“The Aspern Papers” by Henry James is about a nameless man who is willing to do anything in order to achieve his goal concerning an obsession with a writer. In the story, this nameless character who is both the narrator and the main character,...

Henry James’ 1903 novella, The Beast in the Jungle, has long been debated by readers and critics alike. Central to the narrative is the status and understanding (or lack thereof) of a secret, a ‘crouching beast,’ (James, 1) that haunts...

In the works of Daisy Miller and The Beast in the Jungle, author Henry James provides readers with multiple explanations as to why it is important for one to live a full life. These two novellas share many broad similarities, including central...

Henry James is considered the master of subtle psychological fiction, and in The Beast in the Jungle he demonstrates the powerful extent in which determinism can reach and bar an individual from any consideration of free will. This situation will...

Over the course of time, a person’s life is affected by the various people they have met and the experiences they have endured. As a result, the person -or those around them- may find themselves changed in some way or another, whether it be their...

Realism, as described by William Dean Howells in the late nineteenth century, replaces the high art and style of the literature of the preceding decades by permitting such characters as Howells' Silas Lapham to have a distinct place in the...

Our society revolves around the question of what is good and what is evil. We usually characterize humans as essentially malevolent or benevolent. The world contains, however, a minority of people characterized by ambiguity, a unique emotional...

Throughout Washington Square, the revelatory effects of love catalyze the heroine’s transformation against the wishes of a treacherously oppressive father. The juxtaposing development of the Doctor’s increasing inadequacy with that of Catherine’s...

"On her long journey from Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they were in...

Assignment: Discuss the treatment of female independence and the independent heroine in two Victorian novels.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, and The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, both utilise the Victorian convention of the orphaned heroine...

In psychology, one of the most frequently debated topics deals with the issue of environmental and societal impact on one’s upbringing. It is commonly believed that society plays a tremendous role in how one behaves and how one readily conforms to...

Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady presents the reader with a novel that uses literary form in an attempt to frame the life of its female protagonist; the very title – ‘Portrait’ – expresses a double meaning, referring both to the representation...

Although still a global issue today, misogyny in the time period of Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady stemmed from the quantification of a woman’s value from what she can contribute to males rather than her character. The author explores this...

The characters in Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady long for a way into Isabel Archer’s mind. They are particularly curious about her decision to marry her husband, the self-centered and manipulative Gilbert Osmond. James offers more of his...

Henry James’s novella The Turn of the Screw and his literary essay The Art of Fiction are entirely unalike in form, but contain thoroughly alike themes. Overall, a fascination with the acts of reading and writing is presented; these things are...

In his essay, ‘The Art of Fiction’ (1884), Henry James writes ‘the only classification of the novel that I can understand is into the interesting and the uninteresting’. Here, and elsewhere in his writing, James eschews the constraints of textual...

“Jamesian” is a term frequently used by literary scholars to describe the psychological assemblage of individual identity, a realization of consciousness and selfhood through knowledge and action, credited at times to both Henry James’s literary...