This thesis explores the roles of widowhood and sympathy in Henry James's short and long fiction. By the time James established himself as a writer of fiction, the culture of sentiment and its formation of sympathetic identification had become central to American and British writers. Critically, however, sympathy in James's fiction has been overlooked because he chose to write about rich expatriates and European nobility. James's pervasive use of widowed characters in his fiction suggests the he too participated in the same aesthetic agenda as William Dean Howells and George Eliot to evoke sympathy in their readers as a means of promoting class unity. In this thesis I show how James's use of widowed characters places him in the same sympathetic tradition as Howells and Eliot not by eliciting sympathy for themselves, but, rather, by awakening a sympathetic response from his readers for his protagonists seeking love. In chapter one I explore why James may have used so many widowed characters in his fiction. I cite the death of his cousin Minny Temple as a defining moment in his literary career and argue that he may have experienced an "emotional widowhood" after her early death. I also discuss the role of widows in his short fiction, which I suggest, is different from the role of widows in his novels. This chapter is biographical, yet provides important background for understanding why, more than any other author, James's fiction is replete with widowed characters. Chapter two explains the culture of sentiment of which James has been excluded. It explores the theories of David Hume and Adam Smith and their influence on the aesthetic principles defining Howells and Eliot's work. In this chapter I contend that James is indeed part of this sentimental tradition despite his renunciation of sentiment in his fiction because he tried to promote sympathy among his readers through his widowed characters. In chapter three I do close readings of The Portrait of a Lady (1881) and The Wings of the Dove (1902) and argue that these two texts best represent James's attempt at sympathetic writing.

In the world of Henry James's novels, characters are often placed in difficult situations where their happiness depends on their ability to make a free choice. Female characters are manipulated and diminished by a patriarchal system that not only seeks to subordinate their will, but also to objectify them, to place them on the shelf as a trophy. Fathers and husbands are typically the controlling agents, but James also presents women who appropriate the dominating role. With varying degrees of success, each female character rejects the status of trophy. Instead, each attempts to make choices and determine her own future. James allows for ambiguity and nuanced resolutions. With ambiguity comes hope in the steadfastness of Catherine Sloper in Washington Square, in the tragic heroism of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, and even in the sacrificial loss of Verena Tarrant for Olive Chancellor in The Bostonians.

This thesis examines the structures guiding and informing reading intrinsic to James's "late" style. It seeks to explore James's analogy between reading as an ethical activity and his own and his characters' acts of storytelling. It looks first at the necessities of reading as they are presented through the character of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady, to find that reading for James is itself a form of storytelling. James's concept of "revision," which replaces the concept of "re-writing," unites the activities of reading and storytelling because both activities, to be free, must be guided by the contingencies of experience. James's emphasis on the determinations of experience, which yields changing apprehensions of the same material, at once makes reading a test of the reader's resources in dealing with unexpected and complex situations, and storytelling an act of improvisation if it is to be faithful to the demands of its subject. The second half of the thesis examines Maggie Verver's command of storytelling in The Golden Bowl. It finds that ethical storytellers must have the same faith in their subject matter as ethical readers must have in the texts they engage. Finally, the thesis unites the study of reading with storytelling by examining the ways in which stories are exemplary performances whose the most significant subject is the audience. It is the forms of judgement that a work of art elicits which are essential to establishing alternative conceptions of the good and new modes of valuation in a community.

The thesis focuses on a variation of James's interest in the "international theme", the effect of transatlantic influences on the development of personality, culture and idea. In the context of this theme it seeks to understand the processes in the development of, and portrayal of change in, the identities of two central characters in the fiction of Henry James, Isabel Archer and Lambert Strether. The two novels analysed, The Portrait of a Lady and The Ambassadors. have a strong contextual relevance to the ''international theme", and compass the span of James's career, providing some degrees of comparison. Beginning with a view of the preliminary vision that James had of the main elements of each central character, the thesis seeks to understand how Isabel Archer and Lambert Strether are subsequently shaped, and developed, by way of the incidents and experiences they meet, and what they make of them. Of primary importance amongst these are the relations they form with the other characters in the novel. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

Syftet med denna studie har varit att belysa representation av lesbisk åtrå i film. Filmerna jag har tittat på är Carol och Portrait of a Lady on Fire, där jag undersökt huruvida begreppen the male gaze och the female gaze visar sig i filmerna. Detta är gjort genom en filmanalys där jag har utvecklat en tes, delat upp filmen i segment samt antecknat filmtekniker. I min analys har jag utgått från teorier om blick; gaze theory, the male gaze och the female gaze. I båda filmerna representeras åtrå främst genom blicken, men även genom olika symboler, språk och behov. Den skildras inte nödvändigtvis genom nakenhet eller sex – utan kan vara ett grepp på axeln eller en intensiv blick. Genom välarbetat manus, kameravinklar utifrån bådas synpunkter och kostymer som inte förminskar kvinnan tar båda filmerna avstånd från the male gaze. Istället har båda parterna i förhållandet en aktiv roll där kommunikation och samtycke styr, vilket är i linje med the female gaze. / The purpose of this study has been to highlight the representation of lesbian desire in film. The films I have watched are Carol and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, where I investigated whether the concepts of the male gaze and the female gaze appear in the films, and if so, how. I have conducted a filmanalysis where I developed a thesis, segmented the films and took notes of film techniques. I have based my analysis on different theories concerning the gaze; gaze theory, the male gaze and the female gaze. Both films represent desire throughout the gaze, but also through different symbols, languages and needs. It is not necessarily portrayed by nudity or sex – instead by grasping the shoulder or holding an intense gaze. Through well-crafted script, camera angles based on both viewpoints and costumes that do not diminish the woman, both films distance themselves from the male gaze. Instead, both parties in the relationship have an active role where communication and consent govern, which is in line with the female gaze.

Der spanische Maler Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599-1660) präsentiert in dem Berliner Bildnis eine elegante, aber bis heute nicht eindeutig identifizierte Dame in entspannter Körperhaltung in Dreiviertelansicht vor einem einfarbigen, braun-beigen Hintergrund (Abb. 1). Zwar deutet sich auf den Lippen der Porträtierten ein scheues, zurückgenommenes Lächeln an, doch lässt ihr direkt auf den Betrachter gerichteter Blick aus dunklen Augen sie nichtsdestotrotz selbstbewusst erscheinen.

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The opening scene of The Portrait of a Lady takes place upon the broad, sunlit lawns of Gardencourt. Yet, even in this expansive setting, the most essential character in the novel, the protagonist, is, curiously, no more than a narrow, shadowy speculation symbolized by a few odd words found in a telegram of dubious value. The only worth of these words comes in the amount of curiosity they can arouse in the other characters and in the reader. For it appears that, with this slow but significantly unusual means of introducing Isabel, the author intends her for more than a mere foil in a worldly triangle. Henry James does not squander his characters and while the plot of this novel, for example, suggests a debt to the traditional sentimental novel, the characters transcend such a strict formula and take on great depth and mass. Thus, as the reader progresses through the tale, he is continually surprised, and gratified, to discover that the characters emerge as real personalities, each possessing, his own set of ideas, sensibilities, an visions. When these personalities are brought together there can be no chance for a sentimental novel.