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Section Two: The representatives of the realism: Mark Twain
and Henry James
I.Mark Twain
1. Life and Works
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on 30
November l835; When he was four, his family moved to Hannibal,
Missouri, a small township on the Mississippi, where he continued to
live until the age of eighteen. His formal education ended soon
after his father's death in 1847, when he became a printer's
apprentice, working for a time on the Missouri Courier, under the
editorship of his elder brother, Orion. From 1853, he traveled
widely, as a journeyman printer, in the Eastern States and in the
west. As a result of a steamboat journey down the Mississippi, he
met Horace Bixby, the captain of the boat, and turned to a career on
the river. After an apprenticeship of one and a half years, he
became a licensed pilot in l859. He left the Mississippi at the
outbreak of the Civil War, and became, in swift succession, an army
volunteer, a gold prospector in Nevada, a timber speculator and a
journalist. He met Artemus Ward and Brot Harte during this time and
turned increasingly towards a professional literary career. While
working for the Virginia City Enterprise, he adopted the pseudonym
‘Mark Twain’, the cay of a boatman taking soundings, and meaning two
fathoms, i.e. twelve feet. The choice of name may have been
characteristically ironic, since two fathoms was presumably an
uncomfortab1e depth for a large steamboat. His first book,
Jumping Frog, appeared in 1865. Assignments as a trave1ling
reporter to the Sandwich Islands and then to the Mediterranean and
Middle East brought him success as a public lecturer and a1so
material for his first major literary success, Innocents
Abroad (1869). He married Olivia Landon the fo1lowing year, and
in l871 established himself, as a successful writer, in a large
mansion in Hartford, Connecticut. He continued to live there for the
next seventeen years. It was during this period that his most famous
works were written, Roughing It (1872), The Gilded Age
.(l873), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer(1876), Life on
the Mississippi (l883), and The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn (l884). He combined his writing with public lecturing and
foreign traveling, becoming American ambassador at large, and
acquiring an international reputation as
humorist-cum-frontier-philosopher. He indulged in frequent financial
speculation, particularly in typesetting machinery and the Charles
L. Webster pub1ishing house. Although his literary reputation became
increasingly secure (received an M.A. of Yale in 1888), his
intellectual pessimism and despair of human nature increased with
his success.The Gilded Age, written in collaboration with his
Dudley Warner, had already pointed towards his uneasy acceptance of
the values of nineteenth-century American society. In the year of
Pudd'nhead Wi1son's publication (1894), he was bankrupted by the
failure of both the type-setting and publishing companies, and was
compelled to restart his travels to raise the money to discharge his
debts. It was during his absence on this voyage that his daughter
Susy died. In 1898, the year that he cleared his debts, he wrote
three works expressing his acute pessimism, The Man that
Corrupted Hadleyburg (published l900),the philosophizing
treatise What is Man? (published l906) and The Mysterious
Stranger (published posthumously in 1916).From this time until
his death, he maintained a bitter skepticism, relieved at times by
outraged commentary on world affairs, notably on Belgian cruel acts
in the Congo and American behavior in the Philippines. His last
years were saddened by losing his relations; his wife dying in 1904
and his daughter Jean in 1909. In l906 he started preparing material
for his Autobiography. and in l907 received an honorary doctorate of
Oxford university. He died at Redding, Connecticut, on 2l April
l910, at the age of seventy-five.
2. Technique in writing:
a. Humor: He is considered to
be a master of humor. His humor is of different kinds , for example,
tall-tale which is a type of frontier anecdote characterized by
exaggeration or
understatement with realistic details of
characters or local customs that work toward a humors effect and
dead-pan, which is originally a type of oral humor in telling which
the teller has a straight face with the listener laughing.
b.
language: He uses dialects as form of art. He is not the first to
use dialect in the works but it was he who made dialect an accepted
form of art.
c. Satire: his social criticism is made sharp with
the use of satire.
II. The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn:
1. Plot overview :The story takes place along the Mississippi
River, on both sides of which there was unpopulated wilderness and a
dense forest. Along this river floats a small raft, with two people
on it: one is ignorant, uneducated Black slave named Jim and the
other is a little white boy of about the age of thirteen, called
Huckleberry Finn, or Huck Finn. Huck Finn comes from the very lowest
level of society. His father is the poor town drunkard who would
willingly commit any crime just for the pure pleasure of it. Huck
Finn is an outcast, with no mother, no home, sleeping in barrels,
eating scraps and leavings and dressed in rags. The book relates the
story of the escape of Jim from slavery and, more important, How
Huck Finn, floating along with
him and helping him as best he
could, changed his mind, his prejudice, about Black people, and came
to accept Jim as a man and as a close friend as well.
