam
turing ti
Zola, Fla
of the Si
manners (
ticularl‘
apart; fr

servatio

James I

Whethe]

 

 

108

[Basil] presently discovered that, beneath her hood, she was in tears.
It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into
which she was about to enter, these were not the last she was destined
to shed" (p. 390). Thus, although Basil ostensibly wins the contest
and affirms the place of love and marriage within human affairs, his
qualified victory also suggests the rockiness of the path those affairs
usually take.

James's concern with social issues and social criticism, consti-
tuting the novel's backdrop and the result of James's friendship with
Zola, Flaubert, and Daudet,5 distinguishes this novel from his fiction
of the seventies and presents an abrupt break with the urbane study of

manners developed in The Portrait of a Lady. Attention to detail, par-

 

ticularly in regard to vivid rendering of place, also sets this novel
apart from James‘s previous work and reveals his talent for close ob—
servation, as this description of a "Dutch grocery" in New York reveals:

The two sides of the shop were protected by an immense
pent—house shed, which projected over a greasy pave-
ment and was supported by wooden posts fixed in the
curbstone. Beneath it,'on the dislocated flags, bar—
rels and baskets were freely and picturesquely grouped;
an open cellarway yawned beneath the feet of those who
might pause to gaze too fondly on the savoury wares in
the window; a strong odour of smoked fish, combined with
the fragrance of molasses, hung about the spot; the
pavement, toward the gutters, was fringed with dirty
panniers, heaped with potatoes, carrots, and onions;
and a smart, bright waggon, with the horse detached
from the shafts, drawn up on the edge of the abominable
road (it contained holes and ruts a foot deep, and imr
memorial accumulations of stagnant mud), imparted an
idle, rural, pastoral air to a scene otherwise perhaps
expressive of a rank civilization. (p. 160)

James paints the scene vividly, engaging all the reader's senses.

Whether the setting is laid in Miss Birdseye's dingy parlor, Mrs.

 

 

Burrage's
James mas
By
ideologic
the Frenc
expose sc
his hotel
American
casions I
and sens
his fict
earlier
torian h
It is im
tute the
feminism
as femir
Clusim
"indepm
real 811‘
in his
well as
Suiting
an expc
of Per:

Chance]

 

109

Burrage's glittering drawingroom, or the summer cottage in Cape Cod,
James masterfully captures the very essence of the American atmOSphere.
By employing the contemporary women's movement as the novel's
ideological background,6 James also demonstrates his allegiance with
the French naturalists, who saw the contemporary subject as a means to
expose social ills. The suffragist movement exemplifies for James, as
his notebook attests, "the most salient and peculiar" feature of the
American scene;7 it embodies the American penchant for reform and oc-
casions the more deplorable aspects of American democracy-~publicity
and sensationalism. In adopting contemporary events as the setting of
his fiction, James affirms his kinship with the historian, as outlined
earlier in "The Art of Fiction," in that both the novelist and the his-
torian have the task of illustrating the past and the actions of men.8
It is important, though, to recognize that contemporary events consti-

tute the novel's background; to see The Bostonians as a novel about

 

feminism and as a chronicle of "the struggle for women's emancipation,"
as feminist critic Nan Bauer Maglin does, invariably leads to the con-
clusion that "James's attitude is that of disgust and mockery" toward
"independent women, the women's movement, and women in general."9 The
real subject of the novel is human relationships; as James specifies

in his notebook, The Bostonians examines the "Boston marriage"10 as
well as the relationship between the sexes and the complications re-'
sulting from applying abstractions to human affairs. Rather than being
an exposé of the women's movement, The Bostonians is a study of clash

of personalities and ideologies, embodied in the battle between Olive

Chancellor and Basil Ransom for the possession of Verena Tarrant.

 

Becz
sexes, mo:
advocate
protagoni
William J
acter, pr
character
respecte(
in the p]
sponded
but the
Henry's
fiction
it, wou]
Charge (

A:
it,13 b.
that "t
dePreci
M
17, 19c

Ceived

in the

 

 

110

Because, perhaps, the novel's subject concerns the war of the
sexes, most critics adamantly reject or accept the novel and strongly
advocate one or the other of the characters as the novel's blameless
protagonist. Whatever the reason, most criticism is rarely lukewarm.
William James's admonitory criticism of Miss Birdseye, a minor char-
acter, presages the critical tendency to react strongly to the novel's
characters. William, after reading the first installments in Century
Magazine, quickly took Henry to task for satirizing Elizabeth Peabody,
respected Boston reformer and sister-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
in the philanthropic though ineffectual Miss Birdseye.ll Henry re—
sponded in a lengthy apologia, defending his right to create character,
but the depth to which William wounded his brother is evident in
Henry's pained exclamation that "[t]he story is, I think, the best
fiction I have written, and I expected you, if you said anything about
it, would intimate that you thought as much—-so that I find this
charge on the subject of Miss Peabody a very cold douche indeed."12

After having read the entire novel, William placatingly praised
it,13 but by then James himself was bored with the novel and admitted
that "the whole thing is too long and dawdling."l4 Despite his own
depreciations of the novel, James remained convinced of the merits of
The Bostonians, prompting him to complain to W. D. Howells on August
17, 1908 that the "tolerably full and good 'Bostonians'" never "re—
ceived any sort of justice."15

It could be argued that even today, despite a renewed interest

in the novel, The Bostonians has yet to receive justice. For the most

 

part, cri
coincide ‘
sexes, an
critics-—
champion
James's s
ularized
Basil is
accuse hi
Converse
to Olive
was a ty
0f incip
about t}
thing f:

Ransom‘

CUT tha

 

111

part, critics tend to approve of those qualities and characters which
coincide with their conception of James's fiction and their view of the
sexes, and dismiss conflicting elements as technical flaws. Male
critics--Walcutt, Andreas, Edgar, Anderson, and Oliver, for example-—
champion Basil Ransom as James's spokesman; Anderson explains away
James's satiric treatment of Basil as evidence that James relied on pop-
ularized misconceptions about Southerners in creating his hero.l6 If
Basil is the hero, then Olive is the villainess; and many male critics
accuse her of lesbianism and perverted sexual designs upon Verena.l7
Conversely, female critics-~Davis, Johnson, Faderman, and Maglin-—rally
to Olive's support, either by showing that her relationship with Verena
was a typical nineteenth-century Boston marriage, or by accusing James
of incipient anti-feminism.18 And no one, male or female, can agree

about the novel's heroine, Verena Tarrant, who has been called every-

 

thing from James's "embodiment of the feminine principle" to Basil
Ransom's "booby prize."19

While the characters arouse controversy, the critics fairly con-

cur that The Bostonians is flawed. Except for a few dissenting voices,

 

F. R. Leavis's and Irving Howe's being the most prominent,20 critics
agree that the novel lacks unity and consistency. Walcutt feels that
James fails to incorporate the novel's ideas into plot and characteri-
zation; Berthoff sees the structure as falling apart at the novel's
midpoint; Habegger cites shifts in tone, emphasis, and point of view

in Book; 2 as reasons for The Bostonians' "disunity"; and Stone dis-

 

covers a discrepancy between James's intention to write an American

tale and the Victorian novel The Bostoniansaactually is.21 Samuels

 

 

and Buiter
others, a1
with Jame
suggest t
essential
Th3
osity--an
the line
The Bosh
ent in "'
the nove
facets o
society
is saved
rather 1
Critics
and sel
M
regards
ments “-
eXamine

inform

 

 

112

and Buitenhuis object to the novel's complex points of view, while
others, among them Miller, McMahan, Johnson, and Anderson, take issue
with James's treatment of his characters.22 Samuels goes so far to
suggest that the novel is a Jamesian aberration when he notes that "the
23

essential James is not perceptible in The Bostonians."

The Bostonians is not an aberration; although it may be a curi-

 

I o l 2 O
osity—-and.lames himself recognized it as such 4--the novel continues
the line of development initiated in the tales of the early eighties.

The Bostonians carries on James's criticism of American society appar-

 

' and "Pandora"; and in

ent in "The Siege of London," "Lady Barberina,’
the novel's larger scale, James's critical vision focuses upon many
facets of American manners and mores. James's satiric perspective of
society is as devastating as Thackeray's, but James's "Vanity Fair"

is saved from mordancy by good—natured humor and subtle wit. And

rather than taking sides in the battle between the sexes--as James's
critics accuse him of doing--James exposes the narrow points of view

and self-imposed limitations of E11_his characters.

Many of the novel's technical and structural aspects, heretofore
regarded as flaws, are actually the result of James's continuing experi-
ments with point of view and center of consciousness. Critics tend to
examine the novel in terms of its antecedents; they see The Bostonians
informed by works as diverse as L'Evangéliste, The Blithedale Romance,
Adam Bede, and Antigone, and literary forms ranging from the pastoral
to the fairy-tale.25 Doubtless, such works influence James's novel,

but these sources have occupied critics' attention to the exclusion

of seeing the novel as an important development of James's technical

 

 

 

skill. P
tale them
Irving Ho
experimen
Alt
onstrates
experimel
the funC‘
boldly e
"curious
subject
vised ti
James‘ 3
each otl
cal con
Plement
dramati
Vivid r
are ese
ment a1
his ch;
minds

of Qha

the no
(Chap:

twO af

 

 

113

skill. Perosa and Isle acknowledge, of course, the novel's experimen-

tale themes;26 of all the critics who discuss The Bostonians, only

 

Irving Howe comes close to suggesting that the novel is technically
experimental.27

Although Victorian in many of its characteristics, as Stone dem-

2 . . .
onstrates, 8 The Bostonians reveals James's continuing the technical

 

experiments of the tales on the novel's wider stage. In particular,
the functions of the narrator and the center of consciousness are most
boldly experimental. Page has rightfully called the novel's narration
"curious,"29 taking his one from James himself who called the novel's

subject "most salient and peculiar,"

and who vowed that if he ever re—

0 a I! . "30
Vised the novel he would make it more curious. In no other of
James's novels do various modes of narration and characterization jostle
each other as they do in The Bostonians. Indeed, echoing the ideologi-
cal conflict incarnated in Olive and Basil is the dialectical but com-

plementary movement between the methods of painting and the methods of

dramatizing. As noted above, The Bostonians is distinguished by James's

 

vivid rendering of place and the sketching of character--features which
are essentially pictorial in method. Yet much of the novel's excite—
ment arises from James's ability to reflect the novel's action through
his characters' perspectives, capturing the very movement of their
minds and thus achieving in the novel a penetrating psychological study
of character.

Dramatizing and pictorializing are aims essentially opposed. In
the novel, generally throughout but most intensively in Book I
(Chapters 1-22), an omniscient narrator attempts to reconcile these

two aims. This narrator, an amplification of the intrusive narrators

 

 

 

of the ta
duces the
ters that
tion of P

voice:

The narr
exposes
social 1
take he:
Tarrant
danger

will en
tePTOdu
the ass
of her

Tarran1
rator'

hand_

and rh

 

114

of the tales of the early eighties, functions traditionally. He intro—
duces the major characters, but it is in the painting of minor charac—

ters that the omniscient narrator waxes most elaborately. The descrip-
tion of Mrs. Tarrant exemplifies the traditional and witty narratorial

voice:

She was queer, indeed-—a flaccid, relaxed, unhealthy,
whimsical woman, who still had a capacity to cling.
What she clung to was 'society,‘ and a position in the
world which a secret whisper told her she never had

and a voice more audible reminded her she was in danger
of losing. To keep it, to recover it, to reconsecrate
it, was the ambition of her heart; this was one of the
reasons why Providence had judged her worthy of having
so wonderful a child. Verena was born not only to lead
their common sex out of bondage, but to remodel a
Visiting—list which bulged and contracted in the wrong
places, like a country—made garment. (p. 62)

The narrator reveals Mrs. Tarrant's ambitions. Yet, simultaneously, he

exposes her by showing that she equates the women's movement with her

 

social rehabilitation-~and he does so humorously because he seems to
take her as seriously as she takes herself. The narrator records Mrs.
Tarrant's thoughts with all their intrinsic contradictions—-she is in
danger of losing, for example, a social position she never had; Verena
will enable her to keep the position, recover it, reconsecrate it. By
reproducing Mrs. Tarrant's incongruous thoughts, the narrator captures
the essence of her mind: authorial omniscience recreates the fabric
of her thoughts while conveying a vivid sense of character. Mrs.
Tarrant's personality surfaces not by direct statement but by the nar—
rator's enabling the reader to experience her inconsistencies first-
hand.

Indeed, as the passage progresses, it assumes a unique texture

and rhythm, so that although it is primarily an example of omniscience,

 

it is per

by descri

Frequent
difficul
parenthe
Parenth
establi
Pure de
sage p1
by mirr
"hated
lowere
i111Pude
her as
tions
the ct

rial (

his t

 

 

 

115

it is permeated with Mrs. Tarrant's character. The passage continues

by describing her association with her husband, Selah:
As the daughter of Abraham Greenstreet, Mrs. Tarrant
had passed her youth in the first Abolitionist circles,
and she was aware how much such a prospect was clouded
by her union with a young man who had begun life as an
itinerant vendor of lead-pencils (he had called at Mr.
Greenstreet's door in the exercise of this function),
had afterwards been for a while a member of the cele-
brated Cayuga community, where there were no wives, or
no husbands, or something of that sort (Mrs. Tarrant
could never remember), and had still later (though
before the development of the healing faculty) achieved
distinction in the spiritualistic world. (He was an

extraordinarily favoured medium, only he had to stop'
for reasons of which Mrs. Tarrant possessed her version.)

(p. 62)

Frequent parenthetical asides distinguish this passage, although it is
difficult to determine who speaks in them. The material outside the
parentheses is fairly straightforward description of past events; the
parenthetical comments directly relate these events to Mrs. Tarrant or
establish specific details of the past. The narrator wavers between
pure description and Mrs. Tarrant's thoughts. Thus, though the pas-
sage provides background, it also develops Mrs. Tarrant's character
by mirroring her uncertainty and her ambivalence toward Selah: she
"hated him for the manner in which, somehow, as she felt, he had
lowered her social tone; yet at the same time she admired him for an
impudence so consummate that it had ended . . . by imposing itself on
her as'a kind of infallibility" (p. 64). The omniscient narrator func-
tions brilliantly, blending biographical summary with the texture of
the character's personality-~a blend that economically obviates edito-
rial commentary yet achieves James's satiric purposes.

However, the intrusive narrator does not always function within

his traditional role; indeed, the narrator is frequently one of the

 

 

 

most curi
in the pi

Ransom:

i
and Th;
the na:
imPort
ticipa
the na
the "j
dialec
the f;
teria
lect"

tetio

 

 

 

116

most curious features of The Bostonians. His peculiarities are apparent

 

in the physical description and historical sketch of his hero, Basil
Ransom:

[Basil]came, in fact, from.Mississippi, and he spoke
very perceptibly with the accent of that country.

It is not in my power to reproduce by any combination
of characters this charming dialect; but the initiated
reader will have no difficulty in evoking the sound,
which is to be associated in the present instance with
nothing vulgar or vain. This lean, pale, sallow,
shabby, striking young man, with his superior head,

his sedentary shoulders, his expression of bright grim-
ness and hard enthusiasm, his provincial, distinguished
appearance, is, as a representative of his sex, the
most important personage in my narrative; he played a
very active part in the events I have undertaken in
some degree to set forth. And yet the reader who likes
a complete image, who desires to read with the senses
as well as with reason, is entreated not to forget that
he prolonged his consonants and swallowed his vowels,
that he was guilty of elisions and interpolations which
were equally unexpected, and that his discourse was
pervaded by something sultry and vast, something almost
African in its rich basking tone, something that sug—
gested the teeming expanse of the cottonfield. (p. 6)

Basil is introduced by an omniscient narrator, who like Trollope's
and Thackeray's narrators, is uninhibited in intruding and manipulating
the narrative. The narrator designates Basil as his hero, "the most
important personage in my narrative," a statement which begins to an—
ticipate narrative events and the reader's judgment. Yet, curiously,
the narrator also transforms the reader into a co-creator of the text:
the "initiated reader" will be able to reproduce Basil's Mississippian
dialect. Basil‘s dialect forces the narrator, however, into making
the first of many admissions of helplessness in regard to his ma—
terial--"it is not in my power to reproduce . . . this charming dia-
lect"-—an admission which Page sees as calling attention to the limi—

tations of "the novel's language, all printed language, and all

 

 

 

novels."3
sounds le
ary langv
"African
the cottv
language
role of
In
cause
the narr
to elabr
quick t<
hrs. Fa:
country
rator w
Of his
out Bag

mere re

the HOV

 

117

"31 The narrator's inability to reproduce the dialect's actual

novels.
sounds leads him to mask his deficiencies with self-consciously liter-
ary language: he lyricizes Basil's dialect as "sultry and vast,"

' recalling the "teeming expanse of

"African in its rich basking tone,‘
the cottonfields." The narrator not only probes the limitations of
language; his ironic and self—conscious stance calls into question the
role of omniscient narrators, of all narrators.

Indeed, James's curious narrator is alternately coy and bold; he
earns a prominent place in the novel--Stone comments, for example, that
the narrator is a character in his own right.32 The narrator will turn
to elaborate language to capture the essence of character, yet he is
quick to keep them at arm's length. In describing Basil's reaction to
Mrs. Farrinder, who labors "to give the ballot to every woman in the
country and to take the flowing bowl from every man" (p. 28), the nar—
rator worriedly denies his own reaponsibility: "I am but the reporter
of his angry formulae" (p. 44). Although the narrator blithely singles
out Basil as his "most important personage," he reduces himself to a
mere reporter when Basil begins spouting "formulae."

The narrator maintains an equally slippery presence throughout
the novel,33 particularly in his function as the narrative's manipula-
tor. The narrator in The Portrait of a Lady was masterful and confi—
dent; he freely explored his characters' minds and collapsed narrative
chronology through prediction and foreshadowing. The narrator of The
Bostonians possesses an arsenal of peculiar excuses, all of which are

used to deny his omniscience while he overtly manipulates. When Olive

"purchases" Verena from her disreputable father, the narrator confides

 

 

that "Thi
describir
of these’
forces hf
resses, 1
these EXI
Referrin
at Marni
"No stra
young wo
particul
0f reali
mind whe
cedes t]
(p. 355
trol of
lates,
t0 loge
I shall
cern" (
1
tion wj
nials (
leeSne:
ticula
life t

Sense,

 

118

that "This interview, which had some curious features, would be worth
describing, but I am forbidden to do more than mention the most striking
of these" (p. 143). Unfortunately, the narrator never specifies what
forces him to abdicate his narratorial role. And, as the novel prog-
resses, the narrator continues to rationalize his omission of material;
these excuses increasingly become pleas of incompetence or helplessness.
Referring, for example, to the relationship between Olive and Verena

at Marmion, where they struggle against Basil, the narrator confesses:
"No stranger situation can be imagined than that of these extraordinary
young women at this juncture; it was so singular on Verena's part, in .
particular, that I despair of presenting it to the reader with the air
of reality" (p. 328). And in attempting to describe Olive's state of
mind when she realizes she has lost Verena to Basil, the narrator con—
cedes that "here again I must plead a certain incompetence . . ."
(p. 355). Incompetence notwithstanding, the narrator can assume con—
trol of the narrative and boldly wave aside the unknowable. He specu-
lates, for example, whether "Verena's strange aberration" causes Olive
to lose faith in the women's movement: "These are mysteries into which
I shall not attempt to enter, speculations with which I have no con-
cern" (p. 354).

The narrator's asides are indeed curious. Although he can func—
tion within an omniscient point of view, his avowals are singular de—
nials of the traditional narrator's role. By acknowledging his help-
lessness or his ignorance, the narrator gives these characters-~par-
ticularly the main ones--a life that seems to exist beyond the text, a
life to which neither author nor reader is privy. In a very real

sense, the narrator's confessions maintain the integrity of character

 

 

by sugges
reach. 1
though t]
to presc
admissio
the char
his read
acters‘

their i<

author

progres
take or
0f pair
acteri
differ

cient

Basil
the s
to U

her

 

119

by suggesting that these characters are at least partially out of his
reach. Moreover, such admissions serve James's thematic purpose. Al-
though the narrator's disclaimers may point to James's unwillingness

to prescribe or even judge, it is perhaps more accurate to see these
admissions of ignorance and "withdrawals" from characters as foils to
the characters' own perspectives. The narrator's lack of knowledge and
his readiness to own up to that lack contrast ironically with the char-
acters' complacent self-assurance and their determination to impose
their ideologies on others. And ultimately, such confessions distance
author from character, enhancing James's humorous and satiric purposes.

The narrator figures importantly in The Bostonians. As the novel

 

progresses, however, the centers of consciousness, Olive and Basil,
take over many of the narratorial functions; consequently, the methods
of painting give way to the methods of dramatizing. Indeed, the char—
acterization of Olive and Basil offers an opportunity to compare the
differences implicit in each method. Basil is delineated by the omnis—
cient narrator, but Olive is presented through Basil's perceptions:

He perceived very quickly that Miss Chancellor be—
longed to the [class of people who take things hard].
This was written so intensely in her delicate face
that he felt an unformulated pity for her before they
exchanged twenty words. He himself, by nature, took
things easy; if he had put on the screw of late, it
was after reflection, and because circumstances
pressed him close. But this pale girl, with her
light-green eyes, her pointed features and nervous
manner, was visibly morbid; it was plain as day that
she was morbid. (p. 11)

Basil begins with Olive's physical features, glossing over them with

' in contrast

the simplest of descriptions; her eyes are "light—green,‘
to the more literary narrator who comments that "the curious tint of

her eyes was a living colour; when she turned it upon you, you thought

 

 

vaguely c
play-er6
guishes l
and more
ters' us
of consc

Ba
features
continue

of wome1

thus t
Pictur
mOVemE
derin;
Chara
Past

Pelle
"Boec

min]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

vaguely of the glitter of green ice" (PP. 17-8). The narrator's word

p1ay-—green eyes and green ice—~and his suggestive comparison distin—
guishes between Basil's View of Olive and the narrator's self-conscious
and more complex one. In other words, the narrator's and the charac-
ters' use of language becomes a means by which omniscience and center
of consciousness can frequently be identified.

Basil, naturally enough, moves quickly from Olive's uninspiring

features to speculations about her personality. And, as the passage
continues, Basil tries to "square" his cousin with his past experience

of women:

The women he had hitherto known had been mainly of
his own soft clime, and it was not often they ex-
hibited the tendency he detected (and cursorily de-
plored) in Mrs. Luna's sister. That was the way he
liked them--not to think too much, not to feel any
responsibility for the government of the world, such
as he was sure Miss Chancellor felt. If they would
only be private and passive, and have no feeling but
for that, and leave publicity to the sex of tougher
hide! Ransom.was pleased with the vision of that
remedy; it must be repeated that he was very provin—

cial. (p. 11)

Basil's mind moves from physical reality to memory then opinion;
thus the passage reflects the mind as process, rather than as a satiric
picture. And because the focus is upon that process with its sense of
movement, James dramatizes the mind's movement, instead of simply ren-
dering--painting--character traits. Moreover, in this process, Basil's
character is dramatically revealed: the reader learns more about his
past and his ideas. Interestingly, however, the narrator feels com-
pelled to intrude at this point, disassociating himself from Basil's
"Boeotian" views. Particularly at the novel's beginning, the narrator

reinforces his control over the narrative, a control he relinquishes

 

somewhat
ative val
narrator
those va
rity abo
values,
modern 1
passage
and espv
tinctio
subtle;
for the
satiric
sages,

larly

tits,

PlaCe.

Conscj

tion

 

121

somewhat in Books 2 and 3. Basil's ideas echo the traditional conserv—
ative values held by much of the novel's contemporary audience; the
narrator's intrusive disclaimer is perhaps James's attempt to question
those values. It is true that such intrusions reflect James's insecu—
rity about the reader's ability to distinguish between his and Basil's
values, but James's doubts are well-founded, since even sophisticated
modern readers are inclined to cast Basil as James's spokesman. This
passage exemplifies the problems with the mixture of narrative modes,
and especially with the center of consciousness. In places, the dis—
tinction between the narrator's voice and Basil's consciousness is
subtle; without careful reading, it is easy to mistake Basil's views
for the narrator's. Hence, the necessity of the narrator's obvious
satiric intrusions and blatant disclaimers-—especially in those pas-
sages, like the one above, where such views are inclined to be popu—
larly accepted.

Although the narrator intrudes when Basil dwells on sexual poli—
tics, he generally recedes when Basil functions as a means to describe
place. For example, the reader sees Olive's parlor through Basil's
consciousness:

The general character of the place struck him as
Bostonian; this was, in fact, very much what he had
supposed Boston to be. He had always heard Boston
was a city of culture, and now there was culture in
Miss Chancellor's tables and sofas, in the books

that were everywhere, on little shelves like brackets
(as if a book were a statuette), in the photographs
and water-colours that covered the walls, in the cur—
tains that were festooned rather stiffly in the door~
ways. (PP. 15-6)

Olive's parlor is sketched with few details, with Basil's reac-

tion to it predominating. The description is general and vague——

 

 

 

naturally
linger ox
notice--1
a statue
paring a
provinci
ousness
tion thr
satirize
A]
novel, 1
place a
center.
each be
Conside
through
as an 2
example

knife"

 

 

122

naturally, someone as "provincial" and masculine as Basil would not
linger over specifics of furniture and bibelots. The details he does
notice—-the books "on little shelves like brackets (as if a book were

a statuette)"-—suggest Basil's own love of books. Moreover, his com—
paring a book to a statuette is an individual touch revealing the hero's
provinciality while enabling James to poke fun at the Bostonians' seri-
ousness without intruding into the text. Thus, by reflecting descrip-
tion through the center of consciousness, James characterizes and
satirizes simultaneously.

Although James maintains the narrator's presence throughout the
novel, the center of consciousness gradually assumes a more important
place as the novel progresses. This is particularly true of Basil as
center. Ransom's view dominates the major changes of scene opening
each book; in the description of Marmdon narratorial intrusions are
considerably diminished, and Cape Cod's quaint charm is conveyed
through Basil's eyes. Indeed, it is at Marmion that Basil functions
as an almost "pure" center of consciousness. He is the means, for
example, through which the lines of Olive's and Basil's "war to the
knife" are drawn:

[Basil asked] himself what amount of consideration

he should (from the most refined Southern point of
view), owe Miss Chancellor in the event of his de-
ciding to go after Verena Tarrant in earnest. He was
not slow to decide that he owed her none. Chivalry
had to do with one's relations with people one hated,
not with those one loved. He didn't hate poor Miss
Olive, though she might make him yet; and even if he
did, any chivalry was all moonshine which should re-
quire him to give up the girl he adored in order that
his third cousin should see he could be gallant.
Chivalry was forbearance and generosity with regard

to the weak; and there was nothing weak about Miss
Olive, she was a fighting woman, and she would fight

 

 

Th
never re
of Basil
ideas i:
if she
ferings
tradict
people
hate "p
as a re
being
does n
In the
Such e

eHCES

Omnim
histo-
Incid
criti
Cognj
RQSS.
Pare:

that

 

 

123

him to the death, giving him not an inch of odds.

He felt that she was fighting there all day long,

in her cottage-fortress; her resistance was in the

air he breathed and Verena came out to him some-

times quite limp and pale from.the tussle. (PP. 338-9)

The sound of Basil's voice dominates.34 The narrator, for example,
never refers to Olive as "poor Miss Olive"--the expression reverberates
of Basil, gallant Southerner. "Moonshine" as a reference to foolish
ideas is characteristic of Basil; earlier in the novel, he asks Verena
if she really believed "all that pretty moonshine" about women's suf-
ferings (p. 79). Also, the ideas presented here are confused and con-
tradictory-—Ransom defines chivalry as governing "one's relations with
people one hated, not with those one loved"-—and although he does not
hate "poor Miss Olive," he certainly does not love her either--so that
as a result the passage possesses the immediacy of thought rather than
being structured and organized by the narrator. Notice that James
does not depend on the expressions "he thought" or "he perceived."

In the sentence describing chivalry and "Miss Olive's" strength, all
such expressions are eliminated, so that the reader directly experi-
ences the matter at hand through Basil.

Basil's characterization, then, is a combination of narratorial
omniscience and center of consciousness. The narrator relates Basil's
history and his personality traits omnisciently and usually satirically.
Incidentally, the narrator's satiric treatment of Basil disturbs those
critics who wish to see Basil as James's spokesman; they refuse to re-
cognize that narratorial distance from Basil reveals Basil's narrow-
ness-~a narrowness comparable to Olive's. This satiric treatment pre-

pares the reader to judge Basil's performance as center by suggesting

that because Basil is both strong-minded and prejudiced, his point of

 

 

 

view is
as cente
been app
hero's p
his shor
ally shi
of view
0
althoug
Basil‘s
posed t
is neve
Olive‘s
ceives
context
Pardon
not sh
which,
have b

u 4
eXpec

 

124

View is limited and slanted. In this manner, too, Basil's functioning
as center approaches James's goal of dramatizing character. Having
been apprised of Basil's limitation, the reader can experience the
hero's point of view first—hand, yet retain enough distance to consider
his shortcomings. Indeed, the manner in which the narration continu-
ally shifts in perspective should warn the reader not to see any point
of view as trustworthy,

Olive functions as the novel's other center of consciousness,
although the manner in which James presents her character differs from
Basil's. James is more inclined to see Olive from the outside, as op—
posed to the omniscient treatment of Basil. Olive's past, for example,
is never related by the narrator; it must be pieced together from

Olive's and other characters' remarks. Occasionally, the reader re—

 

ceives a more detailed look at her past, but that occurs within the
context of her consciousness. Olive, for example, learns that Matthias
Pardon has accompanied Verena to the theatre; Olive "was accordingly
not shocked at the idea of such adventures on Verena's part; than
which, indeed, judging from her own experience, nothing could well
have been less adventurous" (p. 102). Olive then recollects her own
"expeditions" and her feelings toward them:

The whole affair had always a primness; this was
discernable even to Olive's very limited sense of
humour. It was not so religious as going to
evening-service at King's Chapel; but it was the

next thing to it. Of course all girls didn't do

it; there were families that viewed such a custom
with disfavour. But this was where the girls were
of the romping sort; there had to be some things
they were known not to do. As a general thing,
moreover, the practice was confined to the decorous;
it was a sign of culture and quiet tastes. (p. 102)

This rev
flow of

an oppor
tain he:
so relif
are abs
view-~t
the imp
condemn
The omn
tion.

reader

omnisc
0f con
course
the mo

acteri

Basil
it is

 

125

This revelation from Olive's past is embedded in a smooth, continuous
flow of present thought. Although Olive's memory might have provided
an opportunity for omniscient narration, James permits Olive to main-
tain her integrity as center. The section beginning with "It was not
so religious" is straightforward; verbs of mental process or perception
are absent from the sentences following it. Clearly, this is Olive's
view-—the passage echoes with her typical seriousness and conservatism;
the implicit judgment of girls "of the romping sort" reiterates Olive's
condemnation of "people who disapproved of the marriage—tie" (p. 74).
The omniscient narrator stands aside so that Olive as center can func—
tion. Olive thus exposes her humorless seriousness, permitting the
reader to comprehend and judge her character.

