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Оуэн Вингрейв
Классический мистический рассказ Генри Джеймса, американского классика психологической прозы, был написан в 1892 году. В центре повествования – судьба молодого мужчины, который противостоит своей семье и оказывается отверженным. В отчаянной попытке сохранить любовь своей невесты, которая также готова отказаться от него, он проводит ночь в проклятой комнате семейного поместья, но последствия оказываются трагическими.
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First published January 1, 1892
About the author
Henry James
4,822 books4,069 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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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
October 9, 2020
Comecei a ler Henry James pelo tema do americano que se sente estranho ao europeu e vice-versa; gradualmente, fui-me aproximando do James que escreve literatura do género fantástico e fantasmagórico.
Neste conto ou narrativa curta, James apresenta-nos um jovem que, contra a vontade da família e do seu instrutor, quer abandonar o exército por objecções à vida militar e num golpe genial baptiza-o com o sugestivo nome de Owen Wingrave. Como o título já é um spoiler, só posso acrescentar que há 👻 e o final é perfeito.
Neste conto ou narrativa curta, James apresenta-nos um jovem que, contra a vontade da família e do seu instrutor, quer abandonar o exército por objecções à vida militar e num golpe genial baptiza-o com o sugestivo nome de Owen Wingrave. Como o título já é um spoiler, só posso acrescentar que há 👻 e o final é perfeito.
June 25, 2019
Un fantasma familiar vivaz. Severo espectro de tradición militar. Owen es un joven presionado por la familia, su hombría puesta en entredicho, tanto por su familia como por la novia. Grave conflicto. Está destinado a la guerra.
Es el único relato que he encontrado de Henry James donde el fantasma es un soldado.
Es el único relato que he encontrado de Henry James donde el fantasma es un soldado.
October 11, 2016
This novella is very difficult to analyze. It is supposed to be a ghost story but once again (with Henry James) the ghosts are in the head of some characters, in fact essentially Spencer Coyle. The famous portrait in Paramore that shows the violent ancestor who killed his son shows him alone in the painting. The absence of his son (hand in hand with his father in Benjamin Britten’s version) is essential since he is only remembered because he killed his son and died in the room where the boy died and that has been haunted ever since. Benjamin Britten is far more subtle by having this picture changed from Henry James’s version and having the son in the painting too. Since this son is also called Owen like the main character of the novella, there is an obvious connection Henry James does not use, at least not in this portrait, even if it is difficult to have two people in those very formal portraits.
Note too that Henry James situates the murder in the 18th century under George II, only one century or hardly more before the events at the end of the 19th century. Benjamin Britten in the BBC production of 1970 seems to have favored a portrait dated 1652, which is strangely considered as being under Charles II by Hubert Teyssandier who must have forgotten that only Charles II considered he climbed on the throne on the very day when his gather was executed in London in 1649 whereas most historians would consider that in 1652 England was a Commonwealth headed by Oliver Cromwell. But this element is not really meaningful. Henry James though describes Poramore as an “impoverished Jacobean house, shabby and remarkably creepy.” And this remark may explain the shift to the 18th century in the BBC production, if I believe Hubert Teyssandier.
This novella is centered on the feudal function of noble families. They are warriors and this family does not want to move. It is with them a tradition that in every generation at least one son becomes a soldier. That’s the problem of Owen Wingrave who does not want to win graves to himself or anyone else, friend or foe alike. He rejects his family tradition, function, justification in life. We only know about his direct family that his own father died in Afghanistan, and his mother in childbirth delivering soon after the third child who was stillborn. Owen Wingrave never explains his reason except that for him war is not the proper solution to current problems. But no real argument is given so we do not know if it is an opposition to war by principle, or to colonial war in particular that killed his father and caused the death of his mother in India. Is it moral, ethical, economic, political, historical, philosophical, religious or conscientious? No real answer to that, which disqualifies the novella as an antimilitary novella. It is a novella in which the antimilitary theme is strongly represented, but that’s not the main topic the way I look at it.
