The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction (Bantam Classics)

Book Description

To read a story by Henry James is to enter a world--a rich, perfectly crafted domain of vivid language and splendid, complex characters. Devious children, sparring lovers, capricious American girls, obtuse bachelors, sibylline spinsters and charming Europeans populate these five fascinating Nouvelles --works which represent the author in both his early and late phases. From the apparitions of evil that haunt the governess in The Turn Of The Screw to the startling self-scrutiny of an egotistical man in The Beast In The Jungle, the mysterious tumings of human behavior are skillfully and coolly observed--proving Henry James to be a master of psychological insight as well as one of the finest stylists of modern English literature.

Customer Reviews:

book review.......2007-09-17

This book has five short fiction tales. The longest story is about 200 pages, and the shortest one is around 90 pages. This book is great for bringing on an airplane, or if you just have a short amount of free time. The stories are easy to read in an hour or so at a time.

The Screw Turns Slowly But Effectively!.......2006-07-14

Although this story churns slowly and with a writing style that many of us are not used to, it makes up for it with a great, chilling story that sticks with you after the last pages are over. This is one of those books you have to read in the quiet to concentrate on each word, but it is all the quiet that can make this book scare you. James' obviously did a masterful job on the story, with his cliffhanger ending, because to this day, people are still giving their interpretation of it and what it means. And this story was published over 100 years ago, in 1898. Any author would LOVE to have people still talking about a book like that, for better or worse. I love the characters throughout this story, and you begin to wonder what exactly is going on - is she seeing ghosts? Are the kids seeing ghosts? Has she lost her mind? All good questions and at the end, you still might be scratching your head, but it is still a satsifying conclusion that lets your creative mind decipher it all. In conclusion, this book is a pretty slow read considering it's only like 100 pages, but once you get half way, you're not going to want to put it down!

Unnerving Tale Hidden Inside Some Stories in a Flashback.......2003-03-16

On the surface this is a story about an either haunted or hysterical governess who juggles words with true virtuosity, stringing them into psychologically insightful sentences. But that is all just camouflage, as is the many-layered structure of this tale. When the chips are finally down, the truth emerges, even though it is never explicitly stated --- how could it possibly have been stated explicitly in 1898? --- this is a story about pedophilia and its effects on a ten year old boy. At the core of this tale lies the relationship between the boy Miles and his uncle's servant Quint at Bly, the uncle's country estate. The housekeeper Mrs. Crose informs the new governess that the too-good-to-be-true Miles had been "bad" in the past, he would disappear for hours in the company of Quint who was not only "much too free" but also engaged in "depravity." Sent off to a boarding school, Miles gets expelled for what he tells his classmates presumably about this depravity. When at the very end of the tale the governess confronts Miles about these matters, he appears to expire in the last four words of the tale's last sentence. Yet at the start of the unresolved flashback which this tale represents, Miles may yet be alive as a middle-aged family man named Douglas, who reads to his friends the whole tale as written down by the governess herself.

Is Douglas the grownup Miles? James doesn't tell, but this remains a fascinating possibility perfectly consistent with the rest of this tale. Further conflations of characters are equally well compatible with the "facts." The uncle who lived at Bly and then left his estate at the very time of Quint's accidental death doesn't want to ever again hear of his nephew or to return to Bly. Could it be that it was not Quint who engaged in pedophilia, but that it was the uncle himself who abused his orphaned nephew? In their numerous dialogues the Governess and Mrs. Crose complete each other's sentences to such a degree that one gets the distinct impression that one is dealing with the ruminations of a single character and like Quint, so Mrs. Crose too can easily be removed from the scene. In fact James does just that shortly before tale's end, while getting rid of Miles' little sister Flora at the same time. He sends them to London to visit the uncle. There is one more character, the earlier governess Jessel, whose only role is to impose a certain degree of symmetry to the tale, and to appear in one climactic scene.

Why all these dispensable main characters, why the fireside chat of all kinds of minor characters at the time when the flashback is entered never to be left again, and finally why even use a flashback? I think these are all diversionary tactics on James' part. The central story he tells is so very unorthodox, unnerving and incendiary that he prefers to hide it with great care and great success among all this clutter. As I said, in 1898 he would have been pilloried for openly writing about pedophilia. The challenge of doing so all the same, has resulted in a masterpiece of ambiguity, which still clearly conveys its point. This interpretation of the story is supported by the fact that Benjamin Britten, one of the twentieth century's greatest opera composers, has set "The Turn of the Screw". Britten was himself apparently interested in pubescent boys and pedophilia drives the stories of three of his masterpieces. Based on what has been written about Henry James, he may not have been a stranger to this subject either.

