A statement of sexual tension: Henry James's criticism of some British and American writers, 1865--1880

Focusing upon some critical pronouncements of the American writer, Henry James (1843--1916), written between 1865 and 1880, this study contends that James's early reviews of the works of a number of British and American women writers participate in a trend of mid-late nineteenth-century male resistance to the feminization of culture. Ann Douglas refers to "the testament of sexual tension" which can be discerned in the works of some nineteenth-century American writers, and her pioneering text The Feminization of American Culture (1978) provides a productive context for this current study of sexual tensions in the works of some British and American writers in the latter half of the nineteenth century.;Utilizing a diachronic, literary-historical methodology, this project examines James's reviews of the works of George Eliot (1819--1880), Rebecca Harding Davis (1831--1910), Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826--1887), Helen Hunt Jackson ("H. H.") (1830--1885), Rhoda Broughton (1840--1920), Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1837--1915), and Anne Moncure Crane Seemuller (1838--1872). The study discovers evidence of a "testament of sexual tension" both in James's criticism and in the works of the writers he discusses, it looks at the qualitative criteria upon which James appears to have based his critical judgements of their works, and it considers some of the canonical implications of his undeniably influential views in as far as the literary careers, reputations, and legacies of these writers is concerned.;The first chapter deals with James's reviews of works by George Eliot---an important canonical British writer. The second chapter examines his critiques of two novels by Rebecca Harding Davis, one of the pioneers of American literary realism. The third chapter looks at James's criticism of the works of popular novelists, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, Helen Hunt Jackson, and Rhoda Broughton. The final chapter studies the genre of sensation fiction, and James's reviews of works by Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Anne Moncure (Crane) Seemuller. The Conclusion assesses how James's criticism and the works of these women writers contribute to our overall understanding of sexual tensions in mid-late nineteenth-century culture on both sides of the Atlantic.