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The Portrait of a Lady

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tutorial, characters, resources, film, writing

The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is generally regarded as the masterpiece of James’s middle period. Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives to discover Europe. She sees the world as “a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action”. Turning aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion, she follows her own path.

But that way leads to disillusionment and a future as constricted as “a dark narrow alley with a dead wall at the end”. James explores here one of his favourite themes – the New World in contest with the Old. In a conclusion that is one of the most moving in modern fiction, Isabel is forced to make her final choice.

Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

The Portrait of a Lady – plot summary

Isabel Archer, originally from Albany, New York, is invited by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, to visit Lydia’s rich husband Daniel at his estate near London, following the death of Isabel’s father. There, she meets her cousin Ralph Touchett, a friendly invalid, and the Touchetts’ robust neighbor, Lord Warburton.

Isabel later declines Warburton’s sudden proposal of marriage. She also rejects the hand of Caspar Goodwood, the charismatic son and heir of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Although Isabel is drawn to Caspar, her commitment to her independence precludes such a marriage, which she feels would demand the sacrifice of her freedom. The elder Touchett grows ill and, at the request of his son, leaves much of his estate to Isabel upon his death.

The Portrait of a LadyWith her large legacy, Isabel travels the Continent and meets an American expatriate, Gilbert Osmond, in Florence. Although Isabel had previously rejected both Warburton and Goodwood, she accepts Osmond’s proposal of marriage. She is unaware that this marriage has been actively promoted by the accomplished but untrustworthy Madame Merle, another American expatriate, whom Isabel had met at the Touchetts’ estate.

Isabel and Osmond settle in Rome, but their marriage rapidly sours due to Osmond’s overwhelming egotism and his lack of genuine affection for his wife. Isabel grows fond of Pansy, Osmond’s presumed daughter by his first marriage, and wants to grant her wish to marry Ned Rosier, a young art collector. The snobbish Osmond would rather that Pansy accept the proposal of Warburton, who had previously proposed to Isabel. Isabel suspects, however, that Warburton may just be feigning interest in Pansy to get close to Isabel again.

The conflict creates even more strain within the unhappy marriage. Isabel then learns that Ralph is dying at his estate in England and prepares to go to him for his final hours, but Osmond selfishly opposes this plan. Meanwhile, Isabel learns from her sister-in-law that Pansy is actually the daughter of Madame Merle, who had an adulterous relationship with Osmond for several years.

Isabel visits Pansy one last time, who desperately begs her to return some day, something Isabel reluctantly promises. She then leaves, without telling her spiteful husband, to comfort the dying Ralph in England, where she remains until his death.

Goodwood encounters her at Ralph’s estate and begs her to leave Osmond and come away with him. He passionately embraces and kisses her, but Isabel flees. Goodwood seeks her out the next day, but is told she has set off again for Rome. The ending is ambiguous, and the reader is left to imagine whether Isabel returned to Osmond to suffer out her marriage in noble tragedy (perhaps for Pansy’s sake) or whether she is going to rescue Pansy and leave Osmond.

Study resources

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Cliff’s Notes – Amazon UK

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – Kindle eBook edition

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – eBook version at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – audioBook version at LibriVox

Red button Preface to The Portrait of a Lady – for the 1910 New York edition

Red button The Portrait of a Lady – audio book (abridged, with music)

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button The Ladder – A Henry James web site

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study resources

The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady – characters
Lord Warburton English peer and landowner
Daniel Touchett Vermont banker
Ralph Touchett young invalid – Isobel’s cousin
Lydia Touchett Ralph’s sister in Florence
Isabel Archer Ralph’s (maternal) cousin
Lilian Archer Isobel’s married sister
Edith Archer Isobel’s married sister
Edmund Ludlow Lilian’s husband
Caspar Goodwood rich Boston industrialist
Henrietta Stackpole feminist and journalist
Bunchie Terrier dog
Miss Molyneux Lord Warburton’s elder sister
Mr Bantling Bachelor friend of Ralph’s
Lady Pensil Bantling’s sister
Miss Climbers friend of Henrietta Stackpole
Madame Merle friend of Mrs Touchett’s from Florence
Mr & Mrs Luce friends of Mrs Touchett’s in Paris
Edward Rosier aesthete living in Paris
Gilbert Osmond asthete living in Italy for 20 years
Pansy Osmond Osmond’s 15 year old daughter
Countess Gemini Osmond’s sister
Gardencourt Mr Touchett’s estate
Lockleigh Lord Warburton’s estate
Palazzo Crescentini Mrs Touchett’s home
The Portrait of a Lady – film version

Jane Campion 1996 – Nicole Kidman and John Malkovich

Red button See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

The Portrait of a Lady – further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

Henry James The BostoniansThe 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 from the South 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.

Buy the book at Amazon UK
Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James What Masie KnewWhat 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.

Henry James What Masie Knew Buy the book at Amazon UK
Henry James What Masie Knew Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James The AmbassadorsThe 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.
Longstaff's Marriage Buy the book at Amazon UK
Longstaff's Marriage Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James 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.

Henry James web links 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.

Red button 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.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links 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 2010

More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Princess Casamassima

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Princess Casamassima first appeared as monthly serial insallments in The Atlantic Monthly magazine between 1885 and 1886. It was published in book form as three volumes by Macmillan in 1886. The work is very unusual in James’s oeuvre in dealing with both the working classes and with revolutionary politics. It also features a character (the Princess) who had appeared as the American beauty Christina Light in Roderick Hudson, published ten years previously in 1875.

The Princess Casamassima

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)

The Princess Casamassima – critical commentary

The serial novel

Like most other nineteenth century novelists, James was accustomed to producing his novels first in the form of monthly magazine installments, then in book form – either as single or multiple volumes. The Princess Casamassima first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly over the space of a year in fourteen installments, then in three volumes, published by Macmillan in 1886.

It has to be said that one reason why the novel has not proved popular with general readers (or scholars) is that the pace of the narrative is glacially slow. Although there are sufficient characters and plot intrigue to provide psychological development and dramatic tension, much of the story is laboured beyond belief. It’s as if James felt uncomfortable with the subject he had chosen. It is also true that he was literally making up the story as he went along, having been held up in his writing schedule over problems with his previous novel The Bostonians which was published almost at the same time (1885-1886).

There is none of the light and shade or the dramatic tension one would expect in the serial form (as one gets to abundance in Dickens for instance). Journeys from one location to another are described in excessive detail; interaction between the characters is traced exhaustively, but does not lead anywhere (see below); and there is a great deal of repetition.

Politics

Conversely, many elements hinted at in the account of events, particularly related to the ostensible subject of social revolutionaries, are not actually realised. There are mentions of spies, informers, agents provocateur, hard-line anarchists, and police surveillance, but none of this is dramatised or even discussed by the principal characters.

One cannot expect James to be particularly well informed on matters of revolutionary politics, because very few people knew anything much about the subject at that time in the 1880s. It was generally assumed that revolutionaries were small, almost secret groups of bomb-throwing anarchists and desperadoes who had utopian dreams of dispossessing the rich and overturning society.

However, James did choose his subject consciously, so he must be held accountable for his failure to provide any knowledge of its workings. None of the meetings in the Sun and Moon are reported, and even the conversations of his two principal characters, Hyacinth and Paul, do not cover revolutionary politics or even social theory. Paul merely opines that ‘the democracy’ will eventually prevail, whilst Hyacinth volunteers for his fatal mission as an act of bravado.

However, James was not entirely unaware of the lives of lower-class people. His story In the Cage deals with the life and working conditions of a young woman who operates a telegraphy machine within a grocery store in London’s West End.

The Dickensian shadow

There are many elements of the novel that have powerful overtones of Dickens. For instance, Hyacinth’s melodramatic origins. He is the unrecognised bastard child of a French prostitute and an English Lord who has been raised by an impoverished dressmaker. His mother has murdered his father; and as a child Hyacinth is taken to a gruesome deathbed meeting with his mother in a prison.

Rosy Muniment, the irrepressibly cheerful invalid with a crippled spine who finds positives in everything that surrounds her is closely reminiscent of Fanny Cleaver (Jenny Wren) the doll’s dressmaker in Our Mutual Friend whose lament is “my back’s bad and my legs are so queer” and is unstoppably chirpy and optimistic, despite her disabilities.

Mr Vetch and Hyacinth are a very close parallel to Pip and Joe Gargery in Great Expectations. Mr Vetch does everything to protect and help Hyacinth get on in life, and is very loyal to his foster mother. When Hyacinth becomes involved with the aristocracy and develops snobbish and selfish values, Mr Vetch is uncomplaining and does not reproach an entirely unthankful protege – and even offers to lend him money from his hard-earned savings as Hyacinth is engaged in squandering his small inheritance on trips to Paris and Venice.

There is even direct reference to Dickens when Paul Muniment sees someone who reminds him of Mr Micawber.

Resolution

What reinforces this impression of torpor more than anything else is the fact that at the end of the novel there are so many unfinished or unresolved elements in the plot. We know that Hyacinth cannot contain the contradiction which exists within him – the pull between his love of ‘civilization’, luxury, plus an aristocratic lifestyle, and his fast-disappearing socialist sympathies. So he resolves the issue personally by shooting himself. But what happens to the other ‘revolutionaries’? We have no idea what happens to the Princess, to Paul Muniment, to Eustace Poupin, to Schinkel, or even to Hoffendahl’s plot to assassinate someone of importance.

Many of the other plot lines are also left in an unfinished or unresolved state. The relationship between Paul and Hyacinth is not brought to any closure – nor is Paul’s romantic dalliance with the Princess. We do not have any explanation for Mr Vetch’s unquestioning support for Hyacinth, even when he is betraying his own principles and drifting into a self-indulgent ‘appreciation’ of luxuries afforded to the upper class.

Even Hyacinth’s melodramatic origins are not resolved or examined in any way in the later parts of the novel. Where Dickens might have produced some sort of long-term dramatic connection resulting from this sexual link between upper and lower class, James leaves this whole melodramatic episode merely as a donnée to illuminate Hyacinth’s problematic origins. In a novel of this length and complexity, I think readers are entitled to expect resolutions or at least connections to be made between the various elements of the narrative. All we are given instead is a ‘surprise’ twist to the tale which is fairly easy to foresee and brings one of James’s longest novels to an abrupt and quite unsatisfactory stop.

The Princess Casamassima – Study resources

The Other House The Princess Casamassima – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Other House The Princess Casamassima – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Other House The Princess Casamassima – Digireads – Amazon UK

The Other House The Princess Casamassima – Digireads – Amazon US

The Other House The Princess Casamassima – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Other House The Princess Casamassima – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

The Princess Casamassima

The Princess Casamassima – plot synopsis

Book First

Chapter I.   Prison office Mrs Bowerbank visits poor dressmaker Miss Amanda Pynsent (‘Pinnie’) regarding a possible visit for her adopted son Hyacinth Robinson to see his mother, who is dying in prison where she has been confined for the previous nine years for murdering he lover Lord Frederick Purvis, who is Hyacinth’s father.

Chapter II.   Pinnie seeks advice from her radical neighbour Theophilious Vetch. She worries about revealing to Hyacinth his true parentage. Mr Vetch takes a tough realistic view and thinks Hyacinth ought to know the truth.

