tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Glasses was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1896. Henry James records in his Notebooks “A little idea occurred to me the other day for a little tale that Maupassant would have called Les Lunettes though I’m afraid The Spectacles won’t do”. The story does have the sort of ironic twist that Maupassant featured in some of his own stories – of which James was a great admirer. It features the ever-present un-named first person narrator through whom the events of the story are presented.

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Glasses – critical commentary

The main theme

The principal theme of the story is signaled throughout by images of sight, seeing, looking, and appearance. The narrator’s occupation is looking at people and representing them in paintings. It is Flora Saunt’s eyes to which he is first attracted and which give him the inspiration to paint her portrait

However, we learn that these eyes are also her point of weakness, and she feels socially threatened by the prospect of wearing glasses.

Mrs Meldrum is a fairly conventional figure of fun because of the odd juxtaposition of her manner and her appearance.- ‘the heartiest, the keenest, the ugliest of women’ with ‘the tread of a grenadier and the voice of an angel’. She has

a big red face indescribably out of a drawing, from which she glared at you through gold-rimmed aids to vision, optic circles of such diameter and so frequently displaced that some one had spoken of her as flattering her nose against the glass of her spectacles.

This comic vision is rammed home countless times throughout the narrative, with her spectacles referred to variously as ‘nippers’, ‘pince nez, and ‘great goggles’.

Geoffrey Dawling on the other hand is physically unattractive: ‘a long, lean confused, confusing young man, with a bad complexion and large protrusive teeth’ – but the narrator feels that he is a gentleman because he is reassured by his ‘good green eyes’.

Dawling has fallen in love with Flora without even having met her – after seeing her portrait in the exhibition. It is significant that Flora at first rejects his attentions out of hand as unthinkable, but she later blossoms as his wife – but only when she can no longer see him.

During the course of the story people repeatedly stare at each other – through spectacles, a telescope, and opera glasses. And emotional scenes invariably bring tears to somebody’s eyes.

A secondary issue

It is interesting to note how Flora’s fate is closely tied to her physical appearance and her income. She is an orphan, living in straightened circumstances, but has one advantage – her good looks. She knows that she must use those looks to attract a husband, because she is aware that she does not have a good figure. She also realises that if she were to wear glasses, this would reduce her chances of capturing a suitable husband.

And the conventions of society on this issue support her, for when she reveals her ocular weakness (as James might put it) to her fiancé Lord Iffield, he breaks off the engagement. Two interesting developments flow from that.

An engagement at that time could not be broken off lightly, without causing damage to social ‘reputation’ – particularly that of the woman. Iffield transfers the blame for the rupture onto Flora, so that he cannot be accused of ‘breach of contract’ – but offers her money as compensation. It is not made clear if she accepts it or not.

Blemishes

Contemporary readers might find it mildly amusing that so much fuss is made about the issue of having to wear glasses – though Flora’s eyesight is very seriously affected, to the extent that she eventually becomes blind.

What they will not fail to notice however, is a sudden flash of corrosive and wholly gratuitous anti-semitism on James’s part when the narrator arrives in Folkestone to visit his mother.

The place was full of lodgings, and the lodgings were at that season full of people, people who had nothing to do but stare at one another on the great flat down. There were thousands of little chairs and almost as many little Jews; and there was music in an open rotunda, over which the little Jews wagged their big noses.

This sort of thing takes some explaining away, even with allowance made for some ‘historical context’ – the more so since it is not an isolated instance in James’s work. There are many cases of Jews making a fleeting appearance in his fiction, and almost all are cast as negative stereotypes.

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Glasses – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Complete Tales (Vol 9) – Paperback edition – Amazon UK

Selected Tales – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

Glasses – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

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Glasses – plot summary

The narrator is on holiday in Folkstone to visit his mother. In the company of a family friend Mrs Meldrum (who wears glasses) he meets Flora Saunt.

