Henry James by Edel Leon 1907-

Author:Edel, Leon, 1907-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: James, Henry, 1843-1916, Authors, American
Publisher: Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press
Published: 1960-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

LEON EDEL

A visit to Paris in 1884 and long talks with Zola, Edmond de Gon-court, and Daudet had deeply impressed him. James failed this time, however, to take the measure of his public: it was awaiting more tales from him about helpless and bright Americans in Europe, and wandering foreigners in the United States (such as those described in "The Point of View"). Instead James offered his readers a realistic and minutely painted picture of Bostonian suffragettes and another of London radicals; this was the kind of novel which was not to gain a firm hold until the Edwardian period, and which in America would have as its foremost exponents Norris and later Dreiser. In attempting to place the American novel into the stream of the Zolae i que Continental fiction, James alienated his limited but appreciative public. The novels were flat failures.

He made one more attempt. This time he wrote of the world of art and tried to record the problems confronting a young politician-painter and an actress. The Tragic Muse ran for many months in the Atlantic Monthly, yet it had small success with its readers for all the brilliancy of its writing. James, with his experimental attitude toward the novel, had done more than switch from his main theme: he had tried "naturalism" but he was an incomplete "naturalist" —naturalism relying on literalism and the portrayal of primitive passion and violence. What James created was a series of subtle studies of individuals caught in forces and movements beyond their control, undone by conflicts between their temperaments and their environment. James's "determinism" was essentially psychological, where Zola's was physical. The Princess Casamassima anticipated by five decades the major theme of the twentieth century—the young man who seeks to overthrow the very society in which he in reality also seeks acceptance.

While he was writing these novels he continued to turn out a brilliant series of tales; some of them were of such length that by

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