The Novella

critical studies of the novella form as a literary genre

critical studies of the novella form as a literary genre

The End of the Tether

August 24, 2013 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and further reading

The End of the Tether was written in 1902 and collected in Youth, a Narrative and Two Other Stories, published by William Blackwood in 1902. The other stories in the trio were Youth and Heart of Darkness.

The End of the Tether – critical commentary

Story – Tale – Novella – Novel?

This narrative is too long, complex, and rich in dramatic incident to be considered a story in the modern sense of that term. Not that Conrad generally considered his shorter fictions stories: he used the tern tales to describe them. And The End of the Tether might be considered a tale – except that the term tale as a literary category is elastic and ill-defined. It can be used for any sort of shapeless narrative that falls short of a full length novel.

The End of the Tether could almost be classified as a short novel. It has a central, fully-rounded protagonist in Captain Whalley, and the secondary characters of Massy, Sterne, and Van Wyk are all fully developed with convincing psychological motivations firmly anchored to the plot.

But it seems to me that the concentration of the main theme (money) and the dramatic unity of events lends the narrative to be classified as a novella. There are no decorative or superfluous passages here. Every event is strongly related to the overall effect.

It’s true that there is no central image or symbol – unless it is the Sofala itself. It is owned by one man (Massy) who has financial problems of his own making, and it is captained by another (Whalley) who also has financial problems – caused partly by the international capitalist banking system, and partly by his obsessive desire to provide for his daughter.

The ship has faulty boilers which should have been replaced by its owner (but he has gambled away his money); the crew are a dubious collection of individuals, and one of them (a drunk) correctly predicts that the ship will be deliberately shipwrecked for the sake of the insurance money.

So the tragic hero figure (Whalley) is firmly related to the central symbol of the novella – a doomed ship which is on its last voyage. It is therefore entirely fitting in terms of the demands of dramatic unity that Whalley goes down with the ship.

The tragic hero

Whalley is a tragic hero in the classical sense that the very characteristics which make him noble and heroic – his desire to finance and protect his own daughter – are the very things that bring about his downfall. And he falls from a great height – the former captain of famous ships, with a fortune and with an island and a nautical passage named after him.

Whalley struggles to maintain his sense of honour and does the right thing for the ship and what he feels is an obligation to support his daughter – whilst he is yoked to an unscrupulous villain, a moral shirker, and a desperate antagonist who has one advantage over him: he can see what he is doing.

The main theme

Despite its setting as a maritime tale (like so many of Conrad’s other works) the essential theme of this piece is money.

Whalley has amassed a fortune through hard work and honest dealing – but it is largely swallowed up by the collapse of a bank.

He had not been alone to believe in the stability of the Banking Corporation. Men whose judgement in matters of finance was as expert as his seamanship had commended the prudence of his investments, and had themselves lost much money in the great failure.

After selling the Fair Maid he is left with a lump sum of £500 and £200 for his daughter’s dubious investment in the Australian lodging house. He is quite prudent with the £500, and ties it into the agreement with Massy for a fixed period, with strong protection clauses. But it does tie him to co-operation with a villain.

Massy on the other hand is entirely motivated by dreams of easy wealth. Having won the lottery once, he has become addicted to gambling, and his greed is such that he cannot believe that Whalley hasn’t got more than the £500. Massy wants to exhort more money from him – not to promote their business ventures, but to fuel his gambling lust.

He is prepared to shipwreck the Sofala in order to claim the insurance (as its owner) and Whalley (as its captain) is eventually prepared to go down with his ship because he cannot face his incipient blindness, which deprives him of the very skill that made his fortune in the first place.

Conrad deploys a bitterly ironic twist when Captain Whalley puts into the pockets of his own jacket the very pieces of scrap iron Massy has used to deflect the ship’s compass. Whalley knows that it is possible for bodies to resurface from the maelstrom of a sinking ship, and he does not want to survive his own watery grave.

The End of the Tether – study resources

The End of the Tether – Collector’s Library – Amazon UK

The End of the Tether – Collector’s Library – Amazon US

The End of the Tether – Kindle eBook

The End of the Tether – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The End of the Tether – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The End of the Tether – Aeterna Editions – Amazon UK

The End of the Tether – Aeterna Editions – Amazon US

The End of the Tether – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The End of the Tether – plot summary

Part I. Henry Whalley is captain in charge of the Sofala which makes regular trade journeys on a fixed route in the Malay archipelago. He has previously been captain of a much bigger ship, the Condor, has made famous voyages, and has been fifty years at sea, with an honourable record. But he has lost most of his money in a banking crash.

Part II. Having married off his daughter, he retired with his own ship the Fair Maid. He is much given to reminiscence about his wife (now dead) who he regarded as a shipmate. He has given his daughter a large sum of money on her marriage to a man he thinks an unsuitable choice of husband.

He is planning what he will leave to her and her children when the bank wipes out his fortune. He realises that he will have to earn a living with the Fair Maid. But he discovers that all his old business contacts in the shipping world have gone – replaced by younger people he doesn`t know. Then his son-in-law becomes a wheel-chair invalid.

Whalley cuts back on his own personal expenditure in order to send money to his daughter, but then she asks him to send her £200 to become the landlady of a boarding hose – and he doesn`t have the money.

Part III. Whalley sells the Fair Maid, after which he has £500 to invest and £200 to send to his daughter. He moves into a cheap hotel and feels both homeless and bereft.He has spent all his life in command of ships, and now feels he has nothing. He also thinks that his daughter Ivy being landlady of a boarding house is a slur on his family`s reputation.

Part IV. He wonders what employment he might secure, and fears the consequences of breaking into his £500 life savings. On meeting a government official he thinks back to his earliest days in the port when it was quite undeveloped.

Part V. He meets Captain Elliot, master-attendant of the port who brags about his government connections and complains that having three daughters is a drain on his prospects. Elliot then reveals that the Sofala is looking for a captain. It is owned by George Massy its current engineer, who bought it with winnings from the Manilla lottery. It is currently losing trade, and Massy is spending all his money gambling. Elliot suggests that the only solution would be for Massy to locate a partner who could buy into the business.

Part VI. Whalley invests his £500 in the Sofala for three years and a sixth part of the profits, with a stipulation that if anything happens the money is paid back entirely to Ivy within three months. The narrative then rejoins the opening of the story as the Sofala approaches Batu Bera, and Whalley`s agreement (almost three years old) has six weeks left to run.

Part VII. Massy is a cantankerous owner who thinks everybody else is a fool and beneath his contempt. He bitterly resents Whalley being the ship’s captain. The second mate Jack is a drunken loner whose occasional binges result in imprecations for all members of the Sofala crew past and present with the exception of Massy.

