Henry James (1843-1916)

- Is considered as the first psychological realist in American literature

- a famous critic and literary theorist, his most famous critical/ theoretical work being
“The Art of Fiction”

- he wrote short stories, novels, non-fiction, letters, autobiographical works

- his favorite theme: the illumination of the present by “the sense of the past”, that is
the American present illuminated by the past of Europe: the basis of the Jamesian
‘international theme’

- one of the most controversial writers of the beginning of the century

- known to be a great artist but difficult to read, mainly because of a confounding
extravagance of language:

The central fact of the place was neither more nor less, when analysed – and a pressure
superficial sufficed – than the fundamental impropriety of Chad’s situation, round about
which they thus seemed cynically clustered. Accordingly, since they took it for granted, they
took for granted all that in connection with it was taken for granted at Woollett – matters as
to which, verily, he had been reduced with Mrs. Newsome to the last intensity of silence.

- apparently functionless luxury of decoration

- his special style is due to the writer’s complicated vision of experience
 - his dialogue is stylized, full of metaphors, leaps over the obvious, queer ellipses
- James is maybe the first great novelist who fused the European’s sense of the
objective limits of life (novel of manners) with the American’s sense of limitless
possibilities (metaphysical romance)
- hence his extravagance of style which represents states of the consciousness and the
uncertainty about objective reality

Life:

- born 15th April 1843, in New-York

- had Irish and Scottish ancestors
- his grandfather, William James of Albany enjoyed great commercial success
- his father, Henry James senior- Swedenborgian philosopher, friend of Emerson
- his family – prosperous descendants of self-made men, a new aristocracy in Albany,
New-York, and Boston
- his brother William (1842-1910) became a famous philosopher, professor of
philosophy at Harvard, author of influential work

- highly individualistic education of the two sons, Henry and William were sent from
school to school, from tutor to tutor, from country to country on a pre-arranged plan of
their father
- his apprenticeship as a writer began in America, in the eighteen-sixties, published in
several magazines articles and short stories
- in 1871 he published his first novel Watch and Ward
- in his early works almost all major themes of his later novels can be traced (including
the international obsession)
- a real and deep nostalgia for Europe enslaved him from earliest childhood
- letters and autobiographical works refer to that sense of Europe to which I felt that
my very earliest consciousness waked
- he claimed that his first memories of Paris dated from the summer of 1844, when he
spent some time in Europe with his parents:

I had been hurried off to London and to Paris immediately after my birth, and then
and there, I was ever afterwards strongly to feel that poison had entered my veins.

- his impressions of Europe were impressions of unusual clarity and quality

- manifested great sensibility to European culture, but also a sensibility to everything he

saw, touched, smelt, tasted, or merely conjectured

- in his study of Hawthorne (1879) he stated:

…The flower of art blossoms only where the soil is deep… it takes a great deal of
history to produce a little literature…it needs a complex social machinery to set a
writer in motion.

- in his view Americans devoted themselves to the world of business, Europeans were
preoccupied by the world of ideas and perceptions
- between 1858 (when he returned to America after a 3- year tour in Europe) and 1876
(when he made his first serious attempt to settle in London) James travelled to and fro
across the Atlantic
- he spent time in Geneva, Harvard, Liverpool, at the English countryside, in Venice,
Florence, Rome, America again, back to Switzerland, Paris, Homburg, Rome and
Florence again, back to Cambridge (Massachusetts), Paris and then London where he
stayed until 1881
- thus, before settling down in England, his spiritual home, James experienced the
enchantment of France and the intoxication of Italy
- in Paris he met Flaubert and Turgenev, but also Zola, Daudet, Maupassant, and
Edmond de Goncourt
- in 1896 he retired in Rye, Sussex
- became a British subject a year before he died
- his novels and stories frequently record the impact of England upon Americans or
America upon English people
- in general, he did not become widely read till many years after his death
- died in 1916, left among his unfinished works a novel entitled The Sense of the Past
- his private life remained a secret
 Work:
First Period:
Roderick Hudson (1876)
The American (1877)
The Europeans (1878)
Daisy Miller (1879)
The Portrait of a Lady (1881)

Works of Maturity:
The Bostonians (1886)
The Princess Casamassima (1886)
The Spoils of Poynton (1897)
What Maisie Knew (1898)
The Awkward Age (1899)

Last Period of Creation:

The Sacred Fount (1901)
The Wings of the Dove (1902)
The Ambassadors (1903)
The Golden Bowl (1904)
The Ivory Tower (1917) – unfinished

