Fiducia

by Henry James, Giorgio Manganelli (Translator)

Pubblicato a puntate sullo "Scribner's Monthly" tra l'agosto del 1879 ed il gennaio del 1880, Confidence uscì prima a Londra e poi a Cambridge, Massachussets.
Questo romanzo, costruito su un abile gioco di concidenze, analizza in modo impietoso e affascinante il tema del tradimento e, di conseguenza, della fiducia, tanto in amore come in amicizia. Dei due protagonosti maschili, James ebbe a scrivre nei suoi Taccuini: "I due uomini sono amici di vecchia data, uniti da un legame molto stretto. L'interesse della vicenda deve dipendere soprattutto dalla forza e dalla profondità di questa amicizia che contrasta con la singolare differenza di indole dei personaggi..."

Genres: Classics, Fiction, American, 19th Century, Literary Fiction, Romance, British Literature

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1879

About the author

Henry James was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the son of Henry James Sr. and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
He is best known for his novels dealing with the social and marital interplay between émigré Americans, the English, and continental Europeans, such as The Portrait of a Lady. His later works, such as The Ambassadors, The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl were increasingly experimental. In describing the internal states of mind and social dynamics of his characters, James often wrote in a style in which ambiguous or contradictory motives and impressions were overlaid or juxtaposed in the discussion of a character's psyche. For their unique ambiguity, as well as for other aspects of their composition, his late works have been compared to Impressionist painting.
His novella The Turn of the Screw has garnered a reputation as the most analysed and ambiguous ghost story in the English language and remains his most widely adapted work in other media. He wrote other highly regarded ghost stories, such as "The Jolly Corner".
James published articles and books of criticism, travel, biography, autobiography, and plays. Born in the United States, James largely relocated to Europe as a young man, and eventually settled in England, becoming a British citizen in 1915, a year before his death. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912, and 1916. Jorge Luis Borges said "I have visited some literatures of East and West; I have compiled an encyclopedic compendium of fantastic literature; I have translated Kafka, Melville, and Bloy; I know of no stranger work than that of Henry James."

Reviews

[Kalliope · Rating 4 out of 5]

CONFIDENCE in INSCRUTABILITY

This less well-known novel by Henry James is certainly worth reading. Published between The Europeans and Washington Square, the reader may think that Daisy Miller has come back to life so that she can finish it.

This is also a good novel to read for those who are scared of Henry James and his inscrutability. For the language is polished, is crafted, but it is not ambiguous. Or at least it is not overtly ambiguous even if James can play with the reader using ambiguities. Plus there is his fine irony and humor. In this book one senses that he must have enjoyed writing it.

I used to see James as an aesthetician but I am beginning to see his roots in the 19C concerns with morality. The concern he tackled in Roderick Hudson – to what extent ought one to interfere with somebody else’s life reappears in these pages again. But only to then be discarded.

Or may be not entirely. The French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792-1897) is mentioned twice in the novel – one of the characters, who engages in ‘casuistry’, is presented reading his books. This intrigued me because Cousin is the only theoretician alluded to in the entire book and it made me think that Henry James could have been engaged with Cousin’s ideas while writing his novel. Not having read Cousin’s works, I just investigated in the web. From what I could gather, Cousin insisted on the strength and power of psychological observation; he also contended with the potential of the ‘Self’ and free volition. And may be these ideas are at the core of the somewhat enigmatic title of the book, Confidence.

To put this assuredness into action, James resorted to another of his female creations, the reborn Daisy Miller, an “Angela” who this time becomes the vehicle for shaping, in a ‘Cousin-manner’, an ending that, unusually in James, is enclosed, clean and somewhat comic.


And this is done with a full, but somewhat inscrutable, Confidence.

[Agnieszka · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across that Henry James rather accidentally. It’s his earlier work written after Daisy Miller and The Europeans but before The portrait of a lady and Washington Square. It reads and not reads like Henry James. But first things first.

Confidence is arranged for four persons, there are more protagonists here of course but in our interest is foursome. Let’s take a look at them. Bernard Longueville is more than his friend Gordon Wright. He’s more handsome, more intelligent, he flatters himself to be more perceptive and smart than others that even leaves to himself some witty remark as he suspects they wouldn’t be appreciated but also because he very much enjoys own company, and he’s either more blind as we would see. For what left for Gordon is to be less. He doesn’t distinguish himself in anything, neither appearance nor perceptiveness nor witticism. He’s a pragmatic man and wants to know if he chose well. But he’s also good-humoured and easy going man.

Gordon, trusting Bernard’s judgement and clear-headedness, asks friend a favour, unusual rather. He asks him about an opinion on a girl Gordon would love to marry. Bernard after a while agrees and on the scene appear two beautiful young women. Angela Vivian, object of Gordon’s interest and as it shows a person Bernard had met fleetingly in Siena some years back, and coquetish Blanche. And as Master himself states in the novel there were two kinds of pretty girls—the acutely conscious and the finely unconscious.

