Sign in with Facebook
Kalliope's Reviews > The Europeans
The Europeans
by
After reading The American, I find myself with a sort of Mirror Image in The Europeans. In the former the American man, who feels boundless, explores, and gets burnt, in the Europe full of boundaries. In The Europeans, we find a couple of siblings who feel bound and look for a way out in the open and clear new world. This time there is a split, for we are talking
The contraposition of America and its values and Europe and its culture is an ongoing theme in James’s works – just as oil and vinegar are found, in one way or another, in most salads. Sometimes their respective flavors and textures mix well; sometimes they remain distinctly apart, without resolving into an emulsified blend.
The title is however somewhat misleading. The Europeans are not really such. They are the offspring of uprooted Americans, who have grown knowing that there was always an alternative to their existence. Different from the Europeans who, unless forced by dire conditions, would not consider once that their lives could be lived otherwise.
But the title is not misleading in that these siblings remain undefined in their ‘Europeanness’. They speak English, French, Italian and German, and are not really rooted in any particular European country. Their ‘otherness’ in the clear, sober, defined, austere, constrained world remains somewhat theoretical and vague.
This second novel presents a much more restricted setting than the one in The American and the reader often feels as if she is were facing a stage in the theater. The profusion of lively and effective dialogue, that can be easily quoted or recited, as well as the enclosed spaces, and the emphasis on costumes, contradicts somehow the suggestion of the limitless space of the New World. This theatrical tone ought not to surprise the reader, however, given that James, if unsuccessful, had always wanted to write drama.
At the end, the plot and the characters are clearly closed in and resolved in a somewhat uncharacteristic fashion for this writer. And this reinforces the nature of this short novel as a light comedy; the curtains are drawn and the spectators can gather their belongings and go back to their daily lives without further ado.
But James called this a ‘sketch’ – and it seems that differently to the pictorial artists, he understood sketches as more defined than the final work with a more loose texture.
The oil and vinegar succeeded in making this a delicious read.
by
Kalliope's review
bookshelves: literary-classics, 19-century, 2018, american, fiction-english, rereads, jamesian
Apr 17, 2010
bookshelves: literary-classics, 19-century, 2018, american, fiction-english, rereads, jamesian
Read 2 times. Last read April 23, 2018 to April 28, 2018.
Oil and Vinegar
After reading The American, I find myself with a sort of Mirror Image in The Europeans. In the former the American man, who feels boundless, explores, and gets burnt, in the Europe full of boundaries. In The Europeans, we find a couple of siblings who feel bound and look for a way out in the open and clear new world. This time there is a split, for we are talking
The contraposition of America and its values and Europe and its culture is an ongoing theme in James’s works – just as oil and vinegar are found, in one way or another, in most salads. Sometimes their respective flavors and textures mix well; sometimes they remain distinctly apart, without resolving into an emulsified blend.
The title is however somewhat misleading. The Europeans are not really such. They are the offspring of uprooted Americans, who have grown knowing that there was always an alternative to their existence. Different from the Europeans who, unless forced by dire conditions, would not consider once that their lives could be lived otherwise.
But the title is not misleading in that these siblings remain undefined in their ‘Europeanness’. They speak English, French, Italian and German, and are not really rooted in any particular European country. Their ‘otherness’ in the clear, sober, defined, austere, constrained world remains somewhat theoretical and vague.
This second novel presents a much more restricted setting than the one in The American and the reader often feels as if she is were facing a stage in the theater. The profusion of lively and effective dialogue, that can be easily quoted or recited, as well as the enclosed spaces, and the emphasis on costumes, contradicts somehow the suggestion of the limitless space of the New World. This theatrical tone ought not to surprise the reader, however, given that James, if unsuccessful, had always wanted to write drama.
At the end, the plot and the characters are clearly closed in and resolved in a somewhat uncharacteristic fashion for this writer. And this reinforces the nature of this short novel as a light comedy; the curtains are drawn and the spectators can gather their belongings and go back to their daily lives without further ado.
But James called this a ‘sketch’ – and it seems that differently to the pictorial artists, he understood sketches as more defined than the final work with a more loose texture.
The oil and vinegar succeeded in making this a delicious read.
Sign into Goodreads to see if any of your friends have read
The Europeans.
Sign In »
Reading Progress
Finished Reading
April 17, 2010
– Shelved
April 19, 2010
– Shelved as:
literary-classics
April 23, 2018
–
Started Reading
April 23, 2018
– Shelved as:
19-century
April 23, 2018
– Shelved as:
2018
April 23, 2018
– Shelved as:
american
April 23, 2018
– Shelved as:
fiction-english
April 23, 2018
– Shelved as:
rereads
April 27, 2018
–
21.08%
"It shows how extremes meet. Instead of coming to the West we seem to have got to the East. The way the sky touches the house-tops is just like Cairo; and the red and blue sign-boards patched over the face of everything remind one of Mahometan decoration."
page
43
April 27, 2018
–
20.59%
"The afternoon was drawing to a close; the coarse, vivid grass and the slender tree-boles wee gilded by the level sunbeams - gilded as with gold that was fresh from the mine."
page
42
April 27, 2018
–
31.86%
"'The house is very old, General Washington once spent a week here'.
- 'Oh, I have heard of Washington. My father used to adore him'."
page
65
- 'Oh, I have heard of Washington. My father used to adore him'."
