THE DEEP ONES: "The Friends of the Friends" by Henry James

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THE DEEP ONES: "The Friends of the Friends" by Henry James

2AndreasJ
Apr 13, 2022, 6:19 am

So, is there a ghostly rival, or is the narrator imagining things?

Perhaps more interestingly, is there a connection between the string of coincidences preventing fiancé and friend from meeting and their putative postmortem romance? Was some force keeping them apart until the "right" moment? If so, why is it "right" - last time to prevent the "wrong" marriage?

Early on, I wondered if fiancé and friend were going to turn out to be somehow the same. They didn't, of course, but I guess it's metaphorical vindication if they become "one flesh" after death.

3semdetenebre
Modificato: Apr 13, 2022, 11:03 am

I really enjoyed this haunted Jamesian RomCom which often seems to be headed in one direction before making a successful leap onto another tack altogether. In less capable hands, we might expect our out-of-sync potential lovebirds to finally meet and implode in some manner, given the general tone and buildup (visions of death loom in the background of each), but then the unhappy couple quite unexpectedly turns out to be a different pair. The story actually takes on a Poe-like nature by the end, as the bride-to-be becomes utterly neurotic and then is truly haunted by her dead friend, who continues to be a posthumous rival.

Whether the ghosts are real or not is probably the similarity between this tale and THE TURN OF THE SCREW that Jeffrey Ford mentions in the link up above. Either way, the marriage is doomed due to the mental condition of the bride-to-be. The very idea of the ghosts at the beginning is the enabler.

All of the characters are unnamed, which makes it a bit difficult to write about this story, but not to read it! I love the title "The Friends of the Friends". It's a lot more amusing than "The Way It Came", as it is sometimes known by. Does anyone know the reason for the alternate titles?

4housefulofpaper
Apr 15, 2022, 11:09 am

I hadn't remembered this one its inclusion in The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories, which I must have read sometime in the noughties. Considering that I had only got into H. P. Lovecraft around 1999 (with the first Penguin Classics selection), this story was probably too much of a change of mood and style, and consequently I wasn't a sympathetic or receptive reader.

It made a better impression on me this time, although I have to confess that James' style has a "can't see the wood for the trees" effect on me - either I lose the sense of the syntax of a sentence, or what is going on in the mundane sense, can get lost in the psychological "reading", in the instant, of every act and utterance.

>3 semdetenebre: I have yet to read "The Turn of the Screw" but I have watched The Innocents (1961) more than once, and I also have a CD of Benjamin Britten's opera (The Turn of the Screw); and the ambiguity as to the reality or otherwise - or, better to say, the nature - of the hanunting in both stories would certainly seem to be the resemblance that Jeffrey Ford is suggesting. I wonder, though, if there's also a hint of sex in "The Friends of the Friends"? There are stories of people having relationships with ghosts filling up column inches in magazines and hours on daytime TV in the present day, and I suppose "Carmilla" (to give one example) would be an earlier 19th Century example. Or, given the popularity and cultural prominence of the seance room and mediumship in the 19th Century it's worth bearing in mind how paradoxically physical such experiences could be. From merely holding hands in the dark all the way to female mediums being stripped to their underwear and tied up (to supposedly dispel any ideal of trickery) and writhing around in the throes of channelling spirits (I think I read about this sort of thing most recently in A Natural History of Ghosts).

5semdetenebre
Apr 15, 2022, 12:38 pm

>4 housefulofpaper:

I've only read HJ's supernatural tales, but I'm given to understand that subtle undercurrents of sexuality run throughout much of his work. A sea of sexual suppression, obsession, and maybe even oppression (all carried through perfectly in Clayton's THE INNOCENTS) surges just beneath the plot of "The Turn of the Screw". I'd have to read "The Friends of the Friends" again looking for similar clues. Perhaps in the strange kiss transference between the groom and the two women. And there does seem to be a hint if necrophilia (again evoking Poe) in the bride-not-to-be's accusation that her ex is willfully continuing his relationship with her dead friend thanks to his "peculiar power". Of course, you could read all of this as a Victorian-era denial of her own repressed sexuality that allows the bride-not-to-be to latch onto a convenient, supernatural reason (made acceptable by spiritualism being in vogue) for backing out of a marriage she may not want to consummate. Yikes! So many divergent paths you can take!