Tutorials

literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

literary studies, cultural history, and study skill techniques

The Tree of Knowledge

May 28, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Tree of Knowledge first appeared in the volume of short stories published under the collective title The Soft Side in 1900 – a remarkably productive year for Henry James. It was a period which saw the publication of The Great Good Place, Maud-Evelyn, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, The Abasement of the Northmores, The Third Person, The Tone of Time, and the story which is widely regarded as his finest – The Beast in the Jungle. He wrote all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

The artist’s studio

The Tree of Knowledge – critical commentary

This is one of many stories James wrote about artists and their varying degrees of success. Morgan Mallow is a hopelessly untalented sculptor who is blind to his own lack of skill but has apparently persuaded the people around him otherwise. The main point of the story is first his son’s realisation that his father is a fraud, and then the revelation that his devoted and supportive wife has been aware of his artistic failure all along.

The most noteworthy thing about the story is the lofty and droll manner in which James conveys Mallow’s lack of talent as a sculptor.

The room they sat in was adorned with sundry specimens of the Master’s genius…They were indeed of dimensions not customary in the products of the chisel and had the singularity that, if the objects and features intended to be small looked too large, the objects and features intended to be large looked too small…The creations [ …] stood about on pedestals and brackets, on tables and shelves, a little staring white population, heroic, idyllic, allegoric, mythic, symbolic, in which “scale” had so strayed and lost itself that the public square and the chimney-piece seemed to have changed places, the monumental being all diminutive and the diminutive all monumental

The Tree of Knowledge – 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 Tree of Knowledge – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

The Tree of Knowledge – eBook formats at Gutenberg Consortia

The Tree of Knowledge – 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 Tree of Knowledge – plot summary

Part I. Peter Brench is a bachelor and a writer of sorts who is very friendly with Morgan Mallow, a hopelessly untalented sculptor who gives himself great airs and lives on his wife’s money. Brench has been a long time admirer of Mrs Mallow and is godfather to her son Lance. Brench keeps to himself his belief that Mallow lacks talent, whilst Mrs Mallow helps to support the idea that her husband is an unrecognised genius.

Part II. When Lance comes of age he announces that he is giving up studying at Cambridge in favour of going to Paris to become an artist of some kind. Brench tries to dissuade him – without success. Mallow meanwhile recieves a commission from a wealthy Canadian to carve a tombstone.

Part III. Lance eventually returns from Paris, revealing to Peter Brench that he now realises the truth about his father’s lack of talent. Brench shares his own opinions, but asks him to conceal the truth for the sake of his mother’s feelings.

Part IV. Lance returns to Paris, but his father begins to put pressure on him to produce some tangible evidence of success. When Lance feels he can longer remain silent regarding his father’s fraudulence, he reveals to Brench that his mother has confessed to him that she too all along has secretly known about her husband’s lack of talent.

Principal characters

Peter Brench	bachelor (50) and ‘writer’
Morgan Mallow	his friend, a sculptor
Mrs Mallow	Mallow’s wife
Lance (Lancelot)	their son
Egidio	their Italian footman

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More tales by James
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More on the novella
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The Trial

August 6, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Kafka’s one completed novel masterpiece

The Trial was the only novel Kafka ever more-or-less completed during his own lifetime. Most of his other work is renowned for being fragmentary and incomplete. But even so, its chapters were kept in separate folders and he gave no indication of the order in which they were to appear. The parts were assembled and published by his friend Max Brod in 1925, the year after Kafka’s death. It is a novel which seems to give an amazingly premonitory account of the horrors in the modern totalitarian world.

It deals with the arbitrary nature of power threatening the freedom of the individual and the crushing of every attempt to understand its workings. The novel opens with a sentence which has become famous – heralding the nightmare to come: “Somebody must have been telling lies about Joseph K, for one morning without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.” This is the ‘knock on the door’ which was to become an everyday experience for millions in the years that followed in the totalitarian worlds of Stalin’s Russia and the Nazi period of German’s history. Needless to say, it has also become commonplace throughout the world ever since – from Franco’s Spain and Pinochet’s Chile to China, North Korea, and today’s middle-East.

Joseph K’s offense is never explained to him, and the illogical nature of his helplessly vulnerable condition is pursued relentlessly throughout the narrative. Indeed, it gets worse with each of his efforts to understand or do anything about it. He appeals to all forms of bureaucratic authority for help and clarification, but gets nowhere.

Of course, no trial in the ordinary sense of that word takes place. He never discovers the precise charge which is made against him. Once he is arrested, an examining magistrate inquires into the case against him – and the process [Der Prozess is the German title of the novel] gradually merges into the verdict.

Joseph K visits a number of people and even the court itself in pursuit of his self defense. Every venue seems more bizarre than the last. A courtroom which is more like a madhouse; a lawyer’s office which seems more like a derelict cathedral; and a painter’s studio which is packed with lubricious young girls.

Many possible interpretations of the story have been discussed at length in the critical writing on Kafka. First there were the religious and existential approaches to explain why Joseph K feels guilty, even when he doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong. Then the psychoanalytic and biographical theories, based on guilt about his family or his fiancee Felice Bauer to whom he was twice engaged. Western Europeans favoured the existential approach, whereas the old Eastern bloc countries understandably read Kafka as expressing the fate of the individual denied freedom by bureaucratic tyrannies. Both approaches can be equally convincing, and more are possible.

These new editions of Kafka’s main works from Oxford University Press offer fresh translations, and they come with extended introductory essays, full explanatory notes, a bibliography, and both a biographical preface on Kafka and a chronology of his life. They also explain the very complex provenance of the text, and included as a bonus are fragments from the novel discovered amongst Kafka’s papers after his death. Generations of scholars have been unable to decide exactly where they belong in the novel, so they are offered as appendices.

