HENRY JAMES (1843-1916) was realist, but nota naturalist. Unlike Howells and the naturalists, he was not interested in business, politics or the conditions of society. He was an observer of the mind rather than a recorder of the times. His realism was a special kind of psychological realism. Few of his stories include big events or exciting action. In fact, the characters in his last (and finest) novels rarely do anything at all. Things happen to them, but notas a result of their own actions. They watch life more than they live it. We are interested in how their minds respond to the events of the story. What do they see? How do they try to understand it? The changing consciousness of the character is the real story. Henry’s older brother, the philosopher William James, gave this kind of literature a name. He called it “stream-of-consciousness” literature. In the late nineteenth century, most readers were not ready for such a new approach and so Henry James's greatest novels were not very popular. But in twentieth- century literature, the “stream-of-consciousness” method has become quite common. Thanks to modern psychology and writers like Henry James, we are now more interested in the workings of the mind. Weknow that events inside one’s head can be as dramatic as events in the outside world. We usually divide James's career asa writer into three stages: early, middle and mature. James developed toward his mature — or fully devel lope ~ style rather slowly, The novels of his early period deal with his thoughts and feelings as an American living in Europe. James himself spent most of his life in England and, in 1915, he finally became a British citizen. Roderick Hudson (1876) tells of the failure ofa young American artist in Italy. Although he has genius, the young man fails because he lacks moral strength. The American (1877) contrasts!” American “innocence” with European “experience” James uses this contrast throughout his work. Like many of James’s later American heroes, Christopher Newman (in The American) is a rich young man who goes to Europe in search of culture and a better life. There he meets a young woman, and wants to marry her. The woman wants to marry him too. But even though he is a fine, intelligent man, her family will not allow it. They are the worst kind of European aristocrats. They value their family name more than the happiness of their daughter. They have a “destructive, life-hating honor’, Unlike most of James's later novels, this one is rather easy to read. The story moves quickly and clearly. Daisy Miller (1879) is another novel about American innocence defeated by the stiff, traditional values of Europe. Daisy brings her “free” American spirit to Europe . she looks at people as individuals. ther than as members of a social class. Despite her goodness, she is completely misunderstood by the European characters. She meets a young American, who has lived in Europe a long time and has taken on the same kind of coldness. The coldness of these people finally leads Daisy to her death The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is the best novel of James's “middle period”. Again, a young, bright American gitl goes to Europe to ‘explore life”. After many good offers of marriage, she chooses the wrong man. The most important part of the book is where she realizes rer mistake. She sits all alone, late at night, in her “house ofdarkness”, James shows her inner consciousness in this quiet moment. There is great drama in his description of her “motionlessly seeing” the mistakeshe has made. The drama is not created by her actions but by the thoughts in her mind. This description marks the beginning of James's “mature” period. After this, little by little, dramatic action almost disappears from ‘James's novels. Characters usually spend their time talking about the different aspects and possibilities of the situations they are in. Sometimes the drama comes when a character changes from one way of looking at the world to another way. In The Princess Casamasstima(1886), the hero isa revolutionary who wants to destroy the European aristocracy. But gradually, he falls in love with the aristocrat’s “world of wonderful precious things”. This change of heart leads to his suicide’. In The Ambassadors (1903), a middle-aged American goes to Paris to rescue the son ofa friend from the “evils” of European society. When he arrives, he is still a moralistic New Englander. He disapproves of everything he sees. But slowly, he begins to see Europe in an entirely different way. In the end, the boy is happy to be “rescued” and to go back to America. The man, however, wants to stay in Europe. Henry James never tries to give a large, detailed picture of society. Rather, in his stories, he selects a single situation or problem: often, the problem is about the nature of art. ‘Then, using his imagination, he studies that one problem from various points of view. In his excellent short stories, we can clearly see how this method works. In The Real Thing (1893), the problem is how art changes reality. An artist wants to create a picture of typical aristocrats. When he tries to use real aristocrats as his models, he fails. He discovers that lower-class models are better for his purposes than “the real thing”. The real aristocrats are so real that he can’t use his imagination. In The Death of the Lion (1894), a famous writer faces the problem of being too popular, He becomes too busy with his admirers to write. Another kind of problem that Henry James deals with in both his short stories and novelsis the “unlived life”. The hero may be so afraid of life that he cannot really live. In The Beast in the Jungle (1903), the hero is sure something terrible is going to happen to him. Much later, he discovers that the terrible fate waiting for him “is that nothing is to happen to him’, A further problem James often studied was the introduction of children to the evil and immorality of the world around them. This is the theme of What Maisie Knew (1897) and The Turn of the Screw (1898). The latter is a famous ghost story about two children and their nurse. ‘The nurse is sure the children are being haunted" by ghosts, but it is not clear to the reader whether these ghosts are real or only in the nurse’s mind. For James, in his private life and in his literature, being anAmerican was a great problem. “It is a complex fate, being an American,” he wrote. Although he lived most of his life abroad, this was always a central theme. In his writings, Americans are always seing “tested” by European civilization. And, similarly, the achieve- ‘nents of European civilization are alwa sossibilities of American civilization, ‘s being tested by the new