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The Princess Casamassima V2: A Novel |
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Author:
Henry James
By Kessinger Publishing, LLC
Average Customer Rating:  
List Price: $42.95
Our Price: $26.00
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Product Description
In Three Volumes.
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A Personal Account of the Class Struggle, 2008-06-29
Can a person love the fine creations of culture while reviling the class disparities that make such luxuries possible? How can one decide which side to choose when you are beguiled by fine things and easy living but repulsed by the inaccessibility of this lifestyle to the greater populace (including yourself)? These are the questions faced by our young hero Hyacinth, a poor but talented man with unfortunately good taste. Not unexpectedly for a young man, these ideals become entangled in Hyacinth's love affairs with a low-class but entertaining working girl and the beautiful title character, who has forsaken her fortune and her husband and embraced the liberation of the masses. James has perfectly portrayed the hypocrisy in which most educated people still live today, and the near futility of trying to absolve that hypocrisy. (As a side note, I was fascinated by his descriptions of the art of book binding, and would love to learn more about it.)
The Princess Casamassima and Determinism, 2006-08-15
When Henry James wrote THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA in 1886, he left the polite, drawing room society of effete and erudite snobs pontificating endlessly at one another for the decidedly lower class world of thugs, anarchists, and terrorists. Europe, then, as the Mid East is now, was full of internal dissension, with Marxist anarchists dreaming of plots that would soon reach fruition in Russia in 1917. The intellectual clime was also rife with a sense of deterministic fatalism that suggested that man was a pawn of a cobwebbery of political, social, and economic events totally beyond his control. There was little one could do, its proponents argued, but to meekly go with the flow. It was against this twin background of anarchy and determinism that James wrote this book.
Hyacinth Robinson is a child born of an illicit romance between a French prostitute and an English lord. After his birth, his mother kills his father with a knife and is sentenced to life in prison. At birth, then, Hyacinth is consigned to a lower class existence with his world view eminating from the ground up. He is raised by a good-hearted Miss Pynsent, who senses in the boy a chance to rise above his station in life. As he matures, he finds a female playmate, Millicent Henning, who, later in life, will love him unreservedly, but he, in turn, will reject that love. Hyacinth tries to find his niche in the world, and for one of his low caste, becoming a bookbinder will do well enough.
The problem with Hyacinth is that the more he struggles to overcome his humble origins, the determinism that gripped the philosophers of the day sought only to prevent him from climbing out of his rut. Hyacinth, even at an early age, began to intuit that the only way to rise above his station was first to destroy it. Eventually he meets the Princess Casamassima, a lovely but bored wife of a wealthy prince, who is the means by which he can elevate himself and in so doing crush the grubby underside of a society to which he yet belongs. She plays along with him, but to her, Hyacinth is only one whose lowly background matched hers prior to her marriage. For the moment, he occupies her attention. Soon enough, however, she dumps him for Paul Muniment, a revolutionary hustler who does not mind mixing the business of revolution with the pleasure of the bedroom. Muniment entices an all too willing Hyacinth into a presposterous scheme to assassinate an unnamed capitalist. When finally, Hyacinth learns that he has abandoned his former world of drudgery and poverty for the unobtainable world of the now unavailable Princess, he does not belong in either, and in desperation shoots himself.
THE PRINCESS CASAMASSIMA is not one of Henry James' best books. It is preachy and today's readers do not connect readily with the concept that one's fate is predetermined. Yet, in the fate of Hyacinth Robinson, James starkly depicts a man unhappy with his environment which he determines to alter. The fact that he fails does not negate the intensity of his effort.
Taming His Inner Anarchist, 2006-01-10
The Princess Casamassima is fascinating for the way it takes James out of his comfort zone to depict the social world of workingmen, dressmakers, shopgirls, pub goers and (most improbably) underground revolutionaries in late Victorian London. I've heard the novel criticized for James's knee-knocking in confronting the 'social question': uneasy about the inequality it was built upon, his privileged world glittered too brightly for James to ever really denounce it.
But in the person of his "little bookbinder" Hyacinth Robinson, he gives it a valiant try, along the way bringing a lot more complexity--if not much documentary accuracy--to social problems than you get in many other writers, then or now, who take on the disadvantaged as their subject. No book's made me understand the British class system more sharply than this one. James's subtle eye reminds you how much was said by the cut of a glove, the smoothness of a hand, or the slight drop of an 'h' in England c. 1885. He's also sensitive to the way charity can be an expression of power (especially to those on the receiving end) and how mixed the motives can be when well-meaning fortunates "take up" the cause of the poor. The idea of the poor itself gets complicated as James delves into the various shades separating bookbinders from theater fiddlers from chemical experts from impoverished but titled aristocrats.
I think James was picking a bone with himself in this novel, since the same question--whether equality (what we'd probably call "social justice" today) should be achieved at the expense of the beauty and grace wealth provides--comes up over and over again. Kind of like the school busing question writ large. I think the frustrating thing about the novel is that James didn't know how to answer, so just kept writing new scenes. In the end, he falls back on the "religion of friendship" I think he calls it somewhere, a determination to see people, whatever their station, as individuals first and put their personalities above abstract theories. But he's also sharp enough to realize the personalities he likes most are the exceptional ones with intelligence and taste, not the "average" that reigns when everybody's equal. It's a muddle, but one that James tackled with his usual love for detail and appreciation for the complexities of human relationships. After the first few chapters, I had trouble putting it down.
A Jamesian Curiosity, overlong but beautifully written, 2005-08-29
I liked this book, but I notice that all the critics seem to hate it. It did take me more than a year of picking at it on and off. I picked it up because Walter Laqueur referred to it in one of his books about terrorism. Written in 1886, it suggests that there is a pan-European anarchist underground, which the protagonist gets mixed up with. It is interesting in its depiction of liberal guilt among the wealthy, who support a political movement that would lead to their own extinction. The prose is wonderful, as is the depiction of the subtleties of the characters' personalities, if you have the taste for that sort of thing. All in all, it was worth reading and it passed the most important test for a novel: I finished it with regret. I had previously read and liked Portrait of a Lady, which is a superior novel. As much as I liked it, I would have to say do not start with Princess as an introduction to James. Incidentally, I have a theory about the omniscient narrator in James' books being a malign demiurge, but I will spare you that theorizing here.
Casamassatastic, 2003-10-05
This is my favorite book over 500 pages. I haven't finished it yet, but when I do, I think I'll like it even more than I do now. Hyacinth is funny. He gets to ride around with rich people all day and work for the anarchists when he wants to. I think it's sad that he had to be given up because his parents were in trouble with the law. If he had the right upbringing, he probably wouldn't have gotten into the trouble he gets into. I think that James wants readers to realize how important it is to have a good family. Without proper parents, you might end up in trouble like Hyacinth. Also, the Princess is beautiful.
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780548536483
ISBN: 0548536481
Label: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 264
Publication Date: 2007-09-13
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
Studio: Kessinger Publishing, LLC |
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