English literature Archives - Page 7 of 44

Complete Critical Guide to Jane Austen

June 28, 2009 by Roy Johnson

biography, guidance notes, and critical essays

This complete critical guide to Jane Austen comes from a new series by Routledge which offers comprehensive but single-volume introductions to major English writers. They are aimed at students of literature, but are accessible to general readers who might like to deepen their understanding. The approach taken is quite straightforward. Part One is a potted biography of Austen, placing her life and work in a socio-historical context. This takes into account the role of women in the early nineteenth century; the position of a female author in the world of book publishing at the time; the social conventions surrounding women and marriage; and the sheer political fact that she was living at the time of the French revolution and war between Britain and France.

Part Two provides a synoptic view of Austen’s six great novels – from Northanger Abbey to Persuasion. The works are described in outline, and then their main themes illuminated. This is followed by pointers towards the main critical writings on these texts and issues.

Part Three deals with criticism of Austen’s work. This is presented in chronological order – from contemporaries such as Walter Scott to critics of the present day, with the focus on feminist and gender criticism, Marxist, and psychoanalytic criticism. Some of the readings Irvine outlines will be quite provocative and surprising to many readers – particularly those dealing with such issues as slavery in Mansfield Park and both sexual and homosexual readings of Sense and Sensibility.

The book ends with a commendably thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Austen journals. There is also a separate chapter which deals with Austen on screen. This discusses the controversial issue of Austen’s work as it has been appropriated to project modern notions of English nationalism and the ‘heritage industry’.

This will be an excellent starting point for students who are new to Austen’s work – and a refresher course for those who would like to keep up to date with criticism. And it certainly is up to date – with references to publications only just over a year old at the time of publication.

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Robert P. Irvine, The Complete Critical Guide to Jane Austen, Abingdon: Routledge, 2005, pp.190, ISBN 0415314356

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Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy

June 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Biography, guidance notes, and criticism of Hardy

This comes from a new series by publishers Routledge which offers comprehensive but single-volume introductions to major English writers. They are aimed at students of literature, but are accessible to general readers who might like to deepen their understanding. The approach taken by the Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy could not be more straightforward.

Part one is a potted biography of Hardy, placing his life and work in a relatively neutral socio-historical context. Thus we get his early influences and ambitions, his rise to fame as a novelist, and then his switch to poetry in later life. The study does not shy away from the difficulties he had in his first marriage and his second marriage to a woman forty years younger than himself.

Part two provides a synoptic view of Hardy’s stories, novels, plays, and poetry. The works are described in outline, and then their main themes illuminated. This is followed by pointers towards the main critical writings on these texts and issues.

Hardy is not an easy writer to categorise. We think of him mainly as a novelist – but he is equally influential (if not so highly regarded) as a poet and a writer of novellas and short stories.

Part three deals with criticism of Hardy’s work. This is presented in chronological order – from contemporaries such as D.H. Lawrence to critics of the present day, with the focus on feminist and gender criticism, Marxist, and psychoanalytic criticism.

The book ends with a commendably thorough bibliography which covers biography, criticism in books and articles, plus pointers towards specialist Hardy journals.

An excellent starting point for students who are new to Hardy’s work – and a refresher course for those who would like to keep up to date with criticism.

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Geoffrey Harvey, The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy, London: Routledge, 2003, pp.228, ISBN 0415234921

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Concise Chronology of English Literature

November 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

what was written and published between 1474 and 2000

What were people writing about as Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or whilst engineers built the first railways in the nineteenth century? This reference book Concise Chronology of English Literature lists the major and some minor works published in every year between 1474 and 2001. Each year in the chronology begins with a list of interesting events, births, and deaths. The later entries also include other cultural items such as films, television productions, and plays.

There’s a big index which lists the authors and all their works listed by date – so you can either see an entry in its chronological context or look up its dating directly. It represents highbrow, middlebrow, and even lowbrow tastes, so the editors have tried to be egalitarian. So for instance, we learn that 1900 saw the birth of the Labour Party; the death of Ruskin, Nietzsche, and Oscar Wilde; and the publication of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, Bernard Shaw’s Fabianism and the Empire, and H.G.Wells’ Love and Mr Lewisham.

It was also the year which saw the first production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, the Boxer Uprising in China, and the publication of S.R. Crockett’s The Stickit Minister’s Wooing, and Other Galloway Stories – which I have to confess I have never heard of before, and I bet you haven’t either.