Flora is an attractive orphan eking out a small inheritance, living in the shadow of people who are taking advantage of her. She is full of self-confidence and is surrounded by admirers.

The narrator introduces his mother to Flora and proposes to paint her portrait. He asks her about a problem she is rumoured to have with her eyes. Flora protests that there is nothing whatever wrong with her. Her upper class admirers then snub the narrator’s mother.

Flora’s admirer Lord Iffield buys her portrait when it is exhibited at the Royal Academy, then Geoffrey Dawling arrives at the narrator’s studio to purchase the preliminary sketches, merely on the strength of having seen the portrait.

Dawling becomes deeply enamoured of Flora, and refuses to take the narrator’s critical advice about her. Flora accuses the narrator of trying to put pressure on her to marry Dawling.

The narrator sees Flora whilst he is out shopping, but is puzzled that she doesn’t see him. He discovers her secretly wearing glasses to inspect a toy.

The narrator discusses this revelation with Dawling, who wishes to check the source of the narrator’s suspicions – Mrs Meldrum. Dawling reports back from Folkstone that Flora has a horror of looking like Mrs Meldrum, but that he will continue to pursue her.

Flora reveals the desperation of her plight to the narrator. She feels that she must marry before revealing her eye problem – because her face is her one good feature, since she ‘no figure’. When it is announced that Flora has become engaged to Lord Iffield, Mrs Meldrum tries to protect Dawling from the shock.

Dawling goes abroad and the narrator goes to America for a year. When he returns he meets Flora in Folkstone. She is a shadow of her former self, and is living with Mrs Meldrum.

Mrs Meldrum reveals to the narrator that Flora confessed her condition to Lord Iffield, who then backed out of their engagement and offered her financial compensation. Flora is living on next to nothing but the charity of Mrs Meldrum.

The Narrator goes back to America for three years, whilst Flora and Mrs Meldrum go abroad. When the narrator returns to London he sees Flora at the opera, looking more beautiful and well off than she has ever done before.

But when he goes to join her in her theatre box he discovers that she has gone blind. She has in fact married Dawling, who continues to be devoted to her. The narrator hurries to Mrs Meldrum for a full account of events, but she doesn’t want to discuss the matter.

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Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator, a portrait painter
—	his invalid mother in Folkestone
Mrs Meldrum	his mother’s friend
Flora Louisa Saunt	an orphan, with a beautiful face but ‘no figure’
Bertie Hammond Synge	one of Flora’s admirers
Lord Iffield	an admirer of Flora’s who becomes engaged to her
Lord Considine	another admirer of Flora’s
Geoffrey Dawling	an awkward but decent Oxbridge admirer of Flora’s

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Henry James’s study

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Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Other works by Henry James

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Daisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2012

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Henry James – web links

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

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

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More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

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tutorial, commentary, web links, and study resources

Guest’s Confession first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly for October—November 1872. It was reprinted years later as part of Travelling Companions published after James’s death in 1919.

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Guest’s Confession – plot summary

Part I.   The narrator David is waiting for his elder step-brother to arrive during the summer holidays in a small town. David’s account of his brother emphasises the differences and rivalry between them. Walking in the countryside, he enters a small church during a rainstorm to find that the organ is being played by a young woman. He sings along to her playing, and they exchange pleasantries.

When the rain stops he goes to meet Edgar, his step-brother, reflecting critically on his egoism. When he arrives, Edgar is full of neurotic self-concern, and he reveals that he has been swindled out of twenty thousand dollars by a man called John Guest.

Part II.   Shortly afterwards they walk out in the village and encounter John Guest in the company of a coquettish woman Mrs Clara Beck. Edgar immediately wishes to challenge Guest, but David sees positive qualities in the handsome and debonair figure. Edgar has appointed solicitors. Guest pleads for ‘understanding’ and restraint.

