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The Tragic Muse
This Elibron Classics book is a reprint of a 1891 edition by Macmillan & Co., London.
559 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1890
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917 people want to read
About the author
Henry James
4,619 books3,962 followersHenry 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."
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."
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September 24, 2022
Originally serialized in Atlantic Monthly and subsequently first published as a book in 1890, The Tragic Muse is one of the most highly polished, aesthetically attuned novels ever written, featuring one of the most provocative, aesthetically attuned characters in all of literature – Gabriel Nash. I love reading this novel and how Gabriel Nash challenges everyone he encounters, all those men and women who discount feelings and sensations and who take the world and life in other than purely aesthetic and artistically refined terms.
So, rather than synopsizing the plot or making allusions to the many intricate relationships, for example, diplomat Peter Sherringham with Biddy Dormer or actress Miriam Rooth (many pages are dedicated to reflections on theater and the dramatic arts) or politician/painter Nick Dormer with his politically ambitious cousin, Julia Dallow, I will focus on the tensions established in the very first chapters between two contrary sets of values: on one side, adhering to the conventional and establishmentarian as represented by Lady Agnus and her friends and family, and on the other side, taking a stand for the beautiful and fine by developing aesthetic awareness and cultivated feelings as represented by Gabriel Nash.
Firstly, Nick Dormer and his sister Biddy meet Gabriel Nash in a museum garden where both Nick and Gabriel are delighted to reconnect, not haven’t seen one another since their college days at Oxford. Gabriel goes on about how he drifts and floats through life, letting his feelings direct him and how, unlike other people who define themselves by what they do, he defines himself by what he doesn’t do – outside the realm of action, he is an exalter in shades of impression and sensibilities, living in the world of his feelings, urging others to train that special sense, their faculty of appreciation. To which, Biddy asks: “Are you an aesthete?” Gabriel answers graciously, recoiling at being defined or delimited by any unoriginal category or set formula.
Meanwhile, Nick’s mother, Lady Agnes, knows full well her son should be following in his dearly departed father’s footsteps, pursuing a political career and doing the sensible, honorable thing by marrying his beautiful, charming, rich cousin Julia. Nick and Biddy return to luncheon with their mother, sister Grace and their cousin, the diplomat Peter Sherringham, but, unexpectedly, Nick brings along Gabriel Nash. Nick is informed that he can run for political office in Harsh since the current representative, Mr. Pinks, has suddenly died and the seat is now open. Gabriel Nash comments jocularly and somewhat roguishly on the sound of these two words: Harsh and Pinks. And this jibe is only the beginning - in the course of conversation as they all sit down (Nick seats Gabriel next to his mother) Nash attacks the provinciality of English pocket-boroughs along with positing how politics is a rather nasty, foolish business inferior to everything else, even the theater, since all those political comedians are less honest than comedians one finds on stage. Gabriel Nash might as well have picked up his water glass and emptied its contents over Lady Agnes’ head.
A couple of days later at a gathering arranged by Peter Sherringham, Nick introduces Gabriel Nash to his cousin, Julia Dallow. Once seated next to Julia, Gabriel brims forth with observations on feelings and art, until, taken aback at his remarks, we read:
Julia Dallow was conscious, for a moment, of looking uncomfortable; but it relieved her to demand of her neightbour, in a certain tone, “Are you an artist?”
“I try to be,” Nash replied, smiling; “but I work in such difficult material.” He spoke this with such a clever suggestion of unexpected reference that, in spite of herself, Mrs. Dallow said after him –
“Difficult material?’
“I work in life!”
At this Mrs. Dallow turned away.
You bet she turned away. And if at that moment she had a loaded derringer in her possession and realized what a profound influence Gabriel Nash would have on her cousin, Nick Dorner, the future successful member of Parliament and perhaps, if Nick would become more serious in his political aspirations, even her husband, she might well have fired a bullet into Gabriel Nash’s highly refined chest. Afterwards. Julia tells Nick that she found Nash to be odious as well as impertinent and fatuous – or, in our current-day language: revolting, rude and stupid. Of course, Gabriel Nash is anything but stupid but since his very presence is a direct challenge and threat to Julia’s worldview and what she most highly esteems, she lashes out, degrading and debasing Nash as much as possible.
That very evening, Nick Dormer meets up with Gabriel Nash and the two friends take a stroll through the streets of Paris. Gabriel pontificates on how it is his business to cultivate his personal style and have an interest in the beautiful. He states directly that, unlike other people, he is not ashamed to have feelings and to have sensations. And then he continues by telling Nick it is better to be on the side of beauty, to be on the side of the fine. Gabriel makes it clear, however, what he is describing isn’t so much a doing as it is a being, and goes on to underscore this important point by noting how if one were to judge in terms of having something to show for being on the side of the fine and the beautiful, that would amount to a confession of failure. Nick, in turn, admits if he followed his heart’s desire, he would devote himself to portrait painting. Nash is delighted and assures Nick that he will take his side in actualizing his artistic dream.
In the tradition of Indian classical music there is the tala, that is, the regular, repeating rhythmic phrase in any given raga or other piece of music and once the set pattern of tala is established, the music grows and evolves accordingly. What I have noted regarding the tension between the above two sets of values is the tala of this Henry James novel, manifesting not only with Nick Dormer and his family but also in the story of Miriam Rooth and her rise to fame and fortune as an actress. Henry James had a keen and abiding interest in acting and the theater (at one point in his life he expended great energy attempting to become an Ibsen) and the dramatic arts take center stage (no pun intended) in this novel.
Henry James also had an abiding interest in the visual arts and aesthetic theory, particularly the writing of John Ruskin and Walter Pater, and how aesthetic experience impacts character, so much so that, along with a number of his short stories, several of his novels feature men and women changed by aesthetic experience, for example, Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady and Milly Theale in The Wings of the Dove. And this is one prime reason I focused on Gabriel Nash and what he stands for.
