Henry James and Dirty French Novels

James's essays on such French novelists as Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, and George Sand display considerable discomfort with their portrayal of sexuality, yet at the same time–as is especially apparent in his comments on Sand–a deep fascination with the subject. In a letter to Paul Bourget in 1887, criticizing his French disciple's novel Mensonges, he is more than usually explicit about what bothers him in the representation of sexual activities. In his later work, we see James more and more attempting to find a place for sexuality as a force that–like evil–is crucial and yet not directly representable.