The Ambassadors, a classic work by Henry James, delves deep into the complexities of transatlantic relationships, exposing the often-overlooked darker side of cultural and personal entanglements between Europe and America.
Through its intricate narrative and richly developed characters, the novel reveals how the allure of European sophistication can lead to disillusionment, identity conflicts, and a profound sense of alienation. This exploration of cross-cultural dynamics serves as a compelling commentary on the hidden challenges of navigating the divide between the Old and New Worlds.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Henry James began writing professionally after the publication of his first short story in 1865.
A back injury incurred while fighting a stable fire had kept James out of the American Civil War, but he was acutely aware of the war’s significance and throughout his career used his writing to help the United States arrive at a new sense of self. He did this by reassessing his country’s relationship with its origins in Europe. James utilized the increasingly efficient transatlantic transportation to capture the true spirit of contemporary Americans in contact with their European peers.
In doing so, he showed how the two sides actively engaged each other in an Atlantic community.
The best novel of his last period, The Ambassadors, neatly resolves this discussion. In this work, Americans enjoy Paris but then return to America where the grit of life is being manufactured.
The Ambassadors began from a “germ” that James captured in his notebook on October 31, 1895. There he records how William Dean Howells, standing in the garden of James McNeill Whistler’s Parisian home, sermonized to the young Jonathan Sturges that he must live while he was young. Then, in September of 1900, in an article for Harpers called “Project of a Novel by Henry James”, James laid out the blueprint of the novel.
The piece shows how James constructed from Howells’s speech, reworked as the speech that Lewis Lambert Strether gives to John Little Bilham, the basis of his novel.
The actual writing took seven months and James also supervised the novel’s publication process.
Published serially in 1903 by the North American Review (where Howells was a literary consultant), the novel’s reception was guided by James’s own appraisal in which he described the work as “the best, ‘all round’, of my productions”.
Plot Summary
A. England
The Ambassadors begins in England. To maintain his social and employment status, Lewis Lambert Strether arrives in Liverpool under orders from his fiancée, Mrs Newsome.
While waiting for his friend, Mr Waymarsh, who might be of assistance, Strether meets the ever-resourceful Maria Gostrey, who promises undying support. Waymarsh, once he arrives, seems reluctant about helping Strether’s project. While on an outing in the Rows in Chester, Waymarsh reveals his “sacred rage” by dashing madly into a jeweller’s shop. As he does so, Gostrey and Strether realize they are, in comparison to Waymarsh, unsuccessful in life.
The party journeys to London, where Strether has a fabulous night on the town with Maria. While attending a play, Maria recapitulates Strether’s mission as Mrs Newsome sees it: Mr Chad [Newsome]…a young man on whose head high hopes are placed at Woollett; a young man a wicked woman has got hold of and whom his family over there have sent you [Strether] out to rescue.
Waymarsh and Strether head for Paris; Maria follows separately.
B. Arrival in Paris
Strether, who has told Chad he would drop in sometime, seeks out Chad’s apartment on the Malesherbes Boulevard. Strether gains his first impression of Chad through an inspection of this apartment and the house sitter, Mr John Little Bilham. Far from discovering sordid details and evidence of discredit, Chad’s abode impresses Strether.
The next morning, Strether brings Waymarsh to breakfast with Bilham and another of Chad’s friends, Miss Barrace. Afterwards, Waymarsh urges Strether to stop meddling with Chad’s affairs and be done with the whole thing.
Maria arrives in Paris and Strether introduces her to Bilham while they tour the Louvre. She pronounces Bilham “one of us” while speculating about Chad. His wonderful apartment and his absence, for the time being, in Cannes indicate good things, for one does not go to Cannes with a common mistress. Something special is going on. Strether takes a box at the theatre for the group but, with minutes remaining before the show’s start, Bilham has not yet arrived.
Just before the curtain goes up, Chad himself enters and surprises the party.
C. Negotiations
During the show, Strether dwells on Chad’s obvious improvement.
After the performance, Strether and Chad adjourn to a café where Mrs Newsome’s arguments in favour of Chad’s return to America to take up advertising—the family’s business—are laid out. Chad does not refuse to return but hints that he will be detained. Strether, who has been writing detailed letters to Mrs Newsome about his progress, now writes telling of his success at finding Chad and delivering the message. Somewhat relieved at having fulfilled his duty, Strether begins to enjoy Paris by becoming a “haunter” of Chad’s apartment.
Waymarsh increasingly disapproves of Strether’s behaviour and has Miss Barrace run interference—to help Strether focus on helping Chad free himself from whatever binds him. Chad asks that he not be forced to give an answer until after Strether has met the mother and daughter pair that keeps him in Europe.
