SOURCE: Hocks, Richard A. “Early James: Social Realism and the International Scene.” In Henry James: A Study of the Short Fiction, pp. 12-35. Boston: Twayne, 1990.

In the following essay, Hocks explores the international theme—the contrast between Americans and Europeans—in Henry James's short fiction.

In James studies it is sometimes customary to cite “The Madonna of the Future” (1873) and “A Passionate Pilgrim” (1871) as early prototypes in James's evolution toward the international theme, yet many Jamesians would probably agree that both immature tales are uncertain in their focus. It is true that in “The Madonna” the artist-protagonist Theobald, an expatriate American and compatriot to the narrator, proclaims Americans “the disinherited of Art,” and that the narrator himself admits to being of the “famished race”;¹ yet the real center of the tale seems to be the ironic disparity between a pristine aesthetic idealism and artistic practice, and thus more...