Henry James’s Feminist Afterlives: Annie Fields, Emily Dickinson, Marguerite Duras

184 Pages·2018·1.34 MB·English

by  Kathryn Wichelns

American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
Henry James’s
Feminist Afterlives
Annie Fields, Emily Dickinson, Marguerite Duras
KATHRYN WICHELNS
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
Series editor
Linda Wagner-Martin
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC, USA
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century publishes works by
contemporary critics that help shape critical opinion regarding literature
of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14765
Kathryn Wichelns
Henry James’s
Feminist Afterlives
Annie Fields, Emily Dickinson, Marguerite Duras
Kathryn Wichelns
Department of English, University of New Mexico,
Albuquerque, NM, USA
American Literature Readings in the 21st Century
ISBN 978-3-319-71799-9 ISBN 978-3-319-71800-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71800-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017963646
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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In memoriam:
Susan R. Barnard
(1969–2000)
An early version of Chapter 3 was published in The Emily Dickinson Journal 20.1
(2011). It appears here by permission of Johns Hopkins University Press.
An early version of Chapter 4 appeared in Comparative Literature 67.1 (2015).
It appears here by permission of Duke University Press.
vii
A
cknowledgments
Like all books, this one reflects the contributions of many. I want
particularly to thank the students, professors, friends, and colleagues who
have been most instrumental in my approach to specific aspects of this
project, in ways large and small: Aaron Aguilar, Jesse Alemán, Aaron Alter,
Brooke Beloso, Stéphanie Boulard, Frank Boyle, Shelby Crosby, Amy
Cunningham, Ken Dauber, Richard Giannone, Christopher GoGwilt,
Jason Goldbarg, Alyosha Goldstein, Elizabeth Grosz, Oliver Herford,
Philip Horne, Susan Howe, Lynne Huffer, Dalia Judovitz, Mary Lannon,
Chad Lavin, Sarah Lewis, Elissa Marder, Elias Marenco, Olivia McGinnis,
Christanne Miller, Michael Moon, Gerry O’Sullivan, Elizabeth Petrino,
Adriana Ramirez de Arellano, Cindy Rankin, Bárbara Reyes, Jill Robbins,
Joyce Rowe, Neil Schmitz, Rebecca Schreiber, Shane Vogel, Daniel
Worden, and Greg Zacharias.
Two anonymous reviewers for Palgrave Macmillan gave invaluably spe-
cific and thorough feedback. In addition, my editors at Palgrave, Allie
Bochicchio and Emily Janakiram, have served as advocates and consultants
throughout this process.
Librarians are at the foundations of every scholarly project. The staffs of
the Miller Library at Colby College, the Houghton Library at Harvard
University, the Huntington Library, the Maine Women Writers Collective
at the University of New England, and the Massachusetts Historical
Society have provided access to, and input on, the unpublished and archi-
val material that helps support the arguments in Chaps. 2 and 3. The staff
of the Interlibrary Library Loan Office at the University of New Mexico’s
Zimmerman Library has bent over backwards over the last couple of years,
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
in an increasingly impossible budget climate, to get copies of far-flung
texts sent, with remarkable speed, to the U.S. Southwest.
I also thank the members of my various incarnations of family—
biological, legal, and chosen—who continue to inspire me with their cour-
age in the face of mortality, parenthood, and other unthinkables: Adrian,
Dan, George, Grace, Jenny, Jerry, Katy, Nancy, Sarah, and Trish.
c
ontents
1 Introduction: On James, Mastery, and Transgression 1
2 “Those Who Know”: Henry James and Annie Adams
Fields 15
3 Emily Dickinson’s Henry James 57
4 Henry James, French Feminist: Marguerite Duras’s La Bête
dans la jungle 85
5 Gender, Colonialism, and Italian Difference: Duras
and The Aspern Papers 113
6 Conclusion: Towards a Queer Feminist James 143
Works Cited 153
Index 171
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