Above the Law: James's "Scenic Method" in The Spoils of Poynton

Abstract

A critical commonplace regards James's "scenic method" as a transposition of techniques from theater. In The Spoils of Poynton, this essay argues, James finds a scenic practice specific to the novel, in which scenes are structured by temporally unfolding relations rather than the spatiotemporal consistency to which theater is limited. Thus liberated, scenes in Spoils propose relations between people, places, and things not predicated on legal ownership. Dispossession enables the actions of women in the novel to achieve the purposiveness without purpose attributed to beautiful things and to suggest an aesthetics of the scene in its autonomy from narrative.