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the complete review - fiction

The Princess Casamassima

by
Henry James

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : a lot that is good here, but is undermined by its central character

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "The low-class characters are quite different. They are not exactly human beings. But when we say that they belong to the same class as the creations of Dickens and Balzac we pay them a perfectly deliberate compliment. Unfortunately for Mr James, his great predecessors confined themselves almost entirely to their own people, whom they understood, and Mr James has tried English people, whom he does not understand. The result is that Muniment, Miss Henning, Lady Aurora, Sholto, and the rest are rather extremely clever attempts and conjectures than real life studies." - The Guardian
  
  
• "The novel, therefore, is entirely Jamesian in its strong supporting undertone of sexual anguish. (...) Hyacinth is an Ishmael well enough, victim not only of the timeless dilemma of the man of sensibility from spiritual provinces, but also of the most harrowing sort of frameup on the part of his creator." - R.W.Flint, The Hudson Review
  
  
• "The Princess Casamassima, it is true, opens with a block of Balzacian realism mixed with Dickensian melodrama that is extremely hard for modern readers to accept. In the later chapters of the book detail and suspense are to be brought in with sureness and ease; every part of the situation is to be elucidated by that sure technical skill so characteristic of the pre-theater James. The first three chapters, however, are thick with underlining and filled with a kind of cardboard darkness. The characters are so overloaded with reasons that they closely approach the line dividing drama from burlesque. (...) The book is full of wonderful moments." - Louise Bogan, The Nation
  
  
• "The Princess Casamassima is rich fare; it has the complexity of any fiction which acknowledges all the possibilities of behavior. (...) The Princess Casamassima is one of the few novels in which we find an American writer emerging in something like full moral-political consciousness" - Richard Chase, The Nation
  
  
• "What makes this book particularly remarkable is the way it manages to combine a compassionate portrayal of those at the near-bottom of Britain's social scale with a decidedly mordant critique of radical politics and its practitioners. In that sense The Princess is not merely James's great political novel, but his great conservative political novel. (...) As a writer James's peculiar strength lies not so much in plot as in texture and characterization. The Princess is extraordinarily rich in both. But in this novel he also displays a remarkable grasp of political sociology. (...) In fact, the most interesting person in the novel might well be Madame Grondoni, whose voice (one suspects) comes closest to that of James himself. (...) The real key to the novel is the single fact of Hyacinth's profession. His work as a bookbinder, James explains, constitutes a kind of "education of the taste, [training] him in the finest discriminations, in the perception of beauty and the hatred of ugliness." This hatred of ugliness inevitably has social connotations." - Mark Falcoff, The New Criterion
  
  
• "Mr. James Princess Casamassima is the novel of slumming (.....) The Princess Casamassima is a sinister romance, and we have no hesitation in calling it a singularly unpleasant one. (...) Mr.James has fabricated a tiresome story of 596 pages. With his peculiar tendencies to be retrospective and introspective, he indulges in these qualities ad nauseam. (...) In order to be nice and elegant whenever he can he sprays his subject as with a perfumed atomizer. Mr.James dawdles and lingers, postpones and prolongs, saunters backward and forward, and staves off as long as he can the tragic dénouement (.....) The decadence of a literary art, once most distinguished, we think is appreciable in The Princess Casamassima." - The New York Times
  
  
• "Oddly enough the reasons its original failure are the elements which make it of such compelling present-day interest -- its penetrating vision into the broad contemporary social scene. (...) The picture that James drew could not be accepted as what it was -- a remarkably accurate account of the Anarchist movement. And if the general possibility of such a picture could not be recognized, then it is not particularly surprising that even the most intelligent reviewers and certainly most of the reading public completely missed the implications of the story and ignored the beautifully developed main theme of the book -- the dispute between art (or rather certain of the more triumphant aspects of art) and moral action." - Anthony Bower, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "(T)he reader will probably feel that for all James's intentions, his poor are specimens under glass, people he merely glimpsed during his endless London strolls. They are the aristocrats of the poor, never in want and constantly being taken up by genuine aristocrats who have come to regard their own inheritance as a badge of shame. The opening chapters read like dehydrated Dickens. (...) What saves this colossal structure of melodrama and coincidence from toppling is largely James's style, at once dense and gracious, his fine sense of theater whenever his characters enter a room or open a conversation. The women in this novel are as unsuccessful as Joseph Conrad's, yet as symbols they are impressive" - Time
  
