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

The Path of Duty first appeared in magazine form in The English Illustrated Magazine in December 1884, which had been established the year previously by Macmillan to create a publication with high production values and illustrations appealing to the artistic market. The story was later reprinted in a three volume collection of James’s stories in 1885.

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The Path of Duty – critical commentary

The burden of inheritance

This story is a variation on the theme of fear of marriage or burden of inheritance – both of which are very deeply buried seams in the sub-stratum of homo-eroticism which runs through much of James’s work. He would explore these issues in more direct form in the later tale Owen Wingrave (1892) in which the burden of responsibility and fear of reproduction goes as far as a sort of willed death. The theme normally depicts women as predators, marriage as a social expectation which is experienced as a threat, and various strategies or plot twists to avoid the requirement of producing children.

Ambrose Tester is not only due to inherit his family title; he has the additional burden, placed upon him by his own father, of the demand that he produce an offspring. Not only that, but he must do so as quickly as possible. His father wants to see the continuity of the Tester family before he dies. The title of the story reinforces this notion of an unpleasant responsibility.

The burden of inheritance is also intensified because Ambrose had an elder brother, who would normally have borne the responsibility of producing an heir for his father and continuing the family line. But Francis was profligate, and has died. Meanwhile, Ambrose has chosen as the object of his affections a married woman – a sure way to avoid the possibility of marriage.

This interpretation of the story is ultimately a psycho-analytic reading which rests on the notion that Henry James was exploring psychological conflicts of his own via fictional projections. We know that James wrestled with the question of marriage in his private life – and always came down in favour of remaining a bachelor. We also know that rather late in life he gave way to the homo-erotic impulses which also surface more and more frequently in his work.

He destroyed all his private papers in an effort to preserve control of what would be known about him by his contemporaries – and posterity. But the theme is explored again and again in his creative work, over which he had no such control.

The Narrator

James has very few stories with female narrators, and this one, un-named like so many others, seems to have a somewhat hermaphroditic personality. ‘She’ claims that she wishes to marry off her women friends, but to prevent the marriage of her men friends. Is this the voice of James himself, hiding behind the not very plausible skirts of his narrator?

Certainly when Ambrose does finally settle for Jocelind, the anti-marriage rhetoric is unleashed in no uncertain terms. The narrator reports that ‘the day of his execution was fixed’ and then ‘he was going to be beheaded’. The supposed female narrator seems to be speaking from a very masculine point of view at this point.

The happy ending

Unlike other explorations of the ‘fear of marriage’ theme, this story does have an ostensibly happy ending. Ambrose marries Jocelind, and they have two children. He has renounced Lady Vandeleur, and has accepted his lot. The problem appears to have been resolved.

But is everybody happy? Certainly not Jocelind, and maybe not the reader – because this ending does not seem very satisfactory, for the simple reason that no plausible explanation has been given for the radical change of mind on Ambrose’s part.

One minute he is in love with the vibrant Lady Vandeleur, who is fully realised as a character in the story. The next, he accepts marriage to Jocelind, who is an un-dramatised cipher. It is possible that James was unable to provide a convincing resolution to the initial problem the story explores – precisely because he didn’t really believe in the outcome he created.

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The Path of Duty – 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

The Path of Duty – Kindle edition

The Path of Duty – eBook versions 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

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The Path of Duty – plot summary

The story is narrated by an un-named American woman who is married to an Englishman. She is writing the account for a ‘compatriot’ American, but appears to be ambivalent about revealing the story. The recipient is addressed directly in the text, but the narrator says she will not release the final product.

Part I. Young Ambrose Tester inherits a title and an estate. He confides in the narrator, has a seat in parliament to represent Dorset, and is much admired in society.

Part II. Ambrose’s father has pressured him to get married. Ambrose procrastinates, then agrees to marry within a year. He is very friendly with Lady Vandeleur, but she is married to a boring husband. But after six moths he is engaged to Jocelind Bernardstone.

