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James's The Awkward Age: A Reading and an Evaluation by Daniel J. Schneider, University of Tennessee Over the past several decades, as we know, critics have disagreed widely about the Intention and the artistic success of The Awkward Age. Because James's method in this novel is dramatic—because, as James remarks in the Preface, he has carefully eschewed the author's prerogative of "going behind" the scene "to compass explanations and amp I ifications"--we have all had considerable difficulty in determining the nature of the novel and particularly in assessing the characters of Nanda and of her mother, Mrs. Brook.' How sympathetic _\s_ James's treatment of these central" characters? Critics like Edmund Wilson, Joseph Warren Beach, Oscar Cargill, Joseph Wiesenfarth, Eben Bass, Edward Wagenknecht, and Charles Thomas Samuels view Nanda as a rare and tender spirit, a fine example of "the moral sense" thrust Into a world of rapacious adults of whom one of the worst is her mother.2 But Margaret Walters, Gerald Levin, and Daniel Schneider see duplicity and corruption in the supposedly irreproachable Nanda, whlIe Dorothea Krook and F. W. Dupee see Mrs. Brook as sympathetic or even loveable despite her badness.3 As for the effectiveness of the novel as art, William Dean Howel Is, Michael Swan, F. W. Dupee, Dorothea Krook, and Louis Auchincloss think the work is brilliant, while Joseph Warren Beach, Carl Van Doren, Pelham Edgar, Edmund Wilson, Joseph Wiesenfarth, Edward Wagenknecht, and of course Maxwell Gelsmar find it Irritating and tedious or badly made.4 Given the very deep disagreements, I would suggest that a re-examination of the structure of the novel—particularly re-examination of the underlying principles at work in the construction and the alignment of the characters—can help us to refine our notions of what James was doing in the novel. And, having looked at these principles, I wish to consider once again the question of whether the novel is effective as art. 1. The Novels and Tales of Henry James (New York: Scrlbner's, 1908), p. xvii. This edition of the Preface and of The Awkward Age itself is hereafter cited parenthetically in my text. 2. For Wilson's and Beach's remarks, see F. W. Dupee, ed., The Question of Henry James (1945; rpt. London: Allan Wingate: 1947), pp. 192, 117-18; Carglll, The Novels of Henry James (New York: Macmlllan, 1961), pp. 269-72; Wiesenfarth, Henry James and the Dramatic Analogy (New York: Fordham UnIv. Press, 1963), p. 86; Bass, "Dramatic Scene and The Awkward Age," PMLA, 79 (1964) 148-57; Wagenknecht, Eve and Henry James (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1978), p. 150; Samuels, The Ambiguity of Henry James (Urbana: Univ. of I I I inois Press, 1971), pp. 167, 171. Samuels sees Nanda as "good because she is guiltless of the egoism, the scheming, and the wantonness of her elders" (p. 171); but he adds that she Is "corrupted" (p. 172). 3. Walters, "Keeping the place tidy for the female mind: The Awkward Age," in John Goode, ed., The AIr of Reality: New Essays on Henry James (London: Methuen and Co., 1972), p. 202 and passim; Levin, "Why Does Vanderbank Not Propose?" UKCR, 27 (1960-61), 314-18; Schneider, The Crysta I Cage: Adventures of the Imagination In the Fiction of Henry James (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978), pp. 56-58; Krook, The Ordeal of Consciousness in Henry James (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1962), p. 166; Dupee, Henry James (New York: Wi I I iam S loan Associates, 1951), pp. 202, 198. 4. HowelIs, in The Question of Henry James, pp. 331-39; Auchincloss, Reading Henry James (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1975), p. 112; Beach, The Method of Henry James (1918; rpt. Philadelphia: Albert SaIfer, 1954), p. 245; Carl Van Doren, The American Novel (New York: Macmillan, 1921), p. 211; Edgar, Henry James: Man and Author (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), p. 131; Wilson, In The Question of Henry James, p. 192; Wiesenfarth, p. 77, pass i m; Wagenknecht, p. 150; Gelsmar, Henry James and the Jacobites (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 170, 175. 219 Most critics agree that James In his Preface defines adequately the...

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