Maria and Strether discuss this situation, and Maria supposes that Chad’s affair is not virtuous and, further, that Chad must want to marry the daughter.
D. Gloriani’s Party
The celebrated artist, Gloriani, hosts a party where Chad presents Madame de Vionnet to Strether, Mrs Newsome’s supposed enemy.
Strether has hardly spoken with her when they are interrupted, and Strether finds himself on a bench in the garden alone. Bilham joins Strether, who breaks out into the speech that provided the basis for the novel. Strether urges Bilham to take advantage of his youth and live. Strether says this out of regret that he did not do the same; he feels he has wasted his life. The advice endears Strether to Bilham.
Chad reappears to introduce Jeanne de Vionnet, an absolutely stunning young woman. Strether believes that Chad must be pursuing her, and he hardly blames him. But Jeanne could never possibly live in Woollett and that, Strether believes, is the crux of the issue. Chad takes Jeanne to her mother and Strether quietly departs. He now assumes that Madame de Vionnet will want to plead for Chad to remain in Europe on Jeanne’s account.
He discusses everything with Maria, who was at the party. Maria is uncomfortable with recent developments. She had promised to support Strether through his errand but did not imagine she would be implicated.
She was a classmate of Madame de Vionnet, whose history she tells Strether. Fearing that she might be compromised and approached by Madame de Vionnet, Maria leaves for a while to visit a sick friend.
E. Chad Surrenders
The morning after the party, Chad “surrenders” to Strether on the condition that Strether puts himself at Madame de Vionnet’s disposal for a time.
Chad begins to make clear that Madame de Vionnet should be acknowledged as the reason for his transformation. A woman so capable must be made known to Strether and Mrs Newsome as a wonderful person—not a temptress of a sordid nature. Strether agrees and begins a relationship with Madame de Vionnet. Against his will, he too is enamoured with her. For her part, Madame de Vionnet wishes only for Strether to keep Mrs Newsome patient. She also assures Strether that Chad is more Jeanne’s guardian than her lover.
F. New Ambassadors
Strether, through hints from Miss Barrace and Bilham, realizes that Madame de Vionnet and Chad are having an affair. This changes everything for Strether, who warns Chad not to give up so wonderful a lady.
A bit confused, Chad has to agree with Strether’s command due to his prior vow of surrender. With the secret out, Strether gets to know Madame de Vionnet better and likes her even more. To help her, Strether writes favourably of her to Mrs Newsome. He also prevents Chad from visiting America and pleading with Mrs Newsome directly.
When a telegram arrives demanding their return, Strether decides to stall and Chad plays along. Their negative response prompts Mrs Newsome to send out her daughter.
Sarah and Jim Pocock arrive with his sister, Mamie, to bring Chad to his senses. Waymarsh immediately joins their group, and it is clear that he has been a double agent. Sarah sticks to the business at hand and refuses to see anything but that. Jim opts out of the mess and resolves to enjoy Paris. Mamie sees that Chad has changed for the better and that he is now too refined to be interested in her, a simple woman. Chad does his best to behave as tour guide.
Bilham becomes interested in Mamie. Sarah meets Madame de Vionnet but sees nothing impressive about her.
G Returning to America
Sarah issues a three-week ultimatum during which time the Pococks travel to other parts of Europe with Waymarsh and Bilham.
Strether decides to spend his last days enjoying his vacation and randomly selects a train to take him into the countryside. While happily enjoying the scenery, he bumps into Madame de Vionnet and Chad, who give every indication that theirs is a normal love affair. Strether, still believing in platonic ideals, is saddened by this and surprised that Chad does not offer an explanation. Instead, Chad travels to London for a week to research advertising, which “presented itself thus as the great new force”. After seeing Chad, Strether begins preparations for home.
He says goodbye to Madame de Vionnet, who knows she has lost, and declines Maria’s offer to stay with her. Strether reveals how much has changed in the past five months by telling Maria he cannot possibly marry Mrs Newsome; he has become a different person who now “sees things” whereas she remains an invalid who sees what she wants to see.
CHARACTERS
A. Miss Barrace
Miss Barrace is a liberated woman who finds amusement in flirting with Waymarsh and who peers at the world through “her long-handled glass”. Miss Barrace has the power of “not being” and responds to seriousness with a “crescendo” of “Oh, oh, oh!”.
B. Mrs Newsome
A wealthy American, Mrs Newsome only appears in the novel through her letters, referenced by her fiancé, Strether.
C. John Little Bilham
Bilham has failed in his original purpose of becoming an artist by studying in Paris. Instead, he has adopted Parisian habits and struggles to stay there, but he has no purpose—he needs saving. Fortunately, Strether appears, and John finds a more appropriate role model than Chad. The relationship between Bilham and Strether builds to the point where Bilham accepts Strether’s mission to help Bilham be saved by Mamie. Consequently, Bilham will cease wasting his life and become Mamie’s suitor.
