The Imprisoned, Unspeakable Self: Silenced Sexuality in Henry James
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25071/2369-7326.36119Abstract
This essay analyzes Henry James’s The Bostonians (1886) as a novel, like several other works by James, that hints at but never fully articulates homosexual desire. The relationship between Boston feminist Olive Chancellor and her protégé, Verena Tarrant, is a study in self-silencing and repression. In particular, James subtly explores Olive Chancellor’s struggle with an internal prison, her suppressed homosexuality, which was likely James’s own sexual struggle as well. In addition, James’s literary style, his famously imposing and dense walls of verbiage attempt to articulate secrets without ever stating what’s hidden. Paradoxically, James’s voluminous wall of words calls the reader’s attention to what is silent in his characters and in James himself.References
Buelens, Gert. “Henry James’s Oblique Possession: Plottings of Desire and Mastery in The American Scene.” PMLA 116.2 (2001): 300- 313. Web. 14 April 2014.
Donadio, Stephen. Nietzsche, Henry James, and the Artistic Will. New York: Oxford UP, 1978. Print.
Freedman, Estelle B. “Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century America: Behavior Ideology and Politics.” Reviews in American History 10.4 (1982): 196-215. Web. 12 April 2014.
James, Henry. “The Beast in the Jungle.” 1903. The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Novels. New York: New American Library, 1962. 404-451. Print.
James, Henry. The Bostonians. 1886. New York: Penguin, 2000. Print.
Kaplan, Fred. Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, A Biography. New York: William Morrow, 1992. Print.
March, Harold. “The Imprisoned.” Yale French Studies 34 (1965): 43- 54. Web. 12 April 2014.
Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs 5.4 (1980): 631-660. Web. 14 April 2014.
Rowe, John Carlos. The Other Henry James. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1998. Print. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822398530
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: California UP, 1990. Print.
Todorov, Tzevtan. “The Structural Analysis of Literature: The Tales of Henry James.” The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, edited by David H. Richter. New York: Bedford / St. Martin’s, 1989. 900-916. Print.
Young, Barbara. “The Turn of the Screw: The James Family’s Encounters with the Terrors Lurking in the Unconscious Mind.” Journal of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 39.2 (2011): 313-34. Web. 14 April 2014.
Zimmerman, Bonnie. “What Has Never Been: An Overview of Lesbian Feminist Literary Criticism.” Feminist Studies 7.3 (1981): 451- 475. Web. 12 April 2014.