The Short Story Archives - Page 11 of 31

Dubliners – a study guide

June 16, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, summaries, study resources, further reading

Dubliners (1914) is James Joyce’s first major work – a ground-breaking collection of short stories dealing with the moribund lives of a cast of mostly lower-middle-class characters through pointedly undramatic events chosen to illustrate the crippling effects of family, religion, and nationality. He spent seven years working on them, even though he suspected publishing them might be difficult at the time – and he was right. He submitted the stories to seventeen publishers over the space of many years before they were finally accepted.

This collection of vignettes features both real and imaginary figures in Dublin life around the turn of the century, ending with the most famous of all Joyce’s stories – ‘The Dead’. The book caused controversy when it first appeared, and was banned in Ireland almost immediately upon publication, the first of many of Joyce’s works to be censored or banned in his native country. Dubliners is now widely regarded as a seminal collection of modern short stories.

Contemporary readers may wonder what all the fuss was about; but one hundred years ago at the start of the twentieth century any references to body functions, sexuality, and anti-religious sentiment was more or less unthinkable in Ireland – which is the principal reason why Joyce left his homeland in 1906, never to return.

Dubliners is a carefully arranged set of miniatures in which he strips away all the decorations and flourishes of late Victorian prose. What remains is a sparse yet lyrical exposure of small moments of revelation – which he called ‘epiphanies’. Like other modernists, such as Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, Joyce minimised the dramatic element of the short story in favour of symbolic meaning and a more static aesthetic. Instead of the surprise endings and dramatic twists of the typical nineteenth-century short story, Joyce offers subtle, understated character studies, revelations of mood and atmosphere, and small moments in life which reveal something about larger issues.

James Joyce – portrait

Dubliners – structure

Joyce gave his publisher Grant Richards the following account of his ideas for the structure of his collection:

“My intention was to write a chapter of the moral history of my country, and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under four of its aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories are arranged in this order. I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness and with the conviction that he is a very bold man who dares to alter in the presentment, still more to deform, whatever he has seen and heard.”

Section I, Childhood contains – The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby (the most anthologised of the stories).

Section II, Adolescence is made up of – Eveline, After the Race, Two Gallants, and The Boarding House.

Section III, Maturity is also made up of four stories – A Little Cloud, Counterparts, Clay, and A Painful Case.

Section IV, Public Life is made up of – Ivy Day in the Committee Room, A Mother, Grace, and the structurally different The Dead.

Study resources

Dubliners – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon UK

Dubliners – Penguin Modern Classics – Amazon US

Dubliners – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon UK

Dubliners – Oxford World’s Classics – Amazon US

Dubliners – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon US

Dubliners – eBook version at Project Gutenberg

The Dead – 1987 film version by John Huston on DVD – Amazon UK

Dubliners – Naxos audio CD version – Amazon UK

Dubliners – audioBook version at LibriVox

Dubliners – York Notes (Advanced) – Amazon UK

Dubliners – Cliffs Notes study guide – Amazon UK

James Joyce: A Critical Guide – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce – Amazon UK

James Joyce: Texts and Contexts – Amazon UK

Dubliners – chapter summaries

The Sisters – After the priest Father Flynn dies, a young boy who was close to him and his family deal with it only superficially. The events force him to examine their relationship and cause him to see himself as an individual for the first time.

An Encounter – Two schoolboys playing truant from school encounter an elderly man, who turns out to be a pervert.

Araby – A boy falls in love with the sister of his friend, but fails in his quest to buy her a worthy gift from the Araby bazaar. He becomes aware of the pain and unfulfilled dreams of the adult world.

Eveline – A young woman abandons her plans to leave Ireland with a sailor, and faces instead the prospect of remaining with her abusive father in order to help raise her younger siblings.

After the Race – College student Jimmy Doyle tries to fit in with his wealthy friends, and fails.

Two Gallants – Two con men, Lenehan and Corley, find a maid who is willing to steal from her employer.

The Boarding House – Mrs. Mooney successfully manoeuvres her daughter Polly into an upwardly mobile marriage with her lodger Mr. Doran.

A Little Cloud – Little Chandler’s dinner with his old friend Ignatius Gallaher casts fresh light on his own failed literary dreams. The story reflects also on Chandler’s mood upon realizing his baby son has replaced him as the centre of his wife’s affections.

Counterparts – Farrington, a lumbering alcoholic Irish scrivener, takes out his frustration in pubs and on his son Tom.

Clay – The old maid Maria, a laundress, celebrates Halloween with her former foster child Joe Donnelly and his family.

A Painful Case – Mr. Duffy rebuffs Mrs. Sinico, then four years later realizes he has condemned her to loneliness and death.

Ivy Day in the Committee Room – Minor Irish politicians fail to live up to the memory of Charles Stewart Parnell.

A Mother – Mrs. Kearney tries to win a place of pride for her daughter, Kathleen, in the Irish cultural movement, by starring her in a series of concerts, but ultimately fails.

Grace – After Mr. Kernan injures himself falling down the stairs in a bar, his friends try to reform him through Catholicism.

The Dead – Gabriel Conroy attends a party his wife, has an epiphany about the nature of life and death.

Dubliners – video short

Epiphanies

When Joyce wrote Dubliners it was at a time when he was seeking to strip bare what he saw as the smugness and hypocrisy which Britain had inherited from its Victorian epoch. To do this he felt that a new sense of realism and honesty was necessary, and in literary terms this meant dealing with subjects which were not always particularly pleasant or uplifting, but might on the contrary be concerned with the sadder and negative aspects of life. Even these, he felt, should be depicted with scrupulous honesty and objectivity.

He postulated the notion (as did Virginia Woolf only a few years later) that revelations about the truths of life are available to us in special moments – fleeting episodes, snatches of conversation, or a sudden dawning of awareness which as he said, was like ‘the revelation of the whatness of a thing’. To describe these experiences he borrowed the term ‘epiphanies’ from his religious background. It means ‘a manifestation’ or ‘showing forth’ – but he gave it a secular meaning. The sometimes negative and transient nature of these moments are underscored by Richard Ellman, Joyce’s biographer:

The unpalatable epiphanies often include things to be got rid of, examples of fatuity or imperceptiveness, caught deftly in a conversational exchange of two or three sentences.