Bernard fulfilling the task causes involuntarily more troubles than one could expect and put confidence and their friendship in jeopardy. In the effect Bernard feels confused and Gordon chagrined. Blanche cries and Mrs Vivian, well she takes matters in her hands. The novel shows much lighter face of Henry James. It’s humourous, it's playful, farcical at times, it’s rather comedy of manners than drama. Though it's definitely more straightforward than his other works, smooth at times and protagonists feel less ambiguos or complex but their portraits are as usual finely painted and deeply intriguing. Because despite that lighter note Henry James being, well, Henry James couldn’t create any sappy story.

3.5/5

[Proustitute (on hiatus) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A supremely minor James novel, more of an interlude from his early work to his more middle period. This feels even more inconsequential than The Europeans, with stilted dialogue, very short paragraphs (for James, this is odd) and feels clumsy, predictable, and without the scathing social satire of his other work—yes, even his earlier work.

A bump on the road to the middle period, to say the least, it's no wonder that in all my years dipping into and dipping back into James's novels and tales, I've never once opened Confidence. And so it's with confidence that I can say: this is totally skippable. You will have missed nothing but some bumbling and some stumbling.

Perhaps now for a "palate cleanser," of sorts, before revisiting Washington Square.

[Julie]

7.5/10

Well, thank goodness. The equilibrium in the Henry James universe has been restored for me. Coming fresh on the heels of The Europeans, I must admit to being more than a trifle "trepidatious" on embarking on another HJ.

The old fellow did himself proud, more or less. This is definitely HJ-Lite, but after the migraine-inducing Eugenia Munster, even twitterly little Blanche comes as a bit of fresh air.

I wasn't as taken with the indomitable Angela Vivian as so many seem to be. She is indeed impregnable, and therein lies for me her greatest fault: I like my heroines (and heros) to have a little more heart. She is calculating and controlled; a bit too unflinching in her righteousness; -- and strikes me more as a woman who would break, rather than bend.

The rest all seem to play their parts well: Gordon who ends up tying himself in the proverbial Gordian Knot; Bernard, the loyal, dogged, tenacious lover; Lovelock who bears faint echoes of Clarissa's (albeit effete) lover.

This novel dragged in all sorts of echoes from numerous directions, and so was a lot of fun to play with -- just as HJ intended, no doubt.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very happy to report that my first James novel after having read Gerald Murnane backs up what Gerald Murnane led me to think about James: his most important contribution to literature is not his characterisation, or realism, or ethical reflections; it isn't even his discovery that a novel can be given form if everything in it is viewed through the (often 'unreliable') eyes of a single character. James is great (okay, I think he's great) because he foregrounds interpretation rather than action. (And because the late style is just amazing, but that's irrelevant for this early novel).

Confidence has an extremely straightforward plot: Wright asks Bernard (our focal character) for an opinion on Miss Vivian, the girl he (Wright) is in love with; Bernard gives it; Wright doesn't marry her, and marries a "lighter" girl instead; Bernard marries Miss Vivian instead; moral difficulties abound; Wright threatens to leave the "lighter" girl; Miss Vivian save the day.

But what makes this book fascinating is how the action, as such, is carried out. The plot exists because Wright doesn't just want Bernard's opinion; he wants him to interpret Miss Vivian, to explain her to him--"it was not a wonder that poor Wright should not have found this young lady's disposition a perfectly decipherable page." Bernard does precisely this, and does it fairly accurately.

Then the book gets interesting: everyone starts interpreting everyone else. Bernard interprets Miss Vivian, then he interprets Wright's new marriage in various lights; he (and everyone else) is constantly looking for the reason for events (thus it is particularly disturbing when Wright refuses to accompany his wife to visit Miss Vivian, and "gave no reason.") Later we'll learn that Miss Vivian herself had interpreted Bernard's actions perfectly, she knew that she had been "handed over to [him] to be put under the microscope... like an insect with a pin stuck in it." She asserts her own ability to be the interpreter, not just the interpreted.

And in that role she is the savior of the story: she understands the Wrights' marital difficulties, which is far beyond Bernard's ken; she concocts a plan to deal with them; her interpretations and machinations lead to the happily-ever-after. So this book is open to very convincing feminist readings (in large part the plot is of Miss Vivian refusing to be a mere object of interpretation, and insisting that she, like Bernard, is a subject of it).

So the structure of Confidence is: interpretation of Miss Vivian by Bernard for Wright; interpretation of Wright by Bernard for Bernard; interpretation of Miss Vivian by Bernard for Bernard (which, not so coincidentally, takes place while she's reading a book); interpretation of Wright by Miss Vivian for everyone. James replaces the "plot" (that is, the sequence of events) with interpretations of the events, so the reader gets the tension we're used to from good detective novels, but the tension comes from the characters, narrator, and readers all trying to work out why certain things happened, not the characters and readers all waiting to see what will happen--a vein of fiction now being mined by, inter alia, Murnane and Javier Marias. Confidence isn't James's best novel, but it does make this method particularly transparent, so it's a great lesson in the craft of fiction.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

There’s a reason I knew nothing much of this short novel, a sort of comedy of manners, beforehand: it’s not that good.

