Popular Fiction and Henry James's Unpopular "Bostonians"

Abstract

Henry James's The Bostonians (1886) is paradoxical in a number of ways: it is genuinely funny but terribly cruel in its attack on Boston life; it is diffuse in manner (both James and his contemporaries observed that he had spent too long analyzing his characters and their behavior)1 yet incisively critical; it is a romance with an unhappy ending; and, as I will suggest, it uses the configurations of popular literature to voice an unpopular idea. The book was born out of James's visits to America from November 1881 to May 1882, during which his mother died unexpectedly, and from December 1882 to August 1883, following his unsuccessful attempt to reach his father before his death. Such long visits, under such circumstances, could only have stirred troubled feelings. At the beginning of his first visit, he wrote extensively in his notebook evaluating his recent years in London, dwelling lovingly on his social and literary successes, and observing about America, Heaven forgive me! I feel as if my time were terribly wasted here!2 In the course of both his visits he saw friends in New York and