But Joyce also believed that the author of a work should not be present in his story – nudging the reader’s elbow, telling him what to think and feel – but should scrupulously remove himself from the work and let it speak for itself. [This was a notion he had inherited from Flaubert.] Consequently these epiphanies when they occur are often understated: Joyce does not specially draw our attention to what is going on but leaves us to work out or sense the implications for ourselves.

To make matters even more subtle, the revelations, when they occur, are not always fully evident to the fictional character undergoing the experience – but they are nonetheless available to the attentive reader.

Howth, Dublin

The short story

Joyce was well aware of developments in the modern short story. He was an admirer of Flaubert, whose precision of style was influential in the late nineteenth century. He also knew the work of Maupassant and Checkhov, who had done a great deal to bring realistic, everyday subjects to prose fiction – often featuring raw, painful, and frank exposures of negative aspects of daily life. Joyce followed these tendencies by removing suspense or any overt drama from his stories. Instead, he focused his attention on what he called ‘epiphanies’.

The stories in Dubliners are arranged in rising order of length and complexity, and also in the age of the central character. They are best read in that sequence by first time readers. The early stories are brief character sketches, studies in mood, and revelations of desperation and failure. The sequence ends with the longest and very celebrated story, The Dead, which combines Irish culture and politics with a poignant study in personal weakness and disappointment.

Joyce writes in a spare, undecorated, almost Spartan style. As he said of this approach himself: ‘I have written it for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness.’ There are very few figures of speech, no exaggeration, and no rhetorical flourishes – until the very last story in the collection. Most of the time Joyce shows events from the point of view of the principal character in each story – and in fact his style and choice of vocabulary closely reflects their consciousness.

Major works by James Joyce

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is Joyce’s first complete novel – a largely autobiographical account of a young man’s struggle with Catholicism and his desire to forge himself as an artist. It features a prose style whose complexity develops in parallel with the growth of the hero, Stephen Dedalus. The early pages are written from a child’s point of view, but then they quickly become more sophisticated. As Stephen struggles with religious belief and the growth of his sexual feelings as a young adult, the prose become more complex and philosophical. In addition to the account of his personal life and a critique of Irish society at the beginning of the last century, it also incorporates the creation of an aesthetic philosophy which was unmistakably that of Joyce himself. The novel ends with Stephen quitting Ireland for good, just as Joyce himself was to do – never to return.
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Ulysses (1922) is one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, and it is certainly Joyce’s most celebrated work. He takes Homer’s Odyssey as a structural framework and uses it as the base to create a complex story of characters moving around Dublin on a single day in June 1904. Each separate chapter is written in a different prose style to reflect its theme or subject. The novel also includes two forms of the ‘stream of consciousness’ technique. This was Joyce’s attempt to reproduce the apparently random way in which our perceptions of the world are mixed with our conscious ideas and memories in an unstoppable flow of thought. There is a famous last chapter which is an eighty page unpunctuated soliloquy of a woman as she lies in bed at night, mulling over the events of her life and episodes from the previous day.
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The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce contains eleven essays by an international team of leading Joyce scholars. The topics covered include his debt to Irish and European writers and traditions, his life in Paris, and the relation of his work to the ‘modern’ spirit of sceptical relativism. One essay describes Joyce’s developing achievement in his earlier works (Stephen Hero, Dubliners, and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man). Another tackles his best-known text, asking the basic question ‘What is Ulysses about, and how can it be read?’ The issue of ‘difficulty’ raised by Finnegans Wake is directly addressed, and the reader is taken through questions of theme, language, structure and meaning, as well as the book’s composition and the history of Wake criticism.
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James Joyce – web links

James Joyce at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major works, book reviews, studies of the short stories, bibliographies, web links, study resources.

James Joyce at Project Gutenberg
A limited collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

James Joyce at Wikipedia
Full biography, social background, interpretation of the major works, religion, music, list of biographies, and external web links.

James Joyce at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, plus box office, technical credits, and quizzes.

James Joyce Centre in Dublin
Exhibition centre, walking tours, lectures, and newsletter. The latest addition is a graphic novel version of ‘Ulysses’.

The James Joyce Scholars’ Collection
University of Wisconsin – digitised scans of Finnegans Wake and out-of-print studies on Joyce’s language, plus rare critical studies.

An Annotated Ulysses
An online version of Ulysses with hyperlinks giving explanations of obscure and classical references in the text.

Cornell’s James Joyce Collection
Cornell University – a collection of letters, manuscripts, and books documenting the life and work of James Joyce on exhibition in 2005. Particularly strong on Joyce’s early life.

A Bibliography of Scholarship and Criticism
Slightly dated but still useful web-based compilation of criticism and commentary – covers Joyce himself, plus the stories and novels.

More on James Joyce
Twentieth century literature
More on study skills

Edith Wharton biography

July 8, 2011 by Roy Johnson

writer, traveller, socialite, gardener, interior designer

1862. Edith Newbold Jones born into wealthy ‘old money’ family in New York. Her childhood nickname was ‘Pussy Jones’.

1866. Following depreciation on the US Dollar after the Civil war, family move to tour and live in Europe for economic reasons. They live in Paris, Rome, Germany, and Spain. Edith learns French, Italian and German. She inherits a strong sense of place and visual memory from her father.

1872. Family returns to live in New York city, spending the summers in Newport. Edith has a difficult, estranged, and rivalrous relationship with her mother, who has no sympathy with Edith’s artistic and imaginative interests. Edith relieves her solitude by reading in her father’s library, where she becomes acquainted with classics of modern French, Italian, English literature.

1877. First poems published in Atlantic Monthly.

1879. Successful debut into New York society at 17 years old.

1880. The family returns to live in Europe – London, Paris, and Venice. Edith strongly influenced by Ruskin and his concepts of art and architecture.

1882. Death of her father in Cannes. Edith and her mother return to New York.

1885. Edith marries Edward (Teddy) Wharton who does not share her intellectual tastes. It is a marriage for which she is singularly unprepared. They set up home at ‘Penridge Cottage’ (a lavish house) in Newport, and socialize amongst rich New Yorkers (Van Allens, Astors, Vanderbildts) giving parties, boating, and engaging in fashionable archery contests.

1888. Whartons go on lavish Mediterranean cruise paid for with a legacy.

1889. Edith’s stories and poems began to appear in Scribner’s Magazine. She begins to suffer from attacks of asthma, nausea, and fatigue

1892. The Whartons acquire their own first home at Land’s End in Newport – another large-scale house with views on the Atlantic.

