Henry James And The Empires

Henry James(1843—1916)was one of the great novelists,stylists and literary critics in the history of world literature.He was the first American writer to conceive his career in international terms.Born in New York City of America,but spent most of his lifetime in Europe,and settled permanently in England,Henry James was very familiar with the cultures on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean,and had close relationships with the British Empire and the American Empire.Using John Atkinson Hobsorn's Imperialism theory and Edward W.Said's post-colonialism,this paper analyzes such biographical and autobiographical materials as Autobiography and Henry James:A Life,James's correspondences,James 's essays and his depiction of empire and colony,oriental images in his fictions to explore James's views on empires,mainly his attitude toward the British Empire and the American Empire.To be specific,this paper explores James's attitude toward empires not only from his daily life,but also through a close textual reading of his fictions such as The Europeans,The Golden Bowl,The Ambassadors,and The Turn of the Screw.Some of his critical essays and travel writings such as English Hours and The American Scene are also analyzed to explore his attitude toward empires.James's views on empires is a new research area in James study.He lived in Britain most of his life when the Victorian Britain was at its peak of imperialism.He also travelled back to the U.S.at the beginning of the 20th century and witnessed America's emergence as a new 'great empire.This has stirred his imagination for a powerful American Empire.These two empires,one as his adopted country for almost half of his life time and the other as his native land,both attracted James's attention.His attention to these two countries has also influenced his fiction writing.From the perspective of post-colonialism,we should also take some oriental countries into our research which James mentioned in his fictions such as India and China.The Orient appears as the Other for the Empire and is a significant field when we study empires.It's inevitable that we may encounter the Orient and the Orientalism when we study James's portrait of European empires and the American Empire.This paper has found that the Orient under James's pen is closely related to those empires' colonies and overseas exploitations,and James has skillfully used some Oriental images to symbolize those empires' overseas exploitations.Although James liked the Great Britain's long history and culture,he saw the British drawbacks in its maintaining of an empire,and his spectator perspective allowed him to keep an objective and neutral attitude towards the ruling of the British Empire.James believed that the British Empire should keep its existing colonies carefully but he opposed to its further imperialism of exploitation.In the late 19th century he tried to avoid wars while in the early 20th century he changed his attitude towards war.After the outbreak of the First World War,James supported the British Army in its effort to fight against Germany 's invasion and finally became a British citizen.James lived for most of his life in Europe and thought that the American culture was too shallow to provide a suitable environment for his literary career.Before the Spanish-American War,James depicted a group of Americans who went to Europe and were attracted by the European culture,and were thwarted in their encounter with the empire culture,such as Daisy in Daisy Miller and Newman in The American.The victory of the Spanish-American War in 1898 influenced the Americans' psychology and greatly encouraged their self-confidence.After the Spanish-American War,America became a new empire in the world.At that time American economy was also developing very fast and the new empire has grown to compete with the old European empires.America's rise greatly stimulated James's imagination of America as an empire and also influenced the writing of his later fiction.The larger,world-historicizing aspect of James's later fiction,written in the next few years after the war with Spain,arises from this response.James had more confidence in the American people and portrayed some American characters who were different from those depicted before and even superior to the Europeans.The American girl Millie in The Wings of the Dove was superior in morality to Kate,a European.Maggie in The Golden Bowl is also more successful in her life than Newman and Isabel in their confrontations with the European culture.But there is a huge gap between James's grand imagination of the American Empire and its poor cultural reality,which is reflected in The Ambassodors(1903).This novel reveals a subtle equilibrium between the European power and the American power.In The American Scene(1907),although James was aware of America's rise,he still criticized American culture.In general,he kept a sobre and objective attitude in appraising these two empires.From his comments on the British Empire's issues as a spectator before the First World War,to his active effort to help the British army to fight against the German invasion during the War,James finally walked out of his artistic ivory and got rid of his role as a spectator,and joined the effort to fight against German imperialism.James has a complicated and contradictory feeling towards the American Empire after the Spanish-American War.He opposed to America's imperialistic invasion of the Philippines in the Spanish-American War,but aspired to a powerful future of America.He was proud of America's rise in the world politically and economically,but still couldn't bear with its vulgar culture.Born in America,he has already got used to the British way in life and culture.His observation of the empires enriched his works and also deeply influenced his portrayal of the fictional characters,espeeially of the American characters.Henry James's life and writing are closely interwoven with thehistory and the development of both the British Empire and the American Empire.