Questioning the Master: Gender and Sexuality in Henry James's Writings

This is the first collection to bring together previously unpublished essays exploring James's depictions of gender and his use of sexual imagery that is balanced, objective, and critically diverse. Nine articles examine James's fiction, films made from his works, his own literary criticism, letters, and travel writing. These essays represent a range of theoretical perspectives - cultural studies, feminist and gender studies, queer theory, Lacanian and deconstructive psychoanalytical studies, and historicism. Contributors include eminent James scholars such as Sarah Daugherty, Leland Person, and John Carlos Rowe, as well as critics who have more recently established their reputations in James studies such as Mary Esteve, Eric Haralson, Bruce Henricksen, Anny Brooksbank Jones, Priscilla Walton, and Michael Wilson. The editor, Peggy McCormack, introduces each essay by contextualizing its theoretical perspective as well as establishing its relationship to contemporary and previous James scholarship.

This volume will be a valuable resource for readers in the fields of James, American literature, the novel, and gender studies. It assumes no a priori critical perspectives in its reading and, to that end, examines the writing rather than James's biography. Questioning the Master constitutes the first collection of essays that brings together a variety of critical approaches and a mix of established and newer James specialists to the examination of two subjects heatedly debated in current James scholarship: gender depiction and sexual imagery.