It starts off okay, with different meanings of the title word interspersed within its pages, plus a very tiny glimpse for me into perhaps the beginnings of his The Beast in the Jungle. But the characters of the two men are twisted to fit the theme, and the inscrutable nature of Angela Vivian (Living Angel!) and the speech of the other member of the love-rectangle turn rather tedious.

Whether it’s intentional or not, and though James' occasional first-person narrator has a statement about women that I find completely wrong and a narratorial usage of I say that makes no sense, the work does point out the unrealistic expectations men have of women.

[Mark Stephenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have only to finish The Golden Bowl, The Bostonians and The Awkward Age and I shall be able to boast of having read all of Henry James novels (as well as the vast majority of his shorter fiction) now that I have completed a first reading of Confidence. On the first page of his eloquent early story, The Madonna of the Future, there is a very telling (if lengthy) sentence which I should like to quote: "If I were to doubt whether it would bear repeating, I should only have to remember how that charming woman, our hostess,who had left the table, ventured back in rustling rose color to pronounce our lingering a want of gallantry, and, finding us a listening circle, had sunk into her chair in spite of our cigars and heard the story out so graciously that when the catastrophe was reached, she glanced across at me and showed a tear in each of her beautiful eyes." The three James fictions which have brought tears to my not-so-beautiful eyes are The Portrait of a Lady, The Altar of the Dead and Confidence. I should also add that it had me smiling with pleasure and at least twice laughing out loud as well! James didn't include this early effort in the New York Edition but I have confidence it would have sold better had Confidence been there!

[Michael Neno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henry James' 1879 Confidence is considered to be the least of his novels. I find all of James entertaining, though, and often frustrating in equal measure. The measure is equal here, in a story of romantic entanglements between a coterie of lackadaisical European travelers.

As always, the fun (and what profundity is present) is all in the sparring, probing conversations and debates, as each character attempts to know the others' intentions, goals and hearts. The attempt to use words to bring other's true thoughts to the surface is a complex and endlessly satisfying game in James. In Confidence, it's used at times almost farcically.

Where Confidence fails is in its predictabilities and unbelievable coincidences. When our protagonist, Bernard, meets the beautiful and mysterious Angela in Tuscany, the event is quickly over. When Barnard's best friend, Gordon, later asks him to come to Germany to give his appraisal of Gordon's girlfriend, the reader intuitively tells him or her self: don't let it be Angela; that's too much of a coincidence. Worse coincidences, more unbelievable, await. The story, which ends in an
uncharacteristic manner for James, does at least feature a strong and smart woman, stronger and smarter, in fact, than the layabout, clueless, and rather uninteresting males surrounding her.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

This often forgotten early James novel proved to be rather a sweet little story. It’s not one of his greatest works, but rather charming nonetheless. It just goes on a little too long: I feel there’s enough material in the story for a lengthy short story, not quite for the small novel that it is.
Since it is near-contemporaneous with the much more famous Daisy Miller, it’s interesting to see James ring the changes on a few similar themes. Here too, we have an expatriate young American who has trouble realizing he’s actually fallen in love with the young American woman he meets in Europe. Only in this case his realization takes too long to set in, at least for this reader’s patience. When I finally read: ‘He had been a great fool--an incredible fool-- not to have discovered before this what was the matter with him!’ I could only sigh: ‘Yes!!!! And the author was an ass for thinking he could string us along all this time.’

The second plot mirrors the main story line and concerns the best friend of the protagonist, who has to be made to realize he actually loves his wife. This friend is a serious scientist has married a garrulous and superficial socialite: an unlikely partnership, but a marriage that has to be salvaged because the heroine of the novel is convinced that although they don’t realize it, the two are actually deeply in love with each other.
(Incidentally: the serious scientist is seriously contemplating divorce in this novel. Surely one of the earliest times divorce is mentioned as a serious option in an English novel? Even if only as an option James’ heart is set against...)
This woman is characterized thus: ‘Fortunately he was not obliged to talk much, as Mrs. Gordon displayed even more than her usual vivacity, rendering her companions the graceful service of lifting the burden of conversation from their shoulders.’ James’ portrait of her (which is actually much more affectionate than this quote may suggest) is one of the very best things in this novel. He really lets rip with a couple of pages of monologue-posing-for-dialogue that are gems of entertaining garrulity. They reminded me of nothing so much as a couple of similar outbursts by Daisy Miller. In fact, Confidence helped to confirm my interpretation of those outbursts in the earlier novella, where they are rather more subtle.
Daisy Miller is both more assured and more ambiguous – and consequently richer – than this short novel. The highest achievement of Daisy Miller is probably that it never quite resolves its ambiguities: was Daisy a garrulous and superficial flirt or a touchingly innocent young lady who had feelings for that queer fish, the stiff and unresponsive Winterbourne? And was Winterbourne in love with her but just too slow to realize it, or do we make too much of it?
The failure of Confidence, and the triumph of Daisy Miller, is that in the latter the two types, superficial and garrulous socialite and the sincere and intelligent woman worthy of a serious man’s affections, are conflated into the portrait of a single confusing young lady – whereas in Confidence they’re split out into two characters in two mirroring plot lines. This arrangement is too neat and one-dimensional. It makes the story fall flat, although not without providing some excellent entertainment along the way – all of it written as stylishly as always. (Is it just me or is James incapable of writing a truly awkward sentence?)