Certainly, in vintage Henry James style, a reader will be treated to the richness and complexity of intertwining relationships between characters, in this case Lady Agnus, sister Biddy, cousin Julia, Peter Sherringham, actress Miriam Rooth, Nick Dormer, but Gabriel Nash is the rare jewel, each and every one of his appearances in the novel displaying a different facet of the aesthetic experience and what it can mean as a possible life transformer. As I read this nearly 600 page novel, I lingered with and relished everything Gabriel Nash.
“There will be the beauty of having been disinterested and independent; of having taken the world in the free, brave, personal way.” Gabriel Nash speaking to Nick Dormer. To my eye, this photo captures much of the spirit of Gabriel Nash.
February 7, 2017
You know I did read this once but it was in one ear and out the other.
Henry James : Blah blah blah
Me : Yeah sure
Henry James : Blah blah blah
Me : Yeah sure
October 29, 2023
Henry James loved the theatre (partially one reason why I wanted to read this overstuffed 500-pager), but his actress, Miriam Rooth (nee Roth) never comes alive; she's the least interesting among his quadrille of players. (Maugham creates the best fictional actress, Julia Lambert, in "Theatre." She is truly memorable). Here, in this fable of art vs the world, HJ also presents a striving painter, Nick Dormer, who can be boring unless he's at aesthetic war with his beautiful would-be fiancee Julia, who becomes an impossible bitch if you disagree that politics offer a rewarding life. Her brother, a young diplomat, Peter Sherringham, has a passion for theatre, and mentors actress Miriam, but reveals himself as a sort of Philistine who could never marry an actress. His conflicts are vivid, making him genuinely confused, and the one player I actually liked. Then, there's the worldly observer, Gabriel Nash, a peripheral Oscar Wildean figure (hardly functional to the plot). Wilde said of James: "He writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes...his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire."
Altogether, a leisurely social comedy as James slowly ambles between Paris and London, presenting
his related couples and friends within a playwright's framework: each section opens with a descriptive scene or dramatic situation in which 2 or 3 of his players then engage in a meeting, a parting, confrontation or revelation that scholars call a simple parable on James's busiest canvas. His devoted friend, Edith Wharton, in "A Backward Glance," notes that his novels had to fit "his strict geometrical sense" despite, to some, their floundering in "a heavy sea of parentheses." Wharton refers to these "hesitancies" as a cobweb of ironies, jokes, and malices.
Scholar A.L. Rowse finds it odd that James, the most intellectual of novelists, kept himself outside the stream of life, but, alas, James was riddled with American Puritanism. This also offered a smoke-screen. For didnt he have the characteristics of a very sharp old lady? With gentle humor, Wharton tells a story that sums up James: a terrible heat wave scorched The Mount while James was guesting one summer. He decided to return to England immediately. Wharton found a steamer leaving from Boston (4 hours away) 2 days hence. Impossible, said James who was thrown into a helpless state of perturbation. How could she suggest anything so impracticable? "Good God, what a woman!" he despaired, sucking on an orange.
Altogether, a leisurely social comedy as James slowly ambles between Paris and London, presenting
his related couples and friends within a playwright's framework: each section opens with a descriptive scene or dramatic situation in which 2 or 3 of his players then engage in a meeting, a parting, confrontation or revelation that scholars call a simple parable on James's busiest canvas. His devoted friend, Edith Wharton, in "A Backward Glance," notes that his novels had to fit "his strict geometrical sense" despite, to some, their floundering in "a heavy sea of parentheses." Wharton refers to these "hesitancies" as a cobweb of ironies, jokes, and malices.
Scholar A.L. Rowse finds it odd that James, the most intellectual of novelists, kept himself outside the stream of life, but, alas, James was riddled with American Puritanism. This also offered a smoke-screen. For didnt he have the characteristics of a very sharp old lady? With gentle humor, Wharton tells a story that sums up James: a terrible heat wave scorched The Mount while James was guesting one summer. He decided to return to England immediately. Wharton found a steamer leaving from Boston (4 hours away) 2 days hence. Impossible, said James who was thrown into a helpless state of perturbation. How could she suggest anything so impracticable? "Good God, what a woman!" he despaired, sucking on an orange.
February 1, 2022
I can finally put aside this warm, well-thumbed and softened paperback. I think it is the first social kunstlerroman I've ever read. Portrait of the Artist as Young Man and Nabokov's The Gift are anchored in the artist's point of view, and we see the world warping and changing as the artist's sensibility evolves. James, however, observes his two artists - the actress Miriam Rooth and the painter Nick Dormer - from the outside, from a social distance. The story is not about art as it is conceived and made, but the vocation as it is lived - "art, that is, as a human complication and a social stumbling-block," as James says in his preface. James is interested in how the discipline, sacrifice and solitude of the vocation complicates the social existence of the artist. (Though James is not afraid, here and there, to delve into some recondite questions of representation, Miriam's acting - her endless observation and modeling of the various people she meets, stories she hears - serving as an obvious surrogate for his own Notebooks.)
It's an interesting choice. Nick's strolls through the National Gallery could have served as a pretext for an elaborate prose poem, a tour of the artist's mind as it moves among colleague productions. But James stays vague and distant--which is fine, but James could have retained his distance and vagueness about Nick artistry while still zooming in close on the wider psychology. Nick is capable of "wide excursions of spirit" that give life to his art but complicate his relations with his mother and fiance: he's a born pleaser, someone who can imagine the emotions of others to the point of identifying with those emotions, even when the aims of those with whom he so wholly sympathizes oppose his own inclinations. Nick is very serene and breezy about this tendency--as he would be, when seen from the outside--but the inner lives of such people are usually very chaotic, as they are wrenched by conflicting loyalties. I thought James could have given more glimpses of that turmoil, and maybe less of the outward jauntiness, without compromising his pledge to stay out of the artist's workshop, as it were.