Although the entries are short, there is an amazing amount of fine detail. For instance, here are two listings from 1756:

David Hume (1711-76)

The History of Great Britain [vol ii] NF Published 1756, dated 1757. Volume i published 1754 (q.v.) See also History of England 1759

Charlotte Lennox (1729? – 1804) (tr.) The Memoirs of the Countess of Berci F Anonymous. Adapted from L’Histoire tragi-comique de notre temps by Vital d’Audiguier (1569-1624)

The more recent entries – say from 2000 onwards read like a list of best-sellers in the weekend supplements. But then of course, who knows how many of these titles will stand the test of time. Will people still think Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Anita Brookner’s The Bay of Angels summarised the turn of the century? I somehow doubt it.

On some items there is additional publishing history details which appeals to literary anoraks like me. For instance:

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

Youth F

Published on 13 November 1902. Contains ‘Youth’ (first published in Blackwood’s Magazine, September 1898), ‘The Heart of Darkness’ (first published in Blackwood’s Magazine, February 1898), and ‘The End of the Tether’ (first published in Blackwood’s Magazine, July-December 1902).

This is useful information for researchers, historians, and detail specialists. All of which might all sound dry as dust – but the strange thing is that I imagine that this will stay at the front of my desktop bookshelf as a useful resource.

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Michael Cox (ed), The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd revised edition 2005, pp.844, ISBN: 0198610548

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Concise Companion to English Literature

July 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

authors, books, literary topics, and cultural issues

This Concise Companion to English Literature is a cut-down paperback version of Margaret Drabble’s Oxford Companion to English Literature. It’s based on the sixth edition, but it adds 500+ new entries on contemporary writers, ‘women writers’ and literary theorists. The main entries are thumbnail sketches of novelists, poets, and dramatists; but there are also entries representing philosophers, historians, scholars, critics, biographers, travel writers, and journalists.

Topics covered include authors (from Abelard to Zola); literary genres (from the Absurd to yellow-backs); characters in fiction, drama, and poetry; famous works (Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod to Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson); famous literary places, and concepts in literary theory. There are bonuses, such as the occasional special mini-essays on topics such as biography, or detective, gothic, and historical fiction. It also explains literary genres such as free verse, the epic, metaphors, and naturalism.

It more or less reflects contemporary concerns: Sorley McLean and Marshall McLuhan get far less space than Bernard McLaverty.

The extras are entries on significant magazines such as Edinburgh Review and Atlantic Monthly; entries on deconstruction, folios and quartos; the Hogarth Press and Penguin Books; performance poetry and post-colonial literature.

There are also appendix lists of poets laureate, plus Nobel, Pulitzer, and Booker Man prizewinners for literature.

One useful feature is the potted plots of novels and dramas. I’m fairly sure I will be going back to that, having refreshed my memory of the sprawling plot of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano.

For those of us who were denied a classical education, there’s a generous outline of its main authors, texts, and characters – from Aristophanes and Aristotle to Virgil and Xenophon.

This is the sort of reference book which you will grab off the shelf the moment you see a name you don’t recognise, when you want to check the date, the author, or the correct title of a work you see mentioned, or if you want to know about ‘The Battle of Alcazar’ (1594) or ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ (1875).

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Margaret Drabble and Jenny Stringer, The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edition, 2003, pp.752, ISBN: 0199214921

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Confession

August 19, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Confession first appeared in Edith Wharton’s collection of stories The World Over, which was published in 1936. It is based upon a famous (and scandalous) incident from 1892 which Edith Wharton had used for the basis of a stage play which she never completed.

Edith Wharton

Confession – critical comments

Murder mystery

The puzzle to this story is explained by the fact that nowhere is the truth of the situation made explicit. Everything is revealed via inference and small details which add up to the fact that Kate has killed her father. The trial jury concluded that Ezra Spain was killed by ‘a passing tramp’ and his daughter Kate has been acquitted of any involvement in the crime on the strength of the evidence of the household servant Cassie Donovan who testified that they were both elsewhere at the time of the murder. As Jimmy Shreve points out to Severance in his exposition of the facts:

Cassie was the servant girl’s name, sure enough … It was her evidence that got Kate Spain off. But at the trial she was a thin haggard Irish girl in dirty calico

But she has become larger and coarsened through over-indulgence, and like Kate she has changed her name – from Donovan to Willpert. Cassie has complete control over Kate, who does whatever her socially subservient travelling companion decides.

Kate also provides Cassie with an allowance, and in earlier attempts to free herself from the dominance of her companion she has offered to give her a house and double her allowance – offers which were refused.

Because Miss Willpert is such an unappetizing figure (especially in the eyes of the first person narrator Severance) superficial suspicion is cast over her as the villain whom Kate Ingram has agreed to protect.

But in fact the truth is the other way round. Cassie Donovan has provided an alibi for Kate Spain, who is guilty of the murder. In return for this favour Kate is forever beholden to her former domestic servant. This explains her inability to act in her own interest. Kate is not free to do anything – because Cassie has the evidence which could reveal her guilt.