This is one of the key texts in early twentieth century modernism. Kafka was unlike any other writer before or since (even though he has many pale imitators). If you have not read Kafka before, it’s probably better to start with some of his short stories – such as Metamorphosis. When you’re ready, this novel will be waiting for you – like a nightmare ready to happen.

1962 film version – directed by Orson Wells

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Franz Kafka, The Trial, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp.191, ISBN: 0199238294

More on Franz Kafka
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The Trial

January 27, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, characters, video, resource materials

The Trial is Kafka’s one indisputably successful novel – a haunting and original study in existential anxiety, paranoia, and persecution. Joseph K is accused one day of being guilty – but not told what crime he has committed. He wrestles hopelessly with legal officials and a nightmare-like court which acts on arbitrary rules, striving to find justice. In the end he fails, only to be killed ‘like a dog’. Kafka gave expression to modern anxiety three decades before most people even started feeling it. This is a novel which stands outside literary norms – a superb achievement of literary modernism. Be prepared for black humour as well as mind-bending contradictions and deeply etched literary expressionism.

Franz Kafka

The Trial – plot summary

Joseph K is a senior bank clerk who lives in lodgings. On his thirtieth birthday he is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, however, but left at home to await instructions from the Committee of Affairs.

K goes to visit the magistrate, but instead is forced to have a meeting with an attendant’s wife. Looking at the Magistrate’s books, he discovers a cache of pornography.

He returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.

Later, in a store room at his own bank, K discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a flogger for asking K. for bribes, as a result of complaints K. previously made about them to the Magistrate. K. tries to argue with the flogger, saying that the men need not be whipped, but the flogger cannot be swayed. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he had found it the day before, including the Whipper and the two agents.

K is visited by his uncle, who is a friend of a lawyer. The uncle seems distressed by K’s predicament. At first sympathetic, he becomes concerned K is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces K to an advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse, who K’s uncle suspects is the advocate’s mistress. K. has a sexual encounter with Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle’s anger, and to the detriment of his case.

K visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. He returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.

K is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a court painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. K learns that, to Titorelli’s knowledge, not a single defendant has ever been acquitted. He sets out what K’s options are, but they all consist merely of delaying tactics to stretch out his case as long as possible before the inevitable ‘Guilty’ verdict.

K decides to take control of his own life and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate’s office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K some insight from a client’s perspective. Block’s case has continued for five years and he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate’s meaningless and circular advice. The advocate mocks Block in front of K for his dog-like subservience.

K is asked to tour an Italian client around local places of cultural interest, but the Italian client short of time asks K. to tour him around only the cathedral, setting a time to meet there. When the client doesn’t show up, K explores the cathedral which is empty except for an old woman and a church official. K decides to leave as a priest K notices seems to be preparing to give a sermon from a small second pulpit, lest it begin and K be compelled to stay for its entirety. Instead of giving a sermon, the priest calls out K’s name, although K has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K a fable, (which has been published separately as ‘Before the Law’) that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K’s fate is hopeless.

Over the course of the year, the stress of the case weighs on K He begins a gradual decline from confident to a nervous state similar to that of the client Block, and those of other broken defendants he meets in the explosively hot law offices. At the bank, he is humiliated by his inability to handle an important client as he is constantly exhausted from worry.

On the last day of K’s thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him by plunging a knife into his heart.

Study resources

The Trial – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Trial – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Trial – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon UK

The Trial – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon US

The Trial – Dover Thrift – Amazon UK

The Trial – Dover Thrift – Amazon US

The Trial – Everyman’s Library Classics – Amazon UK

The Trial – Everyman’s Library Classics – Amazon US

The Trial – eBook formats at Project Gutenburg

The Trial – Orson Welles’ 1967 film version – Amazon UK

The Trial – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

The Trial – audioBook at Project Gutenberg

The Trial – book review

The Trial – as a graphic novel

Kafka: A Short Introduction – book review

The Trial – 1992 film version by Harold Pinter

The Cambridge Companion to Kafka – Amazon UK

Principal characters

Joseph K	a senior bank clerk
Fraulein Burstner	a boarder in the same house as K
Fraulein Montag	a friend of Fraulein Burstner
Frau Grubach	proprietress of the house where K lives
Uncle Karl	K’s uncle and former guardian
Herr Huld	a pompous and pretentious lawyer
Leni	Herr Huld’s seductive nurse
Vice-President	K’s rival at the bank
President	the manager of the bank
Rudi Block	an accused man, former grain-dealer
Titorelli	a court painter

Kafka’s writing

a page of Kafka’s manuscript

Franz Kafka: Illustrated Life This is a photographic biography that offers an intimate portrait in an attractive format. A lively text is accompanied by over 100 evocative images, many in colour and some previously unpublished. They depict the author’s world – family, friends, and artistic circle in old Prague – together with original book jackets, letters, and other ephemera. This is an excellent starting point for beginners which captures fin de siecle Europe beautifully.

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The Trial – film version

Orson Welles wrote and directed (and acted in) a magnificent film version of The Trial in 1962. It’s a faithful dramatisation of the novel which captures perfectly the brooding, nightmarish world of the original. Much of it was filmed in the old French government buildings of the Quai d’Orsay before it was transformed into the present museum.

