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

Gabrielle de Bergerac first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly over three issues, between July and September 1869. Its next appearance in book form was when published by Boni and Liveright in New York, 1919.

Bergerac – the old town

Gabrielle de Bergerac – critical commentary

This is a story from the early part of James’s oeuvre as a writer of stories – or ‘tales’ as he preferred to call them. It is serious, well orchestrated, and deals with some serious political issues as part of its narrative. But it is a story clearly not composed from any elements of personal experience, so much as reading and the world of the active imagination. It has a distinctly Balzacian flavour beneath the rather more romantic story of a vulnerable young woman under siege from an unwanted suitor

It is also, rather unusually for James, set roughly a century prior to its composition, and contains many elements of political and social history. The most striking element of course is the materialist and almost Marxist interpretation of the ruined chateau at Fossy given by Coquelin. He is aware of its former splendour, but realises the social cost at which it has been built and maintained – on the labours of people of the lower classes to which he belongs.

It is his passionate articulation of these beliefs that wins over Gabrielle to admire him so much – even though on the occasion of their visit she presents a different, more romantic interpretation. But she has the honesty to later reveal that she didn’t really believe the case she was making.

And if the story has certain romantic elements – the poor but brave hero; the scheming villain; the vulnerable motherless heroine; the dramatic confrontation in Coquelin’s room – it certainly doesn’t have a romantic outcome. The hero and heroine do eventually marry, but they lose their children in straightened social circumstances in Paris, and are then both executed as Girondistes as part of the revolution.

Study resources

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

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

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

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

Gabrielle de Bergerac – read the text of the story on line

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Gabrielle de Bergerac – plot summary

Part I.   The outer narrator receives a painting in lieu of a debt from Baron de Bergerac. It is a portrait of his aunt, who was executed during the French revolution. The Baron recounts his family history, mainly from the point of view of his childhood – which forms the remainder of the narrative.

When he is a child (‘the Chevalier’) the Baron’s father appoints Pierre Coquelin as his tutor. Coquelin is a poor would-be writer who has fought in the French colonies in America and been wounded. He is a follower of Rousseau, and teaches the boy Greek and Roman classics.

The father also has a scheme to marry a somewhat dissolute family friend Viscount Gaston de Treuil to his sister Gabrielle, because neither of them have any money, and it will save the expense of her becoming a spinster, financially dependent on the family. Gabrielle has lived a very sheltered life, but she is attracted to Coquelin who is younger and more romantic than the Viscount.

She is told that the Viscount is waiting to inherit money from an elderly relative before he proposes marriage to her, but he does propose before leaving to curry favour with the relative. The offer of marriage is expressed in a patronising manner, full of self-aggrandisement. Her response is noncommittal. He promises to return in three months with more money. Afterwards they visit Coquelin in his cottage where he shows them some sketches, including a portrait of Gabrielle. She agrees to ‘wait’ for three months before deciding on the Viscount’s offer.

Part II.   The summer period is a countryside idyll for the boy and his tutorOne day they come across Gabrielle and her friend in the house of a dying peasant. The boy realises that Coquelin is in love with his aunt. The tree of them visit a ruined chateau in the region. Coquelin takes a materialist and class-conscious view of its history, whereas Gabrielle argues for a romantic view of its past glories. Then Coquelin climbs to the highest point of the building (at great personal risk) and has difficulty getting down again.

Part III.   Back home, the boy imitates his tutor’s daring, and ends up falling in a river. He becomes ill, and whilst recovering overhears his aunt Gabrielle and Coquelin talk about their love for each other. The relationship is made problematic by their differences in social class. It becomes apparent that she has been deeply moved by his class critique of the ruined chateau, and didn’t really believe in her own argument. Coquelin knows that she is supposed to be ‘waiting’ for the Viscount’s return – though she says she will never marry him. In fact she feels that she cannot marry anyone – so Coquelin decides to leave.

The Viscount arrives, having inherited from his now-deceased relative. But Gabrielle refuses his offer – much to her brother’s anger. The Baron and the Viscount get the story of what has happened out of the young boy, who immediately tells his aunt. They go to the cottage where Coquelin is preparing to leave. The Baron and the Viscount arrive, and there is a violent show down, during which the Viscount attacks Gabrielle with his sword. She immediately reverses her decision of renunciation and announces that she will leave with Coquelin.

The aftermath of the story is that Gabrielle and Coquelin were married, had children (who died) and lived off his painting and writing in Paris. But during the revolution, they were both executed as Girondists

Principal characters

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other works by Henry James

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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© Roy Johnson 2013

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Georgina’s Reasons first appeared in serial form in the New York newspaper The Sun for July—August 1884. This was a serious newspaper which ranked alongside the more famous broadsheets The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The story was then reprinted in book form amongst Stories Revived published in England and America in 1885.

Georgina’s Reasons – critical commentary

There only seem to be three points to be made about this tale. The first is obvious and explicit; the second less so; and the third only emerges in the light of reading James’s other stories with a similar theme.

