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"Valets Fiction."
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The Place of a Servant in the Scale
This essay examines the servants and shopkeepers who play a surprisingly central yet critically unacknowledged role in Henry James's fiction of the late 1890s, arguing that James's frequent depiction of lower-class life is a sign not of an unsuspected interest in class but of his familiar interest in consciousness. This interest has been memorably diagnosed by Sharon Cameron, who observes that in the work of James's last stage “consciousness is not in persons; it is rather between them”—that thoughts can be shared by characters without being spoken. Yet the writings that immediately precede James's last works offer a less reciprocal model of consciousness to the one that Cameron provides. Because the characters inWhat Maisie Knew(1897),The Awkward Age(1899), andThe Turn of the Screw(1898) do not have access to the minds of those around them, they are forced to imagine other forms in which to measure both their own knowledge and that of others. The form they discover is the lives of the people who work for them. These subjects provide a fixed scale by which to measure the growth of consciousness in James's protagonists because they are assumed to have none of their own. Thus inThe Turn of the Screwthe terror experienced by the governess at the apparition of the ghosts of the former governess and valet can be understood as her realization that her identityisher situation; like them, she is reproducible, exchangeable, dispensable. The ghosts, that is, function as externalized figures for her own condition.
Journal Article
A Dream Sold Down the River
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilsonhas given modern critics extensive grounds for consternation and disagreement (even the use of the word “tragedy” in the title is challenged on both textual and thematic grounds). In the wake of the civil rights movement and affirmative action, its plot is inevitably troubling to today’s reader. It is clearly informed by Twain’s own state of conflicted feelings about blacks and race in the 1890s, a point of view that was absorbed into his pessimism about the so-called “damned human race.” In its final evolution out of a farce later labeled a “comedy” in the
Book Chapter
Jeeves and the king of clubs : a novel in homage to P.G. Wodehouse
\"What ho! A new Jeeves and Wooster novel, penned in homage to P.G. Wodehouse by bestselling author Ben Schott-in which literature's favorite gentleman and his gentleman's personal gentleman become spies in service to the Crown. The misadventures of P.G. Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster and his incomparable valet, Jeeves, have delighted audiences for nearly a century. Now, bestselling author Ben Schott brings this odd couple back to life in a madcap new adventure that is full of the hijinks, entanglements, imbroglios, and Wodehousian wordplay that readers love. And, by Jove, there's a hook! In this escapade, the Junior Ganymede Club (Jeeves's association of butlers and valets) is revealed to be an arm of the British intelligence service. Jeeves must ferret out a Fascist spy, and only his hapless employer can help. Unfolding in the background are school-chum capers, affairs of the heart, drawing-room escapades, antics with aunts, and sartorial set-tos. Energized by Schott's effervescent prose, Jeeves and the King of Clubs delights longtime fans and introduces a new audience to the comic joys of these beloved characters.\" -- Publisher's description
Book
Guermantes (May to August 1910)
The idea of an infatuation with a comtesse de Guermantes goes back to the very first sketches, in the Sainte-Beuvecahiers. The Guermantes family, related to the Villeparisis, was created before the idea of a novel had even come into focus, onCahier1. Right from the start (Cahier4), the Protagonist was aware of the countess in the courtyard below, and she very soon became part of the Combray associations also. Then in the first idea for Querqueville (31), the Protagonist makes contact with Mme de Villeparisis and, through her, with her nephew Montargis, soon to become a close
Book Chapter
The Job Applicant
In early September 1914, Ernest Forssgren, a nineteen-year-old Swede, recently unemployed, crossed the Seine and headed for 102 boulevard Haussmann.¹ Before ringing the bell, he gazed at the solid stone façade, whose wrought-iron balconies bespoke Right Bank bourgeois respectability and wealth but lacked the stately grandeur of the Russian Prince Alexis Orloff’s mansion in the old aristocratic quarter of the faubourg Saint-Germain, Forssgren’s previous place of employment.
It is unimaginable how many lives had been forever altered just a month earlier, on August 2, when the French government ordered the mobilization of the army, an action followed the next day
Book Chapter
The code of the Woosters
\"They say trouble comes in threes, and Bertie Wooster soon learns why. It all begins when his aunt Dahlia asks him to steal a silver cow creamer illegally obtained by her husband's silver rival. Then comes the telegram from Gussie Fink-Nottle begging Bertie to come to Totleigh Towers to mend the rift between him and his soppy fiancée, Madeline Bassett. To top it all off, Bertie must contend with Roderick Spode, the menacing, black shorts-wearing, amateur dictator. How will Bertie get the cow creamer, stay unengaged from Madeline, and survive Totleigh Tower?\"--P. [4] of cover.
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