February '13 / James Reading: The Bostonians

[Gladys]

Gladys, your comments were very interesting. I'm not so sure that Ransom will succumb in the end. Henry James hardly gives us any hints about what will happen after the novel has ended. It was the same with Portrait of a Lady. I really couldn't imagine Isabel Archer's future course, after I closed the book.

Henry James invariably produces novels for which minority interpretations of the ending are more than defensible. The Portrait of a Lady is a case in point, as you may see from my entirely sympathetic reading of Isabel Archer: An infinite hope that she should never do anything wrong.

There is many a hint given by Henry James as to the aftermath of the ending. For instance, while the urbane Basil Ransom seems the winner, James (with his usual understatement) has painted Ransom as a decidedly unpleasant character, perhaps as unpleasant as any in a James' novel. Ransom preys on the obvious vulnerability of the highly suggestible Verena (consider her father's sorcery) and he treats everyone else as means to an end. I doubt that the charismatic Verena Tarrant ever had much love for Ransom, or for Olive Chancellor, but for better or for worse she will faithfully carry out Miss Birdseye (inspired, deathbed) prophesy to the letter, in the course of time. And that will be Basil Ransom's terrible punishment!

Henry James, in my opinion, is all about irony, and especially so in his endings. I wonder whether James, born to a wealthy New York family, and a homosexual, does have the bias against women you suggest. I would certainly struggle to accept that the London-based author has the least sympathy for our energetic young man from the deep South with a world-view appropriate to the dark ages and a moral compass to match.

I much liked the novel.

[Scheherazade]

I did not find Ransom an unpleasant character at all. He is, quite probably, someone I would not agree with on my issues but I do not think that he expresses his views any less agreeably than the others in the book, inclusing Olive and Verena.

I am not a romantic but I give their love more credit. I don't think Basil will succumb because he truly believes in his views and, I feel, James also thinks he is a necessary opposition in the mechanism. However, theirs will not be a peaceful home because their political views; there will be heated debates and exchanges.

[mona amon]

I have to say I actually liked Basil and was rooting for him all the time, and can easily imagine why Verena fell in love with him. Like Scher I feel they were both genuinely in love with each other. He might be a bit overbearing, but his views were not overly reactionary for his time and only seem so in contrast to the radical feminism of the female characters. Also, he's no hypocrite - He's very open about his opinions, his opinion of Verena's opinions, and his lack of money.

His male chauvinism does not bother me so much because Olive comes across as a man-hater rather than a feminist, or rather, a woman who is interested in feminism not because of passionate conviction but because she hates men. I was also not convinced that Verena had any true longlasting passion for the cause, beyond a youthful enthusiam stoked in her by others, and a way to showcase her gift for public speaking. It is this gift that Basil will have to deal with in the future. Will it cause her suffering to give it up, or will she be accepting of the supression and turn to other things?

Neither of the women is like Miss Birdseye, the stalwart soldier labouring for the cause, and Basil ultimately respects her and feels perfect friendliness for her and for Mary Prance, a doctor and a genuinely 'liberated' woman.

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EDIT: I found this movie on youtube and will be watching it sometime - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4L-qel7AQs

[Gladys]

I did not find Ransom an unpleasant character at all...I do not think that he expresses his views any less agreeably than the others in the book, including Olive and Verena.

So Ransom seems throughout: eminently likeable. Indeed, the most distasteful characters in many a James novel only seem so after considerable reflection on the ending. The best example is beautiful and stunningly sublime Kate Croy in On the wings of the Dove. Kate seems peerlessly wonderful until one chooses to reflects, with no help from James, on her relation to others. Henry James is good at decoying the reader to the very end.

Olive, by contrast, seems grimly miserable but, as Mrs Luna says, honest Olive is full of rectitude.

I am not a romantic but I give their love more credit. I don't think Basil will succumb because he truly believes in his views...

If you are right, why are there so many passages like these below?

...so that her friend [Olive] had a perception, after this, that it would probably be impossible in any way ever to offend her [Verena]. She was too rancourless, too detached from conventional standards, too free from private self-reference. It was too much to say of her that she forgave injuries [Ramson's is the deepest], since she was not conscious of them; there was in forgiveness a certain arrogance of which she was incapable, and her bright mildness glided over the many traps that life sets for our consistency.
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And while, lifting and pushing, he was helping again to insert her [Verena] into the oblong receptacle, she turned a little and repeated, "She will affect you! If that's to be your secret, I will keep it," Ransom heard her subjoin.
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She [Mrs Tarrant] would make any sacrifice for affection." The fancy suddenly struck Ransom of asking, in response to this, "And you? would you make any?" Verena gave him a bright natural stare. "Any sacrifice for affection?" She thought a moment, and then she said: "I don't think I have a right to say, because I have never been asked. I don't remember ever to have had to make a sacrifice—not an important one."
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...and as they walked it came over her [Olive] that some of the things he [Ransom] had said to her were far beyond what Olive could have imagined as the very worst possible.
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What was a part of her essence was the extraordinary generosity with which she could expose herself, give herself away, turn herself inside out, for the satisfaction of a person who made demands of her.
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What will become of your charm?—is that what you want to know? It will be about five thousand times greater than it is now; that's what will become of it. We shall find plenty of room for your facility; it will lubricate our whole existence. Believe me, Miss Tarrant, these things will take care of themselves.
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The emotion she [Verena] had expressed as he stood there before poor Miss Birdseye was only one of her instinctive contortions; he had taken due note of that—said to himself that a good many more would probably occur before she would be quiet.
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"I shall see nothing but shame and ruin!" Olive shrieked...

Nevertheless, Verena will eventually vindicate both Olive and Miss Birdseye. In view of these quotes and ones previously supplied, the affect of the ever-so-subtle demands made on the infinitely suggestible Verena by the dying Miss Birdseye is critical to appreciating the ending.

I was also not convinced that Verena had any true long-lasting passion for the cause, beyond a youthful enthusiasm stoked in her by others, and a way to showcase her gift for public speaking. It is this gift that Basil will have to deal with in the future. Will it cause her suffering to give it up, or will she be accepting of the suppression and turn to other things?