Short Stories:
A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Stories (1878)
The Lesson of the Master (1892)
The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Autobiographical Works:
A Small Boy and Others (1913)
Notes of a Son and Brother (1914)
The Middle Years (1917) – unfinished

About his Work:

- a double inheritance can be traced in his work: one stemming from the American
writer N. Hawthorne, and one from Jane Austen and the later George Eliot
- the physical world with James is just a background for drama – central in his work
- had a wonderful ability to render subtleties, pain, despair which exist in the mutual
relations of human beings
- J. Conrad called him the historian of fine consciences
- was constantly fascinated by the legacy of the past
- the impact of Europe is acknowledged in most of his works
- the theme of the passionate pilgrim crops up in the whole of James’ work
- the pilgrimage at its purest is a journey towards a state of mind rather than an ideal
place
- the theme has also been labelled as the international theme or the international
situation, in James’ own words

The Ambassadors
- consists of twelve books, originally meant for serial publication in installments
- each book can be considered as a separate, exquisite ‘medallion’, a complete artistic
entity, but also as integral part of the whole
- the first six books deal with Strether’s conversion from the Woollett values (Mrs
Newsome) to the European values (M-me de Vionnet)
- the last six books constitute an ironic reversal: Strether urges Chad not to leave
Europe/ Paris
- the theme is not merely Lambert Strether’s awakening to life
- it is more about: It is more blessed to give than to receive
- James had developed a ‘pointilliste’ technique of portraiture

G. Seurat
- the unity of the novel is given by the unique/ Strether’s point of view
- Strether filters every single situation through his own consciousness: every detail is
observed and then analyzed by Strether
- James also uses structural devices in order to achieve balance by contrasting M-me
de Vionnet to Mrs. Newsome, Maria Gostrey to Waymarsh, Jeanne de Vionnet to
Mamie Pocock, even Strether to Chad
- the most obvious contrast is that of Woollett to Paris
- plot centers around Strether and his European experience; his vision/ point of view is
shared by the reader
 - substance of the novel is what Strether feels, thinks
- two major concerns: the restricted point of view and the inner drama of the character
- Foreshadowing of the stream of consciousness technique

- dialogues/ elaborate conversational passages demand the closest attention and are never
simply ornamental

- James’ technique reminds the reader of the staging of a play concerning setting,
placement of characters, arrangements of acts and scenes

- his settings are like paintings come alive (James was an admirer and a connoisseur of
the art of painting)

- James deals with the world of the wealthy in high society

- renders the highly enjoyable conversational game of this social class
- wrote the novel on the basis of a really detailed scenario, intensely structural,
intensely hinged and jointed frame (James)
- like in most of his novels, Lambert Strether is defined by his relationship to Maria
Gostrey and Mrs. de Vionnet
- Strether sees the world through the eyes of women and judges people according to
their opinion
- Maria Gostrey even plays the role of a spiritual guide and counsellor in Europe for
Strether, the ‘innocent’ American
- the protagonist ends up being fascinated – just like Chad – by the ‘vie parisienne’, as
rendered by Boucher in his paintings
 - thus, he fails in his mission as an ambassador, realizes that life is too short not to be
enjoyed fully (this is the advice he gives to Bilham)
- ultimately, he is driven back to New England by the imperatives of an unbending
conscience
- although the plot is told by an objective narrator, it relies very much on subtle
conversation and the relating of the characters’ thoughts, all of which are filtered
through Lambert Strether’s consciousness
- we are able to look into the consciousness of a man of gentle temperament whose only
weapon is his intelligence by means of interior monologues

Conclusion:

- life itself, not the art of fiction, was the subject of his work
- readers find out a lot about his reactions to living from his letters:

I have only to let myself go! So I have said to myself all my life – so I have said to myself in
the far-off days of my fermenting and passionate youth. Yet I have never fully done it. The
sense of it – of the need of it – rolls over me at times with commanding force: it seems the
formula for my salvation, of what remains to me of a future…Go on, my boy, and strike hard;
have a rich and long St. Martin’s summer.

- in a notebook entry of 1881, James described himself as an artist and as a bachelor,

one who has the passion of observation and whose business is the study of human
life.
- in “The Ambassadors” and in several other Jamesian novels the ‘international theme’
is rendered as a clash between the American innocence as embodied by Lambert
Strether and the European experience
- at the end of the novel Strether has broadened his horizon and embraced a
cosmopolitan outlook, thus being able to bridge the gap between New England and old
Europe.