The style of this tale is fascinating. On the one hand it is formal, quite pedantic, quite precious and removed, as if carving itself a much-needed ditch separating the narrative from the reader. It does not grant easy access. On the other hand all those long sentences with big words tend to have a mesmerizing effect that absorbs the reader into the story better than even the most honest and well-meaning informality ever could. There is a certain rhythm and poetic drive to some crucial passages. For instance, as one enters the flashback, the first few pages have the drive of a prose poem or of a symhony. With it James welcomes the reader to his realm. No wonder "The Turn of the Screw" ultimately landed on the opera stage.

clear, precise, even-handed stylist.......2003-02-09

Henry James wrote in a clear, precise even-handed American style that has not grown stale despite the passage of over 100 years. The two stories that stand out here to me are the two that are usually singled out by reviewers, "Daisy Miller" and "The Turn Of The Screw", the former because of its sensual European atmospherics and the fact that even back in 1900 an American female could be considered overly outgoing or prurient by community standards, even if she was probably just an extroverted American; the latter because James effectively creates the controlled terror of a ghost story involving children at a British greathouse, perhaps a bit like Poe. But the other 3 stories all have something going for them: "The Jolly Corner", is also a ghost story,set in New York; "The Beast Of the Jungle" creates a sense of mysterious suspense within the context of a couple's love relationship, and "Washington Square" is the story of a love relationship forbidden by the girl's
sophisticated doctor father.

The Best of One-of-the-Best Short Story Writers.......2001-03-30

This is a good collection of Henry James' best. Each short story is a pager-turner rich with insights into American and British life at the end of the 1800's. He doesn't make his characters Romantic heroes but real, flawed, interesting and complex. James definately ranks among the best of the Realism and Naturalism authors like Twain, Dresler, Crane and Howells.

The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)

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The Turn of the Screw: And Other Stories
A Horror Story that falls a little short of a Classic
a bad writer's best book

The Turn of the Screw and Other Stories (Oxford World's Classics)
Henry James
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0192834045

Book Description

Whether viewed as a subtle, self-conscious exploration of the haunted house of Victorian culture, filled with echoes of sexual and social unease, or simply as "the most hopelessly evil story we have ever read," The Turn of the Screw is probably the most famous of ghostly tales and certainly
the most eerily equivocal. This new edition includes three rarely reprinted ghost stories from the 1890s, "Sir Edmund Orme," "Owen Wingrave," and "The Friends of the Friends," as well as relevant extracts from James's notebooks and journals.

Customer Reviews:

Base menials.......2006-12-06

Henry James is a prime aristocrat, a not always very subtle defender of the leisure class. Two short stories in this bundle show it profusely.
In `The Turn of the Screw', two aristocratic children are haunted by two `base menials' (`You reminded him that Quint was only a base menial?'). Henry James fears really that the higher classes will be contaminated and corrupted by the lower classes: `I should continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister to superstition and fears.'
The evil comes out of the lower classes, `For the love of all the evil that the pair (of servants) put into them.'
At the end, one of the children succumbs to the same fate as the child in `Erlkoenig' by Goethe, Erlkoenig being the quintessence of the evil force, the killer of innocence.

In `Owen Wingrave' (masterly transformed into an opera by Benjamin Britten), the main character refuses to step into the tradition of his ancestors and to become a soldier (and die on the battlefield). On the contrary, he calls war an overwhelming stupidity, the `crash barbarism'. He doesn't understand `why nations don't tear to pieces the governments, the rulers that go for them.'
For Henry James, the ideas and the behavior of Owen Wingrave are like `falling in love with a low girl.'
At the end, Owen is slain by the ghost of one of his ancestors, dying on his own battlefield (for his ideas). The last words of the story (`gained field') would mean that the aristocracy has adopted the `anti-war' policy.

These perfectly constructed and brilliantly written stories reveal Henry James's real obsession: preserve the `purity' of his kind.

The Turn of the Screw: And Other Stories.......2002-11-14

You guys missed the most dramatic plot twist in history!

Think about it there was no gost it was all in Governess's head, and she is the true villain.

This is trully the best horror book I have ever read.

