ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Henry James’s classic 1903 novel and subsequent appraisal of American culture (1907) within the context of growing criticism and scholarship on the transnational turn in American Studies. The transnational move frequently is accompanied by a readjustment of allegiances and values, as characters encounter different cultures and perspectives. The narratives inscribed in both of these works are lodged within historical dynamics involving the place of the United States within the world. An examination of the novel’s protagonist, Lambert Strether, as he moves from England to Paris, shows how his loyalties shift, transcending the interests of the party who sent him on his mission, as he takes things in and sees another (transnational) perspective, adjusting his own moral compass and views in response his apprehension of fresh and changing circumstances. Similarly, in The American Scene, our “restless analyst” takes in and critiques his homeland in relation to values he has known and experienced abroad, applying a distinctly comparativist approach in an appraisal of aesthetic values, the role of money, and the unfolding experiment in democracy. Both narratives end on a distinctly inconclusive note. A consideration of The Ambassadors and The American Scene side by side highlights key relationships between James’s fiction and his travel writing. James’s short story “The Jolly Corner,” along with the two preceding more substantial works, dramatically presents the dialectical interaction between aesthetic appreciation precipitated by travel and exposure to other cultures and monetary accumulation accompanying an adherence to domestic interest. More broadly, the essay opens up to consider James’s novel within the tradition of the American expatriate novel, a tradition extending from Cooper up through Hawthorne, James, Hemingway, Barnes, Baldwin, Bowles, Kingsolver, Doerr, Eggers, and so many others. This transnational approach reveals a complex, evolving story of US interactions with the world.