Chapter III.   Pinnie and Hyacinth visit the gloomy penitentiary, but the meeting between Hyacinth and his mother is a disaster. He does not like the prison and does not know why he is there. His mother thinks he hates her. He submits unwillingly to her brief embrace, then they leave

Chapter IV.   Ten years later Pinnie receives a visit from Millicent Henning, Hyacinth’s childhood friend and the daughter of a dissolute neighbouring family who have been evicted. Millicent is now a pushy and vulgar young cockney woman. Pinnie thinks she made a grave mistake in taking Hyacinth to the prison; her business has declined, and she has fallen onto hard times.

Chapter V.   Hyacinth arrives home. He has become a bookbinder, has taught himself French, and although physically slight is attractive. But he is bitterly conscious of his low status in life. He is attracted to Millicent and walks home with her. She asks him about his ‘family background’ and mocks his lowly status. Nevertheless, he arranges to see her again.

Chapter VI.   In a narrative flashback, when Mr Vetch has a copy of Bacon’s Essays bound as a gift for Hyacinth, he meets French radical exile Eustace Poupin, whereupon the two families become weekend friends. Poupin finds a position for Hyacinth at the Soho bindery where he works and becomes his mentor.

Chapter VII.   Under the influence of Poupin, Hyacinth tries to understand social class and the revolutionary ethos. Via meetings of radical sympathisers in the back room of the Sun and Moon pub in Bloomsbury, he meets Paul Muniment, who takes him home to meet his disabled sister Rosy, where they also meet Lady Aurora Langrish, an aristocratic do-gooder.

Chapter VIII.   They discuss various degrees of radical ideas, ending with predictions on how the aristocracy might behave in the event of an uprising amongst the lower classes in England.

Chapter IX.   Rosy recounts to Hyacinth the history of their relationship with Lady Aurora, the upper-class ‘saint’ who spends her time amongst the poor. Hyacinth is very impressed by Rosy as she recounts her family’s poor working-class background. She supports the oppressed but wants the aristocracy preserved. Hyacinth wants to know more about the ‘party of action’ from his friends, but Paul keeps him at arm’s length in a good-humoured way.

Chapter X.   Some months later Pinnie is more than ever concerned about Hyacinth’s continuing relationship with Millicent. He sees the positive side of her vulgar plebeian nature, and seems unaware of any sexual attraction he might be feeling for her. He even visualises her in heroic fashion as Liberty leading the people at the barricades.

Chapter XI.   Hyacinth continues his relationship with Millicent, despite her having no taste in anything beyond vulgar acquisitiveness. He meanwhile feels excluded from the aristocratic lifestyle to which he instinctively feels he has the right. This produces a dichotomy in his political allegiances which he cannot resolve. He eventually unearths the true story of his origins. He asks Mr Vetch to secure tickets for a show and is asked about his membership of the First International.

Book Second

Chapter XII.   When Hyacinth takes Millicent to the theatre he meets Captain Sholto (an upper class fellow radical) who wants to introduce him to his friend the Princess Casamassima. Hyacinth is torn between feeling patronised and flattered.

Chapter XIII.   When he joins the Princess and Madame Grandoni in their box he is overwhelmed by their aristocratic glamour. The Princess reveals that she sends Sholto out into society to bring her ‘interesting’ people to study. She wants to ‘understand’ the common people and believes that social revolution is bound to be imminent.

Chapter XIV.   When Hyacinth reports these events to Paul, his friend refuses to trust or give any of his time to people he sees as his class enemies. He makes an exception for Lady Aurora because she makes a practical effort to help Rosy. Hyacinth takes Pinnie to see Rosy, who ‘commissions’ her to make a pink nightgown.

Chapter XV.   Hyacinth compare political notes with Lady Aurora. She reveals her deep-seated antipathy to her own class and the effort it has cost her to break free of it. Paul arrives with Captain Sholto and reveals to Hyacinth that Sholto is merely a tout for the Princess, who he regards as a ‘monster’. Sholto then invites Hyacinth back to his rooms in Westminster where they discuss the Princess, who was expelled from her home by her husband, who now wants her back again.

Chapter XVI.   Prince Casamassima arrives in London hoping to effect a reconciliation with his wife – but she refuses to see him. The Prince discusses the situation with Madame Grandoni, fearful that Christina will bring his illustrious name into disrepute. Hyacinth arrives, and Madame Grandoni warns him against his radical ideas and principles.

Chapter XVII.   When the Prince arrives, the Princess first complains about her husband, then she asks Hyacinth to help her ‘know the people’. She outlines her own life history and how she despises the emptiness of the aristocracy. Finally she invites him to visit her in the country. Hyacinth binds a copy of Tennyson’s poems in her honour, but when he goes to deliver it she has left town.

Chapter XVIII.   Madame Grandoni meets the Prince before leaving for the country. She explains that Princess Christina now thinks it was a mistake to marry for money and a title. She also realises that Christina now finds the Prince terminally boring. The prince quizzes her about Hyacinth and Sholto.

Chapter XIX.   Pinnie uses the creation of the pink dressing gown as an excuse to cultivate Lady Aurora. Hyacinth finally calls on Lady Aurora to collect the French books she has promised to lend him. He is slightly amused that she wishes to explore ‘pauperism’, and she reveals that she thinks Captain Sholto is vulgar.

Chapter XX.   Hyacinth is conscious of a double connection with the upper class – the Princess with whom he is a little in love, and Lady Aurora who he regards as a ‘saint’. He bumps into Sholto in a pub, and together they meet Millicent, with whom he has a lover’s tiff. Sholto takes them to a music hall, and Hyacinth wonders if there is a secret liaison between Sholto and Millicent.

Chapter XXI.   Paul Muniment and Hyacinth are regarded as natural leaders amongst the radicals at the Sun and Moon in Bloomsbury. Paul is sceptical and taciturn, whilst Hyacinth is admired because of his mother’s tragic history. Hoffendahl, a famous German revolutionary is visiting London. He has been imprisoned and tortured, but has refused to name names. The local conspirators debate the ethics and the practical strategies of personal sacrifice. Hyacinth wonders why Paul does not take him more into his confidence. When a provocateur accuses them of cowardice, Hyacinth makes a defiant speech. Then Paul invites him and two others to meet Hoffendahl.

Book Third

Chapter XXII.   Three months later Hyacinth visits Medley, the Princess’s rented estate in the country, and is impressed by its age and beauty. The Princess treats him lavishly, but he is conscious of the contradiction of her claiming to be concerned for the poor whilst living in a house with forty to fifty rooms. He has previously pledged himself to the revolutionary cause of Hoffendahl. When he mentions Lady Aurora, the Princess regrets that she is not the first titled lady he has known.

Chapter XXIII.   After lunch Hyacinth goes for a drive with the Princess and Madame Grandoni, then at high tea more visitors arrive. The Princess puts pressure on him to stay. He explains that he needs to go back to work the next day, but she flatters him and persuades him to stay on.

Chapter XXIV.   Next day the Princess quizzes him about his activities. He tells her he has pledged his life when it becomes necessary to act. The people at the Sun and Moon he now regards as inconsequential. He has been sold a vision of an international network of revolution about to be ignited. He claims to be cautious, but names everyone involved.The Princess reveals that she too knows Hoffendahl but has been kept at arm’s length because he doesn’t trust women. The Princess flatters Hyacinth, and he reveals his origins to her.

Chapter XXV.   A few days later Hyacinth meets Captain Sholto with whom he has been in rivalry regarding Millicent. Sholto reveals that he doesn’t believe in the revolutionary cause at all, and is only interested in regaining his place close to the Princess, to whose every whim he panders.

Chapter XXVI.   The Princess invites Sholto to say at Medley. He believes that Hyacinth will suffer at the hands of the Princess. Hyacinth realises that Sholto is an empty shell who fabricates the role of slave to the Princess because he has nothing else to do. The Princess is bored by his attentions, but tolerates him.

Chapter XXVII.   Hyacinth returns home from Medley to discover that Pinnie is dying, attended by the devoted Lady Aurora. He thinks that people by now might know the ‘secret’ of his birth, but he is no longer concerned. He becomes painfully aware of the sordid living quarters in which he has been raised. Mr Vetch explains that Pinnie wanted Hyacinth left undisturbed whilst he enjoyed his high social connections. He offers Hyacinth money and takes an unquestioning fatherly interest in him.

Chapter XXVIII.   Hyacinth tries to look after the dying Pinnie, who is pleased that he has made contact with the aristocracy. But she dies, leaving him all her meagre savings. Mr Vetch continues to be supportive, and Hyacinth realises that he owes him and Pinnie a debt of looking after them – and that this will not be possible if he should end up in jail. Pinnie has expressed the hope that Hyacinth would travel abroad – to Paris.

Book Fourth

Chapter XXIX.   Following his inheritance and a further advance from Mr Vetch, Hyacinth visits Paris and thinks about his mother’s father, the revolutionary watch-maker who died on the barricades. He is seduced by the glamour and the luxury of the centre of modern civilization and feels distant from his socialist allegiances. He thinks he has an unbreakable bond to the Princess and yet still feels tied to Millicent.

Chapter XXX.   Hyacinth continues to feel a slightly ambiguous admiration for his friend Paul Muniment. After Paris he travels to Venice, from where he writes to the Princess confessing his change of heart regarding the revolution. He now values the products of civilization too much to think of destroying them.

Chapter XXXI.   When he returns to London, he finds that the Princess has gone. Feeling that he has spent his inheritance on an experience he wishes to share with her, he worries that she might have changed. He goes back to work reluctantly and begins to have literary aspirations. Mr Vetch supports him as ever, and he begins to feel distant from his fellow workers.

Chapter XXXII.   When Hyacinth visits the Muniments, he finds the Princess there with Lady Aurora. She claims to have given up all her worldly goods, selling off everything to give to the poor. It is her idea of making a grand sacrifice.

Chapter XXXIII.   Hyacinth walks with the Princess back to her small rented house in Paddington. She protests poverty but seems to have retained servants. Hyacinth thinks this is a fad which will rapidly fade away. She also claims that she admires Paul Muniment for not coming to visit her.

Chapter XXXIV.   Hyacinth discusses the Princess with Lady Aurora, who is a great fan. They all meet for tea together in POaddington. The Princess offers to help Lady Aurora in her ‘work’ – albeit in a patronising manner. Nevertheless, the two aristocratic women seem to form a close relationship.

Chapter XXXV.   Paul and Hyacinth one Sunday travel out to Greenwich, where Hyacinth asks Paul if he is in love with the Princess. Paul is evasive in reply, and they speak instead of Hyacinth’s ‘contract with Hoffendahl. Paul thinks it might not happen; the issue tests their friendship; and Paul jokingly calls Hyacinth a ‘duke in disguise’. Paul does not believe in ‘the millennium’ (violent revolution) but in ‘the democracy’.

Chapter XXXVI.   Paul visits the Princess. She claims she wishes to help the ’cause’ and offers to replace Hyacinth in his contract with Hoffendahl. She also offers money, but Paul remains distant and sceptical, because he does not trust women.

Chapter XXXVII.   The Princess receives Mr Vetch as a visitor. He finds it very difficult to say why he has come, except that it relates to Hyacinth. He wants Hyacinth to reconcile himself to society, and believes he no longer has such radical beliefs as previously. He believes that Hyacinth has fallen in with dangerous conspirators and is about to perform some sort of rash act. The Princess denies all knowledge of any such pledge. Mr Vetch feels responsible, because he introduced Hyacinth to the revolutionaries via Poupin. He also wishes to check with Paul Muniment, but the Princess appeals to him to leave Paul alone.