A few lengthy quotations, first about the garrulous young woman:

Blanche Evers was a pretty little goose--the prettiest of little geese, perhaps, and doubtless the most amiable; but she was not a companion for a peculiarly serious man, who would like his wife to share his view of human responsibilities. What a singular selection--what a queer infatuation! Bernard had no sooner committed himself to this line of criticism than he stopped short, with the sudden consciousness of error carried almost to the point of naivetae. He exclaimed that Blanche Evers was exactly the sort of girl that men of Gordon Wright's stamp always ended by falling in love with, and that poor Gordon knew very much better what he was about in this case than he had done in trying to solve the deep problem of a comfortable life with Angela Vivian. This was what your strong, solid, sensible fellows always came to; they paid, in this particular, a larger tribute to pure fancy than the people who were supposed habitually to cultivate that muse. Blanche Evers was what the French call an article of fantasy, and Gordon had taken a pleasure in finding her deliciously useless. He cultivated utility in other ways, and it pleased and flattered him to feel that he could afford, morally speaking, to have a kittenish wife. He had within himself a fund of common sense to draw upon, so that to espouse a paragon of wisdom would be but to carry water to the fountain. He could easily make up for the deficiencies of a wife who was a little silly, and if she charmed and amused him, he could treat himself to the luxury of these sensations for themselves. He was not in the least afraid of being ruined by it, and if Blanche's birdlike chatter and turns of the head had made a fool of him, he knew it perfectly well, and simply took his stand upon his rights. Every man has a right to a little flower-bed, and life is not all mere kitchen-gardening. Bernard rapidly extemporized this rough explanation of the surprise his friend had offered him, and he found it all-sufficient for his immediate needs.

And this is an interesting passage about gambling – especially if you compare it with Dostoyevsky’s rather differently inclined writing about the same phenomenon!

He knocked about, as he would have said, for half the night – not because he was delighted at having won ten thousand francs, but rather because all of a sudden he found himself disgusted at the manner in which he had spent the evening. It was extremely characteristic of Bernard Longueville that his pleasure should suddenly transform itself into flatness. What he felt was not regret or repentance. He had it not in the least on his conscience that he had given countenance to the reprehensible practice of gaming. It was annoyance that he had passed out of his own control – that he had obeyed a force which he was unable to measure at the time. He had been drunk and he was turning sober. In spite of a great momentary appearance of frankness and a lively relish of any conjunction of agreeable circumstances exerting a pressure to which one could respond, Bernard had really little taste for giving himself up, and he never did so without very soon wishing to take himself back. He had now given himself to something that was not himself, and the fact that he had gained ten thousand francs by it was an insufficient salve to an aching sense of having ceased to be his own master. He had not been playing – he had been played with. He had been the sport of a blind, brutal chance, and he felt humiliated by having been favored by so rudely-operating a divinity. Good luck and bad luck? Bernard felt very scornful of the distinction, save that good luck seemed to him rather the more vulgar. As the night went on his disgust deepened, and at last the weariness it brought with it sent him to sleep.

[Lee Foust · Rating 4 out of 5]

Installment number six of my reading Henry James's novels in chronological order.

This, I must admit, was a work of James's that I'd never heard of nor seen a copy. I had to download the ebook from Project Gutenberg. And I'm quite glad both that I've begun this project which precipitated reading this novel I might otherwise never have stumbled upon. Although too lighthearted perhaps and mainly clever to be a masterpiece in the opinion of this tragedy and complexity lover of post-romantic and experimental fiction, it's actually quite charming and in an original and very Jamesian way.

Once again we have a protagonist who governs the narrative's point of view as I've noted in each of James's novels up to this one, but here the narrative manages to exploit that a bit better than in the others, cleverly concealing the revelations of truth behind a series of ignorances and mistaken assumptions all to the proof of the statement, made more than once by our heroine, that "Men are very stupid."