Verena indeed has little passion for the cause per se, as Mrs Luna rightly forecasts. She will be accepting of the suppression and will turn to her genuine vocation, as imputed by Miss Birdseye, on her deathbed. And the married Basil Ransom will prove just as impotent in derailing the passionate and charismatic Verena as Olive Chancellor! That's some ending, I think - a much better one than a simple love story with a more or less happy ending. The energetic Ransom gets more, much more, than he bargained for.

...the words he [Ransom] had spoken to her [Verena] there about her genuine vocation, as distinguished from the hollow and factitious ideal with which her family and her association with Olive Chancellor had saddled her—these words, the most effective and penetrating he had uttered, had sunk into her soul and worked and fermented there. She had come at last to believe them, and that was the alteration, the transformation. They had kindled a light in which she saw herself afresh and, strange to say, liked herself better than in the old exaggerated glamour of the lecture-lamps.

[Gladys]

I have just understood the blatant foreshadowing by Mrs Luna, early in the novel. Ransom is the lion tamer, who energetically tames both Olive and Verena by the end of the novel. But as Olive has well learned, the taming of gifted Verena is problematic in the extreme.

"But, mark my words," said Mrs. Luna, "she [Verena] will give Olive the greatest cut she has ever had in her life. She will run off with some lion-tamer; she will marry a circus-man!"

In The Bostonians, the wedded Verena will ultimately give the central character, the circus-man Basil Ransom, the greatest cut of all!

Basil Ransom's emotions were peculiar while his hostess delivered herself, in a manner at once casual and emphatic, of these rather insidious remarks.

[mona amon]

I think James is a realistic writer rather than a romantic one, but in this case the ending with Verena and Basil succumbing to each other seems to be the realistic ending. However, he does show us Verena in tears and tells us they will not be her last, in order to remind us that his ending is not a romantic one with Basil carrying off Verena into the glorious sunset. The young couple will have quite a lot of settling down to do. Imagine what a contrast Basil's shabby rooms will be for Verena compared to Olive's beautiful house, for instance, and Basil will have to pull up his socks and start becoming more successful, now that he's a married man. A lot of hardship lies ahead, but I'm sure they'll settle down in the end and have a reasonably happy life.

As for the quotes, my interpretation is quite different -

"...so that her friend [Olive] had a perception, after this, that it would probably be impossible in any way ever to offend her [Verena]. She was too rancourless, too detached from conventional standards, too free from private self-reference. It was too much to say of her that she forgave injuries [Ramson's is the deepest], since she was not conscious of them; there was in forgiveness a certain arrogance of which she was incapable, and her bright mildness glided over the many traps that life sets for our consistency.

Doesn't Verena's 'bright mildness' show that she is the one who will be submissive, and Basil dominant?

"Any sacrifice for affection?" She thought a moment, and then she said: "I don't think I have a right to say, because I have never been asked. I don't remember ever to have had to make a sacrifice—not an important one."

At that point in her life she had not been called to make any sacrifice, but by the end she'll have to sacrifice her career out of love for Basil, and of course this is complicated by the fact that anything she does out of love for Basil will go directly against Olive, for whom she also has affection.


"She will affect you! If that's to be your secret, I will keep it," Ransom heard her subjoin

Ms Birdseye was right in a way, as even Basil acknowledges. She affected him so much that he fell in love with her almost from the first time he saw her. But she doesn't seem to realise that you can be 'affected' by someone's character and personality without being in the least affected by their opinions. She also underestimated Basil's own effect on Verena, and failed to even imagine that Verena might actually be the convert rather than the converter.

"...and as they walked it came over her that some of the things he [Ransom] had said to her were far beyond what Olive could have imagined as the very worst possible."

"I shall see nothing but shame and ruin!" Olive shrieked...

Well yes...poor Olive is to completely lose this battle of wills.

What was a part of her essence was the extraordinary generosity with which she could expose herself, give herself away, turn herself inside out, for the satisfaction of a person who made demands of her.

Everyone makes demands of Verena - her parents, Olive, and Basil, and in the end she gives in to Basil's demands because they are most in accordance with her own wishes.

The emotion she [Verena] had expressed as he stood there before poor Miss Birdseye was only one of her instinctive contortions; he had taken due note of that—said to himself that a good many more would probably occur before she would be quiet.

Here Basil understands something of Verena's conflict, although he is not in sympathy with it. But he's very confident of his ultimate triumph.

What will become of your charm?—is that what you want to know? It will be about five thousand times greater than it is now; that's what will become of it. We shall find plenty of room for your facility; it will lubricate our whole existence. Believe me, Miss Tarrant, these things will take care of themselves.

Basil does not want to trample upon her or stifle her, which is a relief, since he very much has the upper hand in their relationship.

...the words he [Ransom] had spoken to her [Verena] there about her genuine vocation, as distinguished from the hollow and factitious ideal with which her family and her association with Olive Chancellor had saddled her—these words, the most effective and penetrating he had uttered, had sunk into her soul and worked and fermented there. She had come at last to believe them, and that was the alteration, the transformation. They had kindled a light in which she saw herself afresh and, strange to say, liked herself better than in the old exaggerated glamour of the lecture-lamps.

But what do you feel is her genuine vocation? On reading that chapter again I think it's pretty clear that Basil means that her genuine vocation is to take care of home and family and be very beloved by him.

[Gladys]

…the ending with Verena and Basil succumbing to each other seems to be the realistic ending. However, he does show us Verena in tears and tells us they will not be her last, in order to remind us that his ending is not a romantic one with Basil carrying off Verena into the glorious sunset.

The massively understated sentence that ends the novel is typical of many a James’ book. If you want the ironic ending Henry James really intends, consider as entirely accurate the foreshadowing presented here:

"All what, Miss Tarrant?" Ransom asked.

"Well, what I told her [Miss Birdseye]. She is sure you are going to become one of our leaders, that you are very gifted for treating great questions and acting on masses of people, that you will become quite enthusiastic about our uprising, and that when you go up to the top as one of our champions it will all have been through me."

