"I trust you will detect my intention": the strange case of 'Watch and Ward.' (Henry James' first novel)

Article Abstract:

Henry James' first fiction, 'Watch and Ward,' has always seemed awkward, weird and inexplainable. Characterized by its suggestions of incest and pedophilia, it is quite hard to penetrate what the thoughts of the author were while he wrote this piece. However, after perusing James' correspondence with Charles Eliot Norton, whom he respects dearly, it can be said that the novel could have been written within a context and in reaction to events that happened to and around the author. 'Watch and Ward' discusses a theme that was ingrained in the American imagination in its time.

Authors, Writers, Portrayals, Pedophilia, Incest

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A Kodak refraction of Henry James's "The Real Thing."

Article Abstract:

Author Henry James took Eastman Kodak Co to task and its radical influence on mass photography in his 1893 play 'The Real Thing.' James blamed the company for the decline in readership of his books while feeling envious of his contemporaries who enjoyed financial success. 'The Real Thing' is partly an allegory in which the tyrannical forces of the real and the vulgar, represented by the Kodak camera, can be all-conquering. For James, the Kodak phenomenon confused the distinction between what was real and represented and between the amateur and the professional.

Analysis, Marketing, Camera industry, Eastman Kodak Co., Photography, EK, The Real Thing (Play)

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Sailing again on "The Patagonia." (story by Henry James)

Article Abstract:

Henry James employed the first-person narrative in his story 'The Patagonia' to emphasize the ambiguity clouding the suicide of Grace Mavis which is tale's climactic event. The plot concerns the interactions of a group of people traveling on a ship and of the tragic consequences of Grace Mavis's relationship with Jasper Nettlepoint. James succeeded in structuring the tale in a way that allows the reader to perceive the uncertainties in the situation which the snobbish narrator is unable to do.

First person narrative

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