Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 3 - Promising Oneself

  • Stuart Burrows, Brown University, Rhode Island
  • Book:
    Henry James and the Promise of Fiction
    Published online:
    26 October 2023
    Print publication:
    09 November 2023, pp 74-99

  • Summary

    Chapter 3 examines what it means to break a promise, and how doing so might be more virtuous than keeping it. Various promises are broken in The Ambassadors, although ironically their not being kept makes no difference, since what had been promised happens anyway. The chapter focuses on this odd paradox as a means of solving the central puzzle of the novel: Strether’s belief at the end of his summer in Paris that he has remained “just the same for himself on all essential points as he had ever been” (XXII, 284) while undergoing a profound transformation. As I see it, Strether’s developing sense of morality is a creative force, an act of the imagination.