ABSTRACT
Henry James’s first novel, Watch and Ward, begins with the hero’s affections being rejected by yet another woman. James’s treatment of children is thickly enmeshed with adult power dynamics and systems of exchange. In James’s fiction, the female child in particular is perceived as purely innocent, and therefore ready to be filled with meaning by the adult who controls her. The Jamesian child is subject to an adult will-to-power that is simultaneously economic and sexual. The dual threats of publicity and exposure to indecency swirl around James’s children, menacing to carry them away into vortex of degeneration. Mrs. Brookenham’s coolness about these sexual and financial matters explains her lack of indignation when Cashmore shamelessly admits to her his attraction to Nanda. The Victorians had a more inclusive and elastic conception of the state termed “childhood” than we do today. The Awkward Age’s moral fulcrum rests in the turn of screw induced by Longdon’s desire to rescue Nanda from her family.
