Portrait of a Lady (Wordsworth Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Henry James has truly outdone himself with this book. While it is no longer my favorite James' novel, I still think it among the best novels written in the English language. The character of Isabel Archer is an indelible part of literature.The story begins with an American woman, left parentless and penniless, being discovered by an expatriate Aunt. The Aunt convinces her to go England with her so that she might meet her cousin, Ralph. Isabel eagerly agrees. She is idealistic and has always wanted to see Europe. Her aunt agrees to pay for the expenditures. Once there, Isabel falls in love with their house, Gardencourt, and grows to enjoy her frail, sweet, ironic, and funny cousin. Before Isabel knows it, she has become ensnared in a one-sided love affair with a handsome English nobleman, Lord Warburton, little knowing what to do. Despite the urgings of her aunt, Isabel rejects his proposal in the desire to wait for something better. Soon, her elderly uncle dies, but not before she charms him with her intelligence and subtle beauty. Ralph insists that his father leave Isabel a substantial fortune, so that she might be able to live as she wishes. When the uncle dies, Isabel is left with 70,000 pounds, or about 200,000 dollars.From here is where the true story begins. I will not reveal more of the plot, which unwinds slowly and with assurance. James, being a master of prose, knows how to manipulate a sentence in a multitude of ways. His lilting, ironic, verbose writing style lends class and charm to Isabel's ultimately tragic tale.Some modern readers aren't able to handle James' subtle style. Unfortunately, many of us have had to fight the effects of shortened attention spans. Reading a slow-paced and brilliantly conceived tale like this will surely help cure short attention spans. Once you begin the story, it grows on you and affects you greatly. James is difficult getting used to, but he grabs you with his excellent descriptions of passionate people. Finally, the brilliance of this book lies in its tragedy. Even though many readers can predict early on where Isabel's confidence and naivete will lead her, James makes the journey bumpy and fascinating. He also slowly injects the story with dread, as we begin to sense the true malevolence of Madame Merle's and Osmond's vicious plans. Their acts are pure Machiavellian glee. Only in the final third of the book does it become clear of the true nature of the scheming M. Merle's plans. James also leaves several important plot points until near the end of the novel. All of this leads to a long, engrossing, and sad story of a young woman "affronting her destiny", as James puts it. Rarely has so romantic or so devastating a book been written. The ending is the final kicker. Unlike the happy ending we suspect, James leaves readers with open interpretations and many possible questions regarding Isabel's TRUE feelings about men. It also most vividly presents her sexual repression and fear that dominate the entire book. James knew the reserves of the time dictated that such topics not be discussed, and he cleverly uses this theme discreetly. However, he also uses it as a sort of indictment on the times, with their lack of passion and sensuality. Many readers expect a conclusion to the story, but, as with real life, stories simply go on. The ending is perhaps the most modern thing about the book. It also makes certain readers know that Isabel's life will never be one of happiness.This is an exquisitely haunting masterpiece.

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Introduction and Notes by Lionel Kelly, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Reading Transplanted to Europe from her native America, Isabel Archer has candour, beauty, intelligence, an independent spirit and a marked enthusiasm for life. An unexpected inheritance apparently gives her freedom, but despite all her natural advantages she makes one disastrous error of judgement and the result is genuinely tragic.

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Turn of the Screw & the Aspern Papers (Wordsworth Classics) (Classics Library) Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was very hard to follow in the beginning. As it progresses it becomes more interesting. The outcome is the best part of the book. It's conclusion is not what you would think to happen. It has a very good ending.

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Introduction and Notes by Dr Claire Seymour, University of Kent at Canterbury The Turn of the Screw is the classic ghost story for which James is most remembered. Set in a country house, it is a chilling tale of the supernatural. The Aspern Papers is a tale of Americans in Europe, cleverly evoking the drama of comedie humaine against the settings of a Venetian palace.