A Horror Story that falls a little short of a Classic.......2001-12-06

I didn't like the first person style in which most of this book is written. The times when someone else besides the governess is speaking it becomes hard to follow who is talking. However after completing this novella, I realize this style may have been needed to raise some questions in the reader's minds whether or not the governess is just imagining all that she sees, or whether there really are ghosts about the manor trying to corrupt these cherub like children to do unspeakable evil. At times I felt the suspense was forced. Too many pages were used to explain why she just didn't come out and confront the children in the first place, speak to their uncle, or speak to someone at the school. The introductory pages of people telling ghost stories seemed unnecessary as well since it is never tied back in to the story at the end. At times the story shows so much potential to build you up to a great surprise climax at the end, but then in my opinion, it falls short.

a bad writer's best book.......2000-10-30

A young governess is hired to look after two seemingly angelic orphans--Flora and Miles. Seemingly, but why was Miles dismissed from school? and who are the strangers who the governess sees at windows? As in most of James' work, these questions are raised but not answered. However, in this novella he is presenting a gothic mystery, so the open ended questions are appropriate.

Apparently Turn of the Screw was controversial when James wrote it, because of it's presentation of children as potentially wicked. In the era of Littleton, I don't think there's anyone left who will argue that children are incapable of evil.

It's just a good creepy little tale.

Book Description

Some critics go so far as to call Henry James the American writer. Examine ?Daisy Miller,? The Turn of the Screw, ?The Jolly Corner,? and other works by James. The text includes essays from some of the best James critics along with a chronology of the author?s life.

Book Description

Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw may be Henry James’s most widely read tales. Certainly, these swiftly moving accounts of failed connections areamong the best examples of his shorter fiction. One represents the international theme that made him famous; the other exemplifies the multiple meanings that make him modern. The introduction to this volume locates his fiction in the context of the family that conditioned his concern with thesexual politics of intimate experience. In the four essays that follow, Kenneth Graham offers a close reading of Daisy with an emphasis on Daisy; Robert Weisbuch examines Winterbourne as a specimen of James’s formidable bachelor type; Millicent Bell places the ghost story governess in the traditions of English fiction and society; David McWhirter then provides a critique of female authority. Deftly summarizing earlier criticism, these essays demonstrate thecontinuing appeal of Henry James in our time.

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Self and Form in Modern Narrative
Vincent P. Pecora
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0801837685

Turn of the Screw (Everyman's Library (Paper))

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Fear May Be Nonexistent but the Tale is Still Mysterious
Dissapointed and Confused!
PAINFULLY BORING
a story for our time
Not worth the hype

Turn of the Screw (Everyman's Library (Paper))
Henry James
Manufacturer: J.M. Dent & Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0460872990

Amazon.com

The story starts conventionally enough with friends sharing ghost stories 'round the fire on Christmas Eve. One of the guests tells about a governess at a country house plagued by supernatural visitors. But in the hands of Henry James, the master of nuance, this little tale of terror is an exquisite gem of sexual and psychological ambiguity. Only the young governess can see the ghosts; only she suspects that the previous governess and her lover are controlling the two orphaned children (a girl and a boy) for some evil purpose. The household staff don't know what she's talking about, the children are evasive when questioned, and the master of the house (the children's uncle) is absent. Why does the young girl claim not to see a perfectly visible woman standing on the far side of the lake? Are the children being deceptive, or is the governess being paranoid? By leaving the questions unanswered, The Turn of Screw generates spine-tingling anxiety in its mesmerized readers.

Book Description

A governess strives to protect her bewitching charges from the evil that menaces them, and which they seem strangely to desire, in this fireside tale narrated with stalwart morality and an almost deranged propriety. Terror makes this a ghost story, but uncertainty makes it horrifying: are the apparitions the governess's invention? If so, does the evil lie not in the children, but in the love-starved woman-and in adult society itself?

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Henry James' short novels provide an overview of his entire career and serve as an excellent introduction to his singular art and imagination.

Customer Reviews:

Fear May Be Nonexistent but the Tale is Still Mysterious.......2007-10-03

From the opening page, we have it that nothing matches this tale's dreadfulness, uncanny ugliness, and horror. Now, for the people reading it around the beginning of the 20th century (when it was published), this might have held true, but for a reader of the present day, this tale isn't going to strike them as being in the least scary. Basically, the only elements of the story that can be construed as even remotely scary are the presence of two ghosts, who just seem to be wandering around looking for something.

