‘The Jolly Corner’

Abstract

‘The Jolly Corner’ was published in 1908, after the stunning achievement of The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl, all written between 1900 and 1905. ‘The Jolly Corner’ was also written while Henry James was still working on the two unfinished novels, A Sense of the Past and The Ivory Tower. The subtly packed story is probably his most original and exciting brief narrative, and its many links with other novels and stories show its density, freshness, and some of its sources of power. It relates closely to A Sense of the Past in its themes of historical determination and identity as well as its supernatural fantasy. It revises other earlier ghost stories, especially ‘The Turn of the Screw’ and ‘Owen Wingrave’. It is rooted in the bitter symbolist tales of unlived passion, ‘The Altar of the Dead’ and ‘The Beast in the Jungle’, remembering but rejecting their tragic mode. Less conspicuously, but significantly, it qualifies and develops subjects and symbols in the last great novels, especially The Golden Bowl, whose flaw it mends, though in the simplicity of fable.