Tutorials

literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

The Son’s Veto

May 4, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

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

Thomas Hardy

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

The Son’s Veto – critical commentary

Marriage

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

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

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

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

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

Education

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

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

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

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

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

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

Class

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

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

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

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

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

The Son’s Veto – study resources

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Life’s Little Ironies – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Life’s Little Ironies – audiobook version at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

The Son’s Veto – plot summary

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

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

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

Principal characters

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

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Hardy’s WESSEX

Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
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The Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
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Wessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.
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Thomas Hardy – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on Thomas Hardy
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

The Spanish Labyrinth

September 10, 2011 by Roy Johnson

political and historical origins of the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Labyrinth is an important historical study in which a liberal humanist tries to understand why a catastrophic civil war took place in Spain between 1936 and 1939. Gerald Brenan was an auto-didactic but a very passionate historian with an enduring love for the country in which he made his home from 1919 until the war broke out – and to which he returned, living just outside Malaga from 1953 until his death in Alhaurín el Grande in 1987. He is buried in the English cemetery in Malaga.

This account was written whilst the war was taking place, first published in 1943 then revised in 1950 with no changes to its central conclusion that the civil war had set Spain back fifty years. The end of the Franco regime didn’t come about until the mid 1970s, so that was not a bad analysis and prediction. The Spanish Labyrinth is not a history of the war but an account of its origins. Brenan explains complex issues such as the Catalonian separatist movement which resulted in a repository of political radicalism focussed in Barcelona – the principal centre of Spain’s manufacturing industry and one of the most important cities during the war.

The first part of his account looks at the complex history of the relation between the Church and the Liberals. He sees the Catholic Church’s principal mistake as its failure to understand the French revolution and its antipathy to education. The church had historically been a supporter of the underdog against the state, but it was gradually poisoned by its proximity to power and became a force of reaction. Hence the anti-clerical violence during the war.

Brenan’s narrative trajectory is then interrupted by a detailed examination of the ‘Agrarian question’ in each of the main regions of Spain. This is followed by an in-depth account of the political philosophy of Mikhail Bukharin in order to explain why anarchism took such a powerful hold in Spain.

The central portion of the book is his analysis of Anarcho-Syndicalism in Spain – how it differed from other varieties in Europe, how it was a form of Utopian desire to return to a golden age of communal life in the pueblo, and why it ultimately failed.

Sometimes his historical narrative actually seems to be going backwards. No sooner do we arrive at the birth of the new Republic in 1931 than there is a historical detour going back to land divisions and sheep rearing in the thirteenth century.

The story really gets under way with strikes, bomb outrages, police informers, agents provocateurs, and military repression in the post 1918 period. King Alfonso XIII perpetrated reactionary disasters, and the net result of this was a seizure of power in 1923 by Primo de Rivera. His eccentric dictatorship lasted six years.

Elections in 1931 produced a Constituent Cortes which was composed of Anarch-Syndicalists, Socialists, and Republicans. Its first tasks were the establishment of a constitution, a solution to the agrarian question and Catalonian separatism, and the separation of Church and State. All of these issues proved too difficult to implement properly.

This was partly due to the fact that these were turbulent years There were military uprisings, strikes, the burning of churches, and a period of Dictatorship had left the economy in ruins. The more vigorously the government cracked down on disruptions, the more it fuelled the wrath of the anti-Republicans. And all these events were taking place against the backdrop of a World economic crisis. When new elections were held in 1933, all parties of the left suffered heavy defeats.

It is a very sad story of political squabbling, especially in retrospect with the knowledge what it all led to. Elections were still being rigged and votes bought; parties were being formed, split, and re-constituted like amoebas; and all the time the forces of reaction were growing stronger.

Brenan ends with an overview of political developments during the war. (For a comprehensive account of the war, see Anthony Beevor’s The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, and Sir Raymond Carr’s The Spanish Tragedy). Brenan’s argument is that the war was won by Franco because of foreign intervention from his fellow fascists in Germany and Italy.

But it was also lost by the Republicans because of duplicity by Stalin, who was supposed to be offering support, but who used the war as a means of settling political scores with the Trotskyists and myriad opponents he saw from his paranoid hold on power. It might also be noted that within five months of the war’s ending, he had signed the Hitler-Stalin pact with his former ‘enemy’ as his entree to the Second World War. It is no wonder that Victor Serge, in his wonderful novel documenting this period, called these Unforgiving Years.

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Gerald Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth, New York: Cambridge University Press, new edition 1990, pp.404, ISBN: 0521398274

More on Gerald Brenan
More on the Bloomsbury Group
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The Special Type

June 16, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Special Type first appeared in Collier’s Weekly in June of 1900, which was an enormously productive year for James in terms of short stories. It was a period which saw the publication of Maud-Evelyn, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, The Abasement of the Northmores, The Third Person, The Tone of Time, The Tree of Knowledge, The Great Good Place, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. He produced all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next major novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

In the Studio – James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903)

The Special Type – critical commentary

The story turns on various levels of deception. Brivet wishes to protect the name and reputation of Rose Cavenham by creating the smokescreen of an affair with Alice Dundene. He is deceiving society in general. The narrator, realising that Alice is in love with Brivet, worries that she might sacrifice her own good name for the sake of a man who does not love her. He fears she will be deceived by Brivet.