Olive is generally present externally--as opposed to Basil's

 

 

omniscient treatment-~and James also permits her to function as center
of consciousness to develop her character. That is not to say, of
course, that she is never developed omnisciently, but James relies for
the most part on other characters' reactions and impressions to char—
acterize her, as Basil does early in the novel:

What Basil Ransom actually perceived was that Miss

Chancellor was a signal old maid. That was her

quality, her destiny; nothing could be more dis-

tinctly written. There are women who are un-

married by accident, and others who are unmarried

by option; but Olive Chancellor was unmarried by

every implication of her being. She was a spinster

as Shelley was a lyric poet, or as the month of

August is sultry. (p. 17)
Basil's description reveals more about Basil than it does about Olive--

it is one more example of Basil's tendency to pigeon-hole people be-

cause of sex. However, it is equally important that Olive strikes

 

 

Basil so
part of 1
subtly f«
In
she rare
is kept
encing t
Mrs. Luv
In Book
knife,"
and nor
the sha
Book 3,
reader,
PathiZt
enabli
Verena

ficati

 

 

126

Basil so strongly, so strongly that her nun-like stance is a large
part of his first impression of her. Olive radiates seriousness,
subtly foreshadowing her all-or-nothing dedication.

In Books 1 and 2, Olive is developed externally or omnisciently;
she rarely functions as a center of consciousness. As long as Olive
is kept at a distance, (the reader being deprived of directly experi-
encing her perspective), Olive is a legitimate object of satire, with
Mrs. Luna, Basil, and the narrator making jokes at Olive's expense.
In Book 3, when it becomes clear that Olive is losing "the war to the
knife," Olive is dealt with more sympathetically. Through omniscience
and more frequent use of the center of consciousness, James examines
the shattering of Olive's hopes and her relationShip with Verena. In
Book 3, Olive begins to assume a tragic heroine's stature, and the
reader, although judging her stifling hold on Verena, must also sym—
pathize with Olive. James facilitates the growth of this sympathy by
enabling the reader to experience Olive's point of view. The day
Verena capitulates to Basil marks a high point of the reader's identi-
fication with and sympathy for Olive:

[Olive] only went to Verena and sat down beside her.
She didn't know what to make of her manner; she had
never been like that before. She was unwilling to
speak; she seemed crushed and humbled. This was
almost the worst--if anything could be worse than what
had gone before; and Olive took her hand with an irre—
sistible impulse of compassion and reassurance. From
the way it lay in her own she guessed her whole feel-
ing--saw it was a kind of shame, shame for her weak-
ness, her swift surrender, her insane gyration, in the
morning. Verena expressed it by no protest and no ex-
planation; she appeared not even to wish to hear the
sound of her own voice. Her silence itself was an
appeal--an appeal to Olive to ask no questions (she

could trust her to inflict no spoken reproach); only
to wait till she could lift up her head again. Olive

 

Olive's
are dir
shown v
appropr
and une
kind of
Pitulat
stress
the re

and sh

Verena
tritic
with 1
teriz;
her a
"hEro
in th

origj

 

 

127

understood, or thought she understood, and the woe-

fulness of it all only seemed the deeper. She would

just sit there and hold her hand; that was all she

could do; they were beyond each other's help in any

way now. Verena leaned her head back and closed her

eyes, and for an hour, as nightfall settled in the

room, neither of the young women spoke. Distinctly,

it was a kind of shame. After a while the parlour-

maid, very casual, in the manner of the servants at

Marmion, appeared on the threshold with a lamp; but

Olive motioned her frantically away. She wished to

keep the darkness. It was a kind of shame.

(pp. 356-7)
Olive's consciousness functions here at its purest. Her perceptions
are directed inwardly and outwardly: Verena, who has surrendered, is
shown vividly, yet Olive's reactions are also apparent. The language,
appropriate to the intensity of the occasion, is simple, strong, choppy,
and unembellished; the three—fold repetition of the clause "it was a
kind of shame"--a clause summarizing the women's feelings and the ca-
pitulation's enormity-—gives the passage the cadence of a mind under
stress so great that thought is dull and repetitious. Olive enlists
the reader's sympathy through this intense dramatization of her loss
and shame.

James's interest in dramatization is most clearly revealed in
Verena Tarrant's characterization. Although he "goes behind" her at
critical junctures—-her first visit to Olive and the day she spends
with Basil in Central Park--James renders her dramatically by charac-
terizing her only through external means. James originally conceived
her as the novel's center when in his notebook he designates her as
"heroine," noting that "the tale relates the struggle that takes place

in the mind of the [heroine]."35 In the novel James diverges from his

original plan by presenting her through Olive's and Basil's perceptions.

 

As a res
inner st
through
characte
form prt
had bee
show Ja
to expe
center

of the

Americ
of the
for it
innoce
being
the or
her a
reade
"war

antag

char;

Whic
its

bine

 

 

128

As a result, Verena as heroine is an intriguing character because her
inner struggle and "capitulation" are not exposed and she is seen
through those characters trying to possess her. However much Verena's
characterization deviates from James's original intentions, its actual
form presents no great departure from the line of development James
had been following in the early eighties. The tales of those years
show James remaining outside of his heroines. This tactic enabled him
to experiment with the heroine's dramatic presentation through the
center of consciousness. Verena's characterization is a continuation
of the experiments begun in Nancy Headway, Lady Barb, and Pandora Day.36
Verena is unusually pliable and passive. She is very much the
American girl; Olive sees her as having "kept the consummate innocence
of the American girl, that innocence which was the greatest of all,
for it had survived the abolition of walls and locks" (p. 106). Her
innocence and her lack of self-awareness make her admirably suited to
being manipulated by those who possess both a strong sense of self and
the conviction of their views. Because Verena lacks self-awareness,
her thoughts and perceptions would not be very illuminating to the
reader nor would they enhance the novel's conflict, Basil's and Olive's
"war to the knife." Indeed, that Verena is presented through the
antagonists' and narrator's points of view thus gives interest to a
character whose personality is as yet nascient.

The Bostonians is an important novel, not only for its subject,

 

which reflects James's friendship with the French Naturalists, but for
its techniques as well. James's most American tale, the novel com-

bines brilliant evocations of the American scene with the satiric

 

exposure
Bostonia
total wo
the move
London,"
able use
James g1
characu
charact
other‘ 5
Verena
on a mu
tales c
flawed
expert

m

bashed
Ohm sa
and ar
BOStor
lemat;
methOI
the s
0liVe

aCter

 

 

129

exposure of the American penchant for espousing clauses. But The

Bostonians is also significant in terms of its place within James's

 

total work. Essentially experimental in both form and point of View,
the novel continues James's development evident in "The Siege of

' and "Pandora." Although there is consider-

London," "Lady Barberina,‘
able use of a narrator, who wavers between omniscience and ignorance,
James gradually depends on centers of consciousness to narrate and to
characterize. Specifically, the centers become means to dramatize
character: when Olive and Basil function as centers, they develop each

other's characters as well as their own, and they present dramatically

Verena Tarrant, the novel's heroine. Thus, The Bostonians sustains,

 

on a much larger scale, the experimental techniques initiated in the
tales of the early eighties. And most criticism of the novel as a
flawed masterpiece stems from the failure to recognize the novel's
experimental nature. As a result, James's experiments in_The
Bostonians have not been examined in detail.

Many readers take exception to the narrator; because he una—
bashedly manipulates the narrative and does not deny any character his
own satire and criticism, the narrator may seem a troubling presence
and an alien element in a James novel. The narrator, who gives Th§_
Bostonians much of James's deliberate curiousness, becomes less prob-
lematic if he is seen as part of James's attempt to reconcile the
methods of painting with the methods of dramatizing. The narrator sets
the scene and introduces the characters, providing a stage upon Which
Olive and Basil can perform as centers who dramatically develop char—

acter. In this function, the centers provide an intimate view of

 

characte
timacy,

culture.
timacy .
reader

the nar
framewo
novel “

tial e2

ous cr
to ser
vocati
logic:
ulthm
an in
as a

Pecul

 

130

character, typical of the center of consciousness technique. This in-
timacy, however, is at odds with James's aim of criticizing American
culture. The narrator, then, in his merciless satire, balances the in—
timacy and the criticism by continually interposing distance between
reader and character. To be sure, at times James's shifting between
the narrator and the characters is less than smooth. Yet within the
framework of James's thematic purposes and technical experiments in a

novel "most salient and peculiar,"

the narrator is, finally, an essen—
tial element.

The Bostonians, true to its peculiar nature, has endured a curi—

 

ous critical history: when not totally ignored, it has been subjected
to serious misinterpretation. Because of its controversial and pro-
vocative subject, the novel is used to support or refute narrow ideo-

logical standpoints--a treatment ironic because The Bostonians is

 

ultimately James's plea for opendmindedness. Certainly, the novel is

an intriguing example of James's art, and to approach The Bostonians

 

as a significant technical experiment delineates its remarkable--and

peculiar--qualities.

 

1

Books,

2

Henry L
emphasi

notebo
Murdoc
Daudet
Authen
portre
and I
Parti
Mm.
among
Urn, II
DP. 5
eratu
Wei
m.-
aux v
Gerve
Macnr

 

 

Notes

Henry James, The Bostonians (1886; rpt. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin
Books, Inc., 1966); hereafter cited in text.

 

2 F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds. The Notebooks of

Henry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 47; James's
emphasis.

 

 

3 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 47.

4 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 47.

James acknowledges the French Naturalists' influence in the
notebook entry of April 8, 1883 when he admits that "Daudet's
Evangéliste has given me the idea of this thing“ (Matthiessen and
Murdock, p. 47). James, in reviewing L'Evangéliste, found fault with
Daudet's characterization, particularly that of the women: "[Madame
Autheman's character] was a great opportunity for a piece of spiritual
portraiture; but we know nothing about Madame Autheman's inner springs
and I think we fail to believe in her" ["Alphonse Daudet," (1883) in
Partial Portraits (London: Macmillan, 1888), p. 199]. Others have
documented The Bostonians' kinship with French realism and naturalism,
among them Daniel Lerner and Oscar Cargill, "Henry James at the Grecian
Urn," PMLA, 66 (1951), 316-31; Lyall Powers, Henry James and the Natu-
ralist Mbvement (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1971),
pp. 56-8; Powers, "James's Debt to Alphonse Daudet," Comparative Lit—
erature, 24 (1972), 150-62; Philip Grover, Henry James and the French
NOvel: A Study in Inspiration (London: Elek Books, Ltd., 1973);
Adelina R. Tintner, "James and Balzac: The Bostonians and 'La Fille
aux Yeux d'Or,'" Comparative Literature, 29 (1977), 241-54; and David
Gervais, Flaubert and Henry James: A Study in Contrasts (London: The
Macmillan Press, Ltd., 1978).

 

 

 

 

Critics who trace the relationship between the women's move-
ment of the sixties and seventies include Abigail Ann Hamblen, "Henry
James and the Freedom Fighters of the Seventies," Geoggia Review, 20
(1966), 35-44; Howard Kerr, Mediums, and Spirit-Rappers, and Roaring
Radicals: Spiritualism in American Literature, 1850-1900 (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 190-222; Sara deSaussure Davis,
"Feminist Sources in The Bostonians," American Literature, 50 (1979),
570—87; Robert Emmet Long, The Great Succession: Henry James and the
Legacy of Hawthorne (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1979), pp. 118-20; and Ruth Evelyn Quebe, "The Bostonians: Some

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

131

 

 

historic
80-100.

that Jam
ment in

7

9

The Odd
ed. Sus
1972),

 

l(

betweev
W
as "a

ried w
common
defini
tion c
in New

1

Vintag
lette
infer
teriz.
[Lem
harva
Villi
manne
the e
tions
itEE}
nize
ePPe
her
1'10 5
Bird
(197
shif

 

132

Historical Sources and Their Implications," Centennial Review, 25 (1981),
80-100. These articles, particularly Davis's and Quebe's, demonstrate
that James based many of the novel's characters on individuals promi—
nent in the movement and in the daily newspapers.

 

7 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 47.

8 James, "The Art of Fiction," Partial Portraits, pp. 379-80.

 

9 Nan Bauer Maglin, "Fictional Feminists in The Bostonians and

The Odd WOmen," in Images of Women in Fiction: Feminist Perspectives,

ed. Susan Koppelman Cornillon (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press,
1972), p. 219.

 

10 In Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love

between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (New York: William
Morrow and Co., 1981), Lillian Faderman defines the Boston marriage
as "a long-term monogamous relationship between two otherwise unmar-
ried women" (p. 190). According to Faderman, the relationship was
common during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Faderman's
definition can be considered as a gloss to James's notebook descrip-
tion of "one of those friendships between women which are so common
in New England."

11 In The James Family: A Groupriograp y (1947; rpt. New York:

Vintage Books, Inc., 1980), F. O. Matthiessen notes that William's
letter has been lost (p. 325). His charges against the novel can be
inferred, however, from Henry's defense of the novel and his charac-
terization of Miss Birdseye, in a letter written February 14, 1885
[Letters, 1883—1895, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 68-70]. Henry eloquently denied
William's accusation by reaponding in a classic description of the
manner in which authors create character. Nevertheless, to compare
the early description of Miss Birdseye with the James family's descrip-
tions of Miss Peabody as recorded in Jean Strouse's Alice James: A
Biography (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1980), p. 66, is to recog-
nize considerable truth in William's charge. And when Miss Birdseye
appears later in the novel, particularly in those chapters describing
her last summer in Marmion, James treats her with gentle dignity—-and
no satire. Daniel H. Heaton, in "The Altered Characterization of Miss
Birdseye in Henry James's The Bostonians" American Literature, 50
(1979), 588-603 details the controversy Miss Birdseye aroused and the
shift in her characterization.

2 James, Letters, 1883-1895, p. 70.

 

13 F. O. Matthiessen reprints the text of William's letter in

The James Family, pp. 328-9. Although William praised The Bostonians

 

 

 

 

enthusi
can eas
sparkli
success

1

to Edmu
subject
some i]
to be'

Charles

 

Graft
New Yr
PD. 9

Studi
M
Chanc
diScL
hove]
httwe
M

ful

Univ
Posi
Fair
Stud
Fe
M

 

133

enthusiastically, he tempered his enthusiasm by pointing out that "one

can easily imagine the story cut out and made into a bright, short,
sparkling thing of a hundred pages, which would have been an absolute
success."

14 James, Letters, 1883-1895, pp. 121-2. James, in reminiscing

to Edmund Gosse about the novel, "seemed to recall that he found the
subject and the material, after [he] had got launched in it, under
some illusion, less interesting and repaying than [he] had assumed it
to bé'[Percy Lubbock, ed., The Letters of Henrngames (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), II, p. 498].

 

 

15 Lubbock, II, p. 100.

16 Charles Child Walcutt, Man's Changing_Masks: Modes and Methods
of Characterization in Fiction (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press,
1966), pp. 183, 187; Osborn Andreas, Henrngames and the Expanding
Horizon (Seattle: University of washington Press, 1948), p. 34; Pelham
Edgar, Henry James: Man and Author (New York: Russell and Russell,
Inc., 1964), p. 262; Charles R. Anderson, "James's Portrait of the
Southerner," American Literature, 27-(1955), 309—31; and Clinton
Forrest Oliver, "Henry James as Social Critic," Antioch Review, 7
(1947), 243-58.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7 Walcutt, pp. 183, 187, 190; Andreas, p. 34; Clinton Hartley
Grattan, The Three Jameses: A Family of Minds (1932; rpt. New York:
New York University Press, 1962), p. 267; Charles Thomas Samuels, Th3
Ambiguity of Henry James (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971),
pp. 98-99; and Ronald M. Meldrum, "Three of Henry James's Dark Ladies,"
Research Studies of Washington State University, 37 (1969), 54-60.

 

18 Sara deSaussure Davis, "The Bostonians Reconsidered," Tulane
Studies in English, 23 (1978), 39—60; Lee Ann Johnson, "The Psychology
of Characterization: James's Portraits of Verena Tarrant and Olive
Chancellor," Studies in the Novel, 6 (1974), 295-303; Lillian Faderman
discusses the Boston marriage with particular reference to James's
novel in Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love
between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, pp. 190-5; and
Maglin paints James as an anti-feminist in "Fictional Feminists in
The Bostonians and The Odd Women."

 

 

 

19 Anderson, p. 314 and Gerald Haslam, "Olive Chancellor's Pain—
ful Victory in The Bostonians," Research Studies of Washington State
University, 36 (1968), 237, respectively. Critics who see Verena
positively include walcutt, pp. 191-2; W. R. Martin, "The Use of the
Fairy-Tale: A Note on the Structure of The Bostonians," English
Studies in Africa, 2 (1959), 98-109; Robert L. Selig, "The Red—Haired
Lady Orator: Parallel Passages in The Bostonians and Adam Bede,"
Nineteenth—Century Fiction, 16 (September, 1961), 164—9; Hamblen,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1884-I
Wei
(1969
hered
m

The A
Press
The I
Tex.
25 (

that
1 st
out
the

[Ly

 

 

134

35-44; and David Green, "Witch and Bewitchment in The Bostonians,"
Papgrs on Language and Literature, 3 (1967), 267-9. Those more critical
of Verena: Philip Page, "The Curious Narration of The Bostonians,"
American Literature, 46 (1974), 374-83; William McMurray, "Pragmatic
Realism in The Bostonians," Nineteenth Century Fiction, 16 (1962), 339-
44; Martha Banta, Henry James and the Occult: The Great Extension
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1972), p. 18; and Sallie J.
Hall, "Henry James and the Bluestockings: Satire and Morality in Th;
Bostonians," Aeolian Happs: Essays in Literature in Honor of Maurice
Brownipg Cramer, ed. Donna G. Fricke and Douglas C. Fricke (Bowling
Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Press, 1976), pp. 207-25.

 

 

 

 

20 Leavis calls The Bostonians "a wonderfully rich, intelligent,

and brilliant book," noting that "it is one of James's achieved major
classics, and among the works that he devoted to American life it is
supreme" The Great Tradition (1948; rpt. Harmondsworth, Middlesex:
Penguin Books, Ltd., 1962), p. 154. Irving Howe sees the novel as
"great," and points to its "charm" and "wit" [Politics and the Novel
(1957; rpt. Greenwich, Ct.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1967), pp.
186-7].

 

 

 

21 warner Berthoff, The Ferment of Realism: American Literature,

1884-1919 (New York: The Free Press, 1965), p. 107; Alfred Habegger,
"The Disunity of The Bostonians," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 24

(1969), 193-209; and Donald David Stone, N0veliSts in a Changing World:
Meredith, James, and the Transformation of English Fiction in the 1880's
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 278.

 

 

2 Samuels, p. 100 and Peter Buitenhuis, The Grasping Imaggnation:
The American Writings of Henry James (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1970), p. 158; Theodore C. Miller, "The Muddled Politics of
The Bostonians," Georgia Review, 26 (1972), 336-46; Elizabeth McMahan,
"Sexual Desire and Illusion in The Bostonians," Modern Fiction Studies,
25 (1979), 241-51; Johnson, p. 295; and Anderson, p. 323.

 

3 Samuels, p. 107.

24 In an August 25, 1915 letter to Edmund Gosse, James wishes

that he could have included it in the New York Edition: "All the same,
I should have liked to review it for the Edition--it would have come
out a much truer and more curious thing (it meant to be curious from
the first)" [Lubbock, II, p. 498].

2 . ’ I .
5 Besides the most obv1ous source, Daudet's L'Evangeliste

[Lyall H. Powers, Henry James and the Naturalist Movement, and Daniel
Lerner and Oscar Cargill, "Henry James at the Grecian Urn], critics
are inclined to see a bewildering variety of works as sources for Thg_
Bostonians. By no means an exhaustive list these sources include

The Blithedale Romance [Marius Bewley, "James's Debt to Hawthorne (I):
The Blithedale Romance and The Bostonians," Scrutiny, 16 (1949),

 

 

 

 

 

 

178-95;
Legacy <
Trials <
96]; Hov
Laws C
[Robert
The Bee
Green,

[Lerner
"James

241-54]
tale [I
of llhi
Allusit
47]; tl
Pastor

the to

Romant

(Charl
Walter
(Cambl

is tr
cause
most

P. 20
State

Stout
Cont
a pa:
lflfifi
Vict
Wide
the

Shar

374.

135

178—95; Robert Emmet Long, The Great Succession: Henry James and the
Legacy of Hawthorne, pp. 117-57]; The Scarlet Letter [R. W. B. Lewis,

Trials of the Word (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), pp. 88—
96]; Howells's Dr. Breen's Practice [Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry
James (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1961), pp. 124-6]; Adam Bede
[Robert A. Selig, "The Red—Haired Lady Orator: Parallel Passages in

The Bostonians and Adam Bede, 164-6]; Notre Dame and Lohengrin [David
Green, "Witch and Bewitchment in The Bostonians," 267—9]; Antigone
[Lerner and Cargill]; and "La Fille aux Yeux d'Or" [Adeline R. Tintner,
"James and Balzac: The Bostonians and 'La Fille aux Yeux d'Or,'"
241—54]. The Bostonians has been related to various genres: the fairy—
tale [W. R. Martin, "The Use of the Fairy-Tale: A Note on the Structure
of The Bostonians," 98—109; Howard D. Pearce, "Witchcraft Imagery and
Allusions in James's Bostonians," Studies in the Novel, 6 (1974), 236—
47]; the pastoral [Robert C. McLean, "The Bostonians: New England
Pastoral," Papers on Language and Literature, 7 (1971), 374—81]; and

the romance [Elizabeth Schultz, "The Bostonians: The Contagion of
Romantic Illusion," Genre, 4 (1971), 45—59].

 

 

26 Sergio Perosa, Henry James and the Experimental Novel
(Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1978), p. 19;

Walter Isle, Experiments in Form: Henry James's Novels, 1896-1901
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 12—3.

7 Irving Howe excuses the novel's defects by noting that "it
is true that The Bostonians does falter about half way, but only be-
cause James is not quite sure how to manage one of the boldest and
most brilliant transitions of his entire work" [Politics and the Novel,
p. 201]. Unfortunately, Howe does not elaborate upon this tantalizing
statement.

28 Stone, Novelists in a Changing World, pp. 261—2, 277—8.

Stone cites the presence of an omniscient narrator, a closed ending (in
contrast to James's typically ambiguous ones), Dickensian satire, and

a passive Trollopean heroine as the Victorian features of Thg
Bostonians. One can, of course, argue with Stone's definitions of the
Victorian novel; nevertheless, aspects of the narrative technique, a
wide variety of characters, the brilliant evocation of urban life, and
the concern with social issues are similarities that The Bostonians
shares with the "typical" Victorian novel.

29 Philip Page, "The Curious Narration of The Bostonians," pp.
374—83.

30 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 47; Lubbock, II, p. 498.

l Page, p. 379.

 

 

 

32

point ti
["The Di

3
the "51
Bostoni

'1

a

ped of
sistenl
sciousr
to say
functi
the re
ter's

center
cratic
the pa
lary,

criti
Johns
Verer

 

 

136

Stone, p. 262. In this regard, Habegger makes the provocative
point that "the narrator makes his own consciousness the 'center'"
["The Disunity of The Bostonians," p. 200].

33 I am indebted to Sara deSaussure Davis for her description of

the "slippery irony of the narrative voice" ["Feminist Sources in The
Bostonians," p. 585].

34 The passage seems to begin with the omniscient narrator, strip—

ped of his satire. However, in The Bostonians, the narrator is con—
sistently satirical and deprecating. In contrast, the center of con—
sciousness is usually straightforward and serious in tone. That is not
to say that the center does not serve James's satiric purposes. When
functioning as center, the character exposes his or her foolishness;
the reader judges, unaided by direct authorial statement, that charac-
ter‘s absurdity. It is also important to note that in passages of the
center's point of view, the language assumes the character's idiosyn—
cratic speech rhythms, so that the language operates on two levels:

the passage's actual content, and the "personality” revealed in vocabu-
lary, content, and grammatical structures.

35 Matthiessen and Murdock, pp. 46, 47.

6 By not seeing Verena as a continuation of this experiment,
critics tend to regard Verena's characterization as a failure. Lee Ann
Johnson, in "The Psychology of Characterization: James's Portraits of
Verena Tarrant and Olive Chancellor," exemplifies this position.

 

 

 

noting
"compel
look 0:
colour
hmmn
gible
novel
conceI
novel
ficat
the n
Prese
and 6
all.
Palp

eifi

"The
"As
the

pas

 

CHAPTER V

The Penetrating Imagination

In "The Art of Fiction" James argues for fiction as a fine art by
noting the kinship between the novelist and the painter: the novelist
"competes with his brother the painter in his attempt to render the
look of things, the look that conveys their meaning, to catch the
colour, the relief, the expression, the surface, the substance of the
human spectacle."l The novelist, like the painter, captures the tan—
gible surface of life to communicate meaning. The Bostonians, the
novel directly following James's 1884 essay, amply illustrates James's
conception of the kinship between novelist and painter, in that the
novel is devoted to rendering "the air of reality (solidity or speci-
fication)" set forth as "the supreme virtue of a novel."2 Although
the novel's narrator avows that certain situations make him despair of
presenting them "with the air of reality,"3 vivid character sketches
and evocations of place achieve the essay's ideal of "solidity." Of
all James's novels, The Bostonians is distinguished by the dense and
palpable texture of its surface and its accurate portrayal of a spe—
cific time and place in the human spectacle.

Additionally, the novel justifies another kinship proposed in
"The Art of Fiction," the novelist's brotherhood with the historian.
"As the picture is reality, so the novel is history"; the novelist and
the historian share the intent of representing and illustrating the

4 . . . .
past and the actions of men. Again, The Bostonians exemplifies the

 

 

 

 

novel 3:
tion."
as real
novelis
5
truth.
with t]
this a
novel;

lar mi

an in:

0f pe1

For ;

Move

Pere
rece
Surf
mam

Jam

tio

 

138

novel as history in recreating the past with "solidity of specifica-
tion." Yet the novel, as conceptualized in "The Art of Fiction" and

as realized in The Bostonians, does not merely record the past. The

 

novelist probes beneath the surface of the human spectacle to touch
truth.5 Rejecting the popular belief that the novelist is not concerned
with truth, James compares the novelist to the'philOSOpher.6 In making
this comparison James repudiates Besant who prescribes rules for the
novel; James asserts that the novel's purpose is "to reveal a particu-
lar mind," making fiction "a personal, a direct impression of life."7
James's view of the novel as "an attempt to represent life" from

an individual, personal perspective prompts him to redefine the nature
of perception itself:

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace

the implications of things, to judge the whole piece

by the pattern, the condition of feeling life in gen-

eral so completely that you are well on your way to

knowing any particular corner of it--this cluster of

gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.8
For James, experience is an act of the imagination, enabling him to
move from the surface of the human Spectacle "to trace the implications
of things." In defining experience James stresses the receptive and
perceptive consciousness--experience is the action of the consciousness
receiving and organizing physical reality, going beyond the perceptible
surface "to guess the unseen from the seen." Experience, then, is a
matter of personal impressions. It is this kind of experience that

James transmutes into the fabric of fiction.

As The Bostonians attempts to capture the "solidity of specifica-

 

tion," so The Princess Casamassima,9 serialized in Atlantic Monthly

 

 

 

Septembe
in Eggg
between
mama
novel's
and to
interp
from h
a Fren
her se
who ii
howevl
to vi
to a
ical
0f s
also
able
revo

the

ing

Chr

Bel

 

139

September 1885-October 1886 (the same time The Bostonians was appearing

 

in Century Magazine), is concerned with the reciprocal relationship

 

between experience and the receptive consciousness. The Princess

 

Casamassima is James's attempt to guess the unseen from the seen--the

 

novel's backdrop is the political unrest among London's lower classes—-
and to examine the nature of the consciousness as it perceives and
interprets life. The novel traces the development of Hyacinth Robinson
from his tenth year to his death, ten years later, by suicide. Son of
a French seamstress imprisoned for murdering an English lord who was
her seducer, Hyacinth is raised by Amanda Pynsent, a poor dressmaker,
who instills in the boy a vivid sense of his noble origins. Hyacinth,
however, learns of his plebeian heritage when he is taken to the prison
to visit his dying mother. As he grows older, Hyacinth is apprenticed
to a bookbinder, and at the bindery he meets Eustace Poupin, a polit-
ical exile from Paris. Poupin nurtures in Hyacinth an acute awareness
of social inequities and the necessity for social revolution. Poupin
also introduces Hyacinth to Paul Muniment, who involves the impression-
able bookbinder in the anarchist movement. Hyacinth, goaded by the
revolutionaries' inaction, pledges himself to assassinating a duke on
the demand of Hoffendahl, leader of the underground.