So I greatly admire the book for the usual Jamesian strengths: the unique points of view; the delicate dissection of personal motives; and, peculiar to this book, the early Degas-like Parisian scenes in the museum/shrine-to-herself/apartment of Madame Carre, one of the ancient comediennes doted on by Peter in his slightly bloodless, nostalgic, antiquarian obsession with the Theatre Francais...but it was too long and diffuse. Without much narrative tension and no really absorbing characters (I mean absorbing on an Isabel Archer level), the story's telling in no way requires 576 pages. There were sections which I was tempted to skim, especially the talky play-like confronations of Peter and Miriam, of Nick and Julia (James has a great ear for the confusion and awkwardness that attend the conversation of people who view the world differently...but confusion and awkwardness are not fun to read page upon page) and the stretches of thin, watery prose. After months of this, I'm starving for a little lyricism.
It's an interesting choice. Nick's strolls through the National Gallery could have served as a pretext for an elaborate prose poem, a tour of the artist's mind as it moves among colleague productions. But James stays vague and distant--which is fine, but James could have retained his distance and vagueness about Nick artistry while still zooming in close on the wider psychology. Nick is capable of "wide excursions of spirit" that give life to his art but complicate his relations with his mother and fiance: he's a born pleaser, someone who can imagine the emotions of others to the point of identifying with those emotions, even when the aims of those with whom he so wholly sympathizes oppose his own inclinations. Nick is very serene and breezy about this tendency--as he would be, when seen from the outside--but the inner lives of such people are usually very chaotic, as they are wrenched by conflicting loyalties. I thought James could have given more glimpses of that turmoil, and maybe less of the outward jauntiness, without compromising his pledge to stay out of the artist's workshop, as it were.
So I greatly admire the book for the usual Jamesian strengths: the unique points of view; the delicate dissection of personal motives; and, peculiar to this book, the early Degas-like Parisian scenes in the museum/shrine-to-herself/apartment of Madame Carre, one of the ancient comediennes doted on by Peter in his slightly bloodless, nostalgic, antiquarian obsession with the Theatre Francais...but it was too long and diffuse. Without much narrative tension and no really absorbing characters (I mean absorbing on an Isabel Archer level), the story's telling in no way requires 576 pages. There were sections which I was tempted to skim, especially the talky play-like confronations of Peter and Miriam, of Nick and Julia (James has a great ear for the confusion and awkwardness that attend the conversation of people who view the world differently...but confusion and awkwardness are not fun to read page upon page) and the stretches of thin, watery prose. After months of this, I'm starving for a little lyricism.
January 5, 2024
Literature's loquacious Old Maid, Henry James, strikes again. Weighing in at 570+ pages (at least half of them unnecessary), the reader is treated to every thought, impulse, emotion, action, and reaction of 11 self-centered, self-contradictory, self-deluded citizens of London and Paris.
The most interesting aspect of this bloated, hyperbolic novel is its unintentional portrayal of the theatrical movement which led from Classical acting techniques into Method. This is embodied by the development of burgeoning actress, and main character, Miriam Rooth (nee Roth). Unfortunately, she herself is not as interesting as her stage career, and this is true whether one views her classically or methodically.
It was the promise of a meaningful resolution that kept me going. That promise was most unfortunately empty.
The most interesting aspect of this bloated, hyperbolic novel is its unintentional portrayal of the theatrical movement which led from Classical acting techniques into Method. This is embodied by the development of burgeoning actress, and main character, Miriam Rooth (nee Roth). Unfortunately, she herself is not as interesting as her stage career, and this is true whether one views her classically or methodically.
It was the promise of a meaningful resolution that kept me going. That promise was most unfortunately empty.
December 3, 2011
A tale of the theater, and of painting, and of politics, and of art versus love. I've read it four or more times, at least once for the pleasure of it and about three times as I adapted it into an (as yet unused) opera libretto.
June 12, 2024
I admit that five stars for this rather unheralded Henry James novel is probably a bit of a stretch, but, perhaps for personal reasons, I just enjoyed the heck out of it. Most of what I liked about it--given I'm just past the halfway mark of reading all of James's novels in chronological order--is how un-Jamesian it is. That is to say I found it both engrossing and kind of refreshing as a change of pace for him. Here he utterly abandons both the classic innocent American vs. worldy European symbolic plot and Americans altogether, giving us what one critic calls "his most English novel," even if it opens and its characters spend some time in Paris before they get to London.
The novel does, however, go back to the form that I've noticed in several of the novels in which a staid character of some sort finds him or herself challenged by a wildcard character and is either half destroyed or fulfilled by it. Here this plot formula is rather deepened and complicated as the catalyst character, Nash, kind of flits in and out like the angel and devil that sit on cartoon characters' shoulders when they make life or death decisions, and our various key characters also careen in and out of each others' lives, further effecting and influencing our major players' life decisions. Thus James erases the sort of simple, single plot for a real jigsaw puzzle of human interactions here, making I think one of his more sophisticated novels. Oh, it did get a tad soap opera at a certain point, what with the conflicting love interests, but I feel like the novel's more important points weren't to speak of love and coupling so much as self realization and fulfillment. Sure, that's a banal meme topic today, but the struggle for selfhood within the institutions of a culture (always conformist and constricting) is a real thing and I think the deepest of our banal first world problems. We may never work it out.
Personally I was hooked right away as Nick, one of three protagonists--along with a host of secondary characters--will have to choose between politics and art, so I felt like the novel was saying a lot about the value or not of those two Western institutions, as well as the capitalist economy that controls them both, even as each one seeks, in its way, to turn money back on itself or to skirt finance to perhaps change our political economy--or at the very least to expose and defame it.
Very modern themes even if the vast cast of interlocking characters and the marriage machinations did reek of the 19th century novel perhaps a tad too much. (Again the specter of Dickens is always there to sour a James novel a bit for me--I must get over this prejudice!)