2. Themes:
a. The book shows the author’s view on
civilization. Life on the river represents the ideal life while
shore symbolizes corrupting civilization.
b. It is a book
containing sharp social criticism. Through Huck Finn’s eyes, he
observed many brutal and corrupting things in the society.
c.
This novel reflects the moral growth of Huck Finn. At the beginning,
Huck Finn believes that blacks are lower than whites as inferior
animals. However, Through their travel down the river, Huck Finn
gets to know Jim better and becomes more and more convinced that he
is not only a man, but also a good man. He reaches his moral
maturity when he decides to help Jim against the law.
3. Selected reading:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
CHAPTER XXXI
We
dasn't
stopagain at any town, for days and days; kept right along down
the river. We was down south in the warm weather, now, and a mighty
long ways from home. We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on
them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. It was the
first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and
dismal. So now the
frauds reckoned they was out of danger, and they begun to work
the villages again.
First they done a lecture on temperance; but they didn't make
enough for them both to get drunk on. Then in another village they
started a dancing school; but they didn't know no more how to dance
than kangaroo does; so the first prance they made, the general
public jumped in and danced them out of town. Another time they
tried a go at yellocution; but they didn't yellocute long till the
audience got up and give them a solid good cussing and made them
skip out. They tackled missionarying, and mesmerizering, and
doctoring, and telling fortunes, and a little of everything; but
they couldn't seem to have no luck. So at last they got just about
dead broke, and laid around the raft, as she floated along, thinking
and thinking, and never saying nothing, by the half a day at a time,
and dreadful
blue and desperate.
And at last they took a change, and begun to lay their heads
together in the wigwam and talk low and confidential two or three
hours at a time. Jim and me got uneasy. We didn't like the look of
it. We judged they was studying up some kind of worse deviltry than
ever. We turned it over and over, and at 1ast we made up our minds
they was going to break into somebody's house or store, or was going
into the counterfeit--money business, or something. So then we was
pretty scared, and made up an agreement that we wouldn't have
nothing in the world to do with such actions , and if we ever got
the least show we would give them the cold shake, and clear out and
1eave them behind. Well, early one morning we hid the raft in a good
safe place about two mile below a litt1e bit of a shabby village,
named Pikesville, and the king he went ashore, and told us all to
stay hid whilst he went up to town and smelt around to see if
anybody had got any wind of the Royal Nonesuch there yet. ("House to
rob, you mean," says I to myself: "and when you get through robbing
it you'll come back here and wonder what's become of me and Jim and
the raft--and you'll have to take it out in wondering. ") And he
said if he warn't back by midday, the duke and me would know it was
all right, and we was to come along.
So we staid where we was. The duke he fretted arid sweated
around, and was in a mighty sour way. He scolded us for everything,
and we cou1dn't seem to do nothing right; he found fault with every
little thing. Something was a-brewing, sure. I was good and glad
when midday come and no king; we could have a change, anyway?and
maybe a chance for the change, on top of it. So me and the duke went
up to the village, and hunted around there for the king, and by-
and-by we found him in the back-room of a 1ittle low doggery, very
tight, and a lot of loafers bullyragging him for sport,
and he a
cussing and threatening" with all his might, and so
tight he couldn't walk, and couldn't do nothing to them. The duke he
begun to abuse him for an
old fool, and the king begun to sass
back; and the minute they was fairly at it, I 1it out, and shook the
reefs out of my hind legs, and spun down the river road like a
deer-for I see our chance; and I made up my mind that itwou1d be a
long day before they ever see me and Jim again. I got down there all
out of breath but loaded up with joy, and sung out-"Set her loose,
Jim, we're all right, now ! But there warn't no answer, and nobody
come out of the wigwam. Jim was gone! I set up a shout-and then
another- and then another one; and run this way and that in the
woods, whooping and screeching; but it warn't no use-o1d Jim was
gone. Then I set down and cried; I cou1dn't help it. But I couldn't
set still long. Pretty soon I went out on; the road, trying to think
what I better do, and I run across a boy walking, and asked him if
he'd seen a stranger nigger, dressed so and so, and he says:
“Yes.”