Although Hyacinth vows his life to the revolution, he is increas—
ingly sensitive to art and culture. For Hyacinth, the beautiful things
of civilization are incarnated in the Princess Casamassima, the willful

Christina Light of Roderick Hudson, now estranged from her Prince.

 

Believing herself deeply involved with the revolutionaries and bored
by the banal, the Princess cultivates Hyacinth because he represents

the "people." She discovers, however, that he is tainted: he has,

 

 

at leas
lizatic
journ i
longer
consid
are pu
Unwill

Hyacin

the n<
"The.
"to g
patte
he bc
down

stre:

ficu

and
app
pre

his

140

at least partially, an aristocratic parentage, and he appreciates civi—
lization's treasures——an appreciation further enhanced by a brief so—
journ in Paris and Venice. The Princess drops Hyacinth because he no
longer wholeheartedly sympathizes with the movement, although he still
considers himself bound by his vow. Hyacinth's conflicting loyalties
are put to the test when he is ordered to carry out the assassination.
Unwilling to repeat the crime of his mother and bring her shame to life,
Hyacinth turns the pistol upon his own heart.

Although The Princess Casamassima is inspired by actual events,10

 

the novel's real subject is the consciousness as it is described in

"The Art of Fiction." The novel is James's experiment on a wide scale

"to guess the unseen from the seen, to judge the whole piece from the

"11

pattern. It is true that James depends upon actual observations:

he boasts to T. S. Perry of his expedition to Millbank prison; he jots

 

down "phrases of people"; and like Dickens he haunts the London
streets.12 In spite of all this gathered data, James still has a dif—
ficult time achieving solidity of specification--actual details re-
mained vague13-—but James turns his "not knowing" to advantage: "My
scheme," James recollects in the novel's New York Edition Preface,
"called for the suggested nearness (to all our apparently ordered life)
of some sinister anarchic underworld, heaving in its pain, its power
and its hate; a presentation not of sharp particulars, but of loose
appearances, vague motions and sounds and symptoms, just perceptible

l4

presences and eneral loomin possibilities." Thus James enlar es
8 g 3

his ”not knowing” to "the value [he wishes] most to render.”15

The Preface to The Princess Casamassima, dominated by James's

 

discussion of the consciousness, is in many respects an elaboration

 

of the t
essay's
relatio
There,
what he
active
tures”
James

est in

any F
that
one.
what
Stit
wou]
nat1

Cas
\

 

141

of the concepts put forth in "The Art of Fiction," confirming the
essay's influence upon the novel. James returns, for example, to the
relationship between experience and consciousness in the Preface.
There, James defines experience as "our apprehension and our measure of
V. "16 . .

what happens to us as soc1al creatures. Experience is the result of
active participation in the world--"what happens to us as social crea-
tures"—-not the passive aestheticism ofwhichJames has been accused.
James continues to stress action as he acknowledges his abiding inter-
est in the individual consciousness:

This in fact I have ever found rather terribly the

point——that the figures in any pictures, the agents

in any drama, are interesting only in proportion as

they feel their respective situations; since the con—

sciousness, on their part, of the complication ex—

hibited forms for us their link of connexion with it.17

James shifts metaphors here, moving from the passive "figures in

any picture" to the active "agents in any drama,"

thereby emphasizing
that the link between the consciousness and the situation is a dynamic
one. What is important is not what the "agents in any drama" see, but
what they feel. That feeling is a reciprocal relationship, and it con—
stitutes James's interest: "The interest of that attitude and the act
would be the actor's imagination and vision of them, together with the

"18

nature and degree of their felt return upon him. Thus The Princess

Casamassima, the product of James's attempt to unite observation and

 

imagination, is James's celebration of the power of his own conscious—
ness "convert[ing] the very pulses of the air into revelations."19

Moreover, James sees the action of the consciousness as a means

to capture dramatic intensity:

 

The urn
is the
ter of
tion,"
fietic
sciou:

the fl

ness,
ing t
nizes
then
scio
the

Watt
val
OfU
con

Jam

lE<

 

142

Intimacy with a man's specific behavior, with his

given case, is desperately certain to make us see

it as a whole-—in which event arbitrary limitations

of our own vision lose whatever beauty they may on

occasion have pretended to. What a man thinks and

what he feels are the history and character of what

he does; on all of which things the logic of inten-

sity rests. Without intensity where is the vivid-

ness, and without vividness where is presentability?20
The manner in which a man responds to individual things and experiences
is the key to his character; his responses are "the history and charac-
ter of what he does"--reiterating James's joining, in "The Art of Fic—
tion," character and incident as inseparable. Importantly for James's
fiction, this passage shows James transmuting his subject, the con-
sciousness, into practice-~"what a man thinks and what he feels" form
the foundations for dramatic "presentability."

Thus Hyacinth Robinson, as the receptive and organizing conscious-
ness, assumes the author's place in the narrative as a means of achiev-
ing that dramatic presentability. Indeed, in the Preface James recog—
nizes his affinity with Hyacinth as the perceiving consciousness, and
therefore Hyacinth's qualifying to replace James as the narrating con-
sciousness: "I had only to conceive his watching the same public show,
the same innumerable appearances, I had watched myself, and of his

d."21 The human spectacle of London

watching very much as I had watche
acquires dramatic immediacy because it is reflected through Hyacinth's
often bewildered consciousness. But more significantly, Hyacinth's
consciousness struggling to reconcile his dual heritage, constitutes
James's subject and provides a method for presenting that subject. In

The Princess Casamassima, James achieves in Hyacinth many of the ob-

jectives proposed in "The Art of Fiction"——it is no mistake when in

 

the nove
was 105‘
T
pable,
London.
Ward t(
to the
sense
render
gance
thatl
dence
tion
pends
tale,
indut
shar
Egin
the
of ;
nah
sio
Ehg

mas

 

143

the novel James describes the bookbinder as "a youth on whom nothing
I! - y . . . 22
was lost (p. 125), ech01ng James s admonition in the 1884 essay.
The city of London reflected through Hyacinth is vivid and pal—
pable, inspiring Cargill and Dupee to see the novel's subject as
23 . . . . .
London. The City s pervaSive and dominating presence has prompted
. . . 24 . . .
Ward to call London a character in its own right —-a claim testifying
to the success of the center of consciousness as a means of creating
sense of place. The London of The Princess Casamassima is brilliantly
rendered, from the dinginess of back street pubs and shops to the ele—
gance of Mayfair. James is quick to point out in the novel's Preface
that he drew upon impressions gathered during his first year of resi—
dence in London.25 The Princess derives from James's direct observa-
tion of the London scene in much the same way as The Bostonians de—
pends on his American observations. And as in his "peculiar" American
tale, James focuses a critical eye on society. These similarities have
induced critics to pair the two novels: Putt emphasizes the novel's
shared qualities, as does Goode and Trilling; Kimmey regards The
Princess as James's "rewrite" of his American failure; and Powers calls
ll ' - "26
the novels companion pieces. Granted, both novels bear the mark
of James's interest in French naturalism--both novels presuppose a
naturalistic view of heredity and environment--but divergent conclu—
sions about that view come out of each novel. The overall tone of
The Bostonians is satiric; James employs a merciless narrator who un—
masks the characters' limitations and who deflates their ridiculous
rhetoric. The narrator's admissions of ignorance, however, suggest

that the characters exist beyond the text—-they have a life to which

 

 

both nax
bility l
James's
bound b
g
In plat
of vieV
narrat
the he
split
and id
repre
Hyaci
tial
his n
that
endi
have

ESCa

natl
tio

par

 

144

both narrator and reader are not privy--and the characters' inaccessi-
bility taken together with the novel's ambiguous ending indicate in
James's "very American tale" that human beings are not irrevocably
bound by their past or their environment.

The Princess Casamassima is at once more intimate and pessimistic.

 

In place of The Bostonians' objectivity that results from many points

 

of view, James depends upon the dominating perspective of Hyacinth; the
narrator's brief appearances reveal him to be tenderly solicitous over
the hero. Moreover, Hyacinth Robinson is a man divided against himself,
split between a "French impropriety" who dies ignominiously in prison
and who ties him to the people and a dissolute English aristocrat who
represents Hyacinth's link to culture and civilization. To what degree
Hyacinth's heritage is responsible for his fate is moot; what is cru-
cial for the novel is that Hyacinth believes he is to be torn between
his mother's and father's influences. And so intense is this conflict

that Hyacinth can choose only death. In The Bostonians, the ambiguous

 

ending leaves Open the possibility that the characters may attain some

happiness; the ending of The Princess Casamassima admits of no hope or

 

escape.

The Princess Casamassima reflects James's interest in French

 

naturalism and social criticism-—interests dominating much of his fic—
tion of the eighties. The novel's involvement with social issues,
particularly economic inequities and political agitation, has deflected
many critics from the novel's true subject——the workings of Hyacinth's
consciousness. For example, Tilley, Stoehr, and Trilling search for

the actual figures who serve as James's models for Hyacinth, Paul, the

Princes
lengthy
Winters
under 2
does n<
Woodco
ing th
James'
dated,

real z

have
criti
ests
Pref:
Hyac
Hyac
tech
nove
Hya<
havr
Yet
fro
Man

Hy;

145

Princess, and Hoffendahl.27 Despite these factual studies, there is a
lengthy debate about James's success in rendering the political scene.
Winters compares James's rendition of social unrest to a "small boy
under a sheet at Hallowe'en"; less vehemently, Howe asserts that James
does not have "a commanding vision of the political life"; both
Woodcock and Oliver cite James‘s historical inaccuracies in his depict-
ing the anarchist movement of the 18803.28 In contrast, Spender praises
James's observation of political types as "remarkable and curiously un—
dated," and Trilling regards James's picture of political unrest as

29

real and "confirmed by multitudinous records."

Although the majority of studies on The Princess Casamassima

 

have been concerned with source-hunting3O or James's politics, other
critics have focused on issues more closely related to James's inter—
ests suggested by "The Art of Fiction" and explained in the novel's
preface. Vidan, for example, approaches the novel as the story of
Hyacinth's growing awareness of his world, and Powers recognizes that
Hyacinth's consciousness provides James with both subject and narrative
technique.31 In spite of the general acknowledgment of Hyacinth as the
novel's hero and controlling point of view, few critics focus on
Hyacinth's character or consciousness; only Luecke, Kimmey, and Page
have made detailed examination of Hyacinth's "fallible consciousness."32
Yet opinion widely diverges on the nature of his character, ranging
from seeing Hyacinth as a ”prig" to a "victim of his own despair.”33
Many, however, including Bogan, Oliver, Dubler, and Luecke, recognize
Hyacinth as the novel's "finest intelligence," a "significant reflec—

l

tion of the complexities of his society,‘ and a crucial technical

 

device.
for ex:
with J;
35
art.
for co
passiv

ideas

Ward <

persp
B3329
who u
The r
goes
Hyac
tor

Hyac
fatc

wit}

rat

all
nar
Hy;

pm

146

device.34 Others cast Hyacinth as a major flaw in the novel. Stone,
for example, asserts that the problem with Hyacinth is the problem
with James who stuffs Hyacinth with his own illusions about life and
art.35 For Dupee, Howe, and Ward, Hyacinth is not an effective means
for conveying James's political and social insights because he is too
passive and hypersensitive: Dupee sees Hyacinth dying of a poverty of
ideas while Howe faults his "feminine insularity of character,” and
Ward describes Hyacinth as a spectator rather than victim of tragedy.36

Whether or not the characterization of Hyacinth is flawed, his
perspective is the major narrating and characterizing mode in The
Princess Casamassima. Yet James also employs an omniscient narrator
who maintains a pervasive though subdued presence throughout the novel.
The narrator functions most freely in the first five chapters where he
goes behind Miss Pynsent and Mr. Vetch to develop ten-year—old
Hyacinth and to trace his rearing. Thus even with an omniscient narra-
tor James avoids the traditional sketch of the hero by projecting
Hyacinth's background through his surrogate parents. And when the nar—
rator does report to the traditional biographical sketch, as he does
with Eustace Poupin, the narrator limits himself to essential facts
rather than psychological summaries.

The narrator continues his restraint throughout the novel, usu—
ally confining himself to references to "our hero." Occasionally the
narrator is more intrusive, particularly when James must shift from
Hyacinth's consciousness to other means of narration. The narrator
prefaces Hyacinth's letter to the Princess: "Three weeks after this

he found himself in Venice, whence he addressed to the Princess

 

Casamas
332).

narratc
to try

scienc

the na
Hyacir
does I
of di
ancin
forwa

withc

Hyac
ness
ness

acti

125
obj
nov

Spe

147

Casamassima a letter of which I reproduce the principal passages" (p.

332). And an even more awkward shift, reminiscent of The Bostonians'

narrator, occurs when Hyacinth meets the Prince; "It is forbidden us
to try the question of what Hyacinth . . . may have had on his con—
science . . ." (p. 441).

But these ungainly intrusions are relatively infrequent. Where
the narrator might be expected to be most prominent—-the scenes where
Hyacinth is absent-~are purely objective and dramatic. The narrator
does not make his presence felt. Instead, these scenes are composed
of dialogue and minimal stage directions. Such scenes, vital in bal—
ancing Hyacinth's warped view of characters, are narrated straight—
forwardly, the characters themselves generating the narrative movement
without the benefit of a narrator who edits, structures, and interprets.

The characters thus perform as if they were on a stage; when
Hyacinth enters, the scene shifts to the perspective of his conscious—
ness which like a narrator edits and interprets. Hyacinth's conscious—
ness is the receptive medium through which James reflects setting,
action, and character. Hyacinth truly embodies James's ideal artist
of "The Art of Fiction"--he is "a youth on whom nothing is lost" (p.
125). This is not to say, however, that Hyacinth's point of View is
objective or even realistic. Adhering to James's definition that a
novel is "a personal, a direct impression of life," Hyacinth's per—
spective is highly colored by the world of art, justifying Powers in
calling the bookbinder a romantic and Halliburton, a visionary.37
Hyacinth's romantic propensities are established early. Pinnie con—
tinually embellishes Hyacinth's fairy—tale origins. And Hyacinth him—

self spends his spare time and spare money feeding his imagination:

 

 

newspa
much d
hero f
Even t
scribe
intros
much 1

find

mediu
his e

Fable

 

148

He used to stand [in front of the little sweetshop]
for half an hour at a time and spell out the first
page of the romances in the Family Herald and the
London Journal, where he particularly admired the
obligatory illustration in which the noble characters
(they were always of the highest birth) were presented
to the carnal eye. When he had a penny he spent only
a fraction of it on stale sugar—candy; for the remain—
ing halfpenny he always bought a ballad with a vivid
woodcut at the top. (p. 24)

Hyacinth is fascinated by art, such as is accessible to hi ——
newspaper portraits of noble characters and lurid woodcutsF—all very
much divorced from the dingy reality of Lomax Place. As a child James's
hero finds in visual art and in fiction means of escaping everyday life.
Even though Hyacinth is only ten years old, Mr. Vetch accurately de—
scribes him and his future; "'He's a thin—skinned, morbid, mooning,
introspective little beggar, with a good deal of imagination and not
much perseverance, who'll expect a good deal more of life than he'll
find in it'" (p. 41).

Hyacinth's imagination and his tendency to see life through the
medium of literature are evident in the manner in which he registers
his environment. The magic that Medley represents for Hyacinth is pal—
pable in his first response to it:

Hyacinth got up early——an operation attended with very
little effort, as he had scarce closed his eyes all
night. What he saw from his window made him dress as
quickly as a young man might who desired more than

ever that his appearance shouldn't give strange ideas
about him: an old garden with parterres in curious
figures and little intervals of lawn that seemed to our
hero's cockney vision fantastically green. At one end
of the garden was a parapet of mossy brick which looked
down on the other side into a canal, a moat, a quaint
old pond (he hardly knew what to call it) and from the
same standpoint showed a considerable part of the main
body of the house—-Hyacinth's room belonging to a wing

that commanded the extensive irregular back——which was
richly grey wherever clear of the ivy and the other dense

 

 

Medle‘
night
in ti
sets
in tl
the

atmo

lang
tha
imp
bri

all

 

149

creepers, and everywhere infinitely a picture: with

a high-piled ancient russet roof broken by huge chime
neys and queer peep—holes and all manner of odd gables
and windows on different lines, with all manner of
antique patches andprotrusionsand with a particularly
fascinating architectural excrescence where a wonderful
clock—face was lodged, a clock—face covered with gild—
ing and blazonry but showing many traces of the years
and the weather. (p. 247)

The first two sentences, which open Book 3, place Hyacinth at
Medley, dramatically contrasting with the closing of Book 2, Hyacinth's
night-journey through London to Hoffendahl. The narrator is present
in these two sentences——he refers to Hyacinth as "our hero," and he
sets the stage for Hyacinth's consciousness which assumes the narrative
in the final sentence of the excerpt. This lengthy sentence captures

the pulse of Hyacinth's mind as it is confronted by Medley's romantic

 

atmosphere; the sentence is long and breathless, with details piling
on details, leaping from one architectural feature to another. The
language can barely contain or convey Hyacinth's wonder, suggesting
that the bookbinder hardly possesses the vocabulary to articulate his
impression. Details with literary resonance—~"a parapet of mossy
brick"—-alternate with vague descriptions——"a particularly fascinating
architectural excrescence." Hyacinth struggles with the inadequacy
of his experience——"a canal, a moat, a quaint old pond (he hardly knew
what to call it)"-—and lapses into repetition——”all manner of odd
gables and windows on different lines, with all manner of antique
patches and protrusions." Hyacinth cannot convey his impressions, and
his inability enables the reader to experience dramatically both
Hyacinth's wonderment and the limitations of his past.

Simultaneously, by virtue of Hyacinth's inability to describe

the house, Medley assumes a magical, fairy—tale quality, stark contrast

 

to Lend
treat i
though
ate, a
his g1

'Ode t

exper

a Re
the

sat:

cra

150

to London's darkness and squalor. Medley becomes, for Hyacinth, a re-
treat into the world of romantic literature: ”The repast was delicate——
though his other senses were so awake that hunger dropped out and he
ate, as it were, without eating-—and the grave automatic servant filled
his glass with a liquor that reminded him of some lines of Keats in the
'Ode to a Nightingale‘" (p. 248).38
Hyacinth transmutes that real "liquor" into a poetic symbol of

experience, also redolent of the Keatsian ode:

The cup of an exquisite experience—-a week in that

enchanted palace, a week of such immunity from Lomax

Place and old Crook as he had never dreamed of——was

at his lips; it was purple with the wine of romance,

of reality, of civilisation, and he couldn't push it

aside without drinking. He might go home ashamed, but

he would have for evermore in his mouth the taste of
nectar. (p. 271)

 

Hyacinth is inclined to see life, especially life at Medley, as
a Keatsian romance. Significantly, he blurs important distinctions--
the imaginary and symbolic wine is "of romance, of reality, of civili—
sation" as if somehow all three are interchangeable.

The wine of romance intoxicates Hyacinth, so that the aristo—
cratic world is shrouded in Keatsian veils. Hyacinth, having returned
to London, sifts its reality through the sieve of literature:

The long light of the grey summer evening was still in
the air and Madeira Crescent wore a soiled, dusty ex—
pression. A hand—organ droned in front of a neighboring
house and the cart of the local washerwoman, to which a
donkey was harnessed, was drawn up opposite. The local
children as well were dancing on the pavement to the
music of the organ, and the scene was surveyed from one
of the windows by a gentleman in a dirty dressing—gown,
smoking a pipe, who made Hyacinth think of Mr Micawber.

(p. 353).
Madeira Crescent, despite its exotic name, is far from the fairy—

tale palace of Medley. But Hyacinth's response to Madeira Crescent is

still <
in a "
philis
betwee

gown z

simpl

would
exter
leads

magn

 

151

still conditioned by literature——Hyacinth sees Dickens‘s Mr. Micawber

in a "gentleman.' Admittedly, Hyacinth is aware of the vulgarity and

philistinism of the setting, but he uses literature here to intervene
between perceiver and perceived. Seeing a man in a dirty dressing-

gown as Mr. Micawber makes that man more acceptable than if he were

simply a man in a dirty dressing—gown.39

It is understandable that Hyacinth, sensitive and intelligent,
would be inclined to paint over the ugly realities of life. But he
extends his romanticizing tendencies to the people around him, which
leads him to misjudge them grossly. Millicent Henning is, for Hyacinth,
magnificently plebeian:

She summed up the sociable humorous ignorant chatter

of the masses, their capacity for offensive and defen-
sive passion, their instinctive perception of their
strength on the day they should really exercise it;

and as much as any of this their ideal of something smug
and prosperous, where washed hands and oiled hair and
plates in rows on dressers and stuffed birds under glass
and family photographs of a quite similar effect would
symbolize success. She was none the less plucky for
being at bottom a shameless Philistine, ambitious of

a front garden with rockwork; and she presented the
plebeian character in none the less plastic a form.
Having the history of the French Revolution at his
fingers' ends, Hyacinth could easily see her (if there
should ever be barricades in the streets of London)
with a red cap of liberty on her head and her white
throat bared so that she should be able to shout the
louder the Marseillaise of that hour, whatever it

might be. (p. 122)

 

Granted, Millicent is ”to her blunt, expanded finger-tips a
daughter of London" (p. 59) and represents the vitality of the London
masses. To this extent Hyacinth's view of Millicent is consistent with
her portrayal in the opening chapters of the novel where she is pre—

sented omnisciently. However, Hyacinth's perception of Millicent is

 

consid

and st

some I

will i

prese

which

condi

has i

nove

of H

Actu

 

152

considerably mistaken, too: Millicent aspires to bourgeois comforts
and stability: she "only asked to keep her skirts clear and marry
some respectable tea-merchant" (p. 122), making it unlikely that she
will fulfill Hyacinth's vision of her mounting the barricades.

Millicent is presented through Hyacinth's consciousness, and that
presentation is a means by which the reader can judge the degree to
which Hyacinth warps the physical world to coincide with his literature—
conditioned perspective. Such judgment is possible because Millicent
has been introduced and partially developed by the narrator in the
novel's early chapters. As a result, the reader recognizes the justice
of Hyacinth's perspective and his divergence from the real world.
Actually, Hyacinth's view of Millicent exposes more about Hyacinth than
it does about Millicent.

If Millicent Henning reveals the extent to which Hyacinth roman—
ticizes other characters, Paul Muniment demonstrates how dangerous
Hyacinth's failure of judgment is. Hyacinth accepts Paul as ”an elder
brother" who "in the light of cheerful stoicism" could sacrifice
Hyacinth to ”the stiff engagement of Hoffendahl” (p. 328). Strange
elder brother indeed. Moreover, Hyacinth admires Paul immensely for
his cold detachment that enables the chemist to use people as instru-
ments:

Muniment's absence of passion, his fresh-coloured
coolness, his easy, exact knowledge, the way he
kept himself clean (save for fine chemical stains
on his hands) in circumstances of foul contact,
constituted a group of qualities that had always
appeared to his admirer singularly enviable. Most
enviable of all was the force that enabled him to
sink personal sentiment where a great public good

was to be attempted and yet keep up the form of
caring for that minor interest. (PP. 329-30)

 

 

 

contac
sonal

SO sen

autm
Yet,

lear

Whit
the
abs
"ti

im

153

For Hyacinth, Paul keeps himself untouched by the world of "foul
contact." Such is Paul's inviolability that he can coldly "sink per—
sonal sentiment" into vague "public good"—-an ability Hyacinth, who is
so sensitive, finds enviable. Hyacinth ultimately casts Paul as hero:

[Paul] struck Hyacinth while he spoke these words as
such a fine embodiment of the spirit of the people;

he stood there in his powerful, sturdy newness with
such an air of having learnt what he had learnt and of
good nature that had purposes in it, that our hero felt
the simple inrush of his old, frequent pride at having
a person of that promise, a nature of that capacity,
for a friend. (p. 380)

Such is Hyacinth's admiration that he willingly relinquishes his
autonomy, exclaiming, ”'I'd go by what you tell me anywhere'" (p. 380).
Yet, if Paul is a hero, he is a vague one——he had "an air of having
learnt what he had learnt and of good nature that had purposes in it"-—
a statement forcing the reader to realize that Hyacinth's illusions,
which permit him to see Paul as "a fine embodiment of the spirit of
the people," are once again at work. Hyacinth is too inclined to
abstract and intellectualize his friends——as Millicent can figure as
”the Goddess of Reason" (p. 122), Paul is the spirit of the proletar—
iat.

Seeing Paul through Hyacinth, the reader can discover Paul's
true nature, which is cold and calculating. Nevertheless, James feels
compelled to balance Hyacinth's perception of Paul by employing scenes
objectively rendered. In such scenes, the most memorable being Paul's
rejection of the Princess when her money is cut off, Paul exhibits
his cynical exploitation of people, revealing his true colors and the

extent to which Hyacinth's ”fallible consciousness" idealizes the

chemist. With both Paul and Millicent (who is developed omnisciently

 

 

in Book
the rez
them.
Millic
insecu
securi
hero.‘
to tn
Qgsgg
ticul
narra
long
acte

plet

ency

has

154

in Book 1), James adds another frame of reference, as it were, to assist
the reader in evaluating those characters and Hyacinth's misreading of
them. Undoubtedly, the extra frame of reference adds balance to
Millicent's and Paul's characterization, but it also indicates James's
insecurity about relying totally on Hyacinth's point of view, an in—

"our

security apparent in all the narratorial references to Hyacinth as
hero." James's unwillingness to trust Hyacinth's flawed perception and
to trust the reader's judgment of that perception marks The Princess
Casamassima as an experimental novel. Compared to The Bostonians, par—
ticularly in that novel's dependence upon the curious and intrusive
narrator, The Princess Casamassima demonstrates that James has come a
long way in employing the center of consciousness as his primary char—
acterizing and narrating mode. Nevertheless, James cannot as yet com—
pletely relinquish narratorial control.

Although the narrator maintains a constant though subdued pres—
ence, Hyacinth is the novel's dominating perspective. Because Hyacinth
has a natural sensitivity to art and literature, he tends to see his
world through their distorting mirrors; not only does he romanticize
his environment, but he harbors illusions about the people around him.
By providing escape and delusion, art and literature acquire dubious
value in the novel. The Princess Casamassima shows the extent of
James's own disillusionment with the arts of the painter and of the

novelist. James's distrust is apparent in The Portrait of a Lady,

 

where Isabel permits herself to be regarded as an art—object, and be—
comes trapped in Osmond's museum. Art is looked upon with suspicion
in The Bostonians: Olive sees it as a means to keep the down—trodden

satisfied and to deflect energy from reform. And to a real extent, the

 

 

novel's
Jams;
create

by whi

James
and h:
is th
captu
reali
are1

8. bat

the:
Bub
cha

tic

 

155

novel's narrator casts doubt on novelistic traditions, and Page sees
James as questioning the ability of language to communicate and
create.40 Finally, in The Princess Casamassima, the arts are the means
by which Hyacinth blurs distinctions between romance and reality.

With his growing disenchantment with painting and literature,
James turns to drama as a more accurate reflection of his characters
and his art. The drama makes no pretense about pretending--pretense
is the very nature of drama, whereas both painting and literature, by
capturing the ”air of reality," attempt to maintain their illusions as
reality. The novel is pervaded with the drama; many of its characters
are theatrical. Madame Grandoni, who wears an obvious wig, looks like
a badly made-up actress; Millicent Henning makes a living "dressing up"
as a clothes model; and Lady Aurora strikes Hyacinth as "a personage
in a comedy" (p. 97). Anastasius Vetch plays a fiddle in a third—rate
theatre. Even Captain Sholto, who reminds Hyacinth of "certain of
Bulwer's novels" (p. 186), "was nothing whatever in himself and had no
character or merit save by tradition, reflexion, imitation, supersti—
tion" (p. 296); "he was not in the least a natural, quiet person, and
had only a hundred affectations and attitudes" (p. 297). Hyacinth is
also an actor~—he assumes the costume of a Frenchman (p. 68), and Paul
calls him "a duke in disguise" (p. 397). Millicent's first impression

of Hyacinth after a ten-year hiatus stresses his appearance as actor:

What she liked was his face and something jaunty and
romantic, almost theatrical, in his whole little per-
son. Miss Henning was not acquainted with any member
of the dramatic profession, but she supposed vaguely

that that was the way an actor would look in private
life. (p. 69)

 

 

 

orphan
acter

"look

 

156

Hyacinth is indeed an actor, who alternates between his roles of
orphan, gentleman, bookbinder, and revolutionary so that his own char—
acter is hidden. In response to Millicent's suggestion that he would
"look very nice in a fancy costume," Hyacinth reflects:

He was on the point of replying that he didn't care
for fancy costumes, he wished to go through life in
his own character; but he checked himself with the
reflexion that this was exactly what he was apparently
destined not to do. His own character? He was to
cover that up as carefully as possible; he was to go
through life in a mask, in a borrowed mantle; he was
to be every day and every hour an actor. (p. 74)

Hyacinth covers up "his own character" because he does not know
who he is. In fact, Lyall Powers sees Hyacinth's tragedy stemming from

Hyacinth's impulsive committing his life before he knew who and what he

. 4 . . . .
is. 1 Thus, to regard Hyac1nth as an actor is to see him in terms of

a metaphor that accurately describes Hyacinth's situation in the novel.
Hyacinth's wearing "a mask" and "a borrowed mantle" exemplifies
Hyacinth's real dilemma--of not knowing his own character and of per—
mitting himself to be split in his loyalties.