Of course, in regards to matters of the heart, she's not wrong. Not only does our protagonist, Bernard, misunderstand all of the other characters feelings, it takes him three years and two thirds of the novel to discover about his own, which are pretty obvious to the reader from the opening chapter. I know that sounds tedious, but James's style of close examination and thoughtful explanation kind of pull it off. The style might be a tad much for a tale this light--even if it's implications regarding male and female emotional insight and interpretations of behavior are quite welcome--but overall I was rather pleased with it. Perhaps to make up for the horribly vacuous but popular Daisy Miller character, James sought to give us a very wise woman in the person of Angela Vivian. I, for one, was in love with her from the very first page of the novel, which scene was very vivid for me as it takes place in Siena, a city where I once lived for a summer and have visited many times.

[Jared]

Bad, homoerotic George Eliot fanfic. Kinda into it!

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 4 out of 5]

elaThis very fine little novel is easily the best of James's early career. The plot and characterization show the influence of James's thinking (and possibly that of his brother William) about realistic psychological motivation and how it affects the decisions people make and, indeed, the kind of people they are. The title refers both to interpersonal understandings and to a trust of others and of one's self. Angela Vivian's character is one of the most memorable and complex that James managed to create in his early fiction, and discovering the motivations for her behavior keeps the reader engaged. This novel is marred only by the contrived device James uses to get the plot rolling: a very scientifically minded man asking his friend to help him determine the "true" character of the woman he intends to marry (he wants to be able to make an objective assessment, without letting the truth get messed up by such silly things as emotions or love). Despite that, this novel was clearly a breakthrough for James as a writer, opening a gateway that would lead to his more mature works.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

For one who appreciates Henry James’ deeply developed psychological conflict but also likes a fast-paced story, James’ lesser-known novel Confidence (1879) has both. Published during the rising tide of Daisy Miller’s notoriety, Confidence delves into Jamesian complexity of character and relationships while retaining the fast-paced style that helped make Daisy Miller popular.

The idea of confidence develops through the characters Gordon Wright, Bernard Longueville, and ultimately the heroine Angela Vivian. James takes fresh angles on the development of confidence in the characters. Tracing that development creates a lively and compelling movement throughout the story. Initially, the hero Bernard Longueville is the center of gravity among the characters. But in the second half, the force of the story shifts to Angela, even though the third-person limited-omniscient narrator continues to use Longueville as his window into the world of the characters. James commonly uses this method of restricted third-person narrator with one central character with whom the narrator partly shares perceptions. The central character normally functions, in James’ fiction, as center of gravity among the characters as well as narrative window. Longueville is that character in the first half of the novel. But what is unique to Confidence is the division in the second half of the novel: while the central character (Longueville) remains narrative window, the center of gravity shifts to Angela.

We see the characters through the narrator and through Longueville, while the characters come to see each other through Angela. This center-of-gravity shift and split from narrative window may seem a structural defect, but it effectively reinforces the evolution of confidence traced and redefined in the narrative.

The most striking evolution of confidence is in the role reversal between the characters Angela Vivian and her initial wooer Gordon Wright. Wright begins with a monopoly on confidence. Angela appears only able to rest confidence in him, with little of her own. In fact, most of the characters rest confidence in Wright. Longueville and Angela’s mother have absolute faith in Wright’s stability and strength. This relation is exactly reversed by the final chapter. Wright becomes helpless and pathetic, relying on Angela to piece his life back together. Angela’s mother and Longueville in the end have absolute faith in Angela’s intelligence and strength, instead of in Wright.

Longueville and Wright represent false confidence. In Wright’s case the falseness leads to his psychological unraveling after his weak inner self collapses under the weight of elaborate pretended confidence. Gordon Wright’s inflated self-assurance is disproportionate to his limited perceptivity and strength. This disproportion is encouraged by Longueville’s excessive compliments to Wright, and by Angela’s mother’s mantra-like repetition, “We have such confidence in him (Wright).”

Angela is initiated first. She develops early in the novel as she is scrutinized, treated as a specimen to be analyzed by the two men. Her response is subtle and powerful. She undermines the men’s perception of herself, confuses their analysis and sees through their complacent self-importance. Later in the novel, Longueville and Wright are initiated. Longueville lives under an illusion that he dislikes Angela, though in fact, he is in love with her. Wright lives under the illusion that he loves Angela, though in fact, he does not. Through their respective misguided behaviors, the men’s delusions become obvious to Angela. She has turned down Wright’s but repeated proposals of marriage.

Years pass, and Longueville accidentally runs into Angela at a coastal village of France. There, he comes to realize his own delusion.

Meanwhile, Wright has married an acquaintance of Angela’s after Angela had rejected him three years earlier. Wright’s marriage deteriorated quickly and he visits Longueville in Paris, just as Longueville has his own awakening and becomes engaged to Angela. Now Wright’s delusions must be confronted. Wright’s false self confidence becomes pathetic when he tells Angela he will divorce his wife if she will renounce Longueville and give Wright another chance. He is like a beggar pleading for crumbs after he has been kicked. Angela picks up on a complicated miscommunication within Wright’s marriage and pretends to encourage him just enough for Wright to begin to see that “getting his way” would be the worst thing in the world for him. For Wright, leaving his wife would incur the proverbial nightmarish “answered prayer.” Mr. Wright is Mr. Wrong for Angela, and he has wronged himself and his wife more than anyone else. Angela enlightens him to the fact that he still loves his own wife.