The novel does, however, go back to the form that I've noticed in several of the novels in which a staid character of some sort finds him or herself challenged by a wildcard character and is either half destroyed or fulfilled by it. Here this plot formula is rather deepened and complicated as the catalyst character, Nash, kind of flits in and out like the angel and devil that sit on cartoon characters' shoulders when they make life or death decisions, and our various key characters also careen in and out of each others' lives, further effecting and influencing our major players' life decisions. Thus James erases the sort of simple, single plot for a real jigsaw puzzle of human interactions here, making I think one of his more sophisticated novels. Oh, it did get a tad soap opera at a certain point, what with the conflicting love interests, but I feel like the novel's more important points weren't to speak of love and coupling so much as self realization and fulfillment. Sure, that's a banal meme topic today, but the struggle for selfhood within the institutions of a culture (always conformist and constricting) is a real thing and I think the deepest of our banal first world problems. We may never work it out.
Personally I was hooked right away as Nick, one of three protagonists--along with a host of secondary characters--will have to choose between politics and art, so I felt like the novel was saying a lot about the value or not of those two Western institutions, as well as the capitalist economy that controls them both, even as each one seeks, in its way, to turn money back on itself or to skirt finance to perhaps change our political economy--or at the very least to expose and defame it.
Very modern themes even if the vast cast of interlocking characters and the marriage machinations did reek of the 19th century novel perhaps a tad too much. (Again the specter of Dickens is always there to sour a James novel a bit for me--I must get over this prejudice!)
October 31, 2020
I'm slowly devouring the James cannon and so far this is my favorite long work. If you enjoy 19th C American literature and the arts this book may be wonderful for you! The female characters in this novel are particularly wise and strong. The males go through a lot of personal growth, and the over arching theme of the story is the conflict between the artistic life and a more conventional job in business or politics. Should you follow your bliss or your obligations? And through this all is the free spirit Gabriel Nash, an iconic character who influences and affects everyone for good or ill while seemingly remains unscathed by it all. _ The Tragic Muse_ is a slow in depth exploration of art and the pull of the creative life wrapped in intense psychological musings.
October 31, 2023
Not one but TWO ambitious women! And neither of them are punished by the narrative!!!!!
June 4, 2014
Two young men, well-born English cousins, are faced with conflicts between their professional careers and their passion for the arts. One, an ambitious diplomat and amateur connaisseur of the theater, is madly in love with the young muse of the title, whom he has mentored from a gifted nobody into a budding queen of the stage. He wants to have his career and the girl both, but because they are irreconcilable, demands that the girl give up the stage. A true artist, she refuses. He eventually comes around to her counterdemand, but too late, and the novel suggests that his reluctance to "chuck" (as James puts it in his preface) his career for love and art ultimately destroys him, at least psychologically. The second young man -- egged on by a third, a curiously Mephistophelian or Wildean character -- "chucks" career, dependent mother and sisters, and fabulously rich fiancee to become a poor painter of portraits, based on talents he has heretofore barely explored.
I agree with the reviewer who noted that the book is too long for its content. But it also has structural problems that cause it to sag. It lacks a compelling main narrative, so, as I indicated, the reader's attention is divided between two plots whose interconnections are contrived rather than organic. From the title, one expects the young actress to be the leading character, but she is seen mainly from the perspective of her mentor/adorer, who thinks she has no true self - i.e., is always acting. (James gives her a role in the other plot as well, but it is not terribly convincing.) But her determination to ascend the artistic heights IS her main character trait, and she is refreshingly open and cheerful about it. While the conflict between her career and that of her mentor/suitor reaches a high emotional pitch toward the end of the book, he is too thin-blooded to be really tragic, and James keeps distracting us with the other main plot line. The third young man is enigmatic to a fault. He plays a key role in determining the portraitist to follow his artistic dreams, but he comes across as a bad angel. James may have meant him to be some sort of touchstone of artistic freedom, but he is an unpleasant, irresponsible character to hang a career choice on. Finally, James goes to the trouble of giving the portraitist a delightful sister who is not so secretly in love with her cousin the diplomat, only to waste her. She and the actress are the two best characters in the novel, but they take a back seat to the three young men who are respectively indecisive, unbelievably lucky, and unpleasant.
The book's title is not appealing - a "muse" is a female figure important only for her ability to inspire a male artist - but its failure to fulfill the promise of a good tragedy is more disappointing. James at his best is a master of tragedy, usually feminine. The actress is neither a great tragedienne onstage (though James implies she will become one) nor a self-destroying destroyer of men like Wedekind's/Berg's heartless Lulu, which could have made for a more grandly tragic tale. James's actress truly cares about the young man whose heart she breaks - their inability to marry is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is also predictable and does not rise to the level of tragedy. Perhaps James liked and (as the other reviewer said) identified with her too much to let her be cruel. Indeed, by the end of the book it appears that none of the characters is really large enough for tragedy. Ironically, the "tragic muse" is still playing comedy, and her manager's eye is firmly on giving the public what it wants.
I'm in the midst of a quick chronological reading of all James's fiction, and my three stars are based mainly on a comparison with James's own previous works. The Tragic Muse's flaws don't let it measure up to the incomparable Portrait of a Lady, a concise masterpiece like Washington Square, the satirical Bostonians, the strange and touching Princess Casamassima, or even the excellent early novel The American. Still, three-star James is worth reading and rereading. I don't doubt that more will be revealed to me on the next go-round.
I agree with the reviewer who noted that the book is too long for its content. But it also has structural problems that cause it to sag. It lacks a compelling main narrative, so, as I indicated, the reader's attention is divided between two plots whose interconnections are contrived rather than organic. From the title, one expects the young actress to be the leading character, but she is seen mainly from the perspective of her mentor/adorer, who thinks she has no true self - i.e., is always acting. (James gives her a role in the other plot as well, but it is not terribly convincing.) But her determination to ascend the artistic heights IS her main character trait, and she is refreshingly open and cheerful about it. While the conflict between her career and that of her mentor/suitor reaches a high emotional pitch toward the end of the book, he is too thin-blooded to be really tragic, and James keeps distracting us with the other main plot line. The third young man is enigmatic to a fault. He plays a key role in determining the portraitist to follow his artistic dreams, but he comes across as a bad angel. James may have meant him to be some sort of touchstone of artistic freedom, but he is an unpleasant, irresponsible character to hang a career choice on. Finally, James goes to the trouble of giving the portraitist a delightful sister who is not so secretly in love with her cousin the diplomat, only to waste her. She and the actress are the two best characters in the novel, but they take a back seat to the three young men who are respectively indecisive, unbelievably lucky, and unpleasant.
