 |
The American by Henry James  An Introduction to the Author and Novel
By Dr. Marvin Klotz The American (1877) is the third, and by far the best, of Henry James' (1843-1916) earliest novels. And if James did
not invent "the international novel" (Hawthorne and even James Fenimore Cooper preceded him), his work, over thirty years, created an increasingly complex domain in which
people from the New World—trusting, naive, straightforward, and naturally virtuous—interact with those of Old World Europe—aristocratic, jaded, decadent, and morally ambiguous.
Generally, the characters who people his international stories and novels—Americans and Europeans alike—have acquired substantial wealth or, in the case of
the Europeans, descended from aristocratic forebears. Strangely, though James loved Europe (so much so that he chose expatriation and lived most of his mature years in England and France),
the Americans in his novels emerge as the heroes and heroines. They are morally superior to their more sophisticated European antagonists. In this very early work—animated by a sexy
gold-digging woman artist, a horrifying duel, and a dark gothic secret concerning murder most foul—James introduces a good-hearted, rich American into an ancient and somewhat
impoverished French aristocratic family. The American never had a chance. James wrote the novel when he was thirty-three—how did his command of the lives and ambiance of these characters develop?
Childhood and Early Years
Henry James' grandfather, William, came to New York from County Cavan, Ireland, in 1789, and settled in Albany. There he became a leading citizen, prospered, and built a fortune valued at
$3,000,000 by the time he died in 1832.Consequently, Henry's father enjoyed an inherited income of $10,000 a year—a substantial
income for the time—and relief from the burden of having to earn a living. James later pointed out "that the head of our little family was not in business, and that even among our relatives . . .
we couldn't so much as name proudly anyone who was." We need not wonder why James' substantial body of work rarely deals with working men or women. Additionally, though
businessmen such as Christopher Newman of The American appear, they usually do so either as economically established people or as wealthy retirees.
Though Henry was born at the edge of Washington Square in lower Manhattan, his first memories were of Paris and England, where he was taken as an infant in 1843. Between the ages
of twelve and sixteen, he lived, and was schooled and tutored in London and Paris. He also traveled to Germany and Switzerland. A year (1862-63) at Harvard Law School didn't take—and
his first published magazine short story in 1864 launched his productive life as an extraordinary literary artist. Writing Career
During the next ten years, James lived mostly in America and began to publish short fiction and
book reviews regularly. He met, and was encouraged by writers like William Dean Howells (the leading writer and critic of the time) and James Russell Lowell. James began to devour the works
of contemporary English and continental authors like Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, George Sand, George Eliot, Stendahl, Honoré de Balzac, and Ivan Turgenev. In autumn of 1875 he sailed
for Europe, settling first in Paris where he wrote The American, and then moving to London. Though he traveled much and occasionally returned to America, he considered England to be his
home. In 1915, after the beginning of World War I and only a year before his death, he formally became a British citizen.James embarked on The American
a bit sooner than he wished for the most compelling of all reasons—the need to earn money to support himself. His friend Howells, assistant editor at the Atlantic Monthly (
a prestigious literary magazine of the period), agreed to pay James $150 a month for nine monthly installments of the new novel—thus guaranteeing James' economic
survival. Howells liked the work as it grew and decided to stretch the text over twelve months. The American As the novel opens, we meet Christopher Newman (the carefully chosen name evoking Columbus—the discoverer of the Americas—and the new kind of man spawned by
rough-and-tumble economic energy that brought success to some Americans) resting at the Louvre Museum in Paris. Systematic pursuit of Old World culture brought him there, for
Newman, having made his fortune, now wishes to acquire both Old World sophistication and, most pressingly, an aristocratic wife. Perceived by his new and bemused European friends as an
immensely rich, good-natured vulgarian, Newman soon finds Claire, the woman he wishes "to possess" (much as he possesses his wealth). But she is the daughter of the aristocratic
Marquise de Bellegarde (another interesting name: guard of beauty), who, though tempted by Newman's wealth, is repelled by his social position. Newman is no aristocrat. He is a self-made
businessman, and thus, a threat to the social system that nurtures such families as the relatively impoverished Bellegardes.
The struggle between Newman and the Bellegardes over Claire (who refuses to marry without her family's consent) animates the story. And the moral crux of the novel occurs when Newman
threatens to reveal evidence of an awful secret that would disgrace the Bellegardes. Their response to his threat, his final decision, and Claire's own solution to her dilemma, bring the
novel to a strange and, at the time, controversial end. Marvin Klotz, Ph.D., is a retired professor who taught English at California State University, Northridge. |