Now, while this tale falls woefully short in instilling fear in its reader, it nonetheless remains a very entertaining read, because the mystery that unfolds in this short tale isn't derived from the scariness it is meant to produce; the tale's mystery is just as mysterious in the absence of fear as it would be if it were presence.

The mystery concerns a governess who has recently taken on employment at an isolated country estate. Her two charges are a boy and a girl, Miles, and Flora, who are both graced with overwhelming physical beauty, intellectually quite adept, and impeccably well behaved. In short, they seem to be ideal children. Miles has actually been dismissed from his school for unspecified reasons, but the governess chalks this up to unfair treatment given all his redeeming virtues. So, all is well until one day she encounters a ghost on her daily walk about the premises.

This encounter starts a chain of events lead to the governess adopting a Sherlock Holmes persona and baptizing Mrs. Goose, the housekeeper, into the role of her Watson. In the course of her investigation, she encounters another ghost, learns what both ghost are after, and who they are, and begins to question whether Miles and Flora's displayed perfection is just a façade to mask their sinister nature. The key to solving the mystery turns on with what caused Miles's dismissal from school and the identity of the two ghosts.

In this brief work, James has crafted a rather well paced mystery that is told with descriptively rich language and with elaborate and fluid prose. In other words, it was quite a pleasure to read.

Dissapointed and Confused!.......2007-09-13

Huh??? I've just finished reading this story and feel as if I've wasted 3 months of my life! Normally, I enjoy this particular genre, Victorian and Gothic settings, etc. Not this time. I'm still left with two questions. First of all, were the "ghosts" real or a figment of the narrator's imagination? Secondly, I was dying to find out what the young boy had done to cause his expulsion from school. Also, the narratives were drawn out way too long! After the first ten pages, I was bored to tears! I'll give James one more chance before I cast him aside for good!

PAINFULLY BORING.......2007-07-21

I was under the impression this was going to be a rare find of a thriller. Instead, I found it painfully boring, laborious, and way too chatty. I certainly could have gotten the point in ten pages or less. Save yourself the effort and avoid this one.

a story for our time.......2007-07-20

It's a hard read because there is no happy ending. Read it not from the paranoid governess' point of view, but from that of her defenseless charges and you have the story of what happens to too many kids these days. With their parents too self-absorbed to care about protecting, or even just raising, them, these kids are figuratively left -- like those in the story -- on their own, while the P.C. police is given full charge of their upbringing. Those who survive do so by absorbing the self-destructive thinking, which society and the schools demand of them. Those who resist, suffer the consequences because, like the self-righteous governess, the P.C. police is incapable of examining its own culpability in any harm which results from their actions.

Not worth the hype.......2007-07-01

This is the second Henry James book I have read (the 1st being Washington Square) and in both cases, I have not been very impressed. Henry James had great ideas for stories, but he really did not execute them well. Now, I really like literature from this time period, but James stifles his narrative with so much unnecessary language that one gets lost and the suspense of the story falls flat.

I did not find this story in the least chilling and was often frustrated with James' style. Others might find James a good read, but not I.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

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THE TURN OF THE SCREW AND OTHER SHORT STORIES

Manufacturer: Signet
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HFBFWA

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"You Can't Please Your Father and Me Both; You Must Choose Between Us..."
a classic American tale of parents and children
A pleasure
Early James At His Best
the sacrificial American girl

The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Stories
Henry James
Manufacturer: Blackstone Audiobooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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Daisy Miller (Penguin Classics)
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The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)
Poetic Meter and Poetic Form
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

ASIN: 0786105615

Book Description

Washington Square follows the coming-of-age of its plain-faced, kindhearted heroine, Catherine Sloper. Much to her father’s vexation, a handsome opportunist named Morris Townsend woos the long-suffering heiress, intent on claiming her fortune. When Catherine stubbornly refuses to call off her engagement, Dr. Sloper forces Catherine to choose between her inheritance and the only man she will ever truly love. Cynthia Ozick, in her Introduction to what she calls Henry James’s “most American fiction,” writes that “every line, every paragraph, every chapter [of Washington Square] is a fleet-footed light brigade, an engine of irony.” Precise and understated, this charming novel endures as a matchless study of New York in the mid-nineteenth century.

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Inspired by a story Henry James heard at a dinner party, Washington Square tells how the rakish but idle Morris Townsend tries to win the heart of heiress Catherine Sloper against the objections of her father. Precise and understated, the book endures as a matchless social study of New York in the mid-nineteenth century.

Customer Reviews:

"You Can't Please Your Father and Me Both; You Must Choose Between Us...".......2007-07-08

Although Henry James is best known for The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics), this slender volume of a young woman's lifetime is one that resonates for the oddest reasons. With a protagonist who is entirely passive, a plot that is somewhat uneventful and a cast of supporting characters that are entirely unsympathetic, "Washington Square" is a novel that encapsulates a life hardly worth reading about. Paradoxically, that is precisely why it should be read, and why it's so surprisingly memorable.

Catherine Sloper is shy, plain, dull and a little slow in her studies. Her mother was none of these things, leaving her somewhat of a disappointment to her father, an accomplished and well-respected doctor, a man who Catherine adores and longs to please. Well aware of her spiritless nature, Catherine is astonished when she receives the attention of the handsome and charming Morris Townsend, and is soon devotedly in love with her new suitor. Encouraged by her romantic and foolish Aunt Lavinia Penniman, Catherine accepts Morris's proposal of marriage. Unfortunately, her father is not at all impressed by the match, (believing Morris to be a mercenary after her dowry) and forbids Catherine from seeing him on the threat of disinheritance. Torn between the two most important people in her life, the listless and confused Catherine decides to wait. But will her beloved wait for her, or is she deceived by his true intentions?

Catherine's complete ordinariness is what makes her special within the context of the novel, as I am hard-pressed to think up another heroine who is so uncommonly common. Though she is a pleasant enough person, there is nothing remotely interesting to her, save the predicament she finds herself in. Her situation is frustrating to behold, as the poor girl is torn between her intelligent, infallible father and her charming, loving fiancée. Although her father has his daughter's best interests at heart, he handles the affair with such practicality and stubbornness that his crusade against Townsend eventually dwindles into a battle of will between himself and his daughter, and then petty revenge and one-upmanship. Likewise, though Morris Townsend seems faithful and loving, declaring that he has no interest in Catherine's inheritance whatsoever, we cannot shake a sense of untrustworthiness in him. Despite Catherine's plainness, you can't help but feel that neither man deserves her.

To be privy to Catherine's inner struggles is to witness a tiny and insignificant life within literature, with none of the romance, passion or tragedy of Lizzie Bennett, Tess Durbeyfield, Cathy Earnslaw, Jane Eyre, or any other literary heroine that comes to mind. Although Mrs Penniman alleviates some of the gloom with her far-flung intrigues and romances, her presence ultimately brings more harm that good to her young charge. Catherine is a woman who suffers in silence, without witness or companionship, a testimony to how passive-aggressiveness, lost opportunities and selfishness can destroy the life of one who has no means of fighting back. Every single individual on earth would like to believe that they are special, unique and important in some way, and the mediocrity of a life ill-spent becomes quite terrifying by the close of the novel. Catherine's attempts to assert some control over her father and her suitor are pitiful to behold, though they are victories, they are tiny ones within the context of her life. It's almost as if James uses Catherine as a vessel for every individual who has simply "misplaced" their life, and the emptiness that follows those who don't have the means, strength or fortitude to fight against those that hold them in sway. Make sure it never happens to you.

a classic American tale of parents and children.......2007-03-21

Eloquently composed by a master of the World and American novel, Henry James, WASHINGTON SQUARE is a revelatory , painful study of wealth, prestige, and social discrimination in mid nineteenth century New York. Quite possibly James' masterpiece, it poignantly depicts with sympathy and intellectual blindness the a father's oppressing memory of his dead wife upon his innocent, frail and oblivious daughter. The daughter, Catherine Sloper, has become an iconic chatacter in American dramatic literature and film due to James' superficial description of her awkwardness coupled with the arrival of her wit, ruthlessness, spirit and clever sensibility after she is jilted by her fiancee. A remarkable study of how parents unknowingly deprive children of love and nurturing though their grief and personal disappointment.

A pleasure.......2007-01-22

Washington Square is a pleasure to read. Best of all is Henry James' lush prose; his ethereal descriptions of characters and their emotional states and feelings towards others is peerless - and beautiful, and often funny in a stylistic sense. The novel itself functions as an expostition of human greed and the need for control, physically and emotionally. The four focal characters are all well drawn, and because of that their more despicable natures come forward. The naive Catherine; her father, the overbearing Dr. Sloper; his sister, the officious Mrs. Penniman; and the greedy, and lazy, Morris Townsend, ostensibly interested in Catherine only for her, and her father's, money. There is plenty of scheming and posturing by all four of them, and any more words from me will spoil the novel. Also amusing, is the dated sensibilities of the characters; but it all adds up to an enjoyable novel by an American master.

