The Fragmentation of James

The realism of Henry James lies in his ability to communicate through his diction the intricacies of human experience. His shorter fiction has little interest in the fate of his protagonists and is far more concerned with their characterization which he implores thoroughly as a heterodiegetic narrator. Identity forms the premise of much of his work, especially concerning the theme of nationality and its relationship to the individual, as shown in his earlier titles such as; The Europeans (1878), The American (1876) andThe Bostonians (1885). While the national identities he depicted in many of his texts created cartographies across Europe and the New world, his later fiction looked deeper into the psychological complexities of identity- Influenced by the work of his brother and leading psychologist, William James. Looking at one of his most acclaimed shorter fictions The Beast in the Jungle (1903),we can see a more intricate exploration of character, one that considers exterior identity as performative. Through the troubled figure of John Marcher, James is able to delve deeper into the meanings of human life, realism meets psychological examination and, combining the two, James engages with the idea of what it means to live authentically and how experience constitutes identity.

In his 1884 essay ‘The Art of Fiction’ James consolidated his techniques of realist fiction writing, expressing his belief that the finest novelist was one capable of taking ‘the faintest hints of life’ and converting ‘the very pulses of the air into revelations’ (943), being able to exact experience from a mere glimpse of the picture. It is with this same technique that James presents his characters to his readers. Realism is achieved in the way he fails to depict wholes, but rather ambiguous fragments of characters that live in a state of bewilderment, unaware of what will happen next. Characters are left open for interpretation and, in much the same way a great writer will gage a whole narrative from a moment in reality, the reader is left to ‘trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern’ (Art of Fiction, 944). The Beast in the Jungle opens with this very concept, but the technique is employed through the protagonist John Marcher’s first glance at the figure of May Bartram. We are initially presented with a ‘she’ (467) which while seeming at first an impersonal term, in its context holds great significance, ‘she’ becomes the center of the protagonist’s attention, the object of his interest, the antithesis of Marcher who professes himself ‘lost in the crowd’ (467). We see that amidst the room of acquaintances ‘he had within a couple of hours, devoted more imagination to her than to all the others put together and had thereby penetrated to a kind of truth’ (468), Marchers imaginings reflect the process of fiction writing and yet we come to learn that there is in fact no ‘truth’ in his assumptions, only fiction. Her exterior fails to provide any real indication of her identity and Marcher’s misassumptions prove this. In this sense there exists a contradiction in the repetition of ‘she’, while it makes her the central focus it prevents her from being her own individual, May Bartram exists only as ‘she’. 

The true identity of May Bartram from the character’s first meeting becomes peripheral, even after learning of their past encounter we see Marcher long for an alternative history, something of romantic substance; he feels that ‘then they would be in possession of something their actual show seemed to lack’(470), the use of the term ‘show’ suggests the contrived nature of the encounter in the eyes of Marcher, as Marilyn Metzcher-Smith argues ‘he focuses on human interactions in performative terms’(148), these choices of terminology form the first suggestions that Marcher feels himself detached from real human experience. Marchers narcissistic tendencies and constant longing for some exalting experience is what keeps the reader and protagonist alike disconnected from the figure of May Bartram. His tale can be seen as a parable of ‘lost life’ (Geismar, 35) because he allows his imaginings to overshadow reality and constitute his identity.   

James develops life and identity as performative throughout the text, exemplified particularly in how Marcher sees people in the outside world, despite his persistent efforts to appear ‘humanly’ (481) himself, those around him are described in sub-human, almost animalistic terms, milling in pairs around the house observing the antiques ‘with an excited sense of smell’ (468). There is an almost voyeuristic element to the way Marcher describes them as ‘persons to be observed’ (467), their character is described solely in terms of their movements and actions. James’s narrative becomes reminiscent of the act of watching animals in a zoo in the way Marcher appears so disconnected from those he describes. It might be suggested that the animalistic nature of man parallels the human nature of Marchers awaited ‘beast’ with Maxwell Geismar suggesting that the image of the beast is ‘a curiously suggestive symbol of the animal passions in man which Marcher’ (42) does not possess. The identity of those around him is constituted through their exterior appearance as James shows us the contrived nature of the world through the contemplations of John Marcher.

The metaphor of life as a performance is continually referenced and used to show the imitative nature of the life led by the protagonist. John Marcher is not presented as a man but rather an actor. Marcher see’s his life as ‘a long act of dissimulation’ in which he ‘wore a mask painted with the social simper, out of the eye holes of which there looked eyes of an expression not in the least matching the other features’ (477). His identity is a mere pretense which enables him to not only act in the periphery of life but exist as a spectator awaiting his fate, an idea exemplified in the way he invites May Bartram to ‘watch’ with him. The very nature of their relationship from this point on becomes performative, she exists solely to help him ‘pass for a man like another’ (481), no longer existing as her own individual but as merely a prop in his disguise. Raymond Benoit argued that Marcher seeks epistemological realization over ontological realization, essentially seeking truth in knowledge rather than in experience, this idea relates to Heidegger’s point that ‘it was the sophists and in Plato that appearance was declared to be mere appearance and thus degraded. At the same time being, as idea, was exalted to a supersensory realm’ (106), had Marcher allowed the pair to be man and woman rather than just appearing to be so they both would have felt life. Essentially Marchers failure lies in his inability to view life from an ontological perspective and to live in the unknown, without knowledge. His desire to exist on the periphery and spectate his fate, maintaining only the ‘mere appearance’ of living, keeps him from experiencing life in the present. 

