The Bostonians

“That was the way he liked them—not to think too much, not to feel any responsibility for the government of the world, such as he was sure Miss Chancellor felt.” 

When Basil first meets Olive, he immediately senses that she is “morbid” (11), unlike women “of his own soft clime” (11). He prefers women who are “private and passive” (11) and who leave important issues “to the sex of tougher hide” (11). Basil’s traditional beliefs are a major focus of the novel and will grow ever more important as he falls in love with young feminist Verena Tarrant, whose public speaking career he attempts to extinguish. It will put him at odds not only with Verena but with Olive and, it is suggested, with the changing times. Basil “fears” the feminist movement (184) not only for the “damnable feminisation” (260) it imposes on society but also for the change it effects in women; he believes he is saving not only men but also women, whom he loves “too much” (284) to leave to self-destruction. 

“The most secret, the most sacred hope of her nature was that she might some day have such a chance, that she might be a martyr and die for something.” 

Olive thinks about how Basil “fought and offered his own life” (12) for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and even though she does not agree with his cause, she cannot help but feel “a kind of tenderness of envy” (12) that he has had the “opportunity” (12) to die for what he believes in. Later that evening, at Miss Birdseye’s house, Olive is delighted to make herself available for the cause of women’s suffrage, feeling that “she had been born to lead a crusade” (30). When she thinks about avenging women who “had lived only to be tortured, to be crucified” (31), she feels an “emotion which made danger as rosy as success” (31). Olive thrives on “contention” (13), with “was most sweet to her” (13). These passages foreshadow the staunchness Olive will exhibit throughout the novel. They also subtly mock the feminist cause by presenting its followers as emotional and embittered. 

“But do take me; it’s such a chance to see Boston.”

Olive invites Basil to Miss Birdseye’s house to hear Mrs. Farrinder speak but regrets her decision and attempts to convince him not to go. Basil insists on going, however, telling her it would be a good opportunity for him to do something “very Bostonian” (18). When he arrives, he finds the attendants to be very much what he expected. Miss Birdseye “seem[s] to him a revelation of a class” (23). Mrs. Farrinder is “a mixture of the American matron and the public character” (25). Dr. Prance “struck him as a perfect example of the ‘Yankee female’” (33). Basil at times feels “conscious” (39) of the gaze of people who represent those who conquered the South. His Southernness is “his secret heresy” (39). The interest he takes in them, as if they are a foreign people, and the awkwardness he feels in their presence reflects tension between the American North and South.

“The long practice of philanthropy had not given accent to her features; it had rubbed out their transitions, their meanings.”  Women who seek to redefine their roles are seen as unfeminine and unnatural. 

Miss Birdseye has devoted her life to charity, to the extent that “waves of sympathy” (22) have eliminated her facial features. Her self-sacrifice has erased her personal identity. However, by describing her as “essentially formless” (24) and having “no more out outline than a bundle of hay” (24), James suggests that this erasure is specifically related to her being a feminist. Olive, too, is described as having “absolutely no figure” (16). 

“She had an immense desire to know intimately some very poor girl. This might seem one of the most accessible of pleasures; but, in point of fact, she had not found it so. There were two or three pale shop-maidens whose acquaintance she had sought; but they had seemed afraid of her, and the attempt had come to nothing.” 

Olive is disappointed when Mrs. Farrinder suggests she bring affluent women from her neighborhood into their cause. Having always been interested in “the romance of the people” (29), Olive prefers to work with “women who are lonely, who are piteous” (30). This passage reflects the way Olive romanticizes poverty. It also suggests that Verena is not the first young woman Olive has attempted to lure into an intimate friendship—she is merely the first who is innocent enough to be drawn in. The fact that the girls were “afraid” of Olive is a sign that that there is something ominous about the friendship she offers. Indeed, the narrator tells readers that later in her life, Verena would wonder “why she had not been more afraid” of Olive (64). 

“All I know is that I don’t want any one to tell me what a lady can do!” 