Chapter XXXVIII.   Hyacinth binds books for the Princess and rises in status at the bindery. The Princess claims to have lost interest in this project and Hyacinth has to acquire more books ‘from store’ via her servant Augusta. He begins to feel that ‘the democracy’ will look after its own future, and continues to feel pulled between sympathy for his mother and his aristocratic father. Hyacinth and the Princess josh each other regarding their political commitments, and he suspects that she might be going ‘too far’. The Princess wonders if her ‘saint’ Lady Aurora might marry Paul Muniment, with whom she is in love.

Chapter XXXIX.   Rosy Muniment also thinks her brother Paul ought to marry Lady Aurora, and that he ought to stay clear of the Princess. When Paul visits the Princess she flirts with him and tells him about Mr Vetch’s anxieties and suspicions. She asks Paul to dissuade Hyacinth from making his grand self-sacrifice. Paul says that such a decision is Hyacinth’s own business. They leave for a meeting and are spied upon and followed by her husband the Prince.

Chapter XXXX.   The Prince visits Madame Grandoni and asks her for information on the Princess and Paul Muniment, suspecting his wife of having an affair. Madame Grandoni is divided in her loyalty, but she reveals that they are all involved in overthrowing society. The Prince wishes to avoid a ‘scandal’ since he is inordinately proud of his family name. When Hyacinth suddenly appears the Prince quizzes him about his political opinions and wants to know about the house the Princess and Paul have gone to. The conspirators return: Hyacinth is disturbed and goes home.

Chapter XXXXI.   Hyacinth goes into Hyde Park on Sunday with Millicent. She chides him for his inconstancy, his anti-social ideas, and his relationship with the Princess. She also correctly assumes that Paul has replaced him in the affections of the Princess.

Chapter XXXXII.   The same evening Hyacinth calls on Lady Aurora who is going out to a party and seems ready to rejoin her class. Then he goes to the Poupins where they are entertaining Schinkel.

Book Fifth

Chapter XXXXIII.   Although they welcome Hyacinth, he feels that there is something ominous afoot. He demands to know what is happening. They reveal that they think he has given up the cause, and Schinkel has a letter for him. They argue inconsequently.

Chapter XXXXIV.   Hyacinth goes out, followed by Schinkel, who tells him about having received a letter for him. Hyacinth takes the letter, but when he goes up to his room Mr Vetch is waiting for him, worried that he might be in trouble. Hyacinth promises him never to do anything to help the revolutionaries, and Mr Vetch leaves.

Chapter XXXXV.   Next day Hyacinth goes to the Princess’s house, only to find that Madame Grandoni has gone back to Italy. The Princess arrives, and they have a disagreement about his commitment to the ’cause’. She tells him that Paul thinks his ‘grand sacrifice’ will not be called in, because he has obviously changed his political allegiance. He claims not to have changed at all.

Chapter XXXXVI.   Paul visits the Princess to tell her that her husband is cutting off her allowance. He predicts that she will return to the Prince. He also reveals that Hyacinth has received instructions to assassinate somebody in a few days time at a grand party. The Princess claims she will try to carry out the act herself.

Chapter XXXXVII.   Hyacinth has three days left. He decides he would like comfort from Millicent, but when he goes to the shop where she works, she is serving Sholto. He feels that if he carries out the assassination he will be following in his mother’s footsteps. The Princess arrives at Hyacinth’s lodgings to find Schinkel also waiting for him. They break down the door, to find that Hyacinth has shot himself through the heart.

The Princess Casamassima

First edition – Macmillan 1886

The Princess Casamassima – principal characters
I an un-named narrator who occasionally appears
Miss Amanda Pynsent (‘Pinnie’) an impoverished dressmaker, foster-mother to Hyacinth
Hyacinth Robinson small, intelligent bookbinder of Anglo-French parentage
Mrs Bowerbank a large woman who works as a prison officer
Millicent Henning childhood playmate of Hyacinth who becomes a pushy cockney
Theophilous Vetch a radical fiddle player and neighbour
Florence Vivier a French prostitute, Hyacinth’s mother
Eustace Poupin French republican exile and master bookbinder
Mr Crookenden Soho bookbinder
Paul Muniment a chemist’s assistant and radical, Hyacinth’s friend
Rosy Muniment Paul’s sister, a cheerful invalid
Lady Aurora Langrish tall, plain, ill-dressed aristocratic ‘socialist’
Lord Frederick Purvis (‘Robinson’) Hyacinth’s murdered father
Princess Christina Casamassima a beautiful American woman
Prince Casamassima her estranged Italian husband
Captain Godfrey Gerald Sholto a ‘cosmopolitan’ friend of the Princess
Madame Grandoni German companion to the Princess – an old woman who wears a wig
Diedrich Hoffendahl a German revolutionary (who does not actually appear)
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 2014

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The Purloined Letter

by

The Purloined Letter (1844) marks the third and final appearance of Edgar Allan Poe’s master-detective, the Parisian‘ gentleman’ Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin. He first appeared in The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) and then again in The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842). He is also quite clearly the original inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Edgar Allan Poe

The story first appeared in the Christmas literary annual The Gift published in Philadelphia in December 1845. Poe received a payment of only $12.00 for its first printing, but the story was reprinted in many newspapers and magazines in the years that followed.

The Purloined Letter – critical comment

The short story

Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories are generally collected under the title of Tales of Mystery and Imagination. In them, Poe explored a wide range of topics and themes. He is most famous for his tales of Gothic horror – such as The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, and Ligeia. But he also invented the detective story; he wrote tales of science fiction (The Balloon Hoax); spoofs and satires (The Man Who was Used Up); and puzzles or cryptograms such as The Gold Bug.

He wrote prolifically for newspapers and magazines. As a result of his engagement with the shorter literary forms he developed a theory of short stories which is still relevant today. He claimed that a successful short story should follow a set of rules.

  • It should be read at one sitting
  • It should create a ‘unity of effect’
  • It should contain nothing superfluous
  • It should strike its note in the first sentence
  • It should be imaginative and original

The Purloined Letter is successful because it meets all these requirements. The mystery is focussed on one topic – the missing letter. There are no digressions. All parts of the tale relate to its discovery, and the story begins and ends ‘on topic’ – with the loss of the letter and its discovery.

The story has a perfectly reasonable premise. A potentially compromising letter has been stolen and cannot be located by the police. The problems this raises are then explored, and the letter is located by Dupin. The story ends with an explanation of how he found it.

Its aesthetic superiority is evident when compared with the other two Dupin stories. The Murders in the Rue Morgue depends upon a rather improbable premise – an escaped Orang-Outang armed with a cut-throat razor. The Mystery of Marie Roget offers an exhaustive analysis of evidence for a puzzling murder, but it is technically unresolved. The Purloined Letter has neither of these weaknesses.

Structure

The success of this story is principally explained by its sound structure. The narrative is in three distinct parts:

  • the problem and how it came about
  • the efforts that were made to solve it
  • Dupin’s explanation of his strategic success

The story also has an interesting structural feature. The missing letter does not suddenly appear at the end of the story as a coup de theatre, thus providing a resolution to the tale. It is unexpectedly produced half way through the story, when Dupin raffishly claims the 50,000 Francs reward for its discovery. This is a mark of Poe’s genius as a story teller.

The essence of the story is not about the social value of the letter to its addressee (the Queen) or someone else who might read it (the King). There is a suggestion that the compromising contents of the letter will reveal the fact that the Queen has been sexually unfaithful to the King. But Poe’s principal interest is about how the letter is discovered.

The ‘twist’ in the tale is that the letter was in full view of the police all the time. It was not, as the police suspected, concealed in any secret drawer, in the stuffing of a chair seat, or behind the wallpaper of D—’s room. It was fully on view – but it had been disguised as a letter of no importance addressed to someone else.

The French connection

Poe’s literary reputation has always been high in France, and there has been a great deal of literary analysis of The Purloined Letter by modernist critics of the 1960s and 1970s. This debate is summarised in the story’s Wikipedia entry.

This debate mainly centres on the symbolic significance of the letter in relation to the Queen who has received it and her husband the King who apparently is being deceived. However, this discussion ignores the fact that Poe is quite clearly more interested in how Dupin discovers the letter than in the social ramifications of its contents – which are not known anyway.

These approaches to literary of analysis flow from the various schools of criticism which were fashionable in France around that time. These took a stance that literary texts could have more or less any meaning that could be read into them, irrespective of the author’s intention or even an intelligent reader’s understanding of ‘the story’.

The two best known of these theories – structuralism and deconstruction – were popular and influential in Europe and America until the end of the twentieth century. But in recent years they have fallen out of favour, largely because they are now considered elitist and woefully obscure. They also have the weakness that they frequently lack common sense.

The Purloined Letter – study resources

The Purloined Letter Poe: The Ultimate Collection – Amazon UK

The Purloined Letter Poe: The Ultimate Collection – Amazon US

The Purloined Letter Poe: Collected Tales – Penguin classics – Amazon UK

The Purloined Letter Poe: Collected Tales – Penguin classics – Amazon US

The Purloined Letter Tales of Mystery and Imagination – illustrated – Amazon UK

The Purloined Letter Tales of Mystery and Imagination – illustrated – Amazon US

A Bundle of Letters

The Purloined Letter – story synopsis

Auguste Dupin and the narrator are joined by G— the chief of the Prefecture of the Paris Police. He reports the theft of a compromising letter by the minister D— in full view of its royal recipient and her husband.

D— has not yet acted on the content of the letter but the police chief has failed in all his attempts to recover it. He has even taken apart the furniture in D—’s rooms and searched adjacent houses. Dupin advises him to look more carefully.

A month later G— returns, still unsuccessful. A reward for the recovery of the letter has been doubled to 50,000 Francs. Dupin asks for a cheque to that amount, and in exchange he hands over the letter.

When G-— has gone, Dupin explains to the narrator that G—’s methods are indeed very thorough, but they are limited because he fails to put himself into the mindset of his antagonist. Dupin criticises mathematical logic because it is a self-enclosed system which cannot be applied in the moral universe.

He then describes his visit to minister D— in his office where he spots the letter, distressed, torn, and disguised, in a letter rack on the mantelpiece. Dupin deliberately leaves a snuff box behind, and returns next day to collect it. Whilst D—’s attention is distracted he takes the letter and replaces it with a dummy copy he has made.

© Roy Johnson 2017

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The Return of the Native

by

tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

The Return of the Native first appeared as a serial in Belgravia magazine between January and December 1878. This was a publication which specialised in sensation fiction. It was then published in the popular three-volume novel format later the same year by Smith, Elder. Hardy made extensive revisions to the text when it was reprinted as part of the first collected edition of his works in 1895 and later for Macmillan’s Wessex Edition in 1912. These revisions however do not affect the substance of the plot: they were mainly to do with substantiating the geography of the story and drawing the fictitious place names more closely in line with the topography of Dorsetshire which Hardy had re-imagined as Wessex.

The Return of the Native

‘Something was wrong with her foot’

original illustration by Arthur Hopkins

The Return of the Native – critical commentary

Setting

One of the features that concentrates the novel and its drama is that every single scene is set in Egdon Heath and its immediate surroundings. The heath is shown in all seasons, and its vegetation and wild life is documented with almost scientific accuracy.

It is interesting to note that for those who wish to escape rural isolation, Budmouth is the nearest urban centre. Eustacia has come from there, and it is the town with its ‘promenades and parades’ to which she wishes to escape in the novel’s finale.

Hardy makes no attempt to glamourise the countryside: it is harsh terrain; people get soaking wet when it rains; and even those who make their living from it have to wear protective clothing to guard against the furze.

