Frederick's Reviews > Novels 1886–1890: The Princess Casamassima / The Reverberator / The Tragic Muse

POSSIBLE SPOILERS.
Disclaimer: Because this Library Of America volume, which contains three novels, is the one which contains the most definitive text of THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA available, I stress that it is the only one of the three in this volume I've read. Goodreads reviews can only be posted if the reviewer has clicked "I'm finished." So, while I have finished THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA, I have not read THE REVERBERATOR or THE TRAGIC MUSE.
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA was published in 1886, relatively early in Henry James's career. He was forty-three years old, had been a published novelist for almost fifteen years and had already written an unquestioned masterpiece, A PORTRAIT OF A LADY. He died in 1916, well established as a writer of high merit. THE TURN OF THE SCREW, written in 1898, is easily the archetypal novella. James is an iconic author with a wide readership more than a century after his death. But this book is James's attempt to get out of himself. He commandeers Dickens's properties while venturing into Dostoevsky's territory. Whenever his main character, Hyacinth Robinson, is the focus, James must suppress his obvious desire to satirize the underground. He anticipates Conrad when he characterizes the players in the secret society Hyacinth is lured into. The Princess with whom he is enraptured is plausible, but Hyacinth's sexless love for her is not. The deadbeats who argue at the secret political meetings Hyacinth attends are plausible, but their trust in hyacinth is not. I think James had every element he needed in order to make this book soar, but he undercut his effort in order to pay tribute to Dickens. We learn at the start that Hyacinth, a working-class youth living with the impoverished seamstress who adopts him at birth, is actually the son of a lord. That isn't necessarily Dickensian, but his funny name is. James, however, doesn't know how to devise a funny name, let alone one which would convey something about the character it is given to. The name Hyacinth Robinson conjures up no images, the way such names as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or Uncle Pumblechook do. There is another character in this book who is an impossibly good person. She has a mysterious malady from birth which is never specified. James finally lets loose with what is definitely his own thought about her when two characters both say to each other, "I've never liked her." But, as I've said, James is paying tribute to Dickens and not parodying him. For 99 per cent of the book, Hyacinth is Henry James's sincere effort at giving the reader a Dickens hero. But he is also trying to show how the underground works. When Paul Muniment, Hyacinth's idol (and the brother of the over-angelic invalid Hyacinth secretly despises) talks about the rigged game of society, James actually shows he knows how revolutionists talk. But Hyacinth has to be made to be Muniment's rival for the affections of the Princess, and James's unwillingness to specify a sexual dynamic undercuts the portrayal of Muniment. (Note the use of a funny name here, too. It's weird but not weird in an intriguing way. James can't master Dickens's naming trick.) ONLY Dickens can make us root for a fundamentally bland figure. David Copperfield has no human characteristics that I can remember (except for his secretly wishing his first wife would go ahead and die, which Dickens, as an author, clearly wants her to do, do-gooding martyr that she is) and Henry James can only make such a character unfathomably dull. Dickens appeals to a reader's sense of foul play. We like David Copperfield because he has been dealt a bad hand. There is no other reason to care about him. But it is, after all, THE reason to care about him. Add to this that James has a conflict: He wishes to imply an entire world of underground activity. His character Paul Muniment even says that world exists, everywhere, unnoticed, so it's clear that James is aware of this way of thinking. But James's odd super-patriotism comes to the fore, preventing James from detailing the seediness he knows is a dominant quality in the lives of anarchists. Hence, Hyacinth periodically makes proclamations about British backbone. Again, James ALMOST gets somewhere in his depiction of a working-class woman who sometimes socializes with Hyacinth. She is a realistic version of Eliza Dolittle. But James wants us to care about Hyacinth's relationship with the Princess, an aristocrat.
I have not stressed that most of this book is written with great care. But it is the great care of a master craftsman who has forgotten the shape of the object he's creating.
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA has everything a book needs. But Henry James attached a donkey's tale to it. He learned from his mistake and wrote several uncompromising masterpieces after this. If you read this novel, you'll watch a great writer fall on his ass for five-hundred and fifty-six pages.