Part III. The match is considered a great social success, but the narrator notes Ambrose’s lack of enthusiasm and thinks he is doing it to please his father. He is marrying out of a sense of duty, and the narrator thinks he would do better to marry a plain or stupid woman who would accept his lack of interest (and by implication, tolerate his continued interest in Lady Vandeleur).

Part IV. Ambrose visits the narrator with the news that Lord Vandeleur is very ill. The implication is that if he dies, Ambrose will be free to marry Lady Vandeleur. The narrator knows that this will hurt Jocelind, and gives him no encouragement. Lord Vandeleur does die, and Ambrose goes to visit his own father, who is also ill.

Part V. Ambrose visits the narrator and appeals for her help. He wishes to break off his engagement and marry Lady Vandeleur. The narrator refuses to help him. Ambrose continues to be ‘kind’ to Jocelind, who suspects nothing. The narrator argues that he should honour his promises and marry a woman he does not truly love. Amongst his friends, opinion is divided. Suddenly Jocelind’s father General Bernardstone dies, and the marriage is postponed. Jocelind and her mother go to stay with Sir Edmund Tester.

Part VI. When Ambrose next meets the narrator, he reveals that he has not actually asked Lady Vandeleur to marry him, and he has not told her about Jocelind. He wants the narrator to visit Lady Vandeleur on his behalf, but she refuses. He claims he is trying to break off with Lady Vandeleur, and she agrees to help him if he will fulfil his promise to Jocelind.

Part VII. The narrator visits Lady Vandeleur and finds her in something of a pitiable state. She wonders why Ambrose should wish to marry her, and obviously still does not know about Jocelind. The narrator reveals all, and tells her that Jocelind will surely die if she is jilted. Lady Vandeleur replies that she has no intention of marrying Ambrose, and that if he does anything to hurt Jocelind, she will never speak to him again.

Part VIII. Plans for the wedding go ahead, and Lady Vandeleur writes to Ambrose that she cannot possibly profit from someone else’s distress. The narrator worries that Ambrose is making a heroic renunciation, but is still secretly clinging to his feelings for Lady Vandeleur, The marriage to Jocelind goes ahead, and subsequently, Ambrose and Lady Vandeleur become famous in society for the sacrifice they have made – but Jocelind is not so happy.

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Principal characters

I	the outer narrator, a married American woman
You	the American ‘compatriot’ to whom the work is addressed
Sir Edmund Tester	father to Ambrose
Francis Tester	his eldest son, a waster who dies
Ambrose Tester	his younger son, who inherits the title, an MP with a golden moustache
Lady Margaret Vandeleur	a sophisticated society lady, with whom Ambrose is enamoured
Lord Vandeleur	her boring husband
Jocelind Bernardstone	fiancée to Ambrose

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Henry James’s study

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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.

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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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

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

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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.

© Roy Johnson 2013

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

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

The Pension Beaurepas was first published in the Atlantic Monthly for April 1879. It was later reprinted in book form, along with Washington Square, and A Bundle of Letters by Macmillan in London, 1881.

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The Pension Beaurepas – critical commentary

The international element

This is another of James’s tales based on his favourite ‘international theme’ – that is the relationship between America and Europe. It is also concerned with a topic he was making his own around this time following the success of Daisy Miller the year before – the new American woman. The novelty here is that he presents not one but two American families – the Churches and the Rucks, who characterise two different aspects of Americans in Europe.

Mrs Church has exiled herself permanently to Europe – largely for financial reasons. She claims that she does not have enough money to return to the USA. But she is also culturally voracious, and wishes to enjoy the best of everything – a fact comically represented by her demanding higher and higher material standards at the pension Beaurepas, without paying any extra on her weekly rent.

This state of permanent exile is frustrating to her daughter Aurora, because she feels stifled by the social conventions which obtain in Europe. It is regarded dangerously improper for her to be in the English Garden with her temporary friend Sophy Ruck, because neither of them would be considered properly chaperoned. Worse than that, they join the company of two men – the narrator and Monsieur Pigeonneau – and rather innocently enjoy an ice cream together. Mrs Church disapproves so strongly that she intervenes and takes her daughter back home in a closed cab.

