Art and Conflict — ‘The Aspern Papers’, The Tragic Muse, ‘The Death of the Lion’

Abstract

Henrietta Stockpole’s allusions to Boston radicalism and British landlordism which enliven the course of The Portrait of a Lady indicate the direction which James’s fiction was taking in the 1880s. Three times in under a decade he matched that novel in size, but only once, the first time, in quality. Amazingly, two of these huge new works came out at the same mid-decade point; The Bostonians (Century Magazine, February 1885-February 1886) and The Princess Casamassima (Atlantic Monthly, September 1885– October 1886). The Bostonians is among James’s masterpieces; it contains his finest writing on America and is both psychologically deep and satirically bright. The Princess Casamassima bravely explores the English scene in connection with revolutionary politics, a somewhat premature topic at that time, which produces in James’s hands a good deal of tedium, despite the near-fascination of the ideas. This novel does, however, also touch on a theme which exercised James increasingly — the relationship between art and society. A turning-point in the story comes when the hero, the little bookbinder Hyacinth Robinson, begins to regret his commitment to take part in anarchist violence, having now grown better acquainted with the treasures of civilisation.