Henry James
The Europeans
The Europeans is a short novel by Henry James, a comic writing that dwells on the contrasts between the habits, attitudes and behavior of two people coming from Europe and their American relatives. The sketch was first published in the form of a serial in 1878 in The Atlantic Monthly and was published only much later, after James had revised and rewritten it several times. The Europeans is just as much a romance as it is a novel about communication failures. The two title characters, two siblings, a young man and a woman, have an American mother, but they have been brought up in Europe. They come to a village in Massachusetts to visit their cousins whom they have never met. The two are elegant, with aristocratic allures, but of no financial means, while the American cousins and their entourage is wealthy, but not very cultivated. The visit brings about lots of funny events and James makes the most of including problems related to cross-cultural communication. It is not only the shallow and often greedy European attitude towards life that is contrasted with the Puritanism of the American cousins, but language and manners as well. Both the male and the female characters are well-written and complex. James describes them in pairs of opposition – Eugenia, the difficult European woman looking for a wealthy man to marry is in sharp contrast with the Wentworth women, all humble and simple and the male characters are not less contrasting. The language used throughout the novel is sparking and witty, and James adds humor to all situations while not failing to express social criticism, either. James chooses an omniscient narrator to tell his story, providing the audience insight into the feelings, emotions and motivations of each of the characters as well as long physical descriptions and making the readers feel that they know the characters for a very long time.
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