Part VIII. Whalley concentrates on the difficulty of getting the ship across the bar near their destination – and does so with very little depth to spare. Massy threatens to sack Whalley for incompetence. Massy has included a dismissal clause in their agreement for intemperance, and has been aggrieved to discover that Whalley does not drink at all. He also believes that Whalley must have lots more money and wants him to invest more in their joint venture.

Part IX. The ambitious and sneaky chief mate Sterne tries to get promotion from Massy by criticising Whalley. Sterne has been on the Sofala hoping to profit from what seems to him an odd state of affairs. Then when the ship is being navigated through an archipelago, he makes what he believes is an important discovery from which he might profit.

Part X. He arrives at his discovery via his peevish contemplation of Whalley and his loyal henchman, the native Serang – likening them to a whale and its pilot fish. Sterne thinks Whalley is perpetrating a giant fraud, motivated by greed, He thinks the Serang is secretly in charge and that Whalley is losing his sight. Sterne thinks it is time to act, but isnt sure what to do and cannot trust anyone else.

Part XI. Sterne confronts Massy and asks for the job of master of the Sofala. Massy is eaten up by his obsession with lottery numbers, buying tickets for which has brought about his financial downfall. He even resents the wages he has to pay his own crew. Most of all he resents Whalley and their agreement. The ship finally docks at Batu Bera and is met on shore by Mr Van Wyk.

Part XII. Former sailor Van Wyk has established a thriving tobacco plantation- but he relies on regular visits from the Sofala for news and supplies, including his mail. Because the ship is late, Van Wyk blames Massy, and Whalley goes to dinner at Van Wyk’s house, hoping to placate him. Over the years the two naval men have got on well together: Whalley sees improvements everywhere, whereas Van Wyk is slightly more sceptical. Despite these differences, the two men are good friends.

Part XIII. Sterne has attempted to poison Van Wyk’s mind against Whalley, hoping he will be sacked fromthe ship, leaving him to take over its captaincy. But Van Wyk thinks Sterne is a sneak and a trouble-maker. Over dinner, Whalley reveals to Van Wyk that he is going blind. He has been concealing the fact for the sake of the money he is going to send to his daughter.

Hoping to head off Sterne and protect his friend Whalley, Van Wyk visits the Sofala and suggests to Sterne that he might advance a loan and join Whalley for the ship’s last trip under the agreement. Massy stays on board thinking about winning lottery numbers and listening to the second mate’s drunken ramblings as he predicts that Massy will sink the old ship to collect the insurance money.

Part XIV. Massy harasses Whalley again to extend their partnership. He cannot believe that Whalley hasn’t got more money than £500. Massy is motivated entirely by a desire for easy welth and even plans to gamble on the lottery with a winning number that has come to him in a dream. Whalley meanwhile worries about getting the £500 to his daughter.

Massy plans a shipwreck and plants scrap iron in his coat next to the ship’s compass during a night watch. Whalley discovers the coat just as the ship strikes a reef. The crew escape in lifeboats. Feeling he has lost everything, Whalley transfers the scrap iron into his own coat and goes down with the ship.

At the following inquest no blame is attached to Whalley. Massy goes off with the insurance money to gamble in Manilla, and Ivy receives a letter confirming that her father is dead.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

The End of the Tether – principal characters

Henry Whalley	experienced sea captain and widower
Ivy	his daughter
Captain Ned Elliot	master-attendant of port
George Massy	engineer and owner of the Sofala
Sterne	scheming first mate on the Sofala
Jack	drunken second mate on the Sofala
Mr Van Wyk	a Dutch ex-naval tobacco planter

first edition, Blackwood 1902

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.
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Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other writing by Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim (1900) is the earliest of Conrad’s big and serious novels, and it explores one of his favourite subjects – cowardice and moral redemption. Jim is a ship’s captain who in youthful ignorance commits the worst offence – abandoning his ship. He spends the remainder of his adult life in shameful obscurity in the South Seas, trying to re-build his confidence and his character. What makes the novel fascinating is not only the tragic but redemptive outcome, but the manner in which it is told. The narrator Marlowe recounts the events in a time scheme which shifts between past and present in an amazingly complex manner. This is one of the features which makes Conrad (born in the nineteenth century) considered one of the fathers of twentieth century modernism.
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Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of the process of Imperialism. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement, and it is based on his own experiences as a sea captain. This volume also contains ‘An Outpost of Progress’ – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’.
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Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
Joseph Conrad complete tales

The Invention of Morel

December 18, 2015 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, plot summary, and study resources

The Invention of Morel (1940) is a science fiction novella by the Argentinean writer Adolfo Bioy Casares. It was his seventh book, but the publication launched his reputation as a major Latin-American writer. It was awarded the First Municipal Prize for Literature of the City of Buenos Aires in 1941. Bioy wrote many other novels and short stories, some of them in collaboration with his friend, Jorge Luis Borges, whose sister Norah designed the cover of the first edition.

The Invention of Morel – critical commentary

Spoiler alert

The Invention of Morel relies heavily for its dramatic effect upon a plot device which is only revealed to the reader half way through the book. The critical commentary that follows therefore contains plot spoilers which it would be unfair not to announce before you read any further. If you are not already acquainted with the story, but want some idea of what it is about – limit yourself to the first four paragraphs of the plot summary below.

Form

Bioy Casares is best known via the recommendations of his friend and fellow Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges. The Invention of Morel is no exception in carrying his endorsement: “To classify it [the novel] as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole”. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz is even more emphatic, calling it “the perfect novel”.

But this is not a novel in the normal sense of the term. It is a short science fiction fantasy; it has only one meaningful character; and the narrative is concerned almost exclusively with the development of his fears and his reactions.

The only other named characters in the story are not developed in any way and they do not interact with each other. In fact they cannot interact – because they are only recorded projections from Morel’s machine, acting out the same scenes over and over again.

But the book does have a legitimate claim to being a successful novella. Its events take place in one location; it has one central character; and it is concerned with one idea – the notion that human life can be recorded and re-transmitted.

The island itself acts as a controlling image or metaphor. It is a curious mixture of pestilence and advanced technological development – which combines the two threats that confront the narrator. – extinction by disease or by Morel’s invention.

It is a short narrative, permeated by the narrator’s fear of being apprehended, and it is ‘open’ at both ends. We are offered no real explanation why he has to be there, and at the conclusion we do not truly know if his attempts to unite himself with Faustine will be successful or not.

At a crude statistical level, the story is less than 100 pages long – approximately 33,000 words. This is the length of a novella, not a novel. Distinctions between. the two genres are often difficult to make. There are busy and crowded novellas, just as there are short and spare novels. But the unities of a single character, location, and dramatic event in this narrative make it a novella rather than a novel.