So much attention is focused on this concern and so much emphasis is placed on Brivet’s seemingly unscrupulous use of his wealth, that the reader is given every reason to think that Brivet is being doubly duplicitous and that no good will come of the liaison.

The narrator also fears that Rose Cavenham might be deceiving herself because she claims to him that Brivet’s relationship with ‘others’ (that is, Alice Cavenham, who she does not even wish to name) are entirely innocent. She is of course trying to protect his name and reputation in the deceit which has been constructed for her own advantage.

It eventually emerges that relations between Brivet and Alice Dundene have indeed been entirely innocent. Most first-time readers of the story will have been taken in by this playful deceit on James’s part.

As a result, Rose Cavenham is caught out in the logic of her own arguments. She has propagated the notion of Brivet’s innocence whilst he has been supplying (ambiguous) evidence of its absence. But the gift of ‘anything she wishes’ to Alice Dundene suggests that there has been a close bond between her and Brivet. When Rose is furiously piqued by Alice Cavenham’s taking the portrait she herself commissioned, the narrator ironically quotes her own words back to her ‘They took it because they never saw him alone’. In other words – “They were innocent, just as you claimed”.

The Special Type – study resources

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

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

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

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

The Special Type – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

The Special Type – eBook at Gutenberg Consortia

The Special Type – read the story on line

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

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

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Special Type – plot summary

A narrator’s preamble establishes the story as a fine example of ‘service and sacrifice for love’.

Part I. In the narrator-artist’s studio two of his attractive lady sitters meet each other. Rose Cavenham takes against Alice Dundene because she is not a ‘lady’. Alice meets the rich American Frank Brivet and falls in love with him.

Part II. Frank Brivet has grown dissatisfied with his marriage and confides in his friend the narrator. Having previously denied him the possibility of a divorce, his wife is now interested in forming a relationship with another man, and will release Brivet if he accepts the ‘blame’.

Part III. Brivet has meanwhile fallen in love with Rose Cavenham but doesn’t want to compromise her good name and reputation. He therefore devises a plan of paying another woman to act as a ‘decoy’ relationship which will provide his wife with the grounds for bringing the divorce case against him. Brivet meets Alice Dundene at the narrator’s studio and chooses her for the part. Rose Cavenham goes to America (paid for by Brivet) to stay out of the way and to allay all suspicion. The relationship between Brivet and Alice flourishes.

Part IV. Rose returns from America with the news that Mrs Brivet has filed for divorce because of her husband’s relationships with women whilst in Europe. Rose maintains that all of these have been innocent deceptions merely to secure the divorce. The narrator however worries that events might be more complex. Rose commissions a full length portrait of Brivet from the narrator – so that he will drawn back from his intrigues abroad for the sittings.

Part V. The divorce goes through and the portrait is completed. Then Alice Dundene shows up at the narrator’s studio, her role as decoy completed. Brivet has offered her any gift she wishes, and she chooses a portrait of him, revealing that they had never met alone. The narrator gives her Roses’s portrait of Brivet. Rose is annoyed, but the narrator refuses to do another.

Principal characters

—	the un-named narrator, a painter
Alice Dundene	a beautiful society woman
Rose Cavenham	a beautiful society lady
Frank Brivet	a rich American and old school friend of the narrator
Mrs Brivet	his estranged wife
Remson Sturch	suitor to Mrs Brivet

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Other works by Henry James

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Daisy Miller (1879) is a key story from James’s early phase in which a spirited young American woman travels to Europe with her wealthy but commonplace mother. Daisy’s innocence and her audacity challenge social conventions, and she seems to be compromising her reputation by her independent behaviour. But when she later dies in Rome the reader is invited to see the outcome as a powerful sense of a great lost potential. This novella is a great study in understatement and symbolic power.
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Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spoils of Poynton

May 2, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

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

Wakehurst Place Mansion

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

The Spoils of Poynton – critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

The Spoils of Poynton – study resources

The Spoils of Poynton – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

The Spoils of Poynton – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

The Spoils of Poynton – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Spoils of Poynton – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Spoils of Poynton – Kindle eBook edition

The Spoils of Poynton – (unabridged) Audio book

The Spoils of Poynton – eBook editions at Gutenberg

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Spoils of Poynton – plot summary

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

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

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

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

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

Principal characters

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

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The Ambassadors (1903) Lambert Strether is sent from America to Paris to recall Chadwick Newsome, a young man who is reported to be compromising himself by an entanglement with a wicked woman. However, Strether’s mission fails when he is seduced by the social pleasures of the European capital, and he takes Newsome’s side. So a second ambassador is dispatched in the form of the more determined Sarah Pocock. She delivers an ultimatum which is resisted by the two young men, but then an accident reveals unpleasant truths to Strether, who is faced by a test of loyalty between old Europe and the new USA. This edition presents the latest scholarship on James and includes an introduction, notes, selected criticism, a text summary and a chronology of James’s life and times.
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Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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Henry James – web links

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

The 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.

