Henry James (1843-1916)

“An American Abroad”

 

Read the introduction to James in the Norton Anthology of American Literature or see the information at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James and http://www.henryjames.org.uk/home.htm.    Explore the characteristics of literary Realism at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_realism and http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/realism.htm.    Read James’ "The Art of Fiction" (see http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell/engl462/artfiction.html).  James wrote “The Art of Fiction” in response to a series of lectures published later by the English critic Walter Besant.  James defends the novel genre and likens it to history in that it represents life, though it does not “reproduce” it.  What are James’ ideas about the intrusion of the author into the fictional narrative (omniscient author interruptions of the narrative)?  Does he agree with Besant's advice that a novelist must write directly from his or her experience?   What are James’ ideas about portraying life through “rose-colored window panes,” a Romantic portrayal?  What specifically is the “province” of art?  James calls the “germ” or “seed” of a story the donnee, many times no more than a single moment or image that is lodged in the poet’s mind to form the beginnings of a tale.   What art form provides for James an analogy with fiction?   Read "The Real Thing" in the Norton Anthology of American Literature or at http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/j/james/henry/j2r/. 

How is this story a dramatization of James' theory of fiction?  Why are the Monarchs, who really are aristocrats, despite the fact that they have fallen now into gentile poverty, unable to portray “aristocratic characters” as models for the painter?  Why is the cockney model, Miss Churm, more than capable of doing so?  What is James trying to say about art reproducing and/or representing life.  What is the missing ingredient that the Monarchs don’t have that Miss Churm does have?

 

Read Daisy Miller in the Norton Anthology of American Literature or at http://www.online-literature.com/henry_james/1100/.  The setting for half of James’ novella is Vevey, Switzerland, near Chillon Castle, as well as Rome for the second half of the story.  Winterbourne functions as the principle “third-person participant narrator,” with James providing the reader with “multiple-focus points of view.”  The reader participates in the story of Daisy Miller through the eyes of Winterbourne and those characters who pass their severe Victorian judgments upon Daisy.  Describe Daisy and her family.  How do old world European values and American values clash in the story?  How do Winterbourne and his aunt fit into this picture?  What does Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s aunt, think of Daisy?  What is the significance and symbolism of Chillon Castle on the evening that Daisy and Winterbourne visit the famous site?   What does Bonnivard represent for James, and what association has he with gender issues of the end of the 19th Century?  Explore the status of woman during the Victorian Age at http://www.victoriaspast.com/LifeofVictorianWoman/LifeofVictorianWoman.html.   Investigate the New Woman, on the horizon during the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and early decades of the Twentieth Century, at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/default.htm.   Who is Giovanelli?  Who is Mrs. Walker?  Daisy is a headstrong young woman, very self-assured, and somewhat naïve, as are most of the nouveau riche Americans who travel in Europe at this time, but is her “fall,” as seen through the eyes of the British and American expatriates and aristocrats in Rome fair?  Why does Daisy visit the Colosseum at night?  When Winterbourne warns her that the place is rife with malaria after dark, she answers “in a little strange tone”: “I don’t care” (36).  What are the social undertones of this story?  Where do James’ sympathies lie?  How does the story fit into the framework of Realism?  Explain.

 

HENRY JAMES (1843-1916, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_James),   The American, Portrait of a Lady, Daisy Miller, The Golden Bowl, The Bostonians, Washington Square,  was one of the premier 19th-century realists, differing from Twain and Howells in that he was principally interested in psychological realism, in realistically portraying inner truth of character. Note that his brother William James (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_James) was a renowned American philosopher and psychologist) and Alice James, noted diarist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_James).   James is one of the premier innovators in point of view and thus very influential on Modernist writers.  In striving for a realistic narrative format, James achieves extraordinary objectivity by allowing the story to unfold through a "center of intelligence," often a minor character who simply reports in the story what he observes (i.e., Daisy Miller).  The author never intrudes, is more or less objective, and the reader must then decide for himself what to think about characters, theme, etc.  James is rather like an impressionist painter or a pointillist, who dabs paint upon a canvas, creating a whole portrait that we can discern at a distance.  Note Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon . . .on the Grande Jatte at http://cgfa.dotsrc.org/seurat/p-seurat1.htm. 

            THEME:  Like Twain, James is interested in portraying the shallowness of the “Gilded Age,” with its nouveau riche, naive, sometimes ugly Americans.  He will often place his American characters in a European setting, focusing on the contrast between European society (with its older traditions, elegance, but often decaying morality) and American society (with its honesty, individualism, energy, but sometimes naivety and crassness).  James disparages the narrow-minded American Philistine—the Babbitts, new moneyed, blissfully ignorant about Europe and a world scene, flooding the posh hotels of Switzerland and Italy.  Eventually, James became a full-fledged American expatriate, as did his good friend and literary compatriot Edith Wharton (The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, and The Age of Innocence, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Wharton).   James became a British citizen a few years before he died.   Both James and Wharton utilize a similar style and theme, and both were influential on the other’s work.