Dr. Prance speaks these words as she leaves to return to her room before the speech at Miss Birdseye’s house. Dr. Prance does not approve of the feminist movement and believes its followers “waste time” (39). However, Dr. Prance also does not abide by traditional female roles; she leaves the party early so she can study, for she does not want male doctors to have an advantage over her. Like other women who defy traditional roles, Dr. Prance is described as bearing no “relation to a girl […] whatever” (33) and having “no features to speak of” (33). Her defiance of traditional roles has, as it has Olive and Miss Birdseye, deprived her of her femininity. The novel suggests she is a true feminist, one who goes after equality in her everyday life rather than “wasting time” protesting in movements.  

“He had a passionate tenderness for his own country, and a sense of intimate connection with it which would have made it as impossible for him to take a roomful of Northern fanatics into his confidence as to read aloud his mother’s or his mistress’s letters.” 

Basil declines to describe the South to Mrs. Farrinder because the fall of the South is too sensitive a subject. He prefers not to discuss the South with people who do not sympathize with the South as he does. Basil wrestles between his loyalty to the South and his self-consciousness about being Southern in the North. His traditional beliefs are also at odds with the new, more progressive ideas of the North. Basil’s Southernness represents an older order, whereas Olive’s being a Bostonian represents suffrage and abolition. Basil’s reluctance to reveal the secrets of the South reflects the difficulty of reunification after the Civil War and the nostalgia with which Southerners saw the South..

“It is not me, mother.” 

When Dr. Tarrant praises his daughter’s gift of public speaking, Verena insists that it is not her, that “[i]t was some power outside” (44) that “seemed to flow through her” (44). She repeats this statement again in Chapter 11 when she first visits Olive. Olive senses that she is “in the habit of saying it” (63) and wonders “whether it were a sincere disclaimer or only a phrase of the lips” (63). Olive’s perceiving that Verena repeats this phrase because those around her often say it is an early sign that Verena is easily influenced. Verena’s parents exploit her pliability in order to capitalize on her talent. Verena is also exploited by Olive, who preys on her desire to please. Verena is young, innocent, and awestruck by authority, and she tends to believe what she is told. Those around her sense this in her and seek to mold her into the person that suits them best.

“I know not whether Ransom was aware of the bearings of this interpretation, which attributed to Miss Tarrant a singular hollowness of character; he contented himself with believing that she was as innocent as she was lovely, and with regarding her as a vocalist of exquisite faculty, condemned to sing bad music. How prettily, indeed, she made some of it sound!” 

The narrator frequently inserts his own musings and comments on the characters. Here, he comments on Basil’s assumption that Verena “didn’t know what she meant, [that] she had been stuffed with this trash by her father” (49). The feminists in The Bostonians often shrewish and bitter, or empty-headed and insincere. However, Basil does not escape the narrator’s judgment. The narrator seems to share Basil’s fear of feminism while sympathizing with women at the mercy of men like Basil. Whether the narrator is James’s voice, or the voice of another character entirely, is debatable. James himself was a conservative; however, being from the North, and having a sister herself in a “Boston marriage,” he also shares characteristics with Olive. The novel remains ambivalent about feminism.

“There’s money for some one in that girl; you see if she don’t have quite a run!” 

Though the narrator sometimes suggests that Basil’s ideas are outdated or insensitive, Basil is not always wrong in his assessment of the feminists. The novel, while acknowledging the antiquated nature of Basil’s perceptions, is equally critical of the feminists, if not more so. This passage, which describes Olive’s reluctance to visit the Tarrants in Cambridge, shows Basil’s earlier observation that Olive is “morbid” to be correct. The novel offers several examples of Olive’s deliberately suffering because she yearns to feel “the ecstasy of the martyr” (113). She also finds suffering worthy in others. She is pleased to discover that Dr. Tarrant’s birth is “quite inexpressibly low” (87), and she “would have been much disappointed if it had been wanting in this defect” (87). She also feels “joy” when she ponders how Verena, as a child, “came near […] to literally going without food” (87). The nobility of her suffering is dampened, however, by her justification of luxury when it suits her. Olive has “no trouble persuading herself” (134) that because they perform “high intellectual and moral work” (134), she and Verena “owed it to themselves […] to cultivate the best material conditions” (134). Olive’s selective austerity suggests hypocrisy, and as she is representative of her cause, it reflects on the cause as well.

