Henry James, George Sand, and the Suspense of Masculinity

Abstract

Essays that Henry James wrote in 1897, 1902, and 1914 make clear that George Sand destabilized his authorial identity by appearing to be a more masculine writer than he. She forced him to suspend his idea of the masculine, to accept a plurality of masculinities and the freedom to construct a “plural” male self. In a 1902 essay James incorporates Balzac's masculine authority to broaden the concept of masculinity, enabling him to improvise a new masculine position for himself. In The Ambassadors James's solution to Lambert Strether's suspense between genders resembles Balzac's solution to James's own identity problem. In rejecting Maria Gostrey's proposal, Strether rejects one masculine role for another, aligning himself more with Balzac than with Sand. Overall, however, coming to terms with George Sand challenged James to define masculinity in what he calls the plural term.