Basil Ransom
September 2, 2010
THE WORLD is full of Verena Tarrants. Verena, remember, is the heroine of Henry James’s 1885 novel The Bostonians. She is the naive girl enamored of feminism. It is her life and religion, but the main reason she has fallen under its sway is the power and will of one particular feminist, the Boston aristocrat Olive Chancellor. Olive is symbolic of the many demagogues, the Gloria Steinems and Simone de Beauvoirs, the Katie Courics, Oprah Winfreys, and Sarah Palins, who have led far more submissive women into the feminist trenches.
James’s hero, Basil Ransom, succeeds in converting a feminist. He does so in a way very similar to that described by Brandon B. and Heady G. in this entry.
Ransom is a Southern lawyer, down on his luck in New York City, who falls in love with Verena, who has become a celebrity among suffragists, a sublime girl hailed for her uncanny, almost mystical ability to stir a crowd. Ransom argues with Verena privately about her views, but he doesn’t try too hard. Ultimately he relies on his conviction, which matches that of Olive; his appealing masculinity and charm, and a powerful ultimatum: Verena must choose between feminism or him. That is the condition which he imposes on his offer of marriage.
The interesting thing about Basil Ransom is that he hasn’t the slightest doubt about whether women would be better off emancipated, or whether men would be better off if they were. This is what distinguises him from the vast majority of modern men, who have stood by while their friends and wives followed feminists like so many lemmings to the sea.
Here is from Chapter 14 of James’s book:
The deepest feeling in Ransom’s bosom in relation to her was the conviction that she was made for love, as he had said to himself while he had listened to her at Mrs. Burrage’s. She was profoundly unconscious of it, and another ideal, crude and thin and artificial, had interposed itself; but in the presence of a man she should really care for, this false, flimsy structure would rattle to her feet, and the emancipation of Olive Chancellor’s sex (what sex was it, great heaven? he used profanely to ask himself) would be relegated to the land of vapours, of dead phrases.
— Comments —
Kimberly writes:
While you know that I’m suspicious of Basil, it’s obvious that he did do what you say; he converted a feminist, at least enough to marry her on his terms. I tend to imagine that she grew to resent her conversion, even though it was in the right direction, because Basil was far too indifferent to the suffering of women. Hopefully, his love for Verena was true enough that it changed Basil a little in that regard. There was some evidence for this happy ending, but there was also some against it. I doubt that very many of your male readers are inclined to indifference, however, so it doesn’t bother me to give them another strength.
I think it might be helpful to point out another aspect of Basil Ransom’s tactics. It is shown in his thoughts in this quote you posted. He uses his sex appeal. I don’t know how many men out there consciously use this. I wonder if men have lost confidence in women’s natural attraction to them as men. Maybe because they are aware of how perverted women have become, and they wonder if they are enough to satisfy these beastly appetites. But they should be confident, in spite of the lust. If their love is real and their passion is pure, they have every right to feel handsome and appealing in her eyes, and they ought to know that this combination is irresistible coming from a man for whom she already has established feelings.
Laura writes:
Yes, he is very appealing.
I disagree, of course, that he was indifferent. To the contrary, he was filled with deference and understood what makes most women happy. The idea of Verena resenting this man is impossible to conceive. They are both intelligent, loyal and idealistic. If she were a different kind of person, she might resent him for not being rich, as Basil Ransom was destined to never be rich, but Verena is not materialistic herself.
Thomas F. Bertonneau writes:
Two or three other aspects of The Bostonians by Henry James are worth noting. First, the novel details a three-sided amorous struggle. Olive Chancellor is not merely a feminist who wants to recruit the charismatic Verena to her cause; she is also quite plainly a lesbian who is in love with Verena and wishes to keep the girl isolated from men. Next, James portrays the forms of liberalism – not just Chancellor’s feminism – as universally mixed up with cheap mysticism. Ransom first catches sight of Verena at what amounts to a séance, where the girl is the chief theosophical attraction. And again, Ransom is not merely a masculine man; he is a Confederate veteran. The moment of conversion for Verena, indeed, is when Ransom takes her to the memorial chapel on the Harvard Campus, where he honors all the fallen of the late war in an act of silent devotion that deeply moves the girl. Like Hawthorne and Melville, James understood something of what students of Eric Voegelin have learned to call the “Gnostic” character of modernity. James did not have that word, but he could see that the ideological “isms” were a religious phenomenon, whose character was (as it remains) obsessively anti-normative. Hawthorne’s Blithedale Romance and Melville’s Pierre are in their ways precursor-texts for The Bostonians.
Incidentally (or maybe not), the feminist, deconstructive, and gender-obsessed critics hate James. The last twenty-five years of James scholarship have consisted of snooty denunciations, more or less.
[Note: See Mr. Bertonneau’s excellent essay on the book in the journal Anthropoetics.]
Kimberly responds to Laura:
I’m not speaking of materialism. I’m sure Verena was fine without money. What I speak of is much deeper than this. Verena tells Basil that she longs to live a life devoted to a noble cause, to put her whole being into helping others, and to suffer for them. Had Basil any patience for a woman having passionate, noble ideals, let alone any respect for them, his answer would not have been “Balderdash” (Ch.38).
If Basil would have taken a moment to consider what she had said, he would have probably come to the realization that she would be suffering for a noble cause and living the selfless life she longed to live as a wife and mother. But he has no use for a woman with “ideals”. In his theory, a woman should “only be private and passive” (Ch.2). Well, private is fine, but passive? I don’t believe any man actually wants a doormat. Even if she isn’t involved in politics in public, shouldn’t she care for her country privately? So I disagree that Basil understands what makes most women happy. He does know that they are “made for love”, but he doesn’t understand what that entails.