April 27, 2018
–
34.8%
"To consider an event, crudely and baldly, in the light of the pleasure it might bring them, was an intellectual exercise which which Felix Young's American cousins were almost wholly unacquainted, and which they scarcely supposed to be largely pursued in any section of human society."
page
71
April 27, 2018
–
37.75%
"Mr Wentworth was liberal, and he knew he was liberal. It gave him pleasure to know it, to feel it, to see it recorded; and this pleasure is the only palpable form of self-indulgence with which the narrator of these incidents will be able to charge him."
page
77
April 28, 2018
–
38.24%
"Her declaration that she was looking for rest and retirement had been by no means wholly untrue; nothing that the Baroness said was wholly untrue. It is but fair to add, perhaps, that nothing that she said was wholly true."
page
78
April 28, 2018
–
39.71%
"He had known, fortunately, many virtuous gentlewomen, but it now appeared to him that in his relations wit them he ha been looking at pictures under glass. He perceived at present and interfere, how it caught the reflexion of other objects and kept you walking from side to side."
page
81
April 28, 2018
–
44.12%
"That's a compliment. I put all the compliments I receive into little money-jug that has a slit in the side. I shake them up and down, and they rattle. There are not many ye -- only two or three."
page
90
April 28, 2018
–
52.94%
"One's impression of his honesty was almost like carrying a bunch of flowers; the perfume was most agreeable, but they were occasionally an inconvenience."
page
108
April 28, 2018
–
54.41%
"Forming an opinion, say o a person's conduct, was with Mr Wentworth a good deal like fumbling in a lock with a key chosen at hazard. He seemed to himself to go about the world with a big bunch of these ineffectual instruments at his girdle. His nephew, on the other hand, with a single turn of the wrist, opened any door as adroitly as a house thief."
page
111
April 28, 2018
–
64.71%
"Narrator speaking...
It is my misfortune that in attempting to describe in a short compass the deportment of this remarkable womanI am obliged to express things rather brutally."
page
132
It is my misfortune that in attempting to describe in a short compass the deportment of this remarkable womanI am obliged to express things rather brutally."
April 28, 2018
–
68.14%
"He had removed the guns from the ramparts; he had lowered the drawbridge across the moat. The drawbridge had swayed lightly under Madame Münster's step; why should he not cause it to be raised again, so that she might be kept prisoner?"
page
139
April 28, 2018
–
68.63%
"At any rate, Acton, with his characteristic discretion, forbore to give expression to whatever else it might imply, and the narrator of these incidents is not obliged to be more definite."
page
140
April 28, 2018
–
74.51%
"Her irritation came, at bottom, from the sense, which, always present, had suddenly grown acute, that the social soil on this big vague continent was somehow not adapted for growing those plants whose fragrance she especially inclined to inhale, and by which she liked to see herself surrounded - a species of vegetation for which she carried a collection of seedlings, as we may say, in her pocket."
page
152
April 28, 2018
–
Finished Reading
July 16, 2018
– Shelved as:
jamesian
Comments Showing 1-12 of 12 (12 new)
date
newest »
newest »
Fionnuala wrote: "That's one of the things that really stood out for me. James gave us two citizens of th..."
Thank you. Yes, peculiar these 'Europeans' who retained a certain uprootedness even in their adopted continent. The Baroness, after all, is morganatic (a term that comes from the middle Ages like the France of The American), and is herself subject to non acceptance in the continent that she prefers to the New one.
Nice review. James dismissed this as one of his minor works, but I enjoyed reading it. It's one of his most accessible novels; a good introduction to the author. And there's a fine 1970's Merchant-Ivory film version.
Lisa wrote: "Lovely, Kalliope!"Thank you, Lisa.
Gary wrote: "Nice review. James dismissed this as one of his minor works, but I enjoyed reading it. It's one of his most accessible novels; a good introduction to the author. And there's a fine 1970's Merchant-..."Yes, it would be a perfect work for an introduction to James... It seems he undertook the writing with a certain humorous attitude. After all he had already written Roderick and The American. He was around 35 when he wrote this.
Thank you, Gary.
Kalliope wrote: "..The Baroness, after all, is morganatic.."I'd forgotten that detail - she really was a lost soul, between worlds.
Felix though, he was the one who was able to insert himself anywhere.
Marita wrote: "Very nice review, Kalliope."Thank you, Marita.
Fionnuala wrote: "I'd forgotten that detail - she really was a lost soul, between worlds.
Felix though, he was the one who was able to insert himself any..."
Yes, she struck me though as a very self-entered woman who would be out of place every where - just the opposite of her brother.
What an exciting simile you have found for the American/ European streams, Kall! Quite wonderful. And sumptuous.
Seemita wrote: "What an exciting simile you have found for the American/ European streams, Kall! Quite wonderful. And sumptuous."Thank you, Seemita.. And I love salads...!!!
Kalliope, I read this novel as a vignette, but after your review I'll will always see it as a vinaigrette.
That's one of the things that really stood out for me. James gave us two citizens of the world - or Europe at any rate, two people who owed no allegiance anywhere and could mix everywhere - or almost everywhere - puritanical New England is clearly a very daunting fortress to find a passage into, as daunting in its way as medieval France was for The American.
I love your vinaigrette metaphor :-)