The two men argue their cases. Guest accuses Edgar of being insane. David suggests that as a compromise, Guest should write out an apology. .Edgar demands that Guest kneel before him and beg for forgiveness. In addition to his demand for the money, he then dictates a confession which he forces Guest to sign. When Guest’s daughter Laura arrives to collect him, she turns out to be the same woman David met in the church.

Part III.   David feels disconcerted by his divided loyalties and by his part in the scene of humiliation. He meets Laura again in the village, along with her chaperone Mrs Beck. He spends more and more time with them whilst Guest is back in New York, and he feels increasingly frustrated by Mrs Beck’s constant presence.

Mr Crawford arrives claiming cousinship with Mrs Beck, and David sees that he is paying court to her. The two men compare their respective ‘intentions’ and ‘claims’ regarding the two women.

Part IV.   David wishes to pursue his interest in Laura but worries about what she will think if she learns of the part he played in her father’s shame. She however does not take him very seriously and thinks he is spoiled, idle, and too rich. She reveals that he reminds her of her father – because they are both honest and youthful-looking.

David teases Mrs Beck about her choice of Guest or Crawford as the object of her affections. Guest writes from New York to his daughter Laura, telling her he has had to sell their house. David suggests that this would be a good opportunity to go to live in Italy. He plays the organ in the church for her, then declares his love for her and offers her money to help her father. She refuses both offers.

Part V.   Edgar is still ill in bed when he receives news that Guest has repaid his debt, but Edgar refuses to return the signed ‘confession’. Guest returns from New York, and Mrs Beck switches her attentions to him, away from Crawford. David makes an appeal to Laura before her father can reveal what he knows about him to her. But when Guest confronts them both he excoriates David completely, and will accept no apology or compromise. David asks Laura to be patient, and meanwhile attends Edgar, who is dying. Edgar leaves David nothing in his will, but puts aside twenty thousand dollars to found a hospice. However, David inherits the confession as part of Edgar’s effects. He tries to re-negotiate with Guest, but they quarrel again.

Part VI.   Having heard of Guest’s money problems, Mrs Beck switches her attentions back to Crawford. David refuses to return the confession when Guest asks for it. When he next meets Guest he presents him with an ultimatum: remove the objection to his marrying Laura, or he will show her the confession. But following a bucolic epiphany, David returns to a completely distraught Guest and burns the confession in front of him. He then feels free to ‘claim’ Laura.

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Guest’s Confession – principal characters

David	the rich, vain, and self-regarding narrator
Edgard Musgrave	his invalid, older, clever step-brother
John Guest	a handsome swindler who has been ill
Laura Guest	his daughter
Mrs Clara Beck	a childish and coquettish chaperone of thirty-six
Mr Crawford	the owner of a silver mine in Arizona

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Study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

Guest’s Confession – eBook formats at Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

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Guest’s Confession – further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Other works by Henry James

Washington 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

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Henry James – web links

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

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

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More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

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

In the Cage first appeared in book form in both England and America in 1898. It was later revised and included in the complete New York edition of James’s work in 1909. The tale is quite unusual in James’s oeuvre in that it takes its subject matter from the daily life of a working-class woman. The milieu is also novel, because the events of the narrative are set in one corner of a grocer’s shop – albeit located in Mayfair.

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In the Cage – critical commentary

Story? Novella? Novel?

At almost thirty-three thousand words, In the Cage is too long to be classed as a short story. It strays beyond the limits of this genre both in terms of length and subject matter. Of course James never claimed that any of his shorter fictions were short stories in the sense that this term is now used. The collective title he used for his shorter works was Tales – which turned out to be very well chosen, since this term does not carry any fixed expectations in terms of form or content.

The issue of categorisation depends very much on the interpretation given to the content of the piece. If it is regarded as an innocent and brief interlude during the summer months of a young woman’s life, it would be quite legitimate to classify it as a long short-story. She indulges in an imaginative romance, but then settles for a safe if predictable marriage.

