Henry James rebelled intuitively against the tyranny and banality
of plots. Believing a life to have many potential paths and a self
to hold many destinies, he hung the evocative shadow of "what might
have been" over much of what he wrote. Yet James also realized that
no life can be lived--and no story written--except by submission to
some outcome. The limiting conventions of society and literature
are, he found, almost inescapable. In a major, comprehensive new
study of James's work, Millicent Bell explores this oscillation
between hope and fatalism, indeterminacy and form, and uncertainty
and meaning. In the process Bell provides fresh insight into how we
read and interpret fiction.
Bell demonstrates how James's texts steadfastly, almost
perversely at times, preserve a sense of alternative possibilities.
James involves his characters in overlapping scenarios drawn from
folklore, drama, literature, or naturalist formula. The reader
engages, with the hero or heroine, in imagining many plots other
than the one that finally-and often ambiguously--emerges. The story
arouses expectations, proposes courses, then cancels them
successively. In complicity with author and character, the reader
crafts the story in an adventure of constant revision and
anticipation. Literary meaning becomes an experience as well as a
goal. In the end, revelations and resolutions, even if unclear or
partial, assume an altered significance in light of the earlier
imaginings.
Not surprisingly, James's deepest sympathies lay with those
characters who resisted entrapment by cultural expectations--his
idealistic free spirits like Isabel, his marriage renouncers like
Fleda Vetch, his largely silent anddetached witnesses to life like
Strether and the generous Maisie. They are frequently the victims
of callous manipulators who box them into oppressive roles or who
literally "plot against" them. By looking closely at James's
critiques of clever" categorical mind and at his loving and complex
portraits of characters of unfulfilled potentiality, Bell
celebrates the paradoxes of James's story-denying fiction.
In extended analyses of Daisy Miller," "Washington Square," "The
Portrait of a Lady"; "The Bostonians," "The Princess Casamassima,"
"The Aspern Papers," "The Spoils of Poynton," "The Turn of the
Screw," "What Maisie Knew," "The Beast in the Jungle," "The Jolly
Corner," "The Wings of the Dove," and "The Ambassadors," Bell
relates James's work to influential movements of the day, notably
impressionism and naturalism. She examines the influence of
Hawthorne, Emerson, Flaubert, Balzac, and Zola on James at various
periods throughout his career. Drawing on rich traditions of
criticism and on stimulating recent theories, Bell forges a
critical approach both accessible and profound for this elegant
reading of one of the greatest writers of this or any time.
It is a book that will be of high value and interest to the
advanced scholar--marking out new ground in its methodology and
offering innovative interpretations of James's fiction. At the same
time, it will appeal equally to the general, reader, who will find
his reading of James enriched by Bell's lucid and impassioned
discussion.
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