That evidence is information she carries within herself, and it is encapsulated in the written document Cassie is about to produce from her handbag when she has her stroke. Following her death, that evidence is rescued from the police by Severance’s vigilance and is passed over to Kate.

Severance guesses that the envelope contains information about the trial, but he assumes that Kate has concealed evidence to shield someone else (that person most likely being Cassie Willpert). He does not suspect Kate herself, and thus he remains ‘innocent and slightly naive’ until the end..

Lizze Borden

This story has strong echoes of the Lizze Borden trial – a case which shocked America (and the world) in 1892. Lizzie was tried for killing her wealthy but tyrannical and tight-fisted father and her stepmother with an axe, but acquitted because of conflicts and lacunae in the evidence.

The trial caused a sensation which was intensified by extensive coverage in newspapers. And even though she was acquitted, Lizzie was ostracised by the public ever afterwards. Edith Wharton not only knew about the famous Lizzie Borden case, she started writing a play about it, called Kate Price but never finished it.

The case is remembered in American folk memory by the anonymous rhyme:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one.

Setting
The story begins in a hotel situated in Mont Soleil in the Engadine, southwest Switzerland. When the two women leave for Italy, Severance follows them to Orta in the Italian lakes.

Confession – study resources

Confession – Capuchin Classics – Amazon UK

Confession – Capuchin Classics – Amazon US

The New York Stories – New York Review Books – Amazon UK

The New York Stories – New York Review Books – Amazon US

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Confession – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Confession – plot summary

Severance, a somewhat naive and imperceptive New York banker is convalescing in a Swiss hotel when he encounters a mysterious woman with whom he very rapidly falls in love. She is Mrs Kate Ingram, and is closely protected by a brusque and masculine travelling companion Cassie Willpert, who takes a dislike to Severance. Jimmy Shreve, a journalist friend of Severance arrives at the hotel and claims that Mrs Ingram is in fact Kate Spain, a woman who has been acquitted in a trial for the murder of her rich and tyrannical father. Severance does not believe this story.

He tries hard to express his interest in Mrs Ingram and to learn more about her, but is repeatedly thwarted by Miss Willpert. Mrs Ingram finally hints that she will reveal more about herself the next day. But when Severance presents himself he learns that the two women have left the hotel for Italy.

He follows Mrs Ingram to a shabby pension on Lake Orta in Italy where she confesses to him that she is Kate Spain, and has travelled to escape the opprobrium attached to her name. Severance makes an offer of marriage, but she says that Cassie Willpert will never agree to it. They agree to meet her the next day to seek a resolution.

But next morning Cassie Willpert confronts Severance in his room. She tells him that Kate Spain cannot marry him or anyone else. She then tries to bribe him to leave, and when he refuses she threatens to reveal something that will shock him into submission. She is about to produce the evidence when she has a stroke.

In fact she dies shortly afterwards without revealing anything. Severance presses his offer of marriage again, whereupon Mrs Ingram produces an envelope belonging to Miss Willpert and insists that Severance read it. He accepts the envelope, insists he will not read it, but promises not to destroy it.

Severance assumes that the contents of the envelope have some bearing on the death of Kate’s father, and he assumes that she is protecting someone – the overt implication being that this person is Miss Willpert. But since she is now dead, all objections to the marriage are removed. They do finally marry, but Mrs Ingram dies five years later, whereupon Severance burns the envelope.

Principal characters

Severance	the first person narrator, a New York banker
Mrs Kate Ingram	the dark mysterious lady
Miss Crissie Willpert	her travelling companion
Antoine	the head waiter
Mr Jimmy Shreve	journalist on the New York Evening Star

Edith Wharton’s publications

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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The Reef deals with three topics with which Edith Wharton herself was intimately acquainted at the period of its composition – unhappy marriage, divorce, and the discovery of sensual pleasures. The setting is a country chateau in France where diplomat George Darrow has arrived from America, hoping to marry the beautiful widow Anna Leith. But a young woman employed as governess to Anna’s daughter proves to be someone he met briefly in the past and has fallen in love with him. She also becomes engaged to Anna’s stepson. The result is a quadrangle of tensions and suspicions about who knows what about whom. And the outcome is not what you might imagine.
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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.

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

Edith Wharton – short stories
More on Edith Wharton
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Confidence

August 3, 2014 by Roy Johnson

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

Confidence was Henry James’s fifth novel. It first appeared as a serial in Scribner’s Monthly from August 1879 through to January 1880. This was a magazine which James actually disliked, but it paid high rates for work published. The novel first appeared in book form in two volumes published by Chatto and Windus in December 1879, and it was published in America by Houghton, Osgood & Company in February 1880.