  
• "Mr. James is a master of catching faint nuances of feeling, and stereotyping them in dialogue. A small display of this capacity goes a long way in a novel. In The Princess Casamassima most people will be of opinion that the author has entirely sacrificed effect to detail; and that this is, on the whole, a monotonous book." - The Times
  
  
• "The Princess Casamassima may be read, then, as a penetrating inquiry into the varieties -- and more especially the quality, moral and otherwise -- of political commitment; and in this respect it is properly described as post-political." - Edwin M. Yoder, Virginia Quarterly Review

  Quotes:

• "The book, published in 1886, is an outlier in James’s novelistic output (.....) One might take issue with its perfunctory treatment of the politics that is its supposed theme, or see it as a failed attempt to marry James’s psychological pointillism and exquisite, mannered prose to the sentimentality of Dickens and the naturalism of Zola. But the novel’s Frankenstein quality is a manifestation of what I take to be its real inquiry: the fate of a style of hyper-refined sensibility when confronted with the brutality of a sensationalistic plot. (...) The pathos of the novel, which I love, lies in the clarity with which Hyacinth sees that the works of art he now treasures are inextricable from the exploitative class system that has made his life miserable." - Garth Greenwell, The New Yorker (28/8/2019)
  
  
• "(I)t surprises me that The Princess Casamassima is not better known than it is. (...) (W)hen I first read The Princess Casamassima I was delighted, even inspired. It was full of life , beautifully plotted and thoroughly plausible. (...) It was a kind of homage to Dickens and yet shed light on the empty anger of people not very different from those I knew who supported revolutionary causes." - Paul Theroux, Sunday Times (8/5/1977)

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The character of Princess Casamassima will be familiar to readers of James' earlier novel, Roderick Hudson (1875), in which Christina Light is a love-interest of the title-character but winds up marrying Prince Casamassima. She resurfaces in this novel that bears her name -- but only well into it: the first mention and sighting of her comes only a full third of the way into the novel. (James apparently liked to hold back before springing the character on readers: she first appears in Roderick Hudson only well into that novel as well.) She is a significant character in what follows, but the central figure in The Princess Casamassima is, in fact, one Hyacinth Robinson.
       The novel is presented in six books, and the first and longest (and most Dickensian) serves to introduce the protagonist, first as boy and then as a young man. (Princess Casamassima debuts only in the second book-- appropriately enough, at a theater-performance Hyacinth goes to.) Half the first book presents Hyacinth as ten-year-old, with his guardian, Miss Amanda Pynsent, also called 'Pinnie', the dressmaker who had raised him since he was a baby facing a dilemma: the illegitimate boy's mother, jailed for having murdered Lord Frederick Purvis -- his father --, lies on her deathbed and begs desperately to meet her son. Miss Pynsent does take Hyacinth to see her, but he only comes to learn (or at least guess) the truth about his background a few years later.
       Even as she long left him in the dark, Miss Pynsent "had from his earliest age made him feel that there was a grandeur in his past", and while he affects indifference as to the status of his progenitor -- "He may have been a prime-minister for all the good it has done me " --, his background -- the possibility of 'nobility' on the one side, the tragic-fiery French certainty on the other -- comes to loom dark cloud-like over the character, a confusion within him ("the reflection that he was a bastard involved in a remarkable manner the reflection that he was a gentleman") that is then also central to his fate. It manifests itself even in his bearing from early on, with friend Paul Muniment, for example, noting of the adult Hyacinth:

You're a duke in disguise, and so I thought the first time I ever saw you.

He's a thin-skinned, morbid, mooning, introspective little beggar, with a good deal of imagination and not much perseverance, who'll expect a good deal more of life than he'll find in it. That's why he won't be happy.