But if the issues of modern telegraphy, transmitting messages, the different expectations and behaviour between working and liesured classes, and the educative process of the young woman’s lesson in realism are taken into account – a case could be made for it being a short novel. These are large enough issues to warrant classification in the heavier and more serious genre.

However, in even a short novel we would normally expect a more even-handed and fully rounded account of the principal characters. In the Cage provides characterisation for only the young woman, her friend Mrs Jordan, and her fiancé Mr Mudge. We really know very little about Captain Everard and almost nothing about Lady Bradeen except through the imagination of the young woman or the social gossip of Mrs Jordan. This is not the substance we expect of the realist novel, no matter how foreshortened.

That leaves the possibility of classifying the work as a novella. The tale certainly has a number of the ingredients we expect to find in the genre that James particularly admired – what he called “the beautiful and blessed nouvelle“. . Novellas are like simplified and densely compressed novels, with few characters and an intensely concentrated subject which usually has universal significance.

Narrative interest in this tale is focussed on the educative experience of one character – the young woman telegraphist. The location (apart from one brief holiday excursion) is largely her commercial environment in Mayfair and the pressure she is under from social conditions at work and home. Her professional skills working with contemporary technology are a fitting symbol for communications between the classes which form the backbone to the narrative. And it could be argued that her final decision to realistically accept her fate as the wife-to-be of a grocer is a universal theme.

On all these grounds In the Cage qualifies as a novella. But there are some problems with this interpretation which fits the tale to this genre.

Problems

Foremost is the issue of inevitability. The novella (and even the novel) does require a certain degree of persuadable, logical, inevitable outcome from the premises it has laid forward. It also has to be said that most novellas have a very serious, and often a tragic outcome: one thinks of classics in the genre, such as Benito Cereno, Death in Venice, and even James’s own The Turn of the Screw, which was written in the same year.

The problem with In the Cage is that the young lady, for the majority of the narrative, is a hopelessly romantic fantasist – imputing all sorts of characteristics and motives to her customers without any supporting intelligence. James deliberately satirises this attitude, as he does the comparable snobbery and pretention of Mrs Jordan. What he does not really supply is sufficient evidence for her change of heart when she decides to settle for marriage to Mr Mudge.

Quite apart from his semi-comic name, Mr Mudge has been characterised throughout the tale as a well-intentioned man but a monumental bore of Dickensian proportions. He represents a realistic marriage prospect for a young woman of the telegraphist’s position in society – but since we have been made aware of his shortcomings largely from her point of view throughout the narrative, her conversion to accepting him at its end doesn’t seem altogether persuasive. Neither is such a resolution the substance of the novella, which normally deals in serious issues. The future for Mr and Mrs Mudge in Chalk Farm is nothing more than the prospect of a life of unremitting Pooterism, The Diary of a Nobody having been published only a few years earlier in 1888). This sort of bathetic outcome is not normally the substance of a novella.

On these grounds, it might be safer to simply leave In the Cage categorised as the completely amorphous Tale, a long story of sorts (which is more or less the same thing), or a very short novel. It is interesting to note that it is placed in all these categories by members of the book trade such as Amazon and AbeBooks.

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In the Cage – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 18—18 – Library of America – Amazon US

In the Cage – Kindle edition

In the Cage – eBook versions at Gutenberg

In the Cage – audioBook versions at LibriVox

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

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In the Cage – plot summary

Part I.   An un-named young woman works as a telegraphist in the post office within a grocer’s store in Mayfair. She has become engaged (without much enthusiasm) to Mr Mudge, a grocer, and she lives in rather poor circumstances with her mother and her elder sister.

Part II.   Her fiancé wants her to move to an ‘outer suburb’ (Chalk Farm) so as to be nearer to him, and to save money. But she prefers to stay in Mayfair, the social life of which gives her scope for her imagination.

Part III.   She despatches telegrams and cryptic messages, and she fantasises about the lives of her customers – particularly a ‘handsome lady’ who might be called Mary or Cissie.