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

The Story in It

June 19, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Story in It first appeared in Anglo-American Magazine in January 1902, It is collected in Volume XI of The Complete Tales of Henry James (Rupert Hart-Davis) 1964.

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

The Story in It – commentary

This is the story of a small and undramatic romance; it’s a story in which the characters discuss romance as the subject matter of fiction; and it’s a story which rather cleverly reflects upon itself in quite a modern manner.

Maude Blessingbourne has a crush on Colonel Voyt, and although she is not aware of it, she is staying with his clandestine lover Mrs Dyott. This accounts for the tension and the rivalry between the two women. When Colonel Voyt arrives for the first visit, Maude bolts upstairs to change her dress – which turns out to be the prettiest Mrs Dyott has ever seen her wearing.

Against Colonel Voyt’s objections Maude very passionately defends her argument that it is possible to make fictional drama out of virtue. This alerts Mrs Dyott to the true state of Maude’s feelings for the Colonel.

And although Mrs Dyott’s and Colonel Voyt’s behaviour is the conventional subject of fiction (illicit sexual relations) Maude’s story of quiet unspoken love is of no less interest to a writer skilful enough to make something of it – which is precisely what James does.

The story is therefore very modern in its spirit – in the sense that it comments ironically on its own subject. Another way of looking at it is that Henry James is demonstrating his skills as an author and simultaneously revealing the mechanisms by which his narratives are constructed. Fifty years later Vladimir Nabokov was doing the same thing in stories such as The Vane Sisters.

In fact James is well known as a novelist who can spin gold out of straw or generate drama out of scenes that are apparently static and lacking in any drama – as he does when describing the arrival of Colonel Voyt at Mrs Dyott’s house:

They met, as it were, twice: the first time while the servant was there and the second as soon as he was not. The difference was great between the two encounters, though we must add in justice to the second that its marks were at first mainly negative. This communion consisted only in their having drawn each other for a minute as close as possible—as possible, that is, with no help but the full clasp of hands. Thus they were mutually held, and the closeness was at any rate such that, for a little, though it took account of dangers, it did without words

The Story In It – study resources

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

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

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

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

The Story in It – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

The Story in It – eBook at Project Gutenberg

The Story in It – read the story on line

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

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

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Story in It – plot summary

Part I. Mrs Dyott and her friend the widow Mrs Maude Blessingbourne engage in subdued rivalry on a wet afternoon. Colonel Voyt and arrives and whilst Mrs Blessingbourne is out of the room he asks Mrs Dyott about a letter he sent earlier in the day, which she has burned – the implication being that it is compromising in nature.

Part II. When Mrs Blessingbourne returns they discuss French novels as distinct from English and American, and theories of drama in relation to moral and aesthetic values. The exchanges are mainly couched in the style of Wildean epigrams and paradoxes. Voyt appears to be flirting with Maude, who vigorously defends an argument that it is possible for a woman to be both good and romantic.

Part III. When Colonel Voyt has left Mrs Dyott challenges Maude about her theories and her behaviour. Maude reveals that she has a passion for someone who does not know about or share her feelings – and that is an example of goodness and romance combined.

A few days later Captain Voyt arranges to visit Mrs Dyott alone – confirming that they have an illicit relationship. She tells him that Maude is in love with him. Their own relationship is likened to the subject matter of drama and fiction, but they opine that Maude’s ‘shy romance’ could not be the material of any drama. As Colonel Voyt puts it: “Who but a duffer…would see the shadow of a ‘story’ in it?”

Principal characters

Mrs Dyott	woman in illicit relationship with Colonel Voyt
Mrs Maude Blessingbourne	her friend, a widow
Colonel Voyt	a Tory member of parliament
Mrs Voyt	his wife

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

The Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man 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.
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What Masie Knew (1897) A young girl is caught between parents who are in the middle of personal conflict, adultery, and divorce. Can she survive without becoming corrupted? It’s touch and go – and not made easier for the reader by the attentions of an older man who decides to ‘look after’ her. This comes from the beginning of James’s ‘Late Phase’, so be prepared for longer and longer sentences. In fact it’s said that whilst composing this novel, James switched from writing longhand to using dictation – and it shows if you look carefully enough – part way through the book.
Buy the book at Amazon UK
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 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.

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

The Story of a Masterpiece

August 3, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

The Story of a Masterpiece first appeared in The Galaxy magazine in January 1868. It was not reprinted during James’s own lifetime, and its next appearance in book form was as part of the collection Eight Uncollected Tales of Henry James published in New Brunswick by Rutgers University Press in 1950.

A Potrait of a Woman

The Story of a Masterpiece – critical commentary

The Painting

There are two interesting points of note here. The first is the direct reference to Robert Browning’s well known poem, My Last Duchess which features an Italian Duke showing somebody a portrait of his former wife who he has murdered. Baxter refers to his earlier portrait of Marian, somewhat ironically, as ‘My Last Duchess’ – because he was engaged to her at the time it was first started. The irony is lost on Lennox, who does not know the full truth of his wife-to-be’s past at that point in the story. Though Baxter does not have Marian murdered, but he does break off their engagement because he discovers she has a dubious reputation.

