A Conversation Among Himselves: Change and the Style of Henry James

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A Conversation Among Himselves Change and the
Style of Henry James
David L. Hoover New York University
Style in Fiction Symposium (SIFS) PALA
International Symposium 11th March 2006,
Lancaster University
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The Early Style
Newman looked at her a moment he saw that she
was pretty, but he was not in the least dazzled.
He remembered poor M. Nioche's solicitude for her
innocence, and he laughed out again as his eyes
met hers. Her face was the oddest mixture of
youth and maturity, and beneath her candid brow
her searching little smile seemed to contain a
world of ambiguous intentions. She was pretty
enough, certainly, to make her father nervous
but, as regards her innocence, Newman felt ready
on the spot to affirm that she had never parted
with it. She had simply never had any she had
been looking at the world since she was ten years
old, and he would have been a wise man who could
tell her any secrets. The American (1877 1879
edition)
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The Late Style
That brought back to Maisie--it was a roundabout
way--the beauty and antiquity of her connexion
with the flower of the Overmores as well as that
lady's own grace and charm, her peculiar
prettiness and cleverness and even her peculiar
tribulations. A hundred things hummed at the back
of her head, but two of these were simple enough.
Mrs. Beale was by the way, after all, just her
stepmother and her relative. She was just--and
partly for that very reason--Sir Claude's
greatest intimate (lady-intimate was Maisie's
term) so that what together they were on Mrs.
Wix's prescription to give up and break short off
with was for one of them his particular favourite
and for the other her father's wife. What Maisie
Knew (1897 NYE,1908)
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(No Transcript)
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Cluster Analysis5 Authors983 MFW
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20 Novels (23 Editions) by Henry James

• Early (1871-81)
• Watch and Ward, 1871
• Roderick Hudson, 1875
• The American, 1877
• Daisy Miller, 1878
• The Europeans, 1878
• Confidence, 1880
• Washington Square, 1881
• The Portrait of a Lady, 1881
• Intermediate (1886-90)
• The Bostonians, 1886
• The Princess Casamassima, 1886
• The Reverberator, 1888 (1908)
• The Tragic Muse, 1890

• Late (1897-17)
• The Spoils of Poynton, 1897
• What Maisie Knew, 1897 (1908)
• The Awkward Age, 1899
• The Sacred Fount, 1901
• The Wings of the Dove, 1902 (1909)
• The Ambassadors, 1903 (1909)
• The Golden Bowl, 1904 (1909)
• The Ivory Tower, 1917
• Early (revised versions)
• Daisy Miller, 1878 (1909)
• The Portrait of a Lady, 1881 (1908)
• The American, 1877 (1907)

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(No Transcript)
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Cluster Analysis of 23 Editions
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Fifteen Novels by Charles Dickens
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Eleven Novels by Willa Cather
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Some Contractions in 3 Periods
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Personal Pronouns in 3 Periods

• Pronouns increasing, early lt intermediate lt late
• her, herself, it, itself, their, them, us
• Pronouns increasing, early lt late
• she, hers, him
• Pronouns decreasing, late lt intermediate lt early
• he, his, himself

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169 Function Words in 3 Periods

• Pattern Expected Actual
• LateltInter.ltEarly (waning) 28 27
• Inter.ltLateltEarly 28 12
• LateltEarlyltInter. 28 13
• EarlyltLateltInter. 28 19
• Inter.ltEarlyltLate 28 23
• EarlyltInter.ltLate (waxing) 28 75

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Variable Speech Markers in 3 Periods
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The 40 Most Variable Waxing and Waning Nouns

• Waxing nouns
• doom, intervention, nervousness, yearning,
  detachment, diplomacy, plea, clearness, seconds,
  gaiety, possibility, relation, minute, passage,
  reference, events, approach, extent, spot,
  pressure, effect, conditions, presence, freedom,
  question, rate, ways, possession, difference,
  danger, difficulty, consequence, sign, breath,
  vision, form, case, relief, fear, minutes