“Her only consolation was that she expected to suffer intensely; for the prospect of suffering was always, spiritually speaking, so much cash in her pocket.” 

Though the narrator sometimes suggests that Basil’s ideas are outdated or insensitive, Basil is not always wrong in his assessment of the feminists. The novel, while acknowledging the antiquated nature of Basil’s perceptions, is equally critical of the feminists, if not more so. This passage, which describes Olive’s reluctance to visit the Tarrants in Cambridge, shows Basil’s earlier observation that Olive is “morbid” to be correct. The novel offers several examples of Olive’s deliberately suffering because she yearns to feel “the ecstasy of the martyr” (113). She also finds suffering worthy in others. She is pleased to discover that Dr. Tarrant’s birth is “quite inexpressibly low” (87), and she “would have been much disappointed if it had been wanting in this defect” (87). She also feels “joy” when she ponders how Verena, as a child, “came near […] to literally going without food” (87). The nobility of her suffering is dampened, however, by her justification of luxury when it suits her. Olive has “no trouble persuading herself” (134) that because they perform “high intellectual and moral work” (134), she and Verena “owed it to themselves […] to cultivate the best material conditions” (134). Olive’s selective austerity suggests hypocrisy, and as she is representative of her cause, it reflects on the cause as well.

“But she didn’t wish to marry him, all the same, and after he had gone she reflected that, once she came to think of it, she didn’t want to marry any one. So it would be easy, after all, to make Olive that promise, and it would give her so much pleasure!” 

This passage follows Olive’s visit to the Tarrants’ home, when Olive asks Verena to promise she will never marry. Though the request makes her “nervous” (105), Verena decides she would be delighted to accommodate Olive. The passage demonstrates Olive’s taking advantage of a younger, more naive woman. It also shows how Verena is unwittingly coerced into the life Olive chooses for her. Olive’s hold over Verena grows more constricting over time; she is “jealous” even of her relationship with her parents (85), for she does not “wish to think of the girl’s belonging to any one but herself” (85). She also takes Verena on a year-long trip to Europe to prevent her from marrying. Though she professes to want Verena to dedicate her life to the cause, Olive is also motivated by her personal feelings for Verena. By the end of the novel, both Olive and Verena have separately acknowledged that the friendship has always meant more to Olive than it has to Verena.

“The girl was now completely under her influence; she had latent curiosities and distractions—left to herself, she was not always thinking of the unhappiness of women; but the touch of Olive’s tone worked a spell, and she found something to which at least a portion of her nature turned with eagerness in her companion’s wider knowledge, her elevation of view.” 

Verena would not of her own volition dedicate her life to feminism. She does so because she is “completely under the charm” (130) of Olive; though before, she was merely she is in awe of Olive’s “authority” and “stronger will” (130), now she looks forward to all “the precious things they were to do together” (130). Thus, when she tells Olive she declined Mr. Pardon’s proposal, she is proud of the fact that she has resisted an opportunity that is “attractive” and “rather dazzling” (113). Signs of Verena’s longing for a different life appear throughout the novel. She frequently suppresses her own desires in order to please Olive.

“They were all declined with thanks, and he would have been forced to believe that the accent of his languid clime brought him luck as little under the pen as on the lips, had not another explanation been suggested by one of the more explicit of his oracles, in relation to a paper on the rights of minorities. This gentleman pointed out that his doctrines were about three hundred years behind the age; doubtless some magazine of the sixteenth century would have been very happy to print them. This threw light on his own suspicion that he was attached to causes that could only, in the nature of things, be unpopular.” 

Basil fails to grow his law business in New York and begins to wonder if “the game of life was to be won in New York” (146). He writes several articles, but none of them are accepted for publication because they convey antiquated beliefs. Basil at first wonders if his Southern accent seeps into his writing and then realizes it is the ideas related in the articles that prevent their being accepted. What he fails to realize is that his Southernness and the obsolete nature of his beliefs are one in the same. In James’s original conception of the novel, Basil was from the West, not the South. His decision to write about a Southerner instead further reinforces that the novel is, in part, about the struggle between the North and the South. Basil’s enduring poverty and his inability to regain the privilege he enjoyed as a slave-owning Southerner reflect the struggle of the South to rebuild after the Civil War. Basil’s inability to publish his articles in Northern papers is indicative of their ideological differences.

