Possibly Queer Time: Paranoia, Subjectivity, and "The Beast in the Jungle"

Critical analysis of Henry James's novella "The Beast in the Jungle" tends to offer imperatives for the main characters that endorse new productive ways of existing within the world, ways that typically reject or pathologize the protagonist John Marcher's characterized inactivity. This article critiques these predominant readings of Marcher, James, and "The Beast in the Jungle," suggesting that through attenuating to the specific modes of time and knowledge that cluster around Marcher, a new structure for understanding Jamesian modes of queer subjectivity and sexuality arises: one that neither rejects nor transcends imperatives but instead exists without them.