2130_american lit module 1 _henry james

Henry James

The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 8th Edition | Copyright © 2012 W.W. Norton & Company

Henry James


• Born to a wealthy Manhattan family in 1843

• Moved to Europe with his family as an adolescent where he was educated

• His brother William was a respected psychologist and philosopher; his sister Alice a perceptive diarist

• Settled permanently in England in 1876

James’s Early Life


Henry and William James


James in England


• “The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.”

• “Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spiderweb of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every airborne particle in its tissue.”

James and Realism


Daisy Miller


“In this region, in the month of June, American travelers are extremely numerous; it may be said, indeed, that Vevey assumes at this period some of the characteristics of an American watering place. There are sights and sounds which evoke a vision, an echo, of Newport and Saratoga.”

Daisy Miller


“Winterbourne had often thought of Daisy Miller and her mystifying manners. One day he spoke of her to his aunt—said it was on his conscience that he had done her injustice. ‘I am sure I don't know,’ said Mrs. Costello. ‘How did your injustice affect her?’ ‘She sent me a message before her death which I didn't understand at the time; but I have understood it since. She would have appreciated one's esteem.’ ”

Daisy Miller


“ ‘Is that a modest way,’ asked Mrs. Costello, ‘of saying that she would have reciprocated one's affection?’ Winterbourne offered no answer to this question; but he presently said, ‘You were right in that remark that you made last summer. I was booked to make a mistake. I have lived too long in foreign parts.’ Nevertheless, he went back to live at Geneva, whence there continue to come the most contradictory accounts of his motives of sojourn: a report that he is ‘studying’ hard—an intimation that he is much interested in a very clever foreign lady.”

Daisy Miller


Daisy Miller


“ ‘Oh, she was just wondering,’ he explained, ‘if the costumes are in general use.’ I had to confess that they were, and I mentioned further that some of them (I had a lot of genuine, greasy last-century things), had served their time, a hundred years ago, on living, world-stained men and women. ‘We’ll put on anything that fits,’ said the Major.”

“The Real Thing”


“ ‘Oh, I can fancy scenes in which you’d be quite natural.’ And indeed I could see the slipshod rearrangements of stale properties—the stories I tried to produce pictures for without the exasperation of reading them—whose sandy tracts the good lady might help to people. But I had to return to the fact that for this sort of work—the daily mechanical grind—I was already equipped; the people I was working with were fully adequate. ‘We only thought we might be more like some characters,’ said Mrs. Monarch mildly, getting up.”

“The Real Thing”


“ ‘What saves us, you know, is that we answer so completely to so usual an appearance: that of the man and woman whose friendship has become such a daily habit—or almost—as to be at last indispensable.’ ”

“The Beast in the Jungle”


“She looked up at him a while in silence. ‘No—you don’t understand.’ ‘I suffer,’ said John Marcher. ‘Don’t, don’t!’ ‘How can I help at least that?’ ‘Don’t!’ May Bartram repeated.”

“The Beast in the Jungle”

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Henry James

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2130_american lit module 1 _henry james

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