But Aurora is intelligent and well-informed enough to know that she would enjoy more personal liberty if she were to live in America. She is forthright, outspoken, and quite witty – but as a woman with a profession or money of her own, she must accept the social protection of her mother. However, she does have sufficient spirit to think of contacting the American consulate to help her get back home.

The Ruck mother and daughter on the other hand are simply examples of vulgar consumerism. Their only thought is to spend Mr Ruck’s money on jewellery and fripperies – at a point when the narrator believes he is in danger of becoming bankrupt because of the bad commercial climate back in the United States.

It is of interest to note that this tale is closely related to two others that James wrote around the same time – A Bundle of Letters (1879) and The Point of View (1882). They even have some characters in common. They also share a gently satirical tone and an episodic, unstructured composition.

There is almost no attempt to create any plot or even dramatic tension in The Pension Beaurepas. The narrator arrives at the Swiss pension and after describing the people he encounters, he departs for England unchanged. The two American families, the Churches and the Rucks, arrive, there is limited social interaction, and then the Churches leave for Dresden whilst the Rucks might – or might not – be on the point of returning to the USA. The tale is a lightweight and quite amusing study in manners, but lacks the density of a fully constructed narrative.

However, the tale takes on an extra layer of significance when it is read alongside its companion piece, The Point of View (1882). For in the later tale we learn that Aurora does in fact manage to travel back to America with her mother, and she knows that the search for a husband has failed because she has no dowry. Moreover, in her letter to a friend in Paris she reports that the Rucks (who are also on board) are now confirmed as bankrupt.

There were two literary experiments going on here at the same time. These are the only instances of James linking characters and story development between separate tales in this way, exploring the possibilities of a shifting point of view. And the two stories A Bundle of Letters and The Point of View are the only instances of his adopting the epistolary form of narrative.

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The Pension Beaurepas – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle – Amazon US

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

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

Tales of Henry James – Norton Critical Editions

The Pension Beaurepas – 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

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The Pension Beaurepas – story synopsis

Part I.   A young and un-named American narrator with literary aspirations goes to live in a Geneva boarding house in order to see ‘life’ and gather experience of society whilst at the same time practising his French.

Part II.   He is joined at the pension by Mr Ruck, an American businessman who has been ordered to take a holiday by his doctor, even though he would prefer to be back home, attending to his commercial interests in timber.

Part III.   Mr Ruck’s wife and daughter Sophy deeply regret having left the glamour of staying in Paris, and they are intent on shopping for jewellery whilst in Geneva.

Part IV.   They are joined at the pension by fellow Americans Mrs Church and her daughter Aurora who live in Europe permanently because they cannot afford to go home. Aurora yearns for her homeland, which she left as a child.

Part V.   The narrator is interrogated by Mrs Church on the state of American youth and its ideals. He suggests letting Aurora return to America, but Mrs Church argues that they are very comfortable in Europe.

Part VI.   Madame Beaurepas thinks that Mrs Church is parading her daughter around Europe in search of a bourgeois husband. The narrator talks to Mr Ruck about business back in America, which is not good, whilst Mrs Church and Sophy are shopping.

Part VII.   The narrator and ageing womaniser M. Pigeonneau walk in the English Garden and eat ice cream with Sophy and Aurora. Their discussion is about correct behaviour for young women. Aurora is witty, but she feels restricted by social conventions and longs for the freedoms which living in America would afford her. Mrs Church arrives and immediately breaks up the gathering, with the implication that it is not proper.

Part VIII.   The narrator and Mrs Church discuss the Rucks and their lack of sophistication. The narrator thinks that the wife and daughter are spending too much and that Mr Ruck is in danger of bankruptcy. It is also thought by both of them that Sophy is a bad influence on Aurora. Mrs Church tries to encourage Mr Ruck to leave the pension and go on to Chamonix

Part IX.   Mrs Church tries, without success, to persuade Madame Beaurepas to evict the Rucks. Aurora and her mother leave the pension. The narrator and Mr Ruck encounter Mrs Ruck and Sophy in a jewellery shop, where they insist they want an expensive bracelet. But Mr Ruck announces that they are going back to New York. The narrator leaves the pension and goes to join his brother in London.