The second item of interest is James’s attempts to present different interpretations of paintings in a literary text. We as readers of course have no image to see, but he offers a persuasive account of how the earlier and the later portraits of Marian might reflect the painter’s attitude towards his model – or are perceived by their principal viewer Lennox according to his attitude to the sitter. When Lennox is enamoured of Marion he thinks the portraits wonderful, but as soon as he suspects her of deception, he views them as revealing her duplicity. This is a little precursor of modernist critical theory at work on the subjective nature of perception. And of course the magical literary trick is that there is no original portrait against which any interpretation can be judged. We only have the painting as described in the text.

And of course the fate of the painting – hacked to pieces because of the corruption it reveals to its owner – is a powerful precursor to the famous scene ot the end of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) when Dorian destroys both his own idealised image as a young man, and himself as the older and corrupt reality.

The ending

The story originally ended as described in the synopsis below. The painting is destroyed, and we are left in doubt about the outcome of the wedding – though on the whole it seems likely that it will still take place, even though the destruction of the portrait suggests that Lennox has seen a glaring weakness in Marian’s character. But James was prevailed upon by the editor of The Galaxy magazine to add the following paragraph to make the ending more explicit for his readers:

I need hardly add that on the following day Lennox was married. He had locked the library door on coming out the evening before, and he had the key in his waistcoat pocket as he stood at the altar. As he left town, therefore, immediately after the ceremony, it was not until his return, a fortnight later, that the fate of the picture became known. It is not necessary to relate how he explained his exploit to Marian and how he disclosed it to Baxter. He at least put on a brave face. There is a rumour current of his having paid the painter an enormous sum of money. The amount is probably exaggerated., but there can be no doubt that the sum was very large. How he has fared – how he is destined to fare – in matrimony, it is rather too early to determine. He has been married scarcely three months.

James was only young at the time, and would understandably feel compelled to comply with the wishes of an editor. But it is interesting to note that he re-introduces the element of doubt into the conclusion by saying ‘it is rather too early to determine’ the outcome of the marriage.

The story certainly fits well with others written around the same time which feature the duplicity and fickleness of women. This is certainly not an isolated instance. In his very first story A Tragedy of Error (1864) an unfaithful wife hires someone to kill her husband; in The Story of a Year (1865) a young woman vows to be faithful to her fiancé whilst he is away at war, and breaks her promise within a very short time; and in A Landscape Painter (1866) a young woman accepts a man’s proposal of marriage, then later reveals that she does not love him and has only married him for his money.

The Story of a Masterpiece – study resources

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

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Story of a Masterpiece – plot summary

Part I

Rich widower John Lennox becomes engaged to poor but pretty Marian Everett in Newport during the summer holidays When they return to New York he visits his friend Gilbert and finds Stephen Baxter painting a portrait he calls ‘My Last Duchess’ which looks surprisingly like Marian. Lennox offers to buy it, but someone else has already bought it.When he tells Marian the news, she reveals that she met Baxter in Europe. Lennox then arranges for Baxter to paint Marian’s portrait.

It is then revealed that Marian became engaged to Baxter whilst in Europe, but both being poor, they agreed to wait until there was an improvement in Baxter’s fortunes. But Baxter overhears a story of Marian’s having been indiscreet with another young man. He checks the story with Mrs Denbigh and discovers that there have been two indiscretions with men who were both rich and handsome. Baxter breaks off his engagement to her.

A year and a half passes before they meet up again in New York, at which point Baxter has gotten over his anger and disappointment. He now finds Marian shallow, and reveals to her that he has become engaged to a girl he left behind in Germany.

Part II

The commissioned portrait is eventually finished. It is a faithful likeness of Marian, but when Lennox contemplates it he feels that it reveals her essential heartlessness. Baxter feels some sympathy with Lennox, but when they inspect the portrait together Lennox is suspicious of Marian and Baxter’s past connection. Baxter admits that he was once in love with her – and Lennox convinces himself that it is Baxter’s disappointment at being rejected by Marian (as he believes) that shows through in the portrait.

Baxter does not betray Marian by revealing the truth of the matter. Lennox then questions Marian about her past with Baxter, but she is evasive. Nevertheless, she is worried that he might be disenchanted with her.

As the day of the marriage draws closer, Lennox feels more ill at ease. He sees the portrait on public display, alongside ‘My Last Duchess’ which he now thinks inferior. He contemplates buying his way out of the engagement by giving Marian all his money and escaping. The portrait is delivered to his home on the eve of the wedding, whereupon he hacks it to pieces.

The Story of a Masterpiece – characters

John Lennox	a rich (millionaire) thirty-five year old widower
Marian Everett	a pretty but penniless young woman
Gilbert	a painter friend of Lennox
Stephen Baxter	a painter friend of Gilbert
Mrs Denbigh	Marian’s chaperone in Europe, a distant relative of Baxter
Sarah	Baxter’s fiancée

Other works by Henry James

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.

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

The Story of a Year

August 2, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

The Story of a Year was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in March 1865. Its next appearance in book form was as part of the collection The American Novels and Stories of Henry James, edited and with an introduction, by F.O. Matthiessen. published by Knopf in New York, 1947.

