Volume II, Issue VII, November 2014 - ISSN 2321-7065
Theme of Evil in Henry James’s novels or fiction
Sunita Devi
Lecturer
Govt. Polytechnic College
Uttawar
Haryana
Abstract
Evil in Henry James’s fiction as it is embodied in concrete characters and situations.
His concern with evil is a aspect of reality. Evil is an active and felt presence almost from the
beginning, although the lurking beast remains half hidden from view. Evil in his fiction is not
so much a problem as it is an ever present reality that cripples and destroys; it is present at
the base of every human situation. His Villains are usually active; evil to him is a negative.
Evil is unavoidable and universal, but it is centred in the human soul and manifests itself in
the harmful domination of one person over another.
Dr. Sloper’s type of evil, however, assumes another form in the social context- the sin
of manipulation. Parental authority becomes ugly and grasping and wicked when it would
bend or break an innocent and beautiful, but brave, spirit in the name of expediency and
conformity. Dr. Sloper apparently wanted to manipulate his daughter’s life and happiness, in
actual fact; he was at the deeper, unconscious level, violating her virgin soul. Evil does not
have to show the proverbial horns and hoofs.
“The Doctor looked around him too. Should you like to
left in such a place as this to starve?”
“What do you mea?” cried the girl.
“That will be your fate-that’s how he will leave you”.
He would not touch her, but he had touched Morris.
The strangest part of it was that he had said he was
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not a good man; Catherine wondered a good deal
about what he had meant by that……
The evil of manipulation from now onwards becomes a major motif in James’s fiction.
Whenever or wherever a person seeks to dominate control, twist or mould another psyche,
James sees in it a threat not only to individual freedom, but also to society and to civilize
existence. The instinct of aggrandizement is basically a bio-psychological necessity; it is, in
other words, part of the subterranean evil in man.
It is testimony to James’s consistent artistic development that there is in his works a
distinct movement towards detachment in his treatment of evil. Just as the villains of his early
stories are simply conceived, so his own condemnation of them is unequivocal. In “Madam
de mauves” (1894), for example, James employs an almost primitive imagery of black or
white to Convey moral values. In his more mature stories of the early period, however, James
maintains a disinterested position through an ironic approach to his heroes and heroines.
Christopher Newman and Isabel Archer Meet evil through weakness of character as well as
through unfortunate circumstances. James achieves full detachment in his middle period
when He replaces the stage villainy of the Bellegardes and Osmond with the ambiguous
characterization of Mrs. Gereth, Rose Armiger, and Mrs. Brookenhem .
The Other House (1896) reveals the shift in James’s view of evil, it is the novel in
which James continuous to convey the horror of evil, and yet divests the evildoer of the
simple blackness that often takes place of realistic characterization in the early works. The
other house is especially notable and unusual in that it is about a crime of violencespecifically, the murder of child. Yet the villainess, Rose Armiger, is a subtle creation,
looking forward to ambiguous “bad heroines” of later works. Her evil is tempered. Rose’s
tremendous passion and validity, her grace and style are inseparable from her cruelty James
treats Rose’s evil as a psychologist rather than a moralist, and in doing so makes her heinous
crime believable.
In James’s fiction man is not in a condition of absolute depravity, but he possesses a
latent capacity for evil that is dreadful even when unrealized. As R.P. Blackness states,
“…….James’s ghosts represent the attempt to give objective rational form- knowledgeable
form …... our secret selves which we commonly deny or try to explain away”. James seems
to be in the puritan tradition in his subjective treatment of evil; there are some important
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modifications, alterations in his works. James tends to concentrate on the good man’s
reaction to evil, rather than on the guilty man’s obsession with his own sin. Hilda in
Hawthorne’s The Marble Fauh, the innocent made aware of evil, than it resembles the
concern of Miriam with her own guilt. When James allows the reader to see into the mind of
a villain, his emphasis differs from Hawthorne’s. He is little interested in the sinners’s sense
of morality or in his feelings of guilt after the sin. Like most of the villains, the Bellegardes in
The American and Gilbert Osmond in the Portrait of a lady are never dealt with subjectively.
Though his villains are usually active, evil to James is a negative reality. In this
respect James, more in the tradition of Emerson than that of Hawthorne and Melville. In
James’s fiction evil is not an active principle in the universe. James does not characterize
pure egotism, as does Howthorne. Evil comes about through the imperceptions of those who
either do not recognize or ignore the effects of their activity on others. Thus Osmond’s
devotion to aesthetics, in itself a good, bring misery to his wife. Therefore, if the heroes and
heroines are good, they rarely achieve happiness or success often the complexity of life itself
is the villain, but evil is most often revealed in the stupidity, or the rapacity of an individual
or of a society. Evil is unavoidable and universal, but it is centred in the human soul and
manifests itself in the harmful domination of one person over another. Many James’ critic
“has observed that the principle sin in James is the sanctity of the human heart”.