Strengths

The strongest feature of this work is the central conceit of ‘recording’ human life – the technology involved, and the implications for the fictional characters and their virtual counterparts. Morel’s invention is just about acceptable as science fiction. We know that such a machine is not possible, but we can suspend our disbelief for the sake of a drama in which a ‘real’ human being falls in love with the artificial image of a beautiful woman.

The narrator even becomes jealous of her possible relationships with other artificial images, and he is finally prepared to risk death by merging himself with the recorded world in which she exists.

We do not know what the narrator is escaping from – though there are hints that it is some sort of political problem. But Bioy conjures up very successfully a sense of fear and paranoia as the narrator struggles to adjust to the environment and distinguish reality from hallucination in his fervid state of mind.

The explanation for the mysteries that baffle him (Why do visitors on the island ignore him? Why are there two suns?) are cleverly withheld until half way through the story. After the details of Morel’s invention are revealed, dramatic interest switches to what the narrator can do about his situation. He is in both an existential and a metaphysical trap, and his only solution to the problem puts his own life at risk.

Weaknesses

The first part of the narrative is designed to build mystery and tension as the narrator (and the first-time reader) struggles to understand the events in which he is embedded. He changes his mind about his interpretation of events; he thinks he might be hallucinating; and at one point he even thinks he might already be dead.

The problem with the narrative is that there is very little contextual relationship between these earlier scenes of paranoia and the later revelation of Morel’s invention. At the outset the narrator is suffering from the fear of being captured, and he is beset by the privations of living on a desert island. The first few entries in his diary are almost a re-enactment of Robinson Crusoe, with details of tides, food shortages, and the rotting plant-life of a tropical island.

The other main problem is the status of Morel, about which Bioy seems to be ambivalent, since Morel operates as both a ‘real’ character and as an ‘image’ in one of his own recordings. In order to construct the machine and its wave-powered supply of energy in the first place, Morel must be a ‘real’ (fictional) human being, on the same plane of reality as the narrator. Or to be more accurate, we can say that he must once have been a real human being.

But in the early pages of the story, the narrator realises that Morel and Faustine are repeating the same conversation that they had a week previously. We realise (later) that this is because the narrator is witnessing a ‘recording’ of Morel and Faustine which is being ‘projected’.

Later in the story, Morel explains that he has assembled the visitors for a week’s visit to the island which he has recorded, so that afterwards they can all exist ‘for eternity’. This declaration itself cannot be a recording, and when someone reveals that previous participants have died, Morel takes umbrage and disappears.

Moreover, if previous characters in his recordings have died, we are given no explanation why he has not died himself – since he has recorded himself talking to Faustine and has taken part in earlier experimental recordings.

A similar problem arises in the case of the visiting ship. The narrator records in his diary: “The only ship I have ever seen from this island was Morel’s, and that was only the image of a ship”. Yet Morel has earlier claimed that the only person who knows how to navigate the reefs that protect the island is “our captain, McGregor”. This is the (presumably real) person from whom Morel has rented the ship. So McGregor too seems to exist as part of a projected image at the same time as being a fictionally ‘real’ person. In this story, he cannot inhabit both spheres of being, even consecutively.

Maybe this is demanding rational explanations for what after all is a science fiction fantasy. Perhaps it is like demanding to know how someone could really become an Invisible Man or how Dr Frankenstein successfully assembled the parts of his monster. But it is not Morel’s recording and transmitting devices which are the fictional weaknesses: it is the fact that Bioy seems to lose control of their implications – ironically enough, just like Morel himself. As the author, Bioy appears either not to have thought through the implications of his conceit, or in terms of the logic of the narrative he is in a sense having his fictional cake and eating it as well.

first edition – cover by Norah Borges

The Invention of Morel – plot summary

An un-named narrator and fugitive has escaped to a tropical island somewhere in Polynesia. Although we do not know the nature of his wrong-doing, he has an almost paranoid fear of being recaptured and imprisoned for life. He is keeping an account of his existence on the island, a diary in which he records his intention of writing two books.

From the sound of footsteps, a record player, and voices, it appears there are other people on the island, but the narrator at first hides away from them and accuses them of snobbery for ignoring him. Swamps on the island are fed by erratic tides, and they carry a strange disease which causes human flesh to rot. The tides also generate power which is supplied to a building called a ‘museum’ which he visits to search for food.

Every day at sunset he sees a mysterious gypsy-like woman who sits looking out to sea. He becomes fascinated by her, but is meanwhile consumed by fears of being detected. The woman is called Faustine, and she has conversations in French with a bearded man named Morel. When the narrator decides to approach them, they take no notice of him.

The narrator realises that Morel and Faustine repeat the same conversation that they had the previous week. One day when she does not appear, the narrator searches the whole island, but Faustine and all the others have disappeared. But then they suddenly reappear with new visitors at a dinner in the museum. The narrator sees two suns and two moons, and tries to find an explanation for the mysterious ‘intruders’. He thinks he may be hallucinating, invisible, or already dead?

The island is visited by a large boat, from which the captain and his crew disembark. The narrator fears that Faustine will leave the island. There is a party atmosphere, and the inhabitants are eventually addressed by Morel. He explains that he has invented a machine which can ‘record’ and then ‘replay’ complete human beings. He has recorded the group’s visit to the island, and their existence is being endlessly re-boadcast.

One of the visitors claims that earlier experiments using the machine resulted in death for the participants. Morel is annoyed and leaves the meeting, whereupon the narrator seizes his lecture notes. The narrator moves into the museum and starts to live amongst the images, following Faustine around and even sleeping on the floor in her bedroom.

He thinks Morel might have been deceived by his own invention, and he speculates about other machines which could take Morel’s invention one stage further, giving images an independent life. He begins to enjoy the repetition of the images, and resents the haphazard nature of his own life.

One day when the images fail to appear, he goes into the basement of the museum and re-starts the machines. He records himself for a week, inserting himself into the other recordings so that he and Faustine will be together for eternity. He begins to lose his sight, his body starts to disintegrate, and he ends the diary with an odd patriotic note to Venezuela and the hope that someone else will invent another machine so that he can enter the consciousness of Faustine.

The Invention of Morel – study resources

The Invention of Morel – in English – Amazon UK

The Invention of Morel – in English – Amazon US

La invention de Morel – in Spanish – Amazon UK

La invention de Morel – in Spanish – Amazon US

The Invention of Morel – principal characters

—	the un-named narrator, a fugitive
Faustine	a gypsy-like woman who speaks French
Morel	inventor of the machine and owner of the island

Adolfo Bioy Casares, The Invention of Morel, New York: New York Review Books, 2003, pp.120, ISBN: 9781590170571

The Novella

September 20, 2009 by Roy Johnson

tutorial and guidances notes

What is a novella?

