Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: The Moment of Henry James
- 1 Men, Women, and the American Way
- 2 The James Family Theatricals
- 3 Henry James at Work
- 4 Henry James and the Invention of Novel Theory
- 5 Henry James and the Idea of Evil
- 6 Queer Henry In the Cage
- 7 The Unmentionable Subject in "The Pupil"
- 8 Realism, Culture, and the Place of the Literary: Henry James and The Bostonians
- 9 Lambert Strether's Excellent Adventure
- 10 James's Elusive Wings
- 11 Henry James's American Dream in The Golden Bowl
- 12 Affirming the Alien: The Pragmatist Pluralism of The American Scene
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Series List
11 - Henry James's American Dream in The Golden Bowl
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: The Moment of Henry James
- 1 Men, Women, and the American Way
- 2 The James Family Theatricals
- 3 Henry James at Work
- 4 Henry James and the Invention of Novel Theory
- 5 Henry James and the Idea of Evil
- 6 Queer Henry In the Cage
- 7 The Unmentionable Subject in "The Pupil"
- 8 Realism, Culture, and the Place of the Literary: Henry James and The Bostonians
- 9 Lambert Strether's Excellent Adventure
- 10 James's Elusive Wings
- 11 Henry James's American Dream in The Golden Bowl
- 12 Affirming the Alien: The Pragmatist Pluralism of The American Scene
- Suggestions for Further Reading
- Index
- Series List
Summary
Well, we're tremendously moral for ourselves - that is for each other; and I won't pretend that I know exactly at whose particular personal expense you and I for instance are happy. What it comes to, I dare say, is that there's something haunting - as if it were a bit uncanny - in such a consciousness of our general comfort and privilege . . . as if we were sitting about on divans, with pigtails, smoking opium and seeing visions. “Let us then be up and doing” - what is it Longfellow says? That seems sometimes to ring out; like the police breaking in - into our opium den - to give us a shake.
(24:92)James composed The Golden Bowl during 1903, the year when he was planning his extended return trip to America, and writing to American friends of his great curiosity, his eagerness to see the country after two decades of living abroad: “The idea of seeing American life again and tasting the American air, that is a vision, a possibility, an impossibility, positively romantic.” Although the direct impressions from the trip would later go into The American Scene, the indistinct anticipatory vision corresponds to the vagueness of the place called America in The Golden Bowl.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Henry James , pp. 204 - 223Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998