"Wherebouts?" says I.
"Down to Silas
Phelps's place, two mile below here. He's a run-away nigger, and
they've got him. Was you looking for him ?"
"You bet I ain't ! I run across him in the woods about an hour or
two ago, and he said if I hollered he'd cut my livers out- and told
me to lay down and stay where I was; and I done it. Been there ever
since; afeard
to come out."
"Well," he says, "you needn't be afeard no more, becuz they've
got him.
He run off f'm down South, som'ers. "
"It's a good job they got him."
"Well, I reckon ! There's two hundred dollars reward on him. It's
like picking up money out'n the road."
"Yes, it is--and I could 'a' had it if I'd been big enough; I see
him first. Who nailed him?"
"It was an old fellow--a stranger--and he sold out his chance in
him for forty dollars, becuz he's got to go up the river and can't
wait. Think o' that, now ! You bet I'd wait, if it was seven
year.”
"That's me, every time, "says I. "But maybe his chance ain't
worth no more than that, if he'll sell it so cheap. Maybe there's
some-thing ain't straight about it. "
"But it is, though--straight as a string. I see the handbill
myself. It tells all about him, to a dot--paints him 1ike a picture,
and tellls the plantation he's frum, below Newr leans.
No--sirreebob, they ain't no trouble 'bout that speculation, you bet
you.Say,
gimme a chaw tobacker, won't ye? ”
I didn't have none, so he left. I went to the raft, and set down
in, wigwam to think. But I couldn't come to nothing. I thought till
I wore my head sore, but I couldn't see no way out of the trouble.
After all this long journey, and after all we'd done for them
scoundrels. here was it all come to nothing," everything all busted
up and ruined, be-cause they cou1d have the heart to serve Jim such
a trick as that,': and make him a slave again all his life, and
amongst strangers, too, for forty dirty dollars.
Once I said to myself it would be a thousand times better for Jim
to be a slave at home where his family was, as long as he'd got to
be a slave , and so I'd better write a 1etter to Tom Sawyer and tell
him to tell Miss Watson where he was. But I soon give up that
notion, for two things: she'd be mad and disgusted at his rascality
and ungratefulness for 1eaving her, and so she'd sell him straight
down the river again; and if she didn't, everybody natural1y
despises an ungratefu1 nigger, and they'd make Jim feel it all the
time, and so he'd feel ornery and disgraced. And then think of me!
It would get all around, that Huck Finn helped a nigger to get his
freedom; and if I was to ever see anybody from that town again, I’d
be ready to get down and lick his boots for shame. That's just the
way: a person does a low--down thing, and then he don't want to take
no consequences of it. Thinks as 1ong as he can hide it, it ain't no
disgrace. That was my fix exactly. The more I studied about this,
the more my conscience went to grinding me, and the more wicked and
low--down and ornery I got to feeling. And at last, when it hit me
all of a sudden that here was the plain hand of Providence slap-ping
me in the face and letting me know my wickedness was being watched
all time from
up there in heaven, whilst I was stealing a poor old woman's
nigger that hadn't ever done me no harm, and now was showing me
theie's One that's alway on the lookout, and ain't agoing to allow
no such miserable doings to go only just so fur and no further. I
most dropped in my tracks I was so scared. Well, I tried the best I
could to kinedrsoften it up somehow for myself, by saying I was
brung up wicked, and so I warn't so much to blame; but something
in-side of me kept saying, "There was the Sunday school, you could
'a'gone to it; and if you'd 'a' done it they'd 'a' learnt you" there
that people that acts as I'd been acting about that nigger goes to
everlasting fire. "
It made me shiver. And I about made up my mind to pray; and see
if I couldn't try to quit being the kind of a boy I was, and be
better. So I kneeled down. But the words wouldn't come. Why wouldn't
they? It warn't no use to try and hide it from Him. Nor from me,
neither. I knowed very well why they wou1dn't come. It was because
my heart warn't right; it was because I warn't square; it was
because I was playing double. I was letting on to give up sin, but
away inside of me I was ho1ding on to the biggest one of
all. I was trying to make my mouth say I would do the right thing
and the clean thing, and go and write to that nigger's owner and
tell where he was; but deep down in me I knowed it was a lie--and He
knowed it. You can't pray a lie--l found that out.
