Reviews for Culture and Conduct in the Novels of Henry James

The average rating for Culture and Conduct in the Novels of Henry James based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-03-29 00:00:00 Sarah Robinson Like so many other characters in Clarel, Nathan's ferocious retreat into orthodoxy becomes a means to escape the overwhelming complexities and ultimate meaninglessness of the contemporary world. But such a retreat is decidedly at odds with the rhetorical strategy of Clarel, which constantly affirms that the world cannot be escaped (the next great religious pattern I shall identify in the poem -- which I call "the tempered heart" -- requires of the believer to both face and endure the hardships of the world). In this regard, he shares a similar viewpoint as Nehemiah, who, of all people, questions Nathan's turn to Judaism; in canto 1.22 he sadly exclaims: Poor Nathan, did man ever stray As thou? to Judaize to-day! To deem the crook of Christ shall yield To Aaron's staff! to till thy field In hope that harvest time shall see Solomon's hook in golden glee Reaping the ears. Well, well! meseems-- Heaven help him, dreams, but dreams--dreams, dreams! (77-84) That Clarel, to whom Nehemiah is speaking, tacitly agrees with this is reflected in his recognition of the irony involved, for he is left "Conjecturing that Nathan too / Must needs hold Nehemiah in view / The same" (91-93). The difficulties presented by the physical world to orthodox believers (of any kind) is a major theme in Clarel. The orthodox in the poem fall roughly into two groups: the traditionally orthodox who adhere closely to ancient tradition and ritual (Abdon, Salvaterra, the monks at Mar Saba) and the radically orthodox who perceive the world through a singular design not specifically tied to any established doctrine (the Presbyterian elder's atheism, Mortmain's misanthrophy, Nehemiah's millenialistic vision, even Margoth's science); both are monologic views and neither is able to dwell completely (or comfortably) in the present, which often leads to disaster. Thus in canto 26, as Clarel and Nehemiah make their way through a group of lepers, the former does so "in affright,/ Fain would his eyes renounce the light" (15-16), whereas Nehemiah held on his path Mild and unmoved--scarce seemed to heed The suitors, or deplore the scath-- His soul pre-occupied and freed From actual objects thro' the sway Of visionary scenes intense-- (17-22) Nathan's experience before and after his conversion also serve to dramatize the fundamental conflict between orthodox religions, on the one hand, and Mueller's innate religious faculty and Melville's "intersympathy of creeds" on the other. Mueller believed religious orthodoxy obscured the latter as it became more involved in issues of dogma, human interest, and politics. In Nathan's case, his ancestral Protestantism, which he maintains apparently only to please his mother despite frequent bouts of doubt (1.17.50-53), is gradually displaced by powerful spiritual urgings that find the genteel materialism of nineteenth-century Protestantism and secularism hopelessly inadequate.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-08-25 00:00:00 Gabriel Goss Leonard Cassuto's remarkable book posits that the hard-boiled novel continues an obsession with the themes of domesticity and mutual feeling that characterized the 19th C sentimental novel. He argues that the hard-boiled hero is increasingly sentimentalized/domesticated, while the villain is increasingly pathologized in the figure of the serial killer. Cassuto's study is convincing and lays out a powerful counter-narrative to conventional readings of the hard-boiled story as fundamentally reactionary.