If Hyacinth is an actor, then his situation is a drama played out
against the backdrop of London. Appropriately, Hyacinth's conflict is
cast in dramatic terms:

It was not so much that he wanted to enjoy as that he
wanted to know; his desire wasn't to be pampered but

to be initiated. Sometimes of a Saturday in the long
evenings of June and July he made his way into Hyde Park
at the hour when the throng of carriages, of riders, of
brilliant pedestrians was thickest; and though lately,
on two or three of these occasions, he had been accomn
panied by Miss Henning, whose criticism of the scene
was rich and distinct, a tremendous little drama had
taken place privately on the stage of his inner con—
sciousness. He wanted to drive in every carriage, to
mount on every horse, to feel on his arm the hand of
every pretty woman in the place.

 

L_%_

 

 

can 116

of hi
be sp

126)-

his
scio
Fol]
Jam
sil

cha

 

157

. . . And this was not the fruit of a morbid vanity
on his part, or of a jealousy that couldn't be intel—
ligent; his personal discomfort was the result of an
intense admiration for what he had missed. (pp. 125~6)

The "tremendous little drama" is Hyacinth's realization that he
can never know "what it was to be the flower of a high civilisation"
(p. 126). Hyacinth's consciousness is the stage whereupon the drama
of his heredity—-"his fate to be divided to the point of torture, to
be split open by sympathies that pulled him in different ways" (p.
126)-is played out.

Hyacinth's consciousness is also the means whereby James presents
his material dramatically. As has been shown above, Hyacinth's con—
sciousness is a major factor in deveIOping the novel's characters.
Following the theoretical concerns outlined in "The Art of Fiction,"
James makes Hyacinth's consciousness, "a spider-web of the finest
silken threads," the novel's subject and its method of narration and
characterization. By having Hyacinth register impressions and respond
to characters, James dramatically presents the movement of Hyacinth's
mind creating experience and struggling with split loyalties. As a
result, the reader directly experiences the novel's subject, Hyacinth's
consciousness, without narratorial intervention.

Moreover, in the passage describing Hyacinth's "tremendous little
drama" James's dramatic method is at work in developing Hyacinth him—
self. The details of the human spectacle are barely registered;

James permits the reader only a glimpse of a "throng of carriages, of
riders, of brilliant pedestrians." Taking precedence over concrete
details are Hyacinth's responses to the crowd in Hyde Park and subse—

quent train of thought leading him inexorably to "the cause he had

 

 

 

 

secretl
blood"
in his
"priva
James'
differ
In th:
of th
which
to tl
sett:
divi
Medl

veal

evi

per

 

 

158

secretly espoused" and the "extraordinarily mingled current in his
blood" (p. 126). Hyacinth's whole history and character are dramatized
in his responses to the physical world; Hyacinth's dilemma is played
"privately on the stage of his inner consciousness." As a result,
James's approach to the surface of the human spectacle is considerably

different in The Princess Casamassima than it is in The Bostonians.

 

 

In the "very American tale,"

the physical world exists independently
of the characters. Although characters are revealed by the manner in
which they respond to various settings, those settings are peripheral

to the characters' conflicts and moral situations. In contrast, the

settings of The Princess Casamassima dramatize Hyacinth's "fate to be

 

divided." To this end, the settings purposively shift from Keatsian
Medley to Dickensian London, and in so doing function primarily to re—
veal Hyacinth's personality.

The importance of drama in The Princess Casamassima is further

 

evident in James's employing it as a structural device. Millicent
persuades Hyacinth that she deserves ”a high—class treat" (p. 123),

so together they attend The Pearl of Paragugy at a theatre in the

 

Strand. The play is an important part of Hyacinth's own drama, for
during its performance Hyacinth meets the Princess Cassamassima.
Hyacinth is most "friendly to the dramatic illusion" (p. 136); when he
is summoned by the Princess, "he took in all these things and finally
said to himself that if she wanted nothing more of him he was content,
he would like it to go on; so pleasant was it to be enthroned with fine
ladies in a dusky, spacious receptacle which framed the bright picture
of the stage and made one's own situation seem a play within the play"

(p. 148). Hyacinth's own "tremendous little drama" takes place against

 

 

 

 

 

 

the mel

actor

Light
naturt
ribly
(p- l
volve
inc11
is J

past

drm

sci

159

the melodramatic backdrop of The Pearl of Paraguay—she becomes both
actor and spectator.

And it is also quite appropriate that Hyacinth meets Christina
Light at The Pearl because the play begins to dramatize her destructive
nature. It recapitulates her history in Roderick Hudson-—"'It's ter—
ribly complicated; some one or other was hurled over a precipice'"'

(p. 151)——and intimates the fate of the other "artist" she becomes in—
volved with——in the play's final act there is "a violent scene which
included pistol—shots and shrieks" (p. 159).42 The Pearl of Paraguay
is James's means of introducing Christina Light, and it contains her
past and her future.

If the novel as a whole is cast as a play—~a "tremendous little
drama [taking] place privately on the stage of [Hyacinth's] inner con-
sciousness"--then Christina Light, the Princess Casamassima, is the
play's supreme actress. Hyacinth first sees her as a museum—piece:
"That head, where two or three diamond stars glittered in the thick,
delicate hair which defined its shape, suggested to Hyacinth something
antique and celebrated, something he had admired of old——the memory
was vague——in a statue, in a picture, in a museum" (p. 148). Hyacinth
is dazzled and blinded by her mysterious, pictorial resonances of
painting and statuary. But when Hyacinth goes to visit the Princess
in Mayfair, he sees her for what she really is, an actress:

When at last the door opened and the servant, re—
appearing, threw it far back as to make a wide pas—
sage for a person of the importance of his mistress,
Hyacinth's suspense became very acute; it was much

the same feeling with which, at the theatre, he had
sometimes awaited the entrance of a celebrated actress.

In this case the actress was to perform for him alone.
There was still a moment before she came on, and when

 

"divi
Euro;
as Cl
acti'

furt

160

she arrived she was so simply dressed——besides his
seeing her now on her feet——that she looked quite
a different figure. (p. 197)

Hyacinth is never sure just who the Princess is. She might be
"divine" (p. 148), she might be "one of the most remarkable women in
Europe" (p. 198). Indeed, Hyacinth's problem is the reader's problem:
as Charles Anderson asks, "Is Christina sincere, or merely play-
acting?“+3 The mystery of and uncertainty about her true nature is
further complicated by the fact that the Princess evokes a wide variety
of responses among the characters. Hyacinth questions "if she were
really of the same substance with the humanity he had hitherto known"
(p. 148), while Paul Muniment calls her a monster (P. 181). Even
Rowland Mallet, who had known Christina when she was ten years younger,
is bewildered in his responses; he compares her to a goddess, but adds
that ”she is corrupt, perverse, as proud as a potentate; and a coquette
of the first magnitude; but she is generous and intelligent."44 Mallet
concludes that "she is an actress" "more dangerous in her virtuous
moods than in her vicious ones."45 Even critical opinion regards

II II

Christina ambivalently. She is called a ”femme fatale, a destroyer,"

46

”the flame to Hyacinth's moth”; less negatively, she "evokes mixed

feelings of admiration and exasperation.H47 The only agreement about
her is that she is complex and "vitally feminine."48
The Princess is both Visionary and destroyer, goddess and fgmmg
fatale. According to the Preface of The Princess Casamassima,
Christina is "world—weary" and has "an aversion to the PEEEA?5 "she
can, or she believes she can, feel freshly about the ‘people‘ and

their wrongs and their sorrows and their perpetual smothered ferment.""'9

Doubt]

has a

this

when

The

alon

ter:

act

161

Doubtless she is concerned with the plight of the poor, yet her charity
has a large element of self-gratification and naivete about it. In
this respect, she nearly becomes a comic figure;50 she is disappointed
when Hyacinth does not dress his "part" in the play:
"The only objection to you individually is that you've
nothing of the people about you——to—day not even the
dress." Her eyes wandered over him from head to foot,
and their recognition made him ashamed. "I wish you had
come in the clothes you wear at your work." (p. 201)
The Princess may be sincerely concerned with the down-trodden, but
along with her concern is a large measure of exploitation.

The Princess is contradictory and alluring, and James's charac~
terization of her enhances the complexity of her character. The char—
acterization of the Princess is a triumph of the dramatic method. She
is the only character in the novel whom James consistently presents
from the outside. She is most vividly seen through Hyacinth's con—
sciousness; he typically romanticizes her as the fairy-tale mistresss
of Medley or as Madeira Crescent's housewife reminding Hyacinth of
French fiction (p. 411). Other characters correct Hyacinth's view of
the Princess: ‘Mr. Vetch sees her as exercising a dangerous influence
upon Hyacinth (p. 196); Madame Grandoni rightly calls her a cappriciosa
(p. 251); and Paul sees her as a trifler and an instrument to be used
and discarded. James provides a variety of perspectives upon Christina,
including her own words and deeds; as a result of this multiplicity of
view—points, the reader acquires a deep knowledge of the Princess's
complexity. The Princess is presented dramatically——James never goes
behind her——but she achieves considerable depth of character because
of James's multiplication of aspects and the reader's remaining igno~

rant of her true thoughts and feelings.

 

 

 

 

fills
Art of
sciou:
grate
In bo

turni

of J

majc
rad
Jam

tai

 

 

162

More than any of James's fiction, The Princess Casamassima ful—

 

fills James's description of the novel and its subject proposed in "The

I

Art of Fiction.‘ Moreover, in depending upon Hyacinth Robinson's con—
sciousness as the novel's narration and characterization, James inte-
grates the methods and ideals of drama into the texture of his fiction.
In both subject and technique, The Princess Casamassima is a crucial
turning point in James's practice of fiction.

Many critics have recognized, like Seed, the transitional nature
of James's London novel: Howe calls it "an experiment in craft and
imagination" while Oliver notes that in this novel James exhausts the
major themes and forms of the nineteenth—century novel.51 Beyond these
rather vague statements, however, little has been done in terms of
James's technique in The Princess Casamassima. Indeed, the only de—
tailed analysis of the novel as part of James's technical development
is Dubler's, a study which describes the novel as both terminal and
seminal in James development. The first three books, for Dubler, re—
call James's previous work including his use of an omniscient narrator,
while Books 4 through 6 anticipate the novels of the major phase by
depending upon Hyacinth's point of View.52 The Princess Casamassima
occupies a crucial place in the James canon because it is James's
first experiment in organizing a major work around a center of con—
sciousness. Although the novel bears evidence of James's hesitance in
relying completely on the center as a means of narrating and charac-
terizing, it represents a significant step in James's striving to in—

corporate dramatic principles in his fiction.

 

 

 

by con
novels
novels
pelle
writi
is Ja

of ti

 

163

Like The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima was poorly received
by contemporary readers and critics, despite James's high hopes for the
novels to be popular and financial successes. The reception of the two
novels further discouraged James about ”the art of fiction," and im—
pelled him toward his decision later in the decade to abandon novel—

writing for play—wrighting. Nevertheless, The Princess Casamassima

 

is James's personal triumph, because in it he demonstrates the power
of the sensitive mind and celebrates the penetrating imagination:

What it all came back to was, no doubt, something
like this wisdom——that if you haven't, for fiction,
the root of the matter in you, haven't the sense of
life and the penetrating imagination, you are a fool
in the very presence of the revealed and assured;

but that if you are so armed you are not really help—
less, not without your resource, even before mys—
teries abysmal.

 

 

 

rpt.

Book

Hal

HmArz'm

 

 

Notes

Henry James, "The Art of Fiction," in Partial Portraits (1888;
rpt. London: Macmillan and Company, Ltd., 1911), p. 390.

 

2 James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 390.

Henry James, The Bostonians (1886; rpt. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin
Books, 1966), p. 328.

4 James, "The Art of Fiction," pp. 379-80.
James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 398.

6 James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 380.

 

7 James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 384.
James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 389.

Henry James, The Princess Casamassima (1886; rpt. New York:
Harper and Row, 1968); hereafter cited in text.

 

l
O W. H. Tilley, in Backgrounds of The Princess Casamassima

(Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1961), documents in detail
articles on anarchists appearing in The Times during the period when
James was writing The Princess Casamassima.

 

11 In Henry James (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books,

1956), F. W. Dupee also notes that "of all his novels The Princess
Casamassima was [James's] largest attempt to judge the whole piece by
the pattern, the whole piece being in this case the entire structure
of civil society" (p. 133).

 

12 Henry James, Letters, 1883-1895, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge:
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 61; F. O.
Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds. The Notebooks of Henry James
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 69); Henry James,
Preface to "The Princess Casamassima" in The Art of the Novel, ed.

R. P. Blackmur (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), p. 59.

 

 

 

164

13 On A

have never ye
write and set
Hhtthiessen

14 Jam

15 Jam

16 Jan

1' Jar

l8 Ja

19 J3

20 J2

21 J;

22 u

from exper
rather a t
add: 'Try
Art of Fit

23
1

00-, 1961

24

of James:
Wm.

25

 

165

13 On August 10, 1885 James complained in his notebook that "I
have never yet become engaged in a novel in which, after I had begun to
write and send off my MS., the details had remained so vague"
(Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 68).

14 James, Preface to "The Princess Casamassima," p. 76.

James, Preface, p. 77.
James, Preface, p. 64.
James, Preface, p. 62.

18 James, Preface, p. 63.

19 James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 388.

James, Preface to "The Princess Casamassima," p. 66.

 

James, Preface, p. 60.

22 "Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, 'Write

from experience and experience only,‘ I should feel that this was
rather a tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to
add, 'Try to be one of the people on whom.nothing is lost!‘" ("The
Art of Fiction," pp. 389-90).

3 Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry_James (New York: 'Macmillan
Co., 1961), p. 150; Dupee, p. 132.

 

Joseph A. Ward, The Search for Form: Studies in the Structure
of James's Fiction (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press,
1967), p. 117.

25
James, Preface to ”The Princess Casamassima," p. 59.

26
S. Gorley Putt, Scholars of the Heart: Essays in Criticism

(London: Faber and Faber, 1972), p. 188; John Goode, "The Art of
Fiction: Welter Besant and Henry James," in Tradition and Tolerance
in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, ed. David Howard, John Lucas, and John
Goode (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 268, 272; Lionel
Trilling, "The Princess Casamassima," in Discussions of Henry_James,
ed. Naomi Lebowitz (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1962), p. 92;
John L. Kimmey, "The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima," Texas
Studies in Language and Literature, 9 (1968), 537—46; and Lyall H.

 

 

Powers
State I

has

an

1938),
Fans
James
Clint:
7 (l9

Bough

the I
flue
20 (
"V3
Univ
PP.

and

354-
Russ
37 I
Fur1
figs
Tin
333
Fre

I'T’

 

 

166

Powers, Henry James and the Naturalist Movement (East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1972), p. 88.

 

27 Taylor Stoehr, "Wbrds and Deeds in The Princess Casamassima,"
Journal of English Literary Histogy, 37 (1970), 95-135; Tilley,
Backgrounds of The Princess Casamassima; Trilling, pp. 36-9.

 

 

Yvor Winters, Maule's Curse (Norfolk, Ct.: New Directions,
1938), p. 205; Irving Howe, Politics and the Novel (Greenwich, Ct.:
Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1967), p. 153; George Woodcock, "Henry
James and the Conspirators," Sewanee Review, 60 (1952), 223; and
Clinton F. Oliver, "Henry James as a Social Critic," Antioch Review,
7 (1947), 255.

 

 

 

 

29 Stephen Spender, The Destructive Element (Boston and New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 1936), p. 44; Trilling, p. 36.

 

’ 30 As The Bostonians was written to remedy the flaws in Daudet's
L'Evangéliste, so The Princess Casamassima, for some critics, corrects
the weaknesses in Turgenev's Virgin Soil. Daniel Lerner, in "The In-
fluence of Turgenev on Henry James," Slavonic and East European Review,
20 (1941), 28—54, made the pioneering study, followed by R. J. Kane,
"Virgin Soil and The Princess Casamassima," Gifthorse (Ohio State
University, 1949), 25-29; Oscar Cargill, The Novels of Henry James,
pp. 147-9; Eunice C. Hamilton, "Henry James's The Princess Casamassima
and Ivan Turgenev's Virgin Soil," South Atlantic Quarterly, 61 (1962),
354-64; Jeanne Delbaere-Garant, "Henry James's Divergence from His
Russian Model in The Princess Casamassima," Revue des Langues Vivantes,
37 (1971), 535-44; and Anthony D. Briggs, "Someone Else's Sledge:
Further Notes on Turgenev's Virgin Soil and Henry James's The Princess
Casamassima," Oxford Slavonic Studies, 5 (1972), 52-60. Adeline
Tintner, in "Octave Feuillet: La petite comtesse and Henry James,"
Revue de Littérature Comparée, 48 (1974), 218-32, has examined the
French writer's influence on The Princess Casamassima.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31 Ivo Vidan, "James's Novel of 'Looming Possibilities'" in
Renaissance and Modern Essays Presented to Vivian de Sole Pinto, ed.
G. R. Hibbard (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 139; Powers,
p. 119.

32 Sr. Mary Jane Luecke, "The Princess Casamassima: Hyacinth's
Fallible Consciousness," Modern Philology, 60 (1963), 274—80; John L.
Kimmey, "The Princess Casamassima and the Quality of Bewilderment,"
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 22 (1967), 47—62; and Philip Page, “Th3
Princess Casamassima: Suicide and 'the Penetrating Imagination,'"
Tennessee Studies in Literature, 22 (1977), 16299.

 

 

 

David Seed, "Hyacinth Robinson and the Politics of The
Princess Casamassima," Etudes Anglaises: Grande-Bretagne, Etats-Unis,

 

 

 

30 (197
Politic

23 Apr:
Casama:

_—-——-

12 (19

less
(Camb1
note .
l25;1
Item
126,

does.

167

30 (1977), 31; Mildred E. Hartsock, "The Princess Casamassima: The
Politics of Power," Studies in the Novel, 1 (1969), 300.

 

 

34 Louise Bogan, "James on a Revolutionary Theme," Nation, 146,
23 April, 1938, p. 474; Oliver, 252; walter Dubler, "The Princess
Casamassima: Its Place in the James Canon," Modern Fiction Studies,
12 (1966), 58; and Luecke, 274.

 

 

 

35 Donald David Stone, Novelists in a Changing WOrld: Meredith,

James, and the Transformation of English Fiction in the 18803
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 294. Other critics
note James's identification with Hyacinth: Trilling, p. 41; Ward, p.
125; Goode, 275; and Charles R. Anderson, Person, Place and Thing_in
Henry James's Novels (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1977), p.
126, although they do not see this similarity as negatively as Stone
does.

 

 

 

 

6 Dupee, p. 136; Howe, p. 155; and Ward, p. 124.

Powers, p. 96; D. S. Halliburton, "Self and Secularization in
The Princess Casamassima," Modern Fiction Studies, 11 (1965), 120.

 

 

I

38 Anderson examines the manner in which Keats's "Ode to a
Nightingale" permeates the interlude at Medley in Person, Place and
Thing in Henrngames's Novels, p. 155; Adeline Tintner has written two
articles on Keats's influence of James: "The Elgin Marbles and Titian's
'Bacchus and Ariadne': A Cluster of Keatsian Associations in Henry
James," Notes and Queries, 20 (1973), 250-2 and "Keats and James and
The Princess Casamassima," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 28 (1973), 179-
93.

 

 

 

 

 

39 F. R. Leavis's statement in The Great Tradition (Harmondsworth,
Middlesex: Penguin Books, Ltd., 1962) that The Princess's "earthy and
sappy vitality" derives from Dickens (p. 191), initiated a gentleman's
controversy between Leavis and S. Gorley Putt, who accused Leavis of
discounting and dismissing James's own observations. See Gorley Putt,
"Henry James and Dickens," Times Literary Supplement, 5 March 1971, p.
271 and 19 March 1971, p. 325; and F. R. Leavis, "Henry James and
Dickens," Times Literary Supplement, 19 February 1971, p. 213; 12 March
1971, p. 296; and 26 March 1971, p. 353. Arthur Freeman also entered
the debate on Putt's side in "Henry James and Dickens," Times Literary
Supplement, 12 March 1971, p. 296. Others who have noted Dickensian
elements in The Princess Casamassima include Warner Berthoff, Thg_
Ferment of Realism: American Literature, 1884-1919 (New York: The
Free Press, 1965), p. 104; Bogan, p. 471; and Anderson, pp. 140, 144,
154.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Philip Page, "The Curious Narration of The Bostonians,"
American Literature, 46 (1974), 379.

 

 

 

 

 

 

168

41 Powers, p. 122.

42 Adeline Tintner, in "Hyacinth at the Play: The Play Within
the Play as a Novelistic Device in James," Journal of Narrative Tech—
nigue, 2 (1972), 171—85, examines in depth James's use of the play
within the play and traces the device's antecedents in other authors
and in James's earlier works.

43 Anderson, p. 137. Christina Light has been the subject of
several thorough studies, all of which provide insight into her complex
character: M. E. Grenander, ”Henry James's Capricciosa: Christina
Light in Roderick Hudson and The Princess Casamassima," PMLA, 75 (1960),
309-19; George Monteiro, "The Campaign of Henry James's Disinherited
Princess," English Studies, 45 (1964), 442—54; and Edward Wagenknecht,
Eve and Henry James: Portraits of Women and Girls in His Fiction
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978).

 

4 Henry James, Roderick Hudson (1874; rpt. Baltimore, Md.:
Penguin Books, 1981), p. 205.

45 James, Roderick Hudson, p. 205.

46 Wagenknecht, p. 56; Halliburton, 119; and Stone, p. 302.

47 Bogan, p. 472.

48 Oliver, 250; Wagenknecht, p. 65; and Stone, p. 302.

49 James, Preface to "The Princess Casamassima," p. 74.

50 Dupee, p. 137; Howe, p. 146.

51 Seed, 39; Howe, p. 144; and Oliver, 257.

52 Dubler, 45.

53 James, Preface to "The Princess Casamassima," p. 78.

 

 

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CHAPTER VI

Direct Impressions of Life

Although James regards "the penetrating imagination" as a vital
element of the novelist's art, he repeatedly stresses the necessity for
anchoring that imagination to the palpable surface and substance of

life. As he insists in "The Art of Fiction,"

the goal of fiction is,
after all, to recreate the "air of reality." While the need for fidel—
ity to physical reality links the painter and the novelist—-in that
both register the surface of 1ife—-the novelist recreates not merely
the "look" of things, but also renders "a direct, a personal impression
of life."1 James's definition of the novel stresses the personal na—
ture of imagination and observation. Of course, James does not deny
that the painter must exercise his imagination. However, in "The Art
of Fiction" he recognizes the novelist's duty to probe beneath life's
tangible surface as a critical one, because the novel as a personal
impression of life focuses on the study of character and motive, ”the
psychological reason."2

”The Art of Fiction," first published in 1884, sheds light on
James's fiction of the eighties because the essay defines James's con—

ception of the novelist's responsibilities at a time he was re-

evaluating his deve10pment as a craftsman. The Bostonians and The

 

Princess Casamassima were the results of James's self-examination for
3

 

in the two novels he abandoned his successful international theme for

such contemporary issues as American reform movements and British

169

 

 

170

social unrest. In spite of James's "high hopes" for The Bostonians

 

. . 3 .
and The Princess Casama331ma, these novels were failures. Indeed, the

 

public reception of the two novels prompted James once again to scru—
tinize the art of the novelist, and implicitly his own goals and ex—
pectations as a writer of fiction.

Partial Portraits (1888), a direct consequence of James's stock-

 

taking, contains James's major pronouncements on the art of fiction.
Besides reprinting the seminal 1884 essay, "The Art of Fiction," James
includes his loving appraisal of Turgenev, an essay defining James's
intent to apply dramatic principles to the practice of fiction. Egg:

tial Portraits also contains "Guy de Maupassant,‘ an essay previously

 

published in March, 1888, in the Fortnightly Review. Written four years

 

after "The Art of Fiction," the 1888 essay re-affirms the major tenets
of the aesthetic theory proposed in the earlier essay. James esteems
Maupassant's ability to render the sensual aspects of life within the
brief compass of the short story; he was to invoke the spirit of
Maupassant whenever he strove for concision. James, however, did not
applaud Maupassant uncritically; he deplored Maupassant's refusal to
probe beneath characters' surfaces for motive and the "psychological

reason,"

and he suggested that Maupassant overly stressed the sexual
side of human nature.4 Whatever reservations James had about
Maupassant, however he saw the French raconteur as an example of the
central principles of "The Art of Fiction." Maupassant brilliantly
renders the surface of life:

[Maupassant] is plainly of the opinion that the

first duty of the artist, and the thing that makes

him most useful to his fellow—men is to master his
instrument, whatever it may happen to be.

 

171

His own is that of the senses, and it is through
them alone, or almost alone, that life appeals to
him; it is almost alone by their help that he de—
scribes it, that he produces brilliant works. They
render him this great assistance because they are
evidently, in his constitution, extraordinarily alive;
there is scarcely a page in all his twenty volumes
that does not testify to their vivacity.5

James praises Maupassant's ability to capture the very small of
O 6 O I 0 D 0

things, but he inSists that the French writer's Visual sense is as cru-
cial to his particular genius:

Not less powerful is his visual sense, the quick, direct

discrimination of his eye, which explains the singularly

vivid concision of his descriptions. These are never

prolonged nor analytic, have nothing of enumeration, of

the quality of the observer, who counts the items to be

sure he has made up the sum. His eye selects unerringly,

unscrupulously, almost impudently--catches the particular

thing in which the character of the object or the scene

resides, and, by expressing it with the artful brevity

of a master, leaves a convincing, original picture. If

he is inveterately synthetic, he is never more so than

in the way he brings this hard, short, intelligent gaze

to bear.7
James attributes Maupassant's concision .to his visual sense; the French
raconteur focuses on a "telling" object which communicates atmosphere,
character, and theme. James thus introduces a refinement of "The Art
of Fiction's" stress on fidelity to close, accurate observation: ob-
servation must be paired with selection. For James, Balzac is great
because of his talent in rendering atmosphere, but Maupassant is greater
because through selectivity he achieves concision and therefore, inten—
sity.

Most significantly for James, Maupassant's works exemplify Jamesks

ideal definition/of fiction as a personal and direct impression of life.

In the 1888 essay, he repeats the dominating theme of "The Art of Fic—

tion." Maupassant pursues his own vision of the craft and his own

172

"particular instrument," prompting James to proclaim:
This seems to me to put into a nutshell the whole ques—
tion of the different classes of fiction, concerning
which there has recently been so much discourse.
There are simply as many different kinds as there are
persons practicing the art, for if a picture, a tale,
or a novel be a direct impression of life (and that
surely constitutes its interest and value), the im—
pression will vary according to the plate that takes
it, the particular structure and mixture of the re-
cipient.

James emphasizes the individual nature of the artist's vision,
an emphasis that forces him to recognize "the value of the artist re—
sides in the clearness with which he gives forth that impression."9
Thus, in "Guy de Maupassant," James argues for the artistic freedom he
proposed in "The Art of Fiction," freedom logically following from his
belief in the integrity of each artist's response to "felt life."

The definition of fiction as "a direct, a personal impression of
life" guides James's tales of the late eighties particularly in theme
and technique. In these tales James employs various narrative strate—
gies designed to suppress the authorial voice and to enhance the illu—
sion of character speaking directly to the reader. During the years
between the completion of The Princess Casamassima in 1886 and the
appearance of the first serial installment of The Tragic Muse in 1889,

1
James published ten tales and a short novel, The Reverberator. 0 Al-
though James uses various points of view in the tales, he continues
developing the center of consciousness to achieve "a direct, a personal
impression of life." He employs centers of consciousness in "Mrs.
Temperly" (1887), "A London Life” (1888), "The Liar" (1888), and "The

Lesson of the Master" (1888). In these tales the authorial narrator

continues to make appearances, but intrusions are considerably limited

 

 

173

in frequency and length, compared to the intrusions in the early
eighties tales. James also begins the tale in media res, so that he
can eliminate biographical summaries of the characters. Information
about the characters——even details as basic as names and occupations——
is revealed through chance comments and elliptical references.

With the suppression of the narrator, the center assumes greater
importance. In fact, James's treatment of information is a strategy
to present his centers functioning naturally, with all the disorder of
"felt life." As a result of James's attempt to make his centers more
life—like, the tales of the late eighties are pervaded with an ambigu—
ity not present in James's earlier tales. Because the authorial nar—
rator does not intrude to guide the reader or judge the center, the
center's point of view, regardless of that character's limitation,
exercises complete control over the narrative. Ultimately, the reader
alone must judge the center's validity and integrity as perceiver and
interpreter. Such is the ambiguity of these tales that critics widely
disagree on their themes and James's intent in writing them.

Indeed, James's use of the center of consciousness in the late
eighties clearly exhibits his growing confidence with this technique.
The tales employing the center show James more than ever before ex—
ploiting the dramatic possibilities of the center of consciousness.
Moreover, with increasing dependence upon centers who are limited,
James achieves an ambiguity in these tales that makes them deeper and
richer in meaning than were his previous tales.

Yet the ambiguity resulting from advances in technique also re-

flects a shift in James's thematic interests of the eighties. In his

 

174

fiction of the first half of the decade, James criticizes American and
English societies. These early tales humorously examine manners and
mores. The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima, written at the
decade's midpoint, reveal a more critical James, exposing the hypocrisy,
pretensions, and failures of American and English societies. In con—
trast, the tales of the late eighties focus upon the individual's
assumptions about society and his or her sense of moral values. Human
beings are fallible, capricious, and inconsistent; the humanity of
James's characters is vividly captured within the tales' themes and
techniques.

