Henry James's Thwarted Love (review)

Abstract

Wendy Graham's study of repression, sublimation, gender confusion, and what one critic called "cerebral lechery" (27) in four of Henry James's novels is an outstanding contribution to two growing areas of James studies: the increasingly sophisticated body of work devoted to the representation of sexuality in James's life and work, informed by the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and queer theory, and recent studies, such as those by Ross Posnock and Mark Seltzer, which situate James "within the context of crossdisciplinary conversations about modernity and market culture" (6). A "hybrid study" (2) consisting of biography, cultural history, and textual exegesis, Henry James's Thwarted Love rigorously contextualizes James's fictional treatment of sexual ambiguity and his personal history in relation to the various discourses that shaped late-Victorian gender roles and identities: mental hygiene, energy conservation, sexology, psychiatry, and cultural anthropology. Graham's extensive analysis of primary sources from these discourses provides a broad and convincing context and allows her to uncover threads of cultural meaning in the fiction that would otherwise remain invisible to contemporary readers.