Part IV.   She interprets the lives of her customers from the contents of their telegrams – particularly a man who comes in with the handsome lady, who she assumes to be the ‘Everard’ mentioned in some messages.

Part V.   She is very conscious of class differences and the profligate way her (largely upper-class) customers spend their money (judging by the length of their messages – which are priced per word). She feels powerful in knowing people’s secrets and she generalizes that her women customers are on the whole in pursuit of her men.

Part VI.   Her friend Mrs Jordan invites her to join her flower-arranging enterprise, which she enjoys because it brings her into contact with upper class society.

Part VII.   She is tempted by the idea, because she wants to meet people from the upper class. Mrs Jordan claims to be on intimate terms with her clients, but it is clear that she is exaggerating any such connections.

Part VIII.   The two women begin to compete over who has the closer connections with fashionable society. The young woman also begins to have doubts about her engagement to Mr Mudge.

Part IX.   She has mixed feelings about Mr Mudge, who is boring and predictable, yet she respects his simplicity and honesty. She can see his limitations, and she aspires to ‘greater’ (more romantic) things.

Part X.   She tells Mr Mudge that she is appalled by the rich people who are her customers, but it is clear that she feels a snobbish pleasure at ‘mixing’ with upper class society. He too is attracted to the idea of rubbing shoulders with the well-to-do.

Part XI.   Meanwhile,, she continues to inflate the significance of her (non) ‘relationship’ with Captain Everard. She invents excuses for querying his written notes, but sees them as having been planted there deliberately for that purpose.

Part XII.   She imagines that Captain Everard would like to share his problems with her and confide in her about his love affairs. She goes to the building at Park Chambers where he lives and fantasises about meeting him.

Part XIII.   The handsome lady returns, and she helps her to correct a mistake in her telegram, which reveals her knowledge of the lady’s affairs.

Part XIV.   When the summer arrives Mr Mudge wants to plan a holiday together. She is bored by the excessive details of his preparation, and starts walking past Park Chambers every night. On one occasion she does meet him there.

Part XV.   They walk into Hyde Park and sit on a bench together, talking. He reveals that he knows she has been taking a ‘special interest’ in him, which makes her cry.

Part XVI.   Thinking that she is unlikely to meet him again, she tells him the whole truth of the interest she has taken in him, but that she will be leaving to work elsewhere. He asks her to stay and ‘help’ him.

Part XVII.   She admits to him that she enjoys knowing about people’s private lives and says she will do anything for hi. He implores with her to stay working in the post office, and she leaves him saying that she will never give him up.

Part XVIII.   She goes on holiday to Bournemouth with her mother and Mr Mudge, where he is more boring than ever, but she retreats from him into a private world of the imagination. However, he announces that having been given a rise at work, he is now ready to marry.

Part XIX.   She relates her recent experiences in the Park with Captain Everard to Mr Mudge, and explains how she wants to protect him from danger. She also wants Mr Mudge to wait longer before they marry – at which Mudge is (understandably) miffed.

Part XX.   Some weeks later Captain Everard returns to the post office. She feels that something is wrong, and possibly reaching a dramatic climax. Everard lingers in the shop, but they do not get a chance to speak to each other.

Part XXI.   The same thing happens again later. She persuades herself that Everard is somehow trying to help her. She also interprets all his telegrams as signs of danger of some kind.

Part XXII.   She thinks her services as Everard’s protector will come to an end, and she will be obliged to accept Mr Mudge. However, the very next day Everard arrives with an urgent telegram. Next day he comes back again saying he wants to recover a telegram sent some time ago.

Part XXIII.   She procrastinates in trying to locate the telegram for him, but in the end supplies the information he needs. She has memorised it, because of her interest in his correspondence.

Part XXIV.   During the late summer low season Mrs Jordan continues to boast about her connections with high society. She invites the young woman back to her humble rooms in Maida Vale. She is engaged to marry Mr Drake.