D. Jeanne de Vionnet
Jeanne is “an exquisite case of education”, who honours her mother with her beauty and grace. Her mother has raised her to have some American qualities, like “freedom”. This perfect representation of French femininity has entrusted herself to the protection of Chad who eventually finds her a proper husband. Jeanne confuses Strether whenever she gets near him.
E. Madame de Vionnet
The presumably horrible woman who keeps Chad from Mrs Newsome turns out to be the much-adored Madame de Vionnet. In Gloriani’s garden, Madame de Vionnet appears “various and multifold”. By her genius, she takes all of Strether’s “categories by surprise”. A few days later, Strether describes her chamber as a series of passageways that he must journey down so as to lay forth the demands of Mrs Newsome.
To his surprise, far from being a monster, Madame de Vionnet shares a fondness for churches with Strether, and they meet at Notre Dame, where they begin a friendship.
Strether comes to admire Madame de Vionnet as a wise woman in possession of artistic and social ideals. He comes to understand that her education of Chad was done out of a great affection but not because of true love. However, Strether eventually learns that though she transformed Chad, she is human. She did it without marriage but not without physical rewards.
Madame de Vionnet knows the part she plays in the imagination of Woollett, and she registers a protest with Mrs Pocock. As Madame de Vionnet notes, Strether has also profited at the hands of a woman. However, Madame de Vionnet estimates Miss Gostrey as a “really wonderful woman”. Madame de Vionnet realizes that she lost because she failed “to seem to [Strether]—well, sublime!”.
F. Gloriani
Chad arranges for Strether to meet Madame de Vionnet and her daughter at a party held at Gloriani’s house. This character also appears in James’s first novel, Roderick Hudson.
For Strether, a brush with Gloriani is the nearest thing to a brush with fame itself. Strether does not quite make it with the fashionable crowd, “the deep human expertness in Gloriani’s charming smile—oh the terrible life behind it!—was flashed upon him as a test of his stuff.” Strether fails the test.
G. Maria Gostrey
To the American readers of Puritan descent in James’s time, Europe embodied sinful luxuries.
To the more enlightened, Europe linked America with its Old World heritage. Maria Gostrey, an American expatriate, has it upon herself to serve as the expatriates’ guide through their time in Europe. Gostrey stalls those precious few who come to experience European life until they no longer need her. She hurries those Puritans, who arrive to condemn Europe, through their tour and quickly sends them home again.
Gostrey works out that Strether’s quest has little to do with a prodigal son giving himself up. She asks him “will you give yourself up?”
Receiving an affirmative answer, Gostrey becomes Strether’s guide. Throughout the story, she is Strether’s confidant and helps him sort out his thoughts on people and the general situation. Her devotion to Strether has two effects. On discovery that Strether’s adversary is an old school mate, Gostrey becomes unavailable so as not to be put in an uncompromising situation. Consequently, she spends most of the novel in seclusion. Secondly, she rarely provides information.
She merely helps Strether understand the information he has gathered.
Foreshadowing a tragic end, Strether says that Gostrey reminds him of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
That unfortunate woman was idealized after being beheaded by the jealous Queen Elizabeth. He thinks of this after dwelling on the velvet ribbon around her neck rather than what was revealed to him by her “cut down” dress. By the end of the novel, Gostrey has become the ideal woman for Strether for she combines “beauty and knowledge” in ways that he has come to appreciate.
Gostrey, for her part, had already selected Strether to be one of her well-kept things, and she offers him the reward of being kept after his service to the Newsomes is over. He declines and “there we are!”.
H. Chadwick Newsome
Chad, the prodigal son, has been having a fling in Europe, where Paris has polished him into an admirable gentleman: “Chad was brown and thick and strong, and of old Chad had been rough.” He has spent too much time on this fling, however, and seeks to extricate himself from his affairs to return home. Strether, his mother’s suitor, has been sent to expedite this process.
Mrs Newsome has reserved a prestigious managerial position for Chad, which includes learning the new art of advertising to grow the family business. James never identifies the article that the Newsomes’ manufacture, but it is a domestic necessity that has made the family extremely wealthy. The subject of the business provides the one opportunity in the novel for commentary on contemporary society. Chad’s future as an advertising guru for the business is accompanied by the idea that advertising is a new science and nearly an art.
Chad is “formed to please”, and he shows himself to be an able salesman throughout the novel. He arranges Strether’s impressions of Chad himself and the Vionnets.
His show, from his first appearance at the theatre to his last nightly stroll with Strether, has been for Strether’s benefit. Strether has purchased the entire show although it means giving up his betrothed.