Ransom stood there, smiling at her…

As for the quotes, my interpretation is quite different.

Your interpretation is entirely accurate insofar as it reflects the viewpoint of Basil Ransom and Olive Chancellor who, from the first, are like open windows for the reader. Yes, Basil and Olive interpret the situation exactly as you describe.

In reality, Verena will convert Basil through her bright mildness. She'll have to sacrifice her career out of love for Basil, but not Miss Birdseye's final vision for her. What little insight the dying Miss Birdseye actually has matters little alongside the huge impact on Verena. Olive does lose this battle of wills, as will Basil later on. Everyone makes demands of Verena, not least Miss Birdseye, and Verena willingly complies. Basil is as confident of his ultimate triumph as cousin Olive was, before him. He looks forward to marital bliss and, while this may happen, the Southerner will also fulfil Miss Birdseye's feminist vision.

What you seem to miss is that never, never, does Henry James allow us direct access to the viewpoint of Verena. We, like Olive and Basil, are left to infer the viewpoint of this exquisitely passionate and sincere...quivering, spotless, consecrated maiden. Appreciating the differing perspectives of the main characters is always the challenge in reading Henry James.

"Miss Birdseye said you would convert me, but you haven't yet," it came into his head to say.

"You can't tell yet; wait a little. My influence is peculiar; it sometimes comes out a long time afterwards!" This speech, on Verena's part, was evidently perfunctory, and the grandeur of her self-reference jocular; she was much more serious when she went on quickly, "Do you mean to say Miss Birdseye promised you that?"

"Oh yes. Talk about influence! you should have seen the influence I obtained over her."

"Well, what good will it do, if I'm going to tell Olive about your visit?"

"Well, you see, I think she hopes you won't. She believes you are going to convert me privately—so that I shall blaze forth, suddenly, out of the darkness of Mississippi, as a first-class proselyte: very effective and dramatic." [here is massive foreshadowing of the ending from the mouth of the saintly octogenarian]

Verena struck Basil Ransom as constantly simple, but there were moments when her candour seemed to him preternatural. "If I thought that would be the effect, I might make an exception," she remarked, speaking as if such a result were, after all, possible.

But what do you feel is her genuine vocation? On reading that chapter again I think it's pretty clear that Basil means that her genuine vocation is to take care of home and family and be very beloved by him.

Verena's genuine vocation initially related to married life with Ransom. Nevertheless, the evangelical aspect of her vocation flowers in full glory following the death-bed prophesy of Miss Birdseye. Verena Tarrant will do father Selah, that one-time miracle monger, proud. Her Southerner husband, the man who liked to understand, will one day stand in the vanguard of the women's movement! If only Olive Chancellor could see that miraculous day!

As Verena says to Olive:

"Do you leave it all to me? You don't give me much help," Olive said.

"Help to what?"

"Help to help you."

"I don't want any help; I am quite strong enough!" Verena cried gaily. The next moment she inquired, in an appeal half comical, half touching, "My dear colleague, why do you make me say such conceited things?"

The married Ransom will face the same awesome artillery that, in the end, muzzled Olive, his cousin:

Olive had contributed with all her zeal to the development of Verena's gift; but I scarcely venture to think now, what she may have said to herself, in the secrecy of deep meditation, about the consequences of cultivating an abundant eloquence. Did she say that Verena was attempting to smother her now in her own phrases? Did she view with dismay the fatal effect of trying to have an answer for everything?

[Gladys]

The Bostonians is a racy novel with all the appeal of a who-dun-it to be solved by the reader well after finishing. I loved it. The big question is: What are we to make of Verena Tarrant? Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom seriously underestimate her. Even the canny Mrs Luna gets her wrong. Paradoxically, the two who get closest are the seemingly senile Miss Birdseye and the mesmerist father, whom Olive has bought off.

[Selah Tarrant] looked at his child only from the point of view of the service she might render to humanity. To keep her ideal pointing in the right direction, to guide and animate her moral life—this was a duty more imperative for a parent so closely identified with revelations and panaceas than seeing that she formed profitable worldly connexions.

Henry James withholds explicit information on the perspective of Verena: that rancourless young woman, detached from conventional standards, free from private self-reference, the sweetest flower of character (as one might say) that had ever bloomed on earth. One indication of Verena's viewpoint arises from her compliance with the wishes of others. The magnetic Selah Tarrant ensures her cooperation through expansive spiritual conjuring, the ardent Olive Chancellor through positing Verena at the pinnacle of the women's movement, and the debonair Basil Ransom through extolling the genuine vocation that is sacred matrimony.

It’s perhaps easy to miss that the short, aged, unassuming Miss Birdseye also makes a comparable claim on Verena, a claim which happens to mesh perfectly with Ransom’s genuine vocation, and her feminist upbringing. The angelic octogenarian's dying behest sees Verena converting Ransom, the energetic arch-conservative from the South, to serve as a splendid standard bearer for the women’s movement. That’s some vision for Verena’s future: a glorious vision presented with sublime fervour by a dying saint.

If you doubt this interpretation, consider those whose wishes have no impact on the extraordinary generosity of Verena. At the Music Hall, Verena is deaf to harangue of her own loving mother and her business manager, Mr. Filer. Earlier, she is utterly dismissive of that enlightened and cultivated gentleman, Henry Burrage, who tastefully declines to impose on her the least vision, and she is dismissive of Henry’s elegant, rich and well-meaning mother. Verena herself consistently maintains: I have renounced.

"I don't want any help; I am quite strong enough!" Verena cried gaily. The next moment she inquired, in an appeal half comical, half touching, "My dear colleague [Olive], why do you make me say such conceited things?"

In New York, Verena reveals that her performance doesn't really depend on Olive, any more than she really needed her father to start her up. It's a small jump to say that the wedded Verena, a child of the women's movement, will perform without anyone's help, and certainly without Basil Ransom's.

Moreover, I don't believe that at bottom they are Miss Tarrant's opinions," Ransom added.

"You mustn't think she hasn't a strong hold of them," his companion [Miss Birdseye] exclaimed, more briskly. "If you think she is not sincere, you are very much mistaken. Those views are just her life."