The book's title is not appealing - a "muse" is a female figure important only for her ability to inspire a male artist - but its failure to fulfill the promise of a good tragedy is more disappointing. James at his best is a master of tragedy, usually feminine. The actress is neither a great tragedienne onstage (though James implies she will become one) nor a self-destroying destroyer of men like Wedekind's/Berg's heartless Lulu, which could have made for a more grandly tragic tale. James's actress truly cares about the young man whose heart she breaks - their inability to marry is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is also predictable and does not rise to the level of tragedy. Perhaps James liked and (as the other reviewer said) identified with her too much to let her be cruel. Indeed, by the end of the book it appears that none of the characters is really large enough for tragedy. Ironically, the "tragic muse" is still playing comedy, and her manager's eye is firmly on giving the public what it wants.
I'm in the midst of a quick chronological reading of all James's fiction, and my three stars are based mainly on a comparison with James's own previous works. The Tragic Muse's flaws don't let it measure up to the incomparable Portrait of a Lady, a concise masterpiece like Washington Square, the satirical Bostonians, the strange and touching Princess Casamassima, or even the excellent early novel The American. Still, three-star James is worth reading and rereading. I don't doubt that more will be revealed to me on the next go-round.
July 29, 2015
Despite the title, the Tragic Muse doesn't really have the tragic intensity of James's greatest work. It's basically a comedy. One of his wittiest books. James can be so hilariously bitchy, and the opening sentence is one of the best ever:
"The people of France have made it no secret that those of England, as a general thing, are, to their perception, an inexpressive and speechless race, perpendicular and unsociable, unaddicted to enriching
any bareness of contact with verbal or other embroidery."
"The people of France have made it no secret that those of England, as a general thing, are, to their perception, an inexpressive and speechless race, perpendicular and unsociable, unaddicted to enriching
any bareness of contact with verbal or other embroidery."
June 12, 2015
An entertaining read, once you get used to the elliptical language. But the linguistic style soon becomes part of the enjoyment, along with the droll characterizations. The world of politics and respectable society meets that of the arts, via an exemplary actress and an unlikely artist, stirred up by a trickster character - Gabriel Nash - who is loved, hated and misunderstood, but gets things moving. The action is slow, and not much happens really. But it works as an extended observation of the attitudes and manners of the time.
September 18, 2016
Superlative writing, with excellent dramatic scenes. I suspect Powys includes because of the intense discussions of art.
April 16, 2018
James depicts nature and landscape (Central Park, the streets of London, the canals of Venice, Paris’s Bois de Boulogne) in moving detail. He also describes the distinctive physical and gestural traits of his characters with Chaucerian precision. But his greatest gift is for accurately representing the intricacies of what we say, think and feel about each other during our social interactions, especially our more intimate ones.
The “muse” in The Tragic Muse is one Miriam Rooth, a would-be actress whose tragedy is not in her fate but in the role of Shakespeare’s Juliet to which she gradually and successfully rises. Miriam is so entirely absorbed in her profession that she acts a part in everything she says and does, offstage as well as on. Beautiful and forceful in the tradition of Jamesean heroines like Daisy Miller, Miriam’s individuality nevertheless consists wholly in representing the individuality of others. Her life is inseparable from her art.
Miriam is the “muse” of Nick Dormer, an artist who unlike Miriam does not yet know that he is one, and this book is more about Nick’s discovery of who he is than about its title character. Less intrusively spectacular than Miriam, Nick is also less certain. Though in line to carry on the political and aristocratic traditions of his family, he must break with that inheritance to become what he is—an inspired but hard working portrait painter. (In this respect he resembles Henry James himself, who had to set an artistic course for himself different from the Jameses while trying to remain close to them.) Nick’s breakthrough comes when Miriam comes to sit for him and he learns to focus on her complex and sometimes contradictory bodily and facial expressions.
This story, like most others by James (and Shakespeare’s comedies as well) involves various characters finding their appropriate marriage partners. But marriage in itself is not as much of a concern here as what it says about a character’s life and career choices. Nick’s cousin Peter for example, though he has a passion for Miriam, must find a mate who fits better with his career as a diplomat. The same is true of Miriam herself as well as Nick’s sister, Biddy. As to Nick, the reader senses the possibility of his marrying Peter’s managerial sister Julia for the sake of satisfying his family’s wishes but his not marrying at all seems just as likely.
James’s language sometimes makes the reader feel the intensity of Nick’s attraction to his male friend Gabriel Nash. Gabriel is the embodiment of the aesthete, the sort whose life is entirely given over to his impressions and who makes the value of that kind of life his unremitting doctrine. Or perhaps James wants us to think of Nick as reasonably comfortable occupying the space between the aesthetic Gabriel (Oscar Wilde?) and the pragmatic Julia.
May 2, 2015
This 1890 novel is the best longer work James produced since his 1881 masterpiece _The Portrait of a Lady_. The basic conflict (politics vs. Art) is played out through the representation of two different (but linked) romantic relationships between rising artistic talents and people who are engaged in political or diplomatic work. The combining of what was basically two different plots really allows James to thoroughly explore his territory, and the psychological insights and motivations of his characters are subtly yet profoundly drawn. Class (and wealth more generally) plays an important role in each relationship and is vital to the climax of the work; this aspect of English life is treated in a much more assured and realistic way than in the more overtly poltical novel _The Princess Cassamassima_. Though this is one of James's longer works it is well worth the effort.
January 6, 2022
Henry James does Trollope! In a weird way this is his most refined and most baggy novel I've read so far, going chronologically—it's an incredibly loose and reasonably cheerful book along late-Thackeray lines, but many of the character introductions and interactions were peak James, with remarkable use of POV and really heightened, almost thrilling interactions. The introduction of Gabriel (that bastard) in particular felt like it anticipated the first chapters of Gatsby, as Biddy (that sweetheart) introduced herself to us by the particular way she saw him and, because of her limited understanding, gave his first appearance to us as a mystery rather than a matter of fact.