It is worth noting that the English and American editions differ substantially (and from the Scribner’s serial) in terms of punctuation and wording. The surviving manuscripts and their variants suggest that James was deliberately targeting what he saw as two different audiences – in England and America. And it is just possible that – copyright agreements being rather hazy at that time – he was consciously creating two different ‘versions’ for commercial and legal reasons.

cover design by Parish Maxfield

Confidence – critical commentary

This is probably one of the least well known of James’s early novels – indeed, it could almost be counted as completely unknown to most people other than James specialists. It has certainly not been in print recently in any popular or paperback editions – with the honourable exception of the Library of America series. It was not included in the New York Edition published in 1907-1909, which suggests that James himself did not consider the novel worthy to stand alongside his more substantial achievements.

The novel was written in between two early novels which have generally remained popular with the reading public – The Europeans of 1878 and Washington Square of 1880. Like The Europeans there is very little action or dramatic tension in the story, just a great deal of conversation between the principal characters. This is James developing his interest in what we now call the psychological novel. His principal concerns are with the ways his characters understand, mis-understand, and interact with each other.

This is highlighted in the central character of Bernard Longueville. James creates a clever account of Longueville’s psychological processes in dealing with Angela Vivian. He cannot understand her shifting attitudes yet feels drawn to seek explanations and cannot fathom why he finds her so fascinating. It is quite clear to the reader that he is falling in love with her – but this is not apparent to Bernard himself. As the narrator eventually remarks on the dawning of his self-knowledge half way through the narrative:

a great many things had been taking place in his clever mind without his clever mind suspecting them

But although this oblique presentation is successful, the novel lacks the sharpness and the depth of interest of his more successful works published around this time. Events are very slow-moving and schematic, and for all its subtleties, the final resolution is quite unconvincing. We are told (via Angela’s letters to Bernard) that she has succeeded in converting Gordon’s wounded pride and jealous rage into a calm acceptance, but the events are not dramatised – we are not shown any of this process taking place.

There is also a problem of characterisation when compared with James’s more successful novels. Angela Vivian is certainly an intriguing figure – intelligent, witty, yet mysteriously contrary. But it is difficult to take the central character Bernard Longueville seriously at all – a man of endless wealth and a complete lack of purpose. Even the narrator describes him as ‘culpably unoccupied’.

However, there are two further possible readings of this spindly and makeshift plot. The first is that Bernard’s initial report to Gordon of finding Angela to be a flirt and not suitable for marriage, represents another unconscious stratagem on his part – a smokescreen to deter Gordon, so that Bernard himself can stake a claim in a woman he finds so fascinating.

The advantage of this reading is that it would fit neatly alongside his being unconsciously in love with her at that stage in the narrative. However, there is very little direct evidence in the text to support this idea. If James had this possibility in mind, he makes no mention of it in his notes for the story or in the novel itself.

But a second reading, made possible in the light of many texts from James’s later work, is that the story is a thinly veiled study in homo-eroticism – written unconsciously it should be added. In his notes for the story, James stresses the bond between the two men, as well as emphasising their different personalities:

The two men are old friends – closely united friends. The interest of the story must depend greatly upon this fact of their strong, deep friendship and upon the contrast of their two characters. They are in effect, singularly different [Bernard] must be represented as the (roughly speaking) complex nature of the two – the subtle, the refined, the fanciful, the eminently modern … [Gordon] is simpler, deeper, more masculine more easily puzzled, less intellectual, less imaginative. He is greatly under the influence of his friend and has a great esteem for his judgement.

Gordon summons Bernard to Baden-Baden, wishing to both display the woman he has fallen in love with and asking for Bernard’s critical approval of her. Bernard promptly falls in love with the same woman. It does not take a brass plaque on anyone’s front door to realise that when two people share the same love object, it is often a psychological displacement of their attraction to each other.

And this also proves to be the principal plot denouement. The story is not resolved by Gordon’s being reunited with his scatty wife Blanche, nor does it end with Bernard’s marriage to Angela (which is given no dramatic substance at all). It ends when the two men are reunited with each other – and concludes (literally) with Gordon writing Bernard “the longest letter he had ever addressed to him”, and then even more pointedly the narrative ends with these words: “The letter reached Bernard in the middle of his honeymoon.” Gordon has actually re-united himself with Bernard during the consummation of his friend’s marriage.