"Well, she may bring me round to them," said Ransom, smiling.

Preparing for the Music Hall, Olive arms Verena to the hilt, just as Verena has begged of her. But Olive fails to grasp the peculiar nature of Verena's life-long dedication to the women’s cause. Olive sells short the girl who pulls hard. And so does Basil as he whisks his alluring Trojan Horse away from the Music Hall!

...the dreadful, ominous, fatal part of the situation was simply that now, for the first time in all the history of their sacred friendship, Verena was not sincere. She was not sincere when she told her [Olive] that she wanted to be helped against Mr. Ransom—when she exhorted her, that way, to keep everything that was salutary and fortifying before her eyes.

Poor Olive is so wrong: gifted Verena's great calling is not on the grand stage but in the home of that implacable enemy of the women's movement.

If Basil considered women superficial, it was a pity he couldn't see what Olive's standard of preparation was, or be present at their rehearsals, in the evening, in their little parlour.

Verena's tears, as she flees the Music Hall for married life, flow from the important sacrifice she makes for affection. It’s not so much her affection for Basil as her affection for Miss Birdseye and her transcendent vision. She presents to Verena a genuine vocation in the fight for the cause to which she has dedicated her life. The unflappable Selah Tarrant will be proud of his red-haired daughter.

[Basil] presently discovered that, beneath her hood, she [Verena] was in tears.

[mona amon]

I absolutely agree with you that this book just gets better every time you go back to it to look up something. I've been re-reading whole chapters just for the discussion, which I'm enjoying very much, even though my replies are not so frequent.

I feel Verena is central to the novel because her choice is what matters in the end, not Basil's, not Olive's, not her parents', and not (I am convinced) even Miss Birdseye's. All the others exploit her in one way or the other, thrusting a role on her which, with Basil's help, she comes to realize is one that she does not want to play. They exploit her and demand sacrifices out of her which for a while she willingly gives, until she's rescued by Basil. It's all very ironic because the one who preaches to her about freedom of women tries to tie her down and control her as much as she possibly can, while the reactionary Basil is the one who sets her free to pursue her true vocation.

Miss Birdseye is not portrayed as senile, but she too does not entirely escape the anti-feminist narrative bias. She is a noble-hearted, kind, good natured dupe, whom anyone can take advantage of.

It was a mere sketch of a smile, a kind of installment, or payment on account; it seemed to say that she would smile more if she had time, but that you could see, without this, that she was gentle and easy to beguile...[cut]... She belonged to the Short-Skirts League, as a matter of course; for she belonged to any and every league that had been founded for almost any purpose whatever. This did not prevent her being a confused, entangled, inconsequent, discursive old woman, whose charity began at home and ended nowhere, whose credulity kept pace with it, and who knew less about her fellow-creatures, if possible, after fifty years of humanitary zeal, than on the day she had gone into the field to testify against the iniquity of most arrangements. (Chapter 4)

which is why I have trouble accepting that her over-optimistic expectations of Basil are in any way visionary. It is her good natured simplemindedness that casts a spell on everyone from the reactionary Basil to the practical Mary Prance, but they show their affection by pretending to agree with her so as not to cause her distress, rather than changing themselves to fit her vision of them.

Verena is different. Young, impressionable and tender-hearted as she is, Miss Birdseye's death affects her deeply and sparks in her a crisis of conscience and achieves what Olive with all her fighting spirit is unable to. Verena gives Basil the slip. His victory is not to be so easily won after all, but he does triumph in the end.

[Gladys]

Miss Birdseye is not portrayed as senile, but she too does not entirely escape the anti-feminist narrative bias. She is a noble-hearted, kind, good natured dupe, who anyone can take advantage of...which is why I have trouble accepting that her over-optimistic expectations of Basil are in any way visionary.

I too appreciate your input, and entirely agree with your assessment of Miss Birdseye. She is only visionary in the sense that her unlikely but sublime idea rejuvenates the independent-minded Verena, and serves to foreshadows the eventual direction of the Basil and Verena's marriage. Incidentally, one reason Olive allowed Verena to see young men was the possibility of conversion to the cause (visits from handsome and unscrupulous young men for the sake of the opportunities it gave one to convert them): and that's exactly what will happen to the energetic Southerner.

But I would not agree that anyone succeeds in exploiting Verena, least of all the cousins, Olive and Basil. Verena perceives attempts at exploitation as an inconsequential component of her mere experiments in how to live morally better.

Even the development of her "gift" had not made her think herself too precious for mere experiments; she had neither a particle of diffidence nor a particle of vanity.
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"She doesn't want a piano—she doesn't want anything," Selah remarked

How could anyone exploit a girl with such a character?

It's all very ironic because the one who preaches to her about freedom of women tries to tie her down and control her as much as she possibly can, while the reactionary Basil is the one who sets her free to pursue her true vocation.

I suspect you seriously underestimate Verena’s independence and powerful internal drive. Verena, the brilliant young womapulls hard, is neither a muddle-head nor a dupe. There is a wealth of evidence that freedom of women is uppermost in her mind throughout the novel, despite the many who assert otherwise. They simply don't appreciate this singular and unassuming girl, who was raised by her father (“He is very good”) with a keen sense for what service she might render to humanity. Her true vocation owes far more to her egalitarian upbringing (reinforced by Miss Birdseye's naive dream) than to Olive's grandiose scheme or Basil's self-interested bulldozing. Olive does serve to provide Verena a fine (though unwitting) service in arming her to perform a feminist miracle on her husband to be.

With the Boston crowd growing restless in the Music Hall, her father Selah, with a boundless confidence in his daughter, gropingly prefigures the ultimate ending. His curious final utterance is perhaps the last direct foreshadowing of the ending Henry James really intends. Selah's Tarrant's declaration is fine instance of why I read Henry James. The irony of the narrator is exquisite:

Mrs. Tarrant had burst into violent hysterics, while Selah revolved vaguely about the room and declared that it seemed as if the better day was going to be put off for quite a while.

