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Kress, Jill M. The Figure of Consciousness: William James, Henry James, and Edith Wharton.(Book Review)

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From: Studies in the Novel
Date: 20050322
Author:Tursi, Renee

KRESS, JILL M. The Figure of Consciousness: William James, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. New York: Routledge, 2002. xv + 268 pp. $80.00.

The story of consciousness as it emerges in American letters begins most significantly with Ralph Waldo Emerson's struggle to awaken in us a new self. How this self was to proceed seemed relatively easy enough for him to describe--we were to enter into a new relationship with the universe based on our own energies. But where within ourselves we were to garner those forces sent him into his famous paroxysms and cadences of language, those ...

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