1893. French poet and writer Paul Bourget arrives in Newport with a letter of introduction and becomes lifelong friend. He introduces her to his intellectual friends in Paris. She makes intellectual friendship with Edgerton Wynthrop, who becomes her mentor. Meets architect Ogden Codman and commissions him to re-furbish her house at Land’s end.

1897. She co-writes and publishes with Ogden Codman The Decoration of Houses, which is immediately successful and establishes her reputation as an interior designer with a taste for modern style, removing the clutter of the Victorian period from homes. She promotes Codman’s reputation and becomes virtually the project manager of his commissions.

1898. Suffers a nervous collapse and is advised to take a rest-cure by the same doctor who treated Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

1899. Publishes The Greater Inclination, a collection of short stories.

1901. Publishes Crucial Instances a second collection of short stories. Death of her mother in Paris. Edith inherits $90,000 and immediately begins building a huge house (forty-two rooms) in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Edith Wharton’s house – The Mount

1902. Scribners publish The Valley of Indecision, her first novel, which re-creates eighteenth century Italy.

1903. Travels in Europe, and writes Italian Villas and their Gardens. Meets Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) and painter John Singer Sargeant.

1904. Begins friendship with Henry James. She earns more from her writing than he does. They travel together in motor cars named after George Sand’s lovers. The Descent of Man and Other Stories.

1905. The House of Mirth her next novel dealing with modern New York, becomes a best-selling success, following serialization in Scribner’s Magazine.

1906. Edith and her husband spend time in England with Henry James.

1907. Whartons travel through France with Henry James, where Edith meets London Times correspondent W. Morton Fullerton. She starts writing her secret ‘love diary’.

Edith Wharton motoring with Henry James

1908. Edith begins an affair with Fullerton and is passionately moved for the first time in her life. She confides in Henry James, who advises her to ‘sit tight’.

1909. Meets art critic Bernard Berenson in Paris, and for first time does not return to spend the summer at her house, The Mount.

1911. The affair with Fullerton comes to an end, but they remain friends. She establishes an American expatriate salon in Paris and mixes with many cosmopolitan artists – Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide, Serge Diaghilev, and Walter Sickert. Close friendships with Comtesse Rosa de Fitz-James and Comtesse Anna de Noailles. Publishes her novella Ethan Frome which she says ends her period of apprenticeship as a writer.

1912. Edith sells her house The Mount and the same year is formally divorced from her husband Teddy. Publishes The Reef.

1913. Publishes The Custom of the Country.

1914. At the outbreak of the first world war, Edith sets up workshops for working-class women whose husbands have been conscripted. Travels around battlefront in her car with Walter Beery, and writes pro-French articles for the American press. Engages in fund-raising efforts amongst her friends

1916. Death of her friend Henry James. She is awarded the Legion of Honour.

1917. Publishes novella Summer.

1918. Purchases eighteenth-century house, Pavilion Colombie, outside Paris. Restores the house and develops its seven acres of formal gardens

1920. Buys and restores Chateau Sainte-Claire and its gardens in Hyeres, southern Provence. Publishes The Age of Innocence. Begins writing ‘Beatrice Palmato’ – a work about incest.

1921. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence. A great deal of her time is spent developing the extensive gardens on her two estates in Paris and Hyeres.

1923. Makes her final visit to the USA where she is awarded honorary doctorate at Yale university – the first woman to be so honoured. Increasingly reliant on servants – at a time when in the post-war era when working ‘in-service’ was less popular.

1925. Publishes The Writing of Fiction.

1926. Charters yacht for Mediterranean cruise. Visits Bernard Berenson at I Tatti.

1929. Publishes Hudson River Bracketed.

1930. Collection of short stories, Certain People appears.

1933. Another collection of short fiction, Human Nature appears.

1934. Publishes her reminiscences, A Backward Glance. Begins work on a final novel, The Buccaneers, which is never published.

1937. Dies of heart failure and is buried at Versailles.

More on Edith Wharton
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Edith Wharton short stories

March 13, 2014 by Roy Johnson

tutorials, critical commentary, and study resources

Edith Wharton published more than eighty short stories during her writing career. The exact number is debatable, because some are so long (such as the early tale, The Touchstone) that they can be counted as novellas. She certainly produced stories regularly from 1900 until her last collection Ghosts in 1937. During that time she also wrote a number of full length novels, as well as works of non-fiction, such as her travel writing, her war memoirs, and books on the design of house interiors and gardens. The following are tutorials and study guides which offer plot summaries, characters, critical commentaries, and suggestions for further reading on each story. The list will be updated as new stories are added.

After Holbein
Afterward
Autres Temps
Bunner Sisters
Confession
Diagnosis
His Father’s Son
Kerfol
Pomegranate Seed
Roman Fever
Sanctuary
Souls Belated
The Angel at the Grave
The Last Asset
The Long Run
The Muse’s Tragedy
The Other Two
The Portrait
The Pretext
The Reckoning
The Touchstone
The Triumph of Night
The Verdict
Xingu

Video documentary

Study resources

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon UK

Edith Wharton Collected Stories – Norton Critical – Amazon US

Edith Wharton – biography

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Edith Wharton at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Edith Wharton’s Short Stories – publication details

Edith Wharton’s writing

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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More on Edith Wharton
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More on short stories

Eugene Pickering

July 12, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

Eugene Pickering first appeared in magazine form in The Atlantic Monthly for October—November 1874. Stories by popular writers William Dean Howells, Mark Twain, and Oliver Wendell Holmes appeared in the same magazine, as well as poetry by Bret Harte and Henry W, Longfellow, The tale was then reprinted in book form amongst A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales the following year.

Bad Homburg – Germany

Eugene Pickering – critical commentary

Eugene is not only naive in the ways of the world, having been isolated and cosseted by his father for twenty-seven years, but he is also symbolically short-sighted. He is unable to ‘see’ Madam Blumenthal as the rogue female seductress. She is glamorous, experienced, bohemian, an author, and (according to Niedermeyer) something of an adventuress. What this tale represents then is yet another warning to men about the dangers of forming romantic relationships with women.