So I Was full of trouble, full as I could be; and didn't know
what to do. At last I had an idea; and I says, I’ll go and write the
letter and then see if I can pray. Why, it was astonishing, the way
I felt a slight as a feather, right straight off, and my troubles
all gone. So I got a piece of paper and a pencil, all glad and
excited, and set down and wrote,
Miss Watson your runaway nigger Jim is down here two mile be-low
Pikesville and Mr. Phelps has got him and he will give him up for
the reward if you send.
HUCK FINN
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had
ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I cou1d pray now. But I didn't
do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there
thinking?thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near
I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking and got
to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me,
all the time, in the day, and in the nighttime, sometimes moonlight,
sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking and singing, and
laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden
me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my
watch on top of his'n, stead of calling me, so I could go on
sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the
fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the
feud was; and such--like times; and would always call me honey, and
pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he
always was; and at last I struck the time saved him by telling the
men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was
the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he's
got now; and then I happended to look around , and see that paper.It
was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was
a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things,
and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and
then says to myself:
"All right, then, I'll go to hell"-- and tore it up.
It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I
let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I
shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up
wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and
the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal
Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I
wou1d do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I
might as wel1 go the whole hog.
Then I set to thinking over how to get at it, and turned over
considerable many ways in my mind; and at last fixed up a plan that
suited me. So then I took the bearings of a woody island that was
down the river a piece, and as soon as it was fairly dark I crept
out with my raft and went for it, and hid it there, and then turned
in. I slept the night through, and got up before it was light, and
had my breakfast, and put on my store c1othes, and tied up some
others and one thing or another in a bundle, and took the canoe and
cleared for shore. I landed below where I judged was Phe1p’s place,
hid my bundle in the woods, and then filled up the canoe with water,
and loaded rocks into her and sunk her where I could find her again
when I wanted her, about a quarter of a mile below a little steam
sawmill that was on the bank.
Then I Struck up the road, and when I passed the mill I see a
sign on it, "Phe1ps's Sawmill," and when I come to the farm--houses,
two or three hundred yards further along, I kept my eyes peeled, but
didn't see nobody around, though it was good daylight, now. But l
didn't mind, because I didn't want to see nobody just yet--I only
wanted to get the lay of the land. According to my plan , I was
going to turn up there from the village, not from be1ow. So I just
took a look, and shoved along, straight for town. Well, the very
first man I see, when I got there, was the duke. He was sticking up
a bill for the Royal Nonesuchrhree-night performance-like that other
time. They had the cheek, them frauds! I was right on him, before I
could shirk. He looked astonished, and says:
"Hel--1o ! Where'd you come from?" Then he says, kind of glad and
eager, "Where's the raft? -got her in a good place?"
I says:
“Why, that's just what I was agoing to ask your
grace.
Then he didn't look so joyful--and says:
“What was your
idea for asking me?" he says.
“Well," I Says, "when I see the king in that doggery yesterday, I
says to myself, we can't get him home for hours, till he's soberer;
so I went a loafing around town to put in the time, and wait. A man
up and offered me ten cents to help him pull a skiff over the river
and back to fetch a sheep, and so I went a1ong; but when we was
dragging him to the boat, and the man left me a--holt
of the rope and went behind him to shove him along, he
was too strong for me, and jerked loose and run, and we after him.
We didn't have no dog, and so we had to chase him all over the
country till we tired him out. We never got him till dark, then, we
fetched him over, and I started down for the raft. When I got there
and see it was gone, I says to myself, ‘they've got into
trouble--leand had to 1eave; and they've took my nigger, which is
the on1y nigger I’ve got
in the world, and now I'm in a strange
country, and ain't got no property no more, nor nothing, and no way
to make my living'; so I set down and cried. I slept in the woods
all night. But what did become of the raft then? --and Jim, poor Jim
!”
"Blamed if I know--that is, what's become of the raft. That old
fool had made a trade and got forty dol1ars, and when we found him
in the doggery the loafers had matched half dollars with him and got
every cent but what he'd spent for whisky;" and when I got him home
late last night and found the raft gone, we said,?That little rascal
has stole our raft and shook us,’ and run off down the
river.'”
“I wouldn't shake my nigger, would I? --the on1y nigger I had in
the world, and the only property."
