Teacups and Love Letters: Constance Fenimore Woolson and Henry James

This article explores the textual relationship between Woolson and James and the trope of the tea ceremony in their texts (including The Portrait of a Lady and Woolson's surviving letters to James) in order to identify the characteristic gestures of realist representation. Realism is a gendered structure of signification which thrives on a disavowal of symbolic meaning: this makes it an ideal form for mediating covert relations of power and desire. Topics addressed include Barthes's "reality effect," the theoretical assumptions of "reconstructive" biographers such as Leon Edel, James's Partial Portraits assessment of Woolson's fiction, and critical interpretations of Woolson's suicide.