Mantex

Tutorials, Study Guides & More

>> Home / Tutorials / James - Tales

James – Tales

critical studies of all Henry James’s tales & short stories

critical studies of Henry James's complete tales and short stories

Louisa Pallant

by

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

Louisa Pallant first appeared in magazine form in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine for February 1888, alongside contributions by William Dean Howells and George Du Maurier. It was then reprinted in book form in England and America later the same year.

Baveno Lake Maggiore

Baveno – Lago di Maggiore

Louisa Pallant – critical commentary

Intertexuality

Sometimes a work of literature may contains echoes or references to another work by a different author (and the same may be true for works of art or music). They may be placed there deliberately or unintentionally. And these references may (or may not) throw extra light onto either the earlier or the later work.

Here there is a clear echo of Great Expectations (1860-61). Charles Dickens’s character Miss Havisham has been jilted at the altar and has been eaten up with bitterness ever since. As a form of revenge upon men, she trains her young ward Estella to be deliberately stony hearted. When the young hero of the novel Pip falls in love with Estella, she encourages him, then takes delight in rejecting and humiliating him.

In Louisa Pallant, the roles are similar, although the outcome is different. Louisa has been ‘engaged’ to the narrator, but has rejected him in favour of Henry Pallant. We have the impression that she chose a richer man, but her marriage has not been a success, and her husband has both died and left her without very much money.

Louisa has produced a daughter who is cold, clever, calculating, and socially ambitious. Louisa herself admits that the girl is the embodiment of her own weaknesses and flaws – but much magnified. And on the balance of events in the tale, Linda gets what she wants – a rich husband.

Fortunately, Louisa is a benign version of Miss Havisham, and she is decent enough to warn Archie against her own daughter. In fact she hints that the warning is a sort of recompense to the narrator for the distress she caused him in the past. Archie escapes in time and is spared what could have been a painful and disastrous mistake.

Louisa Pallant – study resources

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

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

Louisa Pallant Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Louisa Pallant Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

Louisa Pallant Louisa Pallant – paperback edition – Amazon UK

Louisa Pallant Louisa Pallant – paperback edition – Amazon US

Louisa Pallant Louisa Pallant – read the original text n line

Louisa Pallant Louisa Pallant – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Louisa Pallant Louisa Pallant – Kindle edition – Amazon US

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

Louisa Pallant

Louisa Pallant – plot summary

Part I.   In the spa town of Homburg, an un-named narrator meets Louisa Pallant, a former inamorata, and Linda, her pretty young daughter. Louisa formerly rejected him in favour of Mr Henry Pallant, who has since died, leaving her short of money. Although the narrator claims to be glad to have escaped his commitment to her, he also blames her for his having remained a bachelor ever since.

Part II.   The narrator is particularly impressed with the daughter’s social aplomb and polish, and yet surprised that her mother seems slightly disappointed with her. The narrator’s nephew Archie arrives, and gets on well with Linda.

Part III.   Louisa warns the narrator that Archie is in danger of falling in love with her daughter, and that his mother (the narrator’s sister) would disapprove. She argues that the narrator ought to take him away, out of this danger. He at first prefers to remain in Homburg, but finally decides to leave – only to find that Louisa Pallant has already departed.

Part IV.   The narrator is angry at this sudden disappearance and hopes for a letter of explanation, but none comes. He and Archie travel on to Switzerland where Archie receives a letter from Louisa Pallant in Baveno on Lake Maggiore. The two men follow her there, where Louisa warns the narrator that the renewal of their relations is dangerous and much to his amazement speaks critically against her own daughter.

Part V.   Louisa warns him that Linda is cold, heartless, and has a ruthless ambition to succeed socially. He protests against this, but she insists that the girl is of her own making. She claims that Linda represents all her own faults and weaknesses, only magnified. Louisa wants to save Archie from the girl’s influence. The narrator wonders if this argument might be a bluff, and that she is saving Linda for somebody richer, with a title. But Louisa argues that princes often don’t have money, and that Linda will know all about Archie’s finances.

Part VI.   The two men return separately to their hotel across the lake, and the narrator worries about what Louisa might have said to Archie. But next day nothing seems any different, and the narrator goes to visit the two women alone. Louisa has spoken to Archie, but will not reveal the substance of what she has said. She advises the narrator to leave immediately. When he gets back to his hotel, Archie has left for Milan and then goes on to Venice alone. Time passes. Linda marries a rich Englishman, Archie remains single, and the narrator never discovers what was said.

Principal characters
I the un-named narrator, an American bachelor
Charlotte Parker the narrator’s sister
Archie Parker the narrator’s young nephew, heir to a fortune
Mrs Louisa Pallant a the narrator’s former lover, now a widow
Mrs Linda Pallant her pretty and gifted daughter

Louisa Pallant - Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

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 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.

Louisa Pallant Buy the book at Amazon UK
Louisa Pallant 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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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

Madame de Mauves

by

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

Madame de Mauves first appeared in The Galaxy magazine for February—March 1874. It was reprinted a year later as part of James’s first book, The Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales, published by Osgood in Boston, 1875.

Saint-Germain Spring

Saint-Germain in Spring – by Alfred Sisley

Madame de Mauves – critical commentary

This is an astonishingly mature work for such a young writer. James was only slightly over thirty years old at the time of the tale’s publication, and he had just come to the end of a ten year apprenticeship in writing reviews and short stories. He had yet to write any major work, but Madame de Mauves certainly points to his potential ability to do so. The theme of people entombed in unhappy relationships and solving their problems by renunciation is something he would explore in The Portrait of a Lady written only a few years later.