• Waning nouns
• enterprise, tresses, foreigners, compliments,
  virtues, rapidity, peculiarities, coquette,
  physiognomy, talents, suitor, dresses, advice,
  temper, Europe, Italy, entertainment, forehead,
  liberty, winter, circumstances, dozen,
  satisfaction, city, country, conversation, year,
  family, heart, son, genius, fortune, fellow,
  society, pictures, years, glance, half, evening,
  to-morrow

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Waxing and Waning Nouns of Time

• Waxing
• seconds
• minute, minutes
• hours
• Late gt Early
• hour
• second

• Waning
• year, years
• month, months
• week
• days
• Early gt Late
• day

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Waxing Families of Verbs

• breathe, breathed, breath, breathless
• (breathing late gt early)
• protect, protected, protection
• produce, produced, producing, product (production
  nearly constant)
• pull, pulled (pulling frequent early and late)
• require, requires, required (requiring lategt
  early)
• smoke, smoked (smoking late gt early)
• worry, worried (worrying early gt late)

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Waning Families of Verbs

• displease, displeased, displeasure (displeasing
  early gt late)
• murmur, murmuring, murmured
• spend, spending
• beg, begged
• gaze, gazing, gazed
• marry, marring, unmarried (married early gt late)
• blush, blushing, blushed
• flattered, flattering (flatter early gt late)
• irritate, irritating, irritated, irritation
• glance, glancing, glanced (glances early gt late)

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Waxing Families of Adjectives

• clear, clearer, clearest, cleared, clearness,
  clearly
• sharp, sharpness, sharply (sharpened late gt
  early)
• odd, odder, oddest, oddly, oddity
• vivid, vividly, vividness
• awful, awfully (awfulness late only)
• straight, straightness (straightest late only
  straighter, straightway late gt early)

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Waxing and Waning ly Adverbs

• Waxing adverbs
• markedly, sociably, originally, pleasantly,
  nobly, comparatively, practically, perceptibly,
  ruefully, gaily, conspicuously, lucidly,
  good-humouredly, visibly, inevitably, luckily,
  previously, fearfully, supremely, oddly,
  perversely, cheerfully, helplessly, fully,
  positively, extraordinarily, mostly, publicly,
  repeatedly, precisely, thoughtfully, merely,
  awfully

• Waning adverbs
• sternly, scantily, chiefly, intently, angrily,
  severely, tightly, hardly, terribly, solemnly,
  softly, tolerably, greatly, rarely, attentively,
  badly, rapidly, seriously, mentally,
  occasionally, slowly, passionately, coldly,
  strongly, usually, singularly, differently,
  generally, certainly, abruptly, constantly,
  gracefully, delightfully

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Peculiar ly Adverbs (Mainly Late)

• (4) sighingly, (2) appointedly, assentingly,
  diviningly, protectedly, reasoningly,
  redeemingly, rejoicingly, savingly, (1)
  advertisedly, affirmingly, applausively,
  avoidingly, booklessly, coolingly, creepingly,
  detectedly, inattackably, interruptingly,
  neededly, obstructedly, peeringly, persuadedly,
  protectingly, recordedly, relievingly,
  revivingly, simplifyingly, smokingly,
  spreadingly, sustainingly, swingingly,
  unencouragingly, unlightedly, wailingly, wavingly

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Peculiar ly Adverbs in Context

• The fine old presence on the pillow had faltered
  before expression then it appeared rather
  sighingly and finally to give the question up.
• The Ivory Tower (1917)

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Peculiar ly Adverbs in Context

• She might have been anything she liked--except
  his wife.
• But she wasn't, said the Colonel very
  smokingly.
• The Golden Bowl (1904)

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Fanny herself limited indeed, she minimised, her
office you didn't need a jailor, she contended,
for a domesticated lamb tied up with pink ribbon.
This wasn't an animal to be controlled--it was an
animal to be, at the most, educated. . . . This
left, goodness knew, plenty of different calls
for Maggie to meet--in a case in which so much
pink ribbon, as it might be symbolically named,
was lavished on the creature. What it all
amounted to at any rate was that Mrs. Assingham
would be keeping him quiet now, while his wife
and his father-in-law carried out their own
little frugal picnic quite moreover, doubtless,
not much less neededly in respect to the members
of the circle that were with them there than in
respect to the pair they were missing almost for
the first time. The Golden Bowl (1904)