Melodrama

It was very common in the nineteenth century for novels to have complex plots and lots of dramatic tension. Novels first appeared in serialized form, and performed a similar function to television soap operas today. Even though Hardy is now seen as a bridge between these conventions and those of the modern era, he was repeatedly drawn to arrange his stories in a way in which drama tips over into melodrama. A central scene from the novel illustrates this point very well: the episode in which Mrs Yeobright is refused entry to Clym’s house.

She has decided to seek reconciliation with her estranged son, but when she arrives at the house Clym is asleep, and Eustacia is entertaining her ex-lover Wildeve. Hardy devises clever plotting in order to make these circumstances and coincidences to seem plausible to the reader. But when Mrs Yeobright turns to go back home, full of anger and resentment at being refused admission, it is tipping over into melodrama to have her then bitten by a snake. Though it has to be said that Hardy had flagged up their presence on the Heath earlier in the novel.

Sexual liberties

It is also interesting to note how often in his fiction Hardy explores the boundaries of sexual liberty. At a time when both men but particularly women were supposed to remain chaste until marriage, Hardy is adept at exploiting circumstances in which these restraints could be circumvented or challenged.

In a scene which takes place outside the time frame of the narrative, Thomasin Yeobright and Damon Wildeve have travelled to Southerton in order to be married. The marriage does not take place because the paperwork was made out for Budworth.

The importance of this detail is that they have stayed somewhere away from home, as a couple, without being married. It is not clear if sexual intimacy took place or not, but the mere possibility that it could have done puts a stain on Thomasin’s character, for which her aunt reproaches her: “It is a great slight to me and my family and when it gets known there will be a very unpleasant time for us”.

A very similar set of circumstances obtain in Hardy’s earlier novel of 1872, A Pair of Blue Eyes in which the protagonists Stephen Smith and Elfride Swancourt have a failed elopement to Plymouth (then London) which results in their being absent from their home town for one night together (which they spend travelling on trains) – but this is enough to put her social reputation entirely at risk.

The Return of the Native

original three-volume 1878 edition

The Return of the Native – study resources

The Return of the Native The Return of the Native – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Return of the Native The Return of the Native – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Return of the Native The Return of the Native – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Return of the Native The Return of the Native – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Return of the Native The Return of the Native – York Notes (Advanced) – Amazon UK

The Return of the Native The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

The Return of the Native The Return of the Native – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Return of the Native The Return of the Native – audiobook version at LibriVox.org

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Red button The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Red button Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Red button Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

The

The Return of the Native – characters
Diggory Venn young handsome man (24) covered in red dye for most of the novel, and a persistent peeping tom and eavesdropper
Grandfer Cantle a yokel who reminisces about his role in Napoleonic wars
Chistian Cantle a young unmarried man (31) who is a self-elected loser
Mrs Yeobright a proud and strict woman, the daughter of a curate
Clement (Clym) Yeobright her son, ex-jewellery salesman, would-be schoolmaster
Thomasin (Tamsin) Yeobright Mrs Yeobright’s niece
Damon Wildeve an inn-keeper and former engineer
Eustacia Vye a passionate and romantic woman, Wildeve’s former lover
Susan Nonsuch a country woman
Johnny Nonsuch her son, young boy who carries messages
Captain Drew a retired seaman, Eustacia’s grandfather
Olly Dowden a country woman, maker of brooms
Timothy Fairway a rural worker
The Return of the Native – plot summary

Book the First – The Three Women

November bonfire celebrations are taking place on Egdon Heath. A group of locals decide to celebrate the nuptials of Thomasin Yeobright and Damon Wildeve, but it turns out that they were not married because of irregularities in the marriage licence. Damon goes to meet Eustacia Vye, his former lover, who has been waiting for him on the Heath. She charges him to remain faithful to her.

Their conversation is overhead and transmitted to Diggory Venn, who has been turned down as a suitor to Thomasin, but has remained faithful in his love for her. He spies on Damon and Eustacia, who cannot resolve their feelings for each other. Venn then asks Eustacia to leave Damon for Tamsin, which she refuses to do. Mrs Yeobright intervenes to protect her niece’s good name by telling Wildeve that Tamsin has another suitor (Venn). Damon and Eustacia continue to equivocate.

Book the Second – The Arrival

Eustacia hears her name linked with the absent Clym Yeobright, and becomes fired up romantically by his reputation alone. Tamsin continues to worry about her local reputation since she and Wildeve are still not married. Eustacia tries to meet Clym on his return to Egdon Heath, but fails in her attempt.

She arranges to take part in the Christmas mummers play, where she meets Clym, falls further in love with the mere idea of him, and becomes jealous of Tamsin. She breaks off her relationship with Wildeve, who goes back to Tamsin again and is accepted by him. Tamsin finally marries Wildeve, and is given away by Eustacia (all of which is arranged by Diggory Venn).

Book the Third – The Fascination

Clym has returned from being a jewellery shop salesman in Paris with the intention of setting up a school, despite his mother’s disapproval. He recruits Eustacia to his scheme, and his mother criticises both his lack of ambition and his connection with a flirt who has no money.

Clym falls for Eustacia and decides he wants to marry her, but she thinks that their love might not last. Eventually they agree to marry in fourteen day’s time. Clym leaves home and sets up a small rented house on the Heath. His mother is full of bitter disappointment. She sends inherited money to Tamsin but Christian loses it all gambling against Wildeve, who then loses it all in his turn to Diggory Venn, who gives it all back to Tamsin (though half was intended for Clym).

Book the Fourth – The Closed Door

The Return of the NativeMrs Yeobright checks on the money with Eustacia and they argue about Clym. The money is eventually distributed fairly, but Clym becomes estranged from his mother and Eustacia argues more virulently with Mrs Yeobright. Eustacia wants social advancement and the glamour of a life in Paris, but Clym wishes to stay in his local parish and start the school.

When he is struck with an eye ailment through reading too much, he decides to become a humble furze-cutter. Eustacia goes to a rural dance and meets Wildeve again – and is observed by Diggory Venn once more, who then begins an active campaign to distract Wildeve’s attentions towards Eustacia (all in order to protect Tamsin).

Venn encourages Mrs Yeobright to reconcile herself with Clym, and Clym feels he ought to do the same. Mrs Yeobright finally goes to Clym’s house, but arrives when he is asleep and Eustacia is being visited by Wildeve. Mrs Yeobright finds the door closed against her, and is mortified. When Clym wakes up he goes in pursuit of his mother and finds her collapsed on the Heath, having been bitten by an adder. Eustacia follows, meets Wildeve en route to discover that he has inherited eleven thousand pounds, and arrives at the Heath as Mrs Yeobright is dying from exhaustion, snake bite, and a broken heart.

Book the Fifth – The Discovery

Clym falls ill after his mother’s death and reproaches himself for not having made contact with her.Then he learns from Diggory Venn and young Johnny the true sequence of events that led to his mother’s failed visit. He confronts Eustacia, who admits to all except Wildeve’s identity as the person who was in the house with her. Clym is convinced that she is having an affair with someone, they argue, and eventually agree to separate. Eustacia goes back to live at her grandfather’s house and momentarily contemplates suicide.

Eustacia then plans to leave for Paris via Budworth, with Wildeve’s financial assistance. Clym writes to Eustacia inviting her back, and Tamsin has differences with Wildeve regarding Eustacia. Failing to receive Clym’s letter, Eustacia sets off to meet Wildeve and is caught in a storm on Egdon Heath. Susan Nonsuch curses Eustacia with a wax effigy. Tamsin seeks Clym’s help, and despatches him to check on Eustacia and Wildeve, who appear to be eloping. Eventually, Clym and Wildeve meet on the Heath. Eustacia falls into a weir, both men try to save her, but Eustacia and Wildeve are drowned.

Book the Sixth – Aftercourses.

Diggory Venn becomes a prosperous dairy farmer. Clym thinks to take up with Tamsin (as his mother once wished) but she marries Diggory Venn instead. Clym becomes an itinerant preacher, still devoted to the memory of his mother.

The Return of the Native – bibliography

Gillian Beer, ‘Can the Native Return?’ in her Open Fields: Essays in Cultural Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 31-54.

Kristin Brady, ‘Thomas Hardy and Matters of Gender’, in Dale Kramer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 93-111.

Pamela Dalziel, ‘Anxieties of Presentation: The Serial Illustrations to Hardy’s The Return of the Native‘, Nineteenth-Century Literature, 51.1 (1996), 84-110.

Terry Eagleton, ‘Nature as Language in Thomas Hardy’, Critical Quarterly, 13 (1971), 155-172.

Joseph Garver, The Return of the Native, Penguin Critical Studies, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1988).

Jennifer Gribble, ‘The Quiet Women of Egdon Heath’, Essays in Criticism, 46.3 (1996), 234-257.

Nicola Harris, ‘”The Danse Macabre”, Hardy’s The Return of the Native, Browning, Ruskin and the Grotesque’, Thomas Hardy Yearbook, 26 (1998), 24-30.

Robert Langbaum, Thomas Hardy in Our Time, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995).

Phillip Mallet, ‘Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native‘, in Jay Parini (ed. and introd.), British Writers: Classics, vol. i (New York: Scribner’s, 2003), 291-310.

Mary Rimmer,’A Feast of Language: Hardy’s Allusions’, in Phillip Mallet (ed.), The Achievement of Thomas Hardy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 58-71.

Dennis Taylor, ‘Hardy Inscribed’, in Phillip Mallet (ed.), The Achievement of Thomas Hardy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), 104-122.

Brian Thomas, The ‘Return of the Native’: Saint George Defeated (New York: Twayne, 1995).

Map of Wessex

Hardy’s WESSEX

The Return of the Native – further reading

Red button John Bayley, An Essay on Hardy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Red button Penny Boumelha, Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form, Brighton: Harvester, 1982.

Red button Kristin Brady, The Short Stories of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1982.

Red button L. St.J. Butler, Alternative Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1989.

Red button Raymond Chapman, The Language of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1990.

Red button R.G.Cox, Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1970.

Red button Ralph W.V. Elliot, Thomas Hardy’s English, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984.

Red button James Gibson (ed), The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, London, 1976.

Red button Florence Emily Hardy, The Life of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1962. (This is more or less Hardy’ s autobiography, since he told his wife what to write.)

Red button P. Ingham, Thomas Hardy: A Feminist Reading, Brighton: Harvester, 1989.

Red button P.Ingham, The Language of Class and Gender: Transformation in the English Novel, London: Routledge, 1995,

Red button Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: His Career as a Novelist, London: Bodley Head, 1971.

Red button Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. (This is the definitive biography.)

Red button Michael Millgate and Richard L. Purdy (eds), The Collected Letters of Thomas Hardy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978-

Red button R. Morgan, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge, 1988.

Red button Harold Orel (ed), Thomas Hardy’s Personal Writings, London, 1967.

Red button F.B. Pinion, A Thomas Hardy Companion, London: Macmillan, 1968.

Red button Norman Page, Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1977.

Red button Rosemary Sumner, Thomas Hardy: Psychological Novelist, London: Macmillan, 1981.

Red button Richard H. Taylor, The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, London, 1978.

Red button Merryn Williams, A Preface to Hardy, London: Longman, 1976.

Hardy’s study

Thomas Hardy's study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'UrbervillesTess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbervilles Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbervilles Buy the book at Amazon US

The WoodlandersThe Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders Buy the book at Amazon US

Wessex TalesWessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.

Thomas Hardy Wessex Tales Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy Wessex Tales Buy the book at Amazon US

Thomas Hardy – web links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

© Roy Johnson 2014

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The Reverberator

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Reverberator is a short novel (especially short by Henry James’s standards) which was first serialised in Macmillan’s Magazine between February and July in 1888. Later the same year it was published as a two volume then a one volume novel. It deals with issues which are amazingly contemporary – the power of the press, the individual’s right to privacy, and the journalism of celebrity gossip.