A young Anthony Perkins gives a superb, haunting performance as the angst-ridden protagonist, Joseph K. The rest of the cast features female icons from the 1960s including Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, and Romy Schneider. Welles’ favourite actor Akim Tamiroff is also on hand, and Welles himself plays the Advocate. This is a film which is very faithful to the original novel. It begins with Orson Wells providing voice-over to a comic-book version of the parable ‘Before the Law’.

Film version cast list

Anthony Perkins	Joseph K
Jeanne Moreau	Fraulein Burstner
Romy Schneider	Leni
Elsa Martinelli	Hilda
Orson Welles	The Advocate
Akim Tamiroff	Bloch
Madeleine Robinson	Frau Grubach

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Photomontage

Kafka, family photos, and old Prague

Other works by Franz Kafka

Metamorphosis (1915) is truly one of Kafka’s masterpieces – a stunning parable which lends itself to psychological, sociological, or existential interpretations. It’s the tale of a man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. His family are horrified, gradually disown him, and he dies of neglect, with a rotting apple lodged in his side. Franz Kafka is one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early twentieth century. He was a novelist and writer of short stories whose works came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth century literature.

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Amerika (also known as The Man who Disappeared) is Kafka’s first attempt at a novel. He is renowned for documenting the horrors of modern life, but Kafka also had a lighter and amusing side. This is incomplete, like so much else he wrote. It’s the story of Karl Rossmann who after an embarrassing sexual misadventure is expelled from his European home and goes to live in an imaginary United States (which of course Kafka had never visited). In fact it’s a reverse ‘Rags to Riches’ story, because Karl starts his engagement with the American Dream quite successfully – but by the end of the novel he is destitute. The story is deeply symbolic – as usual – and an interesting supplement to the central texts. The first chapter is frequently anthologised as ‘The Stoker’.
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Franz Kafka – web links

Franz Kafka at Mantex
Biographical notes, book reviews and study guides on the major works, video presentations and documentaries, adaptations for cinema and television, and links to Kafka archives.

Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats – in both English and German.

Franz Kafka at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, survey of the stories and novels, publishing history, translations, critical interpretation, and extensive bibliographies.

Franz Kafka at 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.

Kafka in Love
Video photomontage featuring portraits of Kafka, his friends and family, and locations in Prague – with a rather schmaltzy soundtrack in Yiddish and English.

Kafka-Metamorphosis
A public Wiki dedicated to Kafka and his work, featuring the short stories, interpretations, and further web links.

Kafka Society of America
Academic group with annual meetings and publications. Also features links to other Kafka-related sites

Oxford Kafka Research Centre
Academic group based at Oxford University that tracks current research and meetings. [Doesn’t seem to have been updated since 2012.]

The Kafka Project
Critical editions and translations of Kafka’s work in several languages, plus articles, literary criticism, bibliographies.

Tribute to Franz Kafka
Individual fan site (created by ‘Herzogbr’) featuring a collection of texts, reviews, and enthusiast essays. Badly in need of updating, but contains some interesting gems.

Finding Kafka in Prague
Quirky compilation of photos locating Kafka in his home town – with surrealist additions and weird sound track.

Who Owns Kafka?
Essay by Judith Butler from the London Review of Books on the contentious issues of ownership of Kafka’s manuscripts where they are currently held in Israel – complete with podcast.

The Kafka Archive – latest news
Guardian newspaper report on the suitcase full of Kafka and Max Brod’s papers released by Israeli library.

Franz Kafka: an illustrated life
Book review of a charming short biography with some unusual period photos of Kafka and Prague.

More on Franz Kafka
More on the novella
More on literary studies
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The Triumph of Night

February 16, 2014 by Roy Johnson

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

The Triumph of Night was first published in 1914, and was one of a number of ghost stories written by Edith Wharton in the first part of the twentieth century. She believed that a tale of the supernatural should have the ability to ‘send a cold shiver down one’s spine’, but she did not resort to conventional depictions of ghosts and the spirit world. Instead, she believed in evoking states of psychological mystery and terror – rather like her friend and fellow novelist Henry James, who shared her interest in supernatural stories.

a New England winter scene

The Triumph of Night – critical commentary

It is difficult to offer a rational critical analysis of a ghost story unless you are prepared to suspend disbelief in the supernatural, but fortunately Edith Wharton does not make an understanding of The Triumph of Night dependent upon a belief in ghosts.

The story at a surface reading is seemingly mysterious, almost to the point of being inexplicable – but in fact Edith Wharton is employing a literary device she uses in some of her other stories. That is, the apparent omission of important information which only becomes available when the story has been subject to close reading and interpretation.

When stranded on a wintry night, George Foxon is treated to warm hospitality by John Lavington, a man who he has never met before; and yet despite being offered the comfort of a flower-filled bedroom, Foxon feels that there is something discomforting about the house:

Mr Lavington’s intense personality – intensely negative, yet intense all the same – must, in some occult way, have penetrated every corner of his dwelling.

Mr Lavington has a smile – but it is a fixed smile. And it becomes apparent that despite his superficial generosity, he does not have his nephew’s best interests at heart. Frank Rainer, who seems to be suffering from tuberculosis, has been advised for the sake of his health to go to a warmer, drier climate in New Mexico. Indeed, his state of being is so enfeebled that Mr Balch thinks he should go there ‘at once‘. But his uncle has kept him in New Hampshire, and he sends him out into the snow swept night to retrieve Foxon when he leaves the house in fear.

We do not need a supernatural explanation for the story. Young Frank Rainer is virtually murdered by his uncle John Lavington. But what is Lavington’s motive?

