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Other Henry James, The
College Literature, Fall 2000 by Person, Leland S
John Carlos Rowe. 1998. The Other Henry James.
Durham: Duke University Press.
$49.95 hc. $17.95 sc. xv + 238 pp.
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"Viewed in this way" begins the final sentence of John Carlos Rowe's The Other Henry James, "the scholarly revival of Henry James should be part of the curricular reforms under way throughout higher education that have as their long-term goal a more inclusive representation of nationality; ethnicity gender, and sexual preference in the literatures and cultures we teach our students" (198). In approaching James's writing through this multi-focal lens, Rowe confirms the vitality and viability of the "revivalist" work that marks the past decade of James studies. The Other Henry James is also a logical sequel to Rowe's The Theoretical Dimensions of Henry James (1984). Taken together, the two books illustrate the developments in literary criticism during the past fifteen years, particularly the shift from philosophically oriented critical theory to cultural studies. Organizing this study chronologically Rowe sees James evolving in his representation of race, gender, class, and sexuality James questions patriarchal ideology with some ambivalence in his fiction of the 1870s, experiments with various incarnations of the "New Woman" during the 1880s, and then in the 1890s explores new theories of gender, race, class, and sexual preference.
Rowe makes some unusual and refreshing choices of texts in this book, ignoring the major novels of the 1880s, as well as the three big novels of the early twentieth century. He builds his first chapter around James's early experiences in Rome, for example, focusing on "The Last of the Valerii" as a text haunted by Margaret Fuller's ghost and by male fears of "women's bids for economic, legal, and political powers" (52). Rowe takes a "perverse" view of The American in chapter two (56), and through an insightful analysis of Mozart's Don Giovanni (which Christopher Newman hears for the first time at the Paris Opera) he shows how the opera ironically doubles the dramatic action of the novel. Newman reenacts Don Giovanni's seductive project-but in economic rather than sexual terms-- and he victimizes Valentin de Bellegarde and Noemie Nioche, as well as Claire de Cintre. American democracy Rowe concludes, "is unlikely to offer any radical departure from the social and psychological confinement of women in Europe," for Newman "shows not the slightest understanding of how his conduct reproduces class and gender hierarchies of an Old World that it was the purpose of American democracy to overturn" (72).
By the time James writes The Tragic Muse, his thinking has evolved, in Rowe's view, and he synthesizes race, sex, and politics in chapter three in order to show how the novel challenges the rigid patriarchal values of Victorian culture. Miriam Rooth, whom he considers James's "most successful and emancipated feminine character," shows what the "New Woman can do once she has freed herself from the delusions of romantic love, nineteenth-century femininity, national character, and family heritage" (76), while Gabriel Nash, as a "positive representation of a character who is homosexual," pushes the boundaries of acceptable sexual identities (93). Rowe continues his emphasis on homosexual identity when he turns to "The Middle Years" and "The Death of the Lion" in chapter four. Like others before him, Rowe claims that James remains conflicted about homosexuality and disguises homoerotic passion by mediating desire for another man "through the literary text" and defends himself against sexual desire by demonizing lesbian feminists (106). Rowe is certainly right that James textualizes sexuality in these tales, but I think he exaggerates James's dependence on lesbian demonism and thus obscures some of the complexities of the male-male relationships he does represent.
That relatively minor complaint cannot be lodged against Rowe's superb, comprehensive reading of What Maisie Knew in chapter five. Claiming that Maisie herself"will come to accept and even celebrate the instabilities of gender, class, race, and age that distinguish the modern age even as these same instabilities incapacitate the adults around her" (124), Rowe deftly reads his way through those various convergent instabilities to discover James exploring "socially viable alternatives to traditional heterosexual marriage and bourgeois family" (128), particularly in his depiction of the feminized Sir Claude's relationship with Maisie. Rowe considers Maisie as an "alter ego" for James himself (135), and he examines connections between James's feverish delirium at Boulogne in September 1857, the aesthetic education he received while being tutored at home (by M. Ansiot), and the issues of gender and sexuality raised in the novel. Prompted by Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark (1992), Rowe even explores the question of race in this novel by focusing on the character of the American Countess, a "brown lady" who "may be thus linked with a wide range of other marginal peoples in the English imaginary" (144). Her role in the novel, Rowe concludes, suggests James's "somewhat terrified" exploration of a "brave new world" in which racial, class, gender, and national identities were being rendered less and less stable.