Typically, Henry James plants the key to understanding his stories well before the final chapter. This is spectacularly so in the delightful What Maisie Knew, where the ending is even more subtle. Selah Tarrant's off-the-cuff declaration happens to corresponds perfectly with Verena's words to Ramsom early in the novel:

"You can't tell yet; wait a little. My influence is peculiar; it sometimes comes out a long time afterwards!"

Verena is different. Young, impressionable and tender-hearted as she is, Miss Birdseye's death affects her deeply and sparks in her a crisis of conscience and achieves what Olive with all her fighting spirit is unable to. Verena gives Basil the slip. His victory is not to be so easily won after all, but he does triumph in the end.

I don't think Verena, with her extraordinary powers of reflexion is impressionable in the least! She is a brilliant and thoroughly independent thinker, immune to intellectual bullying from anyone:

She answered all her friend's questions with a good-nature which evidently took no pains to make things plausible, an effort to oblige, not to please; but, after all, she could give very little account of herself.

I don't want any help; I am quite strong enough!

Later, after the holiday at Marmion, we see that inspirational Verena has become more than a match for Olive. Will Basil fare better?

Miss Birdseye's dying vision, in fact, propels Verena (with unwitting Olive's help) into frantic preparation for her improbably ambitious mission to convert Basil. Verena hesitates no longer; she commits herself whatever the cost. After the death, Verena gives Basil the slip because she needs more time to prepare for this formidable mission she will face in wedlock. The risk and consequences of failure are extreme.

Basil's appearance at the Music Hall is not unexpected because Verena has been preparing for him. His "triumph at the Music Hall" will prove short-lived, for the delightful maiden he drags into his castle is a Trojan Horse. The narrator and Verena are agreed that the social views of the Mississippian are abhorrent, and there nothing to suggest Verena has a change of heart. The narrator is hardly suggesting a love story when he ends with: the union, so far from brilliant, into which she [Verena] was about to enter.

I [Verena] am faint and weak at all the horrible things you [Ransom] have said; I have lunched on abominations.

In the end it will be Verena, and the Women's Movement, that triumph gloriously.

"Oh yes—I want to give my life!" she [Verena] exclaimed, with a vibrating voice; and then she added gravely, "I want to do something great!"

[Gladys]

For those who see the ending as a triumph for Basil Ransom, think again. Verena’s perspective is extraordinary: too rancourless, too detached from conventional standards, too free from private self-reference. Therefore the interpretation by "ordinary" others of her actions, motives and motivation simply cannot be trusted. Only the narrator, Verena herself and, perhaps, Selah Tarrant are trustworthy interpreters. The triumphant ending cannot be sustained once these three reliable witnesses are examined. I challenge someone to find a quote which implies otherwise.

Miss Birdseye’s assertion to Ransom that Verena is committed (in her peculiar way) to the Women’s Movement is vindicated by countless passages, believe it or not. She is a child of the movement through and through, despite all the doubters. And towards the end, Verena has reason not to disillusion them.

[Verena] struck her [Olive] as the only person she had yet encountered who had exactly the same tenderness, the same pity, for women that she herself had.
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...that I [Verena] have dedicated my life; that there is something unspeakably dear to me.

Verena will marry Ransom but her view of marriage, a subject long discussed in her presence, is unconventional for the times. She is marrying for mixed motives and, of these, love, honour and obey are not front and centre. Her marital commitment is not necessarily lifelong, unlike her peculiar commitment to the cause of women.

"Well, I must say," said Miss Tarrant, "I prefer free unions." Olive held her breath an instant; such an idea was so disagreeable to her.
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It implied, at any rate, that unions of some kind or other had her approval, and did not exclude the dangers that might arise from encounters with young men in search of sensations.

[mona amon]

Call me a cynical old biddy but I don't see even a whispered hint of a feminist miracle anywhere in the book, and do not believe for a moment that James intended one. The course the book is going to take is summed up early on -

There were two or three pale shop-maidens whose acquaintance she had sought; but they had seemed afraid of her, and the attempt had come to nothing. She took them more tragically than they took themselves; they couldn't make out what she wanted them to do, and they always ended by being odiously mixed up with Charlie. Charlie was a young man in a white overcoat and a paper collar; it was for him, in the last analysis, that they cared much the most. They cared far more about Charlie than about the ballot. Olive Chancellor wondered how Mrs. Farrinder would treat that branch of the question. In her researches among her young townswomen she had always found this obtrusive swain planted in her path, and she grew at last to dislike him extremely. It filled her with exasperation to think that he should be necessary to the happiness of his victims (she had learned that whatever they might talk about with her, it was of him and him only that they discoursed among themselves), and one of the main recommendations of the evening club for her fatigued, underpaid sisters, which it had long been her dream to establish, was that it would in some degree undermine his position--distinct as her prevision might be that he would be in waiting at the door. ~ Chapter 5

Olive sees 'Charlie' as an obstacle in the way of the cause, instead of accepting him as a normal part of life, and one that will have to be incorporated into any social movement, feminist or otherwise. All her problems stem from there. The book seems more concerned with Olive's defeat and Charlie's triumph, rather than about the feminist movement as such. No sooner has Olive taken Verena under her wing, than Charlie appears in the form of Basil Ransom. In a desperate bid to circumvent Basil, she gives her reluctant consent to the idea of a union with Henry Burrage, whom she regards as a less dangerous sort of 'Charlie' than Basil, but of course that doesn't work.

I suspect you seriously underestimate Verena’s independence and powerful internal drive. Verena, the brilliant young womapulls hard, is neither a muddle-head nor a dupe. There is a wealth of evidence that freedom of women is uppermost in her mind throughout the novel, despite the many who assert otherwise. They simply don't appreciate this singular and unassuming girl, who was raised by her father (“He is very good”) with a keen sense for what service she might render to humanity. Her true vocation owes far more to her egalitarian upbringing (reinforced by Miss Birdseye's naive dream) than to Olive's grandiose scheme or Basil's self-interested bulldozing. Olive does serve to provide Verena a fine (though unwitting) service in arming her to perform a feminist miracle on her husband to be.

