"Still and Still Moving": The House as Time Machine in Henry James's The Sense of the Past

In The Sense of the Past, Henry James employs a house as a time machine to explore the mind as it strives to define the interaction between the self and the Other through time. In contrast with the linear chronology employed by Wells in The Time Machine, James uses a "time-web": a superimposition of time-lines in which the mind, represented by the house, becomes the space where time unfolds simultaneously in differing timeframes. I consider the multiple dimensions of Ralph's experience in the house of time, arguing that his hyperactive imagination proves unable to cope with the vertiginous temporal doubling.