Alice in Jamesland: The Story of Alice Howe Gibbens James (review)

This book is a biography of the other Alice James—not the famous diarist and invalid sister of William and Henry but the stable, exceptionally normal wife of the psychologist and philosopher. Her unfailing optimism and reliable mental and moral balance made her "a steadfast center for this idiosyncratic family," Susan Gunter writes, "although sometimes she was nearly overwhelmed by its demands." Relying on a trove of unpublished letters that survived Alice's mass destruction of her private papers, Gunter tells a story of quiet heroism amid adversities—beginning during her late teens with the suicide of her alcoholic father, who was facing conviction in a bribery trial—that would have defeated a less balanced and affirmative soul. When Henry James Sr. first met Alice Howe Gibbens at the Radical Club (a Boston intellectual society) in 1876, he immediately recognized the wife his troubled oldest son needed and offered to supplement William's salary if they married. Alice loved both William and his brother the distinguished novelist and devoted herself uncomplainingly to them, though as Gunter notes: "At times Alice had nearly extinguished herself during her years of caring for others: her union with the Jameses proved to be no basement bargain." Henry James Jr. had affably warned her from the outset: "I hold it to be part of the bargain that you are engaged, more or less, to the whole family."

There is some evidence that Alice collaborated in the production of her husband's breakthrough masterpiece, the two-volume Principles of Psychology, but Gunter concludes that her primary contribution was to provide "a steady emotional counterweight and intellectual companionship" during the "turbulent" decade in which William researched and wrote it. With her Swedenborgian belief in the possibility of communicating with the spirit world, Alice contributed more substantially to William's interest in psychical research and the psychology of religion, which led to his writing The Will to Believe (the provocative precursor to Pragmatism) and to The Varieties of Religious Experience. Though she could never completely overcome his skeptical, empirical temperament, William was open to (and had a deep-seated desire for) the assurances and consolations of faith.

A biography of Mrs. William James could easily have become a rant against the oppression and injustice endured by a long-suffering woman who gave so much of herself to a demanding husband. Gunter explains, indeed, that she originally intended to write a narrative of victimization but that her research persuaded her that Alice's life was too complex and contradictory a mixture of benefits and sacrifices to fit such a scheme. The book Gunter wrote instead offers a carefully detailed picture of the rewards and disappointments of the distinctive life of an unsung but essential member of a difficult but fascinating family.