Henry James and Zola's Roman expérimental

Abstract

Edmund Gosse and W.C. Frierson agree that Henry James's The American inaugurated the experimental novel in English. Frierson correctly attributes this development to the influence of the Flaubert cirele, but The American is surely too Hawthornesque and has too much of the cape-and-sword atmosphere to qualify seriously as an experimental novel. I would suggest that the French naturalists' influence on James is not clearly discernible until the decade of the eighties: James's first period ends with The Portrait of a Lady, while his "naturalist period" begins with "The Art of Fiction" and ends with The Tragic Muse. The works of that period seem to offer substantial evidence of the influence of the cercle Flaubert generally, and of the ideas set forth in Zola's Roman expérimental in particular. The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima, and The Tragic Muse are very nearly "experimental" in Zola's sense, as they seem to adhere closely to his principles regarding the role of heredity and environment and the force of determinism.