Analysing the Female Characters in Henry James' Fiction

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Analysing the Female Characters in Henry James' Fiction ‘A woman it seems to me has no natural place anywhere;

wherever she finds herself, she has to remain on the surface and more

or less to control’

Discuss James’ representations of ‘places’ for women in his novels.

There is an impressive range of female characters in Henry James’

fiction. Drawn to the world of wealth and leisure as a subject, a

world which was at the same time, ironically the context for his own

hermetic labours as a writer, James perhaps inevitably came to

concentrate on the feminine. Correspondingly, most of his male

characters seem to be concentrating on women too.

It seems a woman’s place and her relationship with others in James’s

novels is to act as a sign. Through the exploration of women as signs

in James’ novels, I will focus on a specific pattern and try to trace

a development in his use of women as sign and women as consciousness,

and the implications each has for the other. I will thus concentrate

on Daisy Miller, The American and The Portrait of a Lady which seem to

me to exemplify various stages of treatment in this pattern. Also

these texts form a chronological progression, so that in the early

stories the figure of the ‘American girl’ functions simply as a sign

for an observant consciousness. Daisy Miller is the paradigm of the

woman as a sign in James’ early work, whose destruction raises

questions as to the real nature of her individuality and freedom.

These questions are explored in the use of the same figure attempting

to be the free subject of her own experienc...

... middle of paper ...

...graphical and Historical

Context to Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations. Boston. USA.

Dickens, Charles. (1990). Great Expectations. Penguin. London.

U.K.

Habegger, Alfred. (1989). Henry James and the “Woman Business”.

Cambridge University Press.

Howells, W, D. (1958). Henry James and His novels. Gibson. New York

James, Henry. (1985). Daisy Miller and Other Short Stories. OUP.

U.K.

James, Henry. (1994). The American. Everyman. U.K.

James, Henry. (1989). The Portrait of a Lady. OUP. U.K.

Jefferson, D,W. (1960). Henry James: Writers and Critics. Oliver

and Boyd. Edinburgh and London.

Slater, Michael. (1983). Dickens and Women. Stanford. USA

Walsh, Susan. (1993). Bodies of Capital: Great Expectations and the

Climacteric Economy. Victorian Studies. Longman. U.K.

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