Reinforcing this ‘fear of engagement’ element in the first part of the story is the pre-arranged contract of marriage which has been created by Pickering’s father. Eugene Eugene refuses to open the letter (thinking it is a summons to the altar) and wishes to ‘live’ freely before he submits himself to what he clearly sees as the negative experience of Matrimony. This ‘fear of marriage’ motif is a theme to which James turned again and again in his tales – from The Path of Duty to Owen Wingrave

Eugene Pickering – 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

Eugene Pickering – Kindle edition

Eugene Pickering – Paperback edition – Amazon UK

Eugene Pickering – 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

Eugene Pickering – plot summary

Part I At Bad Homburg in Germany an un-named narrator sees an old acquaintance Eugene Pickering rather shyly gambling at the tables with an attractive woman who wins money. The two men meet next day, and the narrator recalls how they were schoolboy friends. Pickering has been sheltered and cosseted by an over-protective father who has recently died. He now feels liberated and full of potential, but lacking in strength.

Shortly before his death, his father has made him promise to marry Isabel Vernon, the daughter of an old business associate – a promise he feels obliged to honour. He has received a letter he has not opened, believing it to be a summons to the altar: he asks the narrator to keep it for him for a month whilst he explores his desire to live freely. He also reveals that he has an appointment to meet the glamorous Madam Blumenthal. The narrator advises him to leave Homburg immediately, but he refuses. The next day Pickering has been bowled over with enthusiasm for Madam Blumenthal and feels he has dispelled all his previous diffidence.

Part II The narrator’s friend Niedermeyer warns him against Madam Blumenthal, saying that she is bohemian, raffish, is critical of marriage, and has been left with little money by her deceased husband. He recounts the story of a strict officer who fell in love with her , but was rejected when he asked her to give up writing novels. She claimed motives of pure art, flings her manuscript into the fire, but publishes it shortly afterwards nevertheless.

The narrator meets her at a concert and finds her very attractive. She claims to be a democrat and a ‘revolutionist’. She asks him to tell her all about Pickering. The narrator realises that Pickering is hopelessly in love with her. He has made a full declaration of love to her, but she says she will respond to him after he has more experience of life and women.

The narrator visits Madam Blumenthal in order to assess her motives and her sincerity. She asks him again about Pickering, because she fears that he is holding something back. The ‘something’ is his engagement to Isabel Vernon, which the narrator then reveals to Madam Blumenthal.

When the two men meet next day, Pickering reveals that he has renounced the promise made to his father, has told Madam Blumenthal about it, and asked her to marry him. She wants three days to decide, and goes to Wiesbaden. Niedermeyer predicts that she will turn the episode into a little romance and then drop Pickering. But Pickering sends a note from Wiesbaden saying that she has accepted him

Some days later however, the narrator visits Pickering in Cologne, where he reveals that Madam Blumenthal has gone back on her word. She was merely testing him to see how far he would go. The narrator then returns the sealed letter he has been keeping for Pickering. It turns out not to be a summons but a dismissal: the girl refused to be bound by her father’s arrangement.

The two men then travel on in Europe, Pickering recovers his spirits, and when they finally reach Venice he is planning to visit Isabel in Smyrna. Six months later he reports that she is a very charming woman.

Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator
Eugene Pickering	his old school friend
Mr Pickering	Eugene’s father, a widower
Mr Vernon	business friend of Mr Pickering in Smyrna
Isabel Vernon	his daughter
Madam Anastasia Blumenthal	a glamorous bohemian widow
Mr Blumenthal	her poor Jewish husband
Niedermeyer	an Austrian ex-diplomat, friend of the narrator

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Other works by Henry James

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More tales by James
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Europe

April 24, 2013 by Roy Johnson

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

Europe first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine for June 1899, and later the following year in the collection of stories The Soft Side published by Methuen.

Europe – critical commentary

This is a black comedy, in a somewhat similar spirit to James’s earlier story Four Meetings (1877) where the magnetic draw of European culture for Americans proves to be beyond the reach of Caroline Spencer, a New England schoolteacher. In her case she is defrauded of her life’s dream by her unscrupulous cousin.

Here too there is a family connection – but one much closer, of mother and daughters. Old Mrs Rimmel has had a successful earlier life with her celebrated husband, enjoyed her own European tour, and only had her three daughters late in life.

Now the implication is that the puritanical sense of duty that rules in their Boston household grinds the lives of the daughters into prematurely aged drudges, attending to the needs of their increasingly disoriented mother.

Europe as symbol

Europe functions as an idea, a dream of cultural riches – perhaps like some atavistic draw for the American descendents of European settlers for what might be, what could be. Certainly as someone who had lived on both contents throughout his life, James was very conscious of the European—American polarity and what it meant for both groups of people, and he frequently contrasted Europe with all types of Americans – sophisticated New Yorkers, puritannical Bostonians, gentlemanly southerners, and robust Californians.

The more suave New York narrator is able to pass between the two continents with ease, whereas the group of four Bostonian ladies are locked in an ethos of self-denying austerity. This is a strain of American culture which James had explored in greater depth before in works such as The Bostonians.

It is emphasised that the Rimmels are typical New Englanders – old Puritan stock – whereas the narrator is from New York. They have become trapped in a life-denying cycle of emotional inter-dependency. The narrator is particularly scathing about the old woman’s psychological grip on her daughters. She has had the pleasures and benefits of a European tour of her own when (much) younger, but is denying them the chance of the same experience. Only one of her daughters is able to make the break – and she never goes back

Europe – study resources

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

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

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

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

Europe – HTML New York edition

Europe – HTML version 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

Europe – plot summary

Part I. After many years living in Boston as spinster ladies, Becky and Jane Rimmel are finally due to visit Europe, leaving their elderly widowed mother to be looked after by their sister Maria. Old Mrs Rimmel visited Europe many years before (in the early nineteenth century, it would seem) and the continent has been held up to the three daughters ever since as a sort of cultural Nirvanah. The ‘girls’ (who are in fact elderly) tease the story’s narrator about his knowledge of Europe and discuss the possibility of meeting up there.

Part II. However, just before their departure, their mother has a seizure, and the trip is postponed. The narrator discusses Mrs Rimmel’s immense age with his sister-in-law who is a friend of the family. Years pass by in which the narrator himself twice visits Europe, which the Rimmels claim is ‘waiting’ for them. The narrator feels angry that the three sisters are growing old, and that their mother is selfishly denying them valuable life experiences. Then suddenly Jane, the youngest daughter makes the break and travels to Europe with some friends the Hathaways. Old Mrs Rimmel begins to lose sense of time.

Part III. The Hathaways return from the European tour later that year – but they have left Jane behind, because she insists on seeing more of Europe. She has become self-assertive and rebellious, refuses to be chaperoned, and has taken to ‘flirting’. Her sister Becky is supporting her financially. The narrator is delighted by what he sees as the development of the sisters’ potential. When the narrator next visits Boston he is amazed to find Becky at his sister-in-law’s house, looking as old as her mother. He opines that Jane will never return from Europe, and Becky tells him that their mother is no longer alive.

