Henry James - The Europeans : analyse PDF

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21/11/2019 Henry James (1843-1916) : The Europeans (1879) Didactic purpose which Washington Irving had to reject by calling his work “sketch” with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Henry James has a similar approach. He travelled a lot, notably in Italy and his work can be related to this, taking place in America or in England, France, Italy. -

The Portrait of a Lady (1881) The Turn of the Screw (1898) The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl (1901-1904)

He belongs to the 19th century realist tradition as well as modernist writing. In 1916, he gave up his American citizenship has a protest to what he saw as an abandonment of Europe, where he spent almost all of his life. James sees a cultural division between America and Europe, he points out there is very few American novels, his “masters” being mostly Europeans. Relationships are very important in The Europeans: Felix and Gertrude, Eugenia and Acton, Clifford and Lizzie (less important). Eugenia doesn’t set out to have a positive influence on Clifford, instead it as a “redemptive influence”. Felix’s fate is very different from his sister’s, first, he has an “aesthetic consciousness”, there are frequent allusions throughout the novel of how he perceives reality, everything he sees is always virtually a picture, he’s always sees reality filtered through his imagination. Gertrude – Felix Robert – “a nice young girl” (instead of Eugenia) Clifford – Lizzie Mr Brand – Charlotte Henry James’ realism. After the Civil war, American literature undergoes several changes, such like, a switch to realism, Henry James is not interested in the beauty above us but in the beauty before us. James’ realism is very complex because he is not really interested in the representation of reality but in the representation of the perception of reality. Each character has an ambiguous representation of everyone, which is conveyed to the reader -> who is Eugenia? What are her objectives? Early in the novel, there is a comparison between the sisters Gertrude and Charlotte. The imaginative faculty of James involves risks by representing the imagination/consciousness in an attempt to apprehend reality, he shows how fragile our hold on reality is. Chapter 2 -> Gertrude is the only one in the family who possesses a sense of imagination, and other characters find her unstable -> “restless”. On a Sunday morning, Gertrude likes stays alone, at home to read. As she blends imagination and reality reading Arabian Nights, the handsome Prince becomes Felix who arrives at the same time. What’s important for James is the sense of ambiguity between real and imagination, a part of perception is always imaginary according to him, he doesn’t want to explicit anything like Hawthorne would. During this extraordinary meeting of reality and imaginary. While Gertrude did find her happiness, she could have met someone who would have taken advantage of her imagination, like naivety -> imagination bears risks. ”Neutral territory” where “the Actual and the Imaginary may meet”. Robert Acton learn to know Eugenia little by little while his passion for her is very intellectual. As Robert Acton doesn’t want to fall in love with Eugenia, he tries to makes her lie. At the end, while he doesn’t marry Eugenia, he learned a great deal thanks to her, appearing to have been liberated from intellectual passion by marrying “a particularly nice young girl”. No such magic as in the couple of

21/11/2019 Gertrude and Felix appears in Acton’s relationship with Eugenia, he is thinking too much, about her thoughts, her goals, speculating all the time about the reality of Eugenia. The trust between Felix and Gertrude is for her, a “leap of faith”, while the gap between Eugenia and Robert, there is no real emotional passion....