There is little or nothing going on in Henry James's mind that is not about social relations between women and men; every issue is ultimately gendered. Thus to think about gender in James is to think of just about everything he said and wrote. It is necessary, therefore, to draw some lines in this essay, to single out certain aspects and particular moments in time for specific consideration, with the understanding that all those other things are left unattended. The focus here is upon James's long novel, The Golden Bowl, published in 1905, and The American Scene of 1907, compiled from notes James gathered in 1904 and 1905 while roaming the America of President Theodore Roosevelt after an absence of twenty years. These two specimens cut loose from the living flesh of his extensive career are not anomalies. Both the fictive narrative and the text of social commentary forcefully represent the accumulative results of James's lifelong study of the self-limiting manner by which the gender-shaped society of his homeland imposed narrowly defined sexual, political, and cultural functions upon its men and its women.