“It was a part of his Southern gallantry—his accent always came out strongly when he said anything of that sort—and it committed him to nothing in particular.” 

Basil finally visits Mrs. Luna, whom he has been avoiding. When she jokes with him that he should go with her to Europe, Basil responds, “One would go to the end of the world with so irresistible a lady!” (155). Mrs. Luna is too perceptive not to recognize the lack of sincerity in this statement. It is a typical chivalrous comment meant to placate women rather than offer any real support. The Bostonians offers many examples of Basil’s adherence to the chivalric code, which requires courtesy toward women, and he often states that his traditional views of women show not that he does not love women enough but that he reveres them. However, the code’s emphasis on the fragility of women in fact subordinates them. Mrs. Luna is annoyed with comments such as these—she wishes “he wouldn’t be so beastly polite” (155)—because she understands their patronizing nature. Verena encapsulates this idea in her speech at Miss Birdseye’s house, when she states, “They pretend to admire us very much, but I should like them to admire us a little less and to trust us a little more” (49).

“They don’t care a fig about poor Olive’s ideas; it’s only because Verena has strange hair, and shiny eyes, and gets herself up like a prestidigitator’s assistant.” 

Mrs. Luna explains to Basil that the Wednesday Club, of which Mrs. Burrage is a founder, is an organization that tries to make “New York society intellectual” (200). Mrs. Burrage intended to hire music for her party but decided on Verena instead because even “the vulgar set can easily keep up with them on music” (200). Mrs. Luna suggests to Basil that Mrs. Burrage does not truly care about the cause, that she is more concerned with her image. Later in the novel, Mrs. Burrage’s craftiness in trying to convince Olive to allow Verena to marry her son—as well as her bribing Olive with a large check—suggests that, like others in the novel, Mrs. Burrage handles Verena as a commodity to be exchanged.

“The idea that she was brilliant, that she counted as a factor only because the public mind was in a muddle, was not an humiliation but a delight to him; it was a proof that her apostleship was all nonsense, the most passing of fashions, the veriest of delusions, and that she was meant for something divinely different—for privacy, for him, for love.” 

Basil is glad Verena’s speech at Mrs. Burrage’s house is “weak” (209) because it seems to him evidence that she was meant not for public speaking but for marriage, specifically to him. He expresses a similar sentiment when he visits her in New York: he is of “the conviction that she was made for love” (257) and that “in the presence of a man she should really care for” (257), the “false, flimsy structure” of her beliefs (257) would shatter. Like many in the novel, Basil believes he is entitled “to take possession of Verena” (248). However, Basil’s entitlement has the added effect of reflecting the gender hierarchy the feminists seek to dismantle. Basil has not hidden the fact that marrying him would require Verena to give up her career. This is made evident in the final chapter, when Verena wants to “soothe” the audience she is disappointing and Basil tells her to reserve her “soothing words” for him (347).

“‘You were not made to suffer—you were made to enjoy,’ Olive said, in very much the same tone in which she had told her that what was the matter with her was that she didn’t dislike men as a class—a tone which implied that the contrary would have been much more natural and perhaps rather higher.” 

This passage and the events surrounding it demonstrate Olive’s manipulation of Verena in her attempt to prevent her from marrying, and specifically from marrying Basil. When Olive learns that Verena did not tell her that Basil wrote to her in Cambridge, she becomes cold and despondent; when Verena asks why Olive “should attach such importance” to this letter (226), Olive retorts that in fact Verena has attached importance by neglecting to tell her about it. This quotation is in response to Verena’s comment that Olive has “such a fearful power of suffering” (226). Olive continues to question Verena and to make accusatory statements, the tone of her voice suggesting that Verena’s ability to enjoy makes her a subpar feminist. The incident marks the first real moment of tension between the two women. That the chapter ends with Verena’s enjoying dinner and the opera reiterates that Verena is not naturally inclined to dedicate her life to the cause.

“I don’t know what you mean, why you speak of other persons. I can do as I like, perfectly.” 