The international theme

As someone who had lived on both continents, James made the juxtaposition of America and Europe into one of his favourite subjects. Here the contrast is made between the two Americans Longmore and Euphemia de Mauves, and the Europeans (French) Count Richard de Mauves and his sister-in-law Madame Clarin.

Mauves belongs to an old aristocratic family which has no money. So he marries the wealthy Euphemia and reverts to family type by ignoring his marriage and indulging in petty affairs almost as a way of life. Madame Clarin explains all this to Longmore, including the fact that the family has a long tradition of suffering wives who have tolerated such behaviour for the sake of the family’s ‘name’ in society.

Count Mauves has noticed Longmore’s interest in his wife, and encourages his attentions, hoping that the two of them will begin an affair which will in its turn justify his own way of life. To contemporary readers this might seem like an improbably melodramatic plot device, but in fact it is based on the historically sound observation that amongst the upper classes, sexual fidelity has never been a high priority.

So long as the appearance of propriety was maintained and no scandal allowed to sully a family’s name (a collective responsibility) adulteries of all kinds could be incorporated into the practices of upper-class life. Husbands did not have to give any reasons for being absent from their families. Wives could amuse themselves with any number of married or single men (as Euphemia does with Longmore).

The prime objective was to consolidate the family unit as a symbol of accumulated capital and property – which is why Count Mauves’ eventual suicide has been criticised by some commentators as somewhat improbable. There is no reason why he should not merely revert to his previous adulteries and keep the family and its name intact and unsullied.

Of course all this throws French society into a very dubious light compared with the upright behaviour of the two principal Americans. Longmore and Euphemia clearly love each other, but she manages to persuade him to adopt the honourable route of renunciation and self-denial. Madame Clarin on the other hand offers Longmore a ‘devil’s pact’ argument that the family traditions provide an open pathway to socially sanctioned adultery. The two Americans take the honourable way out, at the expense of their own personal happiness.

Madame de Mauves – study resources

Madame de Mauves The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Madame de Mauves The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Madame de Mauves Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Madame de Mauves Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Madame de Mauves Madame de Mauves – eBook formats at Gutenberg

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

Madame de Mauves

Madame de Mauves – plot summary

Part I. Rich American Longmore has been in Saint Germain for six months when his fellow American acquaintance Mrs Draper introduces him to Madame Euphemia de Mauves. She is a rich American woman married to a Frenchman who is intent on spending all her money. She is domestically unhappy, and Mrs Draper encourages Longmore to ‘entertain’ her.

Part II. Euphemia has been educated in a convent and has generated a romantic ambition to marry an aristocrat. Her childhood friend Marie de Mauves invites her to the ancestral home in the Auvergne, where old Madame de Mauves advises her to ignore moral niceties and act pragmatically.

When Richard de Mauves arrives, Euphemia sees him as the epitome of an aristocratic gentleman – although he is in fact a wastrel with unpaid bills. When he proposes marriage, Euphemia is very happy. But her mother imposes a two-year ban on the relationship – but at the end of it she marries him.

Part III. Longmore visits Madame de Mauves and marvels at her resignation. Euphemia’s sister-in-law is married to a wholesale pharmacist who gambles and loses on the stock exchange, then commits suicide. The widow pays court to Longmore, who dislikes her.

He ought to join his old friend Webster in Brussels for a holiday, but feels obliged to ‘support’ Madame de Mauves in her unhappiness. Her husband absents himself from the family home, but is amazingly polite to Longmore and encourages him to keep visiting.

Part IV. Webster writes to Longmore, asking about their planned holiday. Longmore asks Euphemia if she is happy or not – and she tells him it is an entirely private matter, and encourages him to join his friend on holiday. As he takes his leave he is patronised by the Count. Longmore writes to his friend Mrs Draper with his assessment of Madame de Mauves and her husband.

Part V. Longmore goes to Paris, but instead of going on to Brussels, he lingers there, thinking about Madame de Mauves and wondering if he is in love with her or not. Whilst dining in the Bois de Boulogne he sees the Count with a woman of the streets. He returns immediately to Saint Germain where he and Madame de Mauves discuss her situation and his wish to ‘support’ her – during which the Count casually passes by. Longmore is teased and patronised by Madame Clarin.

Part VI.When Longmore next visits the house, Madame de Clarin recounts to him the family history of faithless husbands and long-suffering wives. She also reveals that because the Count’s latest ‘folly’ has been discovered, he has suggested to his wife that she take Longmore as her lover, to form a social quid pro quo.

Part VII. Longmore takes a bucolic interlude in which he meets a young artist and his lover at a country inn, then falls asleep in the forest and dreams of being separated from Madame de Mauves by her husband.

Part VIII. When Longmore next meets Madame de Mauves she wants him to make a big sacrifice for both of them (by renouncing her) – so that she can continue to have someone to look up to and respect.

Part IX. Lomgmore is deeply conflicted on the issue, and he wonders why Euphemia should be so self-denying and stoical. He retreats to Paris to think about his decision. Once again he bumps into the Count in a compromising situation. Longmore leaves Saint Germain, and the Count is severely discomfited.

Part X. Two years pass, then Longmore learns from Mrs Draper that the Count repented and begged to be re-accepted by Madame de Mauves. She refused to accept him, so he committed suicide. Longmore returns to America and remains there.

Principal characters
Longmore a rich young man from New York
Mrs Maggie Draper his American friend in England
Madame Euphemia de Mauves a rich American (née Cleve)
Count Richard de Mauves her philandering husband
Marie de Mauves Euphenia’s young friend
old Madame de Mauves Marie’s grandmother
Mrs Cleve Euphenia’s mother
Madame Clarin Euphemia’s sister-in-law
M. Clarin wholesale druggist and gambler

Madame de Mauves - Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

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.

