Henry James, Shakespeare's Biography, and the Question of National Identity in "The Birthplace" and "The Introduction to TheTempest"

Three essays by Henry James—"The Question of Our Speech," "The Speech of American Women," and "The Manners of American Women"—comprise what he calls an "exceptional inquiry" into the changing cultural status of American women and the shifting American scene. Pursuing a line of reasoning that these essays demonstrate a deliberate series in which the ideas of the later two essays build upon the themes and implications set forth in the first, this article argues that James fosters the development of a critical acumen that would allow women to make penetrating distinctions that go beyond the superficial or the tacit and to acquire a keen practical judgment that recognizes the relations among these distinctions.