There was a world to be revealed to him: it lay waiting with the dew on it under his windows, and he must go down and take his first steps in it.

I'm one of many thousands of young men of my class -- you know, I suppose, what that is -- in whose brains certain ideas are fermenting. There is nothing original about me at all. I am very young and very ignorant; it's only a few months since I began to talk of the possibility of a social revolution with men who have considered the whole ground much more than I have done.

she felt that Hyacinth had strange friends and still stranger opinions; she suspected him of taking an unnatural interest in politics and was somehow not on the right side, little as she knew about parties or causes; and she had a vague conviction that this kind of perversity only multiplied the troubles of the poor, who, according to theories which Pinnie had never reasoned out, but which, in her bosom were as deep as religion, ought always to be of the same way of thinking as the rich. They were unlike them enough in their poverty without trying to add other differences. When at last she accompanied Hyacinth to Camberwell, one Saturday evening at midsummer, it was in a sighing, sceptical, second-best manner

The act was as yet indefinite, but one might get an idea of it from the penalty involved, which would certainly be capital. The only thing settled was that it was to be done instantly and absolutely, without a question, a condition or a scruple, in the manner that should be prescribed at the moment from headquarters. Very likely it would be to kill some one -- some humbug in a high place; but whether the individual should deserve it or should not deserve it was not Hyacinth's affair.

I may have helped you to understand and enter into the misery of the people (though I protest I don't know much about it), but you have led my imagination into quite another train.

He had ceased himself to care for the slums and had reasons for not wishing to spend his remnant in the contemplation of foul things; but he would go through with his part of the engagement. He might be perfunctory, but any dreariness would have a gilding that should involve an association with her.

There was no peace for him between the two currents that flowed in his nature, the blood of his passionate, plebeian mother and that of his long-descended, supercivilised sire. They continued to toss him from one side to the other; they arrayed him in intolerable defiances and revenges against himself.

     'Whatever you are you'll succeed,' said the Princess. 'Hyacinth won't, but you will.'

She made my acquaintance because I was interested in the same things as she was. Her interest has continued, has increased, but mine, for some reason or other, has declined. She has been consistent and I have been fickle.

'Well, promise me that you will never, under any circumstances whatever, do anything.'
     'Do anything?'
     'Anything those people expect of you.'

The winter was not over, but the spring had begun, and the smoky London air allowed the baffled citizens, by way of a change, to see through it. The town could refresh its recollections of the sky, and the sky could ascertain the geographical position of the town. The essential dimness of the low perspectives had by no means disappeared, but it had loosened its folds; it lingered as a blur of mist, interwoven with pretty sun-tints and faint transparencies. There was warmth and there was light, and a view of the shutters of shops, and the church-bells were ringing.

'I have been looking at your books,' the fiddler said; 'you have two or three exquisite specimens of your own. Oh yes, I recognise your work when I see it; there are always certain little finer touches. You have a manner, like a master. With such a talent, such a taste, your future leaves nothing to be desired. You will make a fortune and become a great celebrity.'

When that debt should have been paid and his other arrears made up he proposed to himself to write something. He was far from having decided as yet what it should be; the only point settled was that it should be very remarkable and should not, at least on the face of it, have anything to do with a fresh deal of the social pack. That was to be his transition -- into literature; to bind the book, charming as the process might be, was after all much less fundamental than to write it. It had occurred to Hyacinth more than once that it would be a fine thing to produce a rare death-song.

- M.A.Orthofer, 30 November 2024

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Links:

• Penguin Classics publicity page
• Library of America publicity page
• Folio publicity page
• Garzanti publicity page
• Montesinosv

• Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review
• Del furore ... (Italian)
• The Guardian
• Kate of Mind
• litcritpop
• 1001 Days of Dreaming

• Henry James at books and writers
• The Center for Henry James Studies

• The American
• The Tragic Muse

• See Index of Classical American fiction
• See Index of Books Written Before 1900

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About the Author:

       American author Henry James lived 1843 to 1916.

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© 2024 the complete review

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