Inspired heavily by the work of his brother, and leading psychologist, William James, late James often developed his characters through a psychological lens. Considering this it is possible to comprehend why the figure of Marcher remembers so little of his past encounter with May Bartram, an encounter that’s significance it seems unlikely he would forget. William James suggested the process of remembering occurred within the context of the present moment and related in many ways to direct feeling; ‘its object is suffused with a warmth and intimacy to which no object of mere conception ever attains’ (239), he professes he does remember the encounter in order to maintain his pretense as an actor however his misrecollections reveal the absence of any depth of feeling behind his ‘mask’ since ‘remembering is not an epistemology but a feeling’ (Kwon, 150). We can see how in psychological terms Marcher is entirely detached from both past and present, ‘incapable of personalizing his experiences’ (Kwon, 150). Aside from their first encounter James presents us with one other crucial slip in Marchers façade, at the grave of May Bartram he finds himself ‘unattended… by the distinction, the dignity, the propriety, if nothing else, of the man markedly bereaved’ (491-92), in this moment we see the figure unable to step into the shoes of a grieving man because even as an actor his detachment from the past prevents him from sincerely enacting such an impassioned role. 

Arguably the ‘strangeness’ (472) that John Marcher waits his whole life to encounter is accepting the bewildering nature of ontological existence and the constant state of ambivalence it keeps us in. Yet along with this realization, which forms the climax of the plot, James is able to make comment on what truly constitutes individual identity. The figure of the man in the graveyard is not merely a narrative device used to bring about Marchers epiphany, he in himself holds significance as the only character other than Bartram to be described in distinctly human terms. His identity is composed entirely of his grief; ‘nothing else in the picture comparatively lived, neither his dress, his age, nor his presumable character and class; nothing lived but the deep ravage of the features he showed’ (495). The man at the grave, whilst only a passing figure, has nothing contrived about him, all he displays to the outside world is the sincerity and rawness of his emotions. James is attempting to reveal the truth of what constitutes our identity, it does not comprise our exterior appearance but rather our experiences and emotional capacity, it is through depth of feeling, pain and suffering that we understand life. We see that Marcher’s preoccupation with maintaining his façade meant that ‘No passion had ever touched him, for this was what passion meant; he had survived and maundered and pined, but where had been his deep ravage’(495), we are able to see in these final pages how James ultimate goal is to strip his characters down to their truth, to reveal them from their exterior and shed light on the psychological complexities of human experience, the ambiguous nature of the ending suggests that once this has been achieved he contends to leave them to any fate the reader might imagine.

 There are copious amounts critical interpretations that seek to write James as an author into his work and while it is often important to consider texts as detached from their writers, it is difficult to read The Beast in the Junglewithout considering it a sort of mirror of James’s own life. The incapacity of the protagonist to commit to the bonds of a romantic relationship resembles the unmarried status James maintained in his own life. Maxwell Geismar argued that May Bartram in some ways represented the ‘Jamesian dream-woman’ (38), offering intellectual yet plutonic companionship, her character being the product of an author who rose above the animal passions inherent in man, dedicating his life to the ‘sacred rage’ (The Ambassadors, 54) of his writing. While it remains an unproved theory, James’s own sexual orientation is often called into question in responses to his work, considering the possibility of this it is possible to read the character of Marcher as symbolic of James, his guise being an attempt to conceal the secret of his suppressed homosexual identity. As Eve Sedegwick argued ‘it is unmistakable that Marcher lives as one who is in the closet. His angle of daily existence and intercourse is that of the closeted person’ (205) in this sense Marchers ‘long act of dissimulation’ is an attempt to appear undetected amongst the crowd. Perhaps then the parable of John Marcher is James’s confession of his own fears that he lived his life unfulfilled, his own identity a façade. 

James leaves The Beast in the Jungle on an ambiguous note, the story in itself a fragment, mirroring the very nature of the stoic philosophy that lies at the heart of the tale. As William Dean Howells stated; ‘if he forbears to tell us what he thinks of the last state of his people, it is perhaps because that does not interest him’ (35). Characterization to James is a means of unravelling the very essence of human experience, which he feels to be ‘never limited’ (The Art of Fiction, 943). In the spirit of later James, we ought to read The Beast in the Jungle as an expose of what truly constitutes our human identity. 

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