The Reverberator

first edition 1888

The Reverberator – critical commentary

Most of Henry James’s earlier works first appeared serialized in newspapers and magazines. He was well acquainted with the practicalities and the economics of publishing, but more importantly he was aware of the essential nature of journalism, which in the nineteenth century as now in the twenty-first was a force for potential mischief as well as for spreading enlightened intelligence.

The novel deals with three elements which still affect the public’s ambivalent relationship with the popular press: the promotion of celebrity gossip for commercial gain; the public’s ‘right to know’ (about the behaviour of the upper classes); and an individual’s right to privacy.

George Flack is an early example of a type we have seen over and again at the recent (UK) Leveson Inquiry into the behaviour of the press – the muck-raking journalist who is quite frank about his unscrupulous methods of obtaining information, and whose defense rests on the argument that he is merely supplying a public demand.

Flack tells Francie what information he wants from her, and reveals what use he will make of it. On his part, there is no concealment or pretence. The Probert family wish to preserve their right to privacy, including details such as adultery and petty theft by members of the family. There is even an argument made (without any supporting evidence) that the members of the family secretly enjoy the notoriety that Flack’s article affords them. All of these issues have emerged at the Leveson Enquiry: Henry James was writing about them 124 years earlier.

As a further illustration of fundamental journalistic practices, it is worth noting that Flack has a general brief to gather information and fashionable subjects, but the smaller details of his creations are supplied by what we would now call local ‘runners’. It is Miss Topping who digs out the embarrassing facts of the Probert family behaviour and passes them to Flack as the scandalous meat of his article..

James was to explain these issues again in his 1903 story The Papers which deals with the deliberate creation of celebrity culture via publicity fuelled corrupt journalism. James was personally very sensitive to the question of privacy, and protected his own by eventually burning a lot of his private papers

It is worth noting that whilst the Probert family wishes to protect its privacy and takes pride in social connections that go back ‘a thousand years’, Gaston pére and his children are in fact Americans who have married into French society. They are emigrants from Carolina.

The Reverberator – study resources

The Reverberator - paperback edition The Reverberator – Melville House paperback – Amazon UK

The Reverberator - paperback edition The Reverberator – Melville House paperback – Amazon US

The Reverberator - Kindle edition The Reverberator – Kindle edition [FREE]

The Reverberator - Digireads edition The Reverberator – Digireads paperback – Amazon UK

The Reverberator - Digireads edition The Reverberator – Digireads paperback – Amazon US

The Reverberator - Library of America edition The Reverberator – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Reverberator - Library of America edition The Reverberator – Library of America – Amazon US

The Reverberator at Project Gutenberg The Reverberator – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James study resources Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Reverberator

The Reverberator – plot summary

Newspaper society journalist George Flack visits Fidelia and Francina Dosson at their Paris hotel, having met them the previous year on a transatlantic crossing. He introduces them to Parisian life and persuades Francie to have her portrait painted by a ‘rising Impressionist’, George Waterlowe, through whom they meet his friend Gaston Probert, an American who was born in Paris.

Delia has ambitions for her younger sister – an engagement, but not yet marriage. Gaston is taken by Francie and he wants to know what it would be like to be a ‘real’ American. George Flack and Gaston are rivals for Francie.

Falk has ambitions for his newspaper the Reverberator, and he proposes marriage to Francie, who turns him down. Some months later, whilst Falk has returned to the USA, Gaston is torn between his love for Francie and a social reserve on behalf of his sisters, who have married into rather snobbish upper-class French society. He arranges for his sister Suzanne to meet Francie, but she refuses to endorse his plan to marry her. Gaston ask Mr Dosson’s permission to marry his daughter, and gets his approval.

Members of Gaston’s family eventually consent to meet the Dossons in order to approve them socially, and all appears to be going well. But Mr Probert pére still has reservations based on grounds of class distinctions and family traditions. American-based business connections require Mr Dosson to leave, but since this would leave his two unmarried daughters unchaperoned, Gaston is asked to go in his place.

Flack returns from America and asks Francie to take him to see the portrait, because he wants to write about it for the Reverberator. On visiting, he is snubbed by Gaston’s sister Mme de Cliché, but Francie talks to him freely about the family into which she is about to be married.

When Flack writes a gossip article about the portrait and the family in the Reverberator, they are all incandescent with rage and summon Francie to a family summit meeting, which is inconclusive. Mr Dosson takes a nonchalant attitude to the affair and wonders why anyone should get upset about an article in a newspaper. When Gaston returns from the USA, Francie admits that she has supplied Flack with the information for his article.

Mr Dosson writes to Flack in Nice, who then visits Francie, justifies his article, castigates the Proberts, and declares his love for her. She rejects him, but says that she will not marry Gaston.

Gaston visits the Dossons and vainly tries to make them compromise for the sake of the Proberts’ family pride. Francine and her father refuse. Gaston seeks advice from Waterlowe, who says he must reject his family in order to create a sense of freedom and independence for himself. Even though his father cuts him off with no money, that’s what Gaston does, and Francie accepts him.

Principal characters
George Flack the European correspondent for the American newspaper, The Reverberator
Whitney Desson a rich American financier
Miss Fidelia Desson his plain but sensible elder daughter
Miss Francina Desson his pretty but naive younger daughter
Charles Waterlowe an American ‘rising Impressionist’ painter in Paris
Gaston Probert an American who was born in Paris and has never been to America
Countess Suzanne de Brécourt Gaston’s sister
Mme Marguerite de Cliché Gaston’s sister
Mme Jeanne de Douves Gaston’s sister
Mr Probert Gaston’s distinguished father (originally from Carolina)
Miss Topping Flack’s assistant journalist in Paris (who never appears)
Setting

The setting throughout the novel is Paris, but it is worth noting that all the characters in the story are American – either visiting on a long term basis (the Dossons) resident (Flack) or born there (Probert). Two characters (Flack and Probert) visit America during the course of events, but this is merely a plot device to get them temporarily off stage.

Henry James's study

Henry James’s study

Further reading

Biographical

Henry James - study Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Henry James - biography Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Henry James - letters Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Henry James - notebooks F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Henry James - criticism Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Henry James - meaning Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Henry James - narrative Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Henry James - studies Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Henry James - essays Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Henry James - later writing Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Henry James - shorter fiction Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Henry James - prefaces John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Henry James - critical essays Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James 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.

Henry James web links 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.

Red button 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.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links 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 2012

More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Sacred Fount

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Sacred Fount was first published simultaneously as a single volume by Charles Scribners and Sons in New York and Methuen in London in February 1901. It comes from the ‘late period’ in James’s development as a novelist, and has puzzled readers and critics ever since, because of the obscurity of its subject matter and the extremely complex manner in which the events are related.

On the surface, it is the simple story of a number of people who travel to a weekend party at a country estate (Newmarch). But the narrator of events perceives hidden relations going on between some of the visitors – and he tries to work out the truth of these liaisons by psychological means alone, eschewing what he calls the ignoble methods of “the detective and the keyhole”.

The Sacred Fount

the first English edition 1901

The Sacred Fount – critical commentary

The original idea

When he first began writing The Sacred Fount Henry James thought the narrative would take the form of a short tale – as he did with many of his other novels – most of which became anything other than short. This is how James described what he called the donnée of his tale.

The notion of the young man who marries an older woman and who has the effect on her of making her younger and still younger, while he himself becomes her age. When he reaches the age that she was (on their marriage) she has gone back to the age that he was.

Mightn’t this be altered (perhaps) to the idea of cleverness and stupidity? A clever woman marries a deadly dull man, and loses and loses her wit as he shows more and more.

Both of these ideas are incorporated into the novel. The Narrator thinks Guy Brissenden’s vital juices are being drained by May Server or Lady John, leaving him looking much older than his twenty-nine years. They on the other hand appear much younger and more vivacious than their middle-age would suggest.

Gilbert Long on the other hand has always been something of a nonentity and dolt, but has suddenly developed intelligence and wit – as a result (it is supposed) of his secret sexual relationship with a clever woman. The Narrator spends the next three hundred pages trying to uncover the identity of this women.

‘The Sacred Fount’ as a concept is the source of youth at which older people are refreshing themselves – draining vital fluids from their younger partners. It is easy enough to spot here the notion of vampyrism which has influenced a lot of critical comment on the novel – the older person feeding off the life forces of someone younger, or the same thing in intellectual terms.

Problems of interpretation

The main problem with this as the plot for the novel is the reader is at no point presented with any impartial evidence or dramatised interchanges between the characters on which to form an independent judgement about such matters.

If fact one of the major weaknesses associated with the novel is the lack of characterisation. People are named perhaps given an age – and that’s it. There is no way a reader can form a picture or make any distinction between Grace Brissenden or May Server. They are both either ‘very beautiful’ or look younger than they did previously. Similarly, the men are merely names – Gilbert Long, Guy Brissenden, and Ford Obert. Who might be relating to whom is left unrecorded – except in the Narrator’s overheated imagination.

Not only are the characters not developed as fictional constructs, but everything in the narrative is mediated by the un-named, first-person Narrator. He tells us about the appearance and the interchanges between the other characters – so at a very simple, technical level, we only have his opinion or his interpretation of events.

But more than this, it rapidly becomes apparent that he is one of James’s unreliable narrators – not unlike the Governess in The Turn of the Screw (1898) written three years earlier.

The other characters do not see or do not agree with his observations. He actually imagines, invents, and ‘constructs’ other people’s conversations – thinking what the might or could be saying to each other. But then he draws his analytic conclusions from this evidence that he has constructed himself.

When the Narrator challenges and quizzes people about his suppositions, they give their own account or opinions of events – which turn out to be the exact opposite of what he suspects.

The Narrator is entirely self-congratulatory and vain: he describes himself as having ‘transcendent intelligence’ and ‘superior vision’ – yet the fact is that nobody else agrees with claims he is making, and of course at the end of the novel he turns out to be wrong.

The Narrator puts all his arguments in the form of elaborate metaphors, obscure allusions, and extravagant figures of speech. His interlocutors repeatedly ask him what he is talking about, and Mrs Brissenden finally tells him she thinks him crazy.

He even tells lies – for instance, claiming to Mrs Brissenden that he has not discussed with other people the issues of the secret liaisons he suspects – when in fact he has discussed them with just about everyone else he meets.

Rebecca West issued one of her wittiest sneers when she wrote that the narrator “spends more intellectual force than Kant can have used on The Critique of Pure Reason in an unsuccessful attempt to discover whether there exists between certain of his fellow-guests a relationship not more interesting among these vacuous people than it is among sparrows.”

Leon Edel described the novel as “a detective story without a crime—and without a detective. The detective, indeed, is the reader.”

The Sacred Fount – study resources

The Sacred Fount The Sacred Fount – Library of America – Amazon UK

Red button The Sacred Fount – Library of America – Amazon US

Red button The Sacred Fount – Kindle edition

The Sacred Fount The Sacred Fount – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Sacred Fount – audiobook at Librivox

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James – biographical notes

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

The Sacred Fount

The Sacred Fount – plot summary

Chapter 1.   The Narrator travels by train to a country weekend party at Newmarch with Gilbert Long, and Mrs Grace Brissenden, commenting on the changes in their appearance. Mrs Brissenden thinks that the changes to Gilbert Long are the result of his relationship with Lady Jane.