The business meeting Lavington has concluded with Grisben and Balch is the witnessing of Frank Rainer’s will, being made on the occasion of his having reached the age of twenty-one. The event is punctuated by rumours of an impending financial crisis – ‘the biggest crash since ’93’. And we learn later that Lavington was caught up in financial corruption on a ‘Gigantic’ scale – and yet he is able to come forward with a plan to bale out the cement company with a donation of ten million dollars of his own money.

The implication is that he has come by this money via Frank’s will, and that he is therefore responsible for Frank’s death. Underneath the fixed smile, that is his truly malevolent intention – and it is that which Foxon ‘sees’ in the double figure who appear behind Lavington’s chair in the business meeting and at dinner. The double is the truly and ‘intensely negative’ side of Lavington who represents that unsavoury and unprincipled side of American capitalism.

Foxon’s dilemma is that he was vaguely aware that something was wrong, but he did nothing to act – in time. He felt that he was ‘the instrument singled out to warn and save’ someone. He is with young Frank in his last moments and releases his fur collar – only to have his hands covered in blood – from Frank’s death by tuberculosis, brought on by the hostile climate of New England in which his uncle has kept him.

The Triumph of Night – study resources

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Triumph of Night – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

The Triumph of Night – paperback edition – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton – biography

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Edith Wharton at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Edith Wharton’s Short Stories – publication details

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Triumph of Night – plot synopsis

Part I. George Foxon has been employed by Mrs Culme as a secretary. He is travelling to join her in New Hampshire when he is stranded at a remote train station on a stormy mid-winter night. Frank Rainer, a friendly but emaciated young man offers him temporary lodgings at the house of John Lavington, his rich uncle, where Foxon is made very welcome.

Part II. The house is warm and comfortable, yet Foxon detects something cold and unfriendly in its ambiance. His bedroom is full of flowers. He joins John Lavington and two business associates who are witnessing the will of Frank Rainer, who has just reached his majority of twenty-one. The group is joined briefly by a mysterious figure who casts hostile glances at Frank.

Part III. The group of men go to dinner, where Frank’s health is discussed. He has been advised to leave for a drier and warmer climate in New Mexico, and is offered a free trip and accommodation there. Foxon sees the mysterious figure in the room again, standing behind John Lavington’s chair, looking malevolently at Frank, though nobody else appears to notice. They drink a toast to Frank, but Foxon is transfixed and terrified by the mystery figure.

Part IV. He bolts to his room, anxious that he alone should be singled out to witness the figure. He rushes out of the house into the snow and dark, wondering if his social isolation has predisposed him to such visions. Frank Rainer catches up with him, and they start back to return to the house, but Foxon feels that he is leading Frank back to his doom. They stop at the lodge, where Frank collapses and dies.

Part V. Foxon subsequently has a breakdown, then goes on a tour of Malaysia to recover. There he reads in old newspapers that John Lavington has been involved in a gigantic financial scandal, from which he has bought himself out with ten million dollars. Foxon regrets that he was given the chance to save someone, but did not act in time, and feels that he has ‘blood on his hands’.

Principal characters

George Foxon	a Boston secretary
Mrs Culme	his new employer, who he never meets
Frank Rainer	a cheerful but sickly young man (21)
John Lavington	his rich uncle
Mr Grisben	business associate of Lavington
Mr Balch	business associate of Lavington

Video documentary

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
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The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
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Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Short Stories of Edith Wharton
This is an old-fashioned but excellently detailed site listing the publication details of all Edith Wharton’s eighty-six short stories – with links to digital versions available free on line.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

The Turn of the Screw

February 19, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Turn of the Screw (1898) is a classic ghost story which has defied conclusive interpretation ever since it was first published. A governess in a remote country house is in charge of two children who appear to be haunted by former employees, who are now supposed to be dead. But are they? The story is drenched in complexities – including the central issue of the reliability of the person who is telling the tale. This can be seen as a subtle, self-conscious exploration of the traditional theme of the haunted house, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease. Or is it simply, “the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read”?

Henry James – by John Singer Sargeant

The Turn of the Screw – critical commentary

The film versions and the opera are explicit interpretations of the novella – because both of them make physically manifest the figures of Peter Quint and Miss Jessell. The text of the novella offers no such manifestations. These two characters do not appear in the story at all: they are only described by the governess and discussed by her with others.

At no time does anyone else see the figures the governess claims to have observed. She is always alone at such moments as her sightings occur. There is no evidence in the text that anybody else sees the figures the governess claims to see.

The governess ‘discusses’ Peter Quint and Miss Jessel with Mrs Grose, but in an oblique and ambiguous manner whereby she elicits confirmation of her impressions from the housekeeper, who has known Quint and Jessel as former employees and is gullible enough to share the views of the governess.

Because the narrative is delivered entirely from the point of view of the governess, readers only have her opinions and impressions on which to make judgements. She convinces herself for instance that the two children are devoted to her, but a close reading of their rections to her reveal a growing irritation and hostility. She becomes psychologically oppressive to them, and eventually frightens Miles to death.

And because she never reveals the content of the letter which was sent to the house, we never learn why Miles has been expelled from his school.

Narrative structure

The novella appears to be that of a classic ‘framed narrative’ – which is normally a ‘story within a story’. It is introduced as a tale told by one guest (Douglas) to others at a weekend house party. It is one of the others (un-named) who presents the story. However, once the narrative begins, these intermediary narrators never reappear.

The story also comes to the reader via an extraordinarily oblique route. It is introduced by one (outer) narrator who is part of a group assembled for a weekend house party. He describes a fellow guest (Douglas) reading the manuscript of someone else’s story.