The novella is a prose fiction which is longer than a long story, but shorter than a short novel. If that seems baffling, you could think of something around 30—40,000 words in length. But in fact, it’s not word count which is the crucial factor. The essence of a novella is that it has a concentrated unity of purpose and design. That is, character, incident, theme, and language are all focussed on contributing to a single issue which will be of a serious nature and universal significance.

Many of the classic novellas are concerned with people learning important lessons or making significant journeys. They might even do both at the same time, as do Gustave von Eschenbach in Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s Metamorphosis – both of whom make journeys towards death.

Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912) is a classic novella – half way between a long story and a short novel. It’s a wonderfully condensed tale of the relationship between art and life, love and death. Venice provides the background for the story of a famous German writer who departs from his usual routines, falls in love with a young boy, and gets caught up in a subtle downward spiral of indulgence. The novella is constructed on a framework of references to Greek mythology, and the unity of themes, form, and motifs are superbly realised – even though Mann wrote this when he was quite young. Later in life, Mann was to declare – ‘Nothing in Death in Venice was invented’. The story was turned into a superb film by Luchino Visconti and an opera by Benjamin Britten.
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What produces the unity?

The events of the novella normally turn around a single incident, problem, or issue. There will be a limited number of principal characters – and in fact the story will probably be centred on just one or two. There will be no sub-plots or parallel actions. And the events are likely to take place in one location.

A short story may deal with a trivial incident which illustrates a small aspect of human nature, or simply evokes a mood or a sense of place. A novella on the other hand deals with much ‘larger’ and more significant issues – such as the struggle between the forces of innocence and justice, which Herman Melville depicts in Billy Budd, or the morally educating experience of the young sea captain which Joseph Conrad depicts in The Secret Sharer.

Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd (1856) deals with a tragic incident at sea, and is based on a true occurence. It is a nautical recasting of the Fall, a parable of good and evil, a meditation on justice and political governance, and a searching portrait of three men caught in a deadly triangle. Billy is the handsome innocent, Claggart his cruel tormentor, and Captain Vere the man who must judge in the conflict between them. The narrative is variously interpreted in Biblical terms, or in terms of representations of male homosexual desire and the mechanisms of prohibition against this desire. His other great novellas Benito Cereno, The Encantadas and Bartelby the Scrivener (all in this collection) show Melville as a master of irony, point-of-view, and tone. These fables ripple out in nearly endless circles of meaning and ambiguities.
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Features of the novella

A novel can have plots and sub-plots, a teeming cast of characters, and take place in a number of locations. But a novella is more likely to be concentrated on one issue, with just one or two central characters, and located in one place.

Artistically, the novella is often unified by the use of powerful symbols which hold together the events of the story. The novella requires a very strong sense of form – that is, the shape and essence of what makes it distinct as a literary genre. It is difficult to think of a great novella which has not been written by a great novelist (though Kate Chopin’s The Awakening might be considered an exception). Another curious feature of the novella is that it is almost always very serious. It’s equally difficult to think of a great comic novella – though Saul Bellow’s excellent Seize the Day has some lighter moments.
The Awakening – tutorial
The Awakening – buy the book from Amazon UK
The Awakening – buy the book from Amazon US

Seize the Day (1956) focusses on one day in the life of one man, Tommy Wilhelm. A fading charmer who is now separated from his wife and his children, he has reached his day of reckoning and is scared. In his forties, he still retains a boyish impetuousness that has brought him to the brink of havoc. In the course of one climatic day, he reviews his past mistakes and spiritual malaise. Some people might wish to argue that this is a short novel, but it is held together by the sort of concentrated sense of unity which is the hallmark of a novella. It is now generally regarded as the first of Bellow’s great works, even though he went on to write a number of successful and much longer novels – for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1976.
Seize the Day – tutorial
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Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw (1897) is a classic novella, and a ghost story which defies easy interpretation. 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 haunted house theme in Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease. Or is it simply, “the most hopelessly evil story that we have ever read”? This collection also includes James’s other ghost stories – Sir Edmund Orme, Owen Wingrave, and The Friends of the Friends.
The Turn of the Screw – tutorial
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The Aspern Papers (1888) also by Henry James, is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s private correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer seeks a husband for her plain niece, whereas the potential purchaser of the letters she possesses 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 wins out? Henry James keeps readers guessing until the very end. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in the outcome. This collection of stories also includes The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion which is another classic novella.
The Aspern Papers – tutorial
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Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1902) is a tightly controlled novella which has assumed classic status as an account of late nineteenth century imperialism and the colonial process. It documents the search for a mysterious Kurtz, who has ‘gone too far’ in his exploitation of Africans in the ivory trade. The reader is plunged deeper and deeper into the ‘horrors’ of what happened when Europeans invaded the continent. This might well go down in literary history as Conrad’s finest and most insightful achievement. It is certainly regarded as a classic of the novella form, and a high point of twentieth century literature – even though it was written at its beginning. This volume also contains the story An Outpost of Progress – the magnificent study in shabby cowardice which prefigures ‘Heart of Darkness’. The differences between a story and a novella are readily apparent here if you read both texts and compare them.
Heart of Darkness – tutorial
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Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is the account of a young salesman who wakes up to find he has been transformed into a giant insect. His family are bewildered, find it difficult to deal with him, and despite the good human intentions struggling underneath his insect carapace, they eventually let him die of neglect. He eventually expires with a rotting apple lodged in his side. This particular collection also includes Kafka’s other masterly transformations of the short story form – ‘The Great Wall of China’, ‘Investigations of a Dog’, ‘The Burrow’, and the story in which he predicted the horrors of the concentration camps – ‘In the Penal Colony’.
Metamorphosis – tutorial
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The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

April 24, 2018 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, plot summary, web links

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) is something of a curiosity in the work of Evelyn Waugh. It is usually classed as a novel, but has more of the characteristics of a novella. Quite clearly it is autobiographical in origin, and in essence it has only one character – Gilbert Pinfold himself. In this sense it can also be regarded as a psychiatric case study – except that the condition it dramatises was eventually diagnosed as a pharmacological, not a psychological problem. It continues Waugh’s fictional strategy of combining serious problems with dramatic irony and comic misunderstandings.

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – commentary

Story – novel – novella

The publication could easily be classed as a long story. It deals essentially with one person’s experiences. It starts with the onset of his problems in a domestic English setting. It follows his escapist travels and the intensification of his psychic dramas. Then the narrative returns to its starting point and the solution to his problems. Pinfold is cured, and he decides to write the book we have just been reading.