Chapter 2.   The Narrator sees Lady Jane with Gilbert Long at Newmarch. He also meets Guy Brissenden, Grace’s much younger husband, and is astonished at how much older he appears – whereas his wife looks much younger. However, when he discusses these changes with Gilbert Long, his friend does not see them at all. The Narrator theorises that the older person in a couple can become younger – but only at the expense of the younger partner becoming older.

Chapter 3.   The Narrator discusses his theory with Mrs Brissenden and the case of Gilbert Long and Lady John, where he thinks there he thinks there has been a transfer of intelligence, making him the cleverest guest but one [the cleverest by implication being the Narrator himself]. He suggests that they should search out the biggest fool at the party to discover the source of Long’s improvement – but there must be evidence of relations between them. They make further observations which prove fruitless, and the Narrator entertains the notion that his suppositions might be in bad taste.

Chapter 4.   Mrs Server thinks that Lady John is only interested in Ford Obert. The Narrator and May Server discuss a painting of a man holding a mask, guessing of whom it reminds them. The Narrator talks with Ford Obert about his theory, who has similar suspicions of Mrs Server. They agree to limit their observations to psychology alone, yet they recognise that theoretically it’s none of their business which other parties in these presumably illicit relations are creating the effects they claim to be observing.

Chapter 5.   The Narrator discusses with Mrs Brissenden their observations regarding Mrs Server. They disagree, and still have no evidence for their claims and no known lover. They go out into the garden and find Mrs Server with Guy Brissenden. His wife claims that he is being used as a red herring by Mrs Server to deflect attention from her real lover.

Chapter 6.   The Narrator reflects that whilst Mrs Server keeps appearing with different men, he himself is not one of them. He wonders briefly if he might be in love with her, and if the rest of the company are wondering about her as he is. Next he comes across Lady John and Guy Brissingham in a remote part of the gardens. He imagines their thoughts and intentions regarding each other, and concludes that Lady John is using Guy Brissenden as a red-herring too.

Chapter 7.   The Narrator quizzes young Guy Brissenden on Lady John and Mrs Server, but Brissenden contradicts every one of his suppositions. They agree that Mrs Server is very happy, but don’t know why. Guy Brissenden wants to ‘help’ Mrs Server, and thinks she might be hiding something. He asks the Narrator to help him find out what it is, but the Narrator refuses without giving any explanation.

Chapter 8.   The Narrator congratulates himself on the accuracy and the success of his observations. He then meets Mrs Severn in a garden. They barely speak to each other about the ideas that concern him – which he interprets as a sign that she wants a respite from the strain of acting a part of gaiety. When they do speak it seems to be at cross purposes, about different people – which he interprets as a cover for the truth he thinks she is hiding. He tells Mrs Server directly that he believes Guy Brissenden is in love with her. , by whom they are shortly joined. The Narrator makes his excuses and leaves them together.

Chapter 9.   After dinner that night the Narrator talks with Gilbert Long, congratulating himself that he knows Long’s secret (and that Long knows that he knows) but they cannot discuss it openly. A visiting pianist gives a recital, during which the Narrator assumes that all the guests are reflecting privately on the relationships he thinks he has uncovered. He then challenges Lady John, but she answers him in an oblique manner. When she asks him who he is so concerned about, he refuses to answer her. Moreover, he believes that Lady John does not and can not know all the subtle connections between the guests which he perceives.

Chapter 10.   As a return to London is in prospect for the next day, the Narrator wonders if all the changes and effects he has observed in the guests might disappear and everything return to normal. By midnight he resolves to escape the problems of analysis by leaving on an early train next morning. But then seeing Gilbert Long alone on the terrace all his curiosity is re-awakened. He then meets Ford Obert and goes in search of Mrs Brissenden who has promised to have a word with him.

Chapter 11.   He follows Obert into the library, where he challenges him directly about his interest in Mrs Server. They agree that she has changed, but Obert claims she has reverted to an earlier state of being. Obert claims he has been watching the Brissendens and has reached to same conclusions as the Narrator. However, the Narrator will not accept this admission because he believes that Obert cannot have all the relevant ‘information’. They agree that Mrs Server’s lover may not actually be there at the house. Suddenly Guy Brissenden arrives to say that his wife want to speak to the Narrator, who thinks that maybe Gilbert Long and Mrs Brissenden have been or still are lovers.

Chapter 12.   When he meets Mrs Brissenden she looks very young, and he hopes that all will be revealed. But she has nothing of any consequence to tell him. In fact she expects him to make all the revelations. But she does believe that May Server is not involved in the puzzle they have been trying to solve. The Narrator is suddenly quite sure that Gilbert Long is Mrs Brissenden’s lover and that she is protecting him. He challenges her to say who has brought about the remarkable change in Long. In response, she accuses him of being too fanciful and over-analytical.

Chapter 13.   When she singularly gives him no concrete information, he interprets this as proof that he is correct in his suppositions. He then invites her to advise him how to get rid of his over-active imagination (which he believes has led him to the truth) – but this is a trick designed to get her to reveal her ‘secret’. But she suddenly declares that she thinks him crazy. He then interrogates her relentlessly about exactly which point in the day she changed her mind about him. Finally she reveals that Gilbert Long has been the centre of her attention – but only as a negative example of the Narrator’s idea of a stupid person being elevated intellectually by a romantic liaison. She declares that Gilbert Long was not transformed at all: he was always stupid and remains so now.

Chapter 14.   The Narrator is forced to admit that his theory was all wrong. However, Mrs Brissenden admits that she has been lying and covering up – and that Lady John is the woman in question. Her husband has revealed to her the liaison between Long and Lady John. The Narrator concludes their lengthy nocturnal debate and goes to bed chastened.

The Sacred Fount

Henry James – caricature by Max Beerbohm

The Sacred Fount – principal characters
I the un-named narrator
Newmarch the country estate where the weekend party takes place
Gilbert Long a visitor at the party
Mrs Grace Brissenden a woman of 42
Guy Brissenden her husband of 29
Lady John a visitor at the party
Ford Obert a painter
Mrs May Server an attractive weekend visitor
Lord Luttley a weekend visitor
Compte de Dreuil French visitor
Comptess de Dreuil his American wife

Henry James's study

Henry James’s study

Further reading

Biography

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Spoils of Poynton Buy the book from Amazon US

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 2014

More on Henry James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Sandman

by

tutorial, study guide, web links, and further reading

The Sandman was first published in 1817 as one of the stories in a collection called Die Nachtstucke (The Night Pieces) by E.T.A. Hoffmann. He was a German writer who formed an important link between Romanticism and the Gothic fiction of the later nineteenth century. His novel The Nutcracker and the Mouse was the basis for Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, and two of his other stories were turned into the ballet Coppelia.

The Sandman

The Sandman – commentary

The horror story

The Sandman was written in 1815 and has become famous as an early nineteenth-century horror story – for a number of reasons. First it is an excellent, if sometimes rather puzzling story in its own right. Second, it was used as the basis for a popular opera by the Jaques Offenbach in 1861 and then turned into an English ballet filmed by Michael Powell in 1951. Third, it was the subject of an essay written by Sigmund Freud in 1919 called The Uncanny in which he offers an interpretation of the story in psycho-analytic terms. This has become celebrated as an explanation of horror stories and their attractions.

The principal element of the story that has attracted most attention is that of a human being who falls in love with a work of art – in this case a mannequin or mechanical doll. This is a story which goes back as far as Greek mythology. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses Pygmalion was a sculptor who fell in love with the statue of a beautiful woman (Galatea) that he had carved. This idea has been the basis of stories, poems, stage plays, paintings, operas, and ballets – as the Wikipedia entry demonstrates.

However, this is only one element of The Sandman, and as you will see from the interpretation that follows, not its most important part. Olimpia the mechanical doll is an attractive feature of the story, but its deepest meanings are centred in the psychology of the protagonist, Nathaniel.

The Sandman

Pygmalion and Galatea

The narrative

There is an interesting anomaly in Hoffman’s approach to the form of this narrative. The story begins as the exchange of three letters. The principal character Nathaniel writes to his friend Lothar describing the childhood origins of his fears and the menacing figures of Coppelius and Coppola (the Sandman). But he mistakenly mails the letter to his sweetheart Clara, who is Lothar’s sister. She replies suggesting that the evil figure Nathaniel sees in Coppelius is largely imaginary – a figment of his imagination. Nathaniel then reports to Lothar that he has taken up studies with Spalanzani, who has a very attractive daughter, Olimpia. Following this introduction the story reverts to a traditional third-person narrative mode.

The interpretation

The story lends itself to a variety of interpretations. In his essay discussing the story, The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud has no hesitation in equating the Sandman’s threats to tear out Nathaniel’s eyes with an unconscious fear of castration. Freud also assumes that the source of this threat will be Nathaniel’s father. And it is true that the father and Coppelius not only act in unison, but are fused in Nathaniel’s mind.

When Nathaniel feels he is being threatened by the two men (both dressed in long black smocks) his father “looked like Coppelius”. And even though the father is horribly disfigured as a result of the household explosion, he returns to his normally serene appearance in his coffin: “his features were once again as mild and gentle as they had been during his life”. There is therefore a strong case to be made for a psychological transference between the father and Coppelius as castration threats on Nathaniel’s part.

But this explanation seems to leave a number of important questions unanswered. For instance, why does Nathaniel fall in love with an automaton? And why does he end up killing himself? These questions are answerable with a slightly more nuanced, though still psycho-analytic interpretation.

This approach sees Nathaniel as in fear of female sexuality. He claims to be in love with Clara, but when she moves to live in his father’s house, he has the most serious attack of subliminal fear centred on the figure of the Sandman. Moreover, Clara is not particularly attractive, and he finds her cold and unresponsive. In fact he is attracted to women who are impassive.

This explains the curious detail of Nathaniel mailing the first letter by ‘mistake’ to Clara instead of Lothar. Nathaniel is not aware that the figure of Coppelius (later Coppola) is a metaphor of his sexual fears. He thinks of him merely as an ugly and menacing figure who is threatening to put hot coals in his eyes. But at an unconscious level Nathaniel wishes to avoid the sexual intimacy that marriage to Clara would involve. So he gives a full account of the origins of his psychological problem and mails it to the person for whom it has the greatest relevance – Clara, the woman he fears he is expected to marry.

The poem he writes about their marriage reveals his secret fears – that the event will be to him a form of death. This is in fact the second ‘warning’ he conveys to her. She dismisses the poem out of hand, offering him a perfectly reasonable explanation for his fears – telling him they lie within himself (which is true). But he rejects her suggestions. In fact he rejects them twice – just as he twice selects a cold and unresponsive female as the object of his love.

The second instance of his choosing is even more intractably unresponsive, since she is in fact an automated doll. Nathaniel also falls in love with Olimpia by viewing her through a pocket telescope – a device guaranteed to keep him at a distance from the object of his affection and the source of his secret fears.

Nevertheless, Nathaniel actually decides he wants to marry Olimpia, but when he approaches her, wedding ring at the ready, he collapses into another nervous fit, apparently brought on by the appearance of the evil Coppelius, the embodiment of his fear of female sexuality. But his fainting fit is his unconscious (but well-conceived) avoidance strategy for what he fears most – sexual intimacy.

Having recovered from his indisposition a second time, he is presented via an inheritance with a ready-made family home and estate. All he needs to do is marry Clara, who is still reassuring him. He takes her up the town hall tower to look into their future – the countryside, where their home is located.

At this very moment it looks as if his fate is sealed: he cannot escape matrimony and its sexual implications. So he conjures up the vision of Coppelius again (using the pocket telescope he has bought from him). Anyone sceptical about this interpretation should observe carefully what happens next.

