Henry James's “Various America”: the Novel
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
HENRY JAMES’S “VARIOUS AMERICA”: THE NOVEL, FREEDOM, AND MODERNITY by Jonathan Matthew Hayes B.A., University of Pittsburgh, 1996 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2013 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Jonathan Matthew Hayes It was defended on April 12, 2013 and approved by Susan Andrade, Associate Professor, English Department William Scott, Associate Professor, English Department Giuseppina Mecchia, Associate Professor, French and Italian Department Dissertation Advisor: Jonathan Arac, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, English Department ii Copyright © by Jonathan Matthew Hayes 2013 iii HENRY JAMES’S “VARIOUS AMERICA”: THE NOVEL, FREEDOM, AND MODERNITY Jonathan Hayes, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2013 This dissertation examines the modern, worldly dimensions of Henry James’s literary practice evident across his criticism, nonfiction, and novelistic fiction, which James described to be his “various,” comparative response to U.S. culture and society. Drawing upon contemporary critical turns to ethical and affective-oriented aesthetic modes of interpretation, I show that James’s “various” literary practice expresses worldly and comparative thinking that opposes the private, Protestant-informed “business enterprise” society developing in the United States around the turn of the twentieth-century. In describing James to be an oppositional critic to American business enterprise, my dissertation contributes to ongoing interventions in Henry James studies that have re- constructed James to be a more historically-minded and politically-engaged thinker than asserted in canonical, twentieth-century formalist and New Critical approaches to James’s literary work. My dissertation proceeds through readings of his late criticism in the Prefaces to the New York Edition, his three-volume autobiography, his mid-career essay “The Art of Fiction” (1884), and finally, to his first novelistic masterpiece at the outset of his career, The Portrait of a Lady (1881/1908). My dissertation’s formal construction forefronts iv James’s contributions as a literary critic, and I describe an oppositional, critical reading practice in his thought based upon ethical, aesthetic, and political modes of reading. James’s practice as a critic, I argue, not only enables critics today to confront and challenge the ongoing contentious politics of interpretation in Henry James studies, but it allows readers to discern the critical and oppositional dimensions of his novelistic literary fiction, which I show to be particularly evident in The Portrait of a Lady. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS……...………......………………………………………….viii 1.0 INTRODUCTION...………………………………………………………..........1 2.0 CHAPTER ONE: THE PREFACES TO THE NEW YORK EDITION: READING, INTERPRETATION, AND INTEREST………...…………….…6 2.1 “A RECOGNITION OF DIFFERENCES”: EZRA POUND’S PROTEST…………………………………………………………..….…6 2.2 HENRY JAMES STUDIES: THE ETHICAL TURN…..………........11 2.3 ETHICAL ACTS, INTERPRETATION, AND READING THE PREFACES…………………………………………………..……..…..18 2.4 THE PREFACES: “THE PROMISE OF INTEREST”………...........22 2.5 AN AFFECTIVE ART.…………..…………………………………….27 2.6 SENSIBILITY AND FEELING: FROM JAMES TO ELIOT TO WILLIAMS………………………………………………………..........36 3.0 CHAPTER TWO: A “WORLDLY” LITERARY ART……………………..43 3.1 ART OF THE WORLD…………………………………………..……43 3.2 “DAZZLING POSSIBILITIES”: HENRY JAMES IN EUROPE.….49 3.3 A RUPTURE…………...….…………………………………………....56 3.4 “WHAT HAD BEEN THE MATTER”: THE REVOLT OF HENRY JAMES SR………………………………………………………………67 3.5 AMERICAN THEOCRACY: THE PROTESTANT ETHIC, ECONOMIC MAN, AND THE FOUNDING OF THE U.S. STATE……………………………………………………………..73 3.6 IDEOLOGIES OF FREEDOM: “BUSINESS ENTERPRISE” AND CORPORATE CAPITALISM….……......……………………………81 3.7 A “COMPARATIVE FREEDOM”………….……….………………..88 vi 4.0 CHAPTER THREE: “THE ART OF FICTION”: FRENCH (CON)TEXTS, WRITING, AND FREEDOM………………………………………………….99 4.1 AN ETHOS OF FREEDOM………….…………………..……..……100 4.2 THE EXERCISE OF FREEDOM: ART AND NOVELISTIC PRACTICE…………………………………………………………….101 4.3 FRENCH READINGS: BALZAC’S “DUPLICITY” AS AESTHETIC JUDGMENT…………………………………………………………...108 4.4 “OUR PROTESTANT COMMUNITIES”…...……………………..114 4.5 ART AND DIFFERENCE…………………………………………....118 4.6 ATTITUDE OF MODERNITY……….……………………………...125 5.0 CHAPTER FOUR: THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY: ISABEL ARCHER IN THE WORLD…………………………………………………………………130 5.1 “THE INTERNATIONAL THEME,” THE WORLD, AND BUSINESS……………………………………………………....131 5.2 “AN IMPRESSION DISTINCT”: NOVELISTIC PRACTICE IN THE PREFACE TO THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY………………144 5.3 AN “OLD BEGINNING” …...…...…..……………………..……...…162 5.4 HAWTHORNE-JAMES-ELIOT……………………..……………...177 5.5 F.O. MATTHIESSEN’S DEMOCRATIC CRITICISM……….…...185 5.6 A NEW ETHICS…………….………...……………...……………….201 5.7 FIGURES OF A WORLDLY LITERARY ART ……………...……236 5.8 ISABEL ARCHER “EN L’AIR”……..……..………………………..250 BIBLIOGRAPHY...…………………………………………………………………...257 vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As the culmination of my graduate studies in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh, this dissertation represents my thinking, research, reading, and writing over the course of several years. During this time, a number of people – friends, colleagues, professors, and family – at the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere have contributed to making this project an enriching professional and personal experience for me. In particular, I want to acknowledge and to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Professor Susan Andrade, Professor Jonathan Arac, Professor William Scott, and Professor Giuseppina Mecchia. Their generous responses to my work have encouraged me with suggestions and directions that I look forward to developing as I continue my research and writing. My dissertation advisor, Professor Jonathan Arac, provided me with the opportunity to read Henry James seriously in his graduate seminars, “Studies in U.S. Fiction” and “Henry James,” which also gave me instruction and reflection that I drew upon throughout the research and writing process of this dissertation. I thank Professor Arac for his encouragement and guidance as I completed my dissertation. I also thank my friends, Seung-hwan Shin, of the English department, and Lizardo Herrera, of the Hispanic Languages and Literatures department, who have been the best of colleagues ever since our first semester in our graduate programs together. I will viii always appreciate the conversation, intellectual dialogue, and good company we have enjoyed, and which we will continue in the years ahead. I would also like to thank my family, whose support over the years has been constant. My brother, Ben Hayes, in particular, expressed his optimism and interest as I wrote my dissertation, and I thank him along with my other siblings. I thank Paul and Mary Lou Black, who have been the most welcoming parents-in-law a person could ask for. I thank my mom, Janice Simmons, who cheered me on every step of the way and who read Henry James’s stories while I wrote. I also thank Annette Hayes, who heartily encouraged me along the way, and my dad, David Hayes, who also read Henry James as I wrote, and who lent a good ear and good advice as I completed this dissertation. Unquestionably, my greatest thank you is to my wife, Stephanie Hayes, whose contributions to my dissertation include not only reading it and assisting me with editing it, but also reading Henry James’s fiction and watching film adaptations of that fiction with me. As my closest interlocutor during my writing of this dissertation, she has listened and talked with me for several years about this work. Stephanie: I love you, and I look forward to all of our future endeavors and adventures together. ix 1.0 INTRODUCTION My reading of Henry James’s criticism, nonfiction, and fiction aims to demonstrate that his novelistic practice accomplishes a redirection of American literary art away from the insular, Puritan-derived liberal culture he inherited from Hawthorne toward an expression of literary art as a secular mode of engagement with the world. I argue that James’s conceptualization of the vocation of the novelistic literary artist articulates a “worldly” practice that functions to create the possibilities of new modern relationships, thought, and activity premised upon the artist’s activation of an ethos of freedom both with and against the social, cultural, and economic determinants of the artist’s existence in the world. I further show that James directs this conception of literary art as criticism of the liberal premises of the U.S. state in its relationship to the modern business enterprise economy. In the following four chapters, I examine core texts from James’s body of work, aiming to discern a modern Jamesian “text” that suggests the possibilities of different and other (even oppositional) ways of thinking and acting distinct from the imperatives of the turn-of-the-twentieth century American business economy and the determining Protestant cultural apparatus informing its development. In my first chapter, I examine the Prefaces to the New York Edition (1907 - 1909) in order to describe James’s conceptualization of novelistic practice to be a mode of creating “interest” in the world that functions to create transitional possibilities for thinking and artistic expression that may not be contained by preexisting hegemonic 1 social relations; in chapter two, I examine his three autobiographical