In Longueville’s case the falseness is less complete. He shows a particle of authentic, rather than pretended, self-assurance which emerges late in the novel and grows stronger as Longueville begins facing facts he previously suppressed. But his confidence still needs Angela’s support before it finally blossoms. This transition saves him from an aimless, discontented existence, and leads him back to Angela. She then completes Longueville’s awakening, both concerning himself and his friend Gordon Wright.

Longueville and Wright both owe their self-realizations to the insight and strength of character in Angela Vivian. Angela’s perspicacity cuts through the men’s veil of complacency and exposes the irony of their self-styled superiority.

Henry James dissects and analyzes the concept of confidence from every angle in the novel. Angela never needs to self-consciously assert her own self assurance and self confidence. She acts upon them spontaneously. Both men assert a falsely humble, inflated self confidence which engenders their complacency, and their deludedness. The characters’s varying types of confidence in each other change throughout the novel. The ultimate form of confidence flowers in Angela in the climax of the novel as she pretends to shun her fiancé Longueville to give Wright his “chance” to win her back.

Henry James himself is ultimately the confident analyzer of his characters and their relationships as he develops his theme. While James uses Longueville as his narrative window, James seems to identify with Angela Vivian, as Angela functions as an almost omniscient author of the other characters’ fate. As the actual author, James is the one who sorts out the miscommunication and puts the pieces back together in the broken relationships. The real author and the character Angela play a similar role. Coming on the heels of his Daisy Miller success, Confidence is a complex, true-to-life picture of a set of human relations told in a well-developed, fast-paced, entertaining narrative.

[Matthew Keating · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the James novels no one ever reads, but it’s actually really charming. The plot is somewhat contrived and the arrival at the ending leaves much to be desired but it’s still James, and I found a lot of little passages I loved. By no means “significant” work from James but quite a pleasure to read

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

First sentence: It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending the winter in Rome.

Premise/plot: Bernard Longueville and Gordon Wright both fall for the same woman. Angela Vivian, in Henry James' Confidence.

Technically, Bernard meets her first. Their meeting is oh-so-brief. He sketches her, a stranger, a beautiful woman, on the street. He gives the sketch to her--or perhaps to her mother. Weeks later, Bernard is called to visit his scientist-friend Gordon. Gordon is keeping company with a handful of people, and, he's even considering marriage. He wants his friend's opinion. The company he keeps: Angela Vivian and her mother, Mrs. Vivian; Blanche Evers, a woman as silly as she is beautiful, and Captain Lovelock. Bernard recognizes Angela right away. She acts as if she's never seen him, never spoken to him. And the mother does the same thing!

What does he think of her?! What a question?! He doesn't exactly know what kind of woman she is. If she's after his money--Gordon is very wealthy--or if she genuinely likes Gordon. She doesn't act overly in love with him. And she certainly can flirt--when she's of the mind to--with HIM. He can't advise his friend to marry her--at least not right now.

Months later--perhaps even a year later--he hears from Gordon again. Gordon has married married. He's married to Blanche. Bernard has been invited to visit them both when he has the chance...

Bernard soon tires of their company. Well, soon is a relative term, I suppose! He stays in their home three months!!! He travels several places before returning to Europe, to France, I believe? Anyway, he meets Angela and her mother again. This time he finds himself head over heels in love with her. Perhaps he was slightly in love with her before but not wanting to admit it to himself or to his friend?!

What will Gordon do when he hears the news that the two will marry soon?! (You might be thinking, why is it any of his business? After all, he's married. He shouldn't still be lusting after Angela!) But Gordon has a very dramatic reaction....can Angela outwit him?

My thoughts: I like this one. It's a very silly romance. I admit that much is true. But there's a lightness to it that I appreciate.

Gordon to Bernard:

“I want to marry with my eyes open. I want to know my wife. You don’t know people when you are in love with them. Your impressions are colored.” “They are supposed to be, slightly. And you object to color?”

Bernard and Angela:

“If I have seemed uncivil, let me make it up. When a woman speaks of giving up society, what she means is giving up admiration. You can never have given up that — you can never have escaped from it. You must have found it even at Sorrento.” “It may have been there, but I never found it. It was very respectful — it never expressed itself.” “That is the deepest kind,” said Bernard. “I prefer the shallower varieties,” the young girl answered. “Well,” said Bernard, “you must remember that although shallow admiration expresses itself, all the admiration that expresses itself is not shallow.”