Part XXV.   Mrs Jordan reveals that Mr Drake is due to be engaged (as a butler) by Lady Bradeen – who is a correspondent of Captain Everard’s via his telegrams. Lady Bradeen is due to marry Captain Everard, following quickly on the death of her husband. The two women ‘compare’ impressions of Lady Bradeen – who neither of them know.

Part XXVI.   The two women then compare their own marriage prospects comeptatively. The young woman realises that they are both doomed to live in obscurity. Nevertheless, compared to Mrs Jordan, she feels fortunate.

Part XXVII.   Mrs Jordan then reveals that Captain Everard has no money at all, but lots of debts, and was involved in a social scandal from which Lady Bradeen saved him – but forced him to marry her as the price for doing so.

The young woman departs, more glad than ever to have the prospect of her own home and marriage to Mr Mudge.

---

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

Other works by Henry James

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Daisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

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Henry James – web links

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

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

---

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

---

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

Jersey Villas was first published in Cosmopolitan Magazine in July—August 1892. Its next appearance in book form was as part of the collection The Real Thing and Other Stories, published by Macmilla in New York and London the following year in 1893. When it appeared in book form it was given a different title – Sir Dominick Ferrand.

It is one of a number of tales which James wrote on the theme of private papers and letters, the practice of biography, and the rights of an individual to privacy, even after death. James created a bonfire of his own personal papers in the fear of what writers and critics might find out about his private life after his demise. Of course we now know that he had a lot more to hide than was hitherto thought.

A davenport desk

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Jersey Villas – critical commentary

The story is composed of two dramatic elements. The first is Peter Baron’s discovery of the letters in his writing desk, and his dilemma regarding what to do with them – to publish them, sell them, or hand them over to his editor Mr Locket. The second element is his developing romantic relationship with Mrs Ryves, which is reinforced by his writing a successful libretto for her musical composition.

For the first-time reader there is a dramatic tension (or mystery) in how these two elements are going to be related. James seems to be hinting at some mystical or intuitive connection between Mrs Ryves and Baron’s dealings with the letters. She is agitated or distressed whenever he tries to make a decision about them. There is also something of a mystery about her claims to be leaving Jersey Villas, followed by her failure to do so.

Her connection with the letters and her indecision about staying or leaving the Villas is easily explained at a later stage. She is the illegitimate daughter of Sir Dominick Ferrand, and the revelation of his private mis-doings will (or might) adversely affect her. She senses that Baron has discovered something and visits him on a ‘sudden fancy’ to check. Then as soon as he has told her about breaking the seals, she leaves the Villas and goes to Dover, where she is ‘looking at the Calais boat’ whilst in discussion with him. In other words, she is planning her escape to ‘Europe’ (which was considered a different world in the nineteenth century).

All the hints and development within the plot suggest that her erratic behaviour is the result of her knowing that Baron has her father’s letters. This explains why she is so keen that he burn them, and once she is secure in the knowledge that he has done so, she can relax and form a relationship with him.

But this interpretation of the story, which is certainly invited by the events of the story, rests on two or three flaws, and it is distinctly possible that James is playing fast and loose with his famous ambiguity and evasiveness in this instance. To begin with, at no point does Mrs Ryves know who has written the letters. There is no writing on the outside of the letters, and they are in packets that are sealed. She even tells Baron that she doesn’t want to know who wrote them.

It might be argued that she recognises the letters, or even that the davenport Baron bought originally belonged to her father. But there is also nothing in the text to support either of these two explanations – and she she is not raised in her paternal home, so it is very unlikely that any form of ‘recognition’ takes place.

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Jersey Villas – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1892—1898 – Library of America – Amazon US

Jersey Villas – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

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Jersey Villas – plot summary

Part I.   Aspiring writer Peter Baron has been summoned by Mr Locket, the editor of The Promiscuous Review, to make changes to a story he has submitted. That morning he has made the acquaintence of Mrs Ryves, a fellow lodger of Mrs Bundy at Jersey Villas, a suburban lodging house. After his meeting with the editor, he walks down the Kings Road, dreaming of refurbishing his humble rooms. On the strength of his submitted story, he buys a small second-hand davenport, which he hopes could inspire his literary creation.