Confidence – study resources

Confidence – Library of America – Amazon UK

Confidence – Library of America – Amazon US

Confidence – Tark Classics – Amazon UK

Confidence – Tark Classics – Amazon US

Confidence – Kindle edition

Confidence – eBook versions at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James – biographical notes

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

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

Confidence – plot summary

Chapter I. A young American Bernard Longueville is touring Italy when he meets a woman and her daughter in Siena. He includes the attractive daughter in a landscape picture he paints, which she regards as presumptuous.

Chapter II. Two months later he is in Venice when he receives a letter from his friend Gordon Wright imploring him to come to Baden-Baden to give his opinion on a woman with whom he is in love.

Chapter III. On arrival in Baden-Baden Longueville meets Mrs Vivian and her charge, the talkative Blanche Evers. Then they are joined by the Englishman Captain Lovelock and Miss Vivian, who refuses to acknowledge their earlier meeting in Siena.

Chapter IV. Bernard discusses with Gordon his being in love, which he is finding a painful experience. Bernard conceals from his friend the fact that he has already met Angela Vivian in Siena.

Chapter V. Gordon explains his love for Angela, who moves home from one place to another in Europe with her widowed mother. Gordon has followed them from Dresden to Baden-Baden.

Chapter VI. Bernard spars conversationally with Angela Vivian, who will still not refer to their earlier meeting in Siena. He finds her puzzling but fascinating.

Chapter VII. Next evening they continue to argue and flirt verbally. She is concerned that Captain Lovelock is a penniless trifler, leading on the gullible Blanche Evers. Bernard challenges her directly about their Siena meeting.

Chapter VIII. She refuses to explain, but Bernard spends more time in her company than Gordon, whom she treats politely but indifferently. Gordon reveals that he proposed to her some weeks earlier, but was turned down. He is now perplexed by her.

Chapter IX. Bernard wonders why Mrs Vivian seems to disapprove of him, and discusses Angela with Miss Evers and the Captain.

Chapter X. Bernard decides to ‘interview’ Mrs Vivian, who reveals that she thinks Gordon is very rich and therefore a suitable match for Angela.

Chapter XI. Gordon has to go to England to see his sister. He leaves Bernard with a request that he study Angela closely during his absence.

Chapter XII. Bernard visits Mrs Vivian and Angela where there is further intellectual sparring between them, and a hint that Angela is concealing something about her recent past.

Chapter XIII. Bernard’s thoughts are increasingly taken up with Angela, who correctly guesses that George has asked him to keep an eye on her. Bernard thinks she might marry George for his money, even though she does not love him.

Chapter XIV. Gordon’s return is delayed. Bernard impulsively decides to leave Baden-Baden, but when he mentions it to Angela she asks him to stay – which he does.

Chapter XV. When Gordon returns Bernard reveals his reservations about Angela’s intentions – and then uncharacteristically goes to the casino, where he wins lots of money. Next day Gordon suddenly leaves Baden-Baden, but does not say why. Bernard fears he might have misjudged Angela and done the wrong thing.

Chapter XVI. Suddenly the Vivians and Blanche Evers leave Baden-Baden and travel to Lausanne. Captain Lovelock cannot leave Baden-Baden because of debts he has run up, so Bernard, feeling uneasy about his winnings, lends him money – which he promptly loses in the casino. Bernard then leaves to go round the world alone.

Chapter XVII. Two years later Gordon writes to Bernard to say that he is getting married to Blanche Evers. Bernard travels to New York, where he finds them both very happy with each other.

Chapter XVIII. However, Bernard thinks that Blanche might have married Gordon for his money, and he wonders how his friend can be happy with such a frivolous and garrulous wife. When social gossip about Bernard and Blanche begins to circulate because of the time they are spending together, he decides to leave, whereupon Blanche claims that Gordon does not care for her at all.

Chapter XIX. Bernard goes to California, finds nothing to keep him there, then decides to go back to Europe. As he leaves, Captain Lovelock arrives to stay at Gordon’s house.

Chapter XX. Bernard goes to Normandy where he meets Angela again on the beach. He feels that he has wronged her by spoiling her chances of a marriage to Gordon. They spar with each other again, as in the past.

Chapter XXI. Bernard finds Angela as remote as ever, yet he feels that she does not bear any grudge against him. He takes Mrs Vivian and Angela to the local casino – then suddenly realises that he is in love with Angela.

Chapter XXII. In fact he realises that he has been in love with her for the past three years – and the idea frightens him. He decides to leave immediately, but the next day goes for a long walk instead. When he goes to pay his respects to the Vivians, they have suddenly left for Paris.

Chapter XXIII. Bernard follows the Vivians to Paris, where Mrs Vivian is welcoming and Angela is as polite yet as indifferent as ever.

