tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links
Europe first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine for June 1899, and later the following year in the collection of stories The Soft Side published by Methuen.
Europe – critical commentary
This is a black comedy, in a somewhat similar spirit to James’s earlier story Four Meetings (1877) where the magnetic draw of European culture for Americans proves to be beyond the reach of Caroline Spencer, a New England schoolteacher. In her case she is defrauded of her life’s dream by her unscrupulous cousin.
Here too there is a family connection – but one much closer, of mother and daughters. Old Mrs Rimmel has had a successful earlier life with her celebrated husband, enjoyed her own European tour, and only had her three daughters late in life.
Now the implication is that the puritanical sense of duty that rules in their Boston household grinds the lives of the daughters into prematurely aged drudges, attending to the needs of their increasingly disoriented mother.
Europe as symbol
Europe functions as an idea, a dream of cultural riches – perhaps like some atavistic draw for the American descendents of European settlers for what might be, what could be. Certainly as someone who had lived on both contents throughout his life, James was very conscious of the European—American polarity and what it meant for both groups of people, and he frequently contrasted Europe with all types of Americans – sophisticated New Yorkers, puritannical Bostonians, gentlemanly southerners, and robust Californians.
The more suave New York narrator is able to pass between the two continents with ease, whereas the group of four Bostonian ladies are locked in an ethos of self-denying austerity. This is a strain of American culture which James had explored in greater depth before in works such as The Bostonians.
It is emphasised that the Rimmels are typical New Englanders – old Puritan stock – whereas the narrator is from New York. They have become trapped in a life-denying cycle of emotional inter-dependency. The narrator is particularly scathing about the old woman’s psychological grip on her daughters. She has had the pleasures and benefits of a European tour of her own when (much) younger, but is denying them the chance of the same experience. Only one of her daughters is able to make the break – and she never goes back
Europe – study resources
The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK
The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US
Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK
Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US
Europe – HTML New York edition
Europe – HTML version at Gutenberg
The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK
Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links
Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources
Europe – plot summary
Part I. After many years living in Boston as spinster ladies, Becky and Jane Rimmel are finally due to visit Europe, leaving their elderly widowed mother to be looked after by their sister Maria. Old Mrs Rimmel visited Europe many years before (in the early nineteenth century, it would seem) and the continent has been held up to the three daughters ever since as a sort of cultural Nirvanah. The ‘girls’ (who are in fact elderly) tease the story’s narrator about his knowledge of Europe and discuss the possibility of meeting up there.
Part II. However, just before their departure, their mother has a seizure, and the trip is postponed. The narrator discusses Mrs Rimmel’s immense age with his sister-in-law who is a friend of the family. Years pass by in which the narrator himself twice visits Europe, which the Rimmels claim is ‘waiting’ for them. The narrator feels angry that the three sisters are growing old, and that their mother is selfishly denying them valuable life experiences. Then suddenly Jane, the youngest daughter makes the break and travels to Europe with some friends the Hathaways. Old Mrs Rimmel begins to lose sense of time.
Part III. The Hathaways return from the European tour later that year – but they have left Jane behind, because she insists on seeing more of Europe. She has become self-assertive and rebellious, refuses to be chaperoned, and has taken to ‘flirting’. Her sister Becky is supporting her financially. The narrator is delighted by what he sees as the development of the sisters’ potential. When the narrator next visits Boston he is amazed to find Becky at his sister-in-law’s house, looking as old as her mother. He opines that Jane will never return from Europe, and Becky tells him that their mother is no longer alive.
Part IV. But when the narrator visits their home next day old Mrs Rimmel is corpse-like, but still living. She has persuaded herself that Jane has died in Europe. Becky then dies, having worn herself out with looking after her mother. The narrator visits the house again and finds Maria looking even older than her mother. She ruefully observes that she will now never visit Europe. Then old Mrs Rimmel, in what appears to be her last gasp of life, announces that Becky has gone to Europe – and the narrator agrees with her.
Principal characters
| I | the un-named narrator |
| Mrs Rimmel | an elderly Bostonian widow |
| Becky Rimmel | her eldest daughter, who dies |
| Maria Rimmel | her daughter |
| Jane Rimmel | her youngest daughter, who leaves |
Further reading
Biographical
Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.
F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.
Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.
Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.
Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.
Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999
F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.
Critical commentary
Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.
Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.
Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.
Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.
Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.
J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.
Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.
Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976
Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.
Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.
Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.
Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009
John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.
Other works by Henry James
The Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man to whom Verena becomes more and more attracted. The dramatic contest to possess her is played out with some witty and often rather sardonic touches, and as usual James keeps the reader guessing about the outcome until the very last page.
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What Masie Knew (1897) A young girl is caught between parents who are in the middle of personal conflict, adultery, and divorce. Can she survive without becoming corrupted? It’s touch and go – and not made easier for the reader by the attentions of an older man who decides to ‘look after’ her. This comes from the beginning of James’s ‘Late Phase’, so be prepared for longer and longer sentences. In fact it’s said that whilst composing this novel, James switched from writing longhand to using dictation – and it shows if you look carefully enough – part way through the book.
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The Ambassadors (1903) Lambert Strether is sent from America to Paris to recall Chadwick Newsome, a young man who is reported to be compromising himself by an entanglement with a wicked woman. However, Strether’s mission fails when he is seduced by the social pleasures of the European capital, and he takes Newsome’s side. So a second ambassador is dispatched in the form of the more determined Sarah Pocock. She delivers an ultimatum which is resisted by the two young men, but then an accident reveals unpleasant truths to Strether, who is faced by a test of loyalty between old Europe and the new USA. This edition presents the latest scholarship on James and includes an introduction, notes, selected criticism, a text summary and a chronology of James’s life and times.
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Henry James – web links
Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.
The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.
The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.
A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.
The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.
Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.
Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.
The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.
The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.
Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.
Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.
© Roy Johnson 2013
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