Madame de Mauves Buy the book at Amazon UK
Madame de Mauves 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 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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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

Master Eustace

by

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

Master Eustace first appeared in The Galaxy magazine for November 1871. Its first appearance in book form was as part of the collection Stories Revived published in three volumes by Macmillan in London 1885.

Master Eustace

Freddie Bartholomew as Little Lord Fauntleroy

Master Eustace – critical commentary

Melodrama

This tale has many of the elements of the nineteenth century melodrama: the long-kept secret; the self-sacrificing mother; the demanding child; the sudden revelation of paternity; the attempted suicide. the death by emotional shock. Such ingredients were common in the fiction of that period. In fact the story in theme is not unlike Thomas Hardy’s The Son’s Veto which used similar elements nearly twenty years later.

Readers in the twentieth century began to find such emotionally loaded drama difficult to accept, and the vogue for convincing realism was established which most serious writers of fiction have followed ever since. For a time there was a similar reaction against Charles Dickens, who used very overt melodrama in the plots of his novels. In the twenty-first century however, there has been a greater tolerance of melodramatic effects – provided that narratives are not solely dependent on them for significant meaning, and provided that they are supported by compensating artistic effects and psychological insights.

Checkhov’s gun

The Russian playwright and short story writer Anton Checkhov remarked that “If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there”. The term ‘Checkhov’s gun’ is a metaphor for a dramatic principle concerning simplicity and foreshadowing.

In Matser Eustace the sudden mention of ‘pistols’ flags up to any alert reader the fact that they are likely to be used in what follows. We suspect that Eustace might shoot Mr Cope. But James adds a creative twist to this very traditional plot element. Eustace not only doesn’t shoot Mr Cope, but shoots himself in a suicide attempt – and fails. So the gun in this case turns out to be something of a red herring

There is a similar false lead in the hurried marriage of Mrs Garnyer and Mr Cope. It seems as if he might be after her money, especially when he returns suddenly after Eustace has left and when he takes over the running of her affairs. But this too turns out not to be the case.

The framed narrative

James was very fond of using the ‘framed narrative’ device in his shorter fictions – that is, the strategy of having the main story relayed to a second party, who then makes it available to the reader. This creates an ‘inner’ and an ‘outer’ narrator. Various degrees of reliability can sometimes be built in to the characterisation of the narrators (as he did most famously in The Turn of the Screw.

Sometimes the ‘frame’ is not closed but left open-ended – but in the case of Master Eustace the outer narrator introduces the story with a single short paragraph, then reappears at the conclusion to top it off with two or three comments at the conclusion of the governess’s tale. No attempt is made to construct a separate point of view by the creation of this outer narrator. These were early experiments in James’s oeuvre but they foreshadow many complex experiments which were to come in later tales.

Master Eustace – study resources

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

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

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

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

Master Eustace Master Eustace – read the original text on line

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

Master Eustace

Master Eustace – plot summary

Part I.   A young woman of modest means takes up a position as assistant to Mrs Garnyer, a sad and frail widow whose husband mistreated her. She has a son Eustace on whom she lavishes all her attention and pins all her hopes. The child is demanding, spoiled, and arrogant: he patronises and insults his governess.

Part II.   The child grows older, and a succession of tutors are employed. All of them fall in love with their employer, and are rejected out of hand. The governess becomes a companion and maid-of-all-sorts to Mrs Garnyer. The youth’s birthdays are celebrated by dressing up and fantasies, and the mother remains completely isolated from society, treating her son almost as a lover in waiting.

Part III.   Eustace is keenly aware of what he will inherit and cultivates a taste for luxuries. He creates an idealised image of the father he has never known, and vows to live like him. Mrs Garnyer receives occasional advice from Mr Cope, an old family friend in India. He advises letting Eustace travel in Europe, as he wishes. The youth departs, then she receives a message saying that Cope will be returning. When he settles in the house Mrs Garnyer is transformed into a vibrant and youthful woman again. The governess too is very impressed with Mr Cope.

Part IV.   The governess presumes that Mrs Garnyer and Mr Cope were once due to marry, but were forced by circumstances to marry other (unsuitable) people. She writes to Eustace about Mr Cope and his mother’s improved condition. Then Mrs Garnyer announces that she is due to marry Mr Cope, who will take over the running of her affairs. They marry quite quickly, then depart on honeymoon, leaving the governess in charge of the house.

Part V.   Eustace suddenly returns the next day. When he hears that his mother has actually married Mr Cope he explodes with petulant rage. The governess sends word to his mother that he has come home and is not well, asking her to come back. Later that nigh they all converge in the house. Eustace curses and disowns his mother in a jealous outrage.

Part VI.   Mrs Garnyer feels that her son’s curse has killed her, and she unburdens herself to the governess. Mr Cope reveals to Eustace that he is his father. Eustace tries to commit suicide, but fails. Mrs Garnyer dies, and the two men shake hands – but only once, as father and son – and are never reconciled.

Master Eustace - Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

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 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 Daisy MillerDaisy 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.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller 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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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

Maud-Evelyn

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Maud-Evelyn first appeared in Atlantic Monthly in April of 1900, which was a remarkably fertile period for Henry James in terms of his production of short stories. It was a year which saw the publication of The Abasement of the Northmores, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, The Third Person, The Great Good Place, The Tone of Time, The Tree of Knowledge, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. James produced all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

Maud-Evelyn

Maud-Evelyn – critical commentary

It’s difficult to offer an interpretation of the story except as a study in profound self-deception. Marmaduke progressively buys into the myth of Maud-Evelyn’s living presence – to the extent that he is prepared to invent ‘shared experiences’ in an attempt to create her fictitious ‘past’. He even seems to believe that he marries her and is widowed on her death.

