Pagina principaleGruppiConversazioniAltroStatistiche
Cerca nel Sito
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.

Risultati da Google Ricerca Libri

Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.

Sto caricando le informazioni...

Novels: 1881-1886

di Henry James

Altri autori: William T. Stafford (A cura di)

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
407661,396 (4.38)7
Washington Square: Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The portrait of a lady: When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences. The Bostonians: This brilliant satire of the women's rights movement in America is the story of the ravishing inspirational speaker Verena Tarrant and the bitter struggle between two distant cousins who seek to control her. Will the privileged Boston feminist Olive Chancellor succeed in turning her beloved ward into a celebrated activist and lifetime companion? Or will Basil Ransom, a conservative southern lawyer, steal Verena's heart and remove her from the limelight?… (altro)
Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

» Vedi le 7 citazioni

Washington Square is famously the novel beloved of those who don’t like Henry James. The author, in turn, thought so little of it that he omitted it from the New York edition that canonized his works for posterity. So there is a certain correspondence between the author’s relation to this text and the feelings of Dr. Sloper toward his daughter Catherine. It is a charming tale, well-worth a read.
Portrait of a Lady is considered the masterpiece of James’s middle period, and I would not dispute that. The lady whose portrait is here presented is one of the most fully realized characters I’ve run across in fiction, ranking with those in War and Peace and Crime and Punishment. This is a particular achievement since James depicts Isabel Archer as a young woman highly eligible men fall in love with at first sight. Yet the portrait is so rounded that the reader is inclined to find her as irresistibly charming, faults and all, as the author intended. At any rate, I feel as if I’ve known at least one young lady a lot like her.
The inciting incident in the plot is that she has the misfortune to be made an heiress and to be thrust into the stratum of society whose members run into each other unexpectedly in Rome simply because May is the best month to be there.
Yet Portrait is peopled with a host of other characters, such as Madame Merle. One of the most enjoyable chapters to me was 19, when Isabel and Madame Merle have their first in-depth conversation. The opening of another chapter, 22, a depiction of the Florentine villa in which Gilbert Osmond has his apartment, is a masterly example of James’s virtuosity.
Masterly as well is the comic intrigue in Chapter 26. James is often witty, but in this set piece of exchanges between and about the various characters, the effect is hilarious, albeit in his ornate, latinate way. I laughed even louder over the opening of Chapter 44, his portrait of Isabel’s sister-in-law, Countess Gemini.
Like the other two novels, The Bostonians has a female protagonist at the center, Verena Tarrant, said to be so vivaciously beautiful that at least two characters, one male and one female, fall in love with her at first sight. Unlike Catherine Sloper and Isabel Archer, however, there is less of a center in her character. The daughter of a mesmerist, her appeal hovers on hypnosis as well, while she seems to exist as a surface for the projections of others. Coupled with her seemingly passive malleability whenever exposed to the conflicting ideals of Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom, she never comes alive for this reader in the way the others did. This book contains fine Jamesian writing, with a plot that unfolds slowly and dialectically. I particularly enjoyed the way that the attempts of Olive and Basil to sway Verena often had an effect opposite from that intended. Still, if I were to rate each of these novels individually, I would give the first two five stars, and the final novel four.
One limitation of this Library of America edition is that it settles on one text, which in its opinion is authoritative. In the case of Portrait, this is very close to that published in the first edition, 1881. James, however, revised many of his books for the New York edition, not always improving them, but in the case of this book for the better. Readers wanting to compare for themselves can find the text of the NY edition online. ( )
  HenrySt123 | Jul 19, 2021 |
WASHINGTON SQUARE:
After muttering, grumbling and hating on Henry James for upwards of 40 years (ever since I struggled and failed to read The Ambassadors for an American Lit course in college), I have finally read and enjoyed one of his novels. In truth, I enjoyed it quite a lot. This is the story of unattractive, un-brilliant, motherless Catherine Sloper, who has no prospects of marriage until she somehow attracts the attention of young Mr. Morris Townsend, of the "other" Townsends. His prospects are no better than hers, for although he is delightful to look at, and a charming dinner companion, he has no money, no career and no family connections of the better kind. Catherine's father, a prominent New York physician, will have no part of Catherine's determination to marry Mr. Townsend; she has her own income from her dead mother and Father cannot change that, but he can and emphatically will remove her from his Will and the assured thirty thousand a year she might expect after his death, unless she gives up Mr. Townsend. The exploration of human emotions, motivations, and relationships in this novel are subtle but superb.
The movie, "The Heiress" with Olivia deHaviland and Montgomery Clift was based on this novel. The outcome is fundamentally the same, but rather more dramatic in the movie.
Review written in September 2011
  laytonwoman3rd | Aug 26, 2018 |
Caution, this LoA edition follows the 1881 text of The Portrait of a Lady – the first book publication (not the original serialization) – on the reasoning that the 1881 text is the first over which James had complete editorial control. The general critical consensus, however, tends to favor the 1908 text, which James considerably revised for his set of collected works. The 1908 text can be found (along with an appendix of comparisons to the 1881 text) in the Norton Critical Edition. ( )
  CurrerBell | Mar 10, 2017 |
These three works are his best. Washington Square, The Portrait of a Lady and The Bostonians. I've read nine of his novels and a book of his short stories. It appears as though his earlier works were better written. By the time I got to "The Wings of the Dove" (1902) I had grown tired of him. By the end of his career, there wasn't a simple action or thought that he couldn't convey in an unending stream of words. His mantra seemed to be, "I could be succinct, but why? I enjoy writing. I couldn't give a damn whether I burden the reader with my verbal diarrhea." A highly overrated writer, maybe because he was an ex-patriot. ( )
  JVioland | Jul 14, 2014 |
This Review is for
“The Bostonians”
by
Henry James

