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Summary: One of Henry James's Best Novels
Review: "The Bostonians" offers a revolutionary exploration of lesbianism and feminism in 1870's Boston, and should be regarded as Henry James's satirical examination of both lesbianism and feminism. Boston feminist and lesbian Olive Chancellor thinks she has found a kindred spirit in the young, beautiful feminist orator Verena Tarrant. Verena finds herself vying for the affections of not only Olive Chancellor, but also of Basil Ransom, a reactionary Mississippian Confederate Civil War veteran. Eventually she chooses in favor of Basil Ransom, marries him, and moves to New York City. James's early novel should be regarded as among the earliest modern American novels with respect to its explorations of both lesbianism and feminism. It offers such a harsh look at Boston upper crust society that it can be regarded as James's sour valentine to his hometown.
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Summary: A novel to leave you in thought.
Review: First off, this is a delicious novel! What's amazing is that to me at least, is that it has no heroes. I despised Olive Chancellor (A woman who appears selfless on the surface) and equally did not care for Basil Ransom (who has just as many control 'issues' as Olive). I guess I just felt sorry for Verena, the woman Olive and Basil 'fight' over. Trust me though, despite the lack of heroes, you'll want to keep reading.
And if you want a novel you don't have to think about, this (and Henry James) is NOT for you. But if you want characters that are breathtakinly complex and inviting (though valaverous) prose, than King James is your man. I also liked the review below who stated that if you love the quick action of T.V, you won't like this book much. Of course I'd say turn of the T.V and give it a try anyway.
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Summary: A simple, well-written, North/South love story.
Review: Henry James's, "The Bostonians," is a simple, but increasingly entertaining love story set in the years soon after the end of the Civil War. Basil Ransom, a true Southern gentleman from Mississippi, has moved North (specifically, to New York City) to try and start a career away from the impoverished South of the Reconstruction days. Shortly after moving North, he pays a visit, at her behest, to the Boston house of his distant cousin, Olive Chancellor. Olive, a stalwart in the women's rights movement of the time, invites Basil to her home in order to offer help and assistance to her Southern cousin, but she also wishes to save him from the flawed ways he certainly must have taken on growing up in the South. Her self-seeking, ulterior motives fail miserably, of course.It is through Olive that Basil Ransom meets Verena Tarrant, the young woman who has left her lower middle-class family to move in with and be molded by Olive. Verena has a tremendous speaking ability which caught Olive's (and the other women's (womyn's?) movement leaders') attention. But ultimately, Verena also catches Basil's attention... not for her feminist diatribes, but for her beauty and the passion of her speeches. Basil is instantly struck by Verena, and from this point onward the plot focuses as Basil attempts to seek out his love interest who is highly guarded by Olive, Verena's parents, and several others. The dialogue between Olive and her friends with Basil Ransom, is a constant back and forth that is civil on the surface, but boiling with hostility underneath the social niceties. While Basil is always cool and focused as he tracks the object of his love, Olive Chancellor only becomes more paranoid as she sees that she is gradually losing her young charge... to a Southern Neanderthal. "The Bostonians" meanders through the first couple hundred pages with witty dialogue between the alien Basil and his new peers, but as his focus intensifies, so does the plot. James draws all this circling and stalking into a final, climactic scene that many will be cheering, but one that many modern-day feminists and their sympathizers will be cursing.
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Summary: unique among james's novels
Review: I don't think this is one of his very best works and prefer The Ambassadors and The Portrait of a Lady, but it is interesting and enjoyable nonetheless. None of the characters are very reasonable (the main characters are, perhaps, not even agreeable), and the reader is torn between taking sides with Olive, Verena, or Basil, even though James has a slight bias for Basil, a reactionary. The structure of the novel seems excentric when compared with James's other novels: Basil, the hero, is absent for long stretches, and the finale includes a bit of comedy with a policeman. This scene verges on slap-stick and comes as a shock, in an otherwise intense and somber love story. The prose, however, is beautiful throughout and easier to read than that of his later novels.
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Summary: unique among james's novels
Review: I don't think this is one of his very best works and prefer The Ambassadors and The Portrait of a Lady, but it is interesting and enjoyable nonetheless. None of the characters are very reasonable (the main characters are, perhaps, not even agreeable), and the reader is torn between taking sides with Olive, Verena, or Basil, even though James has a slight bias for Basil, a reactionary. The structure of the novel seems excentric when compared with James's other novels: Basil, the hero, is absent for long stretches, and the finale includes a bit of comedy with a policeman. This scene verges on slap-stick and comes as a shock, in an otherwise intense and somber love story. The prose, however, is beautiful throughout and easier to read than that of his later novels.
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Summary: A different kind of novel than I'm used to
Review: I finished reading this book only a few weeks ago for a college class I'm in. It certainly wasn't the kind of book I'd pick up just on my own, but I wouldn't say I didn't like it. The story is set primarily in Boston and somewhat in New York during the 1880's. At the request of his cousin Olive Chancellor, southern lawyer Basil Ransom comes to visit. He accompanies her to a meeting where the young Verena Tarrant speaks wonderfully on women's rights. Olive is so impressed with Verena, she starts what's debatably a lesbian relationship with her, but Ransom is taken with Verena as well and so a struggle begins between the two for Verena's affections. I think Henry James does an excellent job of giving complete descriptions of each character and you really get a sense of who they are. Olive comes across as rigid and passionate, Verena as young, full of life and curious and Basil as sexist and determined. Basil uses all his ability to wrench Verena from Olive. As I mentioned, the relationship between Verena and Olive is debatable. There are no sex scenes in this novel, but the implication is there. Additionally, I've learned in the class for which I read this novel that many women during this time period engaged in very intense romantic relationships which may or may not be described as sexual. There are of course other characters such as Verena's parents and other women's rights activists, but the whole focus of the novel is on this struggle for Verena. It wouldn't be completely unfair to say that in some ways nothing much happens in this novel. It's truly a character driven story. There aren't really antagonists and protagonists in the story, but more just people whom all have faults and are just trying to make the right decisions. Although my description of Basil above may sound like a bad guy and although he's unapologetically sexist, he perhaps is no worse than Olive who sometimes seems to be using Verena, a young woman whose thoughts and feelings are maleable. At its heart, the novel is still a love story. Overall, I'd say this is probably worth reading if you like novels about this time period, about love or if you like this author. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd read another novel by James, but I don't regret reading this.