Chapter XXIV. Visiting frequently, Bernard eventually tells Angela that he has been in love with her since they first met. She accepts his declaration, and Mrs Vivian gives her blessing to them. Bernard apologises for ‘wronging’ her in Baden-Baden, and she explains that she was angry at being a pawn in Gordon’s ‘assessment’ of her.

Chapter XXV. A wedding is planned, but then Gordon, Blanche, and Captain Lovelock suddenly arrive from New York. Blanche is as silly and flirtatious as ever, and Lovelock is a pompous bore, acting as if he is Blanche’s lover.

Chapter XXVI. Bernard and Gordon go for a private walk to resume their close friendship – but they meet Mrs Vivian and Angela, which results in Bernard’s revelation that he is engaged to marry Angela. Gordon does not like the news, and walks off.

Chapter XXVII. When Bernard reports Gordon’s annoyance to Angela she reveals that Gordon asked her for a second time to marry him – even after Bernard had filed his critical report on her. However, she refused him, so Bernard need no longer feel that he had misled either of them.

Chapter XXVIII. Blanche suddenly arrives with Captain Lovelock in tow and gushes indiscreetly about herself and Gordon, claiming to be ‘unwell’. She is eventually surprised to learn about Angela’s impending marriage to Bernard.

Chapter XXIX. On the next day Bernard visits Angela and finds Gordon there. Gordon is angry, feels betrayed, claims his wife is about to leave him, and wants Angela to postpone her marriage so as to give him another chance. She agrees to do so.

Chapter XXX. Angela argues to Bernard that Gordon is actually in love with his wife but doesn’t realise it. She plans to get rid of Captain Lovelock and reconcile Gordon and Blanche. Bernard is exiled to London, where Angela writes to him each day with news of progress. After just over a week, she has persuaded Gordon that all is well.

Chapter XXXI. Angela’s plan works, and Bernard returns to Paris, where he and Gordon are happily reconciled. Gordon takes Blanche to Cairo, and Bernard marries Angela.

Baden-Baden – the Kurhaus

Confidence – principal characters

I	an un-named narrator who makes occasional appearances
Bernard Longueville	a rich American with no purpose
Gordon Wright	his equally rich friend, who dabbles in chemistry
Mrs Vivian	a Bostonian widow
Angela Vivian	her attractive, spirited, and intelligent daughter
Captain Augustus Lovelock	a penniless English hanger-on and bore
Blanche Evers	a featherbrained and garrulous young woman in the care of Mrs Vivian

Henry James’s study

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.

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Cousins

August 3, 2017 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study guide, web links, and further reading

Cousins (1984) is one of five pieces (four stories and a fragment) published in the collection Him with his Foot in his Mouth. The other stories in the collection are A Silver Dish, Him with his Foot in his Mouth, What Kind of Day Did You Have, and Zetland: By A Character Witness.

Cousins – commentary

Cousins follows a story line similar to many of Bellow’s other fictions. A well-educated first person narrator from Chicago relates the problems he faces as a result of family connections—particularly relatives who have either become rich in a dubious manner or who have connections with organised crime.

For Bellow the connection between these two worlds – education and ‘business’ – is that they symbolise the alternatives open to an immigrant. Education represents the continuation of European cultural traditions and the desire for intellectual improvement. The world of ‘business’ represents assimilation into the American way of life, along with its material excesses and its tainted connections.

The narrator Ijah Brodsky has a foot in both these camps. His work as a financial and political advisor gives him access to the first – even though he doesn’t feel altogether a part of it. His family connections give him access to the second. When he questions his own motives for helping a relative who is being sent to jail, it is a sense of loyalty to relations that wins out:

By sacrificing an hour at my desk I might spare Tanky a good many years of prison. Why shouldn’t I do it for old times’ sake, for the sake of his parents, whom I held in such affection. I had to do it if I wanted to continue these exercises of memory. My souvenirs would stink if I let Shana’s son down. I had no space to work out if this was a moral or a sentimental decision.

Background

The background to this story is the corruption that traditionally lies behind much of business, political government, and even organised labour in the metropolitan centres of America – Chicago in this particular case. This corruption exists because of the Mafia and its system of bribery, extortion, and organised crime that penetrates all levels of American society. Three real-life historical figures from the murky world of gangsters and criminal behaviour are mentioned at the outset of the story:

As for Tanky’s dark associate, I have no idea who he may have been—maybe Tony Provenzano, or Sally (Bugs) Briguglio, or Dorfmann of the Teamsters union insurance group. It was not Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was then in jail.

Tony Provenzano was a Sicilian gangster (1917-1988) from New York who embezzled funds from the Teamsters Union, of which he was second-in-command. Jimmy Hoffa was its leader – in jail at the time the story is set for bribery, fraud, and corruption. Hoffa was eventually released early in 1971 by Richard Nixon, after the payment of a large bribe by the Mafia. Salvatore Briguglio was a loan shark and gangster who was implicated in the murder of Anthony Castellito, the Union’s treasurer, whose body was put through a tree shredder.

