This section will review James’s discussion of his own work and of that of other authors insofar as this reveals James’s literary theories. Henry James was intensely interested in literary style in the broad sense of how novels should best be written. He was a prolific literary critic, as well as a commentator on his own work in his remarkable Prefaces to the New York edition of his novels. In his discussion of his own style, however, he does not dwell on the details of the language he uses in his writing; rather, he is concerned with the role of literature as a part of artistic work in general, and how it might best achieve its purposes. Moreover, he did not feel that style and content could be separated more than notionally. He wrote to the translator of his work (as quoted by Welleck): ‘I feel that in a literary work of the least complexity the very form and texture are the substance itself and that the flesh is indetachable from the bones!’17 (Welleck, 1958, p. 316)
In ‘The Art of Fiction’, originally published in 1884 in Longman’s Magazine (James, 1948 [Original work published 1884]), James responded to a pamphlet of
the same name by Walter Besant (1884), using the opportunity to expound his own theory of the novel. James welcomed the debate as previously, he said, the general belief had been that 'a novel is novel, as a pudding is a pudding, and that our only business with it could be to swallow it' (James, 1948 [Original work published 1884], pp. 3-4). In James’s view, a novel must represent life, which it would do by presenting 'the author's vision' (James, 1948 [Original work published 1884], p. 10). As Blackmur explains, James’s attitude was that ‘the subject of art was life, or more particularly someone's apprehension of the experience of it’ (Blackmur, 1935, p. xv). James’s conception of the purpose of a novel is thus at one remove, in that it is not life itself, but life as seen by the author, which is represented. The portrayal is then removed further when James gives the reader not the author’s own impressions but those impressions filtered through the consciousness and perceptions of the characters, very often a deliberately-inserted intelligent observer. Even when the narrator speaks, we are unsure whether this is actually James or a fictional narrator with their own personality which may colour their interpretation of the situation. So even before considering the considerable difficulties of the late style, there is complexity in James’s view of the nature of literature. For James, a novel’s value would depend essentially on the sensitivity of the author.
[I]t is an immense sensibility, a kind of spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air- borne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind. (James, 1948 [Original work published 1884], pp. 10-11)
With such refinement of perception, an author would be able to portray his own experience but also imaginatively portray other lives, using small impressions as seeds for the imagination. The worth of a piece of literature lay not in the subject matter but in how it was depicted. While literature should be true to life, 'the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer' (James, 1948 [Original work published 1884], p. 21).
For James, his method was best achieved in The Ambassadors. He explains his use of ‘reflectors’ in his Preface to The Wings of the Dove, telling us that there is not only one in a novel. (In modern stylistic terms, a ‘reflector’ would be a focalizer: the character through whom the reader learns about the action of the novel.) For James, they can ‘work [...] in arranged alternation’ (James, 1935, p. 301). He particularly likes the term ‘reflector’ because it punningly expresses not only their relaying of the plot through their eyes but also that they are ‘burnished [...] by the intelligence, the curiosity, the passion, the force of the moment’ (James, 1935, p. 300). For example, James explains in The Golden Bowl’s Preface that the novel unfolds in the consciousness of first the Prince and then the Princess. Both narrator and reader are also observers, each at a further remove. In Welleck’s
view, James’s reflectors could also be a type, such as innocence in Maisie, although they must also be a fully integrated part of the novel. These ideas form part of James’s experimental and radical approach to writing and were influential subsequently. Schwarz claims that 'by shifting focus from external action to the drama of consciousness, James foreshadowed interior monologue and stream of consciousness' (Schwarz, 1993, p. 47). However, despite James’s stated dislike of an intrusive narrator, and criticism of Trollope for breaking the illusion of the novel, which he called ‘little slaps at credulity’ (James, 1948 [Original work published 1884], p. 59), even in The Ambassadors his narrator does intrude. In the much- discussed first paragraph the narrator comments ‘on the principle I have just mentioned as operating’ (James, 1998 [Original work published 1903], p. 1), showing that James still wanted the reader to be aware of the narrator (or author?) while suspending disbelief enough to be immersed in the start of Strether’s story. The inconsistencies in James’s use of reflectors are discussed further in section 3.3.2 with reference to The Golden Bowl.
In James’s view it would not be desirable to attempt to formulate rigid rules as to how a novel should be written. Each author had to develop their own methodology, which would be intensely personal, but which should develop from their sensitive observation of life, 'catching the very note and trick, the strange irregular rhythm of life' (James, 1948 [Original work published 1884], p. 16). However, a novel must also have an essential unity and, though unpleasant aspects of life might be portrayed, a moral quality. It was also essential that a novel be enjoyed, and James praised Trollope for this quality but deprecated his huge productivity, feeling that he sacrificed quality for quantity. On the other hand, he was strongly influenced by Balzac, particularly in his early work, and admired the scale of Balzac’s portrayal of the comédie humaine.
In Blackmur’s (1935) collected edition of James’s Prefaces, he discusses the view they reveal of James’s opinion of his own novels. Unlike James, Blackmur comments on the novels’ language, considering the late style ‘an idiosyncrasy so powerful, so overweening, that to many it seemed a stultifying vice, or at least an inexcusable heresy’ (Blackmur, 1935, p. xiii). He recognises the difficulty this may cause for the reader, both in the novels themselves and in the Prefaces. He attributes the late style to James’s intelligence and to his extreme efforts to communicate his immensely subtle ideas to the reader. While James did not acknowledge the difficulty of his style, he did comment on his characters, who his readers might struggle to understand. He also wished to be economical in his work, condemning the ‘loose baggy monsters’ of Victorian fiction (James, 1935, p. 84). What James strove to achieve was a harmony of form and style, which Schwarz summarises as ‘a text that, when its technique and subject matter fuse into a whole, will appeal to the reader' (Schwarz, 1993, p. 46).
In addition to his admiration for Balzac’s (and George Eliot’s) ‘realistic’ portrayal of life, James was also influenced by Turgenev and Hawthorne, who he felt represented respectively a facility with the form of the novel more usually seen in French novelists and the vital element of character and ideals. While he condemned authors who made plain the intervention of the author/narrator, breaking the illusion of a novelistic reality, first-person narration was also undesirable. James was striving for a more objective view, which would require a narratorial distance.
Welleck’s review of ‘Henry James’s Literary Theory and Criticism’ (Welleck, 1958) brings together a wider range of James’s criticism. He does not consider the Prefaces to be basically critical in content, but rather as ‘primarily reminiscences and commentaries’ (Welleck, 1958). Welleck notes James’s emphasis on the importance of enjoyment and appreciation for critics as much as any reader, and his notion that the critic’s job is to look at treatment rather than subject matter, which is the author’s own domain. James distinguished the novel, which is part of art and therefore a reflection of, and moral judgement on, an aspect of life, from romance, which is a story told mainly for fun, though not without value. Drama was a central influence on James’s novel-writing and his literary criticism. For him, the novel should emulate drama; in Welleck’s words, ‘the novelist should let dialogue grow, to compose by scenes rather than by summary panoramic narration and description' (Welleck, 1958, p. 309). Welleck sees James as retreating somewhat from a too-close emulation of drama, striving for dramatic unity and economy but realising that description must also be used. James’s use of the terms ‘scene’ and ‘picture’ is related, and will be discussed in section 3.2.3.