Claiming Center Stage: Speaking Out for Homoerotic Empowerment in The Bostonians

Structurally The Bostonians duplicates a conventional formula for the nineteenth-century novel. In this formula, a dashing young hero rescues a beautiful lady in danger, which ends in a promise of marriage. What is unusual in The Bostonians is that James employs this conventional structure in order to undermine it. Subversively, James focuses on female relationships and their implied homoeroticism, suggesting liberating possibilities inherent in female friendships. In addition, James privileges these types of relationships by creating a dialogic between conventional, masculine discourse and expansive, feminine language. By examining the surrounding discourse that shapes not only the reaction to this novel but more importantly the way in which discourse and narrative function in The Bostonians, we can better understand how James's subversive writing strategies privilege the feminine. In this unconventional reading, feminine discourse takes center stage and offers an alternative way in which to view relationships and outcomes.

Although recent scholars have recognized the homoerotic tension and desire that pervade the underlying framework of this novel, earlier criticism has condemned these homoerotic elements or ignored them altogether, uncomfortably dismissing the specter of lesbianism between Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant. Few critics view the novel's homoeroticism as empowering, and few see this element as suggestive of alternative readings regarding power and discourse. Perhaps these traditional reactions account for the disappointing initial public reception of this work; James himself was utterly disappointed and Irving Howe describes it as a "public failure" (vii). ¹ Even after The Bostonians' reprinting almost sixty years after its initial publication, the novel was still denigrated. In the reprinted 1945 introduction, Philip Rahv calls it the "least known of his longer novels" (v) and reminds the reader that this work was excluded from Scribner's comprehensive New York collection. Rahv attributes The Bostonians' poor reception by late nineteenth-century genteel readers to the novel's "sexual abnormality" (vi), yet says nothing to suggest alternative readings. Other critics such as F. W. Dupee and Louis Auchincloss decry the uncomfortable elements in this novel, particularly found in the character of Olive Chancellor who is criticized for having a kind of "mental malady" (Auchincloss 42) or "pretty distinctly a case of perverse sexuality" (Dupee, qtd. in Castle 151). Tony Tanner says Olive "hates men" with a "twisted passion" (qtd. in Castle 151) while Edmund Wilson simply calls her "horrid" (qtd. in Castle 151). Recently, David Van Leer calls Olive "the first fully conceived lesbian protagonist in modern fiction" but points out that the rather unflattering descriptions of Olive are made through Basil Ransom's biased views (93). Some critics have tried to steer away from this disquieting myopic classification. Maxwell Geismar argues that James would have been "horrified" to find readers thinking of this novel as a study in "lesbian pathology" (qtd. in Castle 150). ² Perhaps Rahv is more accurate when he suggests that James had a prescience for creating Olive with the "emotional economy" of "the Lesbian woman" without the benefits of psychology or psychiatric studies (ix), though he does not follow through with alternative implications and interpretations of reading such a character in a more favorable light. Obviously from the reception history and criticism of this novel, the underlying homoeroticism evokes strong response, particularly from those who feel most threatened by this avenue of discourse.

More recently, critics such as Leland Person, Terry Castle, and David Van Leer have confronted and treated the homosexual elements in this novel with critical and psychological complexity. Person argues that James complicates gender and racial issues in this novel by considering the blurred boundaries between heterosexual and homosexual desires. He further argues that Ransom is essentially caught in a matrix of homoerotic desire. ³ Castle points out that the novel's lesbianism remains elusive along with James's attitudes regarding female homosexuality. Van Leer greatly adds to the critical dialogue by offering this text as one that encourages thought about homoerotic relationships...