What is it about?
James is famous for celebrating "intelligence" in fiction--whether intelligence refers to mental acuity, the consciousness of a central character, or the qualities required to read and appreciate his work. However, I argue that James also valued stupidity, insofar as stupidity refers to a form of perceptual insensibility that protects oneself or others from damaging experiences and exploitation.
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Why is it important?
This article uses stupidity to explain a number of features in James's late works, including the romantic elevation of insensitive or unintelligent characters, the fascination with beautiful yet inscrutable objects, and the very style itself that seems to promote its own unintelligibility.
Perspectives
With this article, I wanted to find a better way to describe those features of James's works that have hitherto been interpreted as either "innocence" or "repression." These focus excessively on sexual matters when in fact James was grappling with more fundamental problems inherent to the very acts of sensation and cognition.
Dr. Matthew Sussman
University of Sydney
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Henry James and Stupidity, NOVEL A Forum on Fiction, January 2015, Duke University Press,
DOI: 10.1215/00295132-2860325.
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