Allen Dorfmann was in charge of the union’s pension funds: he was charged with jury tampering, bribery, and embezzlement. Three days before sentencing, he was murdered by the Mafia, presumably to prevent his ‘co-operating’ with the authorities. Eventually, even Hoffa himself was ‘disappeared’ in 1985, and his body has never been found.

Corruption in local government is outlined by Tanky’s sister Eunice, who is forced to pay bribes simply to get her daughter admitted to the Talbot Medical School:

“Even to get to talk to the director, a payoff was necessary … And then I had to pledge myself to Talbot for fifty thousand dollars [over and above tuition fees] … I made a down payment of half, with the balance promised before graduation. No degree until you deliver.”

The cousins

As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that Bellow is exploring the responses of a family’s younger generation to the challenges of immigration. The cousins may not have spoken to each other or met for some time, but they recognise family ties – Ijah in particular.

He has been successful and is part of the American establishment – giving advice at government and international level. Yet he feels detached from the centre of power in which he works. He reads ethnographic reports from Siberia and dwells on political history when he should be writing reports.

His cousin Raphael (Tanky) has wandered from business into the realms of illegality and connections with the Mafia – which is why he is being sent to jail. At the other extreme his intellectual cousin Scholem Stavis has written a revolutionary work on biological theory then lived a blameless life working as a New York taxi cab driver.

Several other cousins feature in Ijah’s survey of his social and genetic heritage – a fact that raises two problems. The first is that an alarming proportion of his relatives are talented, gifted, or rich. Eventually, Ijah realises that he should add himself to this roster, since he too is a cousin to the others. This brings the survey to a neat conclusion, but Bellow does not provide any convincing explanation why we should accept such a prosperous group of individuals as in any way typical.

The other problem is that the first half the story is dominated by the episode involving Raphael, who is connected to the Mafia and has gone to prison. He knows he must remain silent about his criminal associates in order to avoid being executed by them. This sets up dramatic expectations which are not met by the remainder of the story, leaving the whole composition rather unbalanced. We are treated to an entertaining roster of character studies, but they remain like the separate beads detached from a necklace, with no string holding them together.

Cousins – resources

Cousins – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Cousins – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

A Saul Bellow bibliography

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

Cambridge Companion to Saul Bellow – Amazon UK

Cousins – plot synopsis

Ijah Brodsky is a financial analyst and political advisor in Chicago. He previously had a television programme that featured contentious court cases. His relatives mistakenly think he is a legal expert and seek his influence when his cousin Raphael (Tanky) gets into trouble. Ijah is acquainted with the judge in the case, and is persuaded to write a plea for clemency. He does this for sentimental reasons of family solidarity as the children of first generation Jewish immigrants.

Tanky receives a reduced jail sentence. Ijah takes Tanky’s sister out to dinner, where she makes a further request for another letter to the judge asking for special favours. She outlines to Ijah the system of bribes and corruption that obtains even in the education system in Chicago.

Ijah reads about Siberian anthropology and discusses his cousin Ezekiel who is a gifted student of foreign languages. Then he visits his aged uncle Mordecai and recalls a family picnic during his childhood.

His intellectual cousin Scholem has written a philosophic thesis and wants to be buried in Eastern Germany, where he fought in the war. Ijah asks another cousin Mendy if they can use a family financial resource to help him. The money is released, and Ijah travels to Paris to meet Scholem.

Cousins – characters

Ijah Brodsky	a Chicago financial and legal advisor
Isabel (Sable)	Ijah’s ex-wife
Raphael (Tanky) Metzger	Ijah’s cousin, with Mafia connections
Eunice Karger	Raphael’s sister
Miltie Rifkin	Ijah’s cousin, a hotel owner
Ezekiel Seckiel)	Ijah’s cousin, a gifted linguist
Mordecai (Motty)	Ijah’s rich uncle
Scholem Stavis	Ijah’s cousin, a philosopher and taxi cab driver
Mendy Eckstein	Ijah’s cousin

More on Saul Bellow
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Twentieth century literature

Covering End

April 27, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

Covering End only ever appeared once as a long story during James’s lifetime – in the publication The Two Magics which was printed in 1898 and also contained The Turn of the Screw. James refers to the work in his notebooks as a comedy – and the work was certainly written to a commission. It had actually been written earlier, in 1895 as a play for Ellen Terry.

