Henry James

(1843-1916)

• focus on consciousnesss,

psychological complexities of mind

• one of the greatest novelists in

English fiction

• pioneer of psychological realism
• he delineated character through

meaningful dialogue and detailed
observation

• born in New York
• the younger brother of eminent

philosopher William James (ideas
about psychology and religion)

• brought up in a family interested in

the arts, philosophy, politics

• inherited his father’s estate and a lot

of money

• went to schools in Europe and the

USA

• injury prevented him from enlisting in

the Civil War

• 1865 – first story appeared in the

Atlantic Monthly

• 1869 – he made his first independent

trip to Europe

• A Passionate Pilgrim and Other Tales

(1875) - reactions of an American
‘pilgrim’ when confronted with the
European world of art

• permanently moved to Europe in

1875

• became a British citizen in 1915
• in Paris befriended Flaubert and

Turgenev

Three phases of James’s

output

• early realism (ended with The

Portrait of a Lady -1881),

• psychological realism (1880s-1900)
• the “major phase” characterised by

experiments in narrative techniques
(1900-1910)

Early realism

• Daisy Miller (1878) – novella in which

James’s most characteristic theme
appears for the first time: contrast
between America and Europe

• America: innocence, crudity, lack of

refinement, idealism, individualism,
honesty

vs Europe: experience, refinement,

culture, scepticism, conformity,
deceit

• beauty and grace that coexist with

corruption in the European society

• lack of sophistication coexisting with

honesty and integrity in the
American society

• international theme
• a shift in his novels from studying

social manners toward close analysis
of human consciousness

The Portrait of a Lady, 1881

• his greatest novel
• Isabel Archer, a pretty, intelligent

and attractive young lady marries
Gilbert Osmond who turns out to be a
vicious man, only interested in her
fortune

• remains loyal to him, although she

realizes her mistake

• international theme: Isabel -

innocence, vitality but mistrust
towards beauty, intellect, a tendency
to oversimplify life

• Europeans - appreciation of beauty

but corruption and immorality

• moral victory of Americans over

more cultivated but immoral
Europeans

“Middle phase”(1880s-1900) -

dramatic realism

• English settings in much of his fiction
• The Bostonians (1886) – satirical

study of the feminist movement in
England

• The Princess Casamassima (1886) -

the only really political novel of
James

• failure of James’s attempts at drama-

writing

• James developed dramatic techniques for

his fiction: manipulation of point of view,
elaborate organisation of contrasting
episodes

• short stories: ingenious use of narrative

viewpoint

• “The Turn of the Screw” (1898): possible

unreliability of the narrator, different
readings: either a Gothic story of evil or a
psychological tale

Third period – (1900-1910)

• experiments in narrative techniques
• three major novels
• The Wings of the Dove, 1902 – study

of guilt

• The Ambassadors, 1903 - deception

of a trusting American; subjective
point of view

• The Golden Bowl, 1904 – naivety vs

deception; most difficult of James’s
works

Characters in James’s

novels

• upper class, rich and idle
• reason: to focus freely on the internal

drama of human psyche

• characters freed from material cares;

conscience - the only point of
reference guiding their behaviour

James’s theory of fiction

• James prepared the foundations for a

new theory of fiction

• The Art of Fiction (1884)
• “Conscious artistry and treatment of

the subject is the key.”

• „"Bad" novels and "good" novels are

a matter of taste, not morality or
choice of subject matter.”

• „The only reason for the existence of

a novel is that it does attempt to
represent life.”

• James modified narrative technique:

the key elements in his novels are
the invisible narrator and different
points of view

• story is told through the eyes of an

observer

• James gave the novel a totally new

dimension

• a great critic and theorist of

literature

• James’s studies of French writers :

French Poets and Novelists (1878)

• Nathaniel Hawthorne (1879) – one of

the best studies of this author

• James - a very conscious craftsman
• close analysis of the intricate

workings of human mind and heart

• shift of emphasis from the plot to the

internal drama of human psyche

• James’s technical innovations paved

the way to further developments:
interior monologue and stream of
consciousness