"A London Life," first published in Scribner's Magazine June—
September 1888 and later revised in Volume 7 of the New York Edition,
exemplifies James‘s interest in the individual in society.11 The
tale's focus is Laura Wing, a young American who comes to London to
live with her sister Selina. Selina is married to Lionel Barrington,
an Englishman, but the marriage is not happy; the tale records the
break—up of the marriage from Laura's point of view. Laura, morally
rigid, is horrified at the impending scandal and Lionel's attempt to
force her to testify against Selina. Laura demands that Selina give
up what she sees as liaisons; Selina ostensibly complies, but during
an evening at the opera Selina bolts with her lover, Captain Crispin.
Panicking at her own untenable position-—Se1ina leaves her sister alone
in the opera box with a young man, Wendover--Laura virtually proposes
to Wendover as a way of shielding herself from Selina's scandalous be—
havior. Wendover is bewildered by and less than enthusiastic about

Laura's implied proposal. Laura, now fully disgusted with herself,

 

 

 

 

175

leaves for Belgium to persuade her sister to return to London. Even-
tually, Laura returns to America, with Wendover pursuing her.

Laura Wing, the tale‘s intense and inflexible heroine, functions
as the center of consciousness; events and characters are seen through
her eyes, and her judgments govern the tale. Other than a few brief
authorial comments, there is only one major departure from Laura's point
of view, occurring during a scene between Lady Davenant, Laura's
worldly-wise confidante and advisor, and Wendover. In the tale's Pref-
ace to the New York Edition, James was to recognize his violation of
the "law” he established for the tale by saying of that scene;

Here indeed is a lapse from artistic dignity, a con—
fession of want of resource, which I may not pretend
to explain to-day, and on behalf of which I have

nothing to urge save a consciousness of my dereliction
presumably too vague at the time.12

James defends his violation by noting that the interview during
Laura's absence was crucial to the tale. Yet James also admits that

he awkwardly thrusts a ”lump sum" on the reader:

I might of course have adopted another plan——the artist
is free, surely, to adopt any he fancies, provided it
be a plan and he adopt it intelligently; and to that
sEheme of composition the independent picture of a pas-
sage between Lady Davenant and young Wendover might
perfectly have conformed. As the case stands it con—
forms to nothing; whereas the beauty of a thing of this
order really done as a whole is ever, certainly, that
its parts are in abject dependence, and that even any
great charm they may individually and capriciously put
forth is infirm so far as it does n't measurably con-
tribute to a harmony.l3

What is significant about James's comments is not his confession
of a "lapse of artistic dignity," but his implicit recognition that the
center of consciousness is a means by which he can order and unify a

piece of fiction, and that the center provides a law creating harmony

 

 

 

and intensity. Indeed, James makes this recognition explicit when he

discusses Laura's function as center. Excluding the lapse from Laura's
ll

perspective, James makes his ”attack" on the reader's consciousness a

call as immediate as a postman's knock"

through the medium of the interesting girl's own
vision, own experiences, with which all the facts
are richly charged and coloured. That saturates

our sense of them.with the savour of Laura's sense——
thanks to which enhancement we get intensity.14

The center of consciousness thus conveys "a direct, a personal
impression of life” because all "facts" and experiences reflected
through the center "are richly charged and coloured." Moreover, by
establishing Laura's consciousness as the tale's "law," James achieves
the intensity which is a crucial element of his dramatic objectives.l
Employing the center as the controlling perspective, James enhances

”the suggestiveness of the drama" which he found in the tale's original

donnée.l6

Because of the importance of Laura's function as center, James
was to place "A London Life" in the New York Edition volume containing

The characteristic shared

The Spoils of Poynton and "The Chaperon.”

by all three tales was that the three heroines—~Fleda Vetch, Laura

Wing, and Rose Tramore——served as centers to dramatize characters and

event S :

[The tales] are each-~and truly there are more of such
to come+—”stories about women," very young women, who,
affected with a certain high lucidity, thereby become
characters; in consequence of which their doings, their
sufferings or whatever, take on, I assume, an importance.
Laura Wing, in "A London Life," has, like Fleda Vetch,
acuteness and intensity, reflexion and passion, has
above all a contributive and participant View of her
situation; just as Rose Tramore, in ”The Chaperon,"
rejoices, almost to insolence, very much in the same
cluster of attributes and advantages.17

 

 

177

To emphasize Laura's importance as center, James plays down the
international theme of "A London Life." Although originally concep-

18 "A London

tualized as an "episode in that 'international' series,"
Life" reveals the extent to which James has developed as craftsman.

In earlier international episodes, international contrasts constitute
a major part of the dramatic situation; the conflict of manners and
mores provides natural drama.19 In "A London Life," there is dramatic
contrast in Laura's rigidity and the Londoners' moral laxity, but that
drama is secondary to the primary one of Laura's consciousness through
which the facts are "richly charged and coloured." In short, James's
goal in using Laura as center is a direct impression of life, a goal
to which the international theme, though present, is subsidiary.

" the reader

Except for James's "lapse from artistic dignity,
sees the drama of Selina's and Lionel's separation through Laura's
perception. Crucially, however, the tale focuses not on the
Berringtons' marital problems, but rather on Laura's awareness of the
impending scandal and her reaction to her own precarious situation.
James endows a common situation—~a marriage's break—up-—with particu—
lar intensity because he reflects it through a bewildered and limited
observer. Through Laura's consciousness, James vividly captures
Selina's petty subterfuges and the emotions seething beneath super-
ficial civilities:

It was a house of telegrams; they crossed each other
a dozen times an hour, coming and going, and Selina
in particular lived in a cloud of them. Laura had
but vague ideas as to what they were all about; once
in a while, when they fell under her eyes, she either
failed to understand them or judged them to be about

horses. These were an immense number of horses, in
one way and another, in Mrs Berrington's life. Then

 

 

178

she had so many friends, who were always rushing about

like herself and making appointments and pairing them

off and wanting to know if she were going to certain

places or whether she would go if they did or whether

she would come up to town and dine and "do a theatre."

There were also a good many theatres in the existence

of this busy lady. Laura remembered how fond their

poor father had been of telegraphing, but it was never

about the theatre: at all events she tried to give

her sister the benefit or the excuse of heredity.

Selina had her own opinions, which were superior to

this: she once remarked to Laura that it was idiotic

for a woman to write--to telegraph was the only way not

to get into trouble. If doing so sufficed to keep a

lady out of it Mrs Berrington's life should have

flowed like the rivers of Eden. (pp. 109—10)
Telegrams about horses and trips to the theatre mask Selina's secret
assignations. Laura, of course, is eager to give Selina the benefit
of a doubt at least at this point. But the reader, less credulous and
involved than Laura, recognizes the horses for what they really are—-
yet James never intrudes to correct Laura's version of the events.
Through Laura's perception, James presents Selina's machinations
dramatically while exposing Laura's naivete. And the reader, who
brings a wider vision to the tale than does Laura, can simultaneously
experience Laura's point of view and judge her shortcomings.

Laura presents a peculiar case as center of consciousness be-
cause of her extreme moral rigidity. Although Lady Davenant counsels
Laura "to live and hold one's head up” (p. 93), the girl exclaims pas—
sionately, "'If anything were to happen-~pub1icly—-I should die, I
should diel'" (p. 96). Laura's primary concern is not for the
Berringtons but for the shadow they will cast upon her own reputation.
Moreover, Laura's "barbarous probity” (p. 124), blinds her to an im—

portant aspect of Selina's situation: although Selina is not blame—

less, Lionel, who threatens a divorce suit against his wife, stoops

 

179

"to the very gutter" (p. 130). Laura believes Lionel's accusations
against Selina, but she refuses to hear Selina's case against Lionel:
"'Where have your eyes been, or your senses, or your powers of observa—
tion? You can be clever when it suits you!'" Selina derides her
sister (pp. 130-1). Mrs. Berrington raises a crucial question against
Laura's ability to function as a center of consciousness, because
Laura's inflexibility warps her sense of reality. Laura herself ques—
tions the validity of her own point of view only once in the course of
the tale:

Laura sat up for her sister that night with that nice
question to help her torment herself——whether if she
was hard and merciless in judging Selina it would be
with the bad too that she would associate herself.

Was she wrong after all—-was she cruel by being too
rigid? Was Mrs Collingwood's attitude the right one
and ought she only to propose to herself to "allow"
more and more, and to allow ever, and to smooth things
down by gentleness, by sympathy, by not looking at them
too hard? It was not the first time that the just
measure of things seemed to slip from her hands as she
became conscious of possible, or rather of very actual,
differences of standard and usage. (p. 165)

Although Laura momentarily doubts her ability to judge "differ—

' she reassumes her "barbarous probity"

ences of standard and usage,‘
by accusing Selina of planning to "go away” with Captain Crispin.
Laura becomes even more hardened. Selina weeps "extravagantly," but

ll

Laura does not soothe or comfort——she takes slight refreshment” at
having affected Selina (p. 169). Laura's concern is not Selina's un—
happiness, but that Selina will ruin the family and Laura herself.

Laura's motives are eminently selfish, and so she sees Selina's "bolt—

ing” at the opera purely in terms of her own reputation:

This image [of Captain Crispin] made her draw back
further behind her curtain, because it brought the

 

 

180

blood to her face; and if she coloured for shame she
coloured also for anger. Captain Crispin was there——
in the opposite box. . . . Selina was nestling there
in safety with him, by their favour, and she had had
the baseness to pay an honest girl, the most loyal,
the most unselfish of sisters, under contribution to
the same end. Laura crimsoned with the sense that she
had been, unsuspectingly, part of a scheme, that she
was being used as the two women opposite were used,
but that she had been outraged into the bargain, inas-
much as she was not, like them, a conscious accomplice
and not a person to be given away in that manner before
hundreds of people. (p. 180)

Laura is hardly as loyal and unselfish as she makes herself out
to be. She sees the Berringtons' affair only in terms of its effect on
her; Laura's vision is compromised by her moral inflexibility. J. A.
Ward suggests that James's heroine exemplifies the potential evil of
an "innocent" person who imposes a narrow creed on others.20 And going
a step further than Ward, John Clair regards Laura as constituting a
"substantial evil" and exonerates Selina, who must continue her struggle

. 21
to keep herself alive for her children. Yet Tony Tanner, who ac—
knowledges Laura's moral blindness, treats her more gently: she is
not wrong as to her facts--Selina is having an affair with Crispin——
. . . 22 . .

but she is exce381ve in her response to them. These diverging opin—
ions about Laura indicate the central problem of "A London Life": to
what extent is her judgment valid or excessive? Laura is not "a lucid

23 she is blinded by her moral intransigence, which James

reflector";
typically regards as a considerable flaw. Yet, however Laura's "bar—
barous probity” may be deplored, the reader must recognize that Lionel,
Selina, and the entire society are not blameless. A society which ac-
cepts marital infidelities and acts as an accomplice is, Laura Wing

notwithstanding, morally lax, and there is something to be said for

Laura's judgment of "the loose, mysterious, rather ignoble tolerance

 

 

181

of people like Mrs. Collingwood” who pretend that nothing is amiss or
unusual (p. 165). James's use of Laura Wing as center, whose conscious-
ness "richly charge[s] and colour[s]" the facts, results finally in
casting an equivocal light upon the tale. ward rightly notes that
James's attitude toward Laura is "necessarily ambiguous" because as
center Laura is not inclined to question her conduct;24 Laura is a
Jamesian innocent, but her rigidity is potentially harmful to herself
and others around her. But James's ambiguous attitude extends beyond
Laura to society's indifference. Because marital infidelity and di—
vorce are commonplace does not make them morally acceptable.

Ultimately, however, it is not James's attitude that dominates
the tale. The significant feature of "A London Life" is James's nearly
total reliance upon a center of consciousness to dramatize character
and event. Laura Wing, the tale's center, poses a particular problem
for the reader; Laura's moral inflexibility makes her one of the least
likable of James's centers, but more important, that inflexibility
warps her perception of character and event. In the words of the tale's
Preface, "the facts are richly charged and coloured" by Laura's own
experience; her vision of things is vividly dramatized and "saturates"
the reader "with the savour of Laura's sense."25 But this saturation
necessarily casts ambiguity upon the tale, for the reader is not given
any other frames of reference with which to balance Laura's slanted
perspective. Laura's point of view may be problematic, but James's
technique is virtually flawless. Limited though Laura's consciousness
may be, through it James dramatizes a direct impression of life.

Although "A London Life" is one of the longer tales published

during 1888, its concerns——the morality of society and to a lesser

 

 

182

degree international contrast8wvdo not dominate James's fiction of the
late eighties. Rather, James turns repeatedly to the artist as subject

and theme during the second half of the decade. In The Princess

 

Casamassima James questions the nature of art, in that the novel's hero,

 

Hyacinth Robinson, uses painting and fiction to mask the realities of
London. And although art plays a peripheral role in "Mrs. Temperly"
(1887)--the tale's center, Raymond Bestwick, is an aspiring artist,
which is a partial reason Mrs. Temperly does not want Raymond to marry
her daughter—-the tale does not present a particularly positive image

of the artist. However, in "The Liar,‘ which ran in Century Magazine,

 

May—June 1888,26 James is mercilessly critical of the artist, for the
tale focuses upon Oliver Lyon, a portrait-painter who ruthlessly
probes another's soul. While staying at a country house, Lyon is fas-

cinated by Colonel Capadose, a "liar platonic,"

who lies "prompted by
the love of beauty" or an inner vision of "what ought to be" rather
than to injure or mislead (p. 411). But Lyon is horrified to learn
that Mrs. Capadose, who is obviously in love with her husband, is the
beautiful Everina Brant, who rejected Lyon's marriage proposal when
he was a young and struggling artist. Lyon, still wounded by that
rejection, resolves to force Mrs. Capadose to confess her shame at
having married an incorrigible liar.

To this end, Lyon paints the Colonel's portrait, "determined
that [the liar's] character should be perceptible even to the meanest
intelligence" (p. 419). Lyon is eminently successful—-so successful
that when Mrs. Capadose sees the portrait, (Lyon is eavesdropping on

the couple), she cries "'It's cruel—~oh, it's too cruel!‘" (p. 429).

With a dagger, the Colonel slashes "the painted betrayal," but Lyon

183

is satisfied—-he has exposed Everina's shame. Lyon is dismayed, how-
ever, to discover that when he questions the Capadoses about the por-
trait, Everina supports the Colonel‘s lie about the disgruntled model
who destroyed the portrait. When Everina is "a party to that final
atrocity," Lyon concludes in a fit of disgust that "she was still in
love with the Colonel--he had trained her too well" (p. 411).

Oliver Lyon, in spite of the psychological insight which enables
him to paint celebrated portraits, is blind to the real truth. Mrs.
Capadose has not been corrupted by the liar; she loves her husband.
Lyon caricatures the Colonel because he sees only the liar and not "the
living man" (p. 49). But Lyon does more. He uses his skills and his
talents to violate the secrets of the heart; Lyon's sole purpose in
painting the Colonel's portrait is to lay bare the shame Lyon suspects
in Mrs. Capadose——the shame that even if it exists, Lyon has no right
to see. Lyon is the tale's real liar: he cannot portray an accurate
View of reality, because his vision is falsified by his blinding ego—
tism. Ultimately, ”The Liar” represents James's most scathing indict-
ment of the artist's limitation, and as such, reflects James's pessi—
mism toward art which permeates The Princess Casamassima.

As in The Princess and "A London Life," the center of conscious—
ness dominates the narration and characterization of "The Liar." Lyon
is the tale's center, and James maintains Lyon's integrity as center
even more rigorously than he does Laura Wing's. Interestingly, in the
notebook entry describing the tale's donnée, dated June 19, 1884,
James focuses the tale on the situation of the liar's wife:

One might write a tale (very short) about a woman mar—

ried to a man of the most amiable character who is a
tremendous, though harmless, liar. She is very

184

intelligent, a fine, quiet, high, pure nature, and
she has to sit by and hear him romance—-mainly out

of vanity, the desire to be interesting, and a pecul—
iar irresistible impulse. He is good, kind, person—
ally very attractive, very handsome, etc.: it is
almost his only fault though of course he is increas—
ingly very light. What she suffers——what she goes
through--generally she tries to rectify, to remove
any bad effect by toning down a little, etc. But
there comes a day when he tells a very big lie which
she has—-for reasons to be related-—to adopt, to
reinforce. To save him from exposure, in a word, she
has to lie herself. The struggle, etc.; she lies--
but after that she hates him.27

It is a measure of James's increasing sophistication with the
center of consciousness that he radically alters his original plan. ‘
The Capadoses' drama, while important, becomes secondary to the drama
of the observer and center, Oliver Lyon. The tale's subject is not a
pure nature corrupted by love, but rather is the artistic nature
twisted by selfishness and pride. Consequently, "The Liar" examines
the critical issues of perception and the artist's role and responsi«
bilities—-issues that lie at the heart of "The Art of Fiction."

To this end, James reflects the whole drama through the artist's
consciousness. At the tale's beginning, the reader is catapulted into
Lyon's consciousness without prologue or explanation: "The train was
half an hour late and the drive to the station longer than he supposed,
so that when he reached the house its inmates had dispersed to dress
for dinner and he was conducted straight to his room" (p. 383). The
pronoun "he" immediately suggests that the reader is experiencing some—
one's thoughts, but the center remains nameless and vague until the
end of a page—long paragraph. Similarly, the center's profession and

purpose are revealed only gradually: that Lyon is as Stayes, a country

house, to paint Sir David Ashmore's portrait, must be pieced together

 

185

from several pages of text. This process of gradual revelation demon—
strates the extent to which James tries to reproduce the natural rhythm
of thought in his center of consciousness.

The opening paragraph focuses on Lyon's response to Stayes and
his room:

The walls were adorned with old-fashioned lithographs,
principally portraits of country gentlemen with high
collars and riding gloves: this suggested-~and it was
encouraging--that the tradition of portraiture was held
in esteem. There was the customary novel of Mr. Le
Fanu, for the bedside; the ideal reading in a country
house for the hours after midnight. (p. 383)

Notice that James avoids using verbs denoting mental process—-
wondered, perceived, and thought-~and gives Lyon's reaction directly.
The reader glimpses actual details of the room—-the walls and their
adornment-~but also Lyon's reaction-—"it was encouraging"--which is
clearly Lyon's feeling although James does not denote it as such.
Physical reality and psychological response are gracefully joined with
little suggestion of the author's presence. James uses the center of
consciousness so effectively that he does not shatter the reader's
illusions of directly experiencing Lyon's impressions.

Oliver Lyon, though center of consciousness, possesses definite
limitations which are subtly revealed in his response to the world
around him. He exults, for example, in giving up the routine of his
London studio for the social life at a country house:

Moreover, there was an exhileration (he had felt

it before) in the rapid change of scene--the jump,
in the dusk of the afternoon, from foggy London and
his familiar studio to a centre of festivity in the
middle of Hertfordshire and a drama half acted, a

drama of pretty women and noted men and wonderful
orchids in silver jars. (pp. 384—5)

186

Lyon sees the social festivities as a "drama half acted,” but the
drama includes women, men, and "wonderful orchids in silver jars"; Lyon
equates men and women and orchids. Further, Lyon exposes his addiction
to fascinating surfaces when he admits his interest in the "human
mask"--watching face after face was an ”amusement [that] gave him the
greatest pleasure he knew" (p. 386). Lyon loves life's pictorial side,
but this love precludes deeper insights into married love and personal
integrity. Lyon the artist reduces human beings to brilliant masks
eminently paintable. Consequently, Lyon is essentially a liar because
he accepts the human mask as the reality of personality. Indeed, when
Lyon first meets Colonel Capadose, the artist dwells on the Colonel's
appearance and romanticizes about his character:

What was odd in him was a certain mixture of the
correct and the extravagant: as if he were an adven—
turer imitating a gentleman with rare perfection of

a gentleman who had taken a fancy to go about with
hidden arms. He might have been a dethroned prince
or the war—correspondent of a newspaper: he repre—
sented both enterprise and tradition, good manners
and bad taste. (PP. 386—7)

In fact Lyon, like Hyacinth Robinson, is inclined to see the
world in terms of "the art of fiction." Lyon tells a young man about
Everina Brant when the artist knew her in Munich:

"She was the child of the first wife and she didn't
like her stepmother, but she was charming to her
little brothers and sisters. I once made a sketch

of her as Werther's Charlotte, cutting bread and
butter while they clustered all around her. All the
artists in the place were in love with her but she
wouldn't look at 'the likes' of us. She was too
proud——I grant you that; but she wasn't stuck up nor
young ladyish; she was simple and frank and kind about

it. She used to remind me of Thackeray's Ethel
Newcome." (p. 391)

%

 

 

187

Lyon's willingness to permit literature to color reality is of a
piece with his romanticizing, but it also reveals Lyon's tendency to
place an obscuring, even distorting, mirror between himself and a
"direct impression of life." Lyon's vision, like Hyacinth's, may be
obscured by art, but more important, Lyon is Virtually blinded by his
own ego. After learning of Mrs. Capadose's devotion to her husband,
Lyon can think of only two alternatives to describe her situation:
"Did she sit in torment while her husband turned his Somersaults, or
was she now too perverse that she thought it a fine thing to be striking
at the expense of one's honour?" (pp. 408-9). Lyon finally decides
that Everina is perverse, corrupted by her husband. Lyon's egotism
prevents him from recognizing the love that enables Everina to accept
her husband and his limitations; her devotion is to the man, not to
the liar.

Oliver Lyon is, like Laura Wing, a morally flawed center. Lyon

reduces human beings to interesting objects: because he ignores the
essential humanity of his subject, Lyon ultimately paints caricatures
rather than genuine portraits. But Lyon's most damning failure is the
misuse of his talent, because he employs his artistic ability to lay
bare Mrs. Capadose's soul in order to salve his injured pride.
Through the character of Oliver Lyon, James looks penetratingly at the
artist and his limitations. Indeed, "The Liar's" pessimistic portrayal
of the artist is far removed from the celebration of the artist in "The
Art of Fiction."

In "The Liar," that pessimism is an essential part of the drama

played out on the stage of the inner consciousness. Far from being

 

 

 

 

 

188

"a drama of pretty women and noted men and wonderful orchids,“ the real
play actually focuses upon the larger issues of the artist's responsi-
bility and the nature of his perception. It is appropriate, then, that
the artist's vision controls the narrative; the reader is almost totally
subjected to Lyon's personal, direct impression of life. However, be—
cause James does not intrude to challenge Lyon's integrity or to estab-
lish a rival perspective, "The Liar" can be an ambiguous tale, as shown
by the widely divergent opinions regarding the tale. West and Stallman,
for example, see Lyon as admirable because he strips away Mrs.
Capadose's social mask to reveal her hypocrisy; Lyon is the only honest
character in a society of liars.28 Booth characterizes Lyon as an un—
reliable narrator,29 although Martineau splits hairs by noting that
Lyon is a center, not a narrator, and therefore cannot be an unreliable
narrator.3O Segal and Powers, in contrast, recognize Lyon's self—
deception, and conclude that he is not trustworthy.31
Yet Lyon is neither completely unreliable nor totally trust—
worthy. Clearly, Lyon's evaluation of the Colonel as a "liar platonic"
is accurate, while the artist's judgment of Mrs. Capadose as corrupt
and perverted may not be dependable because Lyon's self-interest and
pride are involved. Talented yet ironically limited, Lyon is essen-
tially ambiguous. Moreover, that ambiguity is effectively drama—
tized because the reader directly experiences Lyon's point of view,
at once sensitive to detail and nuance but also obscured by pride.
And, as a result, "The Liar" is technically significant, because James
refuses to intercede between center and reader and relies on the reader

to judge the center's character.

 

 

 

 

In "The Liar" James dramatically renders the artist's limitations,
for the tale suggests that the artist may be too involved with "the
look of things, . . . the surface, the substance of the human specta-
cle."32 Oliver Lyon is celebrated because he brilliantly renders sur—

faces, but he neglects the humanity behind the spectacle. "The Lesson

of the Master," first published in the Universal Review, 16 July-l5

 

August, 1888, also focuses upon the artist, specifically upon his need
for popular success.33 James recognized the artist's equivocal posi—

tion: because of the failure of The Bostonians and The Princess

 

 

Casamassima, James was increasingly aware of his inability to write
popular novels. In the New York Edition Preface to Volume 12, of which
"The Lesson" is the titular story, James acknowledges the distinctly
autobiographical elements in his tales of writers:

. . . My hapless friends in the present volume will

have been drawn preponderantly from the depths of the

designer's own mind. This, amusingly enough, is what,

on the evidence before us, I seem critically, as I say,

to father--that the states represented, the embarrass-

ments and predicaments studied, the tragedies and

comedies recorded, can be intelligibly fathered but on

his own intimate experience.34

The central conflict of "The Lesson of the Master"-—the artist's

need for isolation to create is played against his need for the world
and its "false gods"--is drawn from James's "own intimate experience."
James himself had an active social life, which he exploited in many
données he discovered in dinner party conversation, and he saw finan-
cial success—-or at least self—sufficienty-—as important. Naturally,

then, James could sympathize with the "master," Henry St. George, who

turns his exceptional talent to mediocre yet popular novels:

 

 

190

However I might have been introduced in fact to

Henry St George, of "The Lesson of the Master," or
however I might have been deprived of him, my com—
plete possession of him, my active sympathy with him
as a known and understood and admired and pitied, in
fine as a fully measured, quantity, hangs about the
pages still as a vague scent hangs about thick orchard
trees.35

Although St. George is the tale's "master," "The Lesson of the
Master" actually focuses on a young writer, Paul Overt, who functions
as the tale's center of consciousness. The two writers meet during a
weekend at a country house. Overt idolizes St. George, although the
younger man recognizes that of late the master's novels are not of the

quality of his masterpiece, Shadowmere. St. George readily acknowl-

 

edges his "falling off" and attributes it to his need to provide Mrs.
St. George with Parisian dresses and a "perfectly appointed brougham"
and to send his sons to Harrow, Oxford, and Sandhurst. The master ad-

vises Overt to pursue his talent above all else. Describing himself

"I

as the spectacle of a man meant for better things sunk . . . in such

Ill

dishonour, the master exhorts:

"Look at me well and take my lesson to heart, for it
_ig a lesson. Let that good come of it at least that
you shudder with your pitiful impression and this may
help to keep you straight in the future. Don't be-
come in your old age what I am in mine—~the depressing,
the deplorable illustration of the worship of false
gods!" (pp. 238—9)

While at the country house, Overt also meets Marion Fancourt, an
admirer of the novels of Overt and St. George. Although St. George
devotes much of his time to Miss Fancourt—-his own wife is ailing—-
Paul begins to fall in love with Marion. Paul continues to see her in

London, and it is there that St. George repeats his "lesson"——the need

for the artist's renunciation of the world and its false gods. Paul

 

 

l9l

exclaims:

"The artist-~the artist! Isn't he a man all the
same?"

St George hesitated. "Sometimes I really think not.
You know as well as I what he has to do: the concen—
tration, the finish, the independence that he must
strive for, from the moment that he begins to respect
his work. Ah, my young friend, his relation to women,
especially in matrimony, is at the mercy of this
damning fact——that whereas he can in the nature of
things have but one standard, they have about fifty..
Fancy an artist with a plurality of standards. . . . To
dg_it-to do it and make it divine is the only thing
he has to think about. 'Is it done or not?' is his
only question. Not '13 it done as well as a pr0per
solicitude for my dear little family will allow?‘ He
has nothing to do with the relative, nothing to do with
a dear little family!" (pp. 268-9)

With this advice, Paul leaves London, spending two years in
Switzerland perfecting a novel more masterly than his last one,

Ginistrella. Mrs. St. George dies. Upon returning to London, Overt

 

discovers that the master, rather than renouncing the world as he
preached, is to marry Miss Fancourt. Paul feels duped by the master,
yet the young writer anxiously awaits St. George's next novel: it will
be "mockery indeed if now, on his new foundation [the master's mar—
riage], at the end of a year, St George should put forth something with

his early quality-—something of the type of Shadowmere and finer than

 

his finest" (p. 284).

The master's lesson is ambiguous. The artist is, despite St.
George's avowal to the contrary, a man; yet the artist also needs to
be free of the world in order to produce great art. James clearly
advocates that need for artistic freedom, but as Barry rightly notes,
James does not take sides against life.36 In the tale, James does not

believe that the artist must renounce life, as a simplistic reading of

 

 

192

the tale might suggest; the artist's relation to the world is much
more equivocal.

To explore this ambiguous relationship, James choses a center who
is at once a sensitive artist and a rather naive young man. Paul Overt
is a novelist with a growing reputation, and he writes works of art
which do not cater to popular taste. Despite his intimations of genius,
Paul is limited by his willingness to accept surface for substance.
Paul, for example, is disconcerted when his idol, Henry St. George,
does not look like a man of letters:

The young man felt a certain surprise, for the person—
age before him contradicted a preconception which had
been vague only till it was confronted with the reality.
As soon as this happened the mental image, retiring with
a sigh, became substantial enough to suffer a slight
wrong. Overt, who had spent a considerable part of his
short life in foreign lands, made now, but not for the
first time, the reflection that whereas in those coun—
tries he had almost always recognised the artist and

the man of letters by personal "type," the mould of his
face, the character of his head, the expression of his
figure and even the indications of his dress, in England
this identification was as little as possible a matter
of course, thanks to the greater conformity, the habit
of sinking the profession instead of advertising it.. . .
His temporary opinion was that St George looked like a
lucky stockbroker-—a gentleman driving eastward every
morning from a sanitary suburb in a smart dog—cart.

(pp. 221-2)

Paul possesses a romanticized vision of the artist; he expects
to identify the man of letters by "the mould of his face" and his
shabby coat. St. George looks more like a successful businessman
than he does a novelist, but equivocally he is both. Appearances,
therefore, are revealing and deceiving: St. George can provide his
wife with a "perfectly appointed brougham," but he has also written

Shadowmere.