Where to begin? How many stories are being told here? What is James really trying to tell us? I suppose I should start with the obvious first. This examination of relations between men and women on the surface is a kind of love story. The handsome Southern cousin, Basil Ransom, has taken a shine to the beautiful but rather vacant Verena Tarrant, but Verena is under the sway of Olive Chancellor, a Bostonian in more than one sense of the word. The title is a pun on Boston and the Boston Marriage, a semi-permanent living arrangement of the time taken up by single women for mutual protection and enlightenment. For the curious and prurient, I found no hint of sexual consideration in this particular arrangement.

The events are woven together using the loom of the woman's suffrage movement during the 19th century. It seems Olive has plenty to say on equality of women to men and Verena has the speaking ability to put Olive's message across. Ransom, being from the South thinks women belong on a pedestal from which their loveliness will not be despoiled by un-fettered contact with the rough and tumble world that men inhabit. As may be determined by this, Olive and Basil don't like each other much. Okay, that's the basic story.

The novel explores the terra-incognita between male and female attraction and partially succeeds. Verena, Olive, and Basil strike me a bit as stock players in this drama, rather than real people. As with most of James' work this one is heavily narrated. We see the interior lives of Basil and Olive, but we learn about Verena in the interplay between the three. We have no sense that Verena has an interior. She is whatever others wish to make of her.

Another deeper story is one of control. Olive and Basil both want to control Verena. Olive wants Verena to devote her life to the cause, while Basil, afraid she will do just that, fights to keep her from it. Poor Verena doesn't know quite which way to turn. Verena is the best Tea Pot in America, the question is will Olive be successful in filling her with tea, or will Basil empty her out, sacrifice her enormous talent, the fount of Verna's self-knowledge, on the altar of womanhood? Poor Verena, she's an empty vessel to begin, but as Olive fills her with ideas, and as those ideas don't jibe with her developing feelings for Basil she is wracked with cognitive dissonance, first pledging her loyalty to Olive, then entertaining the idea of life with Basil and then turning to Olive again. You'll have to read the book to see how it turns out.

James makes a rather shallow exploration of the male psyche through Basil mostly uttering platitudes ginned up from some idea of Southern male chauvinism. Basil is little more nuanced than a stereotype, but I wonder if he is not far enough in the past to be the prototype, rather than the stereotype. However, as Basil proceeds, he becomes less and less true to his beliefs. Not because he is swayed by the feminist argument, but because he sees it as a better approach with which to subvert Verena's loyalty to Olive and the cause.