Other favorites:

But you don’t want to keep smelling a flower all day, even the sweetest; that's the shortest way to get a headache.

“An opportunity to be wise — not to be foolish!” “Ah, there is only one sort of opportunity,” cried Bernard. “You exaggerate the reach of human wisdom.”

Since Gordon had determined to marry a little goose, he had chosen the animal with extreme discernment. It had quite the plumage of a swan, and it sailed along the stream of life with an extraordinary lightness of motion. He asked himself indeed at times whether Blanche were really so silly as she seemed; he doubted whether any woman could be so silly as Blanche seemed. He had a suspicion at times that, for ends of her own, she was playing a part — the suspicion arising from the fact that, as usually happens in such cases, she over-played it. Her empty chatter, her futility, her childish coquetry and frivolity — such light wares could hardly be the whole substance of any woman’s being; there was something beneath them which Blanche was keeping out of sight. She had a scrap of a mind somewhere, and even a little particle of a heart.

The soul is a still more tender organism than the body, and it shrinks from the prospect of being subjected to violence.

“I particularly dislike receiving apologies, even when I know what they are for. What yours are for, I can’t imagine.”

“If pride is a source of information, you must be a prodigy of knowledge!”

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confidence is one of James' lesser-known novels, which is probably due to several factors. It wasn't included in his New York edition. It has two versions--American and British--intended specifically for those audiences. (I read the American version from the Library of America, which identified most of the American slang and expressions that James changed in the British version.) It also happened to fall within the four-year period (1878-1882) during which he produced some of his first great works: The Europeans, Daisy Miller, Washington Square, The Portrait of the Lady, and his theatrical comedy version of Daisy Miller, which was a popular success. Confidence happens to be merely a good work overshadowed by a handful of classics.

At first it seems to bear a passing resemblance to Daisy Miller, which had been published a year earlier. Indeed, we get more playful references to playboys making "studies" of young ladies (Daisy Miller is, of course, subtitled "A Study"), but James soon turns this idea on its head, as the ladies--Angela and her mother--begin to manipulate the men like so many chess pieces. This gives the title "Confidence" its double meaning: to take one into confidence as a way to share and keep secrets, but also the confidence to take control of a situation and remain assured of the desired outcome. It feels almost like a companion piece to Daisy Miller, as if it should be published alongside that novella in textbooks or critical editions. The male protagonist, Bernard, is wonderfully self-effacing, and therefore much easier to like than Winterbourne. By the end of the novel, the reader appreciates James' ability to manage the love quadrangle (a favorite Jamesian motif) in a way that is insightful, while giving the reader a satisfying conclusion. Compared to some of his more famous works, Confidence is light entertainment; however, the novel is still a pleasure to read just for fun.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

FIRST LINE REVIEW: "It was in the early days of April; Bernard Longueville had been spending the winter in Rome." Not the most enticing of opening lines, but this book continued to reinforce my newly-discovered love for the novels of Henry James. I had never read him until this year and "Confidence" is the 4th that I've chalked up in the "win" column. Charming, intelligent, romantic, with female characters that make the men seem like the ultimate idiots, but for loving them! Many lovely little twists and turns to the story, even though you pretty much know where it's going.

[Liza]

I'm kind of surprised this isn't more popular because it is funny and engaging. A little loose and free-wheeling. For once he writes about the men more distinctly than the women. I kind of read it like marriage advice, which is probably a mistake.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant dialogue, great humor and a healthy dose of suspense..
among other good attributes. I enjoyed this book immensely! :-)

[Paula]

What fun to have discoverd this. It is a satisfying Jamesian story of love among expatriate Americans.

[Kristen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slow start, but I think this might be the juiciest James novel I've read thus far. Angela Vivian I think is one of his most interesting characters.

[Emil Kraft · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s thrilling, hilarious gauntlet of unexpected and delightful twists written in elegant 19th-century prose featuring vibrant characters that exchange sizzling dialogue.

[Duffy Pratt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read these on my Kindle, from a "Complete Works" that I got for nothing or almost nothing. Later in life, James went back and revised his earlier work to conform better with his later aesthetic. There are several writers who have done revisions like this -- famously Mary Shelley with Frankenstein -- and I think its almost always a mistake. Once an author publishes a work, he should have no more authority over it than anyone else.

With James, and with this book, it makes me wonder. There is more detail and description in this book than in most of James. But I get the feeling that there would have been even more if I had not read the "corrected" edition. As his career progressed, it seems clear that James fell more in love with vagueness, and with having his characters never come out and say what they mean. Here, they sometimes do, but there are other times when I get the feeling that they did, but the author then thought better of it. Thus, in some ways, this book feels a little schizophrenic to me, which makes sense because it was written by one guy, and then edited much later by another.