 

 

 

193

Paul's perception of and response to St. George's appearance
establishes the limitations of Paul's consciousness and the tale's
essential ambiguity. Although Overt is not an "unreliable narrator"
in Booth's strictest sense, the young writer cannot be depended upon
to offer a balanced or completely trustworthy view of the tale's events
and characters. Indeed, Paul's portrayal of two other important char-
acters, Mrs. St. George and Miss Fancourt, must be subjected to care-
ful scrutiny. Paul regards Mrs. St. George as a "dragon" (p. 231)37
who prevents her husband from smoking and drinking and who burns St.
George's masterpieces: Paul "felt sure on the instant that the burnt
book (the way she alluded to it!) was one of her husband's finest
things" (p. 219). But Paul does not have the grounds to make that as-
sumption, and the young novelist never forgives the "dragon" for de—
stroying the book. Overt later asks St. George about the book, and
the master recalls, "'Oh, yes, it was about myself,'" adding that ”'it
was rather good'" (p. 267). But perhaps Mrs. St. George judged rightly
when she saw St. George's self—indulgent introspection as bad. The
book—burning incident shapes Overt's perception of Mrs. St. George,
albeit a perception based on tenuous premises. Paul increasingly sees
Mrs. St. George as the master's keeper who locks him in the cage of
his study. Overt only fleetingly recognizes the artist's freedom in
the cage where "the outer world, the world of accident and ugliness
was so successfully excluded, and within the rich, protecting square,
beneath the patronizing sky, the figures projected for an artistic
purpose could hold their particular revel" (p. 260). When the "dragon"

dies and St. George genuinely mourns his loss, Paul is bewildered

 

 

 

because the master seems to be contradicting his lesson of renunciation.
St. George's eulogy of his wife is actually an argument for the artist's
need to marry:

"She took everything off my hands——off my mind. She

carried on our life with the greatest art, the rarest

devotion, and I was free, as few men can have been,

to drive my pen, to shut myself up with my trade.

This was a rare service-—the highest she could have

rendered me." (p. 273)

Mrs. St. George was an artist herself, and devoted her art to her
husband. In acknowledging his wife's art, the master seems to retract
his lesson of renunciation-—that is, if one takes the lesson literally.
The artist must renounce certain aspects of the world, but he cannot
turn his back on life, as Paul Overt thinks. Previously, the young
novelist expected the mask to reflect the individual wearing it, and
was disappointed when he could not fit "the lucky stockbroker" into

' Similarly, Overt misreads the master's lesson,

the novelist's "type.'
admittedly ambiguous, because Paul tends to be too literal.

Paul's perception of Miss Fancourt also demonstrates his willing—
ness to base assumptions on mere appearance. Both St. George and Overt
admire Marion Fancourt, but the younger novelist is particularly taken
by her intelligence and aesthetic taste. When Miss Fancourt praises
his book, Paul never asks which book she refers to (he has written
several)~—"that seemed a vulgar detail" (p. 225). For Paul, Marion
Fancourt embodies the essence of the literary life: "the young purity
and richness of which appeared to imply that real success was to
resemble that, to live, to bloom, to represent the perfection of a

fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with a bent back

at an ink-stained table" (pp. 225—6). Besides representing for Paul

 

 

 

195

an inspiring Muse, Miss Fancourt is "natural"-—that is "indubitable"——
despite "her aesthetic drapery, which was conventionallyunconventional,
suggesting a tortuous spontaneity" (p. 226). Overt makes numerous pre-
suppositions about Miss Fancourt's personality which have no basis in
reality. Marion Fancourt has all the natural spontaneity of a languid
pre-Raphaelite beauty, yet "Overt was sure she liked the taste of life"

(p. 226). The cumulative effect of sure, indubitable, and certain in

 

Paul's description of Miss Fancourt casts doubt on Overt's certainty.
The reader never sees Marion exhibiting her intelligence and spontaneity.
And Miss Fancourt's drawing-room exemplifies her aesthetic sense:

She was in a large, bright, friendly, occupied room,
which was painted red all over, draped with the quaint,
cheap, florid stuffs that are represented as coming
from southern and eastern countries, where they are
fabled to serve as the counterpanes of the peasantry,
and bedecked with pottery of vivid hues, ranged on
casual shelves, and with many water—colour drawings
from the hand (as the visitor learned) of the young
lady, commemorating, with courage and skill, the sun~
sets, the mountains, the temples and palaces of India,
(p. 249)

Red, cheap, florid, vivid, casual-~hardly adjectives to describe

 

 

a tastefully decorated room. The room's appointments seem counterfeit,
suspect, and self—conscious: the fabrics are "represented" as coming
from the east, and are "fabled" to be peasants' counterpanes. Indeed,

if this rather gaudy drawing—room.ref1ects Miss Fancourt's aesthetic

H It

tastes, the reader must wonder what manner of art she brings to the
master's life.

The limitations of Paul Overt's consciousness are apparent in
his response to the surfaces of life. Paul's interpretations of Mrs.

St. George and Miss Fancourt reveal his tendency to make erroneous

judgments about character. But the real significance of Paul's

 

 

 

 

 

196

performance as center lies not so much in his mistaken assumptions,
but in his dramatization of his limitations for the perceptive reader.
Paul makes judgments, but provides the reader with enough evidence to
question his accuracy-éMiss Fancourt's drawing—room being a case in
point. And as a result, Overt's limitations cast doubt on his percep—
tion of the master and the master's lesson. The master's lesson is
ambiguous, but Paul's consciousness only intensifies that ambiguity.3
Although James experiments with various narrative techniques
during the late eighties, he continues to develop the center of con—
sciousness as a narrating and characterizing method. Three major tales
published during 1888——"A London Life," "The Liar," and "The Lesson of
the Master"-—employ centers of consciousness. A comparison of these
1888 tales with those written earlier in the decade—-”The Siege of

' and "Pandora"-—reveals the degree to which

London," "Lady Barberina,’
James has refined his centers. The authorial narrator's role has been
greatly diminished, while the center's point of view increasingly
dominates and structures the tale. Thus, the centers of the later
tales function more naturally, particularly in the manner in which they
release information to the reader. Details are revealed gradually,
even haphazardly. And in the absence of the authorial narrator, who
in the earlier tales summarizes and organizes the narrative, the
reader must piece together characters' biographies and other necessary
information.

More importantly, however, the centers of "A London Life," "The

' and "The Lesson of the Master" are essentially different from

Liar,‘
the centers of tales published during the early eighties. James's

later centers of consciousness are limited: Laura Wing is morally

 

 

 

197

inflexible, Oliver Lyon is proud and self-centered, and Paul Overt is
naive and credulous. These various limitations influence the centers'
perceptions and their interpretations of character. These centers
dramatize views of the world which are "richly charged and coloured"
by their consciousness. Granted, James's earlier centers were not with—
out blemish: Rupert Waterville,Jackson Lemon, and Count Vogelstein are
biased. The crucial difference with the later centers is that their
limitations more radically affect their perception of things; indeed,
the integrity of individual perception constitutes a substantial issue
within each of the 1888 tales. Consequently, because these tales ques-
tion the very nature of perception itself, ambiguity permeates each
tale, an ambiguity which ultimately deepens and enriches James's fiction.
"A London Life," "The Liar," and "The Lesson of the Master" are
essentially dramatic. In them James continues to pursue the dramatic

' an ideal

ideal of permitting "situations to speak for themselves,’
James praised in his master, Turgenev.39 When James's centers of con—
sciousness speak for themselves, James achieves dramatic immediacy

and intensity. His centers offer a considerably limited view of re—
ality: they do not merely reflect their world; they shape it. And
although such centers frequently commit the Jamesian sins of pride and
rigidity, James could still appreciate his "children of fancy"40 for
their unique perception of reality. As he wrote to the Deerfield
summer school in 1889: "Any point of view is interesting that is a

direct impression of life."41

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Henry James, "The Art of Fiction," in Partial Portraits (1888;
rpt. London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1911), p. 384.

 

2 James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 402.

3 Henry James, Letters, 1883-1895, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 101, 208.

Henry James, "Guy de Maupassant," in Partial Portraits, p. 286.

 

James, "Guy de Maupassant," pp. 249-50.
James, "Guy de Maupassant," p. 250.

James, "Guy de Maupassant," pp. 251-2.
James, "Guy de Maupassant," pp. 245—6.

James, "Guy de Maupassant," p. 247.

10 Of these tales, four of them--"Louisa Pallant" (1888), "The

Aspern Papers" (1888), "The Patagonia" (1888), and "The Solution"
(l889)-—employ first-person narration. James's use of that point of
view also reflects his interest in capturing direct impressions of life.
Because first-person narration eliminates the need for an authorial
commentator, James can present his characters dramatically and economi-
cally. The narrator, who supplants the intrusive author, must neces—
sarily focus on the visible, tangible aspects of the characters. ‘More—
over, as a character within the narrative, the narrator cannot examine
the motives or inner life of the other characters except as a matter

of speculation. And because the immediacy of the narrator's voice is
of paramount importance, characters are presented and developed di—
rectly and simply, without large, static blocks of description.

Henry James, "A London Life," in The Complete Tales, ed. Leon

Edel (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963), VII, pp. 87—212; hereafter
cited in text.

Henry James, Preface to "The Spoils of Poynton," in The Art of

the Novel, ed. R. P. Blackmur (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1934), p. 136.

198

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

199

13 James, Preface, p. 136.

14 James, Preface, pp. 137—8.

15

Joseph Weisenfarth, in Henry James and the Dramatic Analogy
(New York: Fordham University Press, 1963), isolates three qualities-—

intensity, economy, and objectivity--as the vital elements of James's
dramatic novel (pp. xii, 5-6).

16 F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds. The Notebooks

of Henry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 77.

 

James, Preface to "The Spoils of Poynton," p. 130.

18 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 77. In the Preface to "The Spoils

of Poynton," James discounts "A London Life's" international theme——

"I fail to make out to-day why I need have conceived my three principal
persons as sharers in that particular bewilderment [of Americanisml"
(p. 133). But Philip Grover, in Henry James and the French Novel: A
Study in Inspiration (London: Elek Books, Ltd., 1973), argues that it
is important for Laura to be American to enhance her position as a
candid outsider and her awareness of a simpler social order (pp. 36-7).

19 In the Preface to "Lady Barbarina," for example, James notes

that "the dramatic side of humans situations subsists of course on con—
trast" and sees that contrast arising from "emphasised international—

ism" (p. 199).

20 J. A. Ward, The Imagination of Disaster: Evil in the Fiction
of Henry James (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), p. 25.

21 John A. Clair, The Ironic Dimension in the Fiction of Henry

James (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University PreSs, 1965), p. 127. Clair's
position frequently leads him to ignore crucial evidence and to make
some unusual interpretations. For example, in the coincidental meeting
between Laura, Wendover, Crispin, and Selina, Clair sees Selina and her
"agent" there to eavesdrop on Laura and gather information that will
destroy her credibility as Lionel's witness (pp. 119-20). Similarly,

for Clair, Selina's bolting to Belgium is a successful ruse to make
Laura leave London (p. 127).

22 Tony Tanner, The Reign of Wonder: Naivety and Reality in

American Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965),
p. 272.

 

 

 

 

 

200

23 The term is Ora Segal's, who uses it in his The Lucid Reflec-
tor: The Observer in Henrngames's Fiction (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1969).

 

 

24 Ward, p. 24.

25 James, Preface to "The Spoils of Poynton," pp. 137—8.

James, "The Liar," in The Complete Tales, ed. Leon Edel

(London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1963), VI, pp. 383-441; hereafter cited

in text. It is unclear when James actually wrote the tale, because he
first refers to the tale's donnée on June 19, 1884, attributing the
tale's germ to Daudet's Numa Roumestan. James revised the tale for the
New York Edition, but in the Preface he mentions having met a "most un-
bridled colloquial romancer" at a dinner-party, and forgets Daudet's
original inspiration (Preface to "The Aspern Papers," The Art of the
Novel, p. 178). Without further evidence, it is difficult to date the
tale, but the tale's subject and theme do seem to proceed out of James's
pessimism toward art apparent in The Princess Casamassima.

 

 

 

 

27 Matthiessen and Murdock, pp. 61—2.

28 Ray B. West, Jr. and R. W. Stallman, The Art of Modern Fiction

(New York: Rinehart and Co., 1949), p. 210.

 

9 wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 352.

 

3 . . . . .
0 Barbara Martineau, "Portraits are Murdered in the Short Fiction

of Henry James," Journal of Narrative Technique, 2 (1972), 2l.
Martineau sees the tale as suggesting that the roles of man and artist
are interdependent and ruled by "monstrous egotism" (p. 22).

 

31 Segal, The Lucid Reflector, p. 93 and "The Liar: A Lesson in

Devotion," Review of English Studies, 16 (1965), 272—81; Lyall H.
Powers, "Henry James and the Ethics of the Artist: 'The Real Thing'
and 'The Liar,'" Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 3 (1961),
362. Other critics who discuss the tale link it to Hawthorne. Robert
J. Kane sees the artist in Hawthorne and James as an unsparing analyst
of the soul ("Hawthorne's 'The Prophetic Pictures' and James's 'The
Liar,'" Modern Language Notes, 65 (1950), 257—8). And Edward H.
Rosenberry, in "James's Use of Hawthorne in 'The Liar,'" Modern Lan—
ggage Notes, 76 (1961), 234-8, believes that Hawthorne's and James's
artists commit the unpardonable sin of laying bare the human heart.

 

 

 

 

 

James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 390.

 

 

 

201

33 James, "The Lesson of the Master,‘ in The Complete Tales, ed.
Leon Edel (London: Rupert Hart—Davis, 1963), VII, pp. 213-284; here-
after cited in text.

 

34 James, Preface to "The Lesson of the Master" in The Art of
the Novel, p. 221.

 

5 James, Preface, p. 225.

36 Peter Barry, "In Fairness to the Master's Wife: A Re-
Interpretation of 'The Lesson of the Master,'" Studies in Short Fiction,
15 (1978), 389,

 

37 Adeline Tintner sees the tale as depending on the legend of

St. George and the dragon. For her, the tale is about the perils of
the artist, and she regards St. George as James's spokesman. Tintner
focuses on the dragon and color (particularly red) imagery, and cone
cludes that Miss Fancourt will be as much of a "dragon" as the first
Mrs. St. George. See Adeline R. Tintner, "Iconic Analogy in 'The
Lesson of the Master': Henry James's Legend of St. George and the
Dragon," Journal of Narrative Technique, 5 (1975), 116—27.

38 . . . . . .
It is interesting to note that while most critiCism has focused

on the ambiguity of "The Lesson," the tale's techniques have been over-
looked. In The Notebooks of Henry James, Matthiessen and Murdock de-
plore the ambiguity of the tale's ending (p. 87). Segal, in The Lucid
Reflector, regards the talelsambiguity more positively, but does not
consider the limitations of Overt's consciousness; Segal sees St.
George and Overt representing "two opposite and irreconcilable views"
(p. l35)-a view which seems to lessen the ambiguity. And G. Van
Cromphout, in "Artist and Society in Henry James," Epglish Studies,

49 (1968), 132-40, ignores the tale's equivocal lesson; he argues that
in this tale James sees an unbridgeable chasm separating the dedicated
artist from the public (pp. 133-4). .

 

 

39 James, "Ivan Turgenieff" in French Poets and Novelists (London:
Macmillan and Co., 1884), p. 231.

 

James, Preface to "The Aspern Papers," in The Art of the Novel,

 

p. 178.

1 James, Letters, 1883-1895, p. 258.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER VII

One Must Go One's Way

As one of Henry James's perennial defenders, William Dean Howells
could rejoice in 1882 that "the art of fiction has, in fact, become a
finer art in our day than it was with Dickens and Thackeray" because of
James's "very great literary genius."l Howell's support for James con—

tinued throughout the decade; although for Howells The Princess

 

Casamassima represented a departure from the "genius" of The Portrait,

 

 

he lauded the 1886 novel as "incomparably the greatest novel of the

year in our language."2 In the October 1888 issue of Harper's New

 

Monthly Magazine, Howells continued in this confident strain when he
singled out James's "impulse to experiment":

There never was much 'prentice faltering in him; the
danger was rather that in one so secure of his literary
method from the first, a mere literary method might
content to the end; but with a widening if not a deep-
ening hold on life (all must admit that his hold has
widened, whoever denies that it has deepened) this has
not contented him.3

Howells was reviewing two volumes of James's tales, The Aspern

 

Papers (1888) and A London Life (1889). In the latter collection,

 

which included "The Liar," Howells praises James's mastery in cap—
turing his characters' psychological nuances. In "A London Life,"
Howells notes the "depths under depths in the subtle penetrations of
this story"; in the same breath he remarks upon James's "brilliant

1

performance" in "The Liar," a tale in which Howells sees 'astonishing

divination, and a clutch upon the unconscious motives which are

202

 

 

 

 

203

scarcely more than impulses, instincts."4

Howell's review implicitly acknowledges James's command of the
center of consciousness, the technique which allows James the "subtle
penetrations" of his characters. With the center of consciousness
James could portray and individualize his characters-—an achievement
duly noted by Howells when he defends James against contemporary
critics' accusations that his characters are caricatures: "They are
really not caricatures: a caricature of any sort would be impossible
to his delicate art: they are exact portraits, and not the less per-
fectly realized because they seem so pitiless."5

James's use of the center enables him, as Howells notes, to create
"exact portraits," with particular attention to the characters' psycho-
logical motivations. By focusing on a character who functions as the
center, James renders an accurate, detailed, and senSitive portrait.

But with the center James can move beyond mere portrait--which sug-
gests a fixed though insightful composition—-to create a character who
develops dynamically and dramatically. One need only compare the por—
traits of Isabel Archer and Oliver Lyon to see James's transition from
painting Isabel to permitting Lyon to reveal himself gradually.
Isabel's portrait is static and inclusive, and the painter himself
obtrudes. Lyon's "portrait," in contrast, is generated by the charac-
ter himself throughout the tale's course, without the author's intru—
sion.

The tales of the late eighties represent James's proficiency with

the center of consciousness. Yet with this technical confidence, a

o o I I ales
troubled note enters James's fiction, particularly in those t

about writers and artists. As a result of the failure of the two

204

novels of the mid-eighties, The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima,

 

 

James questions the artist's relationship to the world and his art.
Tales such as "The Lesson of the Master" and "The Liar," which focus on
that relationship, are essentially ambiguous. While James firmly be-
lieved that the artist must pursue his individual art regardless of the
world's approbation, he also knew that an artist needs to make a living.
James convinced himself that by venturing into playwriting he could
make an adequate income6 and still apply himself to his own particular
art.

As a consequence, James sees The Tragic Muse,7 which ran in

Atlantic Monthly January 1889 to May l890,as his "last long novel."8

 

This description suggests that the novel closes a period in his devel-
opment. Lyall Powers, stressing the words "last" and "novel," sees

The Tragic Muse as James's valedictory to the novel and his declaration

 

to devote himself to the theatre.9 Oscar Cargill, in contrast, is con-
vinced the emphasis is on "long,"10 an emphasis borne out by James's
own comments to Robert Louis Stevenson on March 21, 1890:

I have lately finished the longest and most careful
novel I have ever written (it has gone sixteen
months in a periodical!) and the last, in that form,
I shall ever do—-it will come out as a book in May.

Admittedly, James's "that form" is ambiguous, because it could

refer to "the longest and most careful novel" or to serialization,

with which James was increasingly frustrated. James's letters, how—

ever, reveal him to be preoccupied with the novel's length. To

Frederick Macmillan James describes The Tragic Muse as "longish"; in

the letters to William, the novel begins as "the long thing" and grows

to "my interminable novel"; and to Robert Louis Stevenson James writes

 

205

of his "fearfully long-winded but very highly—finished novel."12 In

his notebook, James confesses that "for fear of making it [The Muse's,

subject] too small I have made it too big" and invokes Maupassant be-

. O 0 13
cause "variety and conCiSion must be my formula." These comments

suggest that James is more concerned with achieving concision than with
abandoning the novel itself.

And in fact, James reveals his preoccupation with concision to
Robert Louis Stevenson on July 31, 1888:

I have just begun a novel which is to run through

the Atlantic from January lst and which I aspire to
finish by the end of this year. In reality I suppose
I shall not be fully delivered of it before the middle
of next. After that, with God's help, I prOpose for

a longish period, to do nothing but short lengths. I
want to leave a multitude of pictures of my time, pro-
jecting my small circular frame upon as many different
spots as possible and going in for number as well as
quality, so that the number may constitute a total
having certain value as observation and testimony.14

James is concerned with brevity; he is not necessarily abandoning the

novel. Indeed, it is in the midst of writing The Tragic Muse that

 

James celebrates "the great art and the great form" of the novel in his
letter to the Deerfield summer school in 1889. In that letter, which
contains distinct echoes of "The Art of Fiction," James equates the

novel with ”life": "it is infinitely large, various and comprehen—

The Tragic Muse itself answers James's description of the novel

 

as "large, various and comprehensive." The Muse is James's attempt to

reconcile, on a grand scale, diverse and even contradictory elements.

With its large cast of characters, multiple plots, and omniscient nar—
. . . . . l6 . .

rator, the novel is distinctly Victorian. Despite this dependence

upon nineteenth century conventions, The Tragic Muse is also a highly

 

 

 

 

206

experimental work. James is boldly innovative in his use of two centers
of consciousness, an objectively treated center, and his intensive fo—
cus on the "psychological reason." Moreover, in The Muse James blends
his major evocations, painting and drama; the two arts comprise the
novel's dual subject. More importantly, however, painting and drama
influence James's technique; in this novel James fuses the painter's
craft with that of the dramatist.

The Tragic Muse is the large and detailed treatment of James's

 

concern with "the conflict between art and 'the world'"-~which James
sees as "one of the half—dozen great primary motives"l7but a motive
apparent in many of his tales of the late eighties. The conflict be-
tween the artist and the world is embodied in Nick Dormer, who resigns
his seat in Parliament for an uncertain career as portraitupainter, and
thus sacrifices a marriage and a fortune and destroys his mother's
hopes for a comfortable old age. Paralleling Nick Dormer, James's

' is Miriam Rooth, a crude but determined actress who

"political case,‘
aspires to be the "English Rachel" and who by the novel's end is
achieving success. James's incarnation of the "Tragic Muse" ruth-
lessly sacrifices intimate love and private life in her pursuit of art
and excellence. Miriam's "theatrical case" receives its special poign—
ancy by being reflected through Peter Sherringham, who falls in love
with Miriam, but who is unable to give up his own ambitions as a dip—
1omat. Because Miriam is the focus of Peter's and Nick's attention,
she is the novel's "objective center"18 and James's most triumphant
representation of utter devotion to art. Miriam's influence permeates

and dominates the novel. And although painting, as both subject and

technique, constitutes a significant portion of the novel, it is the

 

 

207

dramatic art that stamps The Tragic Muse as unique in the Jamesian canon.

 

In no other novel has James so accurately rendered the essence of drama,
nor does he raise that art to the glory of a "subject" as he has in

The Tragic Muse.

 

 

Even as The Tragic Muse's subject encompasses the arts of paint—
ing and the stage, so too do its techniques range from traditional
forms of narration to the more innovative center of consciousness. Al-
though in the 1888 tales James limits or suppresses the intrusive om-

niscient narrator, in The Tragic Muse the narrator constitutes an im-

 

portant element. The narrator functions in a distinctly painterly man-
ner. At the novel's beginning, for example, the narrator exhibits por-
traits of the characters, of which Lady Agnes's, Nick's mother, is rep-
resentative:

The eldest of the three ladies had indeed a face of a
fine austere mould, which would have been moved to
gaiety only by some force more insidious than any she
was likely to recognize in Paris. Cold, still and con—
siderably worn, it was neither stupid nor hard, but it
was firm, narrow and sharp. This competent matron,
acquainted evidently with grief, but not weakened by it,
had a high forehead, to which the quality of the skin
gave a singular polish——it glittered even when seen at
a distance; a nose which achieved a high, free curve,
and a tendency to throw back her head and carry it well
above her, as if to disengage it from the possible en-
tanglements of the rest of her person. If you had

seen her walk you would have perceived that she trod
the earth in a manner suggesting that in a world where
she had long since discovered that one couldn't have
one's own way, one could never tell what annoying ag-
gression might take place, so that it was well, from
hour to hour, to save what one could. (p. 8)

The narrator paints Lady Agnes's portrait. Although the narrator
is intrusive, he slyly avoids omniscience even while he gives the illu-
sion of omniscience. He portrays Lady Agnes in such a way that her

features reflect both her personality and her past. Lady Agnes's face

 

 

 

208

is "cold, still and worn" revealing that she is "acquainted with grief,
but not weakened by it." And the narrator's description of the manner
in which Nick's mother carries herself is elaborately*metaphoric, fusing
physical description and characterization. Yet while the narrator is
firmly in control of his characters, he also draws the reader into the

' indicates that the narrator ma—

narrative; the direct reference "you'
nipulates his audience as well as his characters.

In the novel's opening chapters, the narrator is a portrait-
painter, proudly exhibiting his gallery of characters while they tour
the Parisian salon and the Palais de 1'Industrie. In fact, as the nar-
rator introduces more characters, he deliberately connects his charac—
ters' visages with painted portraits. In contrast to Lady Agnes,
whose description though concrete is primarily suggestive, Peter
Sherringham's portrait is composed of specific details which convey a
vivid picture of one of the novel's more important characters. The
narrator introduces Peter as an eye-catching picture-—"he remains so
conspicuous our eyes may rest on him briefly":

He was middling high and was visibly a representative
of the nervous rather than of the phlegmatic branch
of his race. He had an oval face, fine, firm features
and a complexion that tended to the brown. Brown were
his eyes, and women thought them soft; dark brown his
hair, in which the same critics sometimes regretted
the absence of a little undulation. It was perhaps
to conceal this plainness that he wore it very short.
His teeth were white; his moustache was pointed, and
so was the small beard that adorned the extremity of
his chin. (p. 38)

The narrator approaches Peter as a painter might begin a por—

trait; a quick roughing in of Peter's overall person——"he was middling

high"—-then carefully detailing features—-eyes, teeth, hair. Yet the

 

 

209

narrator adds another dimension to the portrait by including judgment-—
not his own, or the reader's, but that of anonymous "critics." These
critics--the women around Peter——enhance the illusion of the narrator
as painter, for portraits on exhibit usually attract critics. Moreover,
these "critics" contribute an "air of reality" to the novel; they

people the world James creates in The Tragic Muse, and they provide

 

the narrator with means to judge without himself seeming to do so.

The narrator refines his initial sketch of Peter by examining
Peter's physiognomy in order to discover his character. The narrator
notes, for example, that Peter "cultivated the mask of an alien, an
Italian or a Spaniard; of an alien in time, even--one of the wonderful
ubiquitous, diplomatic agents of the sixteenth century" (p. 38). In
true painterly fashion, the narrator studies facial features to expose
the person beneath the face. Thus Peter's "mask" reveals his cosmo-
politanism and his ambitions as a diplomat. But the narrator goes
further by adding an ornate, allusive frame to this intricate portrait.
He tells the reader that Biddy Dormer, Nick's sister who is very much
in love with Peter, admires the hue of Peter's cheek "for its olive
richness and his moustache and beard for their resemblance to those
of Charles I" though she thinks that he also "looked like a Titian"
(p. 38). Mere physical details are amplified with associations and
allusions, creating a portrait that is as complex and richly resonant
as the human personality itself. James's narrator is a master of por—
traiture, who in his painting combines description and characteriza—
tion, and who distills the essence of personality.

In casting the narrator as a painter of suggestive and revealing

portraits, James discovers a strategy which obviates the need for the

 

 

 

210

lengthy biography typically introducing the novel's characters, and
which reduces the necessity for narratorial omniscience. Nevertheless,
The Muse's narrator is essentially omniscient, and assumes many of the
roles associated with that type of narrator. Noting Nick Dormer's
nervous excitement and speculating that it is occasioned by his being
in Paris, the narrator tempts the reader into the narrative:

Certainly, to persons not deeply knowing, or at any

rate not deeply curious in relation to the young man's

history, the explanation might have seemed to beg the

question, consisting as it did of the simplest formula

that he had at last come to a crisis. Why a crisis——

what was it, and why had he not come to it before?

The reader shall learn these things in time, if he cares

enough for them. (p. 19)

Here the narrator, unashamedly obvious, goes behind Nick and

hints at the novel's subject. Moreover, by explicitly referring to

" the narrator destroys the novel's illusion of life, im-

"the reader,
plicitly acknowledging that the novel is a deliberate work of artifice,
whose course the narrator alone is privy to.