“We never thought of that. Fact is, I reckon we'd come to
consider him our nigger; yes, we did consider him so--goodness knows
we had trouble enough for him. So when we see the raft was gone, and
we
flat broke, there warn't anything for it but to try the?Royal
Nonesuch’ another shake. And I’ve pegged along ever since, dry as a
powder-horn. Where's that ten cents? Give it here."
I had considerable money, so I give him ten cents, but begged him
to spend it for something to eat, and give me some I because it was
all the money I had, and I hadn't had nothing to eat since
yesterday. He never said nothing. The next minute he whirls on me
and says:
"Do you reckon that nigger would blow on us? We'd skin him if he
done that !"
"How can he blow? Hain't he run off?
" No! That old fool sold him, and never divided with me, and the
money's gone."
"Sold him?" I says, and begun to cry; "why, he was my nigger, and
that was my money. Where is he? --I want my nigger."
"Well, you can't get your nigger, that's all--so dry up your
b1ub-bering. Looky here--do you think you'd venture to blow on us?
Blamed if I think I'd trust you. Why, if you was to blow on us?”
He stopped, but I never see the duke look so ugly out of his eyes
before. I went on a?whimpering,
and says:
"I don't want to blow on nobody; and I ain't got no time to blow,
nohow; I got to turn out and find my nigger."
He looked kinder bothered , and stood there with his bills
f1uttering on his arm, thinking,and wrinkling up his forehead. At
last he says:
"I’ll tell you something. We got to be here three days. If you'll
promise you won't blow, and won't let the nigger blow, I'll tell you
where to find him."
So I promised, and he says:
"A farmer by the name of Silas Ph-- "and then he stopped. You see
he started to tell me the truth; but when he stopped, that way, and
begun to study and think again, I reconed he was changing his mind.
And so he was. He wouldn't trust me, he wanted to make sure of
having me out of the way the whole three days. So pretty soon he
says: "The man that bought him is named Abram Foster--Abram G.
Foster and he lives forty mile back here in the country, on the road
to Lafayette."
"All right,” I says, "I can wa1k it in three days. And I'll start
this very afternoon.""No you won't, you'll start now'; and don't you
lose any time about it, neither, nor do any gabbing by the way. Just
keep a tight tongue in your head and move right along , and then you
won't get into trouble with us , d'ye hear?"That was the order I
wanted, and that was the one I played for. I wanted to be 1eft free
to work
my plans.
"So clear out" he says; "and you can tell Mr. Foster whatever you
want to. Maybe you can get him to be1ieve that Jim is your
nigger-some idiots don't require documents--leastways I've heard
there's such down South here. And when you tell him the handbil1 and
the reward's bogus, maybe he'll believe you when you explain to him
what the idea was for getting'em out. Go 'long, now, and tell him
anything you want to; but mind you don't work your jaw any between
here and there.”
So I left, and struck for the back country. I did't look around,
but I kinder felt like he was watching me. But I knowed I could tire
him out at that. I went straigth out in the country as much as a
mile, before I stopped; then I doubled back through the woods
towards Phelps's. I reckoned I better start in on my plan straight
off, without fooling around, because I wanted to stop Jim's mouth
till these fellows could getaway. I didn't want no troub1e with
their kind. I'd seen all I wanted to of them, and wanted to get
entirely shut of them.
Questions:
1. Analyze Mark Twain’s writing style.
Answer：
2.
Discuss the character of Huck in the chapter.
Answer：
III. Henry James(1843-1916)
1. Life and works
Henry James was born in New York
City, the second child of wealthy, somewhat, aristocratic parents.
His father, Henry James, Sr., was a philosopher and a friend of
Emerson's; his brother William became a prominent philosopher and
psychologist. Henry James, Sr. disapproved of most schools in
America and consequently, sent his sons to a variety of tutors and
European schools in search of the best education for them. The
children received the major part of their education at home. The
James family's travels in Europe were another source of education
for Henry .
When he was growing up in New York, Henry was given a great deal
of independence, so much in fact, that he felt isolated from other
peop1e. A quiet child among exuberant brothers and cousins, Henry
was more often an observer than a participant in their activities.
Henry's family lived for a time in Boston ,where he became
acquainted with New England authors and friends of his father, began
his friendship with William Dean Howells, and attended Harvard Law
School.
After 1866, James lived in Europe much of the time and
in l875 decided to make it his permanent home. He lived in Paris for
a year, where he met Turgenev(屠格涅夫), Flaubert（福楼拜）, and Zola（左拉）.