It is the first of four stories James wrote with the American Civil War as a background. The other tales are Poor Richard (1867), the ghost story The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868), and A Most Extraordinary Case (1868).

The American Civil War 1861-1865

The Story of a Year – critical commentary

It is difficult to understand this tale, except as a rather simplistic plea for male heroism and altruistic self-denial in the face of female inconstancy. John Ford is giving his fiancée every encouragement to form other relationships even before he departs for the war – and the moment he does join the Army of the Potomac, that is exactly what Lizzie does. And although she is pulled between her regard for both men, she is ultimately not faithful to her vows to John – just as his mother predicts.

The ambiguous ending is one which James would use many times in his later fictions. We do not know if Lizzie will really hold out against Mr Bruce or not – just as we are not quite sure what will become of Olive Chancellor at the end of The Bostonians or Isabel Archer at the end of Portrait of a Lady.

The American Civil War

What is not in doubt at all is the sympathy that James obviously felt for those who were conscripted into what was a very bloody battle. All his stories with a Civil War background emphasise the suffering and hardship of the participants. And although James himself was a Yankee with sympathies for the Unionist cause, he was alert to the general and national sense of suffering caused by the dispute.

Because we now think of James as a modernist writer, and bracket him conceptually (and chronologically) with other experimental writers of the twentieth century such as his friends Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf, it is amazing to realise that he was writing whilst the American Civil War was actually taking place. The introduction to this tale flags up both the background of war which had gone on for three years, and (in a very proto-modernist manner) the outcome of the story itself.

My story begins as a great many stories have begun within the last three years, and indeed as a great many have ended; for, when the hero is despatched, does not the romance come to a stop?”

James himself was conscripted into military service, but was excused duty because of a back injury he had sustained whilst pumping water to put out a fire in Boston. Nevertheless, he visited wounded soldiers in hospitals and recovery centres (rather like Walt Whitman) and it is worth noting that all these tales feature suffering and death on the part of all the participants.

There is a scene in his novel The Bostonians which illustrates this very well. In one of the pivotal meetings of the novel the heroine Verena Tarrant takes the hero Basil Ransom to look round Harvard University in Cambridge, just outside Boston. There in the Memorial Hall he looks on the names of those who have died on the opposite side.

The effect of the place is singularly noble and solemn … It stands there for duty and honour, it speaks of sacrifice and example, seems a kind of temple to youth, manhood, generosity. Most of them were young, all were in their prime, and all of them had fallen … For Ransom these things were not a challenge or a taunt; they touched him with respect, with the sentiment of beauty. He was capable of being a generous foeman, and he forgot, now, the whole question of sides and parties; the simple emotion of the old fighting-time came back to him, and the monument around him seemed an embodiment of that memory; it arched over his friends as well as enemies, the victims of defeat as well as the sons of triumph.

The Story of a Year – study resources

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America [$13.95] Amazon US

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Story of a Year – plot summary

Part I. Lieutenant John Ford and his fiancée Lizzie Crowe contemplate his departure to the Civil War in Virginia. He encourages her not to sentimentalise his memory if he is killed. He wishes her to enjoy herself whilst he is away, and he also thinks their engagement should be kept secret. When they reach home, his call-up papers have arrived. John nevertheless reveals the engagement to his mother, who thinks Lizzie is shallow and that her son deserves a batter class of wife. John asks his mother to keep their conversation secret.

Part II. Whilst John is away Lizzie enjoys a blissful sense of being at one with the world. Mrs Ford keeps a watchful and critical eye on her, and feels that the girl is patronising her because she only reads portions of John’s letters. Gradually, Lizzie begins to think less of he fiancé..

Part III. Mrs Ford engineers a visit for Lizzie to Mrs Littlefield, where she dresses up and meets Mr Bruce at a dance. A relationship between them flourishes. He puts her onto the train back home, where they learn via newspapers that John has been severely injured in the war. When Lizzie gets back home Mrs Ford announces that she is going to her son and will nurse him.

Part IV. Whilst Lizzie waits at home she is conflicted over her feelings for John and Mr Bruce. She becomes pale and ill, and even fantasises about committing suicide..She goes to stay with the local doctor’s housekeeper Miss Cooper, and they are visited by Mr Bruce.

Part V. Lizzie is on her own when news arrives that John is worse and expected to die. Then Bruce arrives and proposes to her. She tentatively accepts him, but then John unexpectedly recovers and is sent home. Bruce arrives, but she turns him away. She re-unites herself with John, but she is kept away from him, because he is so fragile. Mrs Ford is also ill from her nursing efforts. John finally summons Lizzie, tells her he is going to die, and gives her his blessing for her relationship with Bruce. John dies the next day, and Bruce arrives to claim her. She bids him farewell, but he refuses to go.

The Story of a Year – principal characters

Lieutenant John Ford	conscript in the Union army
Mrs Ford	his mother, and Lizzie’s guardian
Elizabeth (Lizzie) Crowe	a pretty girl of twenty
Mrs Littlefield	a childless matron
Mr Bruce	a tall, educated, and rich businessman
Mrs Cooper	ugly housekeeper to local doctor

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

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

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.