Also loved Julia—Lady Laura from Phineas Finn but too careful and capable to fall off the edge, much as she wanted to.
Also loved Julia—Lady Laura from Phineas Finn but too careful and capable to fall off the edge, much as she wanted to.
August 15, 2022
Art vs public life. As James sides with aestheticism, this book lacks the skeptical irony of his studies of reform (Bostonians) and revolution (Casamassima).
May 27, 2025
The weakest of James’ novels? It has more dialogue, probably, than all of James’ other novels combined which is a problem since he didn’t do conversation very well, as his failure as a playwright would show. It’s a novel about art and politics, chiefly interesting for the ascent of the young actress Miriam Roofe. The Oscar Wilde-like aesthete, Gabriel Nash, with his orotund dicta on Art, is tiresome, or as Julia Dallow, the central woman character says, an “ass.” By the way, the strong minded Julia is the earliest character in literature to have her rudeness ascribed to basic shyness, now a common excuse.
August 23, 2025
A very enjoyable classic.
October 10, 2015
So I'm sitting in the dentist's chair, with a dental dam in my mouth, listening to the dentist and her assistant talk. The assistant says to the dentist "I had the weirdest dream last night, you quit your job to become a painter!" The dentist replies "Well, that wouldn't be a very smart financial move with my student loans."
I couldn't tell them (that stuff in my mouth), hey, I once quit my career to become an artist. But at that time I never thought of it in those bald of terms, though on the surface it was true. Instead I just did what I felt was the right and almost only thing to do. And this is very similar to what happens to one of our heroes in this book, Nick Dormer. He quits his seat in Parliament and loses his income and fiancee (who was the moneybags behind his political career) and gains his soul.
In other hands this story could get dangerously close to romantic slush about the starving artist sacrificing all to paint his masterpiece. The world has enough of those, and Henry James isn't interested in diving into that pile of poo. Instead, James dives into the psychological motivations of what makes an artist pursue his art, which is different than what a lot of people think, and I'm sure Henry based it quite a lot on his own career.
The other main characters (and the novel is interesting in that there are three characters who could be termed "main") are his cousin Peter and his actress protege Miriam. Peter is a drama nerd but earns his daily pay by being a diplomat. At night he is at the theater. He discovers an actress who has a striking face, but seems to be clumsy in acting. Note the "seems". James is canny in planting clues for us that Miriam from the start was playing the long, long game and the fumbling actress was a very successful pose to get where she needed to be.
Nick and Miriam are the heroes of the book because they end up doing what their art demands they do, while Peter stumbles in letting other considerations tame his desires (if he even knows them at times.) The "Tragic Muse" in the book is of course at one level Miriam in how she both inspires Nicks breakthrough painting and inspires Peter to launch her career. But the "Tragic Muse" is also the impulse to create at the expense of other considerations in life. Henry James repressive life might be seen in terms of his personality, but it also might have been a strategic move to make room for his own Tragic Muse.
This is a very long book, but James seems to have been particularly inspired while writing it. His prose is intricate, but is rarely boring or hard to follow, unlike my experience in reading another novel (The Princess Casamassima) in the same Library of America volume. However his very omniscient narrator practices his omniscience for 550 pages until this howler:
I couldn't tell them (that stuff in my mouth), hey, I once quit my career to become an artist. But at that time I never thought of it in those bald of terms, though on the surface it was true. Instead I just did what I felt was the right and almost only thing to do. And this is very similar to what happens to one of our heroes in this book, Nick Dormer. He quits his seat in Parliament and loses his income and fiancee (who was the moneybags behind his political career) and gains his soul.
In other hands this story could get dangerously close to romantic slush about the starving artist sacrificing all to paint his masterpiece. The world has enough of those, and Henry James isn't interested in diving into that pile of poo. Instead, James dives into the psychological motivations of what makes an artist pursue his art, which is different than what a lot of people think, and I'm sure Henry based it quite a lot on his own career.
The other main characters (and the novel is interesting in that there are three characters who could be termed "main") are his cousin Peter and his actress protege Miriam. Peter is a drama nerd but earns his daily pay by being a diplomat. At night he is at the theater. He discovers an actress who has a striking face, but seems to be clumsy in acting. Note the "seems". James is canny in planting clues for us that Miriam from the start was playing the long, long game and the fumbling actress was a very successful pose to get where she needed to be.
Nick and Miriam are the heroes of the book because they end up doing what their art demands they do, while Peter stumbles in letting other considerations tame his desires (if he even knows them at times.) The "Tragic Muse" in the book is of course at one level Miriam in how she both inspires Nicks breakthrough painting and inspires Peter to launch her career. But the "Tragic Muse" is also the impulse to create at the expense of other considerations in life. Henry James repressive life might be seen in terms of his personality, but it also might have been a strategic move to make room for his own Tragic Muse.
This is a very long book, but James seems to have been particularly inspired while writing it. His prose is intricate, but is rarely boring or hard to follow, unlike my experience in reading another novel (The Princess Casamassima) in the same Library of America volume. However his very omniscient narrator practices his omniscience for 550 pages until this howler:
"We shall probably never know how much he has been in love with her nor what difference it makes. We shall never know exactly what he came back for, nor why he scrambled down here all but straight from the station, nor why, after all, for the last two hours, he has been roaming the streets. And it doesn't matter, for it's none of our business."Well, Mr. James, for the last 550 pages you have been telling us exactly what was going in people's heads and now you have a character telling us it is impossible to learn what we have been reading about for all this time. Which is it, huh? I think Henry was having a little poke at his readers and is alluding to the immense falseness of fiction (the omniscienct pose) that he required to make something so true. The Tragic Muse indeed.
