Written at the end of the 1890’s, when issues such as female sexuality and the education of women were in fierce debate, James’s novel enacts the tension between various views of women and also of an aristocracy which was fading. This novel anticipates the experimental fiction of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. The text is that of the first edition in book form, published in 1899. Most other existing texts are based on the earlier serial version…. More >>
When Nanda Brookenham “comes out” in her mother’s salon, one question is immediately which of its male members she will marry–and soon. The urgency is partly financial: Nanda’s parents seem to live almost beyond their means and she has no dowry. It is also moral: Given the salon’s racy talk and unconcealed sexual intrigues, how can Nanda long continue to present an image of the “pure young girl” it was assumed most men would want to marry? And finally, it may be familial: Does Mrs. Brookenham really want a younger female competitor sitting with her daily?
Nanda’s choices seem limited to three: The handsome, clever, conceited Vanderbank, who she prefers, but who is not that well off and who may be attached to her mother. The ugly, awkward, but rich and kind Mitchy, who prefers her. And possibly, the elderly, conventional, but rich and kind Mr. Longdon, who was in love with her dead grandmother and who may turn out to be either a benefactor or a suitor.
Nanda’s mother is highly manipulative, not only in trying to arrange her daughter’s marriage but in meddling with all her friends’ affairs. The grandmother to whom Mr. Longdon always compares Nanda was the eptiome of old-fashioned purity and reticence. The other central question of the novel is: Which role model will Nanda choose?
In the hands of a less verbose writer, The Awkward Age could have been action-packed, clever, and even moving in depicting the limitations of its characters’ choices. As it is, James’s hesitations, qualifications, and reluctance to fully disclose his characters’ motivations partly spoil it. We know (as much as James will ever tell) which suitor Nanda chose. But we are unable to gauge whether she has been manipulative, and acted from cynical financial and social calculation, or whether she has been “pure,” and acted from real emotional impulse. That is, we never quite know which role model she chose (though I have my guess).
The novel is written mostly in dialog and reads in places like a play. Personally, I’d like to see it turned it into a play or film script. Simply cutting out a lot of verbosity could give it a clear meaning and a real ending. I even think I know what she’d do with her life after the novel ended.
Rating: 4 / 5
I thought the value of this book lied not in its story (it was forgettable), but as a sort of cultural museum, allowing one to look into what English “high society” was like at the end of the 19th century.
What it was, I found, was horribly superficial and empty. These people had little to do with their time except gather at eachother’s parlours and chat idlely and endlessly. But with nothing to talk about and all day to talk about it, it was considered better to sound “clever” than to have something meaningful to say; style was valued in the absense of substance. No one said what they felt, no one felt strongly about what they said, and the whole frustrating lot of them came across as a bunch of phonies. They were all but toppling over with the weight of their own pretensions.
The reason I found this frustrating, though, is that in his other works I have read (admittedly not that many), the reward for struggling through James’ prose is his deeply penetrating understanding of human nature; clearly, James “gets” people, and it shows in his sharp observation and subtle wit. So that made me struggle all the more to peel back the layers of clever chatter to “get” what James was driving at, but after I turned the final unfathomable page, all I could say was “huh?”
Rating: 2 / 5
This novel tells a familiar tale: old-fashioned man enters a tangled web of wealthy British fashionable types, makes a proposal, and the web falls apart. Mr. Longdon, a wealthy old man from Suffolk, returns to London to find the children and grandchildren of his ancient love. Out of respect for this unspoiled affection, he takes an interest in the grand-daughter of his love and tries to pull her out of the circle of influence that has, effectively, soiled her. James manages some interesting and convincing characters, and these pawns interact in some magnificent scenes. It almost reminds me of Restoration Comedy, with its complicated dialogue and dramatic jumps in setting that resemble staged scenes. The major thread of the novel is the relationship between Vanderbank, a complicated but good-natured young man who has managed to penetrate that affluent circle, and Nanda Brookenham, the granddaughter of Longdon’s lost love. Vanderbank remains deliciously puzzling to the end of the novel, and Nanda manages a kind of heroism. The conclusion is somewhat surprising; James, by this point in his career, seems to have moved beyond the endorsement of conservative values evident in a work like The Bostonians. Despite the surprise, though, it was a great deal of fun getting to that conclusion. This novel is as close to a page-turner as I have read from James thus far, and bristles with subtle interrogation of a rotting social structure. I have no trouble saying, like F.R. Leavis, that this novel ranks among James’s best.
Rating: 5 / 5
Critics will often pair this novel with his earlier “What Maisie Knew.”
Both novels deal with the child’s / adolescent’s emerging conscience, while faced with adult corruption.
In “Maisie” and “Awkward,” we see James following up on his fascination with Hawthornian themes.
James’s facility with dialogue, in which abrupt blushes are loaded with meaning, is apparent here. The drawing-room conversations reminded me of a party in a swimming pool; each character is constantly, in a conversational sense, “taking a plunge and coming up somewhere else.”
I found this novel somewhat thin – read closely James’s “Preface to the New York Edition”; can you hear James in self-defense mode?
Overall, not bad, but “Maisie’s” somber and gloomy tone was better suited to the subject matter and themes than the “light and ironic” touch of “Awkward.”
Rating: 3 / 5
An absolutely amazing book, and one of the best examples of the qualities that make Henry James unique. What James presents us with is basically a group of people whose fate is already determined on the novel’s first page. The entire narrative course of the book consists of the schemes and rationalizations these characters put together in a series of unsuccessful attempts to alter or deny their various fates. A beautiful instance of the idea that language, and the fantasies constructed by language, form a “parallel universe” of sorts, which exists both as a reflection of and a divergence from the physical reality in which James’ characters exist. Really not to be missed
Rating: 5 / 5