Nathaniel sees Woman and Marriage as a threat – so his first impulse is to remove the cause of this existential fear. He tries to throw Clara off the tower into the market square below. But this manoeuvre is thwarted by the arrival of Clara’s brother Lothar, who eventually saves her.

It should be noted however, that Nathaniel whilst climbing the tower has locked behind him not just one but two doors leading to the parapet. This suggests rather strongly that he has gone up the tower with some sort of pre-meditated evil intention.

Having failed to remove the source of the threat by killing Clara, he then takes the only alternative open to him – he removes himself from the threat by plunging to his death below.

As if to underscore this interpretation of events, the story concludes some years later with a pastoral idyll in which Clara is happily married to a handsome young man with whom she has two young children. This is the very scenario which embodies all Nathaniel’s poorly suppressed fears. So the story is not about a man who falls in love with a mechanical doll, but a parable of the fear of domestic intimacy and the socio-psychological price that must be paid to enjoy it.

The Sandman – study resources

The Sandman The Sandman – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Sandman The Sandman – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Sandman Tales of Hoffmann – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Sandman Tales of Hoffmann – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Sandman Freud: The Uncanny – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Sandman Freud: The Uncanny – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Sandman

The Sandman – story synopsis

Nathaniel writes from university to his friend Lothar after a disturbing incident involving someone he recognises from the past. He recalls childhood memories of being sent to bed early with the threat that ‘the Sandman is coming’. He is told that the Sandman throws sand into children’s eyes, which jump out of their heads and are fed to his own offspring, who have hooked beaks like owls which they use to pluck out the eyes of naughty children.

Nathaniel’s mother tried to reassure him that there was no such person as the Sandman, but the image remained alive in Nathaniel’s mind. He heard the Sandman climbing the stairs to visit his father, and one night hid in the room to confirm his fears. The Sandman turned out to be a hideous lawyer Coppelius who threatened to put burning coals into Nathaniel’s eyes. His father pleaded for mercy, and Nathaniel fell into a swoon. Coppelius disappeared from the town.

A year later Coppelius reappeared for what Nathaniel’s father said would be the last time. That night the father was killed in an explosion, and Coppelius again disappeared

Nathaniel mistakenly posts his letter to Clara, Lothar’s sister. Clara in her letter of reply suggests that Nathaniel’s continuing fears are imaginary. She argues that Evil lies within the Self, and it is in Nathaniel’s own power to shake off the Sandman’s pernicious influence.

Nathaniel replies to Lothar rejecting Clara’s advice. He reports on a new enthusiasm for Professor Spalanzani and his beautiful daughter Olimpia.

An outer narrator then takes over the narrative, describing the difficulties of representing uncanny experiences. The story backtracks to describe Clara and her brother Lothar moving to live in Nathaniel’s family home. Nathaniel is engaged to marry Clara, but he leaves to study at the city of G***. When he returns home, Clara continues to argue that Nathaniel can overcome the malign influence within himself. He is irritated by her coldness and unresponsiveness.

Nathaniel writes a dramatic poem describing his wedding to Clara and Coppelius’s disruption of it that reveals Clara to him as an image of death. Nathaniel reads the poem to her: she tells him to throw it in the fire. They quarrel; Lothar rebukes him; but all three are eventually reconciled.

On his return to G*** Nathaniel lives opposite Spalanzani and his statuesque daughter Olimpia. Nathaniel is visited by Coppola, who tries to sell him spectacles. Nathaniel buys a telescope from him instead. When Spalanzani gives a ball. Nathaniel dances with Olimpia and makes overtures of love to her, oblivious to everyone else’s amusement.

Following this he reads his poetry to her and eventually decides to marry her. But when he arrives at her house with a wedding ring, Coppelius is arguing with Spalanzani over possession of Olimpia, who is revealed as a mechanical automaton. Nathaniel goes mad with fury and is taken off to a lunatic asylum.

Nathaniel awakes from a dangerous illness in his father’s house where he is being tended by Clara. The family unexpectedly inherit an estate from a distant relative. Clara and Nathaniel climb the tower of the town hall to view the countryside. Nathaniel finds the telescope in his pocket and immediately tries to throw Clara off the tower. She is saved by Lothar, but Nathaniel sees Coppelius in the crowd below and throws himself off the tower to his death. Some years later Clara is happily married with two small children.

© Roy Johnson 2017

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The Sherlock Holmes Formula

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Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a total of fifty-nine Sherlock Holmes stories – most of which appeared in The Strand Magazine between 1887 and 1927. The stories made Doyle rich and brought thousands of readers to the magazine. Sherlock Holmes became so popular as a character that Doyle thought the stories were interfering with what he regarded as his more serious literary ambitions. In 1893 he killed off his hero in a famous story The Final Problem where Holmes is pulled to his death by arch rival Professor Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland.

The Sherlock Holmes Formula

This created such an outcry and a public demand for more stories (particularly in the United States) that Doyle was forced to ‘resurrect’ Holmes. He did this rather cleverly by creating new stories that dealt with cases from a time before his demise.

Origins

It is quite clear that the character of Sherlock Holmes is based largely on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous detective Auguste Dupin. Holmes leads a largely solitary and slightly bohemian life; he operates as a private detective; and he solves his cases not by action but by a process which combines acute observation of details with a rigorous system of logical induction. All of these characteristics are identical to those of Auguste Dupin.

Structure

A typical story is related by his friend Doctor Watson as a first person narrator. A retired medical orderly from the war in Afghanistan, Watson takes up bachelor residence with Holmes at the famous apartments 221B Baker Street. Later in the series, he marries and lives separately. Sometimes Watson merely acts as an ‘outer narrator’. He introduces the story, then relates Holmes’ account of the mystery and its solution. In just one or two stories Sherlock Holmes himself is the first person narrator (The Lion’s Man and The Blanched Soldier).

Watson often presents a brief character sketch of Holmes – his moodiness, his habits of playing the violin or taking cocaine, and his obsessive recording of previous cases. Then there might follow an example of his inductive method. Holmes for instance more than once presents a perceptive interpretation of Watson’s recent behaviour from a close examination of his shoes.

Then comes the announcement of the mystery to be solved – often accompanied by the arrival of the person who has commissioned the case. The client suddenly appears at 221B Baker Street with a problem which is either a personal and sensitive issue, or one which cannot be solved by the police.

Sherlock Holmes is in fact an amateur consultant detective. He solves problems which might be crimes that have baffled the police, but he also acts in cases which are puzzling to individuals – and sometimes in which no crime has been committed.

His first step in almost all cases is to assemble the details of the case. The reader is thereby presented with the ‘background’ to the problem. This includes baffling circumstances, the skullduggery, or the crime itself – all outlined within the confines of Holmes’ Baker Street consulting rooms.

Holmes then constructs a solution to the problem – but does not say what it is. Proof of his theory is usually required, and this usually involves a trip to either Paddington, Euston, or Victoria railway station. On the journey to their destination he unravels some of the further details to Watson, who is amazed at Holmes’ insights.

Arriving at their destination, (the crime scene or the locus of the problem) Holmes often arranges a fiendish plot or dons some convincing disguise which causes the culprit to reveal him or herself.

It has to be said that in this latter phase of the story, there is often a great deal more background detail provided to explain the origins of the problem or to solve the crime. This is often detail the reader can have no way of knowing from what has been previously dramatised in the story.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

It is in this sense that despite their enduring popularity, the Sherlock Holmes stories are pitched at what might be called the tabloid level of literary distinction. They are lightweight, often dryly amusing, and quite entertaining tales. They have even attracted a considerable amount of critical attention – though this is often taken up with naive issues of correspondence between the fictional events of the stories and the ‘real’ London and South-East in which they are situated. (For example – Where exactly is 221B Baker Street?)

But Conan Doyle does not really play fair with his readers. Sherlock Holmes might be a memorable fictional creation; he might have impressive powers of induction; and he might get caught up in thrilling escapades in his work as a consultant detective. But if the solution to the problems he faces comes from a character who suddenly appears in the last pages of a story, the revelation of a hidden trapdoor, or the unannounced arrival of an illegitimate child – then the patient reader has every reason to feel somewhat cheated rather than rewarded.

The best current editions of the Sherlock Holmes stories are those published in the Oxford World’s Classics paperback series. Each volume contains a critical introduction, a note on the text, a bibliography of further reading, a chronology of Arthur Conan Doyle, and most importantly a series of explanatory notes giving historical, geographical, and scientific information about details mentioned in the text.

© Roy Johnson 2018

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon US

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon US

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon UK

The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes – Amazon US

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The Son’s Veto

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Son’s Veto was first published as a serial in the London Illustrated News in 1891 and then later collected in Life’s Little Ironies (1894). It is a story dealing with three themes that occur throughout the whole of Thomas Hardy’s work – as a writer of short stories, as a novelist, and even as a poet. The themes are marriage, social class, and education.

The Son's Veto

Thomas Hardy

Hardy himself had relatively modest social origins, and despite being a gifted youngster, he did not follow the traditional upper class educational path of public school followed by Oxford or Cambridge. Instead, he trained as a draughtsman and worked for his living in architectural practices before becoming a writer. His marriage to Emma Gifford was not a happy one, and following his wife’s death a second marriage (to a woman forty years younger) was no more successful. He became celebrated as a writer, but was always very conscious of the possibilities of ‘downward class mobility’.

The Son’s Veto – critical commentary

Marriage

There are any number of injudicious, difficult, and failed marriages in Hardy’s work. It was a subject dear to his heart, since he felt that his own marriage to Emma Gifford had run onto the rocks of boredom and indifference once it had passed beyond its early days of romance.

Sophy at nineteen has a proposal of marriage from Sam the gardener which she refuses, but thinks is reasonable. She explains to Twycott ‘It would be a home for me’, which illustrates her social vulnerability. However, Twycott then proposes to her. She does not love him, but respects him and is flattered by an offer from someone she considers ‘august’ – that is, of higher social status.

But Twycott is twice her age; he dies first; and although he leaves provision for Sophy in his will, none of his financial affairs are made accessible to her. On his decease, his son Randolph becomes his principal legatee.

When Sophy (as a widow) receives a second proposal of marriage from Sam, she will have to forfeit her house if she accepts, and by implication her income as well. In other words, despite having moved upwards in the social class system on her marriage to Twycott, she becomes vulnerable to possible downward social mobility on his death.

The fact that Sam makes a success of his fruit and vegetable business merely reinforces the sad irony in the story. Sophy would have been socially secure in accepting his offer of marriage, if she had not been emotionally bullied by her own son.

Education

To become a vicar in the Church of England is to join the upper echelons of the Establishment, even at a modest level. A home and an income are provided for a minister of the church, and in addition it is common for the fees of a private education to be paid for any children.

Reverend Twycott has no children with his first wife, but when he marries Sophy they have a son Randolph, who is privately educated – first at a public school, then at Oxford University.

Thomas Hardy knew the value of education – particularly as one of the few mechanisms (along with marriage) to upward social mobility. And he knew how difficult it was to gain access to higher education for people of lower class origin – no matter how talented. Jude the Obscure is a novel devoted to this subject (along with the theme of injudicious marriage).

But Hardy also realised that absorbing the cultural values of an upper class institution such as a university might create social tensions. Randolph Twycott is upper middle class by birth, because his father is a vicar; but his mother remains an uneducated woman of humble origins.

The son chooses to adopt a snobbish sense of superiority over his mother – illustrated in the story by her trivial lapses in English grammar, which he corrects. But more seriously he maintains a completely groundless sense of emotional superiority over her by his tyrannical refusal to accept her proposed marriage to Sam.