Remember, at bottom this is a novel of control. Who will control the incredible talent that is Verena? The Suffragettes, in public speaking engagements, as Olive demands, or barefoot and pregnant as Basil demands, denying herself in favor of him. Olive always makes certain to allow Verena to do what she will, often with great trepidation, her control is more the result of consensual relinquishment on the part of Verena. It is apparent that Basil has no such consensus in mind. His desire is to own Verena, lock, stock and barrel. Much to his credit he is as open with Verena on this as Olive is on allowing Verena to do as she will. At one point, I thought Verena had realized what was happening to and around her and got out of the situation entirely, but no such luck.

As far as the feminine psyche, well, as hard as he may try, that's James's terra incognita. He takes a stab at creating real women, but unlike “The Portrait of a Lady” his women are either weak like Verena or butch like Olive, not much subtlety, that is until you examine the minor characters. It is through them that James manages to shade women across the spectrum. An authentically strong woman in Mrs. Birdseye who went south to teach slaves to read before the war, or strong in command as is Mrs. Burrage.

To be fair to James, I thought Olive was better and more completely drawn than Basil, but the only thing I could get from her was a sense of histrionics with regard to men and an incredible shyness which was protected by immersing herself in the cause, abjuring men altogether. I think Olive was afraid of men. It seems almost as if she had had a bad experience with one, although this is never brought out. Or it may be incompetence in the face of attracting men. Of course, in this day and age people might look at Olive and think she was a lesbian. There is much more to Olive than we are told.

Verena's parents are happy to sell their daughter to the highest bidder as long as she brings in the money. They remind me of the Micawbers but without their joie de vivre and family values. Incompetent people who would sacrifice their daughter. For me, the most likable of the women was Dr. Prance: a woman who was strong, could run with the men, knew it, and didn't see the need for movements and such. There are probably fewer than two hundred sentences in which Dr. Prance is featured.

I should like to have read this novel when it was initially published. I'm sure, at the time, the topic was one of currency and passion. I should like to have felt those emotions while reading it.

Five stars for the entire volume, four stars for this novel. It's not his best, but then James on a bad day is far superior to most others. ( )
10 vota geneg | Dec 11, 2009 |
nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione

» Aggiungi altri autori

Nome dell'autoreRuoloTipo di autoreOpera?Stato
Henry Jamesautore primariotutte le edizionicalcolato
Stafford, William T.A cura diautore secondariotutte le edizioniconfermato
Devi effettuare l'accesso per contribuire alle Informazioni generali.
Per maggiori spiegazioni, vedi la pagina di aiuto delle informazioni generali.
Titolo canonico
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Titolo originale
Titoli alternativi
Data della prima edizione
Personaggi
Luoghi significativi
Eventi significativi
Film correlati
Epigrafe
Dedica
Incipit
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Nota di disambiguazione
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
This is an omnibus unique to the Library of America; therefore, all CK facts apply to this publication only.

Specifically, this omnibus contains the following works by Henry James:
  • The Bostonians
  • The Portrait of a Lady
  • Washington Square
Redattore editoriale
Dati dalle informazioni generali inglesi. Modifica per tradurlo nella tua lingua.
Elogi
Lingua originale
DDC/MDS Canonico
LCC canonico

Risorse esterne che parlano di questo libro

Wikipedia in inglese (1)

Washington Square: Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The portrait of a lady: When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences. The Bostonians: This brilliant satire of the women's rights movement in America is the story of the ravishing inspirational speaker Verena Tarrant and the bitter struggle between two distant cousins who seek to control her. Will the privileged Boston feminist Olive Chancellor succeed in turning her beloved ward into a celebrated activist and lifetime companion? Or will Basil Ransom, a conservative southern lawyer, steal Verena's heart and remove her from the limelight?

Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche

Descrizione del libro
Riassunto haiku

Discussioni correnti

Nessuno

Copertine popolari

Link rapidi

Voto

Media: (4.38)
0.5
1 1
1.5
2
2.5
3 3
3.5
4 5
4.5 2
5 15

Sei tu?

Diventa un autore di LibraryThing.

 

A proposito di | Contatto | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Condizioni d'uso | Guida/FAQ | Blog | Negozio | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteche di personaggi celebri | Recensori in anteprima | Informazioni generali | 202,657,562 libri! | Barra superiore: Sempre visibile