The Central Problem of James's Fictional Thought: From the Scarlet Letter to Roderick Hudson

Abstract

The assumption behind this essay is that the fiction-making process is only secondarily a matter of portrayal. That is to say, fiction involves something more than the apparent imitation of reality; its essence is, I think, to be found in the author's act of confronting a problem in and through what may appear as imitation. Indeed, I believe, it is the mind's engagement with a sensed human problem that initiates and sustains the act of creating a fiction. If so, we are to conceive of the novel as something dynamic rather than static; it is dynamic not so much because of its concern with human time in its passing but because of the working of a mind within it. If language is, as Susanne Langer affirms, the mark of humanity, we should not forget that it manifests the person making use of it. On this matter Albert Hofstadter has argued-persuasively, I think,-that language articulates human being whatever else it may also do.' Consequently, it may be something of a misnomer to call a literary fiction-perhaps any work of art-an as if it had no more connection with the human than a rock. It has been customary to say that James animated a movement to eliminate the author's presence from his fiction and thus to make of the novel an object apparently distinct from its creator. As a corrective to this notion Wayne Booth has pointed out that even when the author does seem to intrude into his story, there is always a distinction between the intruding image or voice and the author as man. At the same time, he has held that though a writer can to some extent choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear. 2 It is my contention that James is, indeed, very much