Passive resistance: Henry James and the social construction of masculinity

Throughout his career Henry James depicts a series of male characters who turn away from traditional modes of action and in consequence problematize one sort of masculine identity. Although critics may have long noted with a distinct uneasiness James's penchant to represent this type of male figure, their analyses have been based on a narrowly defined conception of behavior deemed appropriate to men which is intrinsically predicated upon an equation of masculinity with action, a definition of gender that James's passive males radically violate. Consequently, critics have basically fallen into two schools of thought: one demonizes masculine passivity, and the other attempts to transform what only seems like passivity into an ersatz activity. In contrast, I am proposing to take Jamesian male passivity at face value--as passivity--which rhetorical resists traditional modes of representing masculinity. Moreover, I contend that rather than envisioning Henry James as sequestered in some rarified ivory tower (as too often he is perceived), he should be seen as a cultural worker intent on re-conceptualizing the social construction of masculinity in response to historically specific social, aesthetic and scientific inquiries that inform the perception of sexuality and gender in the nineteenth century, because only by situating Henry James in his historical milieu is it possible to understand the significance of the passive male in his writings. Contextualizing James's practice with reference to late nineteenth-century sexology, feminism and aesthetics, I demonstrate how James's alternatives to masculine action re-conceive what "manhood" and "action" can mean. I trace James's treatment of this figure through the three phases of his work, reevaluating each in turn, culminating in the experimental narratives of the "major phase" where James challenges the constricting conception of a monolithic masculinity with rhetorical strategies of difficulty and obscurity.