Henry James and Masculinity: The Man at the Margins

The question of Henry James’s relationship to masculinity, and particularly to conventional heterosexual sexuality, is one that has long lingered in the wings of James scholarship, often touched on but rarely explored in depth. The lack of overt references to sexuality in James’s papers has led biographers from Leon Edel to Fred Kaplan to speculate about his many intimate relationships with men; on the other hand several recent studies have explored the position of women in James’s fiction, mainly leaving aside any explicit commentary on masculinity per se. ¹ Enter Kelly Cannon’s recent Henry James and Masculinity, which promises to explore “the theme of masculinity in James’s work” with special attention to what Cannon calls “marginal male” characters (2). This study provides a welcome focus on the “marginal spaces” articulated by James for nonconventional masculinity. Cannon argues that James confronts the limitations of patriarchal norms of masculinity by describing the man at the margins who must “imagine a world of his own creation, modeled not after the aggressive behavior typically associated with masculinity, but upon a nonaggressive model that draws upon the androgynous quality at the core of marginality” (8).

Cannon begins by cataloging several of the characters he considers to be marginal males. Rowland Mallet, the presiding intelligence of Roderick Hudson, best exemplifies the type in early James: unable to become sufficiently passionate and most comfortable in the role of ambassador. In Ralph Touchett these two qualities are melded to a physical infirmity that seems both to prevent him from participating in the male world of business and also to preclude him from marrying. Not only does Ralph remain a bachelor but he seems to prefer it that way, and this is precisely why, according to Cannon, he is relegated to marginality. Males like Hyacinth in The Princess Casamassima, who vows not to marry, Strether in The Ambassadors, who ultimately rejects marriage, and James himself, who never seemed interested in marriage, choose to remain outside the social structure, and therefore relegate themselves to “at best a precarious, and by some views reprehensible, position in society” (20). As Cannon points out, these marginal figures are also characterized by being nonaggressive, androgynous, and ultimately free of the controlling influence of their fathers. This study argues that in these traits James creates an alternative to conventional masculinity.

The limitations of this book, however, also hinge on Cannon’s emphasis on the marginal male. While he provides interesting analyses of the alternative versions of masculinity that James’s characters construct, nowhere does he relate them to the cultural norms outside the text in question or examine dominant sexual constructs in any depth. References to James’s biography, while a propos, often muddy the waters—to what extent are we to believe that without James’s social graces and his ability to manipulate the realm of manners, “society . . . would otherwise have threatened such a self with extinction” (39)? While an interesting argument might be made about the social repercussions of James’s androgyny, Cannon prefers to fold it into discussion of James’s bachelorhood, which alone is made to carry the weight of this potential social ostracism. In fact, it is often difficult to imagine James himself as genuinely marginal. Certainly he was not so in either economic or social terms, moving in such elevated circles that in 1915 his application for British citizenship was witnessed by the Prime Minister himself. Certainly this study would have been more powerful had it situated the sort of gender marginality it describes within a wider sphere of social hierarchy.

Cannon’s book is stronger in its later chapters, particularly the one that concerns James’s transgressive use of language. It is here that he is helped by reference to Kristeva and Lacan, when he claims that James’s late novels actively work to counter linguistic tyranny by rejecting cultural demands for clarity and creating characters who use language to subvert established codes. Cannon discusses...