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Customer Review: Beauty and the Beast
This is about a successful American businessman in his thirties who leaves the USA, having made his fortune in copper and railroads, to travel around Europe and to find a wife. He encounters an old friend in the Louvre who takes him home and introduces him to his own interesting wife. Mrs. Tristram takes Christopher happily under her wing, absorbs him into her circle of friends, and tells him of an old friend who'd be just the perfect wife for him - a young and beautiful widowed countess of unimpeachable descent. Christopher meets Claire de Cintré and from that moment his one obsession is to marry her.
An attractive hero, he possesses remarkable talents. In fact he has pretty well every virtue except exalted antecedents; he is, for example, tall, good-looking, urbane, well-mannered, forthright, intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, persistent, good-natured, generous and rich. At their first meeting he conquers Claire sufficiently to be allowed to continue to visit her, instead of being shown the door. Actually, his dogged audacity is pretty amazing; he simply asks her to marry him after about the fifth meeting, because he wants everything to be above-board. She says No and he promises not to mention the matter for another six months. He then succeeds in making a bargain with her mother and brother, the most rigid and narrow dyed-in-the-wool aristocrats, that they will not stand in his way or say anything against him until she accepts his hand. Marquise and marquis make no secret of their dislike of him ("a commercial person"), nor of their horror and disgust at the entire proposition. These are two different worlds. Christopher is aware of it but is confident that their differences can be overcome; after all he is very rich and he knows this is important to them. He sees no reason why sensible individuals would not agree in time to a straightforward and sensible offer.
Matters seem to proceed well or better than can be expected, and when the six months are up Claire graciously accepts Christopher's proposal. A dramatic turn of events, however, obstructs their happy plans.
Henry James is a joy for those who like a sedate plot to unfold slowly, carefully and thoroughly. His psychological observations are minute; his characters drawn with deftest strokes, and one or two lighter subplots fill out the general late-Victorian picture. Bigoted aristocrats, unprincipled upstarts, impulsive young noblemen, impassive secret-keepers, loquacious duchesses, these and many other finely-drawn characters fill the pages of this enthralling story.
Customer Review: A Showcasing of New and Old Worldviews
In The American, Henry James attempts to convey the differences between the market-driven republicanism of the United States and the monarchical traditions of Old Europe (France in particular). It seems that whenever anyone explores differences, stereotypes precipitate from the mix, and even the careful craft of Henry James is subject to this law of language. Yet one gets the sense that James is aware that presuming to accurately describe actual differences carries with it the risk of proscribing inferred differences. Thus, the novel seems to be more about the act of writing about differences - and not just nineteenth century differences - than anything else.
At the end of The American, neither "side" truly wins or loses in any definite sense, and this becomes emblematic of Modernity - the inability (futility?) inherent in attempting to reconcile past traditions with new ideas. Ezra Pound's mantra, "make it new," gave a center to Modernism, and The American shows us that the desire for newness inherently involves negotiations with the past: Those who carry old traditions desire to render their time-worn customs as eternally of the present while those seeking new ideas must remember the ideas of the past so as to break from them. The overwhelming questions remain: When should one drop outdated customs in favor of something new, and how can one recognize traditions worth keeping?
Customer Review: Why Read Henry James?
Why read Henry James? He can be quite difficult, and his 19th century world was so very different from ours... or was it? This novel, among other things, poses an eternally relevant question: Can money buy everything? Like Edith Wharton, young Henry James was fascinated by the precise effects of wealth, power and social position on interpersonal relationships. He gives us a character, Christopher Newman, who he calls "a powerful specimen of an American" - a tall, handsome, charming, intelligent self-made businessman of incredible personal wealth. He comes to Europe to find the one thing he hasn't got -- a perfect wife, "the best article in the market." He settles in Paris and is befriended by The Tristams, two unhappily married expatriates. The husband is too much of a boor for Newman to tolerate much, but he develops a friendship with Mrs. Tristam, who claims she knows the perfect woman for Newman: a widow from a semi-impoverished aristocratic family. Claire de Cintre is everything Newman is looking for, and he falls in love during a slow courtship consisting of chilly fireside teas with her creepy family, who make it clear that he is a totally undesirable suitor, in spite of his vast wealth. The mere fact that he has had to WORK for his money renders him too "vulgar" to even consider marrying into a family with the blood of archdukes, no matter how hard up they are. It's seriously strange to even imagine a world where great wealth could be seriously second-guessed in such a way. Yet James seems to suggest there is something laudable in even such extreme snobbery. "I must say, to give the Devil his due, there is something rather fine in that...They wanted your money, but they have given you up for an idea." James, an expatriate himself, foresaw the 20th century American Empire and the triumph of pure filthy lucre over corrupt aristocracy, and (also like Edith Wharton) he was ambivalent about it. This is an early James and easier to read, and much less complex, than his later greater novels like "Portrait of a Lady" and "Wings of the Dove." But it's worth the modicum of effort, because the ending of the story hints at his potential for deeper psychological subtlety and ambiguity. Did Mrs. Tristam deliberately set Newman up with a woman she knew was unavailable because she was in love with him herself? And how much did that very unattainability influence Newman's attraction? "I don't believe you would have been happy... I wanted very much to see, first, whether such a marriage could actually take place; second, what would happen if it should take place." -- "Say I should have been miserable then; it's a misery I should have preferred to any happiness."