The governess has written down her account of events and given the manuscript to Douglas. Some time later Douglas gives the outer narrator the original manuscript, and the narrator makes a copy of it. It is the copy which forms the main part of the narrative. No reason is given why the outer narrator didn’t present the original text.

The Turn of the Screw – study resources

The Turn of the Screw – Oxford Worlds Classics – Amazon UK

The Turn of the Screw – Oxford Worlds Classics – Amazon US

The Turn of the Screw – Dover Thrift – Amazon UK

The Turn of the Screw – Dover Thrift – Amazon US

The Turn of the Screw – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Turn of the Screw – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Turn of the Screw – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

The Turn of the Screw – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Turn of the Screw – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Turn of the Screw – the preface to the 1908 New York edition

www.turnofthescrew.com – a history of critical interpretations.

The Turn of the Screw – Text, Contexts, Criticism – at Amazon UK

The Turn of the Screw – A Reader’s Guide – at Amazon UK

The Turn of the Screw – The Collier’s Weekly Version

Henry James – biographical notes

The Turn of the Screw – a book review

The Turn of the Screw – audioBook version at LibriVox

The Turn of the Screw – unabridged audioBook version

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

The Turn of the Screw – plot summary

The plot summary that follows is deliberately brief – because it is difficult to give an account of the narrative without at the same time offering an interpretation of its deeper possible meanings.

An unnamed narrator listens to a male friend reading a manuscript written by a former governess whom the friend claims to have known and who is now dead. The manuscript tells the story of how the young governess is hired by a man who has found himself responsible for his niece and nephew after the death of their parents. He lives in London and has no interest in raising the children. The boy, Miles, is attending a boarding school whilst his sister, Flora, is living at the country home in Essex. She is currently being cared for by the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. The governess’s new employer gives her full charge of the children and explicitly states that she is not to bother him with communications of any sort. The governess travels to her new employer’s country house and begins her duties.

Miles soon returns from school for the summer just after a letter from the headmaster stating that he has been expelled. Miles never speaks of the matter, and the governess is hesitant to raise the issue. She fears that there is some horrid secret behind the expulsion, but is too charmed by the adorable young boy to want to press the issue.

Shortly after, the governess begins to see around the grounds of the estate the figures of a man and woman whom she does not recognize. These figures come and go at will without ever being seen or challenged by other members of the household, and they seem to the governess to be supernatural.

She learns from Mrs. Grose that her predecessor, Miss Jessel, and Miss Jessel’s illicit lover Peter Quint both died under curious circumstances. Prior to their death, they spent most of their time with Flora and Miles, and this fact takes on grim significance for the governess when she becomes convinced that the two children are secretly aware of the presence of the ghosts.

Later, Flora runs away from the house while Miles plays music for the Governess. They notice and go to find her. The governess and Mrs. Grose find her in a clearing in the wood, and the governess is convinced that she has been talking to Miss Jessel. When Flora is forced to admit this, she demands to never see the governess again. Mrs. Grose takes Flora away to her uncle, leaving the governess with Miles.

That night, they are finally talking of Miles’ expulsion when the governess sees the ghost of Quint at the window. The governess shields Miles, who screams at her as he attempts to see the ghost. The governess tells him that he is no longer under the control of the ghost, and finds that Miles has died in her arms.

Principal characters

Narrator	an unnamed outer narrator
Douglas	possessor of the original manuscript, who introduces the story to fellow guests
The uncle	unnamed guardian of two young children
The governess	unnamed young woman, who has written the original account of events
Mrs Grose	the housekeeper at Bly
Miles	a young schoolboy
Flora	his sister
Peter Quint	a former valet
Miss Jessel	a former schoolmistress

The Turn of the Screw – film version

The Innocents – 1961 adaptation by Jack Clayton (dir)

There are several film versions of the story – of which Jack Clayton’s 1961 version starring Deborah Carr is perhaps the most widely admired. The story was adapted for the screen by William Archibald and Truman Capote, with additional scenes by novelist and playwright John Mortimer, and the version was re-named The Innocents – the title alone of which is a form of ‘interpretation’.

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Literary criticism

Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago University Press, 1983.

Robert Kinbrough, Henry James: ‘The Turn of the Screw’, New York: Norton Critical editions, 1966.

T.J. Lustig, Henry James and the Ghostly, Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Shlomith Rimmon, The Concept of Ambiguity: The Example of James, University of Chicago Press, 1977.

John Carlos Rowe, The Theoretical Dimensions of Henry James, University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.

Gerald Willen (ed), A Casebook on Henry James’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’, New York, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1969.

Edmund Wilson, The Triple Thinkers, New York: Farrar, Straus Giroux, 1976.

Henry James’s study

Ghost stories by Henry James

The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868)

The Ghostly Rental (1876)

Sir Edmund Orme (1891)

The Private Life (1892)

Owen Wingrave (1892)

The Friends of the Friends (1896)

The Turn of the Screw (1898)

The Real Right Thing (1899)

The Third Person (1900)

The Jolly Corner (1908)

Other works by Henry James

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

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 Turn of the Screw & Other Stories

June 29, 2009 by Roy Johnson

essays on the theory and practice of information design

Towards the late period of his long and astonishingly productive life, Henry James wrote a number of mystery or ghost stories. In these he combined his skills at controlling narrative and point of view with his penchant for puzzling and ambiguous situations. This collection contains some of the most famous tales – ‘Sir Edmund Orme’, ‘Owen Wingrave’, ‘The Friends of the Friends’, and his best-known shorter work, the terrifying story of (apparent) demonic possession, ‘The Turn of the Screw’.