With the Boston crowd growing restless in the Music Hall, her father Selah, with a boundless confidence in his daughter, gropingly prefigures the ultimate ending. His curious final utterance is perhaps the last direct foreshadowing of the ending Henry James really intends. Selah's Tarrant's declaration is fine instance of why I read Henry James. The irony of the narrator is exquisite:

Mrs. Tarrant had burst into violent hysterics, while Selah revolved vaguely about the room and declared that it seemed as if the better day was going to be put off for quite a while.

In a way Verena is all that you say, and it would be a very hollow victory for Basil if she were not. But she is very young, and very much susceptible to outside influences. Her father seems to have tutored her about all the women's movement stuff. Her gift was for public speaking, and he had to give her something to speak about. Under Olive she goes much further, because she gets a really good education on the subject, and I have no doubt at all that she is completely sincere at the time, and really believes in what she says to the public. The ideas may have been put into her head by others but she seizes on them with enthusiasm, and it's her youthful ardour and enthusiasm which clashes with Basil's obstinate cynicism. But it is this very clash that brings about the realization that this world is too large for any one philosophy, that there are different points of view that can be just as true as one's own, that the majority of woman are not as suffering and down-trodden, nor the majority of men as vile, as Olive would have her believe -

Olive thought she knew the worst, as we have perceived; but the worst was really something she could not know, inasmuch as up to this time Verena chose as little to confide to her on that one point as she was careful to expatiate with her on every other. The change that had taken place in the object of Basil Ransom's merciless devotion since the episode in New York was, briefly, just this change--that the words he had spoken to her there about her genuine vocation, as distinguished from the hollow and factitious ideal with which her family and her association with Olive Chancellor had saddled her--these words, the most effective and penetrating he had uttered, had sunk into her soul and worked and fermented there. She had come at last to believe them, and that was the alteration, the transformation. They had kindled a light in which she saw herself afresh and, strange to say, liked herself better than in the old exaggerated glamour of the lecture-lamps. She could not tell Olive this yet, for it struck at the root of everything, and the dreadful, delightful sensation filled her with a kind of awe at all that it implied and portended. She was to burn everything she had adored; she was to adore everything she had burned. The extraordinary part of it was that though she felt the situation to be, as I say, tremendously serious, she was not ashamed of the treachery which she--yes, decidedly, by this time she must admit it to herself--she meditated. It was simply that the truth had changed sides; that radiant image began to look at her from Basil Ransom's expressive eyes. She loved, she was in love--she felt it in every throb of her being. Instead of being constituted by nature for entertaining that sentiment in an exceptionally small degree (which had been the implication (385) of her whole crusade, the warrant for her offer of old to Olive to renounce), she was framed, apparently, to allow it the largest range, the highest intensity. It was always passion, in fact; but now the object was other. Formerly she had been convinced that the fire of her spirit was a kind of double flame, one half of which was responsive friendship for a most extraordinary person, and the other pity for the sufferings of women in general. Verena gazed aghast at the colourless dust into which, in three short months (counting from the episode in New York), such a conviction as that could crumble; she felt it must be a magical touch that could bring about such a cataclysm. Why Basil Ransom had been deputed by fate to exercise this spell was more than she could say--poor Verena, who up to so lately had flattered herself that she had a wizard's wand in her own pocket. ~ Chapter 38

The irony of the narrator is exquisite:

That's so true, but you seem to be ignoring the irony and taking a very literal reading of it if you take that fraudster and charlatan's words as a foreshadowing of what's to come in Verena's married life, rather than the amusing overstatement of the situation that they actually are. Actually the last chapter is a wonderful mixture of high drama constantly being undercut by the hilariously comic. The mood simply doesn't work for portending the miraculous, inspirational or sublime!

[Gladys]

Call me a cynical old biddy but I don't see even a whispered hint of a "feminist miracle" anywhere in the book, and do not believe for a moment that James intended one.

Maybe I can offer you even more than a whispered hint . During the long, sober weeks between the holiday at Marmion and the Music Hall fiasco, a subdued Basil Ransom takes time to reflect on the prospect of married life with Verena. His misgivings concerning Verena are not dissimilar to Olive's, early in the novel. {EDIT: In the above sentences, I have misconstrued the context in more ways than one.} And at the Music Hall, Basil will take no comfort that Verena thrice pleads to speak from the stage or, on leaving, from the tears of a girl making an important sacrifice to do something great!

Doubtless, too, he had perceived how vain it was to hope to make Verena abjure a faith so solidly founded; and though he admired her enough to wish to possess her on his own terms, he shrank from the mortification which the future would have in keeping for him—that of finding that, after six months of courting and in spite of all her sympathy, her desire to do what people expected of her, she despised his opinions as much as the first day.

Have you examined the possibility that Verena ("the sweetest flower of character...that had ever bloomed on earth") speaks nothing but the truth, and that her moral values and convictions are set in concrete from the first? Nothing I've read suggests that Olive or Basil make the least impact on Verena's integrity (I am quite strong enough!) If so, she is morally stronger than either cousin. Moreover, Verena has a power to charm that the finest mesmerist would envy and, perchance, fear.

We differ most on the credibility of Verena's utterances. For much of the novel, everyone but Mrs Luna (note the name) paints Verena with angelic integrity. Nevertheless, Basil believes that he is slowly but surely altering her convictions, Olive too believes she can manipulate Verena but, at Marmion, Olive despairs and even deems Verena insincere. But are they right about Verena? What if they underestimate her strength: what if no one can fathom the monumental moral depth of Verena Tarrant. Henry James, brother of the great American philosopher and psychologist William James, delights in psychological extremes:

[Verena] began to pray silently that Olive might not push; for it would be odious, it would be impossible, to defend herself by a lie.

Unlike you, I believe that gifted Verena is unerringly true to her well established moral principles and convictions. Remember that from the outset Verena maintains a healthy scepticism of Olive's vision and her antipathy for men, and Verena's big change, prompted by Basil's genuine vocation remark, is simply her absolute rejection of that vision. Why assume - though Henry James tempts us - that Verena's change goes further? If the feminist convictions of this inscrutable girl never waver, many present at the Boston Music Hall fiasco will hopelessly misjudge her.