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Daisy Miller & Other Stories (Wordsworth Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)... have nothing over Henry James! Whatever his many biographers discover about his mundane corporeal existence, James's novels reveal him best, as an inveterate observer - his own words! - a chronic emotional voyeur, always in and never of society, a one-way looking glass. It made him the great writer he was, though one wouldn't want to BE him. "Well," as God said to Satan, "keeping watch on humans is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it."
The four long stories in this Oxford Clssic edition were not originally published together. "Daisy Miller" appeared in 1878, "Pandora" in 1884, "Patagonia" in 1888. The fourth piece, "Four Meetings", was one of James's first, written before 1877. They are a natural assembly, nevertheless, effectively versions of the same story.
DAISY MILLER
"They're very ignorant -- very innocent only, and utterly uncivilized. Depend on it they're not 'bad.'"
"They're hopelessly vulgar," said Mrs. Costello. "Whether being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a questions for the metaphysicians. They're bad enough to blush for, at any rate; and for this short life that's quite enough."
Winterbourne, the first speaker above, is an American of twenty-seven who has lived most of his life in Europe, specifically in Geneva, where he is either a career student or simply an ornamental male presence, depending on the reporter. If 'earning a living' is of any concern to him, it plays no part in his demeanor in this narrative. Mrs. Costello is his wealthy aunt (a dowager?), who 'commands' his proper familial attentions at various resorts and in Rome several weeks a year. She is the very voice of propriety and discretion -- a snooty old biddy, if you will -- while he is a dilettante, a poseur, a prig, a veritable Henry James in short. "They" are the Millers - mother, daughter, and son - sent to inspect Europe and report back on its cultural progress by their filthy rich pater familias Cyrus Miller, of Schenectady, New York. Winterbourne first meets Daisy Miller while visiting his Aunt at Vevey, in Switzerland. He is entranced both by her beauty and by her bizarre ignorance of and/or indifference to the social codes of the Old World. Winterbourne and his Aunt are ludicrous snobs and ditherers; it's important to grasp that they are objects of satire as thoroughly as the Millers, the prototypical "ugly Americans" of touristic prominence all over Europe then and now. In fact, everyone in this novella comes in for a share of deliciously condescending satire, most pointedly James himself in the guise of Winterbourne. That's one of the redeeming qualities of Henry James, his ability to perceive and portray his own uselessness as a mere onlooker at life.
"Daisy Miller" is a gem, an 80-page masterpiece of snarky ambivalence. When I read it first, long ago in college, I probably took Winterbourne seriously; after all, the tale is told from his point of view. But taking himself or his fictional avatars seriously was a fault Henry James never committed. A longer exposure to James's self-observation, such as his later novels require, can challenge a reader's patience; there's only so much most of us want to care for such meticulous ambiguity. But "Daisy Miller" and "Pandora" are eminently enjoyable.
For a man and writer whose sexuality was so peculiarly repressed, James has made his irrepressible American girl Daisy Miller quite a luscious minx. Poor Winterbourne, stiff and epicene, can't keep his eyes off her. In the end, however, his fascination amounts merely to a kind of obsessive observation, and that's the core of the story, the voyeurism which underlies Henry James's literary genius. Nevertheless, Daisy is a brilliant 'study' of the American personality that Europeans have, then and now, found utterly appalling, naive and gauche ... and insidiously alluring.
PANDORA
Written six years after Daisy Miller, "Pandora" is a tongue-in-ear sequel, or perhaps a da capo aria. The characters have different names and play their roles with different outcomes, but James plainly intended the second story to complement the first. In fact, the earlier story is explicitly referenced as `a fiction to read to prepare for America.' "Pandora" begins on a ship crossing from Europe to New York. A young German diplomat, en route to a posting in Washington DC, assumes Winterbourne'James's role as "observer". There's a good deal of fun to be had with putting a precise Teutonic prig in James's skin, and James exploits all of it. The "Daisy" slot in the cast goes to "Pandora", less visually delectable perhaps but a good deal more personally functional. Pandora is on her way to becoming "the new woman," that is, the woman who conquers society merely by force of personality and physical charm, without the advantages of breeding. Our German observer is even less able to communicate his `interest' to Pandora than Winterborne was to Daisy; the most he can do is cogitate about the risk he runs, through his observation, of actually becoming susceptible. The reader will have no reason to fear for him in that manner.
PATAGONIA...
... is also a shipboard tale, with many of the same elements of social misconstruction as the two oolder stories. In it, however, the "observer" is also the first-person narrator, an older and more desexualized James, not so much fascinated by the "new woman" character as by his own obsession with observation. He's a gossip and a meddler, and comes to rue both roles. can we assert that Henry James modeled the famous Uncertainty Principle of physics in social intercourse? The end-game of every character in this and other Jamesian plots is disrupted by the impact of being observed.
Henry James straddled the world of 19th C class consciousness and 20th C class unconsciousness marvelously. Simultaneously the most conservative and the most prophetic of novelists, his women characters are easily the most persuasive and the most intriguing in all American literature. I have the feeling that James would not be at all surprised by the manners of social behavior in the USA in 2010. Daisy and Pandora were halfway here. Neither would he be any more comfortable in our `rec rooms' than he was in the drawing rooms of his own era. Really, I'm afraid he'd find us rather disappointing to observe.

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With an Introduction and Notes by Pat Righelato, University of Reading Daisy Miller is one of Henry James's most attractive heroines: she represents youth and frivolity. As a tourist in Italy, her American freedom and freshness of spirit come up against the corruption and hypocrisy of European manners. From its first publication, readers on both sides of the Atlantic have quarrelled about her, defending or attacking the liberties that Daisy takes and the conventions that she ignores. All three tales in this collection, Daisy Miller, An International Episode and Lady Barbarina, express James's most notable subject, 'the international theme', the encounters, romantic and cultural, between Americans and Europeans. His heroes and heroines approach each other on unfamiliar ground with new freedoms, yet find themselves unexpectedly hampered by old constraints. In An International Episode, an English lord visiting Newport, Rhode Island, falls in love with an American girl, but their relationship becomes more complicated when she travels to London. In the light-hearted comedy Lady Barbarina, a rich young American seeks an English aristocratic bride. The unusual outcomes of these three tales pose a number of social questions about marriage and the traditional roles of men and women. Is an international marriage symbolic of the highest cultural fusion of values or is it an old style raid and capture? Is marriage to remain the feminine destination?