"The Art of Fiction" (http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/j/james/henry/j2r/)  and "The Real Thing" (Norton Anthology of American Literature 1539).  

How is “The Real Thing” a dramatization of James' theory of fiction?

1.  What do Mr. and Mrs. Monarch want of the speaker, a painter?

Describe their socio/economic status.  Why can't they get work?   They are really "the real thing"—a lady and a gentleman.  Yet how do they fair as models, as  “still life,” as “works of art” in for an art series that the painter is planning?  (1542)   At first, the painter feels he will use the Monarchs for an illustrative series that he's trying to negotiate a contract for, but as the work progresses he almost loses the contract.

2.  Are the Monarchs particularly deep, complex people, albeit aristocratic?

4.  Who is Miss Churm?  (1539-40)

5. The Italian Oronte comes to work for the painter as a servant--how does he fair as model?  

6.  By the story's end, the Monarchs (note the name) are "serving" Oronte, serving the “servant”—as “reality,” or what we'd expect to be reality, is turned topsy turvy.  What is the significance in terms of James’ aesthetic of "realism"? 

Real life, or what we would expect to be real life, is "serving" art, bending to art or

to the "alchemy of art" which can represent life.  The painter at last realizes that

the "real thing" is the "wrong thing"  for his art series (1548).

7.  So what is the point of James' story—“The Real Thing"?

What is the connection between this story and "The Art of Fiction"?

 

                                                    James’ Aesthetic of Realism

            James is telling us that both fiction and painting “represent life” but do not precisely “reproduce it.”  Art isn't life, though it certainly reflects it.  If a painting only reproduced life, it would be what—photography?  The Monarchs are the "real thing" in life, but the "wrong thing" in art.  Why are the Monarchs the "wrong thing" in art; why do they not make what we call "art" as do Miss Churm and Oronte?  They are not art because . . . they have no "white heat," as Emily Dickinson wrote, no spirit, no fiery soul. Through her imagination—through "the alchemy of art"—the artist touches the very core of a deeper reality (a Platonic reality, as Poe would say).  The artist's imagination creates the illusion of "real life" (Oronte and Churm)—and that illusion creates in us, the audience, what Coleridge would call the "willing suspension of disbelief."  Look at Andrew Wyeth’s The Patriot (American Painting 61).  How is this “realistic” painting different from a photograph?  Explore Wyeth’s art at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wyeth, http://www.brandywinemuseum.org/, and http://pwp.netcabo.pt/jmmg/andrew_wyeth.htm.

 

Daisy Miller: American Expatriates and Feminists?

Read Daisy Miller: A Study in the Norton Anthology of American Literature (1501) or at http://www.online-literature.com/henry_james/1100/.  The setting for half of James’ novella is Vevey, Switzerland, near Chillon Castle, as well as Rome for the second half of the story.  Winterbourne functions as the principle “third-person participant narrator,” with James providing the reader “multiple-focus points of view”   to complete his “study” of Daisy Miller.  The reader thus participates in the story of Daisy Miller through the eyes of Winterbourne and those characters who pass their severe Victorian judgments upon Daisy.  Describe Daisy and her family.  How do old world European values and American values clash in the story?  How do Winterbourne and his aunt fit into this picture?  What does Mrs. Costello, Winterbourne’s aunt, think of Daisy?  What is the significance and symbolism of Chillon Castle on the evening that Daisy and Winterbourne visit the famous site?   What does Bonnivard represent for James, and what association has he with gender issues of the end of the 19th Century? 

            Explore the status of woman during the Victorian Age at http://www.victoriaspast.com/LifeofVictorianWoman/LifeofVictorianWoman.html.   Investigate the New Woman, on the horizon during the last decade of the Nineteenth Century and early decades of the Twentieth Century, at http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/default.htm.  

            Who is Giovanelli?  Who is Mrs. Walker?  Daisy is a headstrong young woman, very self-assured, and somewhat naïve, as are most of the nouveau riche Americans who travel in Europe at this time, but is her “fall,” as seen and described through the eyes of the British and American expatriates and aristocrats in Rome, fair?  Why does Daisy visit the Colosseum at night?  When Winterbourne warns her that the place is rife with malaria after dark, she answers “in a little strange tone”: “I don’t care” (36).  What are the social undertones of this story?  Where do James’ sympathies lie?  How does the story fit into the framework of Realism?  Explain.