Part IV. But when the narrator visits their home next day old Mrs Rimmel is corpse-like, but still living. She has persuaded herself that Jane has died in Europe. Becky then dies, having worn herself out with looking after her mother. The narrator visits the house again and finds Maria looking even older than her mother. She ruefully observes that she will now never visit Europe. Then old Mrs Rimmel, in what appears to be her last gasp of life, announces that Becky has gone to Europe – and the narrator agrees with her.

Principal characters

I	the un-named narrator
Mrs Rimmel	an elderly Bostonian widow
Becky Rimmel	her eldest daughter, who dies
Maria Rimmel	her daughter
Jane Rimmel	her youngest daughter, who leaves

Other works by Henry James

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

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Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fictions

November 30, 2015 by Roy Johnson

short stories of fantasy, parody, mystery, and satire

Fictions (1944) is a single-volume compilation of two collections of short stories which made Jorge Luis Borges famous – his 1941 publication The Garden of Forking Paths and the 1944 follow-up Artifices. He is one of the few writers to achieve international fame merely on the strength of short stories (Katherine Mansfield was another rare case).

His approach is distinctly playful. The stories are in the form of fantasies, essays on imaginary objects, fake biographies, bibliographic parodies, detective stories, and a form he is particularly fond of – commentaries on other people’s work, real and imaginary. He defends this approach in a typically witty manner:

It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books — setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that these books already exist, and offer a commentary on them.

This illustrates the ironic, tongue-in-cheek approach he brings to the short story form. He is also keen on blurring the distinction between fiction and reality. A story might begin by referring to the real world or a well known text, but he then blends it with fictional inventions or fanciful distortions which produce an effect like philosophic mind games. As a reader, you are suddenly no longer sure in which conceptual plane the narrative is taking place.

As a former librarian, he frequently highlights the bibliographic elements of his creations. He offers academic references (often spurious) for the sources of his information and bogus but amusing footnotes to support the authenticity of his narratives .

Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is a story in which Borges and his friend Bioy Casares (a real Argentinean writer) find one volume of an encyclopaedia that documents an imaginary world. It has been written by a collective of scholars working in secret. The language of this world has no nouns, there are no sciences, and one of the many schools of its philosophy denies the existence of time. The story has a postscript explaining how the project was later expanded to produce the invention of an entire planet. This at first appears to be a failure, but then physical objects from this imaginary world begin to appear in the fictional ‘present’.

In Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, a French belle-lettrist decides to re-write the whole of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, word for word from scratch. The story has an amusing defence that claims his reproduction (of which he only manages a couple of chapters) is more subtle than the original – because it was written three hundred years later. This conceit prefigures a school of literary criticism (Cultural Materialism) which argues that the meaning of a text is influenced both by the time in which it was produced as well as the time in which it is read.

In The Circular Ruins a man crawls into a primitive temple with the task of dreaming another person into being. He eventually manages it – first the heart, then the lungs, and so on. This being becomes his ‘son’, and he worries that his creation might come to realise that he is the projection of somebody else’s dream. When he tries to escape from this metaphysical problem, he suddenly realises that somebody else is dreaming him.

The Lottery of Babylon is a Kafka-like invention of a society run on pure chance, in which everyone is compelled to participate. Lots are drawn which might result in torture, death, or infinite riches. But even the administration of the results are subject to chance, and might be carried out at random, reversed, or simply ignored.

Another plot device favoured by Borges is the point of view reversal or the hidden narrator – such as the Irish republican in The Shape of the Sword who tells the story of how he saved the life of a coward during the civil war. He protects his comrade from his abject fear, only to find that the man has betrayed him to the Black and Tans. When the narrator is brought before a firing squad for execution the story turns itself inside out to reveal that the narrator is in fact the coward.

Funes, the Memorious is the potted biography of a poor young Argentinean boy who has a memory so prodigious that he cannot forget anything. As a child Ireneo Funes always knows exactly what time it is at any moment and can remember trivial events with chronological exactitude. He is thrown off a horse, crippled, and when he recovers he discovers that his memory is virtually infinite. He can remember the shape of clouds on any particular day, the pattern of the leaves on a tree, or the veins of decorative marbling in a book he has only seen once.

Whilst the stories are marvellously inventive, it has to be said that they are not uniformly consistent in quality. Some are formless and not much more than self-indulgent whimsy. But the best are tightly wrought and well constructed, with no superfluous material at all – just as a good short story should be. Borges went on to produce an enormously varied body of work – essays, poetry, translations, lectures, film and book reviews – in addition to his now-famous stories. But this collection Fictions remains what might be called his ‘signature’ work.

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Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions, London: Penguin Classics, 2000, pp.179, ISBN: 0141183845

Jorge Louis Borges links

Jorge Luis Borges – biography

Borges Center – University of Pittsburgh

BBC Radio 4 audio documentary

Paris Review – Interview

More on Jorge Luis Borges
Twentieth century literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Flickerbridge

June 7, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Flickerbridge first appeared in Scribner’s Magazine in February 1902. It’s one of a number of stories Henry James wrote around this time concerned with artists and their personal privacy. James was so concerned for his own privacy that he burned all his private papers late on in life – as did his contemporary Thomas Hardy.

Flickerbridge – critical commentary

This would appear to be another variation on the theme of ‘fear of marriage’ theme which features repeatedly in James’s work around this time (one thinks of Maud-Evelyn, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Altar of the Dead).

At the start of the story Frank Granger feels that Addie is more successful in her career as a journalist and writer of short stories: she ‘sailed under more canvas’. And she wants to return to the United States. They were engaged a year previously, but he now feels unsure and thinks of them as ‘the best of friends’.

Exposure to Miss Wenham and Flickerbridge forces him to reappraise Addie, and he begins to see her as a voracious publicity machine (the writer with ‘a regular correspondence for a “prominent Boston paper”‘) which will spoil both Miss Wenham by making her self-conscious. He warns her:

We live in an age of prodigious machinery, all organised to a single end. That end is publicity—a publicity as ferocious as the appetite of a cannibal. The thing therefore is not to have any illusions—fondly to flatter yourself … that the cannibal will spare you. He spares nobody He spares nothing … You’ll be only just a public character—blown about the world for all you are and proclaimed for all you are from the housetops

This is the same sceptical criticism of modern image manipulation and empty celebrity culture which James attacked in The Papers, which was written in the same year. But that is the superficial significance of the story: the underlying issue for those who wish to trace the recurrent themes in James’s work is that of a bachelor, faced with the prospect of marriage, finding some reason plausible to himself to delay, postpone, or cancel the event.