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The Pension Beaurepas – characters

—	the un-named narrator, a young American
Madame Beaurepas	the proprietor of the pension (73)
Monsieu Pigeonneau	an ageing French womaniser and gallant
Mr Ruck	an American businessman
Mrs Ruck	his wife
Sophy Ruck	their pretty daughter (21)
Mrs Church	an American expatriate living in Europe
Aurora Church	her clever but homesick daughter

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Henry James’s study

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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 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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

 

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.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

---

Henry James – web links

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

The 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.

© Roy Johnson 2014

---

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

---

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

The Point of View is rather unusual in Henry James’s oeuvre, in that it was first produced by Macmillan in London as a privately printed edition in 1882 for which James himself paid. He did this in order to protect his copyright to the text at a time before the introduction of international agreements between America and the United Kingdom, which did not come into force until the 1890s. The story first appeared in The Century Magazine in December 1882, then in single volume collections of his tales in 1883, followed by a Tauschnitz ‘European’ edition the following year.

Northumberland Hotel – Washington

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The Point of View – critical commentary

Context

The Point of View is at face value nothing more than a collection of satirical sketches poking fun at various character types – the enthusiastic young woman (Aurora), the snobbish over-protective mother (Mrs Church), the jaded aesthete (Louis Leverett), the upper-class English bore (Mr Antrobus) – and so on. And their views of society on reaching America obviously reflect in exaggerated form some of James’s own ambiguous feelings about his native land and his ever-active interest in the relationship between Europe and America. But if the story is viewed in the context of the two tales that precede it – The Pension Beaurepas (1879) and A Bundle of Letters (1879) – it takes on a deeper set of meanings.

We know for instance from The Pension Beaurepas story that Aurora Church was feeling oppressed by the European conventions regarding young women in which her mother has held her trapped for most of her young life. She has been educated – in terms of art galleries and museums – but has never been allowed out alone even though she is of an age to marry.

She therefore sees America as the land of democratic freedom which will permit her to mix with whoever she wishes, and possibly find her own husband. The fact that she has failed to do so at the end of The Point of View does not invalidate the positive gesture in favour of the human spirit that her ‘escape’ from Europe represents.

Similarly, Louis Leverett, the over-developed art lover from the earlier story A Bundle of Letters expresses an almost hysterical hatred for the Boston hotel in which he finds himself. But we know from his appearance in A Bundle of Letters to be an over-refined name-dropping poseur – so his criticisms should not be taken at face value. In fact his characterisation seems to represent almost a satirical portrait of James himself – the American viewing his homeland after many years living in Europe.

But it is the sane and sober observations of the fifty year old Miss Sturdy which are probably a closer match to James’ own true views. In fact James also includes a cameo satirical portrait of himself in the letter of the french critic Gustave LeJaune reporting on the absence of American culture to a colleague back in Paris:

They have a novelist with pretensions to literature, who writes about the chase for the husband and the adventures of the rich Americans in our corrupt old Europe, where their primeval candour puts the Europeans to shame. C’est proprement écrit; but it’s terribly pale.

America – and Europe

And if you wish to see Henry James as a social and political prophet, you need look no further than these lines, penned by Marcellus Cockerel, a pro-Yankee character, tired of world travel, and glad to be back home:

Our salvation is here [in America], if we have eyes to see it, and the salvation of Europe into the bargain; that is, if Europe is to be saved, which I rather doubt.

Once one feels, over here, that the great questions of the future are social questions, that a mighty tide is sweeping the world to democracy, and that this country is the biggest stage on which the drama can be enacted, the fashionable European topics seem petty and parochial.

In England they were talking about the Hares and Rabbits Bill, about the extension of the County Franchise, about the Dissenters’ Burials, about the Deceased Wife’s Sister, about the abolition of the House of Lords, about heaven knows what ridiculous measure for the propping-up of their ridiculous little country. And they call us provincial!

