The Art of Belated Souls

Henry James equals confusing person. He is kind of long winded at times and hard to understand. I think he summarizes best in his article “The Art of Fiction” when states, “Discussion, suggestion, formulation, these things are fertilizing when they are frank and sincere.” And later on he says, “The only reason for the existence of a novel that it does attempt to represent life.

I think it is interesting that the story, “Belated souls” was written by a female and if the only reason for a novel according to James is to represent life I think Edith Wharton did it. She makes you feel awkward and scandalous right along with her characters. I actually wished the story would have been longer and had a bit more character development.

For example I would have liked to know how Lydia’s husband felt from his perspective and known more about Gannett’s background. However, what Wharton does is bring the reader in at the middle of the story, which represents life perfectly because how many of us know each other’s life story besides perhaps our family and close personal friends, and even then we all still have secrets. Lydia’s “predicament” is a more romantic version of things we see on Jerry Springer these days.

The story portrays the classic soap opera story of an affair and a women’s struggle to feel independent, and not assimilate into the social, upper-class circle of gossiping women. I think what James is saying about discussion and suggestion being fertilizing when it’s frank and sincere is that society has to recognize these life representations to better understand life. Like Walt Whitman was all about being philosophical and trying to answer the big questions in life, fiction is still a way of representing life. Most fiction is based on some fact.

James discusses this in his own awkward way. First he relates a picture to reality in that a painter is inspired by reality and so history also represents life. If we understand history so we don’t repeat it then we can still see the representation of life in works of fiction in order to understand it.

A lot of what I’ve just said probably makes sense and sounded a lot better in my head and if that’s the case then I’m embodying Henry James an