The main topic is the freedom of a child in front of his family. A child is supposed to do what his family says he has to do. That concerns boys only. Girls just have to marry the man the family will accept or choose. This family is feudal in perspective and war is the only possible choice, hence it is not a choice. Owen refuses and Henry James is showing how absurd such a situation is. He shows that with the name of the family. That military glory can only bring graves to the family and several examples are given in the novella. Furthermore the family seat is Paramore, a parody of some French phrase coming from the Middle Ages, “par amour” that entered Middle English between 1250 and 1300. There is of course no love in this house, in this family. There is only a feudal dictatorship for everyone and their relation to the world can only be seen as military. It reminds me tremendously of “Dr Folamour,” the French title of “Dr Strangelove” by Stanley Kubrick that came out in 1964. I find thus the novella perfectly humorous or even caustic against a certain type of English aristocracy, but in the darkest shade of dark grey, well hidden and wrapped up in so much serious even slightly humdrum vain military discourse that we even forget the novella is making fun of these people.
The family is absolutely absurd in their reaction: since they cannot move Owen they purely cut all resources and reject him out of the family, make him both a pauper and a stranger, though he has his mother’s £300 a year that should enable him to survive in the vast world (which cannot be taken away from him since the Magna Carta). They cannot kill him straight away, so they will starve him to death – if they could of course. 1892 is no longer 1215.
And that’s where the silly attitude of the family (vastly emphasized by Britten who makes it a vociferous scene between Owen and his grandfather with a final disinheritance) is unreasonable, in ,contradiction with the world they live in. But the result in the novella is the same, simply calmer in tone.
And that’s where the novella turns fishy. The haunted room is brought back into a discussion between Lechmere (who is not flirting with Kate), Kate the girl Owen was supposed to marry but who rejects him since he is not going to be a soldier and Owen. In the novella Owen pretends he has spent the previous night in that room. Kate dares him to spend a second night in there and she locks the door behind him. The meaning for her is that Owen must be afraid of being a soldier, so he cannot spend a night in this room since he has to be afraid of dying there. The girl is supposed to love Owen. It sounds more like the love of Venus for Adonis whom she sends away to die under the tusks of a wild boar since he refused to yield to her desire. This girl, Kate, could be considered as slightly psychotic, but of course her father died in some war, and she is living with her mother under the protection of Miss Wingrave, Owen’s aunt, who was supposed to marry Kate’s father and she cancelled it at the last minute and sent him to his military career.
And sure enough Owen dies in the room. Strange that he did not die the previous night. And the concluding words of the novella are fateful: “He looked like a young soldier on a battlefield.” The family is thus spited by this end just as much as Owen is mocked in his anti-militaristic stance. To be a soldier is a curse in this family but it is a family fact. But we have to envisage that meaning in the novella that these last words seem to mean no one can escape that curse, that feudal function in this family and that fate will have the last word and the conscientious objector dies like a soldier. Well at least he looks like one, though as dead as a door nail, or rather a coffin nail in this situation.
It is the various contradictions in this novella that explain its success in its being adapted to various media and various arts. And yet the novella is in no way fascinating. In fact it could have been cut in half. Too much tricky beating about the bush especially when Spencer Coyle speaks or thinks or describes what is happening. He is as slick as a snake coiling around its argumentative preys and trying to make them larger than they actually are. But that is Henry James’ style. Why say in ten words what can be said in one hundred.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Note too that Henry James situates the murder in the 18th century under George II, only one century or hardly more before the events at the end of the 19th century. Benjamin Britten in the BBC production of 1970 seems to have favored a portrait dated 1652, which is strangely considered as being under Charles II by Hubert Teyssandier who must have forgotten that only Charles II considered he climbed on the throne on the very day when his gather was executed in London in 1649 whereas most historians would consider that in 1652 England was a Commonwealth headed by Oliver Cromwell. But this element is not really meaningful. Henry James though describes Poramore as an “impoverished Jacobean house, shabby and remarkably creepy.” And this remark may explain the shift to the 18th century in the BBC production, if I believe Hubert Teyssandier.
This novella is centered on the feudal function of noble families. They are warriors and this family does not want to move. It is with them a tradition that in every generation at least one son becomes a soldier. That’s the problem of Owen Wingrave who does not want to win graves to himself or anyone else, friend or foe alike. He rejects his family tradition, function, justification in life. We only know about his direct family that his own father died in Afghanistan, and his mother in childbirth delivering soon after the third child who was stillborn. Owen Wingrave never explains his reason except that for him war is not the proper solution to current problems. But no real argument is given so we do not know if it is an opposition to war by principle, or to colonial war in particular that killed his father and caused the death of his mother in India. Is it moral, ethical, economic, political, historical, philosophical, religious or conscientious? No real answer to that, which disqualifies the novella as an antimilitary novella. It is a novella in which the antimilitary theme is strongly represented, but that’s not the main topic the way I look at it.
