No abstract provided. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA) / Scope and contents: The first part of the thesis is an orientation to the novel itself, since the entire work must be taken as the only meaningful context for a consideration of the substantive variants. The second part consists of an examination of the selected revisions in the light of the full context and of James's theory of revision. The third part is a record of substantive variants. The appendices contain a report on computer collation of a section of the text and two extended notes on specific substantive variants.

The purpose of this study is to illustrate the power image of Henry James's female protagonists through a Readers Theatre adaptation of his novels, Daisy Miller, The Wings of the Dove, and The Portrait of a Lady. Chapter I includes an introduction and defines the purpose of the thesis. Chapter II briefly examines biographical information on James. Chapter III includes the analysis of the three selected novels in relation to preparation of a performance based script for Readers Theatre. In the Appendix is the Readers Theatre script with the inclusive transition and introductory material. The illustration of a typical Jamesian woman reveals a philosophic view of the human possibilities in freedom, power, and the destructive elements that limit an independent spirit.

The works of Henry James are renowned for their dense sub-text and the manner in which he leaves his reader to elucidate much of his meaning. In the field of adaptation theory, therefore, James presents somewhat of a problem for the film adaptor: how does one convey on screen James' delicate implications, which are formative to the text without actually existing on the printed page? This project not only works to answer that question, but it also addresses a more serious question: what does adaptation have to offer to the student of literature? In the case of Henry James, the film adaptations of his novels expose the trope of voyeurism which functions as one of the central operative mechanisms in the novels, allowing both authorial omniscience into the minds and lives of the characters, as well as the creation of a voyeuristic character through whose perceptions the reader's knowledge is filtered. In examining recent film adaptations of The Portrait of a Lady. The Wings of the Dove, and Washington Square, it becomes apparent that the key to adapting James is careful attention to this trope of voyeurism, which ultimately becomes more important to a successful adaptation (an adaptation which most closely reproduces James' observations and biases rather than those of the director) than exact fidelity to the plot itself. With these considerations in mind, I have indicated that Jane Campion's 1996 adaptation of The Portrait of a Lady most successfully achieves James' purposes, highlighting both the on-screen voyeurism of Ralph Touchett, then using techniques (lighting, camera angles, editing, sound) to similarly construct the viewer as voyeur. Agniezka Holland's Washington Square, however, ignores James' careful positioning of Catherine Sloper as an object of visual amusement to her father and creates an insipid film that plays the drama as a mercantile transaction gone awry. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Iain Softley's The Wings of the Dove bloats the construct of viewer as voyeur into ineffectuality through his use of full nudity to capture the eye of the audience, ensuring that the film's images, rather than its story, are all that is remembered.

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.

在亨利‧詹姆士（Henry James）的小說《鴿之翼》（The Wings of the Dove, 1902）中，金錢在人際關係中的流動以及其所產生的交換方式往往為批評家們所忽略。許多批評家將小說中的角色視為兩種極端：以凱特為代表的倫敦人是剝削者；美國女孩米莉則是天真無邪的犧牲者。而注意到小說中交換議題的批評家，也多半以市場交易的模式來看待小說中的交換行為。有別於以往的研究，本論文嘗試以「禮物」的理論，為小說中的交換提供一種新的觀點。 / 法國人類學家牟斯（Marcel Mauss）的理論顯示，禮物贈與牽涉到社會關係的建立與經濟層面的交流。然而牟斯的理論亦顯示出禮物的矛盾：禮物並非單向的贈與，而是送／收禮物的主體之間的互惠交換行為。同樣的，《鴿之翼》中的金錢交換也是以此種送／收禮物的方式來達成。小說中的禮物交換與角色對金錢的追求呼應，形成一個禮物交換的體系。本論文首先討論小說中的交換者進行交換的方式，突顯其用以掩飾禮物矛盾的包裝策略。其次，本論文討論禮物交換的時間結構如何對送禮者與收禮者產生不同的影響，使米莉的回禮得以藉由時間的運用，產生諧擬（parody）的效果，進而展示了凱特所代表的倫敦人所遵從的交換原則有何限制。 / 在《鴿之翼》中，禮物不斷游移於慷慨與私利的兩端，而此種介於經濟與非經濟之間的交換方式，正是禮物有別於商品，並能夠暗渡實質利益的原因。 / In The Wings of the Dove (1902), Henry James presents a flow of money in interpersonal relations from which a distinctive mode of exchange is derived. However, the issue of exchange does not arouse much discussion among the critics on James. Some critics tend to read the two heroines as representatives of moral oppositions—Kate and other Londoners as exploiters, the young American Milly as a victim. Although there are other critics who notice the exchanges in this novel, most of them choose to approach the issue with the mode of exchange in the market. Differing from these critical perspectives, in which the characters’ exchanges are taken as transforming or reflecting transactions of commodities, this thesis analyzes The Wings of the Dove in terms of gift giving and gift returning. / As the work of the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss shows, gift giving is not only a way to construct social relations but also a part of an economic circulation. But a paradox of the gift can also be observed from Mauss’s theory of the gift—the paradox that gift giving appears as a liberal offer but initiates an exchange of gifts by obligating the gift receiver to return. / What this thesis aims to explore with the theories of the gift is whether it is effective for the characters in The Wings of the Dove to exchange money for social resources, and vice versa. The exchanges in this novel, working alongside the Londoners’ quest for money, constitute a system of gift exchange that brings about Kate’s scheme to reap money from Milly. To look into the problems created from this mode of exchange, the thesis will further be committed to the discussions on the characters’ strategies which help them conceal the paradox of the gift, as well as their actions and limitations in the temporal structure of the gift exchange. Ultimately, this thesis attempts to show the capriciousness of the gift revealed in the exchanges in The Wings of the Dove. In constant fluctuations, the gift never ceases to oscillate between the dichotomies of the economic and the noneconomic, which not only shows its elasticity but also offers a space for discussions of its logic from various critical angles.