The story, as in much of James, is very simple. Hero meets girl in chance meeting. Later, hero visits friend who is thinking about engaging himself to girl. Friend asks for advice. Hero gives, perhaps, bad advice. A love triangle is suggested, and a "comedy" of sorts ensues. That said, its the old fashioned kind of comedy, where everyone ends up married, and not the new sense of comedy, which is supposed to be funny. This is never funny, although there are points at which it is mildly amusing.

The twist that James seems to throw in here is that the real "love" difficulty is between the Hero and his friend, who seem to be more in love than any of the conventional couples. The only real conflict and resolution in the book is in the rift between these two. It is by far the most overtly queer of any of the James books I've read. (I still have about five to read at some point, so that's quite a bit.) It's kind of cool to see how James pulls this off without breaking any of the taboos at the time. But that's not enough to make me enjoy the book. I would have had a better chance at liking this if it had more of his concrete early style (as in Watch and Ward or Roderick Hudson), or if it had more fully been completely vague like the later books (Wings of the Dove or Golden Bowl). As it is, it felt like a stylistic mess.

[Robert Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suspect this fifth novel by Henry James illustrates growing maturity as a writer. But I'm not sure I much like that maturation. Perhaps I'm a philistine but I enjoyed the somewhat broader strokes and occasionally goofily obvious ideas of "Roderick Hudson"(#2) and "The American"(#3). I positively disliked his fourth book "the Europeans" but you can see how the failures of that book informed and improved "Confidence".

With this book Henry James returns to Europe where he belongs, documenting the romantic travails of a couple of wealthy men, and the women that are trying to land them. What I suspect the more literary minded might enjoy is the growing subtlety with which he tells the story. Yes, like "Roderick Hudson" the two men at the center of the narrative represent two very different approaches to life, but James doesn't bludgeon you over the head with it, as he did in his second novel. The more unworldly and scientifically oriented guy invites the viewpoint character to Germany to assess the woman he's fallen in love with, with fairly predictable results.

The concept of confidence, in one's friends, in one's parents expectations of who you marry, and in the choices of the superhumanly confident female lead, are all played with deftly, no doubt providing hours of delicious contemplation for those with more delicate sensibilities. Me, I'll probably read another half dozen sci-fi books on the rise and fall of galactic empires before I'll brave another Henry James book. But it's been interesting trying something different.

[Ronald Wendling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Confidence is the fourth early novel of James I have reviewed, and of them it is by far the most lighthearted and enjoyable. James carries on here with his interest in the financially worry free American with artistic tendencies who lounges around Europe in flight from his Puritanical origins. Here he is also in search of meaning in the form of a woman he can love, though he as yet has no idea of what love feels like. Bernard Longueville (“our hero” as James calls him) lounges more sensibly than the romantic Roderick Hudson in the novel named after him, but even more interestingly.

Bernard reflects engagingly, candidly and humorously on his own and others’ states of mind, but his real strength is in his constant search for “the actual.” That disposition finally teaches him how powerless he has been to believe he actually does love the last woman in the world he thinks he loves—a chronic mistake made to an even greater degree by his best friend, Gordon Wright, another Puritan who not only loves a woman he does not think he loves but thinks he loves one whom he does not. These nearly disastrous failings result in a comedy of errors clearly reminiscent of Shakespeare.

One of James’s most engaging insights in this book is that his two main female characters, Miss Vivian and her mother, are much shrewder judges in matters of love than the males. In such matters, as Miss Vivian lightly remarks to Bernard, “men are stupid.”

[Shari Klase · Rating 4 out of 5]

Conflict and irony

I'm not sure how I feel about this book. From the first it is obvious that our hero, Bernard, is in love with Angela but he is to do his best friend a service by critiquing her in regard to his friend. There seems to be a lot of dishonesty in the story and feelings seemed to be transferred as easily as toppings are put on ice cream. As usual, in stories of this period people have a hard time saying what they really mean and the reader has to be content with not only figuring it out himself but the patience to wait for the expected ending.

[Ourania · Rating 2 out of 5]

My second attempt to read Henry James. 2.5 stars and I can now say that I'm not a fan of his writing.
Henry James has the ability to write characters that I find uninteresting or disagreeable.
Confidence was full of characters who had no idea of what they felt and how to act upon their feelings. No matter how intelligent, serious or respectful they were, they ended up behaving like children and I found that unrealistic.

[Caroline McNaughton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t help it, I’m a sucker for late 19th century socialite stories, especially involving romantic entanglements. This love triangle (...rectangle...pentagon?) entertained and charmed me, though I admit that this doesn’t make it great literature. Good, but not great. The plot kept me interested, but the characters were a bit one-dimensional. It’s a fun and light read, and I’d recommend it to those to which this description appeals.

[Mary Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading

A well written short story with a great plot that ultimately disappoints. This could have been a great novel had the characters been developed fully, especially that of Angela Vivian.

[Alan H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry James

A unique combination of ideas and words that make sentences that embellish them. I find it difficult to justify the initial
“difficulty” II had when reading James. Cannot imagine a life with never having done so.