None of the secondary characters have any real substance, and some of them do not even exist. In this sense it is simply a yarn or a tale whose principal interest is the depiction of a mental disorder from the sufferer’s point of view – and the comic consequences to which this breakdown leads.

To regard it as a novel raises problems. As an account of Pinfold’s psychological difficulties it lacks substance, since the majority of the drama is composed of imaginary events. After a perfectly credible opening, the story drifts into a dreamlike state which lacks the concrete reality that is normally part of a realistic novel.

More importantly, there is no acceptable explanation given for the resolution of the psycho-somatic tensions Pinfold is suffering. His physical pains suddenly and inexplicably disappear half way through the story, and the hallucinations evaporate just as suddenly when he reaches home. No reason is given for their origins or dissolution.

This might be the result of using personal experience as the material of what purports to be fiction. The events of the story are very closely based on Evelyn Waugh’s own ‘mid life crisis’ during which he undertook a sea voyage in an attempt to cure writer’s block. He also suffered from a form of persecution mania and delusions.

The cause of these problems was eventually identified as poisoning brought on by his heavy use of drugs and alcohol. As soon as his medication was changed, the hallucinations disappeared completely. There is no comparable resolution provided within the text. The story simply ends with the sort of ‘It had all been a dream’ conclusion to a schoolchild’s creative writing exercise.

But a stronger case can be made for considering it as a novella. It has unity of theme, unity of tone, and unity of character. It also has a neat triangular structure. The story begins with the origins of the drama in an English country house. Its central section deals with the development of Pinfold’s ailments during a sea voyage. And the problems are resolved on finally returning home.

This is simply an alternative view of the same literary material. It suggests a formal coherence in the events of the story, but it doesn’t provide the logical inevitability normally expected from narratives in the form of a novella. This essential element of formal resolution, unfortunately, is missing.

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – study resources

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – Penguin – Amazon UK

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – Penguin – Amazon US

Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited – Amazon UK

Four novels by Evelyn Waugh – Amazon UK

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – extensive Wikipedia entry

Evelyn Waugh – by Henry Lamb

The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold – plot summary

Gilbert Pinfold is a successful middle-aged author with conservative views and habits. He lives privately on an estate in what seems to be the West Country. He has problems sleeping, drinks heavily, and takes barbiturates. Following an unpleasant interview by the BBC, he finds his memory playing tricks.

He decides to go somewhere hot to finish his latest book. Despite being in ill health and unable to complete everyday tasks, he continues to drink heavily. On board ship he begins to lose track of time and starts having hallucinations. He loses social control at dinner, then overhears a riot on deck – which is severely quelled by the captain.

After lunch the next day he hears the trial and torture of a crew member coming from the captain’s cabin. The crewman dies. Following this, the pains in Pinfold’s legs suddenly disappear.

He hears a radio broadcast criticising his work as a novelist, then at the dinner table thinks to challenge the captain by raising the subject of murder. He stays awake to check that the captain does not dispose of the crewman’s body at night. Then he overhears two drunken youths who are threatening to beat him. The youths wake up other passengers, all of whom have criticisms of Pinfold.

Next morning Pinfold hears two girls planning to give him presents. The two loutish youths begin to taunt him again. They accuse him of being homosexual, a German (Peinfeld), a Jew, and a communist. Pinfold plans to bring them to trial in the ship’s lounge.

As the ship nears the Mediterranean, Pinfold learns that an international conflict has arisen over possession of Gibraltar. The captain reveals that the Spanish authorities want to capture a secret agent who is on board. He proposes giving them Pinfold as a substitute. When nothing happens Pinfold wonders if he is going mad, but decides it was all a hoax.

He becomes convinced that all the passengers on board are talking about him. A young girl called Margaret whom he has never met makes amorous overtures to him. Her parents intervene – but only to encourage her to visit Pinfold’s cabin at night. She is urged on by her father in military terms, but nothing happens.

When Pinfold overhears passengers laughing over telegrams he has sent he complains to Captain Steerforth and changes his cabin. He also thinks the practical jokes played on him have been orchestrated by Mr Angel, the man from the BBC who interviewed him.

He decides to thwart Angel’s plans by leaving the ship at Port Said and flying on to Colombo. He writes to his wife explaining the plot against him and signalling his intentions.

In Colombo he continues his conversations with Margaret. His wife sends a cable, urging him to come home. When he does return, the voices pursue him all the way back to London. He meets his wife and the voices stop. When they get home he decides to write The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold.

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The Secret Sharer

October 26, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

The Secret Sharer (1910) is a popular and much-anthologized work by Conrad. It’s quite short, yet it presents an enigmatic narrative and the story has been interpreted in a number of different ways. Like many of Conrad’s other stories, it combines elements of his own experience as a seaman with events recorded as part of naval history. The story is set in the Malayan Archipelago (The Gulf of Siam or Thailand to be exact) which features in a similar work, The Shadow-Line, written a few years later.

Joseph Conrad

The Secret Sharer – critical commentary

The double

There is a literary tradition of stories which deal with a theme known as ‘the double’. These are narratives featuring a character who feels the presence of, thinks he percieves, or sometimes even sees another character who has the same appearance or name as himself. The second character might succeed in society where the first character fails, or the second might perform some anti-social act for which the first character is blamed. Examples include Edgar Alan Poe’s Wiliam Wilson, Fyodor Dostoyevski’s The Double, and Vladimir Nabokov’s The Eye. For a further explanation this, see our tutorial on The Double.

Very often these stories are first person narratives in which it becomes clear to the reader that the second character does not actually exist, but is a projection of the narrator’s imagination – an ‘alternative’ personality, or ‘another self’ representing a fear or a wish-fulfilment.

The Secret Sharer is explicitly packed with the features of this theme. The unnamed narrator and Leggatt are of similar age. Both of them went to the elite sailor’s training school on the Conway. They are both bare footed when they meet. The captain gives Leggatt his own sleeping suit to wear, so that they look the same, and he puts him into his own bed. The captain immediately (and throughout the tale) refers to Leggatt as his ‘double’ and ‘secret self’. Leggatt was chief mate on the Sephora – and presumably the captain had previously been a mate before promotion to captain.

The two men echo each other’s gestures. The captain feels that they are both ‘strangers on board’. Leggatt is a stranger because he comes from another ship, the captain because he has so recently taken up his command. The captain refers to Leggatt as if he is looking in a mirror.

The story therefore seems to be variation on the double theme – and it is often discussed in such terms, particularly because none of the rest of the crew actually see Leggatt, and all information about him comes from the narrator, the captain.

