A Private Life of Henry James: Two Women and His Art

by Lyndall Gordon

Book Overview

In this beautifully written, eye-opening biography, Lyndall Gordon, author of "Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life", provides a remarkable portrait of two strongly individual women and their lasting influence on Henry James. Photos.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393047113
• ISBN13: 9780393047110
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 500 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

the women in henry james' life

Lyndall Gordon's "A Private Life of Henry James" is a very interesting and readable book.The author argues that we can come to an understanding of what made Henry James tick by a close examination of 2 significant females in his life.These are his cousin,Minny Temple, and a contemporary American female novelist,Constance Fenimore Woolson.Gordon argues quite convincingly that Minny Temple,who died tragically very young was the model for Milly Theale,in "The Wings of the Dove" and probably also influenced other Jamesian character portraits,such as Isabel Archer in "The Portrait of a Lady".There has to be some truth in this,since the similarities are fairly obvious.Constance Fenimore Woolson was a successful writer who came to understand that Henry James was going to become one of the Greats of Literature and went to great lengths to be around him and to get close to him.She and James spent a year living together in a house in Italy,contrary to anyone's idea at the time of correct behaviour.What happened between them is the central subject of the book,which begins with the striking image of James,in a gondola in Venice,way out on the lagoon,tipping Constance's clothes into the water after her death,trying to ensure that the clothes all disappeared beneath the water.Added to this mystery is the question of how Connie died:did she fall from a balcony or did she take her own life?Was rejection by James part of the mystery? Gordon writes plausibly and her documentation is impressive.Whether we would want to go all the way with her is another question.Did James USE his cousin and his writer friend in his efforts to get "inside the heads" of the women of his day?What,if anything,did James feel about these two? Was he just cynically trolling for good ideas to put into his writings.James' sexuality is certainly an area of interest to anyone who reads and loves his books.What were his real feelings for these two remarkable women in his life?

Superb book on the great Henry James

This absorbing book tells the story of Henry James? friendships with Minnie Temple and Constance Fenimore Woolson. Minnie inspired James to create the characters of Isabel Archer, the heroine of The Portrait of a Lady, and of Milly Theale, the heroine of The Wings of the Dove. Both Minnie and Constance looked to James for more than he was prepared to give. He drew them into communion, then left them exposed when he withdrew into the sanctuary of his writing. Minnie died of tuberculosis in 1870 at the age of 25, after James rejected her pleas for a closer relationship; her consequent loss of morale accelerated her death. After fifteen years of friendship with James, Constance killed herself in 1894 at the age of 52. Their tragic deaths spurred his creativity. James? greatest achievements depended on their generosity: the idea of the solitary genius is just a myth: genius cannot emerge in a void. He paid them the supreme artistic tribute of portraying them forever as heroines, but he paid them too little attention as real women. He rejected what few but he knew that they offered. He understood the claims that they made on life, but would not, could not, meet them. James? visionary moralism was born of his ?merciless clairvoyance?. These two wonderful independent-minded women provoked James? creative attention; they figured for him creative possibilities that he celebrated in his greatest fiction. They enabled him to understand a woman?s point of view, a perspective that became central to his art. Like George Eliot and Charles Dickens, James exposed the social corruption and moral bankruptcy of the bourgeois men and women of his time. But only James and Eliot, with Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch and Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda, created heroines who transcended the limits of their society. In each of these novels, the heroine?s integrity and altruism rise above the bullying interference and interests of others.