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Summary: independence versus romance
Review: The astonishing thing about this book -- and a lot of Henry James's writing -- is his insight into the problems of women. This book deals with the problem of independence and freedom. Most of us, let's admit it, love the idea of being swept off our feet by some competent, assertive male. It's a real turn-on. If you don't believe it, check out how many successful professional women secretly read historical romances by the boxload. The problem comes the next morning when he starts to take control, bit by bit, of your entire life. In this book you have Olive, who is not, I think, a lesbian but someone who is very lonely and doesn't trust men and Verena, who likes men just fine, but is, for the moment anyway, under the spell of Olive and her feminist ideology. Are these our only options? Verena Makes her choice, but James notes that the tears she sheds may not, unhappily, be her last.
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Summary: The most unsettling and uncharacteristic James novel.
Review: The Bostonians is a flawed novel that is better for its faults. James clearly couldn't work out exactly what he was doing with the book, but this uncertainty is its greatest strength. The story is simple: a Boston feminist and a Southern chauvinist fight over the devotion of a pretty but not-quite-formed young woman. Reading the novel, it is impossible to tell the degrees to which the views of the characters are meant to be ironic or appreciative, satirical or sympathetic. James apparently writes out of divided feelings, and he fills the book with so many of these divisions that the novel irritates readers who prefer authors to make their judgments clear and unambiguous. James, for instance, is dubious toward the Boston feminism of his time, but he is equally dubious toward the reactionary conservatism of the Southerner, and the novel's tension depends largely upon this split in the author's perspective. Verena, as the character who lives within this split, is placed in the same position as the reader: she must choose between two viewpoints that she partially accepts and partially rejects. As the famous last line indicates, James has more than slight reservations about the decision that Verena ultimately makes, and he means for the reader to take away a similar sense of dissatisfaction--an intense awareness of just how large and complex the war is between men and women.
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Summary: An entirely American James novel
Review: The women's rights movement is a big part of American history, so it's interesting that Henry James used it as the subject of his 1886 novel "The Bostonians." While it's widely considered a satire, it doesn't really ridicule the movement, and the characters are too understated to risk judgment as caricatures. (To say James is a master of understatement is an understatement.) Rather, the novel appears to use the movement as a device to weave male-female relationships into a Balzacian comedy of society. Compared to most of his more popular novels, it is quite lighthearted.
The central heroine is the voluptuous Verena Tarrant, an inspirational public speaker with the voice of an angel and the charm of a Homeric siren. Her uniquely sheltered upbringing as the daughter of a fraudulent and avaricious "mesmeric healer" has freed her from a normal education and exposed her to anybody who wants to take advantage of her ingenuousness. One night at the home of an elderly progressive activist named Miss Birdseye, she delivers a mellifluous speech that grabs the attention of the scheming feminist Olive Chancellor and her cousin Basil Ransom, a Mississippi lawyer who has settled in New York to begin a practice and has just come to Boston to visit his relatives.
Olive quickly befriends Verena with the intention of putting her oratorical skills to work for the women's movement, acting as her mentor and coaching her in the rationale for gender equality. Men, including her own father, see Verena as a goldmine: A wealthy Harvard student named Henry Burrage offers to be her lecture agent, and a journalist named Matthias Pardon reports on her professional engagements, helping her to become a celebrity who commands large audiences. Basil, a conservative gentleman, naturally thinks Verena's speeches are radical nonsense; he resents the "feminization" of male society that he fears the emancipation of women would effect. Like Burrage, he would like to marry her, but he would first like to get the silly ideas out of her head placed there by Olive. Furthermore, his attraction to Verena is disheartening to Olive's widowed sister Adeline Luna, who is somewhat infatuated with him and sympathetic to his traditionalist views.
It almost goes without saying that the novel is not about the political aspect of women's rights; James is obviously not interested in that. The conflict he establishes is the selfish battle for control over Verena--whether her career in the hands of Olive and her handlers will submit to Basil's love for her. In general I find James's prose style to be too purposefully obstructive and uninviting, but here I was able to put aside my reservations and concentrate on the story at hand because I sensed the end would be rewarding, and indeed I liked the way the last sentence of the novel forgoes convention and leaves the principal question of Verena's happiness open and unresolved. For what it's worth, James also conjures great descriptions of street scenes of Boston and New York, giving genuine verbal snapshots of what these cities must have looked like at the time. He will never be one of my favorite writers, but I concede that he is one of my favorite disagreeable writers.
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Summary: Henry James is relevant today.
Review: This book by James is a satiric view at the reformist tendency of Bostonians. Interestingly, Henry Adams, a friend of James, took the same approach in the former's prize winning autobiography. James' portrayal of Ms. Birdseye raised some eyebrows because of the character's similarity to a noted Boston scion of the age. William James had to write to his brother to tell him to tone his description down (the book was being serialized.
Historically the book provides a fascinating glipse of Beacon Hill and its environs as well as the attitudes of the day.
The book does satirize the feminist movement. James had an interest in defining the american 'girl'. This very witty novel fits in with that trend. James is very descriptive. This book is to be savored not rushed.
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