I like to think of reading Henry James as an archaeological foray into sentences that were once the latest in exposition by prose.
I have not read much of the work of the many Jamesian scholars, but I did run across this essay on one of James’ short stories, one I have not read, which does say much of what I would like to relate about the experience of reading Henry James:
Thinking about how garden-path sentences work has helped to clarify what the experience of reading Henry James is often like for me: I am reading and at the same time I am made to feel conscious of the effort of reading, of having to go back over a sentence or a section of a sentence and begin again in order to proceed to the next, of working backwards in order to move forwards. Reading Henry James is nothing like a flow, an unfolding; it is rarely immersive. Reading Henry James, I am made to feel conscious of the action of reading, of reading as an action.
I love the term garden path sentences. Yes, reading a novel by Henry James takes work, but I find it immensely rewarding. Like wandering down a garden path which leads from one delight to another. Over the winter months I have read or reread all of Washington Square, The Wings of the Dove, The Bostonians, The Ambassadors, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Golden Bowl. Plus several novellas and short stories published in The Atlantic Magazine during the 1880’s and 1890’s.
Still, having boasted of all of that, I don’t think I could recount to you the “plot” of any of them. Oh, I could say that Washington Square is about a young lady not getting married, or that the Wings of a Dove is about a young woman dying of consumption, The Bostonians is a bit of a slap at early feminisim, the Ambassadors about perhaps being gay but no one, most of all James, would ever outright admit that, Portrait of a Lady about the dangers of romanticism, and The Golden Bowl about marriage and its failures.
Frankly, it doesn’t even matter much to me what they are about. I read them for the pure pleasure of reading them and once started (in an old issue of The Atlantic) I couldn’t get enough.
You could call his novels studies in the subordinate clause. Like this, from The Golden Bowl:
He [the Prince] was to dine at half-past eight o’clock with the young lady on whose behalf, and on whose father’s, the London lawyers had reached an inspired harmony with his own man of business, poor Calderoni, fresh from Rome and now apparently in the wondrous situation of being “shown London,” before promptly leaving it again, by Mr. Verver himself, Mr. Verver whose easy way with his millions had taxed to such small purpose, in the arrangements, the principle of reciprocity.
We get a subject and verb: He was to dine followed by I count about 15 prepositional phrases and subordinate clauses, all of which fill the reader in with the important particulars about the Prince and his situation. He is to marry a young woman whose father is very rich, which marriage requires negotiations between the families of the bride and groom to be. That is, the Prince is marrying for money.
And thus we begin the history of two marriages and an affair that impacts both, but I think I could, if pressed, find little more than two instances, in this very long novel, in which any one of the parties involved displays any passion whatsoever.
We begin with the thoughts of the Prince, in his head, and from there we bounce from head to head trying the fit the pieces of the narrative together that connect one head with another. And nobody, nobody in a Henry James novel, ever ever says just what is on their mind. Everything is communicated through the forms of accepted social address. It can be very frustrating but, to me, satisfying in the way that finding another piece of my jigsaw puzzle can be. There is an order to their world (the upper class of the late 19th century, that is) which can make it very difficult for the characters to create a satisfactory order in their own lives which, in turn, catches the reader (if you’re lucky) up in a deep desire to see them do so.
As it turns out, in The Golden Bowl there is one character whose voice you do not hear until very near the end but for whom you find yourself rooting throughout the story, and when you do finally hear her voice, even it if does not immediately resolve her dilemma, you are very grateful to realize that she has not been as placid as others have characterized her.
Henry James is not for everyone. He may even be for a relatively few. But if you are the kind of reader who enjoys a writer who wields language so well as a tool to draw you in, almost against your will, who enjoys someone who delineates a culture so finely as to take you out of time and place, then Henry James is for you. Perhaps best to start with The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove. The Golden Bowl is for later, when you simply must read another one.
Warning: If you are one of those readers or watchers of period dramas, you will be forever cured of your dreams of reliving the Gilded Age. Male or female, James’s characters continually find themselves in a Gilded Cage, unable to say what they mean or to get what they want. Reading Henry James is the closest you may ever wish to come.