Wednesday, September 4, 1996
11 a.m.
Caribou Coffee
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Beginning with his early fiction and working our way through his long
career, we briefly surveyed the major works and concerns of Henry James.
Mark launched the discussion by introducing Chris S., Chris G., and Brian
to Roderick Hudson, James's early novel about an art patron named
Rowland Mallett and his passionate, ingenious charge, the sculptor Roderick
Hudson. Emphasizing the parallels between this novel and others by James,
Mark pointed to James' treatment of America and Europe as respectively shallow
and rich sources of culture, as well as his struggle to understand the relationship
between art and life. In the novel, for example, Rowland tries to steer
Roderick away from a relationship with Christina Light because he fears
that the sculptor will lose his inspiration, as indeed he does. Meanwhile,
Roderick complains that Rowland is not allowing him to live.
Chris S. picked up the theme of art, one of James's favorite topics, and
turned the discussion to Portrait of a Lady, in which James portrays
aestheticism run amok in the character of Gilbert Osmond. Chris suggested
that Osmond, whom Madame Merle describes as a "cicerone in [his] own
museum," represents the danger of "dandified aestheticism."
If too much life can kill art, it seems that too much art also can kill
life. Mark noted that James's treatment of Ralph Touchett, although clearly
more positive than his characterization of Osmond, suggests that Touchett
is similar to Osmond in his role of playing puppeteer with other people.
Although he makes it with the best of intentions, his arrangement for Isabel
Archer to obtain a hefty portion of his father's inheritance places him
in the position of manipulating other people's lives--a position that closely
resembles that of the more negatively portrayed Osmond Madame Merle.
In fact, this subject of manipulation and control of others appears frequently
in James's works. For example, Chris S. pointed out that Olive Chancellor
tries to use Varena Tarrant to do work for her feminist cause in The
Bostonians. Rowland Mallet's relationship with Roderick Hudson betrays
the same tendency toward control. The theme perhaps concerned James because
he himself, as a writer, created and controlled characters; like Ralph Touchett,
he equipped Isabel Archer with certain means and then stepped back to watch
the show. Perhaps this practice was James's way of living by proxy, taking
part in life while still remaining detached from it. Later in his career,
in "The Beast in the Jungle" and The Ambassadors, James
seems to have reconsidered the value of this lifestyle and regretted that
he had not lived more deliberately. Brian pointed out that James wrote in
The American Scene of entering a picture, and Mark added that the
same image appears in The Ambassadors. Chris G. noted that James'
concern with detached artists and observers parallels Hawthorne's concerns
in works such as The Blithedale Romance.
The American allowed us to touch on another one of James' favorite
themes: the contrasting cultures of Europe and America. Brian pointed out
that Tristram has lost touch with American simplicity and values; perhaps
he, like Winterbourne in Daisy Miller, has "lived too long in
foreign parts."