Binary Oppositions In The Ambassadors

As one of the most outstanding American writers at the turn of the 20th century and a representative writer from realism to modernism, Henry James (1843-1916) is famous for his creative narrative techniques and international theme, his two lifelong concerns in the creation of novels. The former revolves around the opposition between impersonality and self-expression, which concerns the form of the novel, while the latter focuses on the conflict between the American culture and the European culture, which is about the content of the novel. As one of the three masterpieces in Henry James's last writing stage, The Ambassadors has been accepted by Henry James himself"the most perfect novel of his own". This thesis intends to discuss The Ambassadors from the perspectives of the narrative techniques and the international theme respectively, by an application of the binary opposition theory. Through analysis, the thesis is designed to display the conflict, transformation and mergence of the opposition between impersonality and self-expression in narrative techniques, and the opposition between American culture and the European culture of the international theme, and exhibit how James manages to settle the oppositions through casting the protagonist– Strether, as well as other assistant characters, so as to eventually reveal the implication of the title of the novel and the theme of the novel, and discuss the significance of the novel both in developing Henry James's narrative techniques and in developing American and European cultures.This thesis consists of 5 chapters. Chapter 1, 2 mainly covers the objective of my research and a brief introduction to the theoretical background of the thesis. Then the binary opposition theory is first employed in Chapter 3 in terms of impersonality and self-expression. Central consciousness is Henry James's innovation to give the reader an objective narration. However, as he is unwilling to retreat from the stage completely, he employs narrative techniques of ficelles and transgression of perspective to achieve his goal of self-expression, which shows how the writer manages to deal with the opposition between impersonality and his self-expression. Likewise, the opposition between the American culture and the European culture is discussed in Chapter 4. The former is the stronger party, but the latter prevails later and the two parties seem to merge in the end. The above two pair of binary oppositions are settled eventually through performance of the protagonist and some other assistant characters of the novel.