The main topic is the freedom of a child in front of his family. A child is supposed to do what his family says he has to do. That concerns boys only. Girls just have to marry the man the family will accept or choose. This family is feudal in perspective and war is the only possible choice, hence it is not a choice. Owen refuses and Henry James is showing how absurd such a situation is. He shows that with the name of the family. That military glory can only bring graves to the family and several examples are given in the novella. Furthermore the family seat is Paramore, a parody of some French phrase coming from the Middle Ages, “par amour” that entered Middle English between 1250 and 1300. There is of course no love in this house, in this family. There is only a feudal dictatorship for everyone and their relation to the world can only be seen as military. It reminds me tremendously of “Dr Folamour,” the French title of “Dr Strangelove” by Stanley Kubrick that came out in 1964. I find thus the novella perfectly humorous or even caustic against a certain type of English aristocracy, but in the darkest shade of dark grey, well hidden and wrapped up in so much serious even slightly humdrum vain military discourse that we even forget the novella is making fun of these people.
The family is absolutely absurd in their reaction: since they cannot move Owen they purely cut all resources and reject him out of the family, make him both a pauper and a stranger, though he has his mother’s £300 a year that should enable him to survive in the vast world (which cannot be taken away from him since the Magna Carta). They cannot kill him straight away, so they will starve him to death – if they could of course. 1892 is no longer 1215.
And that’s where the silly attitude of the family (vastly emphasized by Britten who makes it a vociferous scene between Owen and his grandfather with a final disinheritance) is unreasonable, in ,contradiction with the world they live in. But the result in the novella is the same, simply calmer in tone.
And that’s where the novella turns fishy. The haunted room is brought back into a discussion between Lechmere (who is not flirting with Kate), Kate the girl Owen was supposed to marry but who rejects him since he is not going to be a soldier and Owen. In the novella Owen pretends he has spent the previous night in that room. Kate dares him to spend a second night in there and she locks the door behind him. The meaning for her is that Owen must be afraid of being a soldier, so he cannot spend a night in this room since he has to be afraid of dying there. The girl is supposed to love Owen. It sounds more like the love of Venus for Adonis whom she sends away to die under the tusks of a wild boar since he refused to yield to her desire. This girl, Kate, could be considered as slightly psychotic, but of course her father died in some war, and she is living with her mother under the protection of Miss Wingrave, Owen’s aunt, who was supposed to marry Kate’s father and she cancelled it at the last minute and sent him to his military career.
And sure enough Owen dies in the room. Strange that he did not die the previous night. And the concluding words of the novella are fateful: “He looked like a young soldier on a battlefield.” The family is thus spited by this end just as much as Owen is mocked in his anti-militaristic stance. To be a soldier is a curse in this family but it is a family fact. But we have to envisage that meaning in the novella that these last words seem to mean no one can escape that curse, that feudal function in this family and that fate will have the last word and the conscientious objector dies like a soldier. Well at least he looks like one, though as dead as a door nail, or rather a coffin nail in this situation.
It is the various contradictions in this novella that explain its success in its being adapted to various media and various arts. And yet the novella is in no way fascinating. In fact it could have been cut in half. Too much tricky beating about the bush especially when Spencer Coyle speaks or thinks or describes what is happening. He is as slick as a snake coiling around its argumentative preys and trying to make them larger than they actually are. But that is Henry James’ style. Why say in ten words what can be said in one hundred.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
October 20, 2018
The Weight of Tradition: A Review of Owen Wingrave (1892) by Henry James
Like several other stories by Henry James, including “The Turn of the Screw,” this is a “tale of the supernatural” or a “Gothic fiction.” Here the haunted castle or country home is the ancient seat of an English family named Wingrave, for generations wholly dedicated to the military profession. The ghostly atmosphere of the story centers on an unused room in the Wingrave home where a Colonel Wingrave long ago killed his own son. It is taken for granted that the son of the current generation, Owen Wingrave, will follow the family tradition of service to Queen and country but young Owen, who is being coached for that role, decides on a vocational break with the past.
