tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links
The Pupil first appeared in Longman’s Magazine for March—April 1891. It next appeared in the collection The Lesson of the Master published in New York and London by Macmillan in 1919.
Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant
The Pupil – critical commentary
Towards the end of the nineteenth century (and into the twentieth) Henry James wrote a number of works whose subjects were dysfunctional families and the neglect of children. One thinks of What Masie Knew (1897) and The Awkward Age (1899) but the most obvious dramatic parallel is with The Turn of the Screw (1898). In that tale a governess looking after two young children frightens one of them to death by confronting him with what she thinks is the ghost of a former servant Peter Quint.
In The Pupil Pemberton is presented with the avaricious and socially demanding notion of the Moreens that he is now responsible for their son Morgan’s welfare. We know that Pemberton has sacrificed time, money, and intellectual energy on the boy’s upbringing – but to be confronted with a quasi-formal suggestion that he assume full responsibility for his charge causes him to hesitate. It is that hesitation which causes the boy to lose faith in his protector, and we are led to believe that the emotional strain precipitates his heart failure.
The homo-erotic theme
It is impossible to read the tale without noticing the very strong element of homo-erotic attachment between the teacher and his pupil. And the attraction appears to be mutual. Quite apart from the touching and glances that are exchanged between the pair, Morgan buys Pemberton a tie in Paris, and Pemberton later reveals that he has kept a lock of the boy’s hair as a souvenir.
I don’t think this has any particular bearing upon the meaning of the story as a whole, but it does show that from an early point in his writing career, James was giving expression to emotional relationships between men (as he was to do later between women in texts such as The Bostonians).
The Pupil – 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
The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK
Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US
Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links
Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources
The Pupil – plot summary
Part I. Pemberton, a young graduate of Oxford and Yale University, has spent all his inheritance on a European tour and is forced to seek employment as a private tutor to Morgan Moreen, the precocious younger son of a rich American family living in Nice. He is anxious about his salary and the boy in his charge.
Part II. Pemberton discovers that the family are polyglot bohemians in an unusual manner and that the boy is supernaturally clever in a way that makes them want to keep a distance from their own son.
Part III. Pemberton forms a very intimate understanding with Morgan which centres on judgements of the boy’s parents (and which also contains homo-erotic undertones).
Part IV. After a year the family move to live in Paris, where Pemberton begins to notice that the family neglect their son, whose clothes become old and shabby. Pemberton and Morgan become flaneurs and share a degree of poverty. The Moran family fail to pay Pemberton any salary. He threatens to leave, but has no money to return to England. When they do pay him, he realises that he cannot make the break. He begins to see that the Moreens are ‘adventurers who don’t pay their debts. He also perceives that they are toadies and snobs.
Part V. Pemberton feels that it would be improper to criticise his parents to the boy, but Morgan himself tells Pemberton that he ought to take flight from their negligence. Pemberton threatens that he will reveal their misdeeds to the boy, and Mrs Mooreen gives him fifty Francs and tells him he ought to be grateful to work for nothing.. They argue about responsibility for the boy, and he refuses the money.
Part VI. Morgan tells him that a former nurse had left the family for similar reasons: they would not pay her. They discuss the idea of running away together. Morgan knows that his parents are lying and cheating, and wonders what resources they have to survive. They agree that Pemberton should leave at the first opportunity of locating alternative employment, and they feel better now that all the facts of the situation have been revealed and shared.
Part VII. Morgan wonders why his parents are such louche arrivistes and wishes he could feel less shame on their behalf.The family moves to Venice. Morgan is now fifteen and taller. He feels more prepared to meet the world and thinks to attend Pemberton’s old college at Oxford. Mrs Moreen asks Pemberton to lend her money. When an offer of another tutoring post in England comes up, Pemberton leaves the Moreens.
Part VIII. Pemberton takes up his post tutoring an ‘opulent youth’ and (rather improbably) sends money to Mrs Moreen. She replies telling him that Morgan is desperately ill. But when Pemberton travels to Paris he discovers that Morgan is not ill at all, and that Mrs Moreen has withheld his letters to Morgan and tricked him into returning. She accuses Pemberton of taking their son away from them, and that he now has full responsibility for staying with them. Morgan meanwhile wants to be taken away from his parents, who he regards as frauds.
Pemberton senses that the family fortunes are about to crash, and he resurrects the idea of running away with Morgan. He uses up all his savings, and the Moreens move to a cheap hotel. When the family crash does occur, they ask him to take charge of Morgan. But the emotional stress of the scene is too much for Morgan, and he dies on the spot.
Principal characters
| Pemberton | a young tutor, ex Oxford and Yale |
| The Moreens | Americans living in Europe |
| Morgan Moreen | their precociously talented but sickly son |
| Ulrich Moreen | Morgan’s older brother (20) |
| Paula Moreen | Morgan’s sister |
| Amy Moreen | Morgan’s sister |
Further reading
Biographical
Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.
F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.
Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.
Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.
Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.
Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999
F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.
Critical commentary
Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.
Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.
Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.
Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.
Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.
J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.
Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.
Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.
Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976
Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.
Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.
Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.
Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.
Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009
John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.
Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.
Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.
Other works by Henry James
Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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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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