Compunction and Conversion in Henry James's "The Altar of the Dead"

Abstract

In "The Altar of the Dead" (1895), the compunction of Henry James's hero, George Stransom, is a grace of conversion (in Girardian terms, of "novelistic conversion") with real-life consequences for James himself, a writer then still locked in an obsessive, mimetic relationship with Oscar Wilde (1854−1900), his chief authorial rival. The ever ambivalent relationship between James and Wilde has been noted and traced in many of their respective writings, but "The Altar of the Dead" has been neglected in this regard, due to the uncanny tale's putative memorial connection to James's friend, the writer Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894). Taken alone, however, that connection cannot account for elements in the tale that surprised James himself, ranging outside of his narrative control. Composed in the autumn of 1894 and published in 1895, the year of James's public humiliation as a playwright and of Wilde's imprisonment, the tale marks a definite turning point both in James's authorial career and in his personal relationships. Interpreted within the biographical context of its composition, James's tale of fraternal strife, jealousy, and religious cult exemplifies key elements in René Girard's mimetic theory. Through its evocation of the ancient doctrine of compunction, "The Altar of the Dead" also helps to fill a lacuna in Girard's work, which under-theorizes the work of grace. Unlike James's other ghostly stories, "The Altar of the Dead" remembers a moral miracle and a saintly intervention from beyond the grave amid a mimetic crisis that was more than fictional for Henry James.