The central questions the story raises are 1) what James meant by the burden of Owen’s inheritance and 2) what in Owen led him to try a different path. These questions have many possible answers, but I think the key to interpreting this and most other stories by James is precisely that multiplicity. First of all James, who was well into middle age and facing career difficulties when he wrote Owen Wingrave, is most likely recalling his own family’s objections to his choice of a vocation as a fiction writer back in his early twenties. Secondly Owen, who has grown convinced of the futility of war, may reflect James’s own rejection of history’s endlessly repeated belief in war as a successful way to resolve human problems. And thirdly, James may have been trying to ease his generally acknowledged fears of sexual inadequacy and consequent avoidance of the conventional (but for him unsuitable) social role of married man and father. This third interpretation seems especially applicable in those parts of the story where both Owen’s close friend and his family suspect him of cowardice.
All three of these readings of Owen Wingrave are plausible because James took the largest possible view of what kept Owen (and him) from taking their expected social places. Surely James’s determination to become a writer and the distance he maintained from the trials of war, sexual involvement and parenthood were related. Like his creator, Owen was not single minded enough for the military profession. As James emphasizes, he saw the various segments of his experience as related to one another. Hence in James’s case the fierce Calvinism of his grandfather, his father’s Swedenborgian mysticism, his brother William’s pursuit of the science of the mind, for example, were all parts of the burden with which he struggled. Furthermore he took on the enormous task of trying to present in his fiction these and more of his often conflicting influences and to do so all at once. Spencer Coyle, Owen’s sympathetic mentor, points out that he was a soldier in the sense that he had the determination of one. So was James in the making of his art.
The Gothic ending of Owen Wingrave, where even his intended bride, Kate Julian, proves hostile to Owen’s departure from tradition, indicates how impossibly burdensome Henry James must sometimes have felt his inheritance was. James deserves interpreters large minded enough not to try pinning down the “main idea” of his stories. Not only is his fiction more complex than that, but the three themes mentioned above that James touches on in Owen Wingrave hardly begin to exhaust what may reasonably be said about it. The caliber of James’s art is comparable to that of Shakespeare’s.
Like several other stories by Henry James, including “The Turn of the Screw,” this is a “tale of the supernatural” or a “Gothic fiction.” Here the haunted castle or country home is the ancient seat of an English family named Wingrave, for generations wholly dedicated to the military profession. The ghostly atmosphere of the story centers on an unused room in the Wingrave home where a Colonel Wingrave long ago killed his own son. It is taken for granted that the son of the current generation, Owen Wingrave, will follow the family tradition of service to Queen and country but young Owen, who is being coached for that role, decides on a vocational break with the past.
The central questions the story raises are 1) what James meant by the burden of Owen’s inheritance and 2) what in Owen led him to try a different path. These questions have many possible answers, but I think the key to interpreting this and most other stories by James is precisely that multiplicity. First of all James, who was well into middle age and facing career difficulties when he wrote Owen Wingrave, is most likely recalling his own family’s objections to his choice of a vocation as a fiction writer back in his early twenties. Secondly Owen, who has grown convinced of the futility of war, may reflect James’s own rejection of history’s endlessly repeated belief in war as a successful way to resolve human problems. And thirdly, James may have been trying to ease his generally acknowledged fears of sexual inadequacy and consequent avoidance of the conventional (but for him unsuitable) social role of married man and father. This third interpretation seems especially applicable in those parts of the story where both Owen’s close friend and his family suspect him of cowardice.
All three of these readings of Owen Wingrave are plausible because James took the largest possible view of what kept Owen (and him) from taking their expected social places. Surely James’s determination to become a writer and the distance he maintained from the trials of war, sexual involvement and parenthood were related. Like his creator, Owen was not single minded enough for the military profession. As James emphasizes, he saw the various segments of his experience as related to one another. Hence in James’s case the fierce Calvinism of his grandfather, his father’s Swedenborgian mysticism, his brother William’s pursuit of the science of the mind, for example, were all parts of the burden with which he struggled. Furthermore he took on the enormous task of trying to present in his fiction these and more of his often conflicting influences and to do so all at once. Spencer Coyle, Owen’s sympathetic mentor, points out that he was a soldier in the sense that he had the determination of one. So was James in the making of his art.
The Gothic ending of Owen Wingrave, where even his intended bride, Kate Julian, proves hostile to Owen’s departure from tradition, indicates how impossibly burdensome Henry James must sometimes have felt his inheritance was. James deserves interpreters large minded enough not to try pinning down the “main idea” of his stories. Not only is his fiction more complex than that, but the three themes mentioned above that James touches on in Owen Wingrave hardly begin to exhaust what may reasonably be said about it. The caliber of James’s art is comparable to that of Shakespeare’s.