What is the purpose of this willed self-deception? Lady Emma suspects that he is ingratiating himself with the Dedricks in the hope that they will ‘remember him’ in their will(s). And she’s right – because they do. But isn’t there more to it than that?

Well, Marmaduke from the start of the story protests that he will not marry. Lavinia interprets this to mean that he will not marry anybody else but her. But the truth, as it turns out, is that he doesn’t marry anyone. In fact in his own terms, he acquires a wife without actually having to get married, and then becomes a widower, without ever having had a wife.

Is this perhaps another version of the ‘fear of marriage’ theme that James turned to again and again in stories composed during this period of his career? If Marmaduke gets married without acquiring a wife, Lavinia inherits his fortune without marrying him, though the price she pays for doing so is to be forced to wait until she is an old maid.

Another way of looking at the story is as a variation of the ghost story, which James explored on a number of occasions (Sir Edmund Orme, The Friends of the Friends, The Turn of the Screw, Owen Wingrave). Maud-Evelyn is dead, yet she is in one sense the central focus of the story. Her parents spend their time keeping the myth of her existence alive. And Marmaduke is so entangled in the fiction that he even imagines he marries and is widowed by this dead person.

Somehow, the themes of the ghost story, the fear of marriage, and a strange sequence of inheritance seem to converge uneasily yet ultimately to a satisfactory conclusion in this story.

Maud Evelyn – study resources

Maud-Evelyn The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Maud-Evelyn The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Maud Evelyn Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Maud-Evelyn Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Maud Evelyn Maud-Evelyn – Digireads reprint edition

Maud Evelyn Maud-Evelyn – free eBook at Gutenberg Consortia

Maud Evelyn Maud-Evelyn – read the story on line

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his tales and novels

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

Maud-Evelyn

Maud-Evelyn – plot summary

An obscure and elderly woman has recently inherited wealth to the surprise of an assembled group. But one of them, Lady Emma, knows the back story to the unexpected inheritance. It is her first person account of events that forms the narrative.

Lady Emma recounts her relationship with two younger (and poorer) friends, Marmaduke and Lavinia. In the past Marmaduke has paid court to Lavinia, who has not taken up his offer of marriage and now regrets it. He says he will not marry anyone else, and they remain friends.

On holiday in Switzerland, Marmaduke meets Mr and Mrs Dedricks, who keep alive the memory of their dead daughter, Maud-Evelyn, as if she were a living presence. They cultivate Marmaduke, who reciprocates their enthusiasms.

Lady Emma is sceptical about Marmaduke’s motives, thinking he might be a fortune hunter. When she discusses the issue with Lavinia she is surprised to find that Lavinia approves of Marmaduke’s support for the fiction that Maud-Evelyn is still alive.

As Marmaduke grows older he becomes like a son to the elderly Dedricks, and he starts to believe that he actually knew Maud-Evelyn and has shared life experiences with her. Lavinia’s mother dies, leaving her ‘faded’ and ‘almost old’, but she continues to rationalise Marmaduke’s behaviour in supporting the Maud-Evelyn myth.

Marmaduke then announces that he has become ‘engaged’ to Maud-Evelyn. He has bought wedding presents for her, and a bridal suite is established at the Dedricks’ home in Westbourne Terrace.

Time passes, then Marmaduke announces that Maud-Evelyn has died, leaving him in a permanent state of mourning as a widower. The Dedricks then die, leaving everything to Marmaduke, who also dies in his turn, leaving everything to Lavinia.

Principal characters
— the un-named outer narrator
Lady Emma the inner first person narrator
Lavinia a modest spinster
Marmaduke Lavinia’s former suitor
Mr Dedrick forty-five years old, retired
Mrs Dedrick his wife
Maud-Evelyn their dead daughter
Mrs Jex the Dedricks’ medium

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

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

Ghost stories by Henry James

Red button The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868)

Red button The Ghostly Rental (1876)

Red button Sir Edmund Orme (1891)

Red button The Private Life (1892)

Red button Owen Wingrave (1892)

Red button The Friends of the Friends (1896)

Red button The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Red button The Real Right Thing (1899)

Red button Maud-Evelyn (1900)

Red button The Third Person (1900)

Red button The Jolly Corner (1908)

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 Daisy MillerDaisy 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.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller 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.

© Roy Johnson 2012

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

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie first appeared in Cornhill Magazine in 1900 – which was a remarkably fertile period for Henry James in terms of his production of stories, or ‘tales’ as he called them. It was a year which saw the publication of The Abasement of the Northmores, Maud-Evelyn, The Third Person, The Great Good Place, The Tone of Time, The Tree of Knowledge, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. James produced all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

Poughkeepsie

Poughkeepsie – New York State

Miss Gunton is a light-hearted variation on the Daisy Miller story. A young American woman is in Europe surrounded by its ancient rituals, finding them at odds with her own inclination to frank and democratic equalities. Unusually for Henry James, it’s quite a short work at 4,000 words and very light-hearted in tone. The worst that happens is that an aristocrat is annoyed to find that she has unnecessarily lowered herself to acknowledge a commoner. No people were hurt in the writing of this story.

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – critical commentary

Henry James like other novelists often deals with issues of class and money in his works, and to these ingredients he frequently adds what is called his ‘International theme’. That is, the contrasts, differences, and ambiguities between American and European society – both of which he knew at first hand. The emphasis he puts on psychological drama in his work often obscures these elements, but it is noticeable how they permeate even this short and relatively light-hearted story.

Class

Lily comes from a provincial city in New York State – so obscure that Lady Champer has never even heard of it. Yet Poughkeepsie became the second capital city of the state (after Albany) and was a prosperous industrial centre. Lily’s grandfather is in business there, and it is his financial support which provides for Lily in her travels. She is therefore bourgeois – new money in class terms.

But the Prince as his title implies is from an aristocratic Italian family. Lady Champer describes it as ‘a very great house, of tremendous antiquity, fairly groaning under the weight of ancient honours’. That is they have inherited wealth – though this does not necessarily mean that they are very rich.

Lily cannot see why the Prince’s family should not treat her as an equal. That’s because she comes from a ‘self-made’ class. But the Princess cannot move from their tradition of requiring deference from people of a lower position on the social scale. Indeed, the Prince believes that by marrying Lily he will be ‘pulling her up’ in society.

These are common tensions in what is called ‘upwards social mobility’. It is normally very difficult to move upwards in terms of social class – except via marriage or sometimes education. But Lily has two bargaining counters: she is strikingly beautiful and she is rich. These were issues that James explored in much greater depths in works such as The Golden Bowl which he began writing only a couple of years later.

Money

Coming from a ‘self-made’ business class, Lily is the recipient of its wealth. She is supported by her grandfather, and can ‘draw’ financial support from him whenever she feels the need. She pays her own way, and can therefore feel that she owes deference to no one. It is interesting to note that the aristocratic Lady Champer thinks of Lily’s grandfather as an impediment to her chances of social success – when the reverse turns out to be the case.

The Prince knows that he is marrying a rich woman, but his problem is that he does not know how rich she is. Had she been from the aristocratic class, his family would have access to information of this kind. But because she is both from America and of an unknown heritage (‘a young alien of vague origin’) they have no way of knowing the extent of the family’s wealth. His mother the Princess disapproves of the marriage on these grounds alone.

We do not know how wealthy the Prince’s family is, but he is noticeably worried about the potential expense of an American wedding. He fears that ‘A vast America, arching over his nuptials, bristling with expectant bridesmaids and underlaying their feet with expensive flowers, stared him in the face’.

It is in fact almost unthinkable that a genuinely aristocratic dynasty would permit marriage into its ranks without a thorough preliminary investigation of family connections, sources of income, and any potential skeletons in cupboards.

The secondary twist in the tale – after Lily’s marriage to Mr Bramsby – is that she inherits her grandfather’s wealth, and there is a lot of it – ‘an extraordinary number of dollars’ as Lady Champer explains.

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – study resources

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – text, preface, and notes

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – read the story on line

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie

Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie – plot summary

Lily Gunton is a young American woman touring Europe in the company of a chaperone. She has attracted the admiration of a Roman prince and has travelled to London, waiting to see if he will follow her. She reveals to her English confidante Lady Champer her intention of drawing the Prince all the way back to America.

The Prince arrives in London, proposes to Lily, and she agrees to marry him. However, she has not met his mother, and a conflict in protocols arises between them. Lily thinks she should be invited to meet the Princess, who in her turn believes that Lily should request such an audience. Lily thinks she is doing the family an honour in marrying their son, and they think they are doing her a favour by accepting her into such a distinguished family. .

There is a stand off, and in the end Lily calls their bluff by returning to America. The Princess does send an invitation, but it arrives too late, Some weeks later news reaches London that Lily has married into the American family with whom she travelled back to the USA.

Principal characters
Lily Gunton a young American woman travelling in Europe
Mr Gunton Lily’s wealthy grandfather in Poughkeepsie (NY)
Lady Champer a baronet’s widow living in London
The Prince Lily’s admirer, from an aristocratic Roman family
The Princess his mother
Mrs Brine Lily’s chaperone
Adam P. Bramsby the man who Lily marries in America

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 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 Daisy MillerDaisy 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.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller 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.

© Roy Johnson 2012

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

Mora Montravers

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Mora Montravers was first published in the English Review in August-September 1909. It deals with a subject which was very popular around that time – the new woman. Since the 1880s and 1890s women had been fighting for independence, voting rights, and reform of the divorce laws. Alongside these larger political matters, they had also been claiming the right to make their own life choices. James deals here with these issues in his characteristically ambiguous manner.

Mora Montravers

The National Gallery – London

Mora Montravers – critical commentary

Romance and reversal

Sydney Traffle is nurturing a subconscious desire for his wife’s beautiful young niece Mora, which causes friction in his marriage to Jane. They take different views on what should be done about Mora’s independent action in leaving them.

When Mora goes to ‘live with’ painter Walter Puddick, Jane is horrified, but her husband Sydney feels sympathetic towards Puddick, but misses Mora.

Despatched to deal with the problem, Sydney has an epiphanic meeting with Mora in the National Gallery but she turns out to be meeting another man (Sir Bruce Bagely).

When Sydney returns to deliver the news to his wife, the carpet is pulled from under his feet. She already knows all the news, has had a visit from Puddick, and looks forward to developing her relationship with him.

This is a slightly credibility-stretching volte-face on her part, but a neat reversal of the emotional power struggle between Sydney and his wife. It’s as if they are acting out their latent hostility towards each other via proxy. Sydney has condoned Mora’s actions in order to stay as close to her as possible, but he is outwitted by Jane, who constructs a relationship with Puddick that eclipses her husband’s with Mora.

In this reading of the story, Mora is a catalyst – not the main subject. The story is about tensions within the Traffle marriage, and the surprising outcome of their connections with two other people – Mora and Puddick.

The new woman

The question remains – is Mora innocent or not? Sydney believes she is; Walter Puddick says she is; but Jane Traffle finally believes she is not. Mora does plan to leave her ‘husband’ only four weeks after marrying him. However, the technicalities of the marriage are described in such dismissive terms, it seems almost possible that it could be annulled.

We simply do not have enough hard evidence to make a judgement. Mora is obviously a New (young) Woman who is capable of acting in an independent manner. But there is little evidence of a convincing connection between Mora and Jane Traffle’s abrupt change of attitude towards her.

Mora Montravers – study resources

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

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

Mora Montravers Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Mora Montravers Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Mora Montravers The Complete Tales (Vol 12) – Paperback edition – Amazon UK

Mora Montravers Selected Tales – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

Mora Montravers - eBooks Mora Montravers – eBook format at Gutenberg Consortia Center

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

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

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

Mora Montravers

Mora Montravers – plot summary

Part I. Sydney and Jane Traffle have looked after her niece Mora Montravers as a young woman since the death of her parents. Mora has now put them in a socially embarrassing position by going to live with her painting teacher Walter Puddick.

Part II. They disagree about the appropriate course of action that should be taken. Jane thinks Mora’s behaviour is reprehensible and wishes Puddick to regularise the situation by marrying Mora. Sydney Traffle thinks the girl is best left alone to find her own way, and as a fellow painter, he quite likes Puddick’s work.

Part III. Mora suddenly visits the Traffles – though Jane refuses to meet her. Mora explains that she simply wants to keep in touch with the family. Sydney Traffle accepts Mora’s position, but Jane wants something to be done about it.

Part IV. They summon Walter Puddick to a meeting where Jane treats him imperiously, demanding to know details of his relationship with Mora. He tells her nothing, except that he adores Mora. Jane tries to bribe him with offers of an allowance if he will marry Mora, and she insists that he tell Mora – which would put him into a compromised position with her. Sydney is sympathetic to his case, but still manages to patronise him.

Part V. Some time later, Sydney is tempted to seek out Mora. He is wandering around London when he bumps into her in the National Gallery. She reveals to him that she is now married, but wants her aunt’s promise of an allowance to go to Walter Puddick, who she is leaving for another man.

Part VI. Sydney returns home reluctantly to break the news to Jane, but he finds her curiously calm and positive. It transpires that she has had a visit from Walter Puddick, and he has relayed the whole story to her. She now feels a positive duty to support him financially with Mora’s dowry; she believes Mora was a bad lot all along; and she looks forward to visiting Puddick’s studio to develop an interest in his art.

Principal characters
Sydney Traffle respectable Wimbledon would-be painter
Jane Traffle his wife
Mora Montravers her beautiful artistic niece (21)
Walter Puddick a young painter
Sir Bruce Bagley (Bart) an art collector

Henry James portrait

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Further reading

Biographical

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

Henry James - life 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 - memory 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 - companion Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Henry James - Cambridge companion 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 - short stories 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 - ctitical essays 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.
Moira Montravers Buy the book at Amazon UK
Moira Montravers 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.

© Roy Johnson 2012

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

Mrs Medwin

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Mrs Medwin first appeared in Punch in August-September 1901. It is collected in Volume XI of The Complete Tales of Henry James (Rupert Hart-Davis) 1964.

Mrs Medwin

Mrs Medwin – critical commentary

This is a lightweight social comedy that might easily have been written by Oscar Wilde, except that it includes the typical Jamesian theme of contrasting European and American manners.

Mamie Carter and Scott Homer are Americans who are regarded as something quaint by the English characters Mrs Medwin and Lady Wantridge. And it is the Europeans who live in a system of strict social protocols and a snobbish notion of hierarchies based ultimately on class and wealth. Scott Homer expresses this to his sister when he says “They’re dead, don’t you see? And we’re alive”.

Interestingly the story revolves around two characters who have both broken social protocols. Mrs Medwin has done something in the past for which Lady Wantridge cannot at first forgive her. And Scott Homer has done something unspecified which seems to prevent his returning to the United States.

It’s worth noting that story first appeared in the satirical magazine Punch which at that time (1901) published both light fiction and cartoons – to which it gave that name. Punch had also serialised The Diary of a Nobody in the previous decade.

Mrs Medwin – study resources

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

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

Mrs Medwin Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Mrs Medwin Complete Stories 1898—1910 – Library of America – Amazon US

Mrs Medwin Mrs Medwin – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

Mrs Medwin Mrs Medwin – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Mrs Medwin Mrs Medwin – read the story on line

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Red button The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his tales and novels

Red button Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

Mrs Medwin

Mrs Medwin – plot summary

Part I. Mamie Cutter is a middle-aged American spinster living in straightened circumstances in London, and hoping to get on in society. Her indolent half-brother Scott Homer is trying to sponge money from her as she prepares to receive Mrs Medwin.

Part II. Mrs Medwin is an unattractive English woman who also wishes to make social connections. She’s prepared to pay Mamie in order to produce introductions.

Part III. When Mamie pleads on Mrs Medwin’s behalf to social arbiter Lady Wantridge she receives a negative response. But Mamie persists, having given Mrs Medwin her promise of success, and having received the fee for doing it.

Part IV. But when Lady Wantridge meets Scott Homer she is charmed by his idiosyncrasies and his wit. She wants to invite him to her establishment at Catchmore. But Mamie arranges that he will only accept after Lady Wantridge has agreed to meet Mrs Medwin – which she does, then inviting her and Scott Homer to meet a grand duke at a weekend party.

Principal characters
Miss Mamie Cutter middle-aged spinster
Scott Homer her half brother
Mrs Medwin an unattractive middle-aged woman
Lady Wantridge a social arbiter
Catchmore Lady Wantridge’s estate

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 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

Critical commentary

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

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

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 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 Daisy MillerDaisy 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.
Daisy Miller Buy the book from Amazon UK
Daisy Miller 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.

© Roy Johnson 2012

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

Mrs Temperly

by

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

Mrs Temperly first appeared in Harper’s Weekly in August 1887. It first bore the title Cousin Maria and was later collected with other tales in the volume entitled A London Life (1889).

Mrs Temperly

Mrs Temperly – critical commentary

The story is short and slight, but it has at its core a desperately sad subject. Raymond is an eager but ill-fated young man. He has no prospects in terms of social status, and even takes a dive during the course of the story because his father becomes bankrupt. He also has feeble aspirations to be a ‘painter’ – a completely insubstantial prospect for any self-respecting family into which he wishes to marry.

He chooses as his love object Dora Temperly, the eldest of Mrs Temperly’s daughters. Her defining characteristic in the drama is that she’s plain. At the beginning of the story she is very young, so this does not seem so important. But five years later her younger sister has become very attractive, even in Raymond’s eyes

The quasi-tragic element, which is hardly mentioned in the text, is that Dora realises that even though she might be prepared to accept the advances of a ‘penniless’ Raymond who has a dubious family background, she cannot do so without harming the chances of her two younger sisters finding rich husbands. She fends off Raymond’s advances as a form of self-sacrifice – and ends up asking him to wait ten years whilst her sisters find husbands.

This point is even underscored by the slightly grotesque observation that the youngest sister is actually small and the family is waiting impatiently for her to grow, so that this waiting period can end.

It is worth noting that the appellation ‘Cousin Maria’ has a slightly different connotation in America than it would have in Britain. It is not so much a designation of genetic relationship as a symbol of kinship or fellowship, an affirmation of democratic allegiance.

The distinction is slight and very subtle, but in the context of this story it reinforces the sad gulf that exists between Raymond’s social aspirations and the higher ground upon which Mrs Temperly establishes her family.

Mrs Temperly – study resources

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

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

Mrs Temperly Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Mrs Temperly Complete Stories 1884—1891 – Library of America – Amazon US

Mrs Temperly Mrs Temperly – Classic Reprint edition

Mrs Temperly Mrs Temperly – Read Books paperback edition

Mrs Temperly Mrs Temperly – eBook formats at Gutenberg

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

Mrs Temperley

Mrs Temperly – plot summary

Part I. A rich widow Mrs Temperly is preparing to leave New York to live in Paris with her three children. She discusses the issue with her eldest daughter Dora, who a relative Raymond Bestwick expresses a desire to marry. He is a young man without prospects who is a would-be artist. Mrs Temperly has reservations about marriage at such a young age. On the eve of their departure Raymond talks with Dora, hoping to find some encouragement for his suit, but he is unable to make any impression on her.

Part II. Five years later Raymond visits the Temperly family in Paris. He has not made any personal progress, and his father has gone bankrupt. Mrs Temperly on the other hand has acquired fine paintings and is living in grand style. Her second daughter is much prettier, but Dora is unchanged. Raymond renews his attentions to Dora, but she politely keeps him at bay.

Raymond believes that their charming and socially gifted friend Madame de Brives is secretly searching for husbands for the Temperly girls.

Part III. Raymond continues to visit the household, and Mrs Temperly maintains the friendly and wholesome ambiance she brought with her from America. On the occasion of a grand musical evening Raymond again asks the matriarchal Mrs Temperly for her approval of his quest for Dora. She gives him permission but makes it clear that Dora will wish to stay single.

Part IV. Finally, Raymond asks Dora directly to marry him, but she says she cannot accept until her two younger sisters are married. Raymond gradually realises that if he marries into the family it will blight the prospects of the younger daughters – because he is unsuccessful and the son of a bankrupt. Dora confirms the opinions of her mother, and appeals to Raymond to wait the ten years or so it might take – as she is prepared to do.

Principal characters
Mrs Temperly a rich widow
Raymond Bestwick her relative, a would-be artist
Dora Temperly her plain eldest daughter (16)
Effie Temperly her second daughter (15)
Tishy Temperly her youngest daughter (10)
Mademoiselle Bourde the family’s French governess (40)
Marquise de Brives a glamorous and well-connected socialite

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 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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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

My Friend Bingham

by

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

My Friend Bingham first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly magazine for March 1867. Its initial appearance in book form was as part of the collection Eight Uncollected Tales of Henry James published by Rutgers University Press in 1950.

My Friend Bingham

Summer at Newport

My Friend Bingham – critical commentary

It is difficult to know what to make of this very early story except as a very oblique take on the theme of ‘fear of heterosexual intimacy’ – a theme which certainly sits comfortably alongside many of James’s other tales. Bingham has returned from the grand European tour with the resolution that he will not get married. However, he is accidentally brought into contact with Lucy. Quite apart from her intelligence and integrity (which are told about, but not shown) she is a widow.

One cannot escape the ‘shotgun’ connection between this meeting and marrying her. He even provides the gun himself. In other words, he feels obliged to compensate for the accidental shooting of her son by making her an offer of marriage. But following the marriage she never has any other children – so he escapes the fear of procreation after all.

My Friend Bingham – study resources

My Friend Bingham The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

My Friend Bingham The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

My Friend Bingham Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

My Friend Bingham Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

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

My Friend Bingham

My Friend Bingham – plot summary

Charles the narrator and his close friend George Bingham decide to spend a summer holiday together by the sea. Bingham, after travelling in Europe, has decided not to get married. Whilst they are on the beach hunting duck Bingham accidentally shoots a young boy who is playing with his mother.

Charles visits Lucy the grieving mother and offers to help. She is very forgiving and understanding about the accident. The two men attand the boy’s funeral, after which Charles returns to New York.

Ten days later Bingham visits Charles to say how impressed he is with Lucy, then goes off to see her again. He reports back to say that he is even more impressed with her, and finally admits to Charles that he has fallen in love with her.

However, on his next visit he reports that Lucy has been expelled from her holiday cottage by the landlady Miss Horner, who disapproves of the liaison, and so Bingham has brought Lucy back to New York. Charles goes to visit Lucy, and he too is very impressed by her intelligence and integrity.

When he nexts goes to visit her, Bingham is there, and announces that he has asked her to be his wife. She accepts him; they are happily married; but she never has any other children.

My Friend Bingham – principal characters
Charles the first person narrator, 28
George Bingham his rich and good-looking close friend, 30
Mrs Lucy Hicks a poor widow
Miss Margaret Horner her landlady, a relative
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 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 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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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

Nona Vincent

by

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Nona Vincent first appeared in English Illustrated Magazine in February—March 1892, then later reprinted in The Real Thing and Other Tales (London and New York, 1893). The other stories in the collection were The Chaperon, Greville Fane, and Sir Dominick Ferrand, which also has the title Jersey Villas.

Nona Vincent

Walter Sickert (1869-1942)

Nona Vincent – critical comment

At the time of writing this tale Henry James was in the midst of his own theatrical ambitions, writing plays in the hope of creating a name for himself as a major dramatist. His hopes came to nothing. After five years, his play Guy Domville was booed off stage on its first night.

Nevertheless, James made use of his experiences, and Nona Vincent contains many elelemnts of theatrical life – the difficult search for promotional backing, the stress of rehearsals, the issue of dramatic interpretation, and even the author’s embarrassed curtain call on the first night of his big success.

As a glimpse into the world of the theatre, it is witty and charming, but as a tale its parts do not hang together as well as they might. For instance, there is very little connection between the first part of the story and subsequent events in the second.

For instance there is an unexplained difference between Violet’s meetings with Mrs Alsager. Violet is visited by Mrs Alsager in Part II and provides what is the inspiration for Violet’s much-improved interpretation of her role as Nona Vincent. But Violet has already met Mrs Alsager in the first part of the story, and no reason is provided why the second meeting should have such a dramatic effect.

Wayworth seems to be depicted in the first part of the tale as a failure. He flits from one literary issue to another. Initially he is concerned with literary form, then scenic idea, and finally dramatic form. He is also unsuccessful for two years, which is realistic, but has little connection with his huge success in part two of the tale. He even writes a second play, which has no relevance to the overall story.

The tale also has a very conventional happy ending – with Wayworth’s marriage to the principal lady – though it is interesting to note the fact that she then abandons the stage. This perhaps reflects the fact that even as late at the end of the nineteenth century, acting was seen as a slightly improper occupation for women.

Nona Vincent – study resources

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

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

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

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

Nona Vincent The Complete Tales of Henry James – Volume 8 – Digireads reprint UK

Nona Vincent Nona Vincent – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Red button The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Nona Vincent

Nona Vincent – plot summary

Part I.
Allan Wayworth is a young aspiring dramatist who shares his literary enthusiasms with Mrs Alsager, the wife of a rish newspaper magnate. When he writes a play, it appears that the female lead character (Nona Vincent) is a thinly veiled portrait of Mrs Alsager. She is keen to help him find a theatrical promoter, but after a year with no success, he is reduced to no more than hack work, writing encyclopedia entries. He writes a second play, but that fares no better.

When a manager finally agrees to take up the play, Wayworth attends rehearsals, but is disappointed that the leading lady Violet Grey does not appear to fit her role and does not understand what effects Wayworth wishes to create via her character.

Mrs Alsager contrives a meeting with Violet then reveals to Wayworth that the young girl is in love with him. When he next meets Violet she tells him the same thing about Mrs Alsager.

Part II.
Wayworth begins to feel protective about Violet and has conflicted feelings regarding her future. Mrs Alsager manifests jealous feelings towards Violet. Tensions rise during the rehearsal period, but the first night is success. Violet however feels that she is inadequate for the principal role.

The next day Wayworth has a dreamlike vision of his fictional heroine Nona Vincent, and at that night’s performance, Violet puts on an entirely new interpretation of the role which is a big critical success.

Violet then reveals to Wayworth that she too had a visitation at the same time as his – but in the real form of Mrs Alsager, who provided the living substance and model she needed to understand, appreciate, and act Nona Vincent.

The play runs for two hundred performances, Wayworth marries Violet, and she retires from the stage. But Mrs Alsager continues to attend all Wayworth’s subsequent plays.

Principal characters
Allan Wayworth an aspiring young dramatist (28)
Mrs Alsager a cultural enthusiast (50)
Mr Alsager her much older husband, a rich newspaper magnate, who does not appear
Mr Loder a theatrical manager
Miss Violet Grey a young actress

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

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 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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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

Get in touch

info@mantex.co.uk

Content © Mantex 2016