They all deal with ghosts (or the supernatural) in a non-conventional manner, in that they hold a narrative interest whether you find the ghosts believable or not. And none of them rely on any conventional notions of spookiness or ghastly apparitions for their credibility. As Leon Edel, James’s biographer observed, “A ghost was most ghostlike, James held, when it walked in broad daylight, shorn of all Gothic trappings. It was too obvious to have clanking chains, bloodstains, secret stairways and dead of night for one’s phantoms.”

But what these tales do have in common with many other ghost stories is a connection between the supernatural and death. There’s also a more-than-coincidental link to romantic liaisons between the characters. In Sir Edmund Orme for instance (without giving away too much of the story) a middle-aged lady has been haunted by apparitions of a man who took his own life many years before when she ‘wronged’ him. She wishes to protect her daughter from his influence, and does so with the aid of a narrator who falls in love with the daughter. But in the end there is a reversal of expectations and a dramatic price to pay.

Similarly in Owen Wingrave (which Benjamin Britten used as the basis for his opera) the eponymous hero is oppressed by family traditions of military service he is expected to uphold. He resists them on grounds of humane pacifism, and when challenged by a young woman with whom there is a romantic potential, he defies everyone by sleeping in a bedroom haunted by an ancestor. Once again the outcome is disastrous.

James rings quasi-humorous changes on this theme in The Friends of the Friends where he introduces the conceit of two characters who have both seen the ghost of a parent at precisely the moment they have died in a completely different location. When the narrator (a mutual friend and unusually for James, a woman) becomes engaged to the male character she is determined to introduce him to her friend who has had the same experience. But the female character dies first. Her ‘influence’ however, lives on to have a dramatic effect on the proposed marriage.

But of course the most famous story of all is The Turn of the Screw (another Britten opera) which has attracted widespread comment and a number of different interpretations. A governess has the job of looking after two loveable and innocent young children. She is hampered in her endeavours by the repeated appearances of a former gamekeeper and Miss Jessell (her predecessor) who are both supposed to be dead. It seems that these ghosts are seeking to exercise a malign influence over the children, and the governess is driven to desperate measures to protect them. Each step she takes winds the dramatic tension ever higher, right up to the last page and its horrible finale.

This tale was described at the time of its first publication as ‘the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read in any literature, ancient or modern.’ (the Independent 1899) and it has remained a tantalising puzzle ever since. Like the other stories in this collection it is delivered to us in a very oblique manner, and recounted by a narrator who may or may not be telling the complete truth. Readers are presented with a literary experience not unlike a hall of mirrors, in which nothing is quite what it seems. This is what makes the stories worth reading over and over again.

This is a particularly good edition, since it includes an editor’s introductory essay and explanatory notes to the text, a brief history of its publication, and James’s own introductions in which he explains the origins of the stories and how he decided to treat them – all without giving away their specific outcomes, just as I have tried to do above.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Henry James, The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp.266, ISBN 0192834045

More on Henry James
More on literature
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The Two Faces

May 31, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Two Faces first appeared in Harper’s Bazar in December 1900 – which was a remarkably fertile period for Henry James in terms of his production of shorter fiction. It was a year which saw the publication of Maud-Evelyn, Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie, Broken Wings, 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. James produced all of these (and more) in addition to working on his next novel, The Sacred Fount (1901).

Victorian fashion

The Two Faces – commentary

The crux of this story turns upon the almost hidden detail that Mrs Grantham is a former lover of Lord Gwyther. He has ‘played a trick’ on her only six months previously, which suggests that he has broken off a socially accepted relationship.

After only a short period, he has also broken the London society code of conduct by ‘turning up’ at Mrs Grantham’s house unannounced at a time when Sutton is consolidating his position as her currently accepted admirer.

This explains the social unease which ensues when he arrives at Mrs Grantham’s house at the start of the story, and why it is so surprising (and somewhat gauche of him) to wish to introduce his new wife to his (quite recent) former lover. It might also explain the ‘something new’ that comes into Mrs Grantham’s beauty when she conceives of her plan.

Thus too the significance of the story’s title. When Sutton witnesses the arrival of the Gwythers at Burbeck he sees Mrs Grantham’s face (which he normally finds very beautiful) transformed by the malevolence of her trick. Valda’s appearance of naive innocence amidst this piece of social theatre and personal vengeance is the contrast that leads Sutton to leave the party early, and with it the implication that he will abandon his pursuit of Mrs Grantham.

The Two Faces – 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 Two Faces – Digireads reprint edition

The Two Faces – eBook formats at Gutenberg

The Two Faces – 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 Two Faces – plot summary

Part I. Mr Shirley Sutton is visiting Mrs May Grantham in whom he seems to have a particular interest, when they are joined by Lord Gwyther. He has come to announce his recent marriage to a young half-German girl Valda. He also expresses a wish that Mrs Grantham will introduce her into London society.

Part II. Mrs Grantham wonders about Gayther’s motives, but she agrees to take responsibility for the young woman, much to everybody’s surprise.

Part III. The characters assemble at Burbeck, an English country house and estate for a weekend party. Sutton discusses the arrival of the Gwythers with Miss Banker, who seems to know everybody’s business, and even secrets. When the Gwythers arrive, Sutton is shocked to see that Mrs Grantham has chosen for her a hideously inappropriate collection of dressware. Knowing that Valda Gwyther will never recover socially from this gaffe, Sutton leaves the party early.

Principal characters

Burbeck	an English country house and estate
Mrs May Grantham	a beautiful society lady
Bates	her butler
Mr Shirley Sutton	an admirer of Mrs Grantham
Lord Gwynther	Mrs Grantham’s former lover
Miss Banker	a society gossip

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

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 Velvet Glove

June 21, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial. commentary, study resources, and web links

The Velvet Glove was first published in the English Review in March 1909. It was collected into Volume XII of The Complete Tales of Henry James.

