New Essays on Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw (The American Novel) Book

Daisy Miller and The Turn of the Screw may be Henry James's most widely read tales. Certainly, these swiftly moving accounts of failed connections areamong the best examples of his shorter fiction. One represents the international theme that made him famous; the other exemplifies the multiple meanings that make him modern. The introduction to this volume locates his fiction in the context of the family that conditioned his concern with thesexual politics of intimate experience. In the four essays that follow, Kenneth Graham offers a close reading of Daisy with an emphasis on Daisy; Robert Weisbuch examines Winterbourne as a specimen of James's formidable bachelor type; Millicent Bell places the ghost story governess in the traditions of English fiction and society; David McWhirter then provides a critique of female authority. Deftly summarizing earlier criticism, these essays demonstrate thecontinuing appeal of Henry James in our time.