I. Jim Pocock
Jim “arrived in a very mild and reasonable frame of mind” because he has no intention of involving himself in his wife’s ambassadorial duties.
For Strether, he serves as a revelation of Woollett society—which excludes Jim. “He seemed to say that there was a whole side of life on which the perfectly usual was for leading Woollett business-men to be out of the question.” Strether sees in Jim his fate should he marry Mrs Newsome—exclusion from “the Good Life”.
Jim could have been a man who always enjoyed the fullness of life, but marriage and career squashed him into being a “small and fat…failure of type”. Released from the rat race of business life, Jim wants to binge on Europe as if it were an amusement park. And, bingeing is not Strether’s idea of joy.
J. Mamie Pocock
Jim’s sister, Mamie, is “one of the real and the right”.
She is an accomplished young lady who appreciates the arts and recognizes the value of a business-minded man, and Woollett hopes that Chad will return home and marry her. Accordingly, “she came over with ideas. Those she had got at home.” She wants to save Chad by bringing him around to accepting Mrs Newsome’s argument.
She is a good catch, but Chad, as Mamie can see for herself, has drastically changed for the better and does not need her. Bilham, however, suits Mamie, and he accompanies her to Switzerland with the Pococks at the end of the novel.
K Sarah Pocock
When Strether fails to obey a summons from Mrs Newsome, Chad’s sister, Sarah, and her family are sent to Paris to retrieve Chad; on Sarah’s arrival, Mrs Newsome’s correspondence with Strether ceases.
Sarah acts as Mrs Newsome’s surrogate and executioner. Chad and Strether try to determine “what mother thinks” by means of Sarah. As the new ambassador, Sarah stalks Strether’s imagination to the point of giving him “fantastic waking dreams”.
Sarah has modelled herself after the worst aspects of Mrs Newsome. Strether describes her as “gracious” and always “affable” but also fat, unattractive, and “unpleasant”. Whereas, Mrs Newsome was never unpleasant but “reserved” and audibly “silent”. Mrs Newsome had also maintained “the girdle of a maid”. Mentally, Sarah is no match for her mother.
Sarah, like her mother, hates Chad in Paris and, far from seeing a change in the young man, feels that whatever can be done in Paris should be done in Woollett. Sarah’s tenacity in achieving her mother’s objective allows Strether to forgive her for being blind. They part on good terms, but “her mother’s moral pressure” and ideals sustain her. This is a sustenance Strether can no longer tolerate.
L. Lewis Lambert Strether
A man in his mid-50s from Woollett—a provincial New England town—Strether holds the esteem of his fellow Americans due to his intellectual abilities and his editorship of a Review, “the cover’s green—a most lovely shade”.
His work ought to make Strether proud, but he only sounds tired when he admits the journal belongs to Mrs Newsome, who provides all the money as “her tribute to the ideal”. Strether’s attachment to Mrs Newsome has grown deeper, culminating in their engagement. He subsequently accepts a mission from Mrs Newsome of bringing her son home “in triumph as a sort of wedding present”. Strether’s increasing awareness of himself forms the focus of the novel.
In the preface, James calls Strether his hero, but from a psychological viewpoint, he becomes a case study of the imaginative person—too much immersed in literature—whose dull life and mind are forever changed during a trip abroad.
The burdens of life before his trip haunt Strether. Memories of his wife’s death make him feel guilty; in his grief, he was incapable of caring for his sickly child—who died alone. In addition, the weight of living up to Mrs Newsome’s demands has left him “dog-tired”. She, in fact, is ever present with him in Europe through her letters and the command that Strether not indulge in distraction.
Fortunately, Strether meets Maria Gostrey, who helps him without demanding anything in return, unlike Waymarsh, who is more like Mrs Newsome. Strether naturally prefers the healthy exchange with Gostrey. His journey to self-realization has only begun.
Paris does wonders for Strether. While he was focused on doing his job when he arrived in Europe, he now seeks reasons for delaying a return to Woollett as long as possible.
He has, as an old man, learned new tricks and learned how to live. It is this lesson that provided the “germ” for James’s novel. Strether regrets the wasted toil of his days and feels he has only begun to live. He shares this realization—a repetition of the carpe diem theme—with Bilham, who he views as the son he has lost: It’s not too late for you, on any side, and you don’t strike me as in danger of missing the train…It doesn’t so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you live your life…It’s too late.
And it’s as if the train had fairly waited at the station for me without my having had the gumption to know it was there.
Now I hear the faint receding whistle miles and miles down the line…Do what you like so long as you don’t make my mistake. For it was a mistake. Live!
His eyes are open. He can now sees things as they really are; what is valuable in life and what is not. His speech foreshadows the final lesson in his education as a man who celebrates life; he does take a train and makes a grand discovery. His newfound identity makes it impossible to marry Mrs Newsome because she does not see clearly.
