A Personal Quantity: On Sexuality and Jamesian Style

From the end of the nineteenth century until the present day, modern stylistic analysis has operated under the problematic belief that literary style expresses sexual identity, that by reading style we can deduce the “genuine” sexuality of any author. As a transitional figure between the Victorian and the modern novel, James is particularly implicated in the perils of that transformation. This article argues that The Tragic Muse and The Wings of the Dove indicate James’s own awareness of and intervention into this conceptual shift.