The Bostonians (Penguin Classics)

The Bostonians is the first Henry James novel I have read. It was an acquired taste. The long paragraphs, the sparse dialogue, the erudite vocabulary…all these make attentive reading a necessity.But it’s a taste worth acquiring. Not only does he craft unique and complex characters, he also handles ideas with a deftness and piquancy rare even among good novelists.For example, The Bostonians is about a young woman in the 1870s with the gift of natural eloquence. Due to her parent’s opinions and acquaintances, she places it in the service of the nascent women’s rights movement.The reader first notices that her friends and handlers are obviously exploiting her—but it is in the service of the greater good.Meanwhile, a young man wants her to forgo her crusades and submit to a traditional marriage. He seems to be the only character who truly cares for her. But is he sincere or merely seeking to take for himself her extraordinary personality and talents?The story is then simultaneously a reflection on women’s rights, the decision of whether it is right to live for a cause and the extent to which traditional marriage is perennial.The ending, which I won’t spoil, even leaves the reader left to their own opinion about whether the protagonist made, or had made for her, the right choice.While it may have taken some getting used to, I enjoyed the intelligence granted to the reader by a Henry James novel. In 2022, I plan on reading several more. Highly recommended.

I liked the book. It is simpler and more humorous than James' later novels.

After "Washington Square" and the "Aspern Papers", I eagerly started this book. A little more than the first half of the book was very challenging: a lot of detail (too much in my opinion) and a very slow pace. However, once I got past that point, the story seemed to pick up and moved very quickly until the end. I am not that interested in the subject matter of the book - the women's movement in the late 1800s in Boston - but altogether I think the book was very well written, and the end leaves the reader wondering.I would not recommend this edition for Kindle readers because the notes are positioned at the end of the text, and any consultation of the notes entails disruption to the reading experience.

This is the second time I've read The Bostonians in the last three years, and I enjoyed it more the second time than the first. It's still a rather strange story about two very different people trying to wrest control off each other of a somewhat naive young woman; James often writes about people controlling other people, it seems.Feminists may not enjoy it, since it takes the burgeoning feminist movement of the late 19th century to task, and though some modern readers claim that the female character, Olive Chancellor, is a lesbian, this is never stated outright, and if James intended her to be, the hints are subtle. I think he's more concerned about her ferocious attempts to control someone else than about her sexual tendency. She's a strikingly bitter character: basically she neither likes men or women - if they don't agree with her. Some of the conversations she has with other characters are quite malevolent, and manipulative.Basil Ransom, her 'opponent' is a milder character, but strong all the same, and sees through much of Olive's cant. James seems to side with him, and yet the last line of the book hints at a sad future.Apart from the story there's the wonderful Jamesian writing. Yes, his sentences do go on at great length, sometimes, and occasionally take a bit of unravelling. But what style. And when it's necessary to make things move, as he does in the climax, he wastes no words at all.

The Bostonians won't complete a beach reading ensemble of Vince Flynn, Sandra Brown or Julia Garwood but it will surely agitate our sensibilities regarding male and female relationships.The Bostonians introduces to us Basil Ransom, a handsome and cultured Southern gentleman who fought in the Confederacy during the Civil War. He comes to Boston to see his cousin , Olive Chancellor, an entrenched women's rights activist. Olive has a young protegee whom she adores, the beautiful and sweet Verena Tarrant. When Basil meets the young and innocent beauty , he is enchanted. Thus the war begins between both Basil and Olive.Basil believes that Verena's beauty is meant for a man but Olive has other goals for Verena.This 19th Century novel is verbose a la James but no less wordy than an Anthony Trollope novel.We must remember that James inspired another important literary figure who wrote about women and their positions in society, the inexpressible Edith Wharton.The Bostonians was not welcomed by many when it was published and it is even less popular today.James is not afraid to give an educated, eloquent and cultured voice to Basil Ransom. He is a man's man and will not give quarter to Olive Chancellor simply because she despises him as a man.But the question always remains: what are a woman's gifts for: for her husband and her family or for society? As Basil Ransom says when asked what women are for:"There are a thousand ways in which any woman, all women , married or single, may find occupation. They may find it in making society agreeable.... dear Miss Tarrant, what is most agreeable to women is to be agreeable to men! That is a truth as old as the human race, and don't let Olive Chancellor persuade you that she and Mrs. Farrinder have invented any that can take its place , or that is more profound, more durable."

The book reviews will say this is the author waning in his career, the very next will say one of his early works, really it's a good book with a spin that's not accepted in today's feminist commie authoritarianesk political climate but few good things are

It's a nice novel with a lot of irony, just as one expects from Henry James. The confict in the story is a bit too simple for this length though.

RAS si ce n'est que j'ai acheté ce livre pour les besoins de mes études. C'est vraiment un gros roman que je n'ai pas réussi a apprécier

Only half way though the book so far and, as for all Henry James's writing, it requires very careful reading and time to reflect on the marvellous observation of character, the humour and the use of language. I love his writing but his books cannot be rushed.

Very sound book, with a lot of wit and perfectly written. Nonetheless, it has some dull paragraph...I read it after being in Boston, as an "athmosphere reading" and I loved all descriptions of the old city, and Charles street, and Back bay.

The novel is wonderful, the edition isn't.This is early(ish) Henry James, so the book isn't as dense as the later novels. It's wonderfully controlled prose, always moving forward and allowing the characters to develop. I found it very gripping.The Xist Classics edition for Kindle is poor, however. The table of contents is blank. Words and phases that should be in italics are bracketed with underscores instead, _like this_. It seems that the publishers don't fully understand how to prepare an e-book.

One of James's less successful novels. This is perhaps not very surprising given its focus and setting. By this stage of his career, James was struggling to rekindle the flame ignited by his early classic, Portrait of a Lady.To do so, he tried various moves away from the "international" theme which served him so well in that novel, and later during his triumphant major phase. Here, he tries to go back Stateside, to write about places he no longer knew, Virginia, Boston, New England, and New York. There is a lot of material in here about early feminism, the slavery issue and civil war, but it feels a bit secondhand. As though James were writing a novel to order, rather than about the things he really writes well about: art, travel, the complexity of human relationships, deceit and obsession. None of the characters come to life in the way that Isabel Archer or Lambert Strether does, and the plot has none of the intrigue of The Turn of the Screw or The Aspern Papers. A minor James, though interesting for its foray into matters political which he would again try ( with a little more success) in The Princess Cassamassima.