This leads into the realms of psycho-analytic criticism. We know that James wrestled with both the question of matrimony and the nature of his own sexuality, and for reasons perfectly good to himself he decided not to get married.

Flickerbridge – study resources

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

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

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

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

Flickerbridge – Digireads reprint edition – Amazon UK

Flickerbridge – eBook formats at Gutenberg Consortia

Flickerbridge – read the story on line

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his tales and novels

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Flickerbridge – plot summary

Part I. Frank Granger is a young American artist living in Paris. He is ambiguously engaged to Addie (Adelaide) an American writer and journalist. When an enthusiast Mrs Bracken commissions a portrait of herself before she returns to America, he travels to London to undertake the work.

Part II. In London he falls ill, but receives a letter from Addie suggesting that he recuperate in the country, where a recently discovered distant relative lives. Letters are exchanged, and a Miss Wenham invites him to Flickerbridge.

Part III. The house where she lives turns out to be a very old and completely unspoiled relic, almost a living museum. And Miss Wenham herself matches the location: She is a quiet and charming old lady, quite untouched by the contemporary world. Granger thinks of her as ‘Gothic’. He writes a long and enthusiastic letter to Addie, describing Flickerbridge and her relative. But he does not post it, writing a shorter alternative letter instead.

Part IV. In conversation with Miss Wenham he describes the ambiguous state of his engagement, and he flatters the elderly lady, enthusing about Flickerbridge and her as its presiding genius. They receive a letter from Addie, expressing her wish to visit.

Part V. Miss Wenham is very keen to meet her relative, but Granger develops reservations. He argues that Flickerbridge and Miss Wenham will be spoiled if they are exposed to the outside world. Miss Wenham might enjoy the attention, but all will be changed by it. He points out that Addie will ‘publicize’ Miss Wenham and that she will be spoiled by its effects.

Part VI. Letters are dispatched in an attempt to dissuade Addie, but finally she announces that she will be arriving in a couple of day’s time. Granger decides to leave Flickerbridge and go to Oxford so that he will not be there when she arrives, revealing as he does so that he has broken off the engagement.

Principal characters

Flickerbridge	a small English country town
Frank Granger	a young American artist
Addie (Adelaide)	a young American writer and journalist
Mrs Bracken	an American woman who commissions Granger
Miss Adelaide Wenham	Addie’s relative in Flickerbridge
Miss Banker	a society gossip

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For Conscience’ Sake

June 25, 2012 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study resources, and critical commentary

For Conscience’ Sake was first published in the Fortnightly Review for March 1891, for which Hardy recived £17 as payment. It was later added to the collection of stories, Life’s Little Ironies (1894). Students of English grammar and collectors of pedantry might like to note that it was first published under the title For Conscience Sake – without the apostrophe.

Thomas Hardy – portrait by W. Strang

For Conscience’ Sake – critical commentary

Folk myth

The dramatic crux of this story occurs in the boating excursion at the Isle of Wight when Frances and Millbourne both suffer from seasickness and begin to look like each other.

Nausea … often brings out strongly the divergences of the individual from the norm of his race, accentuating superficial peculiarities to radical distinctions. Unexpected physiognomies will uncover themselves at these times in well-known faces; the aspect becomes invested with the spectral presence of entombed and forgotten ancestors, and family lineaments of special or exclusive cast, which in ordinary moments are masked by stereotyped expression and mein, start up with crude insistence to the view

Thomas Hardy was very fond of these folk myths, superstitions, and old wives’ tales. They feature in such widely disparate works as his tale The Withered Arm and his greatest novel The Mayor of Casterbridge. It is the characters in these works who are affected by their beliefs in the myths, but Hardy himself nevertheless regularly resorts to such incidents as plot devices. But fortunately the logic and outcomes of his stories do not depend upon them.

We might object that there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that seasickness would reveal hitherto hidden genetic similarities in a man and his daughter, Nevertheless, it is true that visible similarities frequently do exist between parent and child. The reverend Cope might just as easily have spotted the connection between Millbourne and Frances for other reasons. So the story is not weakened irrevocably by the ‘revelatory seasickness’ idea.

Structure

The story has a very symmetrical structure, notwithstanding its unhappy events. In the first part, Millbourne is living alone as a bachelor in London, whilst Mrs Frankland and Frances are in Exonbury (Exeter). All parties are living reasonable and successful lives.

In the second part, Millbourne’s ambition to restore his self-respect by marrying Mrs Frankland plunges everyone into a state of unhappiness, including even the Reverend Cope. The two women are uprooted from their community and home in Wessex then transported to London, where they know nobody.

In the third part, realising that some things are best left alone (as his friend Bindon warned him) Millbourne then puts everything back in place as it was before. The two women are restored to Wessex, and Millbourne returns to being a bachelor living in a city – this time Brussels.

Motivation

It is worth noting that Millbourne’s motivation is entirely self-oriented. He wishes to marry Mrs Frankland not because he loves her, and not because he wishes to compensate for the wrong he has done her – but because he wishes to bolster his own sense of self-respect. As he tells Bindon, his ambition is “to recover [his] sense of being a man of honour”

The title

It’s worth noting that the story first appeared without the apostrophe in its title as For Conscience Sake. Today we might also expect it to have both an apostrophe followed by the possessive ‘s’. But the truth of the matter is that all three of these usages are accepted by various authorities on English grammar – as the following podcast makes clear:

For Conscience’ Sake – study resources

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Life’s Little Ironies – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

The Complete Works of Thomas Hardy – Kindle eBook

Life’s Little Ironies – eBook version at Project Gutenberg

Life’s Little Ironies – audiobook version at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

The Complete Critical Guide to Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Authors in Context – Thomas Hardy – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Hardy – Amazon UK

For Conscience’ Sake – plot summary

Part I. Mr Millbourne recounts to his friend Doctor Bindon how he feels troubled for having broken his promise of marriage twenty years previously to a Wessex girl he left with a baby daughter. He wants to rectify the misdeed in some way, so as to restore his sense of self-respect. Bindon advises him to leave well alone.