Henry James and Edith Wharton go motoring

The Velvet Glove – critical commentary

The biographical reading

Most commentators see this story as a thinly veiled allusion to Henry James’s relationship with his friend and fellow American novelist Edith Wharton. She like him was an expatriate who spent most of her life living in Europe (Paris in her case). She was very successful as a novelist (in fact she earned more than James from her writing) and in 1905 she had a bestseller with her novel The House of Mirth.

She was also well known for touring in her glamorous series of large automobiles – each of which she named after one of George Sand’s lovers. In fact James had toured France with her by car in 1904. But in 1907 she wrote The Fruit of the Tree, and James was asked to write a preface for it – though not by Wharton personally. James found the situation embarrassing, because he thought the novel was not successful. So, although a great friend and admirer, he turned down the opportunity out of artistic scruple.

Henry James and Edith Wharton

There is a very famous anecdote regarding James, Wharton, and motoring which is designed to throw an amused glance over the prolixity of his literary style. Around the turn of the century, James stopped producing his works by handwriting: instead, he dictated them to a stenograher, which makes this story all the more credible. It comes from Wharton’s autobiography, A Backward Glance (1934).

The most absurd of these episodes occurred on another rainy evening when James and I chanced to arrive at Windsor long after dark. […] While I was hesitating and peering out into the darkness James spied an ancient doddering man who had stopped in the rain to gaze at us. ‘Wait a moment, my dear—I’ll ask him where we are’; and leaning out he signalled to the spectator.

‘My good man, if you’ll be good enough to come here, please; a little nearer—so,’ and as the old man came up: ‘My friend, to put it to you in two words, this lady and I have just arrived here from Slough; that is to say, to be more strictly accurate, we have recently passed through Slough on our way here, having actually motored to Windsor from Rye, which was our point of departure; and the darkness having overtaken us, we should be much obliged if you would tell us where we now are in relation, say, to the High Street, which, as you of course know, leads to the Castle, after leaving on the left hand the turn down to the railway station.’

I was not surprised to have this extraordinary appeal met by silence, and a dazed expression on the old wrinkled face at the window; nor to have James go on: ‘In short’ (his invariable prelude to a fresh series of explanatory ramifications), ‘in short, my good man, what I want to put to you in a word is this: supposing we have already (as I have reason to think we have) driven past the turn down to the railway station (which in that case, by the way, would probably not have been on our left hand, but on our right) where are we now in relation to…’

‘Oh, please,’ I interrupted, feeling myself utterly unable to sit through another parenthesis, ‘do ask him where the King’s Road is.’

‘Ah—? The King’s Road? Just so! Quite right! Can you, as a matter of fact, my good man, tell us where, in relation to our present position, the King’s Road exactly is?’

‘Ye’re in it’, said the aged face at the window.

The Velvet Glove – 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 Complete Tales (Vol 12) – Paperback edition

Selected Tales – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

The Velvet Glove – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Velvet Glove – plot summary

Part I. John Berridge is a successful novelist and playwright. His work The Heart of Gold is enjoying a pan-European success. He mingles with upper-class society at sculptor Gloriani’s studio in Paris, where an English lord asks him for his opinion on a book written by a friend. Berridge speculates imaginatively about the lives of the people at the party, and unobtrusively watches a beautiful woman across the room during a Wagner recital.

Part II. The English lord introduces him to the beautiful woman, who is a princess. Berridge thinks of her as ‘Olympian’ in her beauty and grandeur of demeanour. The lord then produces the novel by his friend Amy Evans, which turns out to be the pen name of the Princess. The Top of the Tree is a florrid romance. The princess seeks out Berridge, promises to replace the book with her latest work, The Velvet Glove, and invites him to a private supper.

Part III. They are driven off together in her large automobile, surrounded by the romantic glamour of Paris at night. Berridge is flattered by her attentions, but then it turns out that she wants him to write a preface for her latest book to help her gain prestige in the literary world. He is deeply shocked at this, and refuses, saying her he will not see her again. He tells her that she does not need commercial success, because she herself embodies the very thing she is writing about – “Princess you are Romance!”

Principal characters

John Berridge	novelist and playwright
—	an English lord
The Princess	romantic novelist (‘Amy Evans’)
—	a great contemporary dramatist

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

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 Verdict

June 24, 2014 by Roy Johnson

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

The Verdict first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine, number 43 for June 1908. The story was subsequently included in Edith Wharton’s collection of short fiction, The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories published by Charles Scribner’s in 1908.

cover design by Parish Maxfield

The Verdict – critical comments

Like her good friend Henry James, Edith Wharton was very fond of writing stories about artists – particularly painters, sometimes writers, but very rarely musicians. And like James she was confronted by the difficulty of rendering an account of a visual medium such as painting in the very different medium of words. It is not easy to say why or how a painting is great or a failure by merely describing it.

This story is essentially a critique of bad art. Gisburn has been a popular success, but the implication is that his work is second rate. Rickham thinks him a ‘cheap genius’. In the absence of any other evidence, we are forced to take Rickham’s word for it that Gisburn is a bad painter:

all the hesitations disguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which … he managed to divert attention from the real business of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail.

