The Bostonians by Henry James

In general I try to avoid judging a book because it exemplifies old social attitudes but in the case of this novel I think it’s fair to be a bit harder on the near-misogyny of James’s take on women and their place in the world. This book deals, uncharacteristically for him, with politics, and in specific with the women’s movement of the latter part of the nineteenth century. His sneering depiction of women’s rights advocates makes his views all too clear. The book would work best if one could read the relationship of Olive and Verena as a lesbian partnering but if James had this in mind he equivocated. Verena is one of many doll-like female centerpieces of James novels, fascinating for her oratorical abilities but born of the wrong kind of parents and anxious to please all and sundry. She is another James heroine who is special because he says so and yet somehow does not earn the distinction on her own. Olive and Ransom engage in a battle for her soul, Ransom being an expatriate southerner and former slave owner who states over and over again that women only matter in their impact on the lives of men. He has only to state this position clearly to Verena to convince her to abandon her ambitions to become an important part of the women’s movement in Boston and in the nation. When she is in his presence she heeds the siren call of his mastery but when she is away from him she attempts to escape her fate. The culminating incident of the book takes place backstage at a speech that is to launch Verena’s career, when Ransom’s appearance drives her into a frenzy of indecision and finally into his arms, her natural place, as it appears. James is too good a writer to present this in such bald terms but such is his contempt for his subject that he is more careless here than in any other of his novels that I have read. An odious performance from a master writer is still an odious performance.