The first is that whatever Georgina’s reasons are, she keeps them to herself. Obviously she is wilful and defiant towards her parents. She disobeys them and thwarts their ambitions. But she gains nothing from marrying Raymond in secret then going back to live at home. She has not gained any independence.

Obviously she deceives Raymond, mistreats him, and behaves even more outrageously towards her own child. Then – although we are not shown how she does it – she claws her way into higher society via a bigamous marriage to Mr Roy.

In other words she is a completely unscrupulous status seeker with no moral framework other than rampant self-interest and a total disregard for the feelings of others. She is like the precursor of an ambitious bitch from some television soap opera.

In contrast (the second point) Raymond Benyon appears to be the model of high-principled moral integrity. He agrees to keep their marriage secret, despite having no earthly motive for doing so. And he sticks to this absurd agreement even when attractive alternatives are on offer.

But is he so honourable? He realises that because he is technically married, he ought not to become entangled with unmarried women, but he does so nevertheless. So far, so understandable. But then he cannot bring himself to explain to Kate Theory why he is so reluctant to develop their relationship – and at the end of the tale he makes quite a cruel suggestion that they ‘wait’ before marrying – at the same time as applying for another commission at sea.

His excuse to himself is that the ‘wait’ is only until the death of his wife, to whom he is still legally married. But she is only thirty years old at the time. He is prevaricating wimpishly at the expense of Kate’s feelings for him.

If these two observations are put together, they form the basis for the third point of argument – that this story is yet another of the many James wrote which offer a cautionary tale against emotional entanglements with women, and the perilous consequences of being married. Read alongside other tales such as Benvolio, , and The Path of Duty there is every reason to believe that James was giving expression (whether consciously or unconsciously) to the dilemma he faced in his own relations with women, marriage, and sexuality. He would not resolve this dilemma until quite late in his own life.

Geotgina’s Reasons – study resources

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

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

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

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

Georgina’s Reasons – paperback edition – Amazon UK

Georgina’s Reasons – paperback edition [$5.84] Amazon US

Georgina’s Reasons – Kindle edition

Georgina’s Reasons – eBook formats at Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Georgina’s Reasons – plot summary

Part I.   Georgina Gressie causes distress to her successful family when she announces that she wishes to marry Raymond Benyon, a humble lieutenant in the navy. She acts in a contradictory manner with Raymond, and argues that they should see less of each other, but marry as quickly as possible. She argues for marrying in secret and continuing to live with her parents.

Part II.   Georgina announces to Mrs Portico that she has been married for a year, and wishes to go to Europe. She has pretended to her family that her relationship with Raymond Benyon is over. He is away at sea, and she is pregnant. She has sworn Raymond to permanent secrecy regarding their marriage. Mrs Portico suggests that she should tell her parents, but Georgina refuses indignantly.

Part III.   However, Mrs Portico consents to the trip and they go to Genoa, where Georgina gives birth to a son, who she immediately gives away to an Italian surrogate mother. Mrs Portico feels guilty about conspiring in this sort of conduct, and thinks of adopting the child herself. She is increasingly critical of Georgina, and secretly writes to Raymond to tell him about his son, offering to bring him up herself. However, shortly afterwards she dies of malarial fever. Georgina returns to New York.

Part IV.   Ten years later Kate Theory is looking after her consumptive sister Mildred in Naples. They have been visited by Captain Benyon, who Kate thinks has a ‘lost love’ in his past. His commodore has left him in charge of the Louisiana whilst away. They have met via the US consul, and Raymond is attracted to them, despite his self-imposed rule of staying away from unmarried women.

Mildred reveals privately to Raymond their fear that they will not like their brother’s wife Agnes, who is due to visit. Raymond also worries that Mildred seems to be pushing her sister Kate at him, because he is falling for her despite himself. He leaves abruptly, and when Kate returns she is devastated.

Part V.   Ten days later Raymond has admitted to himself that he is in love with Kate, but feels he must renounce their relationship because technically he is still married. Agnes Theory has turned out to be an empty-headed bore. Raymond half declares himself to Kate, and then is shown a portrait of Georgina, who has married a rich New York businessman. He thinks back in great anger about the manner in which Georgina has deceived him, particularly with regard to their child, for whom he has searched, fruitlessly. He now feels that Georgina has put herself within his power.

Part VI.   Back in New York, Raymond visits Georgina and finds her beautiful and completely unrepentant. He wants a divorce, but she refuses. Instead she introduces him to her husband Mr Roy. Raymond could reveal her bigamous status, but doesn’t. She sends him off with the suggestion that he should marry again without getting a divorce. He feels constrained by the promise he originally made to her, and cannot find a way out of this dilemma. Finally, he decides to renounce Kate. He tells her they must wait to get married and asks the navy for a new commission.

Principal characters

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other works by Henry James

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

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

© Roy Johnson 2013

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

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

Glasses – critical commentary

The main theme

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A secondary issue

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

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

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

Blemishes

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

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

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

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

Glasses – study resources

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

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

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

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

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

Selected Tales – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

Glasses – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Glasses – plot summary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Principal characters

Henry James’s study

Further reading

Biographical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Critical commentary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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© Roy Johnson 2012

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.