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
3 - Henry James at Work
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
A bright, excited student reads Henry James's story Daisy Miller for an assignment. She especially likes one phrase, used by the wilful heroine's Italian companion, explaining Daisy's fatal exposure of herself to Roman fever in the moonlit Coliseum: “she - she did what she liked.” The quotation is going to be part of the title of her paper. But she leaves her copy of the book at home, and has to consult another edition in the library. In this other edition, for all her efforts, she can't locate the phrase she tagged; when she finds the relevant scene, it's different. There the Italian companion less resonantly says, “she wanted to go.” Our student thought, too, that she remembered the story's hero, Winterbourne, answering with a look down at the ground and a meditative echo of the missing phrase: “She did what she liked!” But here she finds the character behaving quite differently - querulous rather than thoughtful. To the Italian's “she wanted to go” comes back bluntly, “'That was no reason!' Winterbourne declared.” If our poor baffled student casts the book aside in sheer frustration at this betrayal, who can blame her? All she wanted was “the text” of the story.
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- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Henry James , pp. 63 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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