Part II.   Baron befriends Mrs Ryves and her son, and he writes lyrics for the songs she composes as an amateur pianist, guiltily conscious that he ought to be correcting his story for the magazine. He discovers that the davenport has a false back, where he finds packets of old letters. When Mrs Ryves calls, claiming she has been worried about him, he decides to tell her about his discovery. She urges him to keep the letters, and claims that she felt an instinct to ‘save’ the papers. And yet she also suggests that he burn them.

Part III.   Ten days later Baron visits Mr Locket and tells him he has new materials on Sir Dominick Farrand, an eminent stateman. He insists that they are genuine and not forgeries. Locket does not think the public will be much interested in him now that he is dead. Baron insists that he was a complex person, and that the letters reveal some dubious political dealings, as he had received money from people to whom he had awarded contracts. They also reveal evidence of an extra-marital affair. Baron and Locket circle round each other inconclusively over what is to be done.

Part IV.   When Mrs Ryves goes to Dover, Baron asks Mrs Bundy for information about her, but gets very little information. So he goes to Dover, where he meets Mrs Ryves with her son Sydney and Miss Teagle, a governess to Sydney. He reproaches Mrs Ryves for disappearing as soon as he made his discovery known to her. She claims that the papers ‘haunt’ her. He cannot understand why she is bothered about them at all. He wants to ask her to marry him, but realises that he has nothing to offer her.

Part V.   Next day Mr Locket turns up and ‘borrows’ the letters, which makes Baron anxious about his motives. Mrs Ryves writes from Dover about their musical collaboration. Then Locket summons him and offers £100 for the letters. Baron is conflicted over his options: he is badly in debt and needs the money, but he can see Locket profiteering from his advantageous position as influential editor.

Part VI.   When Baron returns to Jersey Villas he finds Mrs Ryves who claims she is packing to leave, but doesn’t appear to be doing so. He takes her out to dinner and the theatre, and later tries to improve his chances with her, but she puts him off.

Part VII.   Mr Locket turns up again next morning with an offer increased to £300, whilst meanwhile Mrs Ryves is leaving the Villas. Baron tries to plea bargain with Locket for his fiction to be accepted as part of the deal. Locket at first refuses, then gives in. But on reflection, Baron feels that it would be wrong to make money out of exposing someone’s reputation to disgrace, and he burns the letters.

Mrs Ryves returns to say that a music publisher has accepted their joint composition and wants more of the same. They share the £50 fee and at Dover return to the question of their future. She reveals that she is a ‘poor girl’ with no money, family, or friends. She ultimately rveals that she is the illegitimate daughter of Sir Dominick Ferrand. After a probationary period, they marry, have success in music publishing, and Baron even manages to get some of his fiction published in magazines.

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Jersey Villas – principal characters

Peter Baron	an aspiring young writer
Mr Locket	editor of The Promiscuous Review
Mrs Ryves	a poor widow and pianist
Sydney	her young son
Mrs Bundy	landlady at Jersey Villas
Miss Teagle	governess to Sydney

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Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Other works by Henry James

Washington 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

© Roy Johnson 2013

---

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.

---

More tales by James
More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

---

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

Longstaff’s Marriage first appeared in magazine form in Scribner’s Monthly for August 1878. Stories by popular writers Bret Harte and Edward Egglestone appeared in the same issue, It was then reprinted in book form amongst The Madonna of the Future and Other Stories the following year.

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Longstaff’s Marriage – critical commentary

The principal feature of this story is the structural symmetry and the ironic reversals of the two ‘deathbed’ scenes. In the first the proud and beautiful Diana seems to have everything to gain when Longstaff makes his appeal to her, but she rejects his offer indignantly.

