The Tragic Sense In The Novels Of Henry James

The popular culture has increasingly developed during the Victorian period. It was in the situation of such a culture of consumption that Henry James devoted himself to the movement of novel-solemned and considered himself as a serious artist. He speaks for the novel and develops theories of the novel which exerts a profound meaning for the later generations.As a serious artist, Henry James has strong consciousness of responsibility. His novels describe dilemma of life from various aspects and focus on anxious souls of human being under the civilized society which makes his novels filled with the consciousness of tragedy.In his novels, on the one hand, he reflects the various tragic dilemmas of life by means of the conflicts of tragedy and shows intensively the psychology of the characters in the circumstances of tragedy in order to highlight the characters'psychological persistent depression, and restless with anxiety in their soul as well. Finally he chooses the imperfect ending to represent the real experience of life, demonstrating that the tragedy of life does not disappear as the story ends but goes along with the misery as the life continues.On the other hand, contrary to the view held by Aristote that the plot weighs over the characters, Henry James locates the characters as the center of the novel, and expresses his understanding and experience to tragedy of life by the characters'consciousness, temperament and future. Through the description of the same tragic life of different characters, he reveals certain truth of life for us that there is a different misery in different people's life and the fate never favors anyone.Eventually, Henry James suggests that the novel resembles the painting as an art and it is the reflection of the life experience. Since the life experience is so trivial and disordered, it comes to the question:how to transfer the novel into language arts, that's why the means of art of the author seems extremely important. In the novels, Henry James constitutes his novels by using the Peripeteia, anagnorisis, arrangement of scenes, particular style of language, etc. to form his own artistic concept. And based on the art of tragedy, his concept comes into being along with his practice of novels, to an extent, which reflects his reference, inheritance, and progress in regard with the classic tragedy aesthetics.Henry James insists that novel should be treated as a kind of solemn art, which explains that he would pay attention to the soul of the human beings, and ponder over their fate. And it exactly reflects the consciousness of tragedy. Therefore, we could say that the consciousness of tragedy in the novels results naturally from the pursuit of the aesthetic.