His formal education has done nothing to develop his sense of humanity or common decency. He might be clever enough to graduate from Oxford, but he has no common respect for his own mother.

Class

On what is Randolph’s claim to superiority based? For this we need to step back once again to the basis of his parent’s marriage in class terms. Twycott marries his servant Sophy, and in doing so he knows he is ‘committ[ing] social suicide’. That’s because as a minister and a member of the upper middle class, he would be expected to choose a wife at a comparable level in class terms.

He marries Sophy more or less in secret, then gets round the problem of social stigma by moving away from the rural community in which his ministry is located (in Aldbrickham) to a new living in an obscure part of south London.

This illustrates another feature of social life of which Hardy was acutely aware – the differences between rural and urban life. Twycott knows that in a village or town everybody’s social status will be known to other inhabitants, whereas he enjoys London for its ‘freedom and domestic privacy’ where the parishioners will not know his wife’s origins.

They were, however, away from every one who had known her former position; and also under less observation from without than they would have to put up with in any country parish.

Randolph is privately educated and develops into a snob and prig. But he is Twycott’s inheritor, and Sophy knows that she will lose all claims to her house and her income if she marries Sam. She does not like her isolated life in London, and Randolph is therefore condemning her to a sort of living death by forbidding her to escape it by marrying Sam.

The Son’s Veto – study resources

The Son's Veto Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Son's Veto Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Son's Veto Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Son's Veto The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

The Son's Veto Life’s Little Ironies – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Son's Veto Life’s Little Ironies – audiobook version at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Red button The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Red button Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Red button Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

The Son's Veto

The Son’s Veto – plot summary

Part I. Sophy is working as a servant to rural vicar Reverend Twycott when she receives a proposal of marriage from gardener Sam Hobson, but she doesn’t accept him. When she injures her foot in a fall down stairs, she thinks she will have to leave the vicarage, but Reverend Twycott (recently widowed) suddenly realises her worth and proposes to her, an offer which she accepts. Feeling that he has committed ‘social suicide’ by marrying a servant, Twycott moves to a new ‘living’ in south London. They have a son, Randolph, who is sent to public school in preparation for Oxford or Cambridge, prior to taking up the ministry.

Part II. When Twycott dies, Sophy lives in a small house he had the foresight to provide for her. She is bored by the eventlessness of her existence, and estranged from her son, who has adopted a superior and critical attitude to his uneducated mother. Eventually she meets Sam again when he is transporting vegetables to Covent Garden market. She tells him she is unhappy and wishes she were living back in the countryside.

The Son's VetoPart III. Their relationship comes to life again, and Sam proposes marriage to her for a second time. She accepts in principle, even though by doing so she would lose the home and the living Twycott has provided for her. But she needs time to break the news to her son. When she does so, he forbids her to marry Sam because the shame of it would downgrade him in the eyes of his friends. Sophy asks Sam to wait, and he does so for five years, after which he repeats his offer. Sophy renews her appeal to Randolph, who is now an undergraduate at Oxford. He forces her kneel down and swear that she will never marry Sam, claiming that he does this to honour the memory of his father. Five years later Sam has become a prosperous greengrocer. He stands in his shop doorway as Sophy’s funeral procession passes by on its way to her home village. Randolph who has now become a priest scowls at Sam from the mourner’s coach.

Principal characters
Reverend Twycott widowed vicar in Wessex
Sophy Twycott his parlourmaid, then second wife
Randolph Twycott their son, a public school boy
Sam Hobson a gardener, then shopkeeper

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Map of Wessex

Hardy’s WESSEX

Further reading

Red button John Bayley, An Essay on Hardy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

Red button Penny Boumelha, Thomas Hardy and Women: Sexual Ideology and Narrative Form, Brighton: Harvester, 1982.

Red button Kristin Brady, The Short Stories of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1982.

Red button Raymond Chapman, The Language of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan, 1990.

Red button R.G.Cox, Thomas Hardy: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1970.

Red button James Gibson (ed), The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, London, 1976.

Red button P. Ingham, Thomas Hardy: A Feminist Reading, Brighton: Harvester, 1989.

Red button P.Ingham, The Language of Class and Gender: Transformation in the English Novel, London: Routledge, 1995,

Red button Michael Millgate, Thomas Hardy: A Biography Revisited, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. (This is the definitive biography.)

Red button R. Morgan, Women and Sexuality in the Novels of Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge, 1988.

Red button F.B. Pinion, A Thomas Hardy Companion, London: Macmillan, 1968.

Red button Norman Page, Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1977.

Red button Richard H. Taylor, The Personal Notebooks of Thomas Hardy, London, 1978.

Red button Merryn Williams, A Preface to Hardy, London: Longman, 1976.

Hardy’s study

Thomas Hardy's study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'UrbervillesTess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbervilles Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy Tess of the d'Urbervilles Buy the book at Amazon US

 

The WoodlandersThe Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy The Woodlanders Buy the book at Amazon US

 

Wessex TalesWessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.
Thomas Hardy Wessex Tales Buy the book at Amazon UK
Thomas Hardy Wessex Tales Buy the book at Amazon US

Thomas Hardy – web links

Hardy at Mantex Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Thomas Hardy complete works The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Hardy eTexts Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Hardy at Wikipedia Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

Thomas Hardy web links The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

Thomas Hardy web links The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Hardy at IMDB Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy web links Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Red button Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

© Roy Johnson 2012

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The Spoils of Poynton

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tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which James wrote in his late period, following the catastrophe of his excursion into the theatre, just before the composition of What Masie Knew, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl. It was first serialised in the Atlantic Monthly under the title of The Old Things then extensively revised by James for publication as a single volume in 1897.

The Spoils of Poynton

Wakehurst Place Mansion

Even though the novel ostensibly concerns a battle of wills over the possession of a beautiful contry house and its collection of antiques and furnishings, there is very little description of these objects themselves. They are merely presented (and accepted) as ‘wonderful’. Nevertheless, James includes a delicate sprinkling of very witty observations about good taste (and lack of it) in the decoration of houses. This was an interest he shared with his friend and fellow-novelist Edith Wharton, whose seminal work on the subject, The Decoration of Houses (1897) was published at exactly the same time as The Spoils of Poynton.

The Spoils of Poynton – critical commentary

One of the most striking features of The Spoils of Poynton is its similarity to Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814). Both are about the forces competing for moral dominance focussed on the possession of a country house. Both feature heroines who are young, relatively poor, and who uphold scrupulous, even fastidious standards of rectitude which cause them to put themselves under a great deal of emotional stress.

Fleda Vetch is separated from her family, and lives under the bounty of Mrs Gereth, just as Fanny Price lives with her richer uncle and aunt Bertram at Mansfield Park. Fleda is much of the time secretly in love with her protectress’s son Owen, as is Fanny with Edmund Bertram.

Both Owen Gereth and Edmund Bertram are unaware that they are selflessly loved and protected by the heroine of the narrative, and meanwhile make relationships with other women who are morally suspect (Mona Brigstock and Mary Crawford respectively).

Both heroines choose to keep their feelings hidden from others, and endure enormous amounts of self-sacriifice and denial in order to protect the object of their affections. Both of them maintain incredibly high standards of moral scruple in the face of other characters tempting them to do otherwise.

In both cases an inheritance and rise in social position is at stake. The stories are variations of the Cinderella theme. But the difference is that Fanny Price eventually gets her man, whereas Fleda Vetch waits too long and loses both her man, Owen Gereth, and the treasures of Poynton Park, which goes up in flames.

The Spoils of Poynton – study resources

The Spoils of Poynton The Spoils of Poynton – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Spoils of Poynton The Spoils of Poynton – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Spoils of Poynton The Spoils of Poynton – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Spoils of Poynton The Spoils of Poynton – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Spoils of Poynton The Spoils of Poynton – Kindle eBook edition

The Spoils of Poynton The Spoils of Poynton – (unabridged) Audio book

The Spoils of Poynton The Spoils of Poynton – eBook editions at Gutenberg

The Spoils of PoyntonThe Spoils of Poynton – Video film (5 disk boxed set)

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Red button Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Spoils of Poynton

The Spoils of Poynton – plot summary

Mrs Adela Gereth has lovingly nurtured a collection of art objects and furnishings in a grand old house at Poynton Park, but when her husband dies the property is inherited by her naive son Owen. She fears he will marry someone with no taste and the spirit of the house will become neglected or even violated. She befriends the sensitive and intelligent Fleda Vetch to share her concerns. But Owen becomes engaged to Mona Brigstock, who has no feeling for aethetic beauty at all, and who merely sees Poynton as a material acquisition. Fleda is in love with Owen, but conceals the fact.

Henry James The Spoils of PoyntonWhen Mona demands that Mrs Gereth vacate Poynton as a condition of her marrying Owen, Fleda feels divided loyalties between helping Owen or his mother. Mrs Gereth goes to live at Ricks, a much smaller house which has been allocated to her, but she also takes all the best items from the collection at Poynton. Mona threatens to call off the marriage to Owen unless the goods are returned. Owen asks Fleda to negotiate with his mother for the return of the goods. She perversely dissimulates her love of Owen to Mrs Gereth in order to preserve what she perceives to be his ‘honour’. However, Mrs Gereth devines the truth of the matter and offers to hand over Poynton and its contents if Fleda will marry Owen.

Mona meanwhile delays the marriage and her mother Mrs Brigstock discovers that Owen has fallen in love with Fleda. Owen and Fleda eventually declare their love for each other, but she insists that Mona must first give him up voluntarily, so that he does not break his promise to marry her.

Knowing that her son and Fleda are in love and likely to marry, Mrs Gereth returns the ‘spoils’ to their spiritual home at Poynton. But Mona takes that as a signal for action, and holds Owen to his promise. They marry quickly, secretly, in a registry office.

Mrs Gereth and Fleda go to live at a much-improved Ricks, whilst Mona and Owen leave Poynton to go on a long vacation in India. Fleda eventually receives a letter from Owen offering to let her select a small momento from the objects at Poynton – but when she arrives there to do so, she finds that the house and its contents have been destroyed in a fire.

Principal characters
Mrs Adela Gereth a strong-minded widow in her 50s who collects beautiful objects
Owen Gereth her well-intentioned but naive son
Fleda Vetch a plain but intelligent young woman
Mrs Brigstock owner of Waterbath
Mona Brigstock her vulgar and greedy eldest daughter
Maggie Fleda’s married sister
Colonel Gereth Mrs Gereth’s brother-in-law
Waterbath a country house full of vulgar objects
Poynton Park a Jacobean house with a collection of beautiful objects
Cadogan Place temporary London home for Mrs Gereth
Ricks permanent alternative home for Mrs Gereth

Henry James's Study

Henry James’s study

Further reading

Biographical

Red button Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Red button F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Red button Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Red button Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Red button Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Red button Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

Red button F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Red button Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Red button Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Red button Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Red button Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Red button Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

Red button J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Red button Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Red button Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Red button Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Red button Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Red button Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Red button Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Red button Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Red button Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Red button Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Red button John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Red button Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Red button Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Red button Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Red button Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Red button Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

Henry James The AmbassadorsThe 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.
Longstaff's Marriage Buy the book at Amazon UK
Longstaff's Marriage Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James Washington SquareWashington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James Washington Square Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James The Aspern PapersThe Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon UK
Henry James The Aspern Papers Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James – web links

Henry James web links Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

Henry James 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.

Henry James web links 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.

Red button 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.

Henry James web links The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Henry James web links Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James web links Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

Henry James web links The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

Henry James web links The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James web links Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James web links 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 2011

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