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

The String Quartet

March 30, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

The String Quartet was written in January 1921 and first appeared in Monday or Tuesday (1921) – a collection of experimental short prose pieces Virginia Woolf had written between 1917 and 1921. It was published by the Hogarth Press and also included A Society, A Haunted House, An Unwritten Novel, Monday or Tuesday, Blue and Green, and Solid Objects.

Virginia Woolf

The String Quartet – critical commentary

Composition

The story contains an impressionistic account of a string quartet performance, but in its own structure echoes the four parts of the traditional musical form – Allegro, Moderato, Minuet, and Sonata-Rondo

The introduction is an account of the narrator’s consciousness and a setting of the scene in the concert hall. This is followed in the next part by the first piece of music. When this finishes, the third part of the narrative returns to distracting events in the hall. And finally, in the fourth part of the story there is a second and more extended piece of music.

Words and music

Writing about music is notoriously difficult, because music itself is entirely abstract. It doesn’t mean anything, but can have a powerful emotional affect upon listeners.

Woolf chooses to render her account of these effects in the form of poetic language and impressionistic images:

‘Flourish, spring, burgeon, burst! … Fountains jet; drops descend … washing shadows over the silver fish, the spotted fish rushed down by the swift waters, now swept into an eddy

And in her account of the second piece of music she conjures up pictures of medieval romance:

the Prince, who was writing in the large vellum book in the oriel window, came out in his velvet skull-cap and furred slippers, snatched a rapier from the wall — the King of Spain’s gift, you know — on which I escaped …

Stream of consciousness

Virginia Woolf was developing the literary technique called ‘stream of consciousness’ at the same time as her famous contemporary James Joyce (of whose work she did not entirely approve) and the very little known Dorothy Richardson. The strategy attempts to reproduce the activity of human consciousness as it deals with the dizzying combination of original thoughts and the bombardment of sense impressions from the outside world.

The result is often a combination of semi-coherent reflections, observations of the material world, and further reactions to those observations – expressed simultaneously in the same way they are experienced. Added to this mixture will usually be the fragments and trivia of everyday life as it impinges on us.

The narrator in this story is conscious of being in the centre of London, of world political events, the weather, the price of housing, and the results of the influenza pandemic (which killed more people that the recent war in 1918-1919) as well as a household repair that has been overlooked:

If indeed it’s true, as they’re saying, that Regent Street is up, and the Treaty signed, and the weather not cold for this time of year, and even at that rent not a flat to be had, and the worst of influenza its after effects; if I bethink me of having forgotten to write about the leak in the larder …

The String Quartet – study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

Monday or Tuesday and Other Stories – Gutenberg.org

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon UK

Kew Gardens and Other Stories – Hogarth reprint – Amazon US

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Mark on the Wall – Oxford World Classics edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

A String Quartet – complete text at Bartelby.com

A String Quartet – an alternative reading

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

The String Quartet – story synopsis

An un-named narrator has arrived at a musical recital in the centre of London, and reflects upon the invasion of a person’s thoughts by the trivial phenomena of everyday life.

Social chit-chat is exchanged amongst members of the audience, and underneath the trivia there is a search for some sort of meaning or significance.

A string quartet enters and plays what appears to be a Schubert composition but is said to be by Mozart. The narrator finds the emotions unlocked by the music unsettling and the audience distracting.

A second piece of music is rendered in romantic medieval imagery, which appears to engulf the narrator completely, until it is time to return to the street and go home.

The String Quartet – first appearance

Cover design by Vanessa Bell

The String Quartet – further reading

Quentin Bell. Virginia Woolf: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972.

Hermione Lee. Virginia Woolf. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Nicholas Marsh. Virginia Woolf, the Novels. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998.

John Mepham, Virginia Woolf. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992.

Natalya Reinhold, ed. Woolf Across Cultures. New York: Pace University Press, 2004.

Michael Rosenthal, Virginia Woolf: A Critical Study. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979.

Susan Sellers, The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader. New York: Harvest Books, 2002.

Alex Zwerdling, Virginia Woolf and the Real World. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

