Differing Portraits of Henry James

DIFFERINGPORTRAITSOF HENRYJAMES Ross Labrie George Bishop. 'Whenthe MasterRelents:The NeglectedShortFictionsof Henry James. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988. 114pp. Darshan Singh Maini. HenryJames:The IndirectVision. Second edition, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988. 246 pp. These two studies of Henry James could not be more different from each other, illustrating as they do the approaches of "traditional" criticism on the one hand (Maini) and deconstructionism on the other (Bishop). Moreover, they contrast in the essential view they take of James, with Maini proffering a venerable and familiar view while Bishop offers a contrary view of a James who subverted the image of his own masterly literary eminence from within his fiction. Maini's revised and expanded study of James is beautifully written, and thus a pleasure to read alongside the numbing prose that one finds in a good deal of literary criticism. In spite of its title, The Indirect Vision is not a thesis book but a general study full of broad perspectives and encompassing judgments. In fact, one has to look long and hard at times for the discussion of the "indirect vision" amidst matters which often appear to relate rather tangentially to the book's stated theme. In those chapters which bear directly on this theme, however, especially those concerned Vviththe use of point-ofview and foreshortening, Maini's analysis, though again of a general kind, is acute and authoritative, reflecting a mind steeped in all of James's writings. Maini's traditionalism shows itself at every turn, including his pervasive assumption that the purpose of literature is to mirror experience. Thus, he is doubtful about works like "The Figure in the Carpet" and The Sacred Fount, for example, because of their "ideational" character, which does not always "authenticate" them as "typical human experience." Equally, though more quaintly traditional, is Maini's discussion of James's "feminine sensibility/ so named because it was "inspired by emotion and intuition rather than by intelligence and intellect." Also somewhat reductivdy traditional, in a way that recalls Edel particularly, is Maini's tendency to read 360 Ross Labrie Jnmcs's life into the fiction in a somewhat offbanded manner, as in his calling our attention to the "numerous alter-egos" James inserted into his fiction. Maini is on firmer ground as a moral observer of James's world. While some of his observations leave one a little breathless, as in his view that greatness is "vouchsafed only when the power of evil is not only understood, but also subjected to a vision of transcendence," one is nevertheless inclined to agree. While the reader may recoil initially at the use of the word "transcendence" in connection with James, for instance, evidence in support of Maini's Olympian view surfaces when he reminds us that James often showed compassion for his wrongdoers--the Kate Crays, Charlotte Stands and Madame Merles. Similarly convincing is Maini's perception that James's protagonists are typically placed in such tight corners that they must struggle to the "last ounce of spiritual energy to be able to wrest a sum of viable values from the darkness and the chaos around." If George Bishop's book can be said to take aim at the simplicity of the critical convention whereby James is celebrated as the master of modern fiction, then Maini's book is probably a good example of that sort of view. While Maini is not unaware of James's shortcomings, for example, he is certainly at times partial in his pronouncements, as when he celebrates J ames's prescience in not having overlooked a "sin or lapse or weakness" of his own in his letters, criticism or fiction. Bishop's book focuses microscopically, according to his own admission, on six "neglected" short stories (along with a few others), and considers the reason why these stories have been neglected, i.e., they appear to lack the complexity which would properly show off the master's narrative powers. Bishop skillfully illuminates the hidden subtleties of these tales, subtleties that sometimes surpass those of the canonical fiction. What makes these stories doubly unattractive to the Jamesian establishment from Bishop's point of view is their surreptitious undermining of the authorial projection...