Part II. Millbourne travels to Wessex and discovers that Mrs Frankland (as she calls herself) is an energetic and enterprising teacher of dancing and music. He proposes marriage to her, but she refuses. However, her daughter Frances (who does not know that Millbourne is her father) is engaged to marry a clergyman whose friends object on grounds of social class differences between the couple. Millbourne argues that if Mrs Frankland marries him it will remove the social stigma from her daughter, so she accepts.

Part III. Mrs Frankland’s business is sold, and the family move to live in west London where they are not known. Reverend Cope joins them on a family holiday on the Isle of Wight. Whilst suffering seasickness on a sailing trip, the facial similarities of Frances and Millbourne are revealed to Cope. He becomes suspicious of the links between them and distances himself from the family.

Mrs Frankland berates her husband for re-entering the life she had successfully created for herself and her daughter, and thus causing this problem for them. Frances demands to know the truth about herself and Millbourne, and Mrs Frankland tells her. Everybody in the story is unhappy.

Millbourne proposes a solution of moving back to Wessex, close to where Reverend Cope lives. He installs his wife and daughter there, but does not join them. Instead, he moves to live in Brussels, writing to them to confess that it was a mistake to try rectifying a past mistake in this way. Some months later he reads in a newspaper that Frances has married the Revered Cope.

Principal characters

Mr Millbourne	a bachelor (50) and retired banker
Dr Bindon	his friend and GP
Mrs Leonora Frankland	a music and dancing teacher
Miss Frances Frankland	her daughter
Rev Percival Cope	fiancé to Frances
Exonbury	Exeter
Toneborough	Taunton
Ivell	Yeoville

Hardy’s WESSEX

Hardy’s study

reconstructed in Dorchester museum

Other works by Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) is probably the most popular of Hardy’s late, great novels. The sub-title is ‘A Pure Woman’, and it is a story which explores the tragic consequences of a young milkmaid who becomes the victim of the men she encounters. First she falls for the spiritual but flawed Angel Clare, and then the physical but limited Alec Durberville takes advantage of her. This novel has some of the most beautiful and the most harrowing depictions of rural working conditions which reveal Hardy as a passionate advocate for those who work the land. It also has a wonderfully symbolic climax at Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. There is poetry in almost every page.
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The Woodlanders (1887) Giles Winterbourne, an honest woodsman, suffers with the many tribulations of his selfless love for Grace Melbury, a woman above his station in this classic tale of the West Country. She marries the new doctor, Edred Fitzpiers, but leaves him when she learns he has been unfaithful. She turns instead to Giles, who nobly allows her to sleep in his house during stormy weather, whilst he sleeps outside and brings on his own death. It’s often said that the hero of this novel is the woods themselves – so deeply moving is Hardy’s account of the timbered countryside which provides the backdrop for another human tragedy and a study of rural life in transition.
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Wessex Tales Don’t miss the skills of Hardy as a writer of shorter fictions. None of his short stories are really short, but they are beautifully crafted. This is the first volume of his tales in which he was seeking to record the customs, superstitions, and beliefs of old Wessex before they were lost to living memory. Yet whilst dealing with traditional beliefs, they also explore very modern concerns of difficult and often thwarted human passions which he developed more extensively in his longer works.

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Thomas Hardy – web links

Thomas Hardy at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, book reviews. bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

The Thomas Hardy Collection
The complete novels, stories, and poetry – Kindle eBook single file download for £1.29 at Amazon.

Thomas Hardy at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of digital formats.

Thomas Hardy at Wikipedia
Biographical notes, social background, the novels and literary themes, poetry, religious beliefs and influence, biographies and criticism.

The Thomas Hardy Society
Dorset-based site featuring educational activities, a biennial conference, a journal (three times a year) with links to the texts of all the major works.

The Thomas Hardy Association
American-based site with photos and academic resources. Be prepared to search and drill down to reach the more useful materials.

Thomas Hardy on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors, actors, production features, box office, film reviews, and even quizzes.

Thomas Hardy – online literary criticism
Small collection of academic papers and articles ‘favoring signed articles by recognized scholars and articles published in peer-reviewed sources’.

Thomas Hardy’s Wessex
Evolution of Wessex, contemporary reviews, maps, bibliography, links to other web sites, and history.

More on Thomas Hardy
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Fordham Castle

November 25, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Fordham Castle (1904) is at less than 10,000 words a very short story by James’s usual standards. It comes from his late period and first appeared in Harper’s Magazine in 1904. When he first recorded the germ of the idea for this tale in his notebooks (or the donnée as he liked to call it) it was ‘the American phenomenon of the social suppression of the parents’. That is, young Americans climbing the social ladder by concealing their true origins.

In his first thoughts the emphasis was on two daughters who wish to deny the existence of their mother. So it is interesting to note that by the time he came to write the story, attention had switched to the male protagonist – but James has retained the idea of denying somebody’s existence by taking up a new identity. And he retains the idea of ‘death’ in a metaphoric sense.

Longford Castle – Wiltshire

Fordham Castle – critical commentary

The most interesting element of this rather light piece of entertainment is the patterning of identities. All the principal characters have two names. Abel Taker is masquerading as C.P.Addard; his wife renames herself Mrs Sherrington Reeve; Mrs Magaw is registered at the hotel as Mrs Vanderplank, and her daughter Mattie Magaw will lose the surname she dislikes to become Lady Dunderton.

It could be argued that the story deals with a theme of people creating new identities for themselves. But Mrs Taker is acting outside the events of the narrative; we do not know if her actions are effective or not. Mrs Magaw only adopts her new persona temporarily. And Mattie secures her fiancé under her real name and will only change it following her marriage. Abel Taker however, volunteers at the end of the story to adopt his new identity of C.P.Addard, leaving his ‘old’ self dead. He is taking a leap into the metaphysical void. If we are to take its premise seriously, it’s certainly an extreme case of people seeking upward social mobility.

Fordham Castle – study resources

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

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

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

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

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Fordham Castle – read the story on line

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his work – Amazon UK

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his work – Amazon US

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Fordham Castle – plot summary

Abel Taker a middle-aged American has agreed to separate from his wife so that she can get on in London society. He is living in a hotel on Lake Geneva under the assumed name of C.P.Addard. There he meets Mrs Magaw, an older American woman who is living under the name of Mrs Vanderplank. She is doing this for the sake of her daughter Mattie who thinks the family name is spoiling her chances of social advancement.