We are then asked to believe in two outcomes from this episode. The first is that the shock of this rejection somehow gives Longstaff the jolt he needs to restore his own health. Since we have no medical information about his state of being during his period of decline, this is very hard to judge.

The other is that at the same time Diana somehow retrospectively falls in love with Longstaff – even though she does not see him for more than two years. This is something of a stretch, but just about plausible.

But then comes another symmetrical twist which stretches credulity – to breaking point. Diana herself develops a wasting ailment which would be acceptable if she were simply pining away for love of Longstaff and might be restored on resumption of contact with him. Her proposal to him is acceptable enough as the neat plot twist – but she really is on her death bed and dies shortly afterwards.

This seems like a gain for plot structure at the expense of plausibility. The architecture of the story is firm enough, but its content is not satisfactory.

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Longstaff’s Marriage – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Longstaff’s Marriage – Kindle edition

Longstaff’s Marriage – Paperback edition [£4.49]

Longstaff’s Marriage – eBook versions at Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

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Longstaff’s Marriage – plot summary

Diana Belfield has inherited money and divided it with her cousin Agatha Gosling. The two women travel to Europe and are in Nice for the winter season. Agatha is much given to fantasising about their fellow residents, and they see Reginald Longstaff on the promenade regularly, she assumes that he is in love with Diana.

Longstaff introduces himself to Agatha and reveals that he is dying and very much in love with Diana. He asks Agatha not to reveal this to Diana until after his death.

Agatha keeps her promise, but some time later Longstaff’s servant asks Agatha to bring Diana to Longstaff’s sick bed, where he is thought to be dying. When they go there, he makes a moving appeal to Diana, asking her to marry him. Diana insists that she finds the idea appalling and suggests that they leave Nice immediately.

Their subsequent travels deteriorate in quality, so they decide to go back to America.Two years later Diana writes to Agatha to say that she is engaged – but then breaks it off. Diana then summons Agatha to say that she is dying and wants to go back to Europe. Diana is eager to travel widely before she dies, and they end up in Rome, where they meet Longstaff again.

Diana reveals to Agatha that she has been in love with Longstaff ever since refusing his offer of marriage, and she now believes he has recovered because of the hurt she inflicted on him. The implication is that she in her turn is now ‘dying of love’.

Agatha is sent in search of Longstaff, and when he visits the dying Diana it is she who proposes to him. The next day they are married, and shortly afterwards she dies.

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Principal characters

Diana Belfield	a tall, attractive, proud, American heiress
Agatha Gosling	her cousin
Reginald Longstaff	a young Englishman from an old, high-toned family

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Henry James’s study

---

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Other works by Henry James

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The Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man to whom Verena becomes more and more attracted. The dramatic contest to possess her is played out with some witty and often rather sardonic touches, and as usual James keeps the reader guessing about the outcome until the very last page.

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What Masie Knew (1897) A young girl is caught between parents who are in the middle of personal conflict, adultery, and divorce. Can she survive without becoming corrupted? It’s touch and go – and not made easier for the reader by the attentions of an older man who decides to ‘look after’ her. This comes from the beginning of James’s ‘Late Phase’, so be prepared for longer and longer sentences. In fact it’s said that whilst composing this novel, James switched from writing longhand to using dictation – and it shows if you look carefully enough – part way through the book.
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The Ambassadors (1903) Lambert Strether is sent from America to Paris to recall Chadwick Newsome, a young man who is reported to be compromising himself by an entanglement with a wicked woman. However, Strether’s mission fails when he is seduced by the social pleasures of the European capital, and he takes Newsome’s side. So a second ambassador is dispatched in the form of the more determined Sarah Pocock. She delivers an ultimatum which is resisted by the two young men, but then an accident reveals unpleasant truths to Strether, who is faced by a test of loyalty between old Europe and the new USA. This edition presents the latest scholarship on James and includes an introduction, notes, selected criticism, a text summary and a chronology of James’s life and times.
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© Roy Johnson 2013

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.

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