Henry James

1843-1916

Life

Family

Homes

Occupations

Chronology

Issues and themes

Widely considered one of the greatest American writers, Henry James is also perhaps the most difficult. The primary obstacle for most readers is James's prose style, which grew more complex as he matured. Indeed, some of his later works, such as "The Turn of the Screw" and The Ambassadors, need to be deciphered before they can be interpreted or even understood. The complexity of James's style comes not only from his challenging vocabulary and syntax, but from his deliberate use of ambiguity. In the most famous example of this ambiguity, James frequently uses masculine pronouns in "The Turn of the Screw" without clearly identifying the antecedents, leaving readers wondering whether "he" is the boy in the story or a ghost the boy seems to know.

This abstruse style suited James's interest in human psychology, which is itself subtle and complex. Sometimes writing in a style that presages the stream-of-consciousness narratives written by James Joyce and William Faulkner, James explores human desire, reluctance, motivation, and relationships through the minds, words, and actions of well-developed characters such as Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady and Lambert Strether in The Ambassadors. These two characters represent two of James's favorite kinds: the young woman who struggles against social conditions and the older man who observes more vibrant, younger persons, seeming to live vicariously through them. In sketching the latter, James drew on his own experience. The literary scholar Henry Seidel Canby has written that James, while in Europe as a young man, wandered through streets and spas and "gave his time utterly to observing, observing, almost forgetting, it would seem, his own personality, his own personal life, though intensely aware of his critical opinions" (104). In a letter to Charles Eliot Norton, James wrote: "I regard the march of history very much as a man placed astride of a locomotive, without knowledge or help, would regard the progress of that vehicle. To stick on, somehow, and even enjoy the scenery as we pass, is the sum of my aspiration" (Edel, HJL 165). James's fiction also reflects his experience in its frequent contrasts between America, where he was born, and Europe, where he traveled extensively and lived for much of his life. In The Henry James Reader, Leon Edel has written that James traveled "partly because he felt that his craft needed the nourishment of older civilizations" (xi).

While he is one of the major figures in American literary realism, he is significantly different from some of the other realists of the time. Unlike William Dean Howells and Mark Twain, James did not focus on the plight of low- or middle-class characters or try to deflate the romantic fancies of earlier writers. Instead, he attempted a realistic portrait of his characters' conflicts, motivations, and characters. In Henry James: A Life, Leon Edel writes that James "believed that each human consciousness carries its own 'reality' and that this is what art captures and preserves" (166). One of James's chief concerns was avoiding character types and instead portraying complex individuals. This concern and other ideas about literary realism are evident in his short story "The Real Thing" and in his treatment of Henrietta Stackpole in The Portrait of a Lady, as well as in James's literary criticism.

Readers tend to respond powerfully to James's fiction. In many cases, their response has been an appreciation of his characterization or his polished style, but negative reactions also have been strong and numerous. His own brother, the renowned philosopher William James, complained that Henry's work was "bloodless" because it dealt more with the intellect than with the passions. Henry's subtle, complex style also irked William, who reacted to The Golden Bowl by writing to Henry: "Why won't you, just to please Brother, sit down and write a new book, with no twilight or mustiness in the plot, with great vigor and decisiveness in the action, no fencing the dialogue, psychological commentaries, and absolute straightness in style" (Edel, HJTM 300). The British novelist H.G. Wells said that Henry James's fiction reminded him of a hippopotamous trying to pick up a pea.

Work

"The Real Thing"

Bibliography

© Mark Canada, 1997

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