This is a seductive interpretation, but it contains one major flaw. The fact is that other people in the story know that Leggatt exists. The captain of the Sephora, Archbold, comes looking for his chief mate who has escaped from the ship. So Leggatt is not a projection of the captain’s imagination, or an id to his ego. He actually exists.

There must therefore be some other means of interpreting the story, or providing an explanation for the events of the narrative.

There but for the grace of God …

Conrad often creates stories in which someone is presented with a moral dilemma or an existential crisis. This experience might also involve confronting ethically complex situations or other characters who have dared to cross the line between good and evil.

In Heart of Darkness for instance the narrator Marlowe is given the task of tracking down Kurtz, a man who has gone beyond acceptable limits in establishing his imperialist empire. Yet Marlowe, before he even meets Kurtz, is pre-disposed to admire his audacity. He asks his readers to empathise and imagine what courage it takes to break the rules of civilized society. Similar situations occur in Lord Jim and The Shadow-Line.

In The Secret Sharer we therefore have a situation where the young captain is confronted by another man of a similar age and provenance who has become embroiled in an ethically complex situation. Leggatt acts with the very best motive of saving the Sephora during a storm, and he is confronted by a weak captain and a malicious crew mate. He saves the ship, but kills his crew mate in doing so. In terms of maritime law he is guilty of a capital crime. This is an example of a good motive with a bad outcome.

But the young sea captain is entirely tolerant of Leggatt and his situation. He makes no criticism and acts instinctively to protect him from detection and capture. It’s as if he realises that he himself might have acted in a similar manner if he had been confronted by the same situation.

One can argue that the young captain acts out of class loyalty. Both he and Leggatt have come from the same training college, and the captain feels an instinct to protect his own kind. This is an interpretation which will not be popular with Conrad devotees, because it is an elitist position. And it is made even worse by the fact that at the end of the story the young captain does not appear to have learned anything.

The captain puts his own ship and the entire crew in great peril just for the sake of saving one individual from justice – something his maritime code of ethics would never condone. And yet the spirit of the narrative and Conrad’s attitude to the captain suggests a positive outcome to the story. The captain succeeds in steering clear of Koh-ring, and he feels that he has a closer relationship with the vessel he commands. This is a bad motive with a good outcome.

Interestingly, Leggatt saves the crew of the Sephora by his act of ‘setting’ a reefed foresail, but kills an individual in doing so. The young captain on the other hand does the opposite. He saves an individual (Leggatt) but puts his own crew in great danger by sailing so close to the Koh-ring island.

The Secret Sharer – study resources

The Secret Sharer – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

The Secret Sharer – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

The Secret Sharer – Kindle eBook

The Secret Sharer – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

The Secret Sharer – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

The Secret Sharer – Dover Thrift – Amazon UK

The Secret Sharer – Dover Thrift – Amazon US

The Secret Sharer – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg [FREE]

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

The Secret Sharer – plot summary

Part I. A young seaman has his first command to take a sailing ship from the Gulf of Siam (Thailand) back to England. Whilst becalmed during the night at the start of the voyage he takes on board Leggatt, another senior seaman who has escaped from a nearby ship. the Sephora, after killing a malicious fellow seaman during a storm. The young captain sympathises with Leggatt’s plight and conceals him in his cabin. Leggatt gives a reasonable explanation for his actions (which saved his ship) and the young captain continues to give him refuge.

Part II. When the captain of the Sephora comes searching for his escaped prisoner, he gives his own account of events. The crew of the young captain’s ship find his behaviour increasingly strange, but he continues to protect Leggatt. Both of them are graduates of the same training school, and the captain regards Leggatt as his ‘double’ or ‘alternative self’. After a number of number of near scrapes in being detected, Leggatt asks to be put off the ship when it nears some islands. He is willing to take his chance to make an escape. The captain takes a grave risk by sailing perilously close to an island, but in the end Leggatt slips away undetected and the captain sails on, feeling that he now has complete control of his ship.

Joseph Conrad – video biography

Principal characters

I	the narrator, an unnamed young mariner
–	the chief mate with ‘terrible whiskers’
–	the young second mate
Leggatt	the chief mate of the Sephora
Archbold	the captain of the Sephora

The Secret Sharer – first book edition

First edition – J.M.Dent & Sons 1912

Critical studies

Ted Billy, A Wilderness of Words: Closure and Disclosure in Conrad’s Short Fiction, Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1997.

Gary Geddes, Conrad’s Later Novels, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980.

Stephen K. Land, Conrad and the Paradox of Plot, London: Macmillan Press, 1984.

F.R.Leavis, ‘The Shadow-Line’, in Anna Karenina and Other Essays, London: Chatto and Windus, 1967.

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Other novels by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

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Twentieth century literature
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The Touchstone

February 17, 2014 by Roy Johnson

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

The Touchstone was published in 1900, and was Edith Wharton’s first novella. It’s an amazingly accomplished piece, considering that she did not think she had matured as a writer until more than a decade later, when she published Ethan Frome (1911), which she described as marking the end of her ‘apprenticeship’ as a writer.

Margaret Aubyn’s letters

The Touchstone – critical commentary

Context

Edith Wharton was a great friend of Henry James, who had written a number of stories dealing with the relationship of authors to society in general, and the problems of biographical revelations in particular. James’s stories generally put the case for the right of authors to retain an autonomous degree of control over the details of their private lives, and he often depicts those who would reveal intimate aspects of a writer’s biography as sneaks, gossip-mongers, and prying busybodies. The most celebrated case of this kind is his novella The Aspern Papers (1888).

Edith Wharton follows this line of argument in The Touchstone. There is never any doubt in Glennard’s mind that by releasing Margaret Aubyn’s letters to the public, he is betraying both her and the one-sided relationship they had in the past. Moreover, he makes the decision to publish for rather dubious motives – because he needs the money in order to marry Alexa Trent, from whom he conceals the fact that the letters were written to him.

However, this view of publishing biographical materials is countered by Flamel’s view that to do so in the case of Margaret Aubyn would be a public service – because she is an important and renowned figure, and because no personal harm can be done to her since she is now dead. At first this appears to be a slippery, diabolical argument leading Glennard into a Faustian pact with his publisher, from which he profits again and again. Hence the dramatic significance of the royalty cheque he receives and his attempt to salve his conscience by paying Flamel a commission fee.

The reader is given ever reason to think that Flamel has underhand motives and is paving his way to seduce Alexa – but in fact he refuses the fee, and turns out to have acted honourably all along, even to the extent of going to live abroad, with the implication that he has been in love with Alexa but is sacrificing his own interests out of respect for hers.

