Henry James

THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes, in response to the latest post on Basil Ransom, the hero of Henry James’s novel The Bostonians and an inspiring  prototype of a man at odds with modern liberalism:

When Basil Ransom first catches sight of Verena at a séance, she is sixteen years old.  She is moreover on display as a mesmeric subject who can channel messages from the beyond; her parents in a kind of mystic road show are marketing her for a Chautauqua audience of suffragettes, blue-nose liberals, and quasi-Christians of vaguely socialist inclination.  All of these people speak endlessly of ideals and Verena – as one would expect from an adolescent who has known no other milieu – speaks a vocabulary of debased Transcendentalism too.  But she is really only mimicking a style of speech; the words have no profound content for her although they imply something about her probable future.  James was our most keen-eyed critic of ideology of his day.  One of the essential insights that he had about ideology is that, despite the use of elevated abstractions and idealistic-sounding formulas, sectarian doctrines are psychic prison houses.  Therefore it would be entirely justified to say that, when Ransom discovers her, Verena is in dire need of ransoming – precisely from the mind-manacles of an unctuous rhetoric.  Olive Chancellor pretends to be Verena’s ransom-payer, but her motives, which James makes perfectly clear in his usual decorous way, are tainted.  Were Verena to do as Chancellor wishes, the girl would eventually become one of those peculiar old women who furnish much of the audience in the novel’s opening mesmeric demonstration. 

Ransom is not an idealist – that is what recommends him, in James’ view, in contrast to the other “suitors” for Verena’s affection.  Ransom fails to see why leading a crusade for indefinable ideals is a better fate for a decent young woman capable of love than finding a man to love who can requite the emotion.

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