The narrator's structuring hand is evident in varying degrees

throughout The Tragic Muse. Although Nick and Peter function as cen—

 

ters, the narrator rarely declines to explain or expand emotional
subtleties. In this role, he can be coy--"I ought possibly to hesitate
to say how much Sherringham felt the discomfort, for him, of the ad—
vantage that Miriam had of him" (p. 214)—-yet he can also be supremely
confident:

Sherringham, I may add, had no desire that she should
indulge a different preference: it was foreign to

him to compute the probabilities of a young lady's
misbehaving for his advantage (that seemed to him defi-
nitely base), and he would have thought himself a
blackguard if, professing a tenderness for Miriam, he
had not wished the thing that was best for her. (p. 215)

 

211

And perhaps even more curiously, the narrator alternates between
allowing the novel's characters freedom and confessing his own editorial
control-~in a single sentence:

I am afraid moreover that I have no better excuse for
Nick than the one he had touched on in the momentous
conversation with his mother which I have thought it
useful to reproduce in full. (p. 176)

The narrator admits a certain helplessness in explaining ideas
and feelings, yet he also boldly tells the reader that he exercises

selectivity by "reproducing" significant events "in full." In many re-

spects, The Tragic Muse's narrator is akin to that of The Bostonians,

 

particularly in his capricious advancing and withdrawing of information.
And there are moments when The Muse's narrator is equally slippery. In
discussing Julia Dallow's love for Nick, the narrator unblushingly con—
fides:

If she liked Nick Dormer extremely (and it may without

further delay be communicated to the reader that she

did), her liking was of a kind that opposed no diffi—

culty whatever to her not liking (in the case of such

a complication) a person attached or otherwise belong—

ing to him. It was not in her nature to extend toler-

ances to others for the sake of an individual she

loved: the tolerance was usually consumed in the loving;

there was nothing left over. (p. 103)

The narrator begins with a conditional statement—-a speculation

perhaps based on observation—-but then parenthetically asserts his cer—
tainty, and proceeds to define Julia's innermost feelings, inaccessible

to observation. Undoubtedly, the narrator's expansiveness is justified

by Julia's characteristic reticence; nevertheless, The Tragic Muse's

 

narrator is hardly distinguishable from other nineteenth—century nar—
rators. Yet that narrator takes on a peculiar dimension when James

uses him to insist upon "the indirect Vision"——the center of

 

 

212

consciousness——as the novel's controlling point of view:
As to whether Miriam had the same bright, still sense
of co-operation to a definite end, the sense of the
distinctively technical nature of the answer to every
question to which the occasion might give birth, that
mystery would be cleared up only if it were open to
us to regard this young lady through some other medium
than the mind of her friends. We have chosen, as it
happens, for some of the advantages it carries with it,
the indirect vision; and it fails as yet to tell us
(what Nick of course wondered about before he ceased
to care, as indeed he intimated to his visitor) why a
young person crowned with success should have taken
it into her head that there was something for her in
so blighted a spot. (pp. 276-7)

In effect, the omniscient narrator, who usually refers to himself

as "I” but here assumes the editorial "we,"

acquiesces to "the minds of
her friends"-—the centers of consciousness—~in order to maintain
Miriam's place as the novel's objective center. The narrator implies
that different laws govern different characters, so that he may go be-
hind the reserved Julia according to the dictates of the plot, but must
back off from Miriam who is developed through James's "indirect vision."
Again, the narrator destroys the novel's illusion of life by acknowledg—
ing the laws under which the story is to be told,19 and in so doing
emphasizes the "art" and artifice of fiction.

Indeed, the passage quoted above has misled some critics to be—
1ieve that the "indirect vision" virtually suppresses the omniscient
narrator's presence. Bellringer calls this passage "the technical crux
for the interpretation of the novel."20 And although Powers admits
that James employs a "hypothetical authority" in the novel's opening
chapter, he asserts that "virtually all of the novel——narration, de~

scription, dialogue-~is presented from the point of view of one or

other of the characters."21 In comparing The Tragic Muse with its

 

 

 

213

predecessors The Bostonians and The Princess Casamassima, Kimmey con—

 

 

fesses to "rare intrusions" in a novel where scenes and characters are

0 I 2 2 a ' I I
predominantly dramatized. Indeed, Stone is one of the few critics
of The Tragic Muse who recognizes the pervasive presence of James's

23
narrator.

 

That narrator, who vacillates between omniscience and reticence,
is more assured in his other functions as a typical nineteenth-century
narrator. He, for example, will judge some characters for the reader.
After depicting Gabriel Nash expounding on the question of Nick's de—

" the narrator turns

voting himself to "the practice of pictorial art,
to the reader:

This may strike many of my readers as a limited and

even trivial inquiry, with little of the heroic or

romantic in it; but it was none the less carried to

a very fine point by our clever young men. (p. 267)
In one breath the narrator defends and patronizes "our clever young
men" while he pokes fun at the reader's "heroic" or "romantic" expec-
tations. James's narrator treads a narrow course between instruction
and criticism—-criticism that is not always limited to the novel's

characters.

But like many nineteenth-century narrators, The Tragic Muse's

 

narrator has firm footing at the novel's conclusion where he ties up
all of the plots' loose ends. The major characters are conveniently
gathered together at Miriam's premiere as Juliet, and are discussing
Peter Sherringham's discovery of Miriam's marriage to Basil Dashwood.
Their discussion abruptly stops as the curtain rises on the play's
"tragic climax." But at this point the narrator steps on stage and

disposes of the characters one by one, He marries Biddy Dormer to

 

 

 

214

Peter, and suggests some form of a reconciliation between Nick and
Julia by having Mrs. Dallow Sit to Nick for a portrait which will at-
tract "general attention." And in the novel's final paragraph, the
narrator breaks away from dealing out fates to bridge the gap between
his deliberately created world and the reader's world:

These matters are highly recent however, as I say; so
that glancing about the little circle of interests I
have tried to evoke I am suddenly warned by a sharp
sense of modernness. This renders it difficult for me,
for example, in taking leave of our wonderful Miriam,

to do much more than allude to the general impression
that her remarkable career is even yet only in its early
prime. Basil Dashwood has got his theatre, and his wife
(people know now that she is his wife) has added three
or four new parts to her repertory; but every one is
agreed that both in public and in private she has a
great deal more to show. This is equally true of Nick
Dormer, in regard to whom I may finally say that his
friend Nash's predictions about his reunion with Mrs
Dallow have not up to this time been justified. On

the other hand, I must not omit to add, this lady has
not, at the latest accounts, married Mr Macgeorge.

It is very true there has been a rumour that Mr
Macgeorge is worried about her-~has even ceased to
believe in her. (PP. 529—30)

Although the narrator professes that "the little circle of inter-
ests" is contrived, he continues to treat his creations as if they were
real. He proposes futures for the novel's characters: ‘Miriam stead—
fastly pursues her "remarkable career" and cites "the latest accounts"
concerning Nick's and Julia's relationship. And the narrator further
invests his imaginary circle with "a sharp sense of modernness" by
taking leave of characters and reader with prose redolent of the gossip
column's presumptive intimacy, or as Bellringer casts it, "extrava—
gantly journalistic" language."24

James's use of the narrator in The Tragic Muse is very much in

 

keeping with his old conception of the novel as picture, exemplified

 

 

 

 

 

215

in The Portrait of a Lady. The narrators of the 1882 and the 1890
novels are essentially similar, except that The Muse's narrator is a
more skillful portrait-painter, and frequently bears evidence of James's
uneasiness with this narrative device. In many important respects,

The Tragic Muse is a painterly novel, with particular focus on the

 

art of portraiture. Throughout the eighties, James fondly rendered

 

literary portraits--first in The Portrait of a Lady, and continued in

 

Partial Portraits (1888), Portraits of Places (1883), and in the 1889

 

 

tale of a portrait-artist, "The Liar;" Indeed, James finds his in—
spiration for his 1890 novel's title in Reynold's portrait, "Mrs.

' which hung in Grosvenor House during the

Siddons as The Tragic Muse,‘
18808. Robert Falk notes an interesting relationship between the

Reynolds portrait and James's novel. In the portrait, Mrs. Siddons
occupies a lofty throne, flanked on either side by shadowy figures.

For Falk, the "symbolic" portrait serves as a model for the structural

technique of The Tragic Muse—éMiriam occupying the novel's objective

 

center, flanked by Peter and Nick.25 Moreover, Nick, who ultimately

paints Miriam as The Tragic Muse, is himself a portrait-painter, who

 

resigns representing the constituents at Harsh so that he may represent

them on canvas.

 

Yet as James's narrator reveals, the concept of painting in
general and portraiture in particular permeates the novel's structure.
The novel's large canvas is crowded with minor characters whose por—
traits are brilliantly rendered. Mrs. Gresham, Julia's sometime com—
panion, is painted in a single paragraph:

Mrs Gresham was a married woman who was usually
taken for a widow; mainly because she was perpetually

 

 

 

216

"sent for" by her friends, and her friends never
sent for Mr Gresham. She came in every case and

had the air of being répandue at the expense of
dingier belongings. Her figure was admired-—that

it was sometimes mentioned--and she dressed as if

it was expected of her to be smart, like a young
woman in a shop or a servant much in View. (p. 175)

There are only general indications of what Mrs. Gresham looks like,
yet her personality is deftly rendered in a few strokes. James himself
regarded portraiture as the greatest art; in his 1887 essay on John

Singer Sargent James proclaims that "there is no greater work of art

'.26

than a great portrait. The portrait is great precisely because it

has the ability to capture the essence of personality. When in 1888
Theodore E. Child sent James a photograph of Gustave Flaubert, James
wistfully noted, "How strangely it is in the power of a good portrait

to revive, recreate what is buried and finished."27 And in The Tragic

Muse, Gabriel Nash expatiates on

the possible greatness of the art of the portrait—
ist--its reach, its range, the magnificent examples
it had left us in the past: windows open into his-
tory, into psychology, things that were among the
most precious possessions of the human race. He in-
sisted, above all, on the interest, the richness
arising from this great peculiarity of it: that un-
like most other forms, it was a revelation of two
realities, the man whom it was the artist's conscious
effort to reveal and the man (the interpreter) ex—
pressed in the very quality and temper of that effort.
It offered a double vision, the strongest dose of
life that art could give, the strongest dose of art
that life could give. (p. 282)

The portrait thus reveals its subject and its creator. Moreover, in
, . 28 . .

James s View, the portrait represents the closest juncture between

art and life: "the strongest dose of life that art could give, the

strongest dose of art that life could give."

 

 

 

 

 

 

217

Yet, for all its "life," the portrait also destroys; and as the
novel progresses, the recognition that portraiture is essentially de-
structive increasingly dominates. James appropriately has Miriam Rooth,
who creates character through her own person, define that nature of the
portrait. She advises Nick to paint Gabriel Nash:

'It will be a good way to get rid of him. Paint Mrs
Dallow too,'Miriam went on as she passed out of the
door which Nick had opened for her--'paint Mrs Dallow
if you wish to eradicate the last possibility of a
throb.' (p. 503)

Nick does paint Gabriel Nash and Miriam; both disappear, leaving
Nick with two unfinished portraits (p. 511). Although Nick success—
fully paints Julia Dallow, the novel's ending is such that the reader
never discovers whether the portrait represents the destruction of
Nick's artistic integrity (as Gabriel prophesies) or the eradication
of "the last possibility of a throb" as Miriam suggests. Art exploits;
the artist must ruthlessly probe his sitter's personality in order to
create great portraits. In rendering the surface and substance of
life, the artist exposes and freezes life. James could praise Daumier
in 1890, but he cast Daumier's art in ambiguous terms: "Art is an em-
balmer, a magician, whom we can never speak too fair . . . It prolongs,
it preserves, it consecrates, it raises from the dead. It conciliates,

2 .
." 9 Although art consecrates, it also

charms, bribes posterity. . .
embalms, charms, and bribes; rather than being "a direct impression of
life," art composes life into the illusion of life. Art fixes human

beings into place, just as Nick Dormer sees the woman he loves, Julia

Dallow, as "a composed picture" (p. 179).

Consequently, even though James founds The Tragic Muse on ele-

 

ments essentially painterly, this novel is James's valedictory to

 

 

 

 

 

 

218

painting as a fruitful analogy for the "art of fiction." James, it is
true, explains in the novel's Preface that he discovered the solution
to fusing his "theatrical case" and his "political case" in "certain
sublime Tintorettos at Venice, a measureless Crucifixion in especial,
which showed without loss of authority half a dozen actions separately
taking place."30 In other words, a commanding, compositional center

would effect a "mighty pictorial fusion."31

In the novel, that center
is the Tragic Muse herself, Miriam Rooth, who is the focus of the
novel's two centers of consciousness. But although Miriam is James's

means of "pictorial fusion,"

she is treated objectively, that is draw
matically. James rigorously refrains from "going behind" her, and
instead develops her through the different perspectives of Nick Dormer
and Peter Sherringham, and through the other characters' perceptions.
The reader, for example, first sees Miriam through the eyes of Biddy
Dormer, Nick's sister:

The other person was very much younger--she might

have been a daughter-and had a pale face, a low

forehead and thick, dark hair. What she chiefly

had, however, Biddy rapidly discovered, was a pair

of largely-gazing eyes. Our young friend was helped

to the discovery by the accident of their resting at

this moment, for a little while--it struck Biddy as

very long-—on her own. (p. 21)

Miriam's physical features are established through Biddy Dormer,
who-~treated omnisciently-~registers those features as one might pick
out the distinctive characteristics of an actress seen on stage. Un-
like the narrator's character descriptions, portraits which reveal and
fix characters through suggestive detail, Biddy Dormer perceives

Miriam's physical traits——traits which do not fix personality into a

"composed picture." Miriam develops gradually over the novel's course,

 

 

 

 

 

 

219

and because she is reflected through several points of view she dynami—
cally and dramatically acquires depth and fulness of character. Peter
Sherringham also records Miriam's physical features, but in his capac-
ity as center he possesses the sensitivity to see the person behind the

mask:

It was the element of outline and attitude, the way

she stood, the way she turned her eyes, her head, and
moved her limbs. These things held the attention;

they had a natural felicity and, in spite of their sug-
gesting too much the school-girl in the tableau-vivant,
a sort of grandeur. Her face, moreover, grew as he
watched it; something delicate dawned in it, a dim
promise of variety and a touching plea for patience, as
if it were conscious of being able to show in time more
expressions that the simple and striking gloom which,
as yet, had mainly graced it. (p. 92)

 

Although Peter portrays Miriam, this "portrait" differs consid-
erably from those presented by the narrator. In contrast to the nar—
rator's painted--and static-portraits, Peter's rendering of Miriam
focuses on her dynamic qualities. His view of Miriam suggests future
promise and development, whereas the narrator's depiction of Lady
Agnes, for example, results in a fixed image and a recapitulation of
the character's past. True, Miriam's potential for growth is a func—
tion of James's purpose--"a study of a certain particular nature
d'actrice"32--and it is appropriate that a secondary character such
as Lady Agnes would not radically change. Significantly, however,
James renders the character who constitutes the novel's centerpiece
through centers of consciousness——a dramatic technique--while rele—
gating minor characters to more traditional and more static methods
of representation.

Peter, in fact, does more than simply record Miriam's promising

and impressionable surfaces; he analyzes Miriam's character, and thus

 

 

 

 

 

220

stands in for the narrator as interpreter of the hidden personality.
When attending Miriam's first London performance, Peter reflects upon
the Tragic Muse's nature:
He had seen Miriam now; he had never seen her before;
he had never seen her till he saw her in her conditions.
Oh, her conditions—~there were paltry enough as yet,
inferior, inadequate, obstructive, as compared with the
right full, finished setting of such a talent; but the
essence of them was now irremovably in Sherringham's eye,
the vision of how the uplifted stage and listening host
had transformed her. That idea of her having no charac-
ter of her own came back to him with a force that made
him laugh in the empty street: this was a disadvantage
she was so exempt from that he appeared to himself not
to have known her till tonight. Her character was simply
to hold you by the particular spell; any other--the good-
nature of home, the practice of virtues or industries or
vices—-was not worth speaking of. These things were the
fictions and shadows; the representation was the deep
substance. (p. 235)

Peter becomes a vehicle through which James can expose Miriam's
character without violating his objective treatment of her. As an
interpreter of Miriam, Peter is qualified and trustworthy; he himself
is a sensitive and educated observer of the dramatic art, and although
he is in love with her, he continues to respect the integrity of her
talent.33 Peter is the near-perfect medium through which Miriam can
be reflected.

James's treatment of Miriam is his most triumphant and assured
dramatization of a character in his fiction of the eighties. Not only
does James conscientiously maintain his objective development of
Miriam; James adds considerable depth and complexity in her characteri-
zation, despite his objectivity, by reflecting her through several

characters. All of the novel's characters react to the Tragic Muse,

but Nick in his capacities as portrait—painter and as center of

 

 

 

 

221

consciousness provides insight into her character:

It was success, Nick felt, that had made Miriam finer—-
the full possession of her talent and the sense of the
recognition of it. There was an intimation in her
presence (if he had given his mind to it) that for him
too the same cause would produce the same effect—-that
it would show him that there is nothing like being
launched in the practice of an art to learn what it may
do for one. . . . Handsome as she had been the year be—
fore, she had suggested provincial lodgings, bread—and-
butter, heavy tragedy and tears; and if then she was an
ill-dressed girl with thick hair who wanted to be an
actress, she was already in a few weeks an actress who
could act even at not acting. She showed what a light
hand she could have, forbore to startle and looked as
well for unprofessional life as Julia; which was only
the perfection of her professional character. (p. 279)

In contrast to Peter, who focuses on Miriam's potentiality, Nick
blends vivid details with a sense of past and present to create a
dramatization of Miriam, a dynamic characterization.which transcends
the narrator's static portraiture. And as a consequence of James's
decision to develop his Tragic Muse through two centers of conscious-
ness, Miriam demonstrates the intensity of characterization possible
with the "indirect vision." When Peter Sherringham reacts to Miriam's
performance, he defines the nature of the dramatic art:

He floated in the sense of the felicity of [Miriam's
performance], in the general encouragement of a thing
perfectly done, in the almost aggressive bravery of
still larger claims for an art which could so trium-
phantly, so exquisitely render life. 'Render it?‘
Peter said to himself. 'Create it and reveal it,
rather; give us something new and large and of the
first order!‘ (p. 325)

In describing the essence of Miriam's talent—-to create and re-

veal 1ife, not render it-—Peter actually describes the true "technical

crux" of The Tragic Muse. The painterly method merely renders and

 

"embalms" life, while the indirect vision creates life. The painter

 

 

 

222

records on a dead canvas; the actor or actress, a living, breathing
human being, reveals character.

Miriam Rooth, the Tragic Muse, is created through the novel's
two centers, Nick Dormer and Peter Sherringham. Yet these centers
present their own particular problems within the novel's context.
James himself, for example, later admitted Nick's weakness as a char-
acter, even though he represents a significant subject of the novel:

It strikes me, alas, that he is not quite so inter—
esting as he was fondly intended to be, and this in
spite of the multiplication, within the picture, of
his pains and penalties. . . .34

James excuses his failure to make Nick interesting through Nick's

nature as subject:

Any representation of the artist in triumph must be
flat in proportion as it really sticks to its sub-
ject-~it can only smuggle in relief and variety. For,
to put the matter in an image, all we then—-in his
triumph--see of the charm-compeller is the back he
turns to us as he bends over his work. 'His' triumph,
decently, is but the triumph of what he produces, and
that is another affair. . . . The privilege of the
hero--that is of the martyr or of the interesting and
appealing and comparatively floundering person--places
him in quite a different category, belongs to him only
as to the artist deluded, diverted, frustrated or van-
quished; when the 'amateur' in him gains, for our ad-
miration or compassion or whatever, all that the expert
has to do without.35

 

Nick's particular "triumph," James explains, prevents him from
assuming the hero's traditional role. Nevertheless, James's reasons
for Nick's failure as character beg the question—-an evasion perhaps
apparent to James for he tersely admits that the "better part of
[Nick] is locked too much away from us, and the part we see has to
pass for——well, what it passes for, so lamentedly, among his friends

and relatives."36 Nick's "better part" is precisely what constitutes

 

 

 

223

his interest as James's political case——Nick's struggle for artistic
dignity amid the demands and expectations of his friends and relatives.
Critical opinion regarding Nick takes its cue from James's con-
fession in the novel's Preface. Some critics elaborate on James's own
criticism: Edgar sees the novel's main flaw as Nick's failure to en-
gage the reader's sympathy.37 Winner elaborates in a similar strain
when she notes that Nick's character lacks vitality because his alter-
natives do not provide "genuine conflict or the challenge of complex

moral choice"-—his choices offer only the "most abstract of gratifica-

 

tions."38 Suggesting that James makes Nick too much like himself,

Stone comments that James endangers Nick's credibility by burdening him

. . . . . 3
With exceSSive senSibility. 9

 

Yet others feel compelled to defend Nick against James's criti~
cism. Krook finds Nick more interesting than James admits, while
Graham praises Nick's "inner drama" of sterile constriction and crea-
tive release.40 And Falk feels that James's discussion of Nick in the
Preface presents a lapse in critical judgment; Falk acknowledges that
Nick is less interesting than Miriam, but rightly so because Nick is
not the main character.41 The fact remains, however, that Nick is weak,
as a character and more crucially as a center, because he is "locked
too much away." He is a most reticent center, and regardless of James's
excuses, Nick may represent the author's own inability to portray or
dramatize the artist's private struggle between his art and the
world.42 Certainly, James's treatment of Nick lacks the confidence
apparent in other centers. Despite his function as a center of con—
sciousness, Nick is frequently interpreted by the novel's omniscient

narrator. On many occasions, the narrator introduces Nick, then

 

 

224

retreats as Nick's consciousness assumes the narrative:

Nick himself was surprised at the airs he could play;
and often when the last thing at night he shut the
door of his room he mentally exclaimed that he had
had no idea he was such a mountebank.

I must add that if this reflection did not occupy
him long, and if no meditation, after his return from
Paris, held him for many moments, there was a reason
better even than that he was tired or busy or excited
by the agreeable combination of hits and hurrahs. The
reason was simply Mrs Dallow, who had suddenly become
a still larger fact in his consciousness than active
politics. She gag) indeed, active politics; that is,
if the politics were his, how little soever, the activ-
ity was hers. She had ways of showing she was a clever
woman that were better than saying clever things, which
only prove at the most that one would be clever if one
could. (p. 178)

The narrator summarizes Nick's thoughts omnisciently—~he portrays
Nick as "mentally exclaim[ing]" and then "adds" in first-person commen—
tary about Nick's reflections. Then, subtly, the passage shifts to
Nick's functioning as center, particularly in the discussion of Julia,
until finally the reader sees Julia, painted by Nick into a "composed
picture":
It was as if she had been too near for him to see
her separate from himself; but none the less, when
he now drew breath and looked back, what had happened
met his eyes as a composed picture-~a picture of which
the subject was inveterately Julia and her ponies:
Julia wonderfully fair and fine, holding her head more
than ever in the manner characteristic of her, bril—
liant, benignant, waving her whip, cleaving the crowd,
thanking people with her smile, carrying him beside
her, carrying him to his doom. (p. 179)
With Nick as center, James combines painting and drama: Nick
fixes Julia into a "composed picture" while he exposes his own charac—
ter, weak, malleable, permitting himself to be carried "to his doom."

Although Nick clearly functions as a center of consciousness in depict-

ing Julia, the narrator, serving in an omniscient capacity, must first

 

 

 

225

lead the reader into Nick's consciousness.

As the novel progresses, James abandons the narratorial prepara-
tion and allows Nick full responsibility as center. Accordingly, Nick's
perceptions become less pictorial and static, and more dynamic in rep-
resenting character. The emotionally-charged scene in which Nick tells
his mother of his resignation is reflected entirely through Nick's
consciousness. Nick vividly dramatizes Lady Agnes:

Lady Agnes challenged him upon this low prospect

exactly as if he embraced it with the malignant pur—
pose of making Julia's return impossible. She con—
tradicted her premises and lost her way in wrath.

What had made him suddenly turn round if he had been

in good faith before? He had never been in good faith-—
never, never; he had had from his earliest childhood the
nastiest hankerings after a vulgar little daubing, trash-
talking life; they were not in him, the grander, nobler
aspirations--they never had been-~and he had been any-
thing but honest to lead her on, to lead them all on,

to think he would do something: the fall and the shame
would have been less for them if they had come earlier.
Moreover, what need under heaven had he to tell Charles
Carteret of his cruel folly on his very death—bed?-—as
if he mightn't have let it all alone and accepted the
benefit the old man was so delighted to confer. No
wonder the old man would keep his money for his heirs,
ifthat was the way Nick proposed to repay him; but where
was the common sense, where was the common charity, where
was the common decency, of tormenting him with such vile
news in his last hours? Was be trying what he could in—
vent that would break her heart, that would send her in
sorrow down to her grave? Weren't they all miserable
enough, and hadn't he a ray of pity for his wretched
sisters? (p. 367)

Nick captures the very rhythm of Lady Agnes's voice and the very
texture of her character. She is angry, grieved, and irrational; she
scolds him as a vulgar, daubing fool, she piles question upon question
as the crescendo of her wrath builds and breaks. Here Lady Agnes is
not the fixed portrait painted by the narrator at the novel's opening.

Instead, she is a moving, breathing, and intensely human character

 

226

because she is registered through Nick's consciousness, MOreover,
James's strategy in reflecting this emotional scene through Nick is
effective in developing Nick's character. Lady Agnes's impact on Nick
is intensified by guilt—-after all, Nick himself is the cause of his
mother's anger. Nick's vivid, even painful reflection of Lady Agnes
literally comes from a guilty conscience.

Nick can function as a legitimate center of consciousness, as
exemplified in his dramatizing the scene between himself and Lady Agnes.
James, however, does not always permit Nick to act freely; instead,
James all too frequently uses the narrator to paint and examine Nick's
character. James's lack of consistency in his treatment of Nick weakens
Nick's character and by extension the novel's whole "political case."
The constant shifting between two narrative methods--the intrusive,
omniscient narrator and the center of consciousness--exposes James's
. own inability to make Nick's struggle concrete and real-—regardless of
the author's somewhat facile excuses in the New York Edition Preface.

In The Princess Casamassima James turns his "not knowin " to his
,

 

thematic purpose. In The Tragic Muse, however, that "not knowing,"

 

thinly masked by narrative shifts, vitiates a potentially interesting
character and a considerable portion of the novel.
Nick's conflict between art and the world is, of course, only a

single though important facet of The Tragic Muse's subject. A similar

 

conflict preoccupies the novel's other center of consciousness, Peter

Sherringham. Critical opinion has not been kind to Peter. Edgar

H H

calls him "an amiable mediocrity spun out too long and beaten too

thin" while both Robson and Stone condemn his "profound

 

 

 

227

conventionality."43 Stone denigrates Peter by regarding him as a

"walking essay" on the drama, whose role is that of mechanical neces-
sity.44 Krook is slightly less harsh when she describes Peter's "poor
divided passion" as shabby when compared to Miriam's "splendid integ-

45

rity." Yet not all of Peter's critics dismiss him. Graham, for

example, admits that Peter is less interesting than Miriam, but insists

 

that the drama of "his perpetual switches of position and of mood"

ll . o o . o . "46
create a dazzling proliferation of sustained ironic analyses. And
Bellringer recognizes Peter's worth as a "human subject" and as the

novel's gravamen: Peter credibly represents the personal stress of the

 

conflict between art and the world, and thus embodies the novel's "most

. . . "47 . .
absorbing psychological interest. Peter Sherringham functions as
the novel's most sustained center of consciousness. He is, moreover,
vital to the novel not only because he represents a high standard of
critical judgment, but also because he provides the poignancy of human

. . 48
emotions in a novel Edel calls preachy.

Peter, in fact, is more successful than Nick as character and
center of consciousness. Peter's struggle between love and ambition
is naturally more accessible to the reader than Nick's triumph as art-
ist. But that James treats Peter with more assurance and consistency
undoubtedly contributes to Peter's success. The narrator introduces
and describes Peter, but has little else to do with him. James gen—
erally steps back so that Peter may dramatize his own dilemma:

There was only one thing in life that his mind had
been very much made up to, but on this question he
had never wavered: he would get on to the utmost in
his profession. It was a point on which it was per—

fectly lawful to be unamiable to others--to be vigi-
lant, eager, suspicious, selfish. He had not in fact,

 

 

 

228

been unamiable to others, for his affairs had not re—
quired it: he had got on well enough without hardening
his heart. Fortune had been kind to him and he had
passed by so many competitors on the way that he could
forswear jealousy and be generous. But he had always
flattered himself that his band would not falter on the
day he should find it necessary to drop bitterness into
his cup. This day would be sure to dawn, for no career
was all clear water to the end; and then the sacrifice
would find him ready. His mind was familiar with the
thought of a sacrifice: it is true that nothing could
be plain in advance about the occasion, the object, the
victim. All that was tolerably definite was that the
propitiatory offering would have to be some cherished
enjoyment. (pp. 210—11)

Peter's perceptions dominate this passage. It is true that the
narrator hovers closely in the background, with reference to Peter's
mind as well as, a few sentences later, a summation: "At any rate it
never occurred to Sherringham that he himself might be the sacrifice"
(p. 211). The narrator presents a possibility as yet unfathomable to
Peter, but that possibility is couched in language that does not inter-
rupt the smooth flow of Peter's thoughts--the narrator does not stand
self-consciously aside to comment.

For the most part, however, James suppresses or mitigates the
narrator's voice and permits Peter to perform as center. Although
James intersperses third-person references within Peter's direct ob—
servation, the cumulative effect is the dramatization of Peter's con-
flict through his consciousness. As the novel progresses, the narra-
tor recedes even further into the background, and Peter assumes all
responsibility for the narrative. For example, Peter recognizes he
must choose his career over his love for Miriam, occasioned by Miriam's
asking Nick to accompany her in her carriage.

Peter Sherringham would not for a moment have

admitted that he was jealous of Nick Dormer, but he
would almost have liked to be accused of it; for

 

 

229

this would have given him an opportunity to declare

with plausibility that so uncomfortable a passion had

no application to his case. How could a man be jealous

when he was not a suitor? how could he pretend to guard

a property which was neither his own nor destined to

become his own? There could be no question of loss

when one had nothing at stake and no question of envy

when the responsibility of possession was exactly what

one prayed to be delivered from. (pp. 389—90)

Peter's consciousness is directly experienced by the reader. As
a result, Peter is intrinsically more vivid a character than Nick.
Peter never turns his back to the reader, as does Nick; Peter is more
accessible and thus more real. Interestingly, Stone implies that
Peter's openness works disadvantageously when he calls Peter a "fixed
portrait" who never has freedom of choice, in contrast to Nick, who
. 4

"is allowed to break out of the frame." 9 Peter has no "freedom" be—
cause the reader knows that Peter's ambition is paramount. But Peter
is the wiser for having made his choice. Moreover, Peter's intense
personal struggle between art and the world, love and career, is the
novel's most palpable psychological drama--far greater and far more
tangible than Nick's struggle. Peter's final choice is hardly sur—
prising, yet Peter is not a "fixed portrait" in the strict sense that
Isabel Archer is. By the end of The Portrait of a Lady, Isabel can
hardly be said to have chosen her fate since she chose while blinded
by idealism; more crucially, she remains blind. Peter, indeed, meas—
ures the distance James has come in developing the center of conscious-
ness and the drama of consciousness. As James admitted in The .
Portrait's Preface, Isabel's interest lies in what she will dgf—her

consciousness is secondary in that it determines her external actions.

