Henry James, The Bostonians
James, Henry. The Bostonians. London: Penguin, 1984 (1886).
This one is a real outlier and I am not sure what he was going for. A lot of it is making fun of those Boston feminists, which does not seem like a very nice thing to do, though the conservative Southern gentleman who's supposed to provide balance is no great shakes either. The ending does crank up the melodrama only to dissolve it in James's usual upsetting ambivalence, but it's not clear how much of the preceding we needed. I am sad to report that I kept getting distracted by marginalia from the previous owner, who apparently had been told it was a "novel about lesbians" and kept writing things like SEDUCTION and SUBMISSION in the margins, along with circling every single appearance of the adjective "queer." I'm surprised he or she didn't go on to other not-a-double-entendres like "toilet" and "ejaculated."
This one is a real outlier and I am not sure what he was going for. A lot of it is making fun of those Boston feminists, which does not seem like a very nice thing to do, though the conservative Southern gentleman who's supposed to provide balance is no great shakes either. The ending does crank up the melodrama only to dissolve it in James's usual upsetting ambivalence, but it's not clear how much of the preceding we needed. I am sad to report that I kept getting distracted by marginalia from the previous owner, who apparently had been told it was a "novel about lesbians" and kept writing things like SEDUCTION and SUBMISSION in the margins, along with circling every single appearance of the adjective "queer." I'm surprised he or she didn't go on to other not-a-double-entendres like "toilet" and "ejaculated."