September 12, 2020
This isn't one of James's best known novels, but it deserves to be read more widely as it contains the author's most profound musings on the role of the artist in society. The manner in which the main characters are played off against one another is masterful. On the one hand there is Nick Dormer, the not so young and not so rich gentleman who gives up a seat in Parliament, marriage to a wealthy widow and an inheritance from a rich elder statesman to follow his dream of becoming a painter. Opposed to him is his cousin Peter Sherringham, a passionate devotee of the theater, who is too timid to give up his diplomatic career for a life on the stage, even if only in a managerial capacity. The real protagonist of the novel, however, is Miriam Rooth, an unskilled actress from a lower class background, who through sheer drive and determination transforms herself into a major star and radiant celebrity. As so often in James's tales, it is the woman who emerges as the strongest character, an unstoppable force who makes the men about her appear indecisive and weak. Miriam also contrasts strongly with Julia, Nick's former fiancee and Peter's cousin, who for all her many causes and involvement in politics, is too timid to seize happiness when she finds it. The weakest character in the book is Nick's friend Gabriel Nash who more often than not seems no more than a caricature. Although Nick places great weight on Nash's pronouncements on art they come across as only clever platitudes.
The ending of the novel is problematic. Because James was dealing with a larger cast of characters than he normally employed he seems intent in the final pages on tying up all the loose ends into a tidy package that is pat and unconvincing. His characters deserve better.
The ending of the novel is problematic. Because James was dealing with a larger cast of characters than he normally employed he seems intent in the final pages on tying up all the loose ends into a tidy package that is pat and unconvincing. His characters deserve better.
February 12, 2018
This book is enchanting. That may seem a strange word to describe a Henry James novel, but The Tragic Muse is unlike any Henry James novel I have read. For one thing, although most of James's novels have strong, complex female characters, in this one James has created a true feminist heroine in Miriam Rooth. Her scathing response to a marriage proposal by a man who wants her to give up her brilliant career in the theater to become a conventional upper class appendage to his ambitions is glorious. For another, the expatriate experience, which plays such a central role in many other James novels, is completely absent in this one. The Tragic Muse is about the struggle of artists to fit into a materialistic larger culture in which art is an indulgence, but not a fit or respectable way of making a living, for the wealthy class. It's also about the necessity of making choices, and about coming to grips with the reality that you can't have everything, and that taking a less-traveled path involves paying a price -- sometimes a steep one. If it's true that when one door closes another opens, it's also true that when you open a door and walk through it, other doors close. Making one choice inevitably means closing off others.
All this said, the novel's conclusions are satisfying if not perfect. Most of the characters -- certainly all the major ones -- get what they need in the end, even if what they need and what they want, or thought they wanted, are not the same.
All this said, the novel's conclusions are satisfying if not perfect. Most of the characters -- certainly all the major ones -- get what they need in the end, even if what they need and what they want, or thought they wanted, are not the same.
June 26, 2022
This book felt much fuller and more complex than it reads. It felt autobiographical.
Why autobiographical? Well, I really don't know much about Mr. James, but I do know that he was homosexual in much less enlightened times, and I would assume he felt some guilt, maybe even shame, especially considering he constantly referred to himself as celibate. I believe when he wrote 'The Tragic Muse' he was struggling for audience.
This novel seems to address, head-on, the conflict of living one's life to meet the expectations set by others or maybe even set by one's own talents versus following one's own 'bliss'. What are our obligations to others? To self? Which is more important: serving in Parliament or painting portraits? Where do I contribute most: a meaningful profession where my talents lie, but for which I have no heart? Or one that contributes less to the common weal in which I have some talent and that floods my days with joy and fulfillment? Heady, heady stuff! 5 stars.
Why autobiographical? Well, I really don't know much about Mr. James, but I do know that he was homosexual in much less enlightened times, and I would assume he felt some guilt, maybe even shame, especially considering he constantly referred to himself as celibate. I believe when he wrote 'The Tragic Muse' he was struggling for audience.
This novel seems to address, head-on, the conflict of living one's life to meet the expectations set by others or maybe even set by one's own talents versus following one's own 'bliss'. What are our obligations to others? To self? Which is more important: serving in Parliament or painting portraits? Where do I contribute most: a meaningful profession where my talents lie, but for which I have no heart? Or one that contributes less to the common weal in which I have some talent and that floods my days with joy and fulfillment? Heady, heady stuff! 5 stars.
Read
November 17, 2010A book for our times! Reminded me of Lindsay Lohan a lot. The obsession with people being famous just for being famous felt really contemporary, while at times it felt more overtly Victorian than most HJ.
August 25, 2021
I quite enjoyed living in this book. It’s not up to James’s best work, is more told than shown, but I loved the dynamic between Miriam and Peter and still feel myself so much disposed to life in the late 1800s!
December 1, 2025
The Tragic Muse was written, it seems, between The Princess Casamassima (perhaps the best of his longer novels that I’ve read) and The Spoils of Poynton (which, to my taste, taken together with ‘The Aspern Papers’, is James at his finest). It’s not as good as those, partly because we can detect a more of the extreme ugliness of sentence structure that was to blight his writing in later years. Also, I can’t help think it would have functioned much better as two shorter novels. We have the Sherringham/ Miriam Rooth love story and the tale of MP Nick Dormer being tempted away from politics into a life of art: neither of these adds very much to the other. Also, as a character, Sherringham isn’t quite as interesting as I felt he needed to be and Miriam Rooth functions for too much of the time as a mouthpiece for James’ own cultural theories – theories which, I’m afraid, today seem crass and simpleminded.
The Nick Dormer half of the book seems to me the stronger. There’s a touch of the Mephistophelian about the dilettante Gabriel Nash, who lures him away from politics but, seemingly perversely, disappears from his life as soon as he attains some success as an artist. We know from ‘The Aspern Papers’ that James had a brilliant knack for dealing with homosexuality without ever mentioning it. I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to suggest that Nash is in love with Nick. Not so in love, though, that he doesn’t perceive Nick’s never-completed attempt to paint him as a threat: Nick is by that point a good enough artist that the completed portrait might have revealed more about Nash than would have been socially safe in the 1880s, as well as forcing Nick to perceive and acknowledge that side of Nash’s character. If Nash’s club, ‘The Anonymous’, really existed and was the sort of place I assume it to have been (the name itself is suggestive enough), my point would be proved. However, what’s most important here is James’ treatment of the shock and sadness occasioned by an important person in one’s life disappearing absolutely from it. Yes, there’s plenty of lugubrious pomposity in James’ language but I know of no other writer who has dealt with that situation – a situation almost all of us go through – with such sympathy and understanding.