There were two or three pale shop-maidens...

Once again, I entirely agree with you about the passage. The narrator presents Olive's perspective and foreshadows majority opinion at the end. Verena Tarrant will be seen to give up everything for the Basil: the "Charlie" in waiting at the door. In the opinion of everyone but Selah Tarrant and Miss Birdseye, Verena in love no longer wishes to give her life to the cause of women. Are we told here what Verena thinks?

But it is this very clash that brings about the realization that this world is too large for any one philosophy, that there are different points of view that can be just as true as one's own, that the majority of woman are not as suffering and down-trodden, nor the majority of men as vile, as Olive would have her believe.

How well you express Basil Ransom's view of Verena's evolving psyche! Are we given reason here to think that Verena shares this view, that she will come to enjoy lunching on what she calls abominations?

the words he had spoken to her there about her genuine vocation, as distinguished from the hollow and factitious ideal with which her family and her association with Olive Chancellor had saddled her...had sunk into her soul...She had come at last to believe them, and that was the alteration, the transformation...she liked herself better than in the old exaggerated glamour of the lecture-lamps...She was to burn everything she had adored; she was to adore everything she had burned. The extraordinary part of it was that she was not ashamed of the treachery which she...meditated. It was simply that the truth had changed sides; that radiant image began to look at her from Basil Ransom's expressive eyes. She loved, she was in love..., she was framed, apparently, to allow it the largest range, the highest intensity. It was always passion, in fact; but now the object was other. Formerly she had been convinced that the fire of her spirit was a kind of double flame, one half of which was responsive friendship for a most extraordinary person, and the other pity for the sufferings of women in general. Verena gazed aghast at the colourless dust into which, in three short months (counting from the episode in New York), such a conviction as that could crumble; she felt it must be a magical touch that could bring about such a cataclysm.

Summarising your quote, Verena's genuine vocation will have nothing in common with the grandiose schemes of Olive Chancellor. Verena is not in the least ashamed to discard a lecture-lamp future and lovingly embrace this man, despite Olive's fierce disapproval.

The ambiguous text, I've highlighted above, is probably the best evidence you'll find to support an assertion that the fire in her [Verena's] spirit...for the sufferings of women has diminished. Such a sentiment, if implicit in the highlighted text, is doubly qualified (via deliberate and inimitable circumlocution so characteristic of Henry James). Firstly, what crumbles is her conception of a kind of a double flame: her spirit will burn with a single (more focused) flame in future. Secondly, what crumbles is her commitment to the sufferings of women in general: her feminist energies will be focused to convert an energetic man with political ambitions. The narrator qualifies and equivocates. The evidence I've cited elsewhere suggests that Verena's feminist fire, as strong as ever, is redirected to a single object: the energetic and charming chauvinist from Mississippi, a man as magnetic as her own father.

Henry James is ever cryptic and no sentence is more ambiguous than: It was always passion, in fact; but now the object was other. There is no good reason to assume that Verena's passion is limited to romance. I suggest she will now redirect her reforming feminist passion from the stage to the marital home.

That's so true, but you seem to be ignoring the irony and taking a very literal reading of it if you take that fraudster and charlatan's words as a foreshadowing of what's to come in Verena's married life, rather than the amusing overstatement of the situation that they actually are.

What you're calling irony, I call humour. Anyone hearing Selah Tarrant's words (the better day was going to be put off for quite a while) would knowingly smile at his quirky and slightly silly remark. That for me is the literal meaning. Beyond the literal, the authorial irony is twofold. Firstly, Selah understands the constancy of his idealistic daughter like no one else: his curious words simply reflect sound judgement. Secondly, Henry James is foreshadowing the feminist triumph that will flow from the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter.

As you say, Selah is amusing and, in Verena's words, wonderfully magnetic. While Selah is a mesmerist, and Miss Birdseye lacks the smallest sense of the real, beware of underrating their function in the novel. They are, after all, the only characters labelled as good: "He is very good," Verena said simply. Selah brought up his daughter to keep her ideal pointing in the right direction, to guide and animate her moral life. Miss Birdseye was sublime, the whole moral history of Boston was reflected in her displaced spectacles. Which other character attracts such moral kudos? Only Verena herself!

Selah Tarrant and Miss Birdseye alone retain faith in integrity of Verena. Is it coincidence that they are the only significant characters in the novel beneath middle-class? Mrs Tarrant, for instance, comes from the best family.

I find recognising irony in Henry James (and perhaps elsewhere) easier if I pay extra attention to any passage containing a dissonance, no matter how faint. Where a fine author chooses to insert a dissonance - something mildly superfluous or odd - irony may be lurking. A full understanding of that irony usually comes later. Here's a simple but enchanting example.

Verena said simply. "And he's wonderfully magnetic."

By magnetic, Verena means something like captivating, a characteristic she has inherited in greater measure. The adjective here does seem a tiny bit forced or dissonant, and so it is because Henry James intends a double meaning. In her coming marriage, Verena will serve as a powerful magnet, drawing poor Basil to her feminist opinions.

Actually the last chapter is a wonderful mixture of high drama constantly being undercut by the hilariously comic. The mood simply doesn't work for portending the miraculous, inspirational or sublime!

Quite so. Here lies the genius of Henry James, and not just here but in all his novels. That's why I read and love him, but only expect to appreciate his endings days or weeks after finishing each book. In The Bostonians, if you fail to discern that Verena Tarrant is truly extraordinary, the closing chapter will not disillusion you. Verena is much wiser than she seems. In an early conversation with Olive, Verena (the girl free from private self-reference) encapsulates the ending.

"Well," she replied, "I guess I have thought more than I appear."

The more you look, the more you find. There's further authorial irony when Basil Ransom concedes that his radical opinions will never lead to public eminence, prompting the reader to wonder whether, his high political ambitions might fare better were he to adopt Verena's feminist opinions.

