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Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeefa Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 HENRY JAMES AND fflS APPROPRIATION AND TRANSFORMATION OF THE MELODRAMA DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Susan M. Meyer, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1999 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Steven Fink, Adviser Professor Elizabeth Renker Professor Thomas Postlewait j^nglish Graduate Program UMI Number; 9931648 UMI Microform 9931648 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 ABSTRACT Critics have long been puzzled over Henry James’s novelistic use of the melodrama, a form which was, and is, critically regarded as a “low,” inferior genre. By definition, melodrama is generally viewed as a form of dramatic composition in prose, based on a romantic plot and developed sensationally, partaking of the nature of tragedy, comedy, pantomime, and spectacle, and intended for a popular audience. Melodrama is primarily concerned with situation and plot with little regard for convincing motivation, and it calls upon mimed action extensively, employing a more or less fixed complement of stock characters, the most important of which are a suffering heroine or hero, a persecuting villain, and a benevolent comic. The melodrama is often marked by an excessive appeal to the emotions of the audience. It is conventionally moral and humanitarian in point of view and sentimental and optimistic in temper, concluding its fable happily, with virtue rewarded after many implausible trials, and vice punished. Because of its relative simplicity and excessive sentimentalism, many have considered melodrama, in short, “any bad piece of dramatic writing”(Von Rosador 87). Bad writing, however, has never been associated with Henry James, and therein lies the critical dilemma: why does such an excellent novelist as James choose to work consistently within a “base” genre? My dissertation follows in the critical tradition of Peter Brooks, who considers the ii melodrama an "imaginative mode" rather than a genre (vii). The melodramatic imagination is thus a mode of conception and expression for making sense of experience. Brooks suggests that the melodramatist's and novelist's true subject is that which is hidden and masked, that which he calls the moral occult — the "domain of operative spiritual values" comparable to the unconscious mind. The moral occult represents "the sphere of being where our most basic desires lie, the realm of meaning and value." The melodramatic mode exists to locate and articulate the moral occult (5). Brooks’s work lays the groundwork for understanding the novels of Henry James. James consistently uses the melodrama in his works. He is not averse to employing traditional melodrama to hurry along his plot, as we will see in early works such as Roderick Hudson (1879) orThe American (1883), as well as in later works such as The Other House (1896) and The Wings o f the Dove (1902). Because James believes that ''true” life exists below the surface, in our consciousness (within in the moral occult), he employs the melodrama—its characters, much of its plotting, and most importantly, its language—to highlight the internal lives of some of his most well-known characters:The Portrait o f a Lady’s Isabel Archer, Washington Square’s Catherine Sloper, and The Wings o f a Dove’s Millie Theale. As James matures in his use of the melodrama, we see him shifting and sometimes eliminating some of the genre’s patterns— for example, the restoration and recognition of innocence by society—and relocating the melodrama’s emphasis within the heroine’s (and sometimes the hero’s) consciousness. By doing so, the novelist makes the genre a particularly Jamesian one, dedicated to unmasking that which lies below the depths of consciousness. Throughout his literary career, James explores the limits to which the iii nineteenth-century melodrama could be pushed: his novels are the act of finding what will suffice melodramatically, an exploration of how far he could push the genre and still allow it to remain grounded in its traditional form. IV Dedicated to my mother, Lois Garnett Meyer You taught me how to read and gave me a love of reading. Most importantly, you have loved me\ Thanks, Mom — I love you. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wash to thank my adviser, Steven Fink, for his never-ending intellectual support, encouragement, and enthusiasm which made this project possible. I thank him for his patience in reading draft upon draft. Henry David Thoreau once wrote; “A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compUment of expecting firom us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another to hear.” Thank you, Steve, for expecting the best from me and for both speaking and listening to me. I thank Elizabeth Renker: you were an extremely important part of this project. Your insistence that I push myself in the last days of the project brought the whole thing together. I thank you for your commitment to me over several long years, and I thank you for writing me a long e-mail some time ago encouraging me to finish. My spirits had begun to flag, and that e-mail helped me rally around to the job. I thank Thomas Postlewait. Even though I seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth for quite some time, you were incredibly supportive and were willing to continue working with me. Thank you for your kindness and encouragement. Even though I’m not in the Theatre Department, you treated me as though I were! Since this is probably the only time I’ll have an opportunity to publicly acknowledge the people who have supported me, in graduate school and beyond. I’m going to take the time here to offer a few words of thanks. vi To Greg Caldeira, I owe an immense thanks. Most people are shocked to leam that I’ve finished this while working fiill-time. I absolutely could not have done that if you had not supported me as you have. You have given me time during my regular work hours to complete this thing, and over and above that, you have encouraged me with your good humor and kindness. Thanks to my beloved firiends—Grant and Barbara Edwards, Megan, Emily, and Matthew Edwards: you have all been such wonderful fiiends over the years. I love you. As my brother is fond of saying, you are my second family; Terry (who’s now running with the Lord and probably working on her tan), Marianne, Elaine, Theresa, and Thomas Struck: words pretty much fail to express my deep love for you. You have always believed in me; Kathy Davidson: who would have guessed that we’d still be pals long after we left Springfield? Your good humor and kindness has seen me through both good and bad times. Thanks for being my fidend; Denis Kozlov: you are a surprise, my fidend! I’m so thrilled to count you as a fidend and a support even though we rarely see each other. I remember our last words together in Russia, that we would see each other again. I thank the Lord that you can share my commencement joy with me; finally. Rod Morrison: you too have always supported and loved me. Your encouragement got me through some tough times, and I’m so honored to call you a fidend. I’m so thankful that w e’ve seen our fidendship through: it’s founded upon the solid Rock. Finally, I have the best family in the world to thank. I begin with my dad: you vii instilled in me the desire not to quit. I particularly remember the many times you told me to a finish a job (usually ones I didn’t want to finish!). I pray that God has blessed you. Mom, this work is dedicated to you. I love you. We all know I could not have made it through graduate school, or life for that matter, without you. God gave me the best gift he could have given me when he gave me you as mother.