And eventually even Gisburn is forced to recognise his lack of genuine artistic talent when confronted by the (dead) Stroud and his donkey sketch. That is the ostensible subject of the story – the reason why Gisburn gave up painting. But the ironic twist to the tale is that instead of completing the commission to paint Stroud, he recommends another young artist, Victor Grindle – and thereby passes on to him the reputation of fashionable (and shallow) success. As he remarks to Rickham:

the irony of it is that I am still painting – since Grindle’s doing it for me. The Strouds stand alone, and happen once – but there’s no exterminating our kind of art.

The Verdict – study resources

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Descent of Man and Other Stories – Project Gutenberg

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Verdict – story synopsis

The narrator Rickham hears that his friend Jack Gisburn has suddenly given up his successful career as a fashionable portrait painter. The move is regretted by his sitters, but not by fellow painters.

Three years later Rickham visits Gisburn on the Riviera to find out why he gave up painting. Gisburn has married a rich widow and enjoys collecting works of art. But none of his own work is on display in the villa. His wife attributes this to his modesty, but she shows Rickham a portrait of herself which Rickham describes as ‘false virtuosity’.

Gisburn then takes Rickham to his private study where there is a small painting (of a donkey) by a famous artist, Stroud. Gisburn explains it was a gift from the Mrs Stroud, presented to him when he went to paint Stroud’s portrait immediately following his death. Mrs Stroud wanted her husband’s reputation vindicated by a fashionable artist – which was pre-eminently Gisburn at the time.

However, whilst Gisburn was attempting the commission he felt as if Stroud was watching him critically, and he realised that his famous ‘technique’ was just a sham. This is the reason why he gave up painting. Mrs Stroud is disappointed, so Gisburn recommends an upcoming portrait painter Victor Grindle, who completes the commission successfully, and thus takes over Gisburn’s reputation where he has left off.

Principal characters

Mr Rickham	the narrator
Jack Gisburn	a fashionable portrait painter
Mrs Gisburn	his wife
Victor Grindle	the next young upcoming fashionable painter

first English edition – Macmillan 1908

Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
More on short stories

The Visits

July 11, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

The Visits first appeared in Black and White weekly magazine in May 1892 It next appeared in the collection of tales The Private Life published in London by Osgood McIllvaine in 1893.

The Visits – critical commentary

On the face of it this tale is hardly more than a sketch or an anecdote. An elderly woman recounts her meetings with a young girl who is upset because she has revealed her feelings to a handsome young man, and dies of ‘shame’ as a result.

At his excellent web site The Ladder Adrian Dover claims that Henry James is here dealing with an issue which simply cannot be made explicit – because of the prudish nature of nineteenth century society at that period.

In fact so prudish was society that this tale, destined to appear in one of its periodicals, has to be reticent about the facts to the point almost of incomprehensibility. Fear not, as so often in James, the point, or one, at least, of the points, lies in what cannot be named. Louisa Chantry cannot speak of it, Henry James cannot speak of it – even his (surviving) notebooks are silent.

Unfortunately, this argument is undermined somewhat by the fact that Dover himself is unable to say what it is, whilst claiming that it is ‘central to the tale’.

The fact is that Louisa Chantry has only just met the poor (but handsome) nephew Jack Brandon, and has obviously been smitten by him. The narrator and Brandon are both aware of a ‘fever in her blood’ when they are dining at the house. She subsequently reveals her feelings to him openly, in defiance of the protocol that a young woman should not do so to a man.

In fact that seems to be the only possible unspoken feature here – that Louisa Chantry has possibly been sexually aroused by Jack Brandon, and feels overwhelmed by the emotions stirred in her. She says “I said strange things to him”.

It should be remembered that in the nineteenth century it was quite commonly believed that women were incapable of being sexually aroused, as such feelings were regarded as unwomanly and degrading. This might explain the profound sense of shame that Louisa feels. James was certainly a master of concealment, restraint, and understatement, but it does not seem altogether convincing that this was the subject he was trying to suggest here – in which case the mystery remains unresolved.

Narrative

This is yet another of James’s tales which is delivered by an outer-narrator relaying the account of events provided by an inner-narrator. And as is very often the case, the outer-narrator makes no further appearance or intervention after introducing the story. The outer-narrator has heard the story from the inner-narrator and has (slightly improbably) taken notes.

The tale occurs only a few years before James used the most elaborately complicated occurrence of the same narrative strategy for The Turn of the Screw (1898). In that tale there is both an inner and an outer-narrator, and the tale has been hand written by one of the characters (the governess) then given to one of the narrators, who makes a copy of it – which is then read out to an assembled company..

The Visits – study resources

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

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Visits – plot summary

An un-named elderly woman recollects visiting a house in the West Country where she meets Louisa Chantry, the daughter of a woman friend she is about to stay with. Louisa is full of mysterious anxiety, possibly to do with a Jack Brandon, a handsome young man who is the host’s nephew.

The narrator comes across Louisa in the garden, very distraught. Before leaving, Louisa begs the narrator not to tell her mother she has been upset.

The narrator goes on to visit Chantry Court, where Louisa is still upset. She tells the narrator that she is going to die. The girl tells her mother that she has done something bad, but will not reveal what it is. The girl falls ill, and a doctor reveals that she has a weak heart. Subsequent specialists are unable to diagnose anything specific.

Louisa eventually reveals to the narrator that at a recent house party she had revealed her feelings to Jack Brandon, who had acted in a gentlemanly manner towards her, though rejecting her advances. Shortly after making this revelation, she dies.

Principal characters

I	the un-named female outer narrator
I	the un-named inner-narrator, an elderly woman
Mr Christopher Chantry	a country gentleman
Mrs Helen Chantry	his wife, friend of the narrator
Louisa Chantry	their pretty young daughter
Jack Brandon	a handsome and poor young man

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.
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.

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