In The Bostonians, the evil of manipulation is indeed one of the principle themes, and
James dramatizes it in all its unmasked hideousness and lurking brutality. Daniel Lerner and
Oscar Cargill declare that in “The Bostonians, the subject is a struggle of personalities instead
of a conflict of characters, not ethical justification for human behaviour, is what we invited to
consider”. Thus the evil in The Bostonians is primarily rooted in the sin of manipulation.
Commenting on this aspect of novel, Irving Howe compares James with Hawthorne. “Both
Are”, he observes,
“observed by the problem of integrity; how, they repeatedly ask,
can a human being, involved as he must be in limiting and
treacherous social relationship......The great sin in Hawthorne’s
novels, which is the presumption of taking in to one’s hands the
destiny of another person, is also the great sin in James’s novels”.
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In all of James’s fiction, if the villains are motivated by common and vulgar desires,
the human damage is irreparable. The victim suffers for more than loss of material
possessions. He suffers loss of love, as does Newman, or loss of his life, as does Isabel
Archer spiritually and Milly Theale physically. The effect of evil is usually to cut off the
victim from free experience and permanently ruin his chances for happiness. Proper moral
growth can occur only with an encounter with evil. The Portrait of a lady and What Maisie
knew are James’s best known novels The aspect of evil has been prevailing in these novels.
In the novel, The Portrait of a lady, the heroine, Isabel Archer explains the Jamesian principle
of experience:
“I am not bent on a life of misery ...... I have always been
intensely determined to be happy, and I have often believed
I should be …… but it comes over me every now and then
that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by
turning away…………… from life…… from the usual chances
and dangers, from most people know and suffer”.
There is clearly a revelation of an intrinsic evil in the novel’s emphasis on man’s
inevitable condition of isolation and failure, but in “The Portrait of a Lady”, James is also
concerned with the process of man’s decline from innocence to depravity. In this novel, the
aims of Isabel and Osmond are similar, for both wish to satisfy their carvings. But Isabel’s
pride is untainted by malice. As Leon Edel points out, “twice in the book James uses Miltonic
words to describe the extent of Isabel’s freedom – as if she were Eve standing at the portals
of paradise which are closing behind her. “Though Isabel is more innocent then Eve at the
beginning of her adventure, her innocence is ambiguous; it combines a false notion of
personal independence with an obliviousness to evil. In these sense her original sin is simply
innocence, but innocence coordinate with pride,’ it is significant that “The Portrait of a Lady”
concludes with Godwood offering Isabel a way out of her misery:
“It is too monstrous of you to think of sinking back into that misery……
why should not we be happy – when it is so easy?..... were we born to
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rot in our misery?...... The world’s all before us-and the world is very
big.”
The two agents of evil in “The Portrait of a Lady, Madam Merle and Gillbert
Osmond, are brought together by passion and parted by money. For Isabel, the true face of
evil is not revealed till the end.
Henry James’s What Maisie knew present from a complex point of view the
intimation of a young girl into a world of vertical activities and emotion. Maisie herself is
untainted by the evil that festers around her. She herself is so vitiated by the girl of her
‘protectors’ that she seek to resolve her dilemma by offering to become Sir Claude’s mistress.
This novel is an attempt to print the figure of life as it falls upon the very acute vision of a
little girl. Life as presented to her eyes in sufficiently unpleasant. Evil continues to exit in one
form or another till the end. Mrs. Wix of What Maisie Knew, for instance, represent, though
to a lesser extent, this type evil. She is a somewhat ineffective manipulator, symbolizing the
misery and poverty of suppressed sex. James places Maisie is an unstable world.
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References
1. Lyall H. Powers, ‘The Portrait of a Lady’ Maiden, Women and Heroine (United
States: Boston, 1984).
2. The Idea of an American Novel, ed. Louis D. Rubin and John Ress Moore (New York
: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1834).
3.
Leon Edel, Henry James, 1843-1870: The untried years (Philadelphia: J.B Lippincott
Company, 1953).
4. The Magic Circle of Henry James, ed. Amaritjit Singh, K. Ayyappa Paniker (New
Delhi: Green Park, 1989).
5.
S. Gorley Putt, A preface of Henry James (New York: Longman House, 1986).
6.
James W. Gargano, Critical Essays on Henry James: The Late Novels (United States:
Boston 1987).
7.
Michael Swan, Henry James (London: Great Britain, 1952).
8.
H. Montgomery Hyde, Henry James: AT Home (London, Great Britian, 1969).
9.
F.W. Dupee,Henry James (New Delhi : 1968).
10. Harry T. Moore, Henry James and his world (London: Great Britian, 1974).
11. Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life (United States: Harper & Row, 1985).
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