Outing Henry James: Outing Politics and Literary Styles in Colm Tóibín’s and Joyce Carol Oates’s James Fictions

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the distinct literary styles in Colm Tóibín’s The Master and Joyce Carol Oates’s “The Master at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, 1914–1916” as differing outing politics that unveil Henry James’s secret closet. Tóibín’s reticent narrative style resonates with his careful and elusive depiction of James’s sexuality, whereas Oates’s gothic rendering of the master’s homosexuality brings out his carnal desires to the forefront. In consideration of the historical James’s sexual ambiguity, could the two writers’ differing strategies represent not contrasts but engaging accounts of the problematics of sexual identity? Attending to the biographical debates surrounding James’s homosexuality and informed by queer theories, this essay contemplates a more enabling outing politic that challenges the dichotomy between “repressed/closeted” and “out/camp” narratives. In this framework, the paper reads Tóibín’s and Oates’s differing literary styles – reticent psychological realism and gothic camp imagination – as differing outing politics to represent the queered James. It first combs through the biographical debates on James’s homosexuality in relation to queer outing politics. Situating Tóibín’s and Oates’s James fictions in this framework, I demonstrate that, read together, they show James as a queer subject that is forever elusive and refuses to be defined.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In her discussion of James’s short story, “The Beast in the Jungle,” Sedgwick deliberately avoids the labels of homosexual and heterosexual in regard to the novelist’s sexuality; instead, she focused on the issue of “male homosexual panic” in James’s work (185).

2. I borrow this term from Julie Rivkin’s “The post-Eve Sedgwick queering of Henry James” (4). Rivkin points out that Sedgwick’s queer intervention in James studies has such a profound significance that critics have to address her thesis when discussing James’s sexuality.

3. For convenience, Oates’s short story will be referred to as “The Master at the Hospital” hereafter.

4. Kathryn Kramer categorises two biographies in 1990s as “revisionist”: Lyndall Gordon’s A Private Life of Henry James (1998) and Sheldon Novick’s Henry James: The Young Master (1996); see Kramer, 198–199.

5. Kramer documented eight novels published from 1990 to 2008 that either feature James or rewrite his works (198). Tóibín also mentioned that when he visited James’s residence (the Lamb house) for research, he bumped into two writers who were working on novels that feature James (“The Haunting of the Lamb House” 223–224).

6. See, for instance, Daniel Hannah, 85–90.

7. See, for instance, Alan Hollinghurst’s review of the book in The Guardian. Terry Eagleton likewise criticizes Author, Author for being loaded with too many “irrelevant facts” ([n.p.]).

8. The debates began with Edel’s review of Henry James: The Young Master, unsubtly titled “Oh Henry! What Henry James didn’t Do with Oliver Wendell Holmes (or anyone else).” Edel questioned the hard evidence in Novick’s bold claim. Novick replied to defend himself, and in turn, he accused Edel of holding on James’s archival materials and suppressing younger scholars. Edel dismissed this attack and refused to further engage with the criticism. Kaplan stepped in on Edel’s behalf, but the debates led to no conclusion. See Sheldon M. Novick, Leon Edel, and Fred Kaplan, “Dialogue: Henry James’s Love Life.”

9. In a 1905 note, James described a “divine” and “unique” experience, which he termed “l’initiation première” (The Complete Notebooks of Henry James 319). Novick takes this as evidence of James’s sexual initiation. He further identifies James’s partner as Holmes, whose name was mentioned in a later paragraph in the same note. Edel, on the other hand, insists that the unique experience refers to the publication of James’s first book review in North American Review (“Oh Henry” [n.p.]). Other critics concede that the note is ambiguous; Novick may have over-interpreted it, but Edel’s claim somehow fails to justify James’s uncharacteristically emotional words in the note. See, for instance, Bradley 151; Flower 331–332; and Kaczorowski [n.p.].

10. See, for instance, Richard Dyer’s The Culture of Queers which names Wilde as “the queer par excellence” (6). Susan Sontag dedicates her “Notes on Camp” to Wilde (277).

11. This is not completely fictional. James did visit wounded soldiers in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London during World War I. See Zorzi, xliv.

12. Critics have debated whether James’s “obscure hurt” in the back was imagined or real. Gordon suggests that it was not a serious injury, and that James had used it as an excuse from being enlisted (51, 64). Novick, however, argues that it was James’s father who opposed his son to join the army (74).

13. Oates has rewritten The Turn of the Screw twice, retelling the story from the perspective of the ghost. Diane Hoeveler argues that Oates adopts a post-modern approach and makes what is implicit in James explicit in Oates (358). This postmodern rewriting seems to echo her deconstructive strategy here in the short story.

14. Eibhear Walshe, for instance, argues that in depicting James as closeted homosexual, Tóibín turns James’s unfulfilled desire into a “voyeuristic” one, which enriches the artistic achievement in his writing (A Different Story 115; “The Elusive Gay Male Body” 127).

15. Tóibín possibly based this scene on Edel’s account in his biography of James. See Henry James: The Treacherous Years, 66.

16. See, for instance, Robert C. LeClair, who asserts that James and Minny’s relationship is romantic. LeClair points out from their correspondence that James did not put his love into action because of his ill health in his early life. Minny’s many suitors also discouraged James from making moves.

17. According to Gordon’s biography of James, this is true: after “‘superhuman efforts’, Minny could find only a single room with only one bed” (72).

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Yen-Chi Wu

Yen-Chi Wu holds a PhD in English from University College Cork, where his research on John McGahern and modernity was funded by an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship. His research interests include Irish Studies, modernism(s), postcolonial studies, gender studies, and contemporary fiction.