Other works by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse (1927) is the second of the twin jewels in the crown of her late experimental phase. It is concerned with the passage of time, the nature of human consciousness, and the process of artistic creativity. Woolf substitutes symbolism and poetic prose for any notion of plot, and the novel is composed as a tryptich of three almost static scenes – during the second of which the principal character Mrs Ramsay dies – literally within a parenthesis. The writing is lyrical and philosophical at the same time. Many critics see this as her greatest achievement, and Woolf herself realised that with this book she was taking the novel form into hitherto unknown territory.
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Orlando (1928) is one of her lesser-known novels, although it’s critical reputation has risen in recent years. It’s a delightful fantasy which features a character who changes sex part-way through the book – and lives from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. Using this device (which turns out to be strangely credible) Woolf explores issues of gender and identity as her hero-heroine moves through a variety of lives and personal adventures. Orlando starts out as an emissary to the Court of St James, lives through friendships with Swift and Alexander Pope, and ends up motoring through the west end of London on a shopping expedition in the 1920s. The character is loosely based on Vita Sackville-West, who at one time was Woolf’s lover. The novel itself was described by Nigel Nicolson (Sackville-West’s son) as ‘the longest and most charming love-letter in literature’.
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Kew Gardens is a collection of experimental short stories in which Woolf tested out ideas and techniques which she then later incorporated into her novels. After Chekhov, they represent the most important development in the modern short story as a literary form. Incident and narrative are replaced by evocations of mood, poetic imagery, philosophic reflection, and subtleties of composition and structure. The shortest piece, ‘Monday or Tuesday’, is a one-page wonder of compression. This collection is a cornerstone of literary modernism. No other writer – with the possible exception of Nadine Gordimer, has taken the short story as a literary genre as far as this.
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Virginia Woolf is a readable and well illustrated biography by John Lehmann, who at one point worked as her assistant and business partner at the Hogarth Press. It is described by the blurb as ‘A critical biography of Virginia Woolf containing illustrations that are a record of the Bloomsbury Group and the literary and artistic world that surrounded a writer who is immensely popular today’. This is an attractive and very accessible introduction to the subject which has been very popular with readers ever since it was first published..
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Buy the book at Amazon US

Virginia Woolf – web links

Virginia Woolf at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

Blogging Woolf
Book reviews, Bloomsbury related issues, links, study resources, news of conferences, exhibitions, and events, regularly updated.

Virginia Woolf at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of her work, fiction and non-fiction publications, photograph albumns, list of biographies, and external web links

Virginia Woolf at Gutenberg
Selected eTexts of her novels and stories in a variety of digital formats.

Woolf Online
An electronic edition and commentary on To the Lighthouse with notes on its composition, revisions, and printing – plus relevant extracts from the diaries, essays, and letters.

Hyper-Concordance to Virginia Woolf
Search texts of all the major novels and essays, word by word – locate quotations, references, and individual terms

Orlando – Sally Potter’s film archive
The text and film script, production notes, casting, locations, set designs, publicity photos, video clips, costume designs, and interviews.

Women’s History Walk in Bloomsbury
Tour of literary and political homes in Bloomsbury – including Gordon Square, Gower Street, Bedford Square, Tavistock Square, plus links to women’s history web sites.

Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain
Bulletins of events, annual lectures, society publications, and extensive links to Woolf and Bloomsbury related web sites

BBC Audio Essay – A Eulogy to Words
Charming sound recording of radio talk given by Virginia Woolf in 1937 – a podcast accompanied by a slideshow of photographs.

A Family Photograph Albumn
Leslie Stephen compiled a photograph album and wrote an epistolary memoir, known as the “Mausoleum Book,” to mourn the death of his wife, Julia, in 1895 – an archive at Smith College – Massachusetts

Virginia Woolf first editions
Hogarth Press book jacket covers of the first editions of Woolf’s novels, essays, and stories – largely designed by her sister, Vanessa Bell.

Virginia Woolf – on video
Biographical studies and documentary videos with comments on Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group and the social background of their times.

Virginia Woolf Miscellany
An archive of academic journal essays 2003—2014, featuring news items, book reviews, and full length studies.

More on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf – short stories
Virginia Woolf – greatest works
Virginia Woolf – criticism
Virginia Woolf – life and works

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux

July 13, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux first appeared in The Galaxy magazine for June 1873. It was not reprinted until 1919 as part of Travelling Companions along with six other early Henry James stories, published by Boni and Liveright in New York.

Portrait of a Lady in a Yellow Shawl

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – critical commentary

This is one of many stories James wrote about art and artists – particularly painters. The premise of the tale is simple enough, and represents a traditionally romantic view of art. Harold Staines is handsome and rich, but he lacks artistic talent. M. Briseux on the other hand is poor and unsuccessful – but he has both artistic insight and skill. Briseux is also a man of principle who turns down an offer of money in order to complete the portrait. The poor but talented artist is something of a cliché which has had a persistently vigorous life ever since it first came into being.

It is echoed here by the complementary cliché of the woman who chooses the poor hero over the rich wastrel. The woman in the portrait refuses Harold Staines when he challenges her, and throws her lot in with the poor Briseux instead. She thereby loses her comfortable position within the Staines family, and is forced to go back to her (poorer) home.

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – study resources

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

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – plot summary

An un-named narrator is looking at paintings in the museum of a French provincial town. The gallery has acquired The Lady with a Yellow Shawl, an impressive work by the best-known local artist, Briseux. The narrator sees a woman in the gallery looking at the picture very intently, and suspects her to be the original subject of the portrait. Later in the day he meets her in the town and she tells him her story, which forms the remainder of the narrative,

She has lived under the protection of Mrs Lucretia Staines, an old friend of her mother. Mrs Staines has a handsome but shiftless son Harold, who decides to become an artist. They all travel to Rome, where he makes copies of old masters. Then he proposes to her, which at first is a delight to her, but then becomes a burden. Mrs Staines however approves the match.

They move on to Paris, where Harold makes copies in the Louvre, The woman delays the marriage, but then challenges him to paint her portrait, after which she promises to settle a date. Harold struggles with the portrait, and one day whilst he is absent from his studio during a sitting, the young painter Briseux appears and denounces the painting as rubbish.