Customer Review: When Man Meets Woman, and Money and Social Status Clash . . .
What does a confident, energetic, single, self-made American millionaire do after amassing a fortune while still in his thirties? In the case of Christopher Newman, the good-natured, optimistic protagonist in Henry James' The American (published 1877), our hero (as James labels him) takes his money and makes on an extended visit to Europe, in search of culture, amusement and excitement to complement his exceedingly practical commercial past. The primary storyline centers on Newman's tireless efforts to marry a French woman, Claire, who is the woman of his dreams. Although the relationship goes passably well at first, despite obvious differences between Newman's straightforward American ways and Claire's aristocratic family, events abruptly take a turn for the worse about two-thirds of the way through the novel. Ultimately, Newman's "commercial side" is too much for the class-conscious Bellegardes to bear, and Claire is forced to reject Newman and retreat to the confines of a nunnery.
For anyone with an interest in understanding the clash of American and European society, values and culture, particularly in the late 19th century, The American is a worthwhile read. While the language and style of the work are at times a bit tedious, James' classic novel succeeds in elevating a common literary theme--man meets woman--onto a higher, more expansive cross-cultural stage. Though a happier resolution may have made for a more popular work of fiction, the realistic, less romanticized ending, with Newman pensive and melancholic and Claire cloistered away and out-of-touch in the nunnery, is exemplary of our universal human condition--a bittersweet affair in which openness and honesty do not necessarily win out over the inevitable prejudices, societal norms and sometimes even ill intentions of others.
One element of the story that I was hoping to find but did not was at least an inkling of how Newman, Claire, the Bellegardes or any other character in the novel go about finding a sense of "deeper meaning" in life. Newman has money but seeks an ideal wife. Claire appears to have the choice of marrying but is really being controlled by her family and ends up seeking solace (and maybe even emotional freedom?) in religion. The Bellegarde family have social status but are too embroiled in internal strife to be content. Beyond his cross-cultural (American versus European) social commentary, could James also be hinting that neither money, nor status, nor family, nor religion can bring us lasting satisfaction? If not any of the above, toward what higher objective should we all--individuals and societies alike---spend our waking hours striving toward?
Product Description
In this classic collision of the New World with Old Europe, James weaves a fable of thwarted desire that shifts between comedy, tragedy, romance, and melodrama.
Customer Review: The American is an early Henry James masterpiece
Henry James lived most of his life in Europe. When he was 36 years old
he wrote a novel about an American millionaire named Chrisopher Newman who was also 36. The novel of manners opens in Paris where Christopher
(named for Christopher Columbus) is enjoying his fortune, visiting art galleries and looking for a suitable wife. The Civil War veteran is a non-intellectual who is a version of an innocent abroad. He will join the countless characters in Jamesian fictions who are innocent Americans dealing with the old world culture of European sophistication.
Through a friend Mrs. Tristam he meets the Bellegard family. He falls in love with the enigmatic Claire Bellegarde courting her for several months. She agrees and then refuses to wed him. Claire retreats to a nunnery in Paris. Claire had been "sold" by her family to the rich and old man Cintre but he has died. She is used as a pawn by her evil mother and odious older brother. The reader will learn why she rejects Newman, the secret of the Bellegarde family and gain an appreciate of what society was like in the 1870s in Paris.
A secondary plot deals with the young Valentin Bellegarde who fights a duel over a prostitute. He befriends Newman introducing him to his formidable mother and brother.
The book is very understandable "The American" is not like the later James works of
"The Wings of the Dove, "The Ambassadors", and "The Golden Bowl" with their dense prose and convoluted pyschological style of probing the consciousness of the major characters.
Henry James was a genius who sought to understand the human heart. In this novel of 1876 the master has produced a fine book. This book is a good introduction to the world of James. Recommended.
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