The Nick Dormer half of the book seems to me the stronger. There’s a touch of the Mephistophelian about the dilettante Gabriel Nash, who lures him away from politics but, seemingly perversely, disappears from his life as soon as he attains some success as an artist. We know from ‘The Aspern Papers’ that James had a brilliant knack for dealing with homosexuality without ever mentioning it. I don’t think it’s too much of a reach to suggest that Nash is in love with Nick. Not so in love, though, that he doesn’t perceive Nick’s never-completed attempt to paint him as a threat: Nick is by that point a good enough artist that the completed portrait might have revealed more about Nash than would have been socially safe in the 1880s, as well as forcing Nick to perceive and acknowledge that side of Nash’s character. If Nash’s club, ‘The Anonymous’, really existed and was the sort of place I assume it to have been (the name itself is suggestive enough), my point would be proved. However, what’s most important here is James’ treatment of the shock and sadness occasioned by an important person in one’s life disappearing absolutely from it. Yes, there’s plenty of lugubrious pomposity in James’ language but I know of no other writer who has dealt with that situation – a situation almost all of us go through – with such sympathy and understanding.
May 30, 2020
This is not accounted one of James' better novels, but having prior to this read only two short stories/novellas, I cannot say whether that is justified or not, nor what marks it off from other, more celebrated works.
I thought it was a strange novel. In some ways it is very straight-forward. A multi-threaded plot about society and taboo. We have the Wildean decadent Gabriel Nash praise one of the main protagonists for choosing the side of beauty over the practical world of politics - much to his conventional mother's despair. So far, so Victorian. But its effects are much more vague. There is something elusive about it. The ending came creeping upon me and I suddenly wondered if I had been led carefully on the arm of an haughty cicerone to admire some super-subtle shade which I was too focussed on the bigger, more obvious splashes of colour to properly notice. In any case there is a comedic ending of marriages, and yet it is by no means a 'happy' one.
The effect is not un-pleasing. The plot is rendered in long conversations punctuated by pages of psychological observation. The details waft like a gauze or pleasing mist which obscure as much as they reveal. Sometimes one longs for a burst of clarity but mostly it is immensely pleasurable. It includes, moreover, an equine epithet to rival even those of Homer.
"Capital trotter."
I thought it was a strange novel. In some ways it is very straight-forward. A multi-threaded plot about society and taboo. We have the Wildean decadent Gabriel Nash praise one of the main protagonists for choosing the side of beauty over the practical world of politics - much to his conventional mother's despair. So far, so Victorian. But its effects are much more vague. There is something elusive about it. The ending came creeping upon me and I suddenly wondered if I had been led carefully on the arm of an haughty cicerone to admire some super-subtle shade which I was too focussed on the bigger, more obvious splashes of colour to properly notice. In any case there is a comedic ending of marriages, and yet it is by no means a 'happy' one.
The effect is not un-pleasing. The plot is rendered in long conversations punctuated by pages of psychological observation. The details waft like a gauze or pleasing mist which obscure as much as they reveal. Sometimes one longs for a burst of clarity but mostly it is immensely pleasurable. It includes, moreover, an equine epithet to rival even those of Homer.
"Capital trotter."
May 5, 2023
James himself admitted that Nick Dormer never fully materialized as he hoped, and this definitely becomes apparent in the final chapters when every single other character has a more complete narrative and developmental arc resolved and we're left almost entirely with this two-dimensional depiction of a dandy giving up a lucrative political career for a dubious prospect at being a portraitist. Even so, the modest reputation this book has even among Jamesians is a bit surprising. It's one of his funniest novels, regularly poking fun at its own pretentions to artistic utopianism; particularly brutal is the depiction of Peter, the ambassador who is so besotted with the theater yet ultimately so terrified of admitting it outside of intimate company that he would seek to cage the very actress he tried so hard to turn into a star. Miriam is as good a character as the author had written to this point, introduced as a grating, desperate wannabe but who by the end has grown so confident as an artist and therefore a person that she can righteously shred her erstwhile patron for daring to demand she give up her passion to wed him "respectably."
January 7, 2023
Which is more important, work or love? And what if the work in question is also art? Though this is not one of his best or best-known works, James is always interesting on questions of art, and in this novel we have an unusual chance to see a woman as an artist. James allows Miriam Rooth, an aspiring actress, to be as driven, as single-minded, as hardworking and as sacrificing as any male artist. In Paris she is introduced by one Gabriel Nash to two other men. One is Peter Sherrington, an English diplomat who takes a great interest in the theater. The other is his cousin Nick Dormer. Dormer is slated to run for parliament and have a career of the kind his late father did, but he itches to paint, instead. The work/love question is examined, in James's subtle way, through the perspectives of several characters. The ending is perhaps marred by a forced feel to the prose as James wraps up his loose ends. But reading Henry James is always a pleasure.
November 11, 2025
About 500 pages published in 1890. My edition had a foreword by the author apologizing for the relative flatness of the main character… which mostly is a problem during the setup in the beginning.
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel; loved it. The main theme is choosing between a life in politics or some established position versus a life as an artist. I related to this theme.
There’s an endless amount of witty dialogue and the author often throws in a great deal of French with a smattering of Italian.
“The gift of tongues is in general the sign of your true adventurer.” Indeed; I wholeheartedly agree!
That said, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel; loved it. The main theme is choosing between a life in politics or some established position versus a life as an artist. I related to this theme.
There’s an endless amount of witty dialogue and the author often throws in a great deal of French with a smattering of Italian.
“The gift of tongues is in general the sign of your true adventurer.” Indeed; I wholeheartedly agree!
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