Those words come from a story written one hundred and twenty seven years ago, but they might have been written last week.

[I have artificially created the three separate paragraphs in the quotation above for the sake of clarity. In the printed text there are no paragraphs. Each correspondent’s letter is a continuous block of text, with no paragraphs.]

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The Point of View – study resources

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

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

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Tales of Henry James – Norton Critical Editions

The Point of View – 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

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The Point of View – story synopsis

Part I.   Aurora Church, a young American woman, is on a transatlantic liner, returning to the USA after an extended stay in Europe with her mother. She writes to a friend in Paris about her liberating sense of excitement of returning home, and the people she has met during the voyage. As a Europhile, her mother is not looking forward to the experience, and she has failed to find a husband for Aurora because she has no dowry. Aurora recounts how she has been pursued on board by Louis Leverett, a pretentious Bostonian would-be belle-lettrist and Mr Cockerel, an American lawyer who is resolutely pro-USA.

Part II.   Having arrived in New York, Mrs Church writes to her Calvinist friend Madame Galopin in Geneva. She complains about the country in general and her lodgings in particular. She bemoans the lack of social distinctions and the fact that she cannot ascertain the incomes of the young men who are paying court to Aurora. She has agreed to let her daughter live by American standards for a test period of three months. Mrs Church’s manner is comically snobbish, convoluted, and self-regarding.

Part III.   Miss Study, at Newport, writes to an American friend back in Florence. She sees the positives and the improvements in American life, and recounts her inviting the Englishman Mr Antrobus to stay at Newport. She is alert to the changes in American-English language, and she feels the predominance of American youth to be an overwhelming feature of modern life, and their propensity to talk a great deal, without being able to talk properly.

She notes that American girls are permitted social freedoms which would be denied to them in old Europe – and that society is the better for it. She admires the democratic spirit of her homeland, even though she admits it brings people to a less variegated common level than in Europe.

Part IV.   Mr Antrobus writes from Boston to his wife back in England in a pompous and didactic manner, giving her a sociological account of his impressions. He is visiting schools and colleges, and even though he is supposed to be a radical (a liberal) he regrets that America does not have a class of aristocracy. He also travels with his own tin bath tub. He goes into comically excruciating detail about what might or could have been the case on every topic he discusses.

Part V.   Louis Leverett, the Boston aesthete, writes to his friend back in Paris complaining bitterly about the conditions in his hotel and the absence of European sophistication that he has left behind. He argues that the democratic spirit of the USA reduces everything and everybody to an undistinguished mediocrity.

Part VI.   The French critic Gustave LeJaune writes from Washington to his friend in Paris complaining about the size of the USA and the lack of manners in the general public. He is writing an official study of America as (the most important visitor since de Tocqueville). He complains about the lack of culture, the size and content of the newspapers, and the lack of social markers of distinction which permits a social free-for-all.

Part VII.   The American Marcellus Cockerel returns after three years of touring the world and writes to his sister in California saying how pleased he is to be back in the USA, even if it is a vulgar society. He gives a jaundiced account of how much he hated being in Paris in particular, and vows that he will never return to Europe again. He excoriates the traditional pageantry and rituals of old Europe and argues that America is better off without them, no matter how much they are revered.

Part VIII.   Aurora writes that she has come to the end of her three months of freedom, and has failed to meet anyone she would wish to marry. However, her mother has decided that they ought to move out to the West where is will be cheaper to live – and Aurora wonders if she might meet a rich Pioneer.

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The Point of View – characters

Mrs Church	an American expatriate who has been living in Europe
Aurora Church	her daughter, a spirited young American woman
Miss Sturdy	a stout, single American spinster (50)
The Honorable Edward Antrobus MP	an English traditionalist and bore
Louis Leverett	a small Boston aesthete
M. Gustave LeJaune	a French social citic
Marcellus Cockerel	a patriotic Yankee

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Henry James’s study

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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.

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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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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.

© Roy Johnson 2014

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