Teaching the “Grandsons of Balzac” a Lesson: Henry James in the 1890’s

Lyall H. Powers, in Henry James and the Naturalist Movement, dubs the period spanning from “The Art of Fiction” in 1884 to The Tragic Muse in 1890 Henry James’s “Naturalist Experiment”, and rightfully so (Powers 3). There is much evidence, in James’s own notebooks, that The Bostonians was influenced by Daudet’s L’évangeliste, The Princess Casamassima by Turgeneff’s Virgin Soil, and The Tragic Muse by the narrative techniques of Maupassant (NB 47, Powers 91, NB 92), and Powers effectively show...