The novella

The basic requirements of the novella form are that it should be short, concentrated, centred on a single theme, with few characters, and tightly focused in terms of time scale, characters, and location. The Touchstone fulfils all these requirements. It has three principal characters, the drama is centred upon Glennard’s moral struggle in his dealings with the other two – and his past relationship with Margaret Aubyn, who is a very good example of a character exerting influence from beyond the grave. And the letters themselves form an appropriate symbol of the central issue of the story – the revelation of biographical information about a well-known writer.

There is more than a hint that Margaret Aubyn is a thinly veiled portrait of Edith Wharton herself. And it’s also interesting to note that she publishes a volume with the title Pomegranate Seed – which Edith Wharton was to do herself when she wrote a story with that title thirty years later.

The Touchstone – study resources

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Stories 1891-1910 – Norton Critical – Amazon US

The Touchstone – eBook format at Project Gutenberg

The Touchstone – AudioBook format at Gutenberg

The Touchstone – paperback edition – Amazon UK

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Touchstone – plot synopsis

Part I. New York lawyer Stephen Glennard sees a request for information relating to famous novelist Margaret Aubyn. He is in possession of hundreds of her letters written at a time when she was in love with him but when he was unable to reciprocate her feelings. He feels financially pinched and does not have enough money to marry Alexa Trent.

Part II. He has been in love with Alexa for two years, and Margaret Aubyn has been dead for three. Glennard met Margaret Aubyn when he was at university, and after her husband died Glennard moved to work in New York, which is when her correspondence began. She decided to move to London, from where she continued her eloquent and vivid sequence of letters. Glennard realises that he is in possession of a rich seam of materials.

Part III. Alexa reports that her aunt has invited her to live abroad in Europe for two years. This is to relieve the financial burden on her family which Alexa creates as the eldest unmarried daughter. Glennard tries to persuade her to marry him instead, and live frugally.

Part IV. Glennard feels vaguely guilty that he has been standing in the way of Alexa finding a husband who can support her. His friend Flamel confirms that a collection of Margaret Aubyn’s letters would be very valuable to a publisher. Glennard plans to invest any money he might raise from such a sale.

Part V. One year later Glennard is married to Alexa, they are living in the suburbs, and his investments are doing very well. Flamel has helped him to edit the letters, and their publication is a big success. Yet Glennard feels oppressed by a sense of regret that he has somehow betrayed Margaret Aubyn. He is worried that Alexa might discover his secret that the letters were written to him, and he is anxious about his pact with Flamel.

Part VI. Margaret Aubyn’s letters are discussed by a group of people on Flamel’s yacht, following which Alexa asks Glennard to buy her a copy of the Letters. Alexa appears to have closer and closer ties with Flamel.

Part VII. Alexa knows that Glennard was acquainted with Margaret Aubyn in his earlier university days. Glennard invites Flamel to dinner, where this connection is revealed. Glennard is anxious about how much his wife and Flamel know respectively about each other’s knowledge of the situation.

Part VIII. Glennard is so worried about what Alexa might discover that he decides to move back into to New York so that he will have less personal contact with her because of social life in the city. A royalty cheque appears as a result of the publishing success, and he feels more guilty than ever. Friends report on a public reading of the Letters at the Waldorf Hotel. Glennard suspects that Flamel might have revealed his secret to Alexa.

Part IX. Glennard gives Alexa the chance to discover his secret by letting her see a letter from his publisher. Alexa meanwhile continues to have more and more private meetings with Flamel.

Part X. Time goes on, and Glennard still does not discuss his guilty secret with Alexa, as a consequence of which they begin to drift further and further apart. He sees a picture of Margaret Aubyn in a magazine and begins to imaginatively re-live their relationship.

Part XI. Glennard goes to the cemetery and scatters flowers on Margaret Aubyn’s grave.

Part XII. Glennard’s morbid connection with Margaret Aubyn continues and leads him into a solitary way of life. But he is suddenly shocked to encounter Alexa and Flamel together in an out-of-the-way part of Manhattan. He sends Flamel a cheque as commission for his part in placing the letters with a publisher. When Flamel pays him a surprise visit, Glennard reveals that the letters were written to him, and he lies to Flamel, claiming that Alexa was aware of the fact. Flamel rejects his arguments and his action as insulting, and tears up the cheque.

Part XIII. Glennard wonders if Alexa does not realise the letters were written to him, and he begins to value her again. He challenges her in a jealous outburst over her meeting with Flamel, who she tells him is leaving for Europe. She also reveals her distaste for the letters and the ‘inheritance’ they provided for the establishment of their marriage. She argues that the money should be repaid. Glennard asks her if Flamel is leaving because he loves Alexa, and he admits that he has deceived Flamel, who has behaved honourably throughout the episode.

Part XIV. Alexa makes sacrifices and they live frugally. Glennard calculates that it will take two years to repay the money. He is tortured by his inability to make amends to the dead Margaret Aubyn, and he wallows in self-pity. However, Alexa argues that Margaret Aubyn has given him the opportunity to ‘discover himself’, even if it was via a base action on his part.

The Touchstone – principal characters

Stephen Glennard	a New York lawyer
Alexa Trent	his fiancé, and later his wife
Mrs Margaret Aubyn	a celebrated novelist, his former lover
Barton Flamel	a rich aesthete and collector

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

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

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 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 on Henry James
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What Kind of Day Did You Have?

August 2, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, web links, and further reading

What Kind of Day Did You Have? (1984) is one of five pieces in the collection Him with his Foot in his Mouth. It first appeared in slightly different form in Vanity Fair. The story is a fictional account of a single day in the lives of two real people Saul Bellow knew well. It reveals the personal tensions and the dramatic situations that arise during a clandestine love affair, set against the backdrop of a midwinter journey by plane between New York State and Chicago.

The four other stories in the collection are Him with his Foot in his Mouth, A Silver Dish, Cousins, and Zetland: By A Character Witness.

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – commentary

Fiction and biography

Saul Bellow often uses real historical figures as the models for his fictional characters. His friend and mentor Delmore Schwartz was the original for the protagonist of his early success Humboldt’s Gift (1975) and his colleague the philosopher Allan Bloom was the inspiration for his last novel Ravelstein (2000). The character Victor Wulpy in What Kind of Day Did You Have? is based on Harold Rosenberg, someone whom Bellow knew from his early days associated with left-wing magazines such as Partisan Review. Rosenberg was a writer, a social philosopher, and art critic for the New Yorker magazine.

These characters are often eccentric, larger-than-life, and an entertaining mixture of talent and gaucheness. Bellow pulls no punches in depicting both their strengths and weaknesses in unsparing detail. They all tend to be great talkers, and the narratives in which they feature are packed with their racy, egotistical monologues.

