Abstract

This paper explores truncated relations in Henry James’s short fiction, focusing on the flight from (re)marital security as well as the rapprochements his maturing vision allows. Bolting, as a way of evading immersion in the real, is no mere plot device but rather a behavioral leitmotif that runs through the short fiction, recapitulating an approach/avoidance dynamic in recurrent movement metaphors of flight and submersion. This paper traces this dynamic from its early expressions involving externalized dangers to its later, internalized manifestations, en route to exploring the “deep warm jungle” of Jamesian human relations.

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