THE PORTRAYAL OF FEMINIST IDEALS IN HENRY JAMES’S THE BOSTONIANS
When it was first published in 1886, Henry James’s The Bostonians received a mixed reception. It was described as ‘brilliant, full of points and eminently readable’ and as ‘undeniably interesting to an unusual degree’. Others were less charitable: ‘condensed into one volume, The Bostonians would be as good as anything Mr. James has written; expanded into three it is nothing short of tedious’. However, one point on which the majority of contemporary critics agree is that the novel is interesting from the point of view of its character portrayal; they are ‘rounded, lifelike, perfect portraitures of existing types’ wrote The Boston Evening Traveler4; ‘The interest of the tale is psychological…. Mr James introduces us to a crowd of characters, very original, and most carefully designed by innumerable minute touches.5’ But what is it that James seeks to do with these ‘perfect’ rounded characters? How do the methods he employs in his characterization help us to understand the novel as a whole? And what, if anything, does James’s novel tell us about his own views on the situation of women in Nineteenth Century America? Let us first take a look at the immediate history of the period and at some of the contemporary views held by and about women at this time.