The next year he settled in London and lived there and in the
English countryside for the rest of his life. In l9l5, a year before
his death, to show his support to England in World War I, James
became a British citizen.
In l87l the Atlantic （大西洋月刊）serialized James's first
novel, Watch and
Ward, with which he hoped, but failed,
to achieve fame, Years later, looking back and finding such early
works "hideous," James preferred to declare that his first real
novel was Roderick Hudson (1875). The Next decade saw the
appearance of novels that brought him popu1ar success: The
American (l877), with its “international” theme of the
traditionless American confronting the comp1exity of European life;
Daisy Mille r (1878), which one American critic described as
"an outrage to American girl-hood" but which brought James his first
international fame; and The portrait of a Lady (1881), the
finest example of James's early work.
The most ambitious novels of James's second period, The
Bostonians (1886), The Princess Casamassima (1886), and The
Tragic Muse (1890), were public failures as were his attempts,
in the l890s, to write for the stage. But he continued to write
short stories and nove1s, and while James never recovered his early
popularity, his last, full--length novels, The Wings of the Dove
(1902), The Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden
Bowl(l904)' exemplify the mature and formidable style
of a third literary period, which critics have come to praise as “
the Major Phase.”
Unlike Howells, James’s greatest influence was exerted not on his
own age but on the one that fol1owed. At the time of his death,
James's audience was small, his impact s1ight. He had been attacked
for criticizing his native land and for the narrow emotional and
social range of his characters. And he had been ridiculed for the
obscure and costive style of his final period, a style that was able
to express the subtlest meanings but was based on the assumption
that the reader was as well educated, as exquisitely attuned, and in
as little hurry as the author. James’s latest were derided as “
cathedrals of frosted glass,” and at the end of his life he
acknowledged that his writing had become “ insurmountably
unsaleable.” Yet his influence has come to be immense. In twenty-two
novels and over a hundred short stories, and in his critical
commentaries, he made major contributions to the art of fiction
itself, helping to transform the novel from its alliances with
journalism and romantic storytelling into an art form of penetrating
analysis of individuals confronting society, chronicles of the
psychological perceptions that James himself defined as the highest
form of experience.
2. Position in Literature:
Henry James was not popular when alive, but he has become more
and more popular in the twentieth century.
The reasons why he was not popular when alive:
1) He lived
mostly in Europe.
2) The language in the novels is complex and
difficult.
3) The subject matter is too narrow.
The reasons why he became popular in the 20th century.
1) The
novels are noted for the international theme.
2) The language is
refined and beautiful.
3) He represents psychological realism
.
IV.A Portrait of a Lady:
1. Plot overview:
It tells about the fate of an American girl,
Isabel Archer, whose father died and had been visited by her aunt,
Mrs. Touchett, She proved so attractive to the older woman that Mrs.
Touchertt decided to give her the advantage of more cosmopolitan
experience, and Isabel was quickly carried off to Europe so she was
full of hope ,and with a will to live a free and noble life. When
she was in Europe, she had three suitors. One is a young nobleman
Lord Warburton who was kind and thoughtful. However, when he
proposed to her, he was refused. Another suitor was her American
friend Caspar Goodwood, who followed her aborad. Isabel showed her
indifference to him. Eventually, Isabel married Gilbert Osmond who
was American artist. However, After marriage, her life was not
happy. Because Osmond was interested only in Isabel’s money. So her
dreams and expectations evaporated.
2. Theme:
International theme- American innocence in
face of European sophistication and the conflicts arising from the
confrontations.
3. Technique:
1) Psychological realism: Henry James
concentrates and records the inner conflict of the characters in the
novel.
2) Absence of narrator: The novel is narrated through the
eyes of the center character or a kind of invisible narrator.
4. Selected Reading:
Chapter VII
The two amused themselves, time and again, with talking of the
attitude of the British public as if the young lady had been in a
position to appeal to it; but in fact the British public remained
for the present profoundly indifferent to Miss Isabel Archer, whose
fortune had dropped her, as her cousin said, into the dullest house
in England. Her gouty uncle received very little company, and Mrs
Touchett, not having cultivated relations with her husband’s
neighbours, was not warranted in expecting visits from them. She
had, however, a peculiar taste; she liked to receive cards. For what
is usually called
social intercourse she had very little relish; but nothing
pleased her more than to find her hall table whitened with oblong
morsels of symbolic pasteboard. She flattered herself that she was a
very just woman, and had mastered the sovereign truth that nothing
in this world is got for nothing. She had played no social part as
mistress of Gardencourt, and it was not to be supposed that, in the
surrounding country, a minute account should be kept of her comings.
