tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post5986021986284254215..comments2024-03-27T16:48:21.039-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: “The awful subject?” Mrs. Brook wailed - the subject of The Awkward Age - abject, horrid, unredeemed vileness from beginning to end Amateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-23137804432213805792017-02-16T23:08:13.383-06:002017-02-16T23:08:13.383-06:00J. Hillis Miller! My favorite academic critic. A...J. Hillis Miller! My favorite academic critic. A number of Wuthering Expectations posts are written in his spirit, as I interpret it. I should read his James book someday. The chain you construct, about Nanda's knowing, is plausible. Maybe necessary.<br /><br />I think I will return to James - <i>Dove</i>? <i>Ambassadors</i>? - when I finish Frank Norris. Now there's a palate cleanser.<br /><br />What great summer plans. Iceland!<br /><br />I have one argument with you. There cannot be spoilers in his essay, because there are no such things as spoilers. A watched plot never spoils.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-57841026321977052892017-02-16T15:24:06.712-06:002017-02-16T15:24:06.712-06:00I'm taking another stab at "The Awkward A...I'm taking another stab at "The Awkward Age" because it has spurred me on to a re-read of "The Wings of the Dove." A casual reference early on in "Dove" caused me to Google something that made me find the 2005 book by J Hillis Miller, "Literature as Conduct: Speech Acts in Henry James," which has an EXHAUSTIVE chapter on "The Awkward Age." Miller takes a while to get wound up, but I thought his analysis was highly illuminating and cogent (though how he could have let a typo like Wilde's "The ETERNAL Husband" make it into print is beyond me). The essay does contain some spoilers regarding other James novels (particularly "Wings of the Dove" but you might find it useful, particularly on the topic what the central object is of the novel--which may or may not be homosexuality (as I suspected). Although Miller ultimately undercuts his own theory near the end, I believe that Nanda's "knowing" ALL about Vanderbank may include knowing the unspeakable, thus making her an unsuitable candidate for marriage; while Vanderbank might have been able to marry her if she did NOT know his proclivities, he is too honorable to face the fact that she would marry him in SPITE of them. That requires precious parsing, but with what other author is such parsing not only appropriate, but required?<br /><br />I'm so glad that this blog sent me to "The Awkward Age," because the heady discussions have reinvigorated my interest in James and in the pleasures of the close reading life in general. I know you have moved on to "War and Peace," which I won't get to most likely until summer, unless I decide to go for Proust instead. I'll be in England much of the summer, studying Mary Queen of Scots at Oxford and then hiking in Iceland part of August, so Tolstoy may have to wait until fall, by which time you most likely will have moved on to Forster, which should lead to some delicious and delightful postings.cwilson284https://www.blogger.com/profile/01095943424268993611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-41189692831769938132017-02-09T08:39:24.726-06:002017-02-09T08:39:24.726-06:00A great Jamesian paradox - those books "ruin&...A great Jamesian paradox - those books "ruin" Nanda and help her <i>escape</i> ruin!<br /><br />I'm glad James brought Tishy Grendon on-stage, however briefly. I was worried, for a while, that we would never get to see her.<br /><br />It is such an interesting book. Wonderful comment.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-84651590859723478072017-02-09T01:45:41.135-06:002017-02-09T01:45:41.135-06:00Maybe because I've been reading The Awkward Ag...Maybe because I've been reading The Awkward Age alongside Tess of the D'Urbervilles (a book James didn't like) I can't help but see parallels between James's and Hardy's vastly different characteristic take on the gap between male and female privilege, regardless of class. Tess's "ruin" is pretty obvious, but it takes tweezers and patience to realize that Nanda's "ruin" is that she has read smutty books and knows how to recognize that everyone in her circle (except perhaps Mitchy and, at the start, Aggie) is either sleeping around or at least wants to. And that alone is what "spoils" Nanda, even for a relatively poor middle-class poseur like Vanderbank, whose own debaucheries are only hinted at, and whose preternatural good looks give him more than a tint of the unspeakable, even while they let him into the very best salons and country houses. The pimping of Aggie is frightening and louche, even by my jaded contemporary standards, and I don't blame her for kicking the traces after marriage, even though I feel sorry for the rich, ugly, and dim-witted Mitchy. Now that I've finished, I think I can say that I liked the book more than you did, but I admit giving up trying to follow the background characters' indiscretions. Although I would almost kill to have someone in my circle named Tishy Grendon. Someone so named would have to be, as so many characters say in this book, "simply 'wonderful.'"cwilson284https://www.blogger.com/profile/01095943424268993611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-46585062399879208342017-01-26T14:49:05.810-06:002017-01-26T14:49:05.810-06:00I assume that The Awkward Age more or less flows i...I assume that <i>The Awkward Age</i> more or less flows into those later novels. I have been reading some James short stories from 1900, some pretty good, some more trivial, but the movement is sometimes visible. And then again other times not - what a useful generalization I have made.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-45713942034299476752017-01-26T11:25:32.424-06:002017-01-26T11:25:32.424-06:00The Ambassadors, when you get around to it, is sor...<i>The Ambassadors</i>, when you get around to it, is sort of about a dawning awareness of corruption and a subsequent striving toward innocence, a nice turnabout.scott g.f.baileyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05726743149139510832noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-71396999873130320322017-01-26T08:24:59.787-06:002017-01-26T08:24:59.787-06:00It begins to seem like it.It begins to seem like it.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-9104417924314198762017-01-26T07:24:28.008-06:002017-01-26T07:24:28.008-06:00It sounds fun, I should read it. Maybe I have a co...It sounds fun, I should read it. Maybe I have a copy somewhere, I certainly used to own one, though I worry I'd give up after 100 pages of people just chatting.<br /><br />Is all later James (all James) about the corruption of innocents?obookihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03885121629202810216noreply@blogger.com