Henry James

Second stage
In the second stage, he experimented with various subjects and forms: first, between 1886 and 1890, Three novels in the naturalistic mode: The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, The Tragic Muse; second, between 1895 and 1900, he turned to three dominant subjects: troubled writers and artists, ghosts and apparitions, doomed or threatened children and adolescents. Good examples are The Beast in the Jungle and The Turn of the Screw.
Daisy Miller travels with her mother to Europe from America. They are newly rich people in a family that has now gained wealth through success in business and they are going to Europe to enrich their culture but in Europe they find that the society behaves by different standards. It is not polite for a young woman to go out in a company of certain men, and especially not to go out in their company without a chaperon, and not to go out in their company alone at night. Daisy Miller breaks the social conventions and it turns out that she catches some kind of influenza by going out in the night of Rome and dies.
According to James himself, The Ambassador is his most perfect work of art. It tells of Lambert Strether, who is sent to Paris by Mrs.Newsome, a wealthy widow in Massachusetts, to urge her son back from the decadence of Europe. His success as an ambassador will ensure his marriage to Mrs.Newsome when he returns. When Strether meets Chad and realizes that Madame de Vionnet has clearly been the refining influence in Chad’s life, he believes that Europe is good for Chad.Biblioteka BaiduHis letters to Mrs. Newsome reveal his declining enthusiasm for his mission , and she sends her daughter Sarah, with her husband and sister-in-law, to carry on the mission. As Sarah fails to overwhelm Madame de vionnet in their confrontation, she returns to America without Chad. Strether remains content to observe life rather than participate in it and ultimately returns to America
Henry James (1843-1916)
Born in New York City on April 15, 1843, of somewhat aristocratic family. Didn’t serve in the army during the Civil War because of a vague back injury. Spent a year in Harvard Law School in 1862, but did not finish his course an decided to take up the life of an author.
Theory of Fiction
1. The novelist must be faithful to life as it actually appears. “The air of reality seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel.” 2. There must be freedom for the artist to choose from what subject he will deal with. 3. The novel must be regarded as an organic whole with every part a functioning contributor to the achieving of the novel’s ultimate expression. 4. Dramatization: showing rather than telling. This is James’s chief criterion. Rather than summarize an event, they take the reader to the event as if the reader were watching it in a movie or on stage.
Literary Career
James’s literary career can be divided into three stages of development. First stage: Henry James developed the international novel, which brings together persons of various nationalities who represent certain characteristics of their respective countries. One example is Daisy Miller published in 1878. This book established his reputation at home and abroad.
Major Subjects
(1). Children: James wrote about children as children, not as small adults. Typical example is What Maisie Knew. (2). New woman: James’s fiction is filled with female characters , not as sexual objects, never married, reticent from sexual passion. (3).Artist: Many of James’s novels and short stories deal with the artist, whether he is a painter, a sculptor, author, or playwright. The author examined the artist to find out how the artist thinks about his audience, what problems the artist has in deciding what to write about, and how to write, or how to paint, and what to paint. This is a realist problem.
Third stage
In the third stage, he returned to his international themes and produced the complex and profound novels such as The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, and The Golden Bowl. Critics regarded them as his most mature and his best. In his later life, he wrote three autobiographical reminiscences: A Small Boy and Others, Notes of a Son and Brother, and The Middle Years. His last novel is The Outcry.
Dedicate all his life to observing and recording society. After 1866, he lived in Europe much of the time, and in 1876 he moved permanently to England. In 1915 became a British subject and received the Order of Merit to protest the America’s slow refusal to enter World War I to assist Great Britain in the struggle against Germany. Died on February 28, 1916. His ashes were interred in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The International Theme
The international theme of the traditionless Americans confronting the complexity of European life is one that is typical for James’ s fiction and it is also typical for realists writers to examine the interplay between innocence and experience. Other examples are The American (1877)and The Portrait of a Lady.
In 1864, published anonymously his first short story and first piece of criticism, reviewing Nassau W. Senior and his Essays on Fiction. Became wealthy then. Didn’t have to worry about popular success in order to feed himself. Never married. His whole life was an observer rather than a participant. He was extremely sociable and knew most of the great artists of his time but he lived and worked alone.