It came home to him that his opinions were stiff, whereas in comparison his effort was lax; and he accordingly began to wonder whether he might not make a living by his opinions. He had always had a desire for public life; to cause one's ideas to be embodied in national conduct appeared to him the highest form of human enjoyment...It came over him with some force that his opinions would not yield interest, and the evaporation of this pleasing hypothesis made him feel like a man in an open boat, at sea, who should just have parted with his last rag of canvas.

When understood in this context, authorial irony is in full bloom as the dying Miss Birdseye just happens to forecast the course of Verena's marriage:

I did want to see justice done—to us. I haven't seen it, but you will. And Olive will. Where is she—why isn't she near me, to bid me farewell? And Mr. Ransom will—and he will be proud to have helped."

Rereading much of the The Bostonians to defend my interpretation has been rewarding. I am at little surprised, given your straightforward interpretation of the novel, that you'd rate it anything like five stars.

[mona amon]

I think you are basically wondering how I, a present day woman, can possibly sympathize with an interpretation of the book which implies that a progressive, strong minded young woman gives up all her cherished opinions and becomes the doormat of a male chauvinist pig but that is not at all my interpretation of it!

Unlike you, I believe that gifted Verena is unerringly true to her well established moral principles and convictions. Remember that from the outset Verena maintains a healthy scepticism of Olive's vision and her antipathy for men, and Verena's big change, prompted by Basil's genuine vocation remark, is simply her absolute rejection of that vision. Why assume - though Henry James tempts us - that Verena's change goes further?

I don't disagree with you fundamentally about Verena, except perhaps in seeing her as a young girl whose mind is not yet fully formed, but is still flexible, learning, growing and evolving to something even better and higher, while you seem to feel she's already reached the perfect state. I'm not saying marriage to Basil was her greatest move in this direction, but well, we all do foolish things when we're in love, and it's really not as bad as it seems, for here I think is the point where we most disagree - the character and opinions of Basil Ransom.

First of all, I do not see Basil as Verena's diametric opposite. Olive sees him that way, because he's male, and a very masculine sort of male at that, handsome to boot, and opposed to her cause. But although he opposes their views, he is no reactionary. He does not consider any age a dream age that he wants to push humanity back to. He is cynically critical of all ages and all humanity, not just women. He doesn’t feel that women don’t deserve an education. He feels that hardly anybody deserves an education. He doesn’t say that woman should be denied power. He doesn’t for a moment believe that they do not have any power, and so on. We see him as anti-feminist only because he’s anti-Olive.

If we leave Olive out of it, we have young, idealistic Verena who is still in a state of flux, and cynical, more obdurate Basil, who is also an idealist in his own way (about what I’ve forgotten - whatever he wrote in his newspaper article).My interpretation of their union is one of realism and compromise. No doubt after marriage they’ll both influence each other, or corrupt each other or tone each other down or elevate each other, or any of the numerous possibilities of marriage between two persons, but I’m highly skeptical about Basil’s miraculous conversion to a cause that Verena herself seems to have all but given up, although I do not see that as a defeat of Feminism. Verena rejects Olive’s brand of feminism and elopes with Basil, and the whole bent of the book seems to suggest that this is the happier choice for Verena. Basil woos her and wins her honourably, through a process of persuasion, debate and dialogue. Olive on the other hand tries to get the girl by bribing her parents, emotional blackmail and control.

The only feminist miracle that could have happened in this context is for Verena to reject both Basil and Olive and go off on her own to find herself (or whatever!) the way Ibsen’s Nora Helmer does, but how many of us actually approve of Nora’s action, anyway?

I have not addressed most of your points, and will be back with more later.

[Gladys]

I offer a few quick thoughts to avoid misunderstanding.

I think you are basically wondering how I, a present day woman, can possibly sympathize with an interpretation of the book which implies that a progressive, strong minded young woman gives up all her cherished opinions and becomes the doormat of a male chauvinist pig

Not at all. I was actually wondering why you'd rate so highly a novel you see as simply a love story.

As an Ibsen zealot, Verena seems to me at least as radical as Nora Helmer from the A Doll's House. As I've said, Verena marries primarily to proselytize or, rather, with the conviction that she will!

I'm not saying marriage to Basil was her greatest move in this direction, but well, we all do foolish things when we're in love, and it's really not as bad as it seems, for here I think is the point where we most disagree - the character and opinions of Basil Ransom.

And I'm saying that in marrying Verena, Basil is doing the foolish thing when in love. Not so the deep Verena who marries with eyes wide open: "Well," she replied, "I guess I have thought more than I appear." Verena's feminist convictions are very well established before she meets Basil: only the nature of her calling is in question.

I am surprised you think we disagree on Basil because I've agreed with all you had written about him. Can you cite evidence for feminist tolerance in Basil? I'd be astonished if you can.

First of all, I do not see Basil as Verena's diametric opposite ... He is cynically critical of all ages and all humanity, not just women ... He doesn’t say that woman should be denied power ... We see him as anti-feminist only because he’s anti-Olive.

Certainly, Verena saw much to like in the free-thinking Basil while she despised his opinions. I think all those outside the stage door at the Music Hall in Boston would label Basil anti-feminist. And I'm much inclined to accept Verena's view of Basil's "monstrous opinions":

"Yes; I presume you feel yourself drawn to any place where ancient prejudices are garnered up," she answered, not without archness. "I know by the stand you take about our cause that you share the superstitions of the old bookmen. You ought to have been at one of those really mediæval universities that we saw on the other side, at Oxford, or Göttingen, or Padua. You would have been in perfect sympathy with their spirit."
---------
She felt cold, slightly sick, though she replied that now he summed up his creed in such a distinct, lucid way, it was much more comfortable— one knew with what one was dealing; a declaration much at variance with the fact, for Verena had never felt less gratified in her life. The ugliness of her companion's profession of faith made her shiver; it would have been difficult to her to imagine anything more crudely profane.

...I’m highly skeptical about Basil’s miraculous conversion to a cause that Verena herself seems to have all but given up, although I do not see that as a defeat of Feminism. Verena rejects Olive’s brand of feminism and elopes with Basil, and the whole bent of the book seems to suggest that this is the happier choice for Verena.

This, of course, is the prime subject of my previous, long post.