The Bostonians

From the beginning of the novel, Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom serve as foils for each other. Olive represents Boston, “a city of culture” (14); her tasteful, luxuriant home is “very much what he had supposed Boston to be” (14). Basil represents the “blighted” American South (11). He speaks with a Mississippi accent, is “very provincial” (11), and unlike Olive’s, his “artistic sense” is not “highly cultivated” (14). Basil looks “poor” and “crumpled” despite his formal dress (6), reflecting the South’s devastation after the Civil War. Upon first meeting, Olive finds Basil “peculiar” and “exotic” (11), indicating the foreignness of the South to the North. Further representing the power dynamic between the post-Civil War North and South, Olive’s mother had been interested in offering financial aid to Basil’s mother.

While Boston represents culture and progress, the South represents tradition. Basil, a Confederate veteran, embodies old-South chivalry. When Mrs. Luna asks whether he knew she had been to Europe, he declines to remind her he just met her, for “this was not the way in which a Southern gentleman spoke to ladies” (8). His “Southern chivalry” (9) also prevents him from admitting he had never heard of her before their first meeting. Admitting he has been exposed to only “old truths” (18), Basil’s “provincial” perspective is demonstrated in his preference for women who do not “think too much” (11) or “feel any responsibility for the government of the world” (11). Whereas Olive, according to Mrs. Luna, has a “mania for ‘reform’” (17), Basil’s own “private vision of reform” (17) is “to reform the reformers” (17).

Olive is a caricature of feminism, which is evident even in her appearance. Olive is “unmarried by every implication of her being” (16). Her having “absolutely no figure” (16) suggests unnatural sexlessness, as though the effect of battling for a role not meant for women. Olive’s stern appearance reflects the rigidity of her character and her lack of enjoyment: as opposed to the milder women Basil knows, Olive is “morbid” (11). Her finding Basil “handsome” only makes her dislike him more, for she has found that men ignore “the truth […] in proportion as they are good-looking” (19).

Olive’s beliefs are extreme, as evidenced in her reflection “that she hated men, as a class” (19). Her feminism appears motivated by spite, an impression reinforced by her disappointment when Basil is “too good-natured” (13) to argue with her. Every detail of her life is calculated to live her values in petty ways. For example, though she usually endures public transportation to avoid luxury the poor cannot afford, she hires a carriage to avoid the sense that Basil is escorting her: “he belonged to a sex to which she wished to be under no obligations” (20).

Despite their differences, Olive and Basil share a mutual curiosity and even mutual envy. Each is interested in learning about the other’s home: she asks him “a great many questions” about Mississippi (17), and he is eager to attend Mrs. Farrinder’s speech if it is “something very Bostonian” (18). Though Olive at first associates Basil with “the old slave-holding oligarchy which […] had plunged the country into blood and tears” (12), she recalls how “he had fought and offered his own life” (12) and hopes she herself will be “a martyr and die for something” (12). Basil also envies Olive. When Olive laments that men try to make women subservient, Basil responds that he would “change my position for yours any day” (21). Olive and Basil longingly imagine the world through the other’s eyes. This interconnection further establishes them as foils and point to their dissatisfaction with their circumstances. They are both searching for peace and meaning.

As the novel progresses, Olive and Basil’s differences will pit them against each other, and their battle will be indicative of a larger battle between progress and convention in a time when the country seeks to carve a new path. Their refusal to bend indicates the tension of late 19th-century America as it struggles to redefine itself.