He is hungry and destitute, but very confident about his own talent. She offers to give him money, but instead he finishes off the portrait.

Harold returns and is angry at this interference with his ‘work’: He tells her to leave the studio, but she sees the shabby figure of Briseux as a positive saviour, and that of the handsome Harold as a negative life force. She refuses to move. Harold says she must chose between them: she chooses Briseux, who then finishes off the painting.

She parts from the Staines family and goes back home. Briseux exhibits the picture at the Paris salon and it is deemed a masterpiece which establishes his reputation.

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – principal characters

I	the un-named American outer narrator
—	an un-named woman who is the subject of the painting
Pierre Briseux	a poor French painter
Mrs Lucretia Staines	a disappointed widow
Harold Staines	her handsome but untalented son

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Other works by Henry James

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Henry James – web links

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

The 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.

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

The Symbol

November 24, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Symbol was not published during Virginia Woolf’s lifetime. Her diaries in the late 1930s record her intention to write something which involved snow and the top of a mountain: ‘There are very few mountain summit moments. I mean, looking out at peace, from a height’. It is interesting to note that this seemingly positive image of a mountain top as the subject of a story contains no hints of the complexities of the narrative or the event which undercuts the ending in its finished version.

The Symbol – critical commentary

Some of Virginia Woolf’s experimental short stories are not much more than static tableaux – non-dramatic sketches of situations held together by related images (Kew Gardens). Some of them might be structured merely by the passage of time (Monday or Tuesday) or by the play of individual imagination (The Mark on the Wall). Others might introduce dramatic tension and the human subjects of conventional prose fiction – only to destroy them as misleading constructions of the imagination (An Unwritten Novel).

The Symbol is Woolf’s version of the ‘surprise ending’ – a story which appears to be concerned with one thing, but which turns out to be about something else – which is precisely the function of the symbol or the metaphor. It is significant that this story originally carried the title ‘Inconclusions’ but was replaced by ‘The Symbol’ during the revision of the typescript some time in 1941 – thus representing her last possible thoughts on the matter.

The mountain is there as a symbol of a challenge which attracts young men to explore it, to climb up it, and to overcome the dangers that it represents. The death of her dying mother is the guilt-inducing symbol of what the letter-writer wishes for – a life free from parental servitude with the possibility of following the family tradition of travel and exploration.

She has wished to explore, like the young men climbing the mountain, but instead has eventually taken the safe option of marriage. There is very little evidence in the text to suggest that a direct comparison is being made, but since there is no other substantial material in the narrative we are free to draw this inference.

Structure

The death of the mountaineers might seem to come as a surprise at the end of the story, but in fact all elements of the outcome of the story have been flagged up in the opening paragraph. The snow is ‘dead white’ [my emphasis]; the atmosphere on the mountain is ‘too high for breathing flesh or fur covered life’; and in the valley below there are ‘graves in the churchyard … recorded the names of several men who had fallen climbing’.

The letter-writer reflects upon the danger that the mountain represents to the local villagers, but does so with a thought which fits exactly her own situation when nursing her dying mother: ‘Ought one not to be ashamed of dwelling upon what after all can’t be cured?’

Study resources

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Shorter Fiction – Harcourt edition – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Virginia Woolf – Kindle edition

The Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

Virginia Woolf – Authors in Context – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Virginia Woolf – Amazon UK

The Symbol – synopsis

The setting of the story is an Alpine summer resort visually dominated by the local snow-capped mountain. On the balcony of a local hotel an un-named woman is writing to her sister in England, whilst below a young man she knows vaguely is part of a group preparing for the ascent. She thinks the mountain is a symbol, but isn’t quite sure of what.

She reflects on her earlier life when she nursed her dying mother, and thinks how her mother’s death seemed to her at the time like a symbol – because it would release her from caring into the freedom to get married. Coming from an Anglo-Indian family of explorers, she had a desire to explore for herself, but opted for marriage instead.

In her letter she likens the Alpine resort to Birmingham, and mentions that the inhabitants (largely invalids) are dominated by their consciousness of the mountain, and she wonders if it could be ‘removed’ from them as an impediment. But she thinks it is perhaps selfish to be concerned with something which cannot be changed, and has been assured that the mountain is quite safe and benign.

Later that night she learns that the mountaineers, including the young man, have died trying to climb the mountain.

Virginia Woolf – Monk’s House at Rodmell

Other works by Virginia Woolf

Jacob’s Room (1922) was Woolf’s first and most dramatic break with traditional narrative fiction. It was also the first of her novels she published herself, as co-founder of the Hogarth Press. This gave her for the first time the freedom to write exactly as she wished. The story is a thinly disguised portrait of her brother Thoby – as he is perceived by others, and in his dealings with two young women. The novel does not have a conventional plot, and the point of view shifts constantly and without any signals or transitions from one character to another. Woolf was creating a form of story telling in which several things are discussed at the same time, creating an impression of simultaneity, and a flow of continuity in life which was one of her most important contributions to literary modernism.
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