October 16, 2021
This has a lot of buildup before we even get near the ghosts but it's a great ghost story. The short story plotting is great with a beautiful stinger at the end. I'm surprised it hasn't been made into a theatrical movie with it's themes of toxic masculinity and anti-war satire.
December 28, 2022
Only 45 pages but it should be half the length. So much padding
September 4, 2022
El protagonista es un joven soldado que, en un momento dado, renuncia a la carrera militar, rompiendo así con una tradición familiar que se remonta a siglos atrás. Es interesante que, si bien el narrador está en tercera persona, todo lo narra desde la perspectiva de un personaje que no es el protagonista (concretamente desde la de su instructor militar, Spencer Coyle). Esto no hace más que aumentar la carga de ambiguëdad (típico de Henry James) y preguntas sin resolver, especialmente en lo que respecta a la mentalidad del protagonista. Ni siquiera me queda claro si en el relato subyace un mensaje antibelicista (vease lo que dice el personaje de Lechmere sobre el protagonista: "ha leído mucho y eso le ha abierto la mente")... o todo lo contrario (vease el final). Ah, y no podía faltar el toque sobrenatural: por ahí deambula (¿o no?) el fantasma de un antepasado de Owen.
October 9, 2022
What is it about being a corpulent repressed old queen that makes you want to create impossibly beautiful blond-haired, blue-eyed boys, only to kill them off? What could have been a serious reflection on conscientious objection turns, via the all-purpose excuse of a canvas ghost, into yet another cheap and risible death, with the decedent even assuming the position of the killer and not the victim.
Oh well, it at least gave Benjamin Britten, whose two leitmotivs were pederasty and pacifism, grist for one of his less interesting operas, although I daresay Myfawny Piper's libretto is vastly superior to James's story.
Oh well, it at least gave Benjamin Britten, whose two leitmotivs were pederasty and pacifism, grist for one of his less interesting operas, although I daresay Myfawny Piper's libretto is vastly superior to James's story.
November 8, 2022
★★★★☆ - 4 stars
Owen is quite the character I think we would have been friends! Incredible how James’ constructs characters with such personality in so short a tale.
Great short story and definitely spooky.
Owen is quite the character I think we would have been friends! Incredible how James’ constructs characters with such personality in so short a tale.
Great short story and definitely spooky.
April 17, 2026
Barely understand what is going on or what is happening, i lost the connection with the point where coyle went to the paramount house , i don’t understand the relationship between him or the haunted room , why him?? Why not Owen? the other that is related to this story?
December 25, 2017
The fifth star is for the final sentence.
November 15, 2019
So Henry James, in every sentence. Excellent.
November 9, 2021
Different ways to analyze the ending!
Overall a good quick read
Overall a good quick read
August 25, 2022
Good little short story, I did enjoy it, but thought the ending was a little predictable! Other than that, and interesting read!
December 27, 2022
1.5 - way too long for too little
April 12, 2023
overall, some good commentary on war-based perspectives. the ending is likely symbolic and has deep meaning, however, I am too tired to decipher it.
fave line: “go to sleep, you goose!”
fave line: “go to sleep, you goose!”
January 7, 2024
Henry James does it again his complexities make his stories absolutely joys to read
January 30, 2025
Old hereditary curse as a metaphor for the evil and stupidity of the tradition of war and pointless valour
February 15, 2025
A typical horror/thriller trope where a group of friends gather in a large country house with a mysterious/unexplained ending
February 4, 2026
It wasn't interesting enough to really capture my attention. There weren't any remarkable details.
March 26, 2009
This is an amazing Victorian gothic story. A great haunted house book in which a young man leaves the military, is all but accused of cowardice, and is caught up in facing the ghosts of his family curse. The chamber opera (originally written for television) by Benjamin Britten came out on CD in summer, 2008!
July 19, 2020
Historien i sig är dammig, genom att idealen är 1800-tal.
Behållningen är Henry James språk, hans egen metod och stil.
Iakttagelserna, beskrivningarna. Små nyanser, som får intrycken att växa fram.
Behållningen är Henry James språk, hans egen metod och stil.
Iakttagelserna, beskrivningarna. Små nyanser, som får intrycken att växa fram.
September 22, 2016
The story is there. The author is not.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews