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Henry James's Critique of Capitalism Through Abstractness and Ambiguity Elizabeth Aileen Barnum

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Henry James's Critique of Capitalism Through Abstractness and Ambiguity Elizabeth Aileen Barnum University of North Dakota UND Scholarly Commons Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects January 2015 Non-Reified pS ace: Henry James's Critique Of Capitalism Through Abstractness And Ambiguity Elizabeth Aileen Barnum Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/theses Recommended Citation Barnum, Elizabeth Aileen, "Non-Reified Space: Henry James's Critique Of Capitalism Through Abstractness And Ambiguity" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. 1740. https://commons.und.edu/theses/1740 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects at UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NON-REIFIED SPACE: HENRY JAMES'S CRITIQUE OF CAPITALISM THROUGH ABSTRACTNESS AND AMBIGUITY by Elizabeth Aileen Barnum Bachelor of Arts, Carleton College, 1973 Master of Liberal Studies, University of Minnesota, 2008 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of North Dakota in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Grand Forks, North Dakota May 2015 i This dissertation, submitted by Elizabeth Aileen Barnum in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy from the University of North Dakota, has been read by the Faculty Advisory Committee under whom the work has been done and is hereby approved. _______________________________________ Dr. Eric Wolfe, Committee Chair _______________________________________ Dr. Sharon Carson, Committee Member _______________________________________ Dr. Michael Beard, Committee Member _______________________________________ Dr. Adam Kitzes, Committee Member _______________________________________ Dr. Albert Berger, Committee Member This dissertation is being submitted by the appointed advisory committee as having met all of the requirements of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of North Dakota and is hereby approved. ____________________________________ Wayne Swisher Dean of the School of Graduate Studies ____________________________________ Date ii PERMISSION Title Non-Reified Space: Henry James’s Critique of Capitalism Through Abstractness and Ambiguity Department English Degree Doctor of Philosophy In presenting this dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a graduate degree from the University of North Dakota, I agree that the library of this University shall make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for extensive copying for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor who supervised my dissertation work or, in his absence, by the Chairperson of the department or the dean of the School of Graduate Studies. It is understood that any copying or publication or other use of this dissertation or part thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of North Dakota in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my dissertation. Elizabeth A. Barnum April 30, 2015 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……………………………………………………….. iv ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………… v CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………….. 1 II. THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA …………………………….. 29 III. THE SPOILS OF POYNTON …………………………………… 58 IV. THE AMBASSADORS ………………………………………….. 91 V. WHAT MAISIE KNEW …………………………………………. 125 VI. RECLAIMING WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN ……………161 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………183 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My sincerest thanks to my dissertation committee and to all the faculty, students and staff of the English Department of the University of North Dakota for professional and encouraging relationships throughout my time as a graduate student and especially during the comprehensive examination and dissertation processes. I also am grateful to my family and friends for so kindly supporting my pursuit of this degree. v To my sons, Paul and Brian, whose support and help for five long years made this degree possible. vi ABSTRACT Despite Henry James’s reputation as a novelist of upper class manners, many critics have argued that his work also contains well-grounded criticism of capitalism and consumer culture. An even larger number of writers have analyzed James’s idiosyncratic style, characterized by ambiguity and abstractness. Where these two analytic approaches overlap, the area examined in this dissertation, James makes a deeper critique of capitalism’s redefinition of human purpose and its reification of the human mind and consciousness. James suggests, through his ambiguous and abstract language, that open- ended language which rejects concrete and conceptual meaning can gesture toward a space in which people can reclaim their full humanity and reject the reification of life – a space that is non-reified. Moreover, this non-reified space, while it can help an individual redefine her subjectivity, is brought to fruition when people share deeply intersubjective connections. By applying to four James novels the Marxist elaboration of commodification and reification by Georg Lukács, the detailed analysis of Jamesian grammar and syntax by Seymour Chatman, and the phenomenological discussions of language and intersubjectivity by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, as well as the views of Gertrude Stein on the importance of allowing linguistic space that is not already filled with meaning, this dissertation finds James’s gesture toward a space in which people can be fully human, experience each other as fully human, and rediscover language as a powerful force for mutual creation of the next moment and, from there, the world. vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Henry James is often thought of as a novelist of manners, focusing his stories on the relationships among well-to-do people and the intricacies of their outer and especially their inner lives. James is also frequently called a master of the English language, manipulating grammar and sentence structure with consummate skill to convey subtle shades of meaning. These two predominant aspects of James’s writing do not appear on the surface as likely places to find political messages or economic commentary. Yet I will argue in this dissertation that it is precisely in the complexity and ambiguity of his idiosyncratic language uses, especially when he is depicting intersubjectivity between characters, that James embeds a surprisingly powerful critique of consumer capitalism and the commodification of people, relationships and human qualities that capitalism engenders. Critiques of and commentaries on consumer culture have been found in James’s writing by many critics – in his themes, in his plot-lines, in his characters’ personalities or relationships. I argue here that the master of the English language uses his sharpest tool to present a more subtle, and for that reason more profound, critique of both capitalism’s surface activity and its influence on people, calling into question the quantification of life and values that many critics, especially those with a Marxist perspective, see as capitalism’s inevitable effect. For James, this effect was most evident in the restrictions that capitalism imposes on what it means to be a human being. In commenting on this impact, James underlines the power of language to shape our 1 understanding of the world and ourselves and invites us to re-engage that power in our own lives. Though James was no Marxist, my reading of his linguistic effort to reveal and oppose capitalism’s presentation of a limited human reality accords with the contention of Raymond Williams that language is a primary human activity as important as labor in building the world and social relationships. Williams’s definition of language as a primary force through which human beings create reality, rather than a tool for reflecting a reality that is already there, as orthodox Marxism typically defines it, acknowledges a truth that I argue James perceived in a somewhat different way: that language can subvert the imposed limitations of capitalist roles and values, and create a space outside of those limitations where individuals can think, act, and relate to others. As a Marxist, Williams sees language as a material activity, a socially developed force that is essential to the building of material social reality. People make meaning together through language in order to cooperate and communicate about their productive activity. James’s concern is less the social creation of material reality through language than ways in which language can be constitutive of individual subjectivity and social intersubjectivity. For Williams, people create their material reality socially through language; for James, people can use language to create and extend their non-material social reality. In doing this, James’s characters begin to show how people living in capitalism’s reified reality can reclaim language as a primary constitutive force and thus take charge again of making the world together. My reading of the linguistic opposition to capitalism and consumer culture in James is woven from three threads of theory: the concepts of commodification and 2 reification as theorized by Karl Marx and elaborated by Georg Lukács; Maurice Merleau- Ponty’s phenomenological theorizing of intersubjectivity in communication; and grammatical and syntactic analysis, primarily Seymour
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