Henry James published The American first as a serial in The Atlantic Monthly between June 1876 and May 1877, then as a volume in 1877. Born an American, James made his first extended visit to Europe at age 26, returned two years later, and would remain there for the next 25 years, returning intermittently to the United States. The American represented the first of his several quiet novels that examined Americans like himself, searching for an improved existence in new surroundings.
The narrator introduces the main character, Christopher Newman, an American who has traveled to France in 1868 and visits the Louvre. A confident businessman, he suffers self-doubt for the first time while deciding how to interpret art. That questioning of self-identity signals the reader of an approaching metamorphosis, as does the name Newman. The narrator clarifies that Newman does not represent the traditional romantic hero; instead, something “profoundly reassuring” exists in his manner and bearing.
Newman becomes acquainted with Noemie Nioche, who sells her painted copies of the masters to tourists. Newman’s question of her—“Combien?” or “How much?”—signals his approach to the world; he acquires through fair negotiation. After agreeing to take French lessons from Noemie’s father, Newman meets an American acquaintance, Mr. Tristram. Newman adopts Tristram and his wife as touchstones, with Tristram considering himself integrated into the French culture.
Newman likes Mrs. Tristram, who the narrator describes as a plain woman, unsatisfied with life and her husband, who she did not marry for love, but rather to validate her fine manners; his dullness complements her own spark. She introduces Newman to Parisian society; he feeds her gossip.
The narrator discusses Newman’s military background, explaining that his killing experiences left him with “an angry, bitter sense of the waste of precious things.” They also shaped his personality as a man in search of something to value, as society values the art in the Louvre. Before leaving the United States, he had discovered he needed a vacation when he did something very uncharacteristic; he passed up the chance to seek revenge against a business associate who had mistreated him in the past. Suddenly, the chance to make money off another’s misfortunes did not appeal. That act foreshadows the novel’s conclusion.
This character shaping lays the groundwork for Mrs. Tristram’