Both Abel and Mrs Magaw speak of their previous names and identities as people who are now dead. Meanwhile Mrs Taker, who is staying at Fordham Castle in Wiltshire, has done the same thing and has now become Mrs Sherrington Reeve.

Mattie Magaw is also staying at the Castle and becomes engaged to Lord Dunderton. Now that she has made her social mark she invites her mother there. Mrs Magaw leaves for England and invites Abel to go with her. However, he doubts that he will receive a similar invitation from his wife, declines, and resumes his status as a ‘dead person’.

Principal characters

Abel F. Taker	middle-aged American – also C.P. Addard
Mrs Sue Taker	his wife – also Mrs Sherrington Reeve
Mrs Magaw	an American woman – also Mrs Vanderplank
Mattie Magaw	her daughter, who is due to become Lady Dunderton
Madame Massin	hotel proprietress

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

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

The Ladder – a Henry James website
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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
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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
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Henry James – The Complete Tales
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Four Meetings

November 24, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Four Meetings (1877) is a simple but very touching story which hovers ambiguously between a comic and a tragic tone. As so frequently in James’s work, there is an ‘International’ element to the tale – in this case the powerful attraction which European culture had for Americans. The tension between pathos and bitter irony make it difficult to tell if the story is meant to be taken as mild satire or a form of grim and off-colour humour. It is not unlike his treatment of the same subject in the later story Europe

Four Meetings – critical commentary

Dramatic tension

This tale has some of the tensions and reversals of expectation that characterise the typical late nineteenth century story – the sort of tale that might have been written by Guy de Maupassant, whose work Henry James knew well.

Part I. Caroline Spencer’s innocent enthusiasm for European culture is obviously set up as the principal source of dramatic tension in part one of the tale. We want to know if her expectations will be realized when she finally makes the trip to Europe.

Part II. Almost immediately in part two however, this subject is replaced by the dramatic news of her naive belief in her cousin, who she has never met before but has entrusted with all her money. When the cousin turns up, his appearance and behaviour fail to dispel suspicion – especially since he still has some disturbing news to impart to Caroline.

Part III. When the piece of news is imparted it makes matters even worse. He needs her money to pay his bad debts, and the student’s pathetic tale of secret marriage to a disenfranchised ‘Countess’ (relayed to us whilst he tucks into a meal) is quite clearly a fabrication of some sort. Yet Caroline accepts it as the truth, believes she will be repaid, and is prepared to sacrifice her own interests for those of her dissolute relative. This is a peak in the narrative arc of the story, but there is a grim further twist yet to come.

Part IV. Having assumed that the ‘Countess’ was a fiction, we are surprised to learn that there actually is a wife (now a widow) who is continuing to live off Caroline’s generosity. She is a vulgar slattern who gives herself airs and graces; the money has never been returned; and Caroline has lost all interest in visiting Europe.

Dramatic structure

There are four meetings, but they are arranged in an interesting and highly structured pattern. The first takes place in New England, then there is a gap of three years. The second and third meetings take place in Le Havre within a few hours of each other. There is then a gap of another five years before the fourth meeting takes place, back once again in New England.

Caroline Spencer goes from being a naive and ‘almost like a little girl’ at the start of the story, until at the end (eight years later) ‘She was much older; she looked tired and wasted’.

It’s also interesting to note that at the beginning of the story Caroline Spencer is already dead. The narrator is describing their four meetings retrospectively.

The International theme

Henry James wrings every possible dramatic variation out of his fascination with American and Europe. In Four Meetings both his principal charcters are Europhiles. The narrator has travelled widely and recorded his impressions in photograph albumns. He knows foreign languages, and has beena nightly visitor to the French theatre. Caroline Spencer is actually even more deeply steeped in its culture, remembering Byron’s lines from The Prisoner of Chillon which he can not. But her enthusiasm is a form of romantic dream, and such is its intensity that the narrator suggests that it is a form of American madness:

You’ve the great American disease, and you’ve got it ‘bad’—the appetite, morbid and monstrous, for colour and form, for the picturesque and the romantic at any price … we have before us the beautiful old things we’ve never seen at all, and when we do at last see them—if we’re lucky!—we simply recognise them. What experience does is merely to confirm and consecrate our confident dream.

The narrator is able to live at ease with his version of the ‘disease’, but Caroline’s dream is shattered as a result of her gullibility in lending money to someone she hardly knows, but who is significantly a fellow American.

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Four Meetings – 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

Four Meetings – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Four Meetings – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Four Meetings – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Four Meetings – read the book on line

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

The Prefaces of Henry James – Introductions to his works – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Four Meetings – plot summary

An unnamed narrator meets Caroline Spencer on four separate occasions. He is a well-travelled and sophisticated Europhile. She is a simple spinster with a passion for European culture who has saved from her earnings as a schoolteacher to finance her own version of the Grand Tour.

Part I. At the first meeting in New England, the narrator shows her his albumns of travel photographs, which arouses her enthusiasm to fever pitch. She regards Europe as the centre of all culture, and a visit there would be the fulfillment of her dreams.

Part II. Three years later he meets her again by chance in Le Havre, where she has just arrived from America for her much-anticipated visit. However, she has given all her travellers cheques to her cousin (who she has never met before) to exchange for Francs before they go on to Paris, where he is studying art. The narrator fears that she will never see the cousin again, but he does turn up and reveals himself as an unappetizing bohemian.

Part III. A few hours later, fearing that the student might take advantage of his cousin’s lack of experience, the narrator goes to check on Caroline before her train leaves for Paris. He discovers that the student has revealed himself to be heavily in debt, and she has given him all her money. But he is also married to a Countess and will repay the money as soon as he is able. Caroline sails back to America the same day – having spent thirteen hours on European soil.

Part IV. Five years later the narrator is back in New England where he first met Caroline, and decides to call on her. She is living in frugal circumstances, has aged terribly, and she is acting as servant to the ‘Countess’ who has come to live with her following the death of her cousin. The money has never been repaid, and it is quite clear that the Countess is a vulgar fraud. As the narrator reflects, she was ‘no more a Countess than I was a Caliph’.

Principal characters

I	the unnamed first-person narrator
Latouche	his friend in New England
Miss Caroline Spencer	a single schoolteacher
—	her unnamed cousin who lives in Paris ‘studying’ art
The ‘Countess’	the cousin’s wife
Mr Mixter	an untalented student of French with the Countess

Henry James’s study

Other works by Henry James

Henry James – web links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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