Jamesian Sociability

Building on Leo Bersani’s work on literature, sociability, and psychoanalysis, this article argues that The Sacred Fount highlights the limitations and the potential of Henry James’s compositional consciousness in fiction at the time. It asks why the narrator insists on reinscribing a depth model of knowledge and psychology onto a social world that ostensibly has rejected that model. It also argues that the novel’s interest in depth and surfaces prepares the way for an impersonal intimacy that de-emphasizes egoistic relations to others.