M. Mr Waymarsh
Waymarsh is an American lawyer from Milrose, Connecticut.
He provides a stark contrast to Strether. Mr Waymarsh matches Strether in age but has been more successful in life.
He stands as a stereotypical American man of money who exhibits a “joyless” disposition—he grumbles about the accommodation, refuses to go to plays, and does not appreciate European civilization, from Chester’s Rows to Parisian streets.
If Strether had not counted Waymarsh as a friend, he would have fitted into Gostrey’s category of persons needing to leave Europe as soon as possible. Waymarsh is incapable of self-realization: “he’ll resist even Miss Gostrey”.
Waymarsh comes from an older American mould than Strether which, apparently, did not tolerate challenge or question. Milrose “was most in the real tradition” of New England Puritanism. Strether knows what this means and adequately explains Waymarsh’s background to Gostrey. Waymarsh has the “sacred rage” of the old-time righteous Americans who despised the luxurious ways of the Europeans, and who glowered in disgust from across the oceans.
The maintenance of the “sacred rage” endears him to Miss Barrace as an antique from childhood, “your friend’s a type, the grand old American…The Hebrew Prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah” who used to visit her father. Miss Barrace loves Waymarsh because he does not understand, “so grand is it not to understand”. This type of American has been outdated, but, for the moment, he acts like a check on Strether who wishes to be a new American—the open-minded, cultured American.
Waymarsh does not appear to Strether as the wonderful curmudgeon Mrs Barrace sees because he sides with the Pococks against Strether.
Themes
A. Disillusionment
Strether runs a gauntlet of disillusioning circumstances on his journey to wakefulness and clear sight. Strether realizes that “to be right” he must see things as they are. Right things are seen and understood clearly. “The wrong…was the obscure.”
In Woollett, this means seeing things according to Mrs Newsome’s definitions. Strether’s actual experiences force him to disavow Mrs Newsome’s theories while maintaining the definitions of right and wrong. That means sacrificing all preconceived notions derived from books, paintings, nostalgia, or the theories of his betrothed. It also means solitude. Strether gains the brand of traitor when he tries to share his knowledge. The disillusionment with the narrow-mindedness of Woollett was bound to happen. In the end, events also destroy Strether’s belief in perfection.
This last ideal will vanish during an attempt to enjoy views of France made famous by the Impressionists. From a train station, Strether walks through a series of studio-perfect landscapes. His nature viewing reaches a crescendo when he takes a seat by a river. “A boat advancing around the bend” that contains a man rowing a woman with a “pink parasol” caps the experience. What a perfect sight! In a moment, recognition ruins the experience.
Although he had felt assured that he could count on Madame de Vionnet and Chad to maintain their perfection as platonic lovers with good judgment, they are the ones he sees on the river “in a boat of their own”, having a typical, romantic affair.
That “their country could happen to be exactly his” adds to Strether’s feelings of disillusionment.
B. France
Contrary to the traditional Anglo-American distaste for French customs and manners, in The Ambassadors Americans embrace French ways and feel better for doing so.
Waymarsh and the Pococks keep themselves from becoming French, but Chad, Bilham, and Strether have been converted. Bilham suggests the process was more thorough than conversion. “They’ve simply—the cannibals!—eaten me; converted me if you like, but converted me into food. I’m but the bleached bones of a Christian.” In this speech, Bilham alludes to the history of colonialism as well as the lingering disagreement between the Protestants and Catholics.
Arts, manners, and food are involved with “going French” but so is the appreciation of the Catholic air embodied in the gargoyles and cathedrals of Paris, which Strether speaks of as “the great romancer and the great romance”.
C. Materialism
The manufacturing of millions of things that people consume as part of their daily lives describes the state of the world in which this novel is set.
But that “vulgar” world, though alluded to under the guise of the mysterious item at the root of the Newsomes’s wealth, remains outside the novel.
In an “age of mechanical reproduction”, to use Walter Benjamin’s phrase, the original and rare item is given greater value. That is, a society that spends a great deal of its time buying and selling “vulgar” things idealizes those original, often antique, pieces and their possessors. This theme announces itself from the beginning when Waymarsh goes into a jeweller’s shop to vent his “sacred rage”.
As a representative of the Puritan tradition, luxurious items and their wanton consumption are sinful. Strether does not agree, but he does not really know what to think about consumption. Things in Paris show Strether “a different scale of relations”.
Expensive and rare things are pointed out in the novel and provide Strether with a means of evaluating people.
He begins with Maria whose “velvet band somehow added, in her appearance, to the value of every other item”. Maria, Chad, and Miss Barrace collect things—expensive things like artworks and antiques. Chad’s “charming place…full of beautiful and valuable things” backs up the idea that Chad has become a gentleman of taste.
