The Disruption of the Feminine in Henry James by Priscilla L. Walton (review)

164 LEITERS IN CANADA 1992 published and as suppressed) - remains an untravelled path to his 'subtlety' as a man of letters, and to the creativity of the greatest poetnovelist in the language. (PETER J. CASAGRANDE) Priscilla L. Walton. The Disruption of the Feminine in Henn} James University of Toronto Press 1992. 179. $40.00 In The Disruption of the Feminine in Henry James, Priscilla Walton uses poststructuralist theory, particularly the poststructuralist feminist theory of Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and Alice Jardine, to illuminate what she considers to be a significant contrast between fiction written relatively early in james's career and later work such as The Turn of the Screw (which becomes a paradigmatic text in Walton's study), The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove, and The Golden Bowl. According to Walton, earlier novels such as Roderick Hudson and The Portrait of a Lady (both of which she discusses at some length) are written to support a realist-humanist and implicitly masculine agenda because the texts assume that language is referential, truth is knowable and explainable, fiction should move toward closure, readers should be allowed little interpretive freedom, and evidence of the feminine Other (such as female characters and textual absences) should be pushed to the margins and/or kept under control. When it is not, as in the portrayal of Christina Light in Roderick Hudson, such evidence tends to 'disrupt' the texts, and undercuts their 'Realist enterprise' by showing that 'it is not a window on the world but a construct of ideology.' In the late fiction, on the other hand, and despite James's continuing ostensible support for the realist agenda, referential reading is frequently criticized (as in the handling of The Turn of the Screw's three narrators), and abundant space is provided for the feminine Other, through, for example, the focus on and celebration of certain female characters like Maggie Verver, and through the way in which both characters and readers are encouraged to' Uwrite" polyvalent texts that are limitless and open-ended.' A major limitation of Walton's study is her related contentions that the 'theory' of nineteenth-century British and American realistic writers was as naIvely and simplistically referential as she makes it out to be, and that James himself supported this theory consistently in his many, sometimes contradictory critical statements throughout his long career. As well, despite her awareness of the 'dangerous tendency' in critical studies to 're-limit the texts while interpreting them' and her desire to 'privilege plurality' of interpretation, Walton's analyses sometimes succumb to the dangers she is eager to avoid. Many readers, for example, will object not only to the following conclusion about The Portrait of a Lady, but also to the way in which she expresses it: 'The text, therefore, works to justify HUMANITIES 165 patriarchal authority, for the circumscription of women is presented as a kindness, a means of helping them to help themselves.' The following assertion about the way in which Portrait supposedly pushes its readers to accept certain conclusions might also be attacked for analogous reasons: 'Isabel's autonomy should be apparent in her "free" choice to return to Rome, the readers' in their acceptance of the inevitability and "rightness" of this decision.' Despite limitations such as these, however, most of Walton's insights are worth considering. Her remarks are revealing, for example, about the implicit sexism of stories such as 'The Author of Beltraffio' and 'The Lesson of the Master,' which she discusses in an interesting chapter focusing on certain stories appearing between 1881 and 1902 that 'evolve from efforts to denigrate and control Feminine "presence" into endeavours that grant priority to Felninine unknowability.' In addition, much of her commentary on the three major-phase novels is insightful, particularly her conclusions about their female characters. About The Ambassadors , for example, she suggests that 'each major female character embodies a particular mode of reading'; about The WblgS of the Dove she argues, convincingly, that the 'absences' not only are suggestive, but 'assume more importance than what is "present'" within the novel. Finally, in her discussion of The Golde'1 Bowl she makes admirable use of Luce Irigaray's perception of the...