Henry James (15 April 1843

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Henry James(15 April 1843 28 February 1916)

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Brief Introduction

• An American-British writer
• born in America
• alternated between America and Europe
• settled in England, becoming a British subject
• key figure of 19th-century literary realism
• Americans encountering Europe and Europeans
• from the point of view of a character
• consciousness and perception

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Brief Introduction

• Contributed significantly to literary criticism
• freedom in presenting view of the world
• containing a representation of life
• imaginative use of point of view,interior
  monologue(????) and unreliable narrators
• An extraordinarily productive writer
• works of fiction, articles and books of travel,
  biography, autobiography, and criticism, and
  plays
• nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three
  times
• Major Works Daisy Miller (1878) The Portrait of
  a Lady (1881) The Turn of the Screw (1898) The
  Wings of the Dove ??(1902) The Ambassadors
  ??(1903) The Golden Bowl ?? (1904) The
  American (1877) The Europeans (1878) Washington
  Square (1880) The Princess Casamassima (1886)

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Life Experience

• Born in New York City on 15 April 1843
• Family Members
• Father Henry James Sr. is a lecturer and
  philosopher.
• Mother Mary Walsh came from a wealthy family long
  settled in NY City
• A wealthy, intellectually inclined family
• His education was calculated by his father to
  expose him to many influences
• Three brothers, William, Wilkinson and Robertson
  
• One younger sister Alice

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Life Experience

• Travels and Study in Youth
• between Europe and the United States.
• Longest stays were in France, became fluent in
  French.
• Briefly and unsuccessfully attended Harvard
  University Law School at 19, and then pursued his
  interest in literature
• Formed lifelong friendships with Oliver Wendell
  Holmes, Jr.
• From an early age, read, criticized and learned
  from the classics
• 1864, anonymously published his first short
  story, A Tragedy of Error

James at sixteen years old
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Brief Introduction of Major Works
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First novel Roderick Hudson

• serialized in The Atlantic Monthly in 1875
• published in book form in 1876
• Roderick Hudson is the story of the conflict
  between art and the passions the title character
  is an American sculptor in Italy. Faltering in
  both his artistic ambitions and his personal
  relationships, he travels to Switzerland and dies
  there.

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Become famous Daisy Miller

• a novella
• book form published 1879
• It portrays the courtship of the beautiful
  American girl Daisy Miller by Winterbourne, a
  sophisticated compatriot(???,??) of hers. His
  pursuit of her is hampered by her own
  flirtatiousness(??), which is frowned upon by the
  other expatriates when they meet in Switzerland
  and Italy.

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The first phase The Portrait of a Lady

• first published as a serial in The Atlantic
  Monthly
• The Portrait of a Lady is the story of a spirited
  young American woman, Isabel Archer, who in
  "affronting her destiny", finds it overwhelming.
  She inherits a large amount of money and
  subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian
  scheming by two American expatriates.
• the masterpiece of James's early period
• reflects James's continuing interest in the
  differences between the New World and the Old

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Second phase The Turn of the Screw

• a gothic ghost story
• Many critics have tried to determine the exact
  nature of the evil hinted at by the story.
  However, others have argued that the true
  brilliance of the novella comes with its ability
  to create an intimate confusion and suspense for
  the reader.

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Last phase His peak

• The Wings of the Dove
• The Ambassadors
• The Golden Bowl

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The Wings of the Dove(1902)

• This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an
  American heiress stricken with a serious disease,
  and her effect on the people around her. Some of
  these people befriend Milly with honorable
  motives, while others are more self-interested.

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The Ambassadors(1903)

• This dark comedy, seen as one of the masterpieces
  of James's final period, follows the trip of
  protagonist Lewis Lambert Strether to Europe in
  pursuit of Chad Newsome, his widowed fiancée's
  supposedly wayward(???) son he is to bring the
  young man back to the family business, but he
  encounters unexpected complications. The
  third-person narrative is told exclusively from
  Lewis's point of view.

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The Golden Bowl(1904)

• Set in England, this complex, intense study of
  marriage and adultery completes what some critics
  have called the "major phase" of James' career.
• The Golden Bowl explores the tangle of
  interrelationships between a father and daughter
  and their respective spouses.
• The novel focuses on the consciousness of the
  central characters, with sometimes obsessive
  detail but also with powerful insight.

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Women in HJ's novels

• female rolesleading position
• noble morality and rich mentality
• transition of womens fate
• three stages innocence, self-determination and
  independence, maturity
• the value of women in new age
• depend on their own to reap the rewards of
  happiness

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ingenuity/ simple /naïve/ acting on first
instinct/ a symbol of natural innocence
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Isabel Archer- The Portrait of a Lady
Innocent/ intelligent/ independent
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Maggie Verver-The Golden Bowl
enduring / noble morality
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The Founder of Psychological Realism

• What is Psychological Novel?
• A psychological novel, also called psychological
  realism, is a work of prose fiction which places
  more emphasis on interior characterization, and
  on the motives, circumstances, and internal
  action which springs from, and develops, external
  action.
• The psychological novel can be called a novel of
  the "inner man," so to say.

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The Founder of Psychological Realism

• Textual Techniques in Psychological Novel
• the Stream of Consciousness
• Interior Monologue
• Flashback

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The Founder of Psychological Realism

• Henry James changed the method of presentation in
  a novel, shifting the centre of gravity from
  action to its intellectual aspectsexternal
  circumstances lose significance before the inward
  events that take place in a soul.

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The Founder of Psychological Realism

• In The Wings of the Dove(1902), he discovered the
  most subtle, hazy thought and feeling of the
  characters, and he put the "beating pulse in
  space" into the image.

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Henry Jamess Major Achievements
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1. Style and themes

• trans-Atlantic literature
• characters from the Old World (Europe) and from
  the New World (United States)
• clash of personalities and cultures in his
  stories.

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2. ???????Realism empiricism

• regarded Reality as the basic principle of
  Realism
• true description of an event
• reality is the basic criteria of judging works
  quality
• attached greater importance to the application of
  experience

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Henry James viewpoint
Every culture needs sensible, objective analysis
but not blind and absolute acceptance. Neither
complete acceptance nor entire rejection yields
desirable fruits. Guided by a cosmopolitan view
and equipped with the facility to differentiate,
one can avoid the tragedies of Daisy and treat
every culture in a proper manner. Americans can
establish all ideal culture only by assimilating
the advantages of both its own culture and
European culture.
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• Edward Wagenknecht "a work of art must lift up
  the heart, and his own novels do this to an
  outstanding degree ... "

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• Ernest Hemingway wrote an emotional letter in
  which he tried to steady himself as he thought
  James would "Pretty soon I will have to throw
  this away so I better try to be calm like Henry
  James. Did you ever read Henry James? He was a
  great writer who came to Venice and looked out
  the window and smoked his cigar and thought."

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• Jorge Luis Borges wrote about him, "Despite the
  scruples and delicate complexities of James his
  work suffers from a major defect the absence of
  life.
• Oscar Wilde once criticised him for writing
  "fiction as if it were a painful duty"

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Thanks!