But Peter's interest as a character arises primarily from his thought

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

230

processes——Peter's action is that of the consciousness perceiving,
organizing, and deciding, and not what Peter actually does. Peter's

development as a character is genuinely a drama of the consciousness

 

in a manner in which Isabel's portrayal can never be. In Peter, who

functions as center and as subject, James achieves a virtually seam—

less fusion of form and content.

James relies on the dramatic presentation of the center of con-

 

sciousness in developing the novel's major characters, but he uses
dramatic elements throughout the novel itself. Much of the novel's
dialogue, for example, is rendered as an actor's script, complete with
stage directions and stripped of the editorial "he said" or "she said."
Frequently, too, the characters are paired off and presented "on stage"
at critical turns of the plot. Indeed, the novel depends on memorable
theatrical scenes: Lady Agnes's begging Nick to marry Julia; Nick's
proposal to Julia; Nick's telling the dying Mr. Carteret of his resig-
nation; Peter's final proposal to Miriam fresh from her London triumph.
That scene between Peter and Miriam in Chapter 46 demonstrates the ex-
tent to which James incorporates dramatic-—even melodramatic-—effects

into The Tragic Muse. The scene is carefully orchestrated to build

 

suspense: Peter awaits Miriam, who emerges from "the little dusky
garden" into the brightly-lit drawing room. When Miriam is in the
spotlight, Peter asks her to renounce the stage to become his "ambas-
sadress." Miriam passionately defends her artistry, and Peter tries
to woo her. While the two argue, there is a sound of a cab off-stage.
The discussion continues but Peter makes out a "hovering shape" which

materializes into Mrs. Rooth, who eventually enters the drawing room.

 

 

231

Miriam, rejecting Peter, flounces into the darkness, leaving Peter and
Mrs. Rooth on the illuminated stage. Such scenes, with their dramatic

lighting, recall the melodramatic chiaroscuro of The Portrait of a Lady,

 

 

yet those scenes do not have the portrait's static nature. The scenes

of The Tragic Muse are essentially dynamic, with entrances and exits,

 

characters lurking in shadows, and stagey gestures. In this novel,
there is a sense of emotionally charged and purposeful movement, of
conscious staging only dimly present in the previous novels and tales
of the eighties.

James himself later recognized The Tragic Muse's close ties with

 

the elements of drama when he composed the novel's New York Edition
Preface. Although the first half of the Preface examines the novel's
pictorial analogy--especially as a means of fusing the two plots--the
second half focuses on the novel's dramatic elements. James casts the
whole novel as theatre and performance, and from that standpoint passes
judgment on The Muse:

If the art of the drama, as a great French master of

it has said, is above all the art of preparation, that

is true only to a less extent of the art of the novel,

and true exactly in the degree in which the art of the

particular novel comes near that of the drama. The

first half of a fiction insists ever on figuring to me

as the stage or theatre for the second half, and I have

in general given so much space to making the theatre

propitious that my halves have too often proved strangely

unequal.50

James ultimately conceptualizes the novel not as a pictorial

composition gradually revealed, but aS'a stage upon which the charac-
ters perform. That James accuses himself of spending too much space

on the stage's preparation indicates his sustained interest in picto—

rial composition-—but only as it is related to drama. According to

 

 

232

James's principle of alternation, "picture" is important because it

. . 51 .
prepares for scene, the characters acting. Dramatic method, however,
increasingly shapes the novel as the painterly influence wanes. Drama-
tization becomes a means by which James meets "the challenge of eco-
nomic representation":

Therein lies the secret of the appeal, to his mind,
of the successfully foreshortened thing, where rep-
resentation is arrived at, as I have already else-
where had occasion to urge, not by the addition of
items (a light that has for its attendant shadow a
possible dryness) but by the art of figuring syn-
thetically, a compactness into which the imagination
may cut thick, as into the rich density of wedding-
cake.52

 

James sees fictional representation arising not from pictorial
elements—«"the addition of elements"--but as generated by the character
itself, "synthetically."

Indeed, it is in the "light" of alternation, the shifting from
picture to scene, that James.reconciles the arts of the painter and
the arts of the dramatist. Nevertheless, though the pictorial elements
figure importantly, they essentially arise from the novelistic tradi-
tion—-hence James associates the pictorial primarily with an omnis—
cient narrator. Tintoretto's Crucifixion may suggest a strategy for
unifying two plots, but James depends on the stage to justify the
presence of the two centers of consciousness:

No character in a play (any play not a mere monologue)
has, for the right expression of the thing, a usurp-
ing consciousness; the consciousness of others is ex-
hibited exactly in the same way as that of the "hero";
the prodigious consciousness of Hamlet, the most
capacious and most crowded, the moral presence the
most asserted, in the whole range of fiction, only

takes its turn with that of the other agents of the
story, no matter how occasional these may be.53

 

 

233

The drama ultimately dominates The Tragic Muse. James's 1890

 

novel is paradoxically his most conventional and his most innovative

to date. And as an experimental novel, The Tragic Muse in its subject

 

and technique, maps the course James will pursue in transforming the
novel in the twentieth century.

Despite The Muse's crucial place in James's development, critical
opinion has been largely negative. Krook and Graham, to be sure,
praise James's maturity and mastery in handling varied material,54 but
many critics support Edel's description of the novel as cold and dis-
cursive.55 Anderson faults the novel's conception as "curiously me-

' and Hall, even more

chanical" and its execution "curiously loose,‘
bluntly, calls the novel a thematic and technical failure.56 Damning
with faint praise, Edgar points out that James dexterously paints over
the seams in his large canvas.57 Others see, as does Edmund Wilson, a
falling-off at the novel's midpoint.58 Stewart, for example, finds
The Tragic Muse initially vigorous, but in the end it is "strangely
inert."59 Stone, more explicitly, recognizes the novel's subject as
promising, yet suggests that halfway through the novel the subject is
resolved and the choices are made, thus agreeing with Robson that the
second half is a "lamentable tailing—off of a distinguished novel."60
In focusing on the novel's shortcomings, the critics miss the
novel's significance as experiment. That the novel is essentially ex—
perimental was recognized by James's earliest critics: Howells char—
acterizes The Muse as marking "the farthest departure from the old

61

ideal of the novel." And in 1903, an anonymous reviewer percep—

tively recognizes the novel as inaugurating the new era of later

 

 

234

Jamesian fiction.62 James himself knew that The Tragic Muse was a

 

turning point in his career. The Muse is James's final attempt to write
a Victorian novel, but more importantly, it also testifies to James's
awareness that he must devote himself to his particular art in spite

of the world. As he explains to his brother William on July 23, 1890,

I have no illusions of any kind about [The Tragic Muse],
and least of all about its circulation and "popularity."
From these things I am quite divorced and never was hap-
pier than since the dissolution has been consecrated by
(what seems to me) the highest authorities. One must

go one's way and know what one's about and have a general
plan and a private religion-in short have made up one's
mind as to ce qui en est with a public the draggling
after which simply leads one in the gutter. One has
always a "public" enough if one has an audible vibration--
even if it should only come from one's self. I shall
never make my fortune-nor anything like it, but--I know
what I shall do, and it won't be bad.63

 

"Experiments of form" have their own intrinsic validity. James's
way would take him through a disappointing experience with play-writing,
and increasing distance from the general public, but in persevering

James irrevocably altered the art of fiction.

 

 

Notes

1 William Dean Howells, "Henry James, Jr.," Century Magazine,

November, 1882; reprinted by Albert Mordell in Discovery of a Genius:
William Dean Howells and Henry James (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1961), pp. 120-1.

 

 

 

Howells, "The Princess Casamassima," Harper's New Monthly Maga—
zine, April, 1887; reprinted in Discovepy of a Genius, p. 123.

 

 

Howells, "Stories Reprinted in The Aspern Papers and A London
Life," Harper's New Monthly Magazine, October, 1888; reprinted in
Discovery of a Genius, p. 126.

 

 

 

4 Howells, "Stories Reprinted," p. 128.

5 Howells, "A London Life," Harpgr's New Monthly Magazine,
August, 1889; reprinted in Discovery of a Genius, p. 133.

 

 

 

6 Leon Edel, Henry James: The Middle Years, 1882-1895 (1962;
rpt. New York: Avon Books, 1978), pp. 265-7.

 

7 Henry James, The Tragic Muse (1890; rpt. New York: Penguin
Books, 1978); hereafter cited in text.

 

8 Percy Lubbock, ed., The Letters of Henry James (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920), vol. I, p. 163.

 

Lyall H. Powers, "James's The Tragic Muse: Ave Atque Vale,"
PMLA, 73 (1958), 270~4.

 

Oscar Cargill, "Gabriel Nash—-Somehwat Less Than an Angel,"
Nineteenth—Centupy Fiction, 14 (1959), 232.

1 Henry James, Letters, 1883—1895, ed. Leon Edel (Cambridge:
The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 273.

 

2 James, Letters, 1883-1895, pp. 238, 243, 300, and 279.

 

13 F. O. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, eds., The Notebooks

 

of Henry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 92.

 

235

 

 

 

 

236

14 James, Letters, 1883-1895, p. 240.

 

15 James, Letters, 1883—1895, p. 257.

 

l6 walter Isle, for example, regards The Tragic Muse as James's

"last Victorian novel, as we use the term" [Experiments in Form: Henry
James's Novels, 1896-1901 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968),
p. 5]. Although Donald David Stone claims that Isle, in making this
statement, confuses style with theme, Stone discusses in detail Egg
Muse's Victorian conventions, though allowing that the novel's theme,
which celebrates artistic self-assertion, is essentially subversive to
the Victorian novel [Novelists in a Changing WOrld: Meredith, James,
and the Transformation of English Fiction in the 1880's (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972) pp. 308-9, 324-5].

 

 

 

 

17 Henry James, Preface to "The Tragic Muse," in The Art of the
Novel, ed. Richard P. Blackmur (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1934), p. 79.

 

 

18 James, Preface, p. 89.

9 James, Preface to "The Spoils of Poynton," in The Art of the
Novel, p. 136.

 

20 Alan W. Bellringer, "The Tragip Muse: 'The Objective Centre',"
Journal of American Studies, 4 (1970), 82.

 

21 Lyall H. Powers, Henpy James and the Naturalist Movement

(East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1972), pp. 144-5.

22 John L. Kimmey, "The Tragic Muse and Its Forerunners,"

American Literature, 41 (1970), 522.

 

23 Stone, pp. 324-5.

4 Bellringer, 85.

25 Robert Falk, "The Tragic Muse: Henry James's Loosest,

Baggiest Monster?" in Themes and Directions in American Literature,'
Essays in Honor of Leon Howard, Ray B. Browne and Donald Pizer, eds.
(Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1969), p. 152.

 

 

Henry James, "John Singer Sargent," Harper's New Monthly Maga—
zine, 75 (1887), 691.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

237

27 James, Letters, 1883-1895, p. 227.

 

28 This is not to suggest, however, that Gabriel Nash is James's
spokesman. In fact, Nash intrigues the novel's critics, who have iden—
tified him with an assortment of people and ideas. Oscar Cargill sees
Nash as a portrait of Oscar Wilde (”Mr. James's Aesthetic Mr. Nash,“
Nineteenth—Century Fiction, 12 (1957), 177-87); Quentin Anderson calls
him an affectionate portrait of Henry James Senior [The American Henry
James (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1957), p. 101].
Lyall H. Powers ("Mr. James's Aesthetic Mr. Nash--Again," Nineteenth-
Century Fiction, 13 (1959), 341-9) and Leon Edel [introd., The Tragic
Muse (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1960), p. xiv] do see him as James's
spokesman. Krook argues that Nash is modelled on John La Farge [iha_
Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James, (London: Cambridge University
Press, 1962), p. 83].

William F. Hall, however, notes that criticism has focused on BBQ:
not what Gabriel Nash is, and suggests that he is James's representa-
tion of the ideal consciousness ("Gabriel Nash: 'Famous Centre' of
The Tragic Muse," Nineteenth-Century Fiction 21 (1966), 167—84).

Pelham Edgar finds Nash less a person than a point of view [Henry James:
Man and Author (1927; rpt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), p. 287],
while Bellringer calls him a caricature of Paterism and a choric fool
("The Tragic Muse: 'The Objective Centre,'" 75). And Ronald Wallace
compares Nash to Meredith's Comic Spirit (described in the preface to
The Egoist), noting that Nash is a "prime mover" who creates relation-
ships among the characters ("Gabriel Nash: Henry James's Comic Spirit,"
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 28 (1973), 220-4). James himself provides
the best analysis of Nash in Chapter 23 of The Muse: Nash is an
"ambiguous being" but an "excellent touchstone" (p. 264).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29 James, "Daumier, Caricaturist," Century Magazine, 17, (1890),
p. 409.
30 n - H
James, Preface to The Tragic Muse, p. 84.
31 James, Preface, p. 84.
32 .
Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 63.
33

Peter is not only a trustworthy interpreter of Miriam; as
Stone notes, Peter demonstrates the reality of Nick's talent. Because
Peter's taste is sensitive and educated, his opinion of Nick's portrait
of the Tragic Muse is a reliable indicator of Nick's ability (p. 314).

James, Preface to "The Tragic Muse," p. 96.

5 James, Preface, pp. 96-7.

 

 

 

 

 

238
36 James, Preface, p. 97.

37 Edgar, Henry James: Man and Author, p. 285.

38 Viola Hopkins Winner, Henry James and the Visual Arts
(Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1970), p. 126.

 

39 Stone, p. 316.

O Dorothea Krook, The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James,
p. 81; Kenneth Graham, Henry James: The Drama of Fulfillment: An
Approach to the Novels (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 85.

 

 

41 Falk, pp. 158—60.

 

Winner notes that James fails "to draw a convincing particu—
larized picture of a painter in conflict with the world" (p. 126).

43 Edgar, p. 295; W. W. Robson, "The Tragic Muse," in Critical
Essays (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966), p. 226; Stone, p. 313.

 

44 Stone, p. 313.

45 Krook, p. 98.

46 Graham, p. 108.

47 Bellringer, 89, 84.

48 Leon Edel, introd., The Tragic Muse, p. xiv.

 

49 Stone, p. 315.

 

50 James, Preface to "The Tragic Muse," p. 86.

51 In the Preface to The Tragic Muse James notes that the novel
most closely approaches the dramatic "in the light of alternation"
(p. 90)., He explains alternation in the Preface to The Ambassadors
as the movement between picture—-"the parts that prepare, that tend
in fact to over—prepare, for scenes" and scene—~"logical start,
logical turn, and logical finish" (pp. 322-3).

 

 

 

2 James, Preface to "The Tragic Muse," pp. 87—8,

 

 

 

 

239

53 James, Preface, p. 90.

54 Krook, p. 64; Graham, p. 79.

55 Leon Edel, Review of Lyall H. Powers's Henry James and the

Naturalist Movement, Nineteenth—Century Fiction, 26 (1971-2), p. 499.

56 Quentin Anderson, The American Henry James, p. 102; William
F. Hall, "Gabriel Nash: 'Famous Centre' of The Tragic Muse," 183.

 

57 Edgar, p. 298.

8 Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers: Twelve Essays on Literary
Subjects (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 107.

59 J. I. M. Stewart, Eight Modern writers, (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1963), p. 98.

0 Stone, p. 328; Robson, p. 226.

61 William Dean Howells, "The Tragic Muse," Harper's New Monthly
‘Magazine, (September, 1890); reprinted in Mordell, Discovery of a
Genius, p. 166.

 

62 "Mr. Henry JameS," Edinburgh REVieW’ 197 (January, 1903)

reprinted in Henrnyames: The Critical Heritage, Roger Gard, ed.
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), p. 346.

3 James, Letters, 1883-1895, p. 300.

 

 

CONCLUSION

The Tragic Muse is the capstone of a decade of technical and
thematic experimentation. At James's "last long novel," The Muse marks
a turning point in James's development. After a decade of attempting
to appeal to public tastes James recognizes he must renounce popularity
and that "one must go one's way"; as his 1890 letter to William clearly
indicates, James accepts the reality that he must pursue his private
muse even if it means that his public consists of himself alone.
James's declaration to his brother, muted though it may be, is still
an affirmation of the artist's liberty James claimed in his landmark
essay, "The Art of Fiction."

Even though The Tragic Muse is, as Lyall Powers characterizes it,
valedictory,l the novel is distinctly triumphant because it is James's
reconciliation, on a grand scale, of seeming opposites. This sense of
reconciliation permeates both theme and technique. James's characters,
for example, eventually harmonize their private desires with the de—
mands of a public life, whether that life entails the sphere of poli—
tics or of art. The major characters-~Nick Dormer, Miriam Rooth, and
Peter Sherringham-~arrive at different resolutions to the conflict be—
tween private and public life. James himself does not, in the novel,
posit easy answers to this conflict. In fact, the novel's lack of a
single resolution is a measure of James's increasing sophistication.
The conflict between the public and private life is a central issue of

James's fiction of the eighties, and in earlier novels, The Bostonians

 

240

 

 

and The Princess Casamassima, James saw no compromise. Basil abducts

 

Verena, forcibly preventing her public debut; Hyacinth is torn between
his private sensibilities and his sense of social injustice, and so

commits suicide. In contrast, the characters of The Tragic Muse have

 

the ability to achieve satisfactory, if not always happy, harmony

among their contradictory needs. The Tragic Muse, then, fittingly con—

 

cludes a decade of work in which James searches for a balance between
the pressures of the world and the requirements of the inner life, par-
ticularly the artist's.

Indeed, the artist and art constitutes an important subject in

 

The Tragic Muse and another facet of James's intent to unite seemingly
disparate elements, showing that "all art is but one." The novel, be-
cause it traces the careers of Nick Dormer, a portrait painter, and
Miriam Rooth, an actress, is a study of the nature of art and the art-
ist. Yet James's blending of painting and drama occurs on another
level of the novel--that of technique, which comprises a significant

portion of the reconciliation that characterizes The Tragic Muse.

 

Portraiture, a pervasive Jamesian interest throughout the eighties,
influences this novel. In the main, portraiture is allied with an
omniscient narrator, who paints the characters, especially the minor
ones, as a means of introducing them. James links novelistic painting
with a traditional mode of narration, thereby implicitly suggesting
the limitations of the portrait and painting as narrative strategies.
Portraiture is limiting because it is essentially static: a portrait
may reveal, albeit gradually, character, but it cannot show a charac-

ter changing. The Portrait of a Lady, in which James painted a

 

masterpiece of fiction, clearly displays James's skill at portraiture,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

242

but the novel also demonstrates the constraints portraiture imposes on
the novelist. Specifically, the painter-narrator is palpably present

throughout The Portrait as he sketches and defines Isabel Archer, and

 

predicts what she will do. In The Portrait of a Lady, James raises

 

portraiture to its finest development, combining it as the novel's

form and content: Isabel is confined within the portrait's frame just

as she is "the prisoner of her constituted self."2
But the frame and the painter destroy the novel's "air of

reality"--hence James's search throughout the decade for other narrat-

ing and characterizing methods. As shown by his essay in French Poets

 

and Novelists, James found inspiration in the work of his "master,"
Ivan Turgenev. James particularly valued Turgenev's willingness to
let "situations speak for themselves"3——a concept James regarded as
dramatic because it circumvented the omniscient narrator who winks and
nods behind the scenes.4 For James, the Turgenevian ideal increasingly
took the shape of the center of consciousness. The center, through
which James could project character and register events, obviates the
need for James or his narrator to "go behind" character. With the
center, narration and characterization are fully integrated within the
novel, because the center is a character—-both an actor and observer—-
who creates the narrative as his own "direct impression of life."
Moreover, the novel can better partake of the "air of reality," for
the center apprehends character gradually, as an accretion of often
conflicting details. Characters are developed in a natural fashion,
mimicking life itself.

Characterization achieved through the center of consciousness is

thus dynamic. A character so developed continues to change and grow

 

 

 

 

 

243

throughout the narrative, in contrast to a character like Isabel Archer,
whose end is implicit in James's.first description of her. In The

Tragic Muse, James relinquishes the major narrative burden to two cen-

 

ters, Nick Dormer and Peter Sherringham, who together develop the
Tragic Muse herself, Miriam Rooth. The actress is a triumph of the
"indirect vision," as James defines the center of consciousness tech—
nique in the 1890 novel; Miriam is dramatized through the novel's cen-
ters,and consequently assumes immense vitality and intensity of charac—
ter.
In its use of centers of consciousness, The Tragic Muse is a

stunning culmination of James's "experiments of form" which influence

the novels and tales of the eighties. Again, a brief comparison of

The Muse with The Portrait measures the extent to which James develops

 

his use of the center in this decade. In The Portrait of a Lady, James

 

also used two centers-—Isabel Archer and Ralph Touchett. By employing
his heroine apg_the heroine's observer as center, James reveals his in—
security about the technique's capacity to reveal character. Moreover,
by having the novel's objective center, Isabel, function as center of
consciousness, James comes very close to appearing to treat Isabel
omnisciently; there are, as a matter of fact, few passages in which
Isabel's consciousness is untouched by authorial intrusion.

The Muse employs two centers of consciousness, but these centers
remain outside of the novel's objective center, Miriam Rooth. ‘Miriam
is presented dramatically, and even though she is never gone behind
by the author, Miriam is richly developed throughout the novel's
course. Nick and Peter, the two centers, provide complementary and

personal impressions of the actress. With Miriam, James fully exploits

 

 

244

the possibilities of the "indirect vision." James boldly refuses to
go behind his heroine, confidently relying instead on the novel's cen-
ters of consciousness to characterize the Tragic Muse.

Yet even while The Tragic Muse caps a decade of "experiments of

 

" the novel remains firmly rooted in James's past work, because

form,
The Muse incorporates methods of painting which counterpoint more dra-
matic techniques. James still depends on a traditional narrator to
paint portraits and set scenes. In the New York Edition Prefaces, he

justifies the necessity for painting in a dramatic novel as the comple-

mentary alternation between picture and scene.5 However, in The Tragic

 

Muse picture, the setting of the stage in preparation for the dramatic
scene, is the province of a traditional narrator, who functions ob-

trusively. As a result, The Tragic Muse is paradoxically traditional

 

and innovative, Victorian and modern.

In fact, the paradox of old and new governs the fiction, particu-
larly the novels, of this period. Experimentation in both content and
form characterize James's work of the eighties, making it his most tra—
ditional. James himself sets the tone for the eighties fiction when
he indicates his commitment to experiment in "The Art of Fiction."

In this essay, James insistently calls for the novelist's freedom to
create the appropriate form for his "direct impressions of life." The
only constraint James imposes is that the novelist be someone on whom
nothing is lost, since the writer's subject and method was experience,
"an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider—web of the finest
silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching

. . . . . 6 .
every air-borne particle in its tissue." Thus, while "The Art of

 

 

 

 

245

.Fiction" is a manifesto for artistic liberty, it is no less an indica-
tion of James's technical development during the 18803. James declares
his intention to focus on the consciousness as subject and method; the
center of consciousness embodies James's own concept of a "direct ime
pression of life," his benchmark of the essence of fiction's art.

In the 1884 essay, James envisions painting as a useful analogy
for fiction, and argues cogently for the kinship between the artist and
the novelist. For James, "a psychological reason is . . . an object
adorably pictorial" which might "inspire one to Titianesque efforts."7
Nevertheless painting, or more specifically, portraiture, is an essen-
tially static technique: a portrait reveals, but does not develop.
Significantly, then, although James applauds Turgenev's skill at por—
traiture, he reserves his warmest praise for the Russian's ability to
dramatize character, event, and mood through selective and compressed
detail. Character and situation thus speak for themselves--and speak—
ing is more dynamic than being exhibited by the painter-novelist.

James's striving for the Turgenevian dramatic ideal necessitates
that James abandon portraiture as his primary narrative method--a
method that betrays too much the hand of the painter. The center of
consciousness becomes, then, a strategy to circumvent narratorial in-
trusion and to project character and event dramatically. Consequently,
the novels and tales of the eighties are marked by James's movement
away from painting as analogy and technique and his increasing depend—
ence on drama, which finds its clearest expression in the center of
consciousness. The tales of the decade, "The Siege of London," "Lady

Barberina," "Pandora," "A London Life," "The Liar,’ and "The Lesson of

the Master," are remarkable not only for their exploration of new and

 

 

 

 

246

old themes. These tales are James's purest experiments with the center
of consciousness where the narrator is successfully eliminated or sup—

pressed. In contrast, the novels of the period--The Bostonians, The

 

Princess Casamassima, and The Tragic Muse——re1y to varying degrees on

 

 

traditional narration, although they display James's growing confidence
with the center of consciousness in the novel's larger compass.

The center of consciousness clearly demands a new analogy for the
art of fiction. James naturally turns to drama, an art which holds as
much fascination for him as does painting. By relinquishing narration
and characterization to the center, who is himself a character in the
narrative, James could approximate the kind of direct communication
that occurs between the actor on stage and the audience. Such was

James's interest in drama that in 1890 he fulfilled an enduring ambi-

 

 

tion to write for the stage once The Tragic Muse was completed. Part

 

of his ambition was fueled by his hope to make a comfortable income
playwriting. More important, James turned to writing for the stage

because of his love for the piéce bien faite and the rigorous demands

 

that form would impose on his talent. James's career as a playwright
ended abruptly, however, when in 1895 he was booed by the audience on

the Opening night of Guy Domville.

 

With the failure of his dramatic venture, James takes up "the
pen of all [his] old unforgettable efforts and sacred struggles," and
returns to the novel.8 To be sure, James had not completely abandoned
fiction during his dramatic years; between 1890 and 1895 he continued
to write tales for magazine publication. James's debacle with pr_

Domville had exposed his inability to write the English piEce bien

 

 

 

247

faite and appeal to the public, yet James was determined to salvage
skills acquired during his dramatic experience and apply them to the

art of fiction. Thus it is that when James begins to plan The Spoils

 

of Poynton, he envisions "the thing in three chapters, like three

 

little acts," although the novel grows beyond three divisions to
achieve "the completeness of the drama—quality."9 James's experience
in the theater had a profound effect on the manner in which he concep-
tualized the novel. James ultimately came to see that the principle
of scenario—-"the adequate and regular practice of some such economy
of clear summarization" and "the sacred mystery of structure" was the
real fruit of his "long tribulation" in the theater."10

James's remarks in his notebooks and in the New York Edition
Prefaces have focused critical attention on the dramatic elements of

the fiction following the dramatic years. walter Isle, in Experiments

 

in Form: Henry James's Novels 1896-1901, and Joseph Wiesenfarth, in

 

Henry James and the Dramatic Analogy, for example, have conducted

 

detailed studies tracing James's incorporation of his "theatrical ex-
periment” into his later fiction. And although such studies have un—
questionable value, they have unfortunately fostered the neglect of
the dramatic qualities pervading the novels and tales of the eighties.
At the most, the experimental nature of this fiction is given a per-
functory nod before being dismissed.

Indeed, the central purpose of this thesis is to argue that
James is steadily concerned with "experiments of form" throughout the
eighties, and that those experiments increasingly focus on the dramatic

possibilities of the center of consciousness. James did not invent the

 

 

 

 

 

248

technique, nor is the technique absent in his earlier fiction. Rather,
the value of James's technical experiments of this decade lie in his
strategies with the center as a means of avoiding intrusive narrators
and coalescing the novel's shape and subject, form and content. The
tales and novels of the eighties do bear the influence of James's early
painterly approach, and depend on traditional modes of narration.
Nevertheless, the fiction of these years reveals James's gradual re-
finement of and confidence with the center of consciousness. The cen—
ter becomes the means by which James transmutes the art of fiction into
the drama of consciousness.

The fiction of the eighties is important. It is considerably
useful in understanding the total James canon: the eighties fiction
is essentially transitional, and thus provides a bridge between the
early phase and the major phase. These "experiments of form" shed
light on the techniques and subjects of James's later masterpieces,

The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl, especially

 

 

in that the eighties fiction is concerned with the nature of perception
and the perceiver.

Yet while the novels and tales of the eighties illuminate James's
later masterpieces, it would be wrong to relegate the work of this dec—
ade to the shadows of the major phase. The fiction James produced
between 1882 and 1890 possesses intrinsic value. In many respects,
the work of these years is among James's most accessible, humorous,
and contemporary. The eighties fiction shows James at his most vari—
ous and versatile: his subjects encompass the International Theme,
social issues, the nature of art, and the artist's relationship with

the world; his tone ranges from satire to despair, expansiveness to

 

 

 

 

249

detachment. The novels and tales of the eighties are, taken together
as a cohesive body of work, a provocative synthesis of painting and
drama, and tradition and innovation. Indeed, James's experiments from
1882 to 1890, together and individually, are valuable as intriguing

examples of the James's practice of his art-—and drama—-of fiction.

 

 

Notes

1 Lyall H. Powers, "James's The Tragic Muse: Ave Atque Vale,"
PMLA, 73 (1958), 270-74.

 

2 Leon Edel, introd., The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James,
(Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1963), p. xx.

 

Henry James, "Ivan Turgenieff" in French Poets and Novelists

 

(London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), p. 231.

4 James, "Anthony Trollope" in Partial Portraits (1888; rpt.
London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1911), pp. 116-7.

 

James, Preface to "The Tragic Muse" in The Art of the Novel,
ed. R. P. Blackmur (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), pp. '
89-90.

 

James, "The Art of Fiction" in Partial Portraits, p. 388.

 

7 James, "The Art of Fiction," p. 402.

8 F. 0. Matthiessen and Kenneth B. Murdock, The Notebooks of

Henry James (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 179.

 

9 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 198.

10 Matthiessen and Murdock, p. 208.

250

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Charles R. "James's Portrait of the Southerner," American
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