When Basil finally convinces Verena to walk through Central Park with him, he asks her to “feel for an hour or two, as if […] there were no such person as Mr. Burrage—as Miss Chancellor” (250). In response, Verena tells him she can do as she likes regardless of the opinions of others. Her insistence that she is free shows her to be naive of the manipulating people around her. It also shows her striving to assert her independence. It reflects the gradually increasing tension between Verena and Olive, whose firm grip on Verena’s actions are beginning to stifle Verena. Verena’s comment to Basil that Olive’s going out when Basil is visiting Verena “proves that she trusts me” (252), and her immediately being “alarmed” by what she has said (252) suggests that Verena is growing more aware that she is not, in fact, free. Verena has struggled to maintain her independence because “it was in her nature to be easily submissive, to like being overborne” (255). Those who would manipulate her give her the mere appearance of independence. 

“It isn’t you, the least in the world, but an inflated little figure (very remarkable in its way too), whom you have invented and set on its feet, pulling strings, behind it, to make it move and speak, while you try to conceal and efface yourself there.” 

Since he has known her, Basil has attempted to convince Verena that her views are “balderdash” (246) and that they have been “distilled into her” (193) by her father, that she is “a touching, ingenuous victim” (193) in need of “rescue” (193). In doing so, he does not consider “how offensive it must be to her” (260). Verena is annoyed by his belief that “he might laugh at her all day without her taking offence” (247). Basil’s laughter is acknowledged even by the narrator to be dismissive. However, as is the case with Olive, he is not wrong in his assessment of Verena’s lack of agency. Though Verena is offended by his statement that she is as mindlessly accommodating as a puppet on a string, Verena herself has admitted that were it not for Olive’s influence, she would not dedicate her life exclusively to the feminist cause. This passage reflects not only Basil’s cruelty but also Verena’s gradual acknowledgement of the accuracy of his statement, which makes her feel not only “angry” but also “scared” (262).

“She wanted, in spite of the greater delay and the way Olive would wonder, to walk home, because it gave her time to think, and think again, how glad she was (really, positively now), that Mr. Ransom was on the wrong side. If he had been on the right—! She did not finish this proposition.” 

Verena feels glad that Basil does not believe in the feminist cause because if he did, she would be tempted to become romantically involved with him, and she has pledged to Olive that she will not marry. His offensive comments make rejecting him easier, for the time being. However, she recognizes the danger of falling in love and abandoning her cause. This is why she returns to Olive and begs her to return her to Boston. Verena’s defenses falter when Basil visits her in Marmion and she sees “herself afresh” (299), now believing what he had said in New York to be true. They falter again when he goes to the Music Hall: she asks him “to spare her” (343) because “so long as he should protest she was submissive” (343). Verena can resist Basil when he is not there, but “as soon as she felt him near” (346) she abandons “loyalty to her cause” (346). These passages illustrate the superficiality of Verena’s dedication and therefore of the cause itself.

“You mustn’t think there’s no progress because you don’t see it all right off; that’s what I wanted to say. It isn’t till you have gone a long way that you can feel what’s been done.” 

As Miss Birdseye dies, she tells Verena not to be discouraged and that progress takes many years. She looks back on her life and sees the change reformers have effected, for when she was young, “the community wasn’t half waked up” (310). The Bostonians depicts the struggle for the United States to reunite after the Civil War and to settle into a new moral code. Miss Birdseye’s statement offers hope that reconciliation is possible.

“This inexpressibly mournful sense that, after all, Verena, in her exquisite delicacy and generosity, was appointed only to show how women had from the beginning of time been the sport of men’s selfishness and avidity, this dismal conviction accompanied Olive on her walk, which lasted all the afternoon, and in which she found a kind of tragic relief.” 

Olive thought that she and Verena were destined to fight for women’s equality; however, the renewal of Verena’s romance with Basil indicates to Olive that Verena was sent to her only to serve as yet another example of how women are used by men for “sport.” Olive and Basil’s competition for Verena has mirrored post-war America’s vacillation between traditional and modern values, between women’s subordination and women’s equality. Basil’s evident win is devastating to Olive not just because of the loss of her friend but because of the loss of her cause.