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Covering End – critical commentary

James and the theatre

Never was a story so obviously conceived as a theatre piece. James put a great deal of hopes and dreams in his attempts to become a successful dramatist. We now know that he failed miserably, being booed off stage at the opening night of Guy Domville in 1895. But he rather resourcefully converted many of his unused theatrical materials into prose fiction.

Covering End was originally written as a one act play called Summersoft in 1895 for his friend the actress Ellen Terry, but it was never performed. As a matter of fact, after he had converted the play to a story, he later went on to convert it back into a three act play called The High Bid, which was produced briefly in 1907.

Dramatic unity

The origins of this tale are nowhere more evident than in the amazing dramatic unity of the story in terms of time, location, and action. Everything takes place in the old house at Covering End; the drama unfolds in the space of a single afternoon; and the action is more or less continuous, with no temporal breaks.

All the characters are given perfectly plausible reasons for their entrances and their exits, through doors, garden windows, and the usual architectural devices of the proscenium arch theatre. and the drama flows from one character’s conversation with one person to the next in an unbroken flow.

Characters remove themselves from the ‘stage’ of the action on the pretext of taking tea, looking at other rooms, or looking for someone else to whom they wish to speak.

Comedy, melodrama, or farce?

The characters in this tale are stereotypes from boulevard melodrama. Mr Prodmore is a pompous stock villain of supercilious vainglory – although he remains unpunished and does end up with all the money. He dresses in a ridiculously exaggerated fashion; he is motivated entirely by greed and self-promotion; and he mistreats his daughter.

Clement Yule is a young and handsome hero. He is an impoverished aristocratic landowner with radical and humane principles; he never seeks to take advantage; and he is kind towards others.

Mrs Gracedew is a pantomime fairy godmother. She has travelled from Boston to view and appreciate the hous;, she seems to have limitless finances to solve Yule’s problems; she assists Cora in her romantic ambitions, and lingers to the last paragraphs before snapping up her man.

However, the aspects of boulevard comedy which audiences might accept in the theatre do not translate well into a realist prose narrative. We are expected to believe that a young aristocrat could be talked into marrying a woman who he had never met or spoken to in the early part of one afternoon, then an hour or so later after this element of the plot coming unstuck, asks another woman to marry him who had met only a few minutes before.

The conventions of Aristotelian drama are well realised, but they do not sit well with the conventions of the short (or even long) realistic story in this respect. The conversations are suffused with plenty of sub-Wildean repartee and bon mots, but it is not surprising that this story is so little known

Covering End – study resources

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

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

Covering End – HTML version at Gutenberg

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Covering End – plot summary

Part I. Handsome young Captain Clement Yule has inherited but never seen a venerable old English country house and estate at Covering End. But the estate is mortgaged and heavily in debts which are currently owned by Mr Prodmore, a rather obnoxious financier. Prodmore arrives at the house, followed by his daughter Cora.

Part II. When Yule arrives Mr Prodmore proposes a business plan – that if Yule stands for parliament in the local constituency (Gossage) and marries his daughter Cora, he will cancel the estate’s debts. However, Yule is a radical and reformer, whereas the Gossage seat is solidly conservative.

Part III. Mrs Gracedew appears and charms old retainer Chivers with her enthusiastic appreciation of the house and its age. She meets Clement Yule and proposes to show him round his own home, but a party of local sightseers arrive. She immediately adopts the role of tour guide, extolling the house’s historical and architectural virtues. The guided tour becomes virtually an auction, with Mrs Gracedew valuing the property at £50,000.

Part IV. Yule reveals his financial predicament to Mrs Gracedew – without mentioning the element of marriage. She speaks warmly on the issue of his duty to preserve Cowering End and its traditions, and she urges him to stand for Gossage as a Tory.

Part V. Cora speaks to Mrs Gracedew and reveals that marriage to her is also part of Mr Prodmore’s plan. Yule then returns to announce that he has accepted Mr Prodmore’s proposal.

Part VI. Cora reappears to say that she refuses to marry Yule – because she is actually in love with another man, who happens to be very rich but has the unfortunate name of Hall Pegg. Mrs Gracedew promises to help her by talking round Mr Prodmore.

Part VII. When Mr Prodmore reappears Mrs Gracedew asks him to give up his plans to marry Cora to Yule, and she offers to buy the house mortgages from him. He asks the price she announced earlier of £50,000, and she admits it was an exaggeration to impress the audience. When he sets off to recover Cora however, she offers to pay his price if he will forgive his daughter and let her marry Pegg. He agrees – but raises the price to £70,000.

Part VIII. Mts Gracedew explains to Yule that he is now let off his mortgages and can ‘own’ his own home because she has bought off his debts. The house now back into its rightful ownership, she claims her work is done, but she lingers long enough for Yule to propose marriage to her – which she accepts.