But it is by no means certain that she die not feel it to be wrong
that so little notice was taken of them and that her failure( really
very gratuitous) to make herself important in the neighbourhood had
not much to do with the
acrimony of her allusions to her husband’s adopted country.
Isabel presently found herself in the singular situation of defening
the British constitution against her aunt; Mrs Touchett having
formed the habit of sticking pins into this venerable instrument.
Isabel always felt an impulse to pull out the pins; not that she
imagined they inflicted any damage on the tough old parchment, but
because it seemed to her aunt might make better use of her
sharpness. She was very critical herself --it was incidental to her
sex, and her antionalit but she was very sentimenta1 as well, and
there was something in Mrs Touchett's dryness that set her own moral
fountains flowing.'
'Now what's your point of view?' she asked of her aunt. 'When you
criticize everything here you should have a point of view. Yours
doesn't seem to be American you thought everything over there so
disagreeab1e. When I have mine, it's thoroughly American !
'My dear young lady,' said Mrs Touchett,' there are as many
points of view in the world as there are people of sense to take
them. You may say that doesn't make them very numerous. American?
Never in the world; that's shockingly narrow. My point of view,
thank God, is personal!'
Isabel thought this a better answer than she admitted; it was a
tolerable description of her own manner of judging, but it would not
have sounded well for her to say so. On the lips of a person less
advanced in life and less enlightened by experience than Mrs
Touchett such a declaration wou1d savour of immodesty, even of
arrogance. She risked it nevertheless in talking with Ralph, with
whom she talked a great deal and with whom her conversation was of a
sort that gave a 1arge licence to extravagance. Her cousin used, as
the phrase is, to chaff her; he very soon established with her a
reputation for treating everything as a joke, and he was not a man
to neglect the privileges such a reputation conferred. She accused
him of an odious want of seriousness, of laughing at all things,
beginning with himself. Such slender faculty of reverence as he
possessed centred wholly upon his father; for the rest, he exercised
his wit indifferently upon his father's son, this gentleman's weak
lungs, his useless life, his fantastic mother, his friends (Lord
Warburton in especial), his adopted, and his native country, his
charming new-found cousin, 'I keep a band of music in myante-room',
he said once to her. 'It has orders to play without stopping; it
renders me two excellent services. It keeps the sounds of the world
from reaching the private apartments, and it makes the world think
that dancing's going on within.' It was dance-music indeed that you
usually heard when you came within ear-shot of Ralph’s band; the
liveliest waltzes seemed to float upon the air. Isabel often found
herself irritated by this perpetualfiddling;
she would have liked to pass through the ante-room, as her cousin
called it, and enter the private apartments. It mattered little that
he had assured her they were a very dismal place; she would have
been glad to undertake to sweep them and set them in order. It was
but half-hospitality to let her remain outside; to punish him for
which Isabel administered innumerable taps with the ferule of her
straight young wit. It must be said that her wit was exercised to a
large extent in self-defence, for her cousin amused himself with
calling her 'Columbia' and accusing her of a patriotism so heated
that it scorched. He drew a
caricatureof her in which she was represented as a very pretty
young woman dressed, on the lines of the prevailing fashion, in the
folds of the national banner. Isabel's chief dread in life at this
period of her development was that she should appear
narrowminded; what she feared next afterwards was that
she should really be so. But she nevertheless made no scruple of
abounding in her cousin's sense and pretending to sigh for the
charms of her native land. She would be as American as it pleased
him to regard her, and if he chose to laugh at her she would give
him p1enty of occupation. She defended England against his mother,
but when Ralph sang its praises on purpose, as she said, to work her
up, she found herself able to differ from him on a variety of
points. In fact, the quality of this small ripe country seemed as
sweet to her as the taste of an October pear; and her satisfaction
was at the root of the good spirits which enabled her to take her
cousin's chaff and return it in kind. If her good humour flagged at
moments it was not because she thought herself ill-used, but because
suddenly felt sorry for Ralph. It seemed to her he was talking as a
blind and had little heart in what he said.
'I don't know what's the matter with you,' she observed to him
once; 'but I suspect you're a great humbug.’