Early James At His Best.......2006-12-18

Though James rejected this tale for inclusion in the New York Edition of his works, presumably because it was too simple and straightforward, many readers have not shared his judgment, insisting instead the work has great merit.
Its theme is an intriguing one that raises the following question: Is it better to be clever or good? Even here, for James, the answer is not all that simple, his conclusion being it's probably best to be some subtle combination of both.
Dr. Sloper and Morris Townsend, the central male figures, are clever men, but each is deficient in his own way. The caustically witty Doctor wants to be just, but his pride in being right about Morris as a fortune hunter ultimately overrides his fatherly concerns. For this reason, he becomes a sort of Hawthorne-like villain, a scientific, detached, almost gleeful observer of his own daughter's plight, rather than a suitably caring parent. He suffers, finally, not from an excess of cleverness, but from a defect of generous felt emotion. Morris, too, is a definitely clever character, but at the same time he's the spoiled creation of enabling women, a boy-man who's more a self-interested player at life than a vital participant in it, an early version of the fatherless "It's all about me" youth of later modern fiction.
The heroine Catherine is a sorely beset young woman, pulled this way and that, now by her right-at-all-costs father, then by her fortune hunting suitor. She is a good, dutiful daughter throughout, though the novel details her growth in intelligent personhood. She finally gains the independence needed to tell her manipulative father where his parental rights end and her own moral self begins. Similarly, once her education in life is complete, she is able to avoid a final romantic capitulation, telling the shameless Morris in the novel's last scene what her mature self now requires he hear from her. Naturally, he's too self-involved to accurately understand her real character.
This short novel, finally, is rich in witty literary parody. It's closing chapters read like an inverted "Odyssey," with the patiently waiting Catherine weaving embroidery in Penelope-like fashion, until the surprise return of the long wandering Morris. All in all, despite the masterly author's doubts, this is a work of considerable distinction.

the sacrificial American girl.......2006-07-10

Washington Square can be read as an upper-class fairy tale. Catherine Sloper has the tendency to see the people around her as if they were characters in a novel. Her father's education has been based on safeguarding Catherine from the vulgarity of "appearance". He is mostly concerned with her daughter not being overdressed. But how is she to learn not to overestimate her acquaintances? The influence of her aunt, a woman of powerful romantic imagination, misleads the young Catherine in her view and opinion of the young and dazzling Morris Townsend. Is he really madly in love with her? What has made this young gentleman worthy of receiving the benefit of every doubt in the Sloper household? Catherine seems to lose her sense of her rights in this relationship: "she had only a consciousness of immense and unexpected favours".

The problem is that Aunt Penniman delights in a drama, and the young Townsend has too high a sense of performance himself to disappoint her. A kiss and an embrace may no longer be a demonstration of affection, but a "sign". The poor bachelorette does not think too much about it, and will take whatever comes her way. Can this man be untrue to her when he says that she is irresistible? Is he in love or is he mercenary?

In the opinion of Dr Sloper, the young Townsend is out to seek his fortune through marriage. He has been reckless in his early youth, squandering his small fortune. But is it too despicable of him to seek to remake his life through matrimony? How are we to draw the moral profile of such a person? Are we capable of mercy, or only of Sloper's smug scorn of Catherine's need for love? It seems to be the case that the "interested" Morris may be altogether more likeable than Catherine's father.

When is the right moment to leave a partner whom one mistrusts? Isn't it better to suffer for a twelvemonth and then get over it than to commit oneself for life to someone unworthy of our cares, be it boyfriend or Dad? Is Morris really a selfish idler? On the occasion of her being disinherited, would Morris still care to marry an unattractive and impoverished girl?

Cosmopolitanism is in the novel a measure of young Catherine's incapacity to develop. After her father takes her for an artistic tour of Europe, she hasn't managed to grow into a "wiser" woman. But how is wisdom to be measured? She becomes withdrawn from her tactless and proud father. After she has been cruelly jilted, Dr Sloper is perverse enough to mock her having lost her chance to marry a charming young man. One is led to believe that Sloper had some Freudian attachment to his daughter, who had come to substitute his her beautiful mother in Sloper's heart. James's understanding of romantic and human emotions is deeply moving.

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