Miss Barrace’s informed and intense inspection of objects makes them seem “to need to be”.
Chad and Miss Barrace widen Strether’s idea about things, but Maria’s Parisian apartment, on the other hand, is an “empire of things” and “as brown as a pirate’s cave”. Though he worries about breaking something in Maria’s “little museum”, he realizes that she, a person, is the most important object to appreciate. Madame de Vionnet disrupts Strether’s newfound appreciation of people by their precious things.
Madame de Vionnet does not collect things; rather, her wealth was “founded more on old accumulations” that simply baffle Strether as he tries to calculate her age. Strether realizes he has entered “the air of supreme respectability—that was a strange blank wall for his adventure to have brought him to break his nose against”.
Strether respects the accumulation of things, and he has learned that the exercise of taste and value can create truly wonderful collections. No effort of collecting, as American billionaires from Gould to Rockefeller were practising at the time, could possibly compete with true collections brought together by a family over centuries.
Not for the first time, Madame de Vionnet shows she represents, not an “old and abject and hideous” creature but someone with the “right stuff”.
D. Diversity
Using a mechanical metaphor, Strether puts forth a theory about humans, influenced by his trip abroad, an observation that would have been impossible had he stayed at home where things were homogenous.
Sitting in the audience at the theatre and glancing at the other audience members, Strether notices the wide variety possible in humanity but holds that there are only two moulds—male and female.
Beyond that, “a series of strong stamps had been applied” to create finite diversity. Miss Barrace aids Strether in his belief in the theory when she identifies Waymarsh as a type.
However, the theory cracks during Strether’s experience in Paris where many opinions—compared to Woollett’s “Three or four”—make him realize that people, however similar they may appear, possess unique minds. From this he graduates to being a critic, in the best sense of the term. “Everything’s comparative,” he tells Madame de Vionnet.
By this he means that people and places, past and present, can be compared and lessons can be drawn from that comparison without having recourse to a system or theory of moral judgement (like Woollett’s “Theory of the Horrible”). Strether’s mastery of this idea disables his knee-jerk ability to judge, which he had at the beginning of the novel.
Comparison wins him admiration. Seeing the benefit he has derived from this lesson, he attempts to encourage Chad and Bilham in the same direction.
Literary Style
A. The Psychological Novel
The impression that external stimuli and events make on a character or the thoughts and feelings motivating characters are the subjects of this type of fiction.
In the novel’s earliest days, the psychology of a character was declarative. Thus, the nervous mind of Robinson Crusoe was stated, as was the fear of death in Tristram Shandy.
However, an increased interest in criminal minds brought greater psychological sophistication to the novel. Detective stories in the United States and Russia delved into psychological motivation and reflected current scientific theory. As the 19th century wore on, George Eliot and Gustave Flaubert produced psychological novels about normal people.
In the 20th century, following James, the psychological novel would reach new heights with James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Virginia Woolf.
James contributed the technique of sustained focus on one mind to this genre.
James used a device called erlebte Rede or le style indirect libre, a technique that plays with indirect speech. A standard narration, which uses indirect speech to focus on the thoughts of a character, would judge a character’s thought: “he thought [blank]”.
In Erlebte Rede, however, the narrator leads us to the judgement but without the overtness just shown. In this novel, the narrator generalizes the sentiments of what Strether thinks by cutting through the literary and metaphorical manners Strether himself would use. The reader, however, has to reach the conclusions by him- or herself.
For example, the narrator does not clue the reader in on the obvious irony of the phrase “in the same boat” at the end of the novel. Some things are better left unsaid, and the result is a focus on the workings of an individual mind as it deals with its environment.
B. Realism
James and his friend Howells introduced to American fiction the 19th-century conceit that art could truly represent life. In this novel, James’s style shows that realist techniques do not always lead to straightforward understandings.
James focused on the psychological experiences of Strether and recorded them in a natural manner. There is no theoretical jargon or explanation of Strether’s mind—just a play-by-play description of Strether’s mind processing his experiences according to his linguistic base.
Another area where James shows his realism is in conversation. Highly educated and witty characters perform the dialogues. Thus, facts and figures obvious to the characters are never spelled out. Thoughts by one character are completed by another as each tries to beat the other to a speculation. The ability to follow the exchanges as well as the allusions contained in the descriptions of Strether’s mind are rewarded by amusement: Considering how many pieces had to fit themselves, it all fell, in Strether’s brain, into a close, rapid order.
He saw on the spot what had happened and what probably would yet; and it was all funny enough.
C. Ficelle
Ficelle comes from the stage and refers to the tricks and devices now called “special effects”.