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Washington Square (Wordsworth Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)"Washington Square", published in 1880, is not, and will not be, regarded as Henry James's best novel -- the honor would go to "The Portrait of a Lady" or much later works like "The Wings of the Dove" -- but this short but richly woven book deserve our attention. The book is always readable and intriguing while it does not fail to deliver the amazingly realistic characters living in New York City of the 19th century. Certainly, this is the best place for any beginners of James to start.
The book starts with an introduction of a New York physician Dr. Sloper and his only daughter Catherine. While the doctor gained respectable position among the patients, he loses his wife suddenly after the birth of Catherine, who grows up to be a not particularly clever nor beautiful girl. Catherine, painfully shy, becomes a dutiful, but perhaps dull, daughter, the kind of a girl whose awkward behaviors her father approves always with a little detached attitude.
Then, comes a good-looking man Morris Townsend, who has no money but gives a word of "gentleman." But what does that mean when Doctor suspects this is just another fortune hunter, who is seeking for the money Catherine is to inherit after his death? Still, Doctor is half amused, even entertained, by this unexpected visitor who now seems to have gained the love of his daughter. But he didn't expect that Catherine would show surprising obstinate attitude in spite of his threat of disinheriting her.
The book is written, as a whole, with a very tragic note, but as you read on, you will find that, just like Jane Austen's narrator, "Washington Square" has an amusing aspect of comedy at first. The meddling widow Mrs. Penniman, whose wild imagination is one of her weakness, is a good example. She runs around between Morris and Catherine, only to annoy both of them. Henry James's touch when he treats these characters, however, sounds more incisive and even colder than Jane Austen's, if not totally cruel -- and the cruelty is gradually obvious as the plot unfolds.
Our main concern is about Catherine. The story is in itself trite and insignificant (James heard the original episode which the book is based on, in England from actress Fanny Kemble, and the brief note remains), but it is the growth (or change) of the apparently insipid heroine, and the interations between her and other characters (or between those other characters) that always impress us greatly. James's pen ruthlessly cuts into the hearts of those characters, and the intense, skillfully-constructed dialogue which show what is going on in the characters would instantly grip the readers' mind.
Some readers might champion more condensed prose of "The Golden Bowl", deeming "Washington Square" as too lightweight. In a sense, it is, I admit; the novel is not long, and the syntax is very easy to understand (for James, I mean). Still, the book is never dull, always fast-paced (for James, again), and the touching fate of the heroine Catherine is not a thing to be missed.
The novel is turned into films and they are also great, I must add. William Wyler's version is a masterpiece, with Olivia de Havilland/Montgomery Clift/Ralph Richardson trio, but more recent production made in 1997 is also good.

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What Maisie Knew (Wordsworth Classics) Review

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(More customer reviews)Never mind the thickets of subordinate clauses. Henry James could look at ugly situations and use them as a means to explore human nature. Written about a century ago when divorce was rare, the novel deals with a little girl whose value to her appalling parents is as a weapon to use against each other. If that wasn't bad enough, nearly everyone who shows the child some kindness has a reason for doing so other than her welfare.What makes this other than pathetic is Maisie herself. She watches the adult's grim game of musical spouses with utter clarity. She may not understand everything she sees, but she is without illusions. She observes, she watches, she copes. Mrs Wix is appalled by Maisie's acceptance of her stepparent's adultery. What Mrs Wix doesn't understand is that Maisie has no conception of conventional morality. How could she? It certainly makes for an interesting protagonist. Maisie may be a strange little girl, but it is because she has lived a strange little life. Shs is more a miniature woman than a little girl because the twisted adults around her have stolen her childhood. In this, James was prophetic of what we have done to our children since he penned this novel at the dawn of the twentieth century.

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With an Introduction by Pat Righelato, University of Reading The child of parents who divorce, remarry and then embark on adulterous affairs, Maisie Farange survives by her intelligence and spirit. For all its sombre theme of childhood innocence exposed to a corrupted adult world, this novel is one of James's comic masterpieces. The outrageous behaviour of the characters on the seedy fringes of the English upper class is conveyed with wit and relish. The dual perspective of a sophisticated narrator richly appreciative of the absurdities of the adult sexual merry-go-round and the candid vision of Maisie, 'rebounding' from one parent to another like a 'shuttlecock', together create an 'associational magic'. Strangely, unexpectedly, from so much that is tawdry, comes a tale of moral energy and subtlety. James's foresight was in understanding the modernity of his subject, which is even more relevant today in the twenty-first century.

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