'That's you privilege,' Ralph answered, who had not been used to
being so crudely addressed.
'I don't know what you care for; I don't think you care for
anything. You don't really care for England when you praise it; you
don't care for America even when you pretend to abuse it.
'I care for nothing but you, dear cousin,' said Ralph.
'If I
cou1d believe even that, I should be very glad.’
'Ah well, I
should hope so!' the young man exclaimed .
Isabel might have believed it and not have been far from the
truth. He thought a great deal about her: she was constantly present
to his mind. At a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a
burden to him her sudden arrival, which promised nothing and was an
open-handed gift of fate, had refreshed and quickened them, given
them wings and something to fly for. Poor Ralph had been for many
weeks steeped in melancholy; his outlook, habitually somber, lay
under the shadow of a deeper cloud. He had grown anxious about his
father, whose gout ,hitherto confined to his legs, had begun to
ascend into regions more vital. The old man had been gravely ill in
the spring, and the doctors had whispered to Ralph that another
attack would be less easy to deal with. Just now he appeared
disburdened of pain, but Ralph could not rid himself of a suspicion
that this was a subterfuge of the enemy, who was waiting to take him
off his guard. If the manoeuvre should succeed there would be little
hope of any great resistance. Ralph had a1ways taken for granted
that his father would survive him --that his own name would be the
first grimly called. The father and son had been close companions,
and the idea of being left alone with the remanant of a tasteless
life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had
always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the best
of a poor business. At the prospect of losing his great motive Ralph
lost indeed his one inspiration. If they might die at the same time
it wou1d be all very well; but without the encouragement of his
father's society he should barely have patience to await his own
turn. He had not the incentive of feeling that he was indispensable
to his mother; it was a rule with his mother to have no regrets. He
bethought himself of course that it had been a small kindness to his
father wish that, of the two, the active rather than the passive
party should know the felt wound; he remembered that the old man had
always treated his own forecast of an early end as a clever fall
acy, which he should be delighted to discredit so far as he might by
dying first. But of the two triumphs, that of refuting a sophistical
son and that of holding on a while longer to a state of being which,
with all abatements, he enjoyed, Ralph deemed it no sin to hope the
latter might be
vouchsafed to Mr. Touchett.
These were nice questions, but Isabel's arrival put a stop to his
puzzling over them. It even suggested there might be compensation
for the intolerable ennui of surviving his genial sire. He wondered
whether he were harbouring 'love' for this spontaneous young. woman
from Albany; but he judged that on the whole he was not. After he
had known her for a week he quite made up his mind to this, and
every day he felt a little more sure. Lord Warburton had been right
about her; she was a really interesting little figure. Ra1ph
wondered how their neighbour had found it out so soon; and then he
said it was only another proof of his friend's high abilities, which
he had always greatly admired. If his cousin were to be nothing more
than an entertainment to him, Ralph was conscious she was an
entertainment of a high order. 'A character 1ike that', he said to
himself -- 'a real little passionate force to see at play is the
finest thing in nature: It's finer than the finest work of art
--than a Greek bas-relief, than a great Titian, than a Gothic
cathedral. It's very pleasant to be so well treated where one
had least looked for it.I had never been more blue, more bored, than
for a week before she came; I had never expected less that anything
pleasant would happen. Suddenly I receive a Titian, by the post, to
hand on my wall --a Greek bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece.
The key of a beautiful edifice is thrust into my hand, and I'm told
to walk in and admire. My poor boy, you've been sadly ungrateful,
and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble again.' The
sentiment of these reflections was very just; but it was not exactly
true that Ralph Touchett had had a key into his hand. His cousin was
a very brilliant girl, who would take, as he said, a good dea1 of
knowing; but she needed the knowing, and his attitude with regard to
her, though it was contemplative and critical, was not judicial. He
surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it great1y; he
looked in at the windows and received an impression of proportions
equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that
he had not yet; stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and
though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of
them would fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free
nature; but what was she going to do with herself? This question was
irregular, for with most women one had no occasion to ask it. Most
women did with themselves nothing at all; they waited, in attitudes
more or less gracefully passive, for a man to come that way and
furnish them with a destiny. Isabel's originality was that she gave
one an impression of having intentions of her own. 'Whenever she
executes them,' said Ralph, 'may I be there to see!'
Questions:
1.Analyze the point of view after reading the
chapter?
Answer：
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