This blending of historical ‘fact’ and fiction raises a number of problems for literary interpretation and judgement. Readers will have an understandable inclination to believe that the portraits and episodes in the fiction are accurate, true, and based on ‘real events’. Yet the author is under no obligation to make them so. A novel or a story declares itself from the outset to be a fabrication, and there is nothing to prevent authors from blending fiction and historical ‘fact’ in any way they choose.

We know from external evidence that Wulpy and his mistress Katrina are based on Harold Rosenberg and a woman called Joan Ullman with whom he had an affair. But as a piece of writing, the story must be judged on internal (that is fictional) evidence alone. Any comment which takes into account evidence from the lives of the ‘originals’ of the characters becomes biographical comment.

It is also rather pointless searching in works of fiction for character studies of real historical people. Novels are not written for this purpose – and they should be taken at their own face value. Even serious biographies are literary constructs – though the best are founded on verifiable evidence.

Characterisation

It should be quite clear that Victor Wulpy is being offered to us as some sort of loveable rogue – an oversized rascal who speaks his mind and is quite prepared to offend others in doing so. He is also a famous intellectual who can earn enormous public-speaking fees.

But he was a talker, he had to talk, and during those wide-ranging bed conversations (monologues) when he let himself go, he couldn’t stop to explain himself … As he went on, he was more salty, scandalous, he was murderous. Reputations were destroyed when he got going, and people were torn to bits. So-and-so was a plagiarist who did not know what to steal, X who was a philosopher was a chorus boy at heart, Y had a mind like a lazy Susan, six spoiled appetisers and no main course.

But the problem in the case of Victor Wulpy is that his philosophic originality is largely told and not shown. That is to say, we are told how radical, freewheeling, and scandalous his private opinions are, but they are not dramatised. We are not sufficiently shown those opinions in action.

What we are shown is an enormous amount of self-centred, boorish behaviour, and male chauvinism bordering on the pathological.

Wulpy like the original Harold Rosenberg is a self-styled bohemian who pours scorn on all conventional opinions and behaviour. Rosenberg was the man who coined the expression ‘the tradition of the new’. And yet both the historical Rosenberg and the fictional Wulpy are living the life of an old-fashioned Victorian patriarch. Wulpy keeps a long-suffering wife in the background whom he refuses to divorce; and he has a lover/mistress whom he picks up and puts down again at his own convenience.

The female character Katrina Goliger is based on the journalist Joan Ullman, who has written her own account of the relationship with Rosenberg:

Bellow had pillaged key incidents from my life, which should have been mine to tell … It’s only been recently, that for the first time the true cost—the steep price I’d paid to be with Harold—struck home.

Yet despite the understandable outrage at having her personal life made the subject of fiction (for which permission was not sought) her own description of the affair is remarkably similar to that in Bellow’s story. The fictional Katrina comes across as a very willing doormat on which Wulpy wipes his size sixteen feet.

Is it a novella?

The strongest feature in favour of the piece being considered a novella is its unity of time and action. The events of the narrative take place over exactly a single day. They begin one evening in Chicago when Katrina is having dinner with her would-be suitor Krieggstein. On receiving a telephone call from Wulpy, she flies to Buffalo to join him. They then fly back to Chicago, with an enforced stop-over in Detroit. The story ends in the early evening, twenty-four hours later, back at her home, where she is reunited with Krieggstein.

The story has two principal characters, Wulpy and Katrina, who are locked in a very conventional power struggle. He is using her for sexual convenience whilst maintaining his independence from her – with a wife safely tucked away in the background. She feels vulnerable as a single mother and is looking for emotional commitment. This tension between them is brought to a climax when their return flight hits dangerous turbulence. Even as they think they might die, Wulpy refuses to say he loves her – because he thinks it is such a situational cliché.

The story ends in an apparently unresolved state. Wulpy goes on to give his lecture; Katrina is met by Krieggstein, who has been supervising her children after school. Krieggstein is present at the beginning and end of the story and the day, offering her devotion and support. This suggests in terms of fictional convention and logic that her future lies with him. As a policeman he might have a concealed firearm strapped to his leg, but at least he will come home every night – unlike Wulpy.

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – resources

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Saul Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Saul; Bellow – Collected Stories – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz UK

Saul Bellow (Modern Critical Views) – essays and studies – Amz US

A Saul Bellow bibliography

Harold Rosenberg at Wikipedia

Joan Ullman’s side of the story

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – synopsis

Famous but egocentric art critic Victor Wulpy is in an adulterous relationship with Katrina Goliger. Her husband has divorced her, and she is left with two teenage daughters. Whilst she is having dinner with her friend Lieutenant Krieggstein, Wulpy telephones, insisting she travel from Chicago to Buffalo to join him.

Katrina is vigorously chided by her sister Dorothea for tolerating Wulpy’s self-centred demands. Katrina gets up before dawn and flies to Buffalo. Wulpy is petulantly distressed because he will be sharing a conference platform with people he does not like.

In the VIP lounge he makes political analyses of America from what he claims is a Marxist point of view. He is powerfully attracted to Katrina even though he realises that there is an intellectual gap between them. They are joined by Larry Wrangel, an old bohemian associate of Wulpy’s who wants him to consider some hippy political views.

On the flight back to Chicago Katrina thinks about the children’s story about an elephant she is trying to write. Wulpy reflects on memories of his Jewish childhood. The plane is forced to land in Detroit because of heavy snow in Chicago.

Larry Wrangel turns up again and takes them to lunch, where Wulpy turns on his ingratiating host with insults. Katrina and Wulpy stay in a hotel room and have sex whilst they are waiting for an emergency rescue flight.

They then fly on to Chicago, Katrina recalling Wulpy’s recent near-death operation, and her being tolerated by his wife Beila. Their light plane hits turbulence, and they think they might crash, but even in what might be their last moments, Wulpy refuses to say “I love you” to Katrina.

She eventually reaches home to find that her friend Krieggstein has been looking after her children and is obviously hoping to become her suitor.

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – characters

Victor Wulpy	an egocentric art critic and theorist
Beila Wulpy	his stoical and ‘understanding’ wife
Katrina Goliger	his lover, a mother with two children
Alfred Goliger	Katrina’s ex-husband, a dealer in antiques
Dorothea	Katrina’s outspoken sister
Sammy Krieggstein	a war hero and lieutenant in the police force
Larry Wrangel	a writer and sci-fi film maker

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Twentieth century literature

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What Kind of Day Did You Have? – commentary

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – resources

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – synopsis

What Kind of Day Did You Have? – characters

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