James uses this term as a label for characters whose function assists in firming up the structure of the novel.
These characters work much in the same way a letter or other evidence in a detective novel would work; they are an opportunity to fill the reader in on elements otherwise unknown, without using an omniscient narrator or employing interior monologue. Thus, Mrs Newsome is not a ficelle because she never appears. A ficelle must be present because verbal communication with Strether activates him or her.
Miss Gostrey is the purest ficelle in the novel although Waymarsh and Bilham act as ficelles from time to time. When Strether invokes the ficelle, the reader gains information while Strether clarifies his thoughts. The ficelle exists, Strether tells Maria, “to see me through…the experience”.
D. Point of View
The success of the novel depends on the technique of using a third-person narrator spliced with one character’s point of view: Strether’s.
James rejects the obvious choice of first-person narrative (his reasons are detailed in the novel’s preface) to gain the freedom and reliability of third-person narration while creating a concentrated focus on a person’s psychology. He also keeps his novel in prose without quoting letters and only alluding to other literary works. James uses many devices to succeed.
First, James alters the device of “central intelligence” so that it becomes the unifying consciousness of the entire work. Prior to this novel, an “intelligence” was simply a viewpoint or a character. In the character of Strether, James develops a viewpoint through which the entire novel is channelled. Information in the novel reveals itself solely through this intelligence. This is admitted within the novel several times. Second, the third-person narration uses “scenes” and “pictures” to aid Strether’s viewpoint.
A scene involves characters meeting and speaking while pictures relate Strether’s thoughts without the drawbacks of soliloquies. For example, Strether’s first meeting alone with Madame de Vionnet begins with a scene with Chad, then flows into a picture, and then into a scene with the lady herself.
The picture relays Strether’s impressions of the inventory of Madame de Vionnet’s apartment in the third person. Their conversation scene is interspersed with comments like, “it gave her another pause; which, however, she happily enough shook off”.
By these devices, the third-person narrative is grafted into the singular viewpoint of the main character to create a tight unity that becomes Strether’s “experience”.
As Strether changes, so does the information relayed by the narrator. The day after the rural outing, a picture of Strether is presented to convey the chaos of his feelings. Amid a series of questions the narrator suggests Strether asks himself, Strether is described as having “a deliberate hand on his blue missive, crumpling it up rather tenderly than harshly”. The details of the note from Madame de Vionnet are relayed without quoting it.
Historical Context
A . Transatlantic Travel
The days of the speedy clipper ship were numbered once Robert Fulton launched a successful steamboat in 1807.
Steamboats soon revolutionized inland transport and, combined with the construction of canals, led to an era of decreasing shipping prices.
Ocean-going vessels began to be fitted with engines in 1819, but they did not pose a significant threat to sail power until the Cunard Line began regular service to Europe in the 1840s. By the 1870s, boiler and propeller improvements led to the triple-expansion steam engine, which did not require huge amounts of fuel.
Further improvements in the 1890s, with the adoption of the turbine, brought the travel time between the United States and Europe down to a week.
Increasing the speed of transatlantic shipment of goods and people fostered an increase in world commerce.
B. Industrialization
Industrialization reached a stage of inertia in the late 19th century.
Whereas heavy industry, like coal mining or iron production (which due to the Bessemer process had all but lost out to steel), had long been brought under the control of large conglomerates like US Steel, other areas of American life had also been industrialized.
Transportation was no longer by foot or horse but by railway or, if you were rich enough, a horseless carriage. Flour was made in great milling centres like Minneapolis, while meat was processed in Chicago; both were shipped by rail to department and chain stores. However, industrial efficiency and expansion had its problems, especially in the downturn of the world economy between 1873 and 1896.
Thus, advertising was the key. Catalogues, roadside billboards, and even parades were used to capture the attention of the newly created mass market.
C. France
France had imperial ambitions, and its industry was expanding as well.
A mass society was being created, and Paris was the cultural capital of the world. Under the government of the Third Republic, nationwide compulsory school education put in place in 1885 created a generation of French citizens who studied the same subjects in the same educational setting. In addition, this generation had similar ideas of patriotism due to compulsory military service.
Also, as in other industrialized countries, the railway and the steam-powered rotary printing press enabled an integrated nation-state. Into this mixture, two critical events helped influence mass politics and the beginnings of a truly secular society.
First, General Georges Boulanger attempted to overthrow the Third Republic through a sophisticated political campaign that took advantage of the aforementioned developments in French society. His platform remained unclear, but he had frightened the entrenched power structure by 1889. The Third Republic was never in real danger of collapse, and he fled the country amid charges of scandal. He left behind a political machine that looks primitive by the standards of the 21st century but which was larger than any other mass political effort of the time.
In 1894 the Dreyfus affair broke.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus was framed as a spy and sent to Devil’s Island in South America after being convicted on a charge of treason. The trial exposed France’s anti-Semitism and showcased the ability of the press and grassroots organizations to influence national politics. Dreyfus was eventually cleared of the charge and returned to the army, where he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
D. The New Imperialism
A number of political and technological developments conspired to bring about New Imperialism.
Faster ships made the world smaller, better firepower gave the Europeans the advantage, quinine made the malarial sting impotent, and the drive for economic expansion and belief in the Christian “civilizing” mission came together in the second half of the 19th century. From 1875 to the eve of World War I, European nations competed with each other in a “scramble for Africa”.
E. The Boer War
Britain had the greatest empire, but by the end of the 19th century, it had a nervous hold on its possessions.
Britain paid special attention to areas of profitability like India and areas with abundant natural resources.
Afrikaners (descendents of Dutch settlers) were laying claim to the world’s largest supply of gold in South Africa, which Britain viewed as its rightful property. This contest grew problematic when Germany, avowedly friendly to the Afrikaners, annexed Namibia in 1884. British colonialists like Cecil Rhodes invested in mines in South Africa and conspired to overthrow the Afrikaners and establish British rule. They failed in their 1895 attempt.
Tensions increased until the Afrikaners declared war on Britain in 1899. Britain sent 350,000 troops to fight 65,000 Afrikaners in a long, drawn out guerrilla war. By 1902, after years of high casualties and international criticism, the British accepted the surrender of the Afrikaners, and South Africa was created.
Related works
One of James’s most popular novels was the story of Isabel Archer, The Portrait of a Lady (1881). Isabel, James’s model of the “American Girl”, travels to Europe where she declines marriage proposals from two honest men. Instead, she enters into a disastrous marriage with the callous and self-serving Gilbert Osmond.
Another of James’s novels that explores the theme of the encounter between Americans and their European counterparts is The Wings of the Dove (1902). At the beginning of the novel, Kate Croy, a Londoner, and her fiancée, Merton Densher, are ready to marry—although they differ in their approaches to the institution. Kate convinces Merton to marry a terminally ill and very wealthy American, Milly Theale, so that they will be rich.
Theale discovers the plot and dies leaving her riches to Densher. However, guilt prevents the Europeans from achieving happiness.
Leon Edel published a monumental five-volume biography of James, Henry James: A Life, which was abridged in 1985 into one volume.
Saul Bellow used very different techniques from James when he approached the problems of worldly success and the theme of carpe diem—“seize the day”. His novel Seize the Day (1956) tells the sad tale of a man who loses his job, wife, and hope by looking at one day in the life of Tommy Wilhelm.
Karl Baedeker’s Paris, the giant of late 19th century guidebooks, precisely locates the places, cafés, and homes featured in The Ambassadors. The 15th edition of 1900 indicates some developments in Paris that Strether ignored but the Pococks probably did not, like the metro and an international Exposition.
HENRY JAMES
The novelist Henry James, son of the theologian Henry James and Mary Robertson Walsh, was born in New York on April 15, 1843.
Months later, Henry and his parents travelled to Europe for the first time. The trip was brief, and the family returned to spend the next ten years in New York. In 1855, the family set off again. This time they numbered four boys and one girl. They remained abroad for a few years, and the children went to a succession of schools in Switzerland, France, England, and Germany.
After their return, the family settled in Newport, Rhode Island. Beginning in 1864, under the influence of W. D. Howells, James devoted his life to literature and started publishing criticism and short stories in 1865. His reputation began to grow in 1870, with his stories about the “American Girl”, whom he modelled on his cousin Minnie Temple—who died that same year at the age of 24. By 1875, he had decided to live abroad.
He planned to live in Paris, but, by 1876, James had settled in London, where he published his first novel, Roderick Hudson. James achieved fame and monetary success from Daisy Miller in 1879, and The Portrait of a Lady in 1881. In 1883, almost two years after his mother’s death, the first collected edition of his works appeared in 14 volumes.
James had success in travel writing, essays, and as a journalist, but his attempt to break into writing plays in the 1890s was humiliating. The audience booed James off the stage after a production of Guy Domville in January of 1895. He gave up drama and returned to fiction. During this year, he recorded the “germ” in his notebook that would become The Ambassadors.
James continued writing novels and travelling. He made an extensive tour of the United States in 1904 and 1905.
He then returned to London and found some success with plays until his health began to decline in 1909. He received two honorary degrees from Harvard in 1911 and Oxford in 1912. When the United States did not enter World War I, James registered his protest by becoming a British citizen in 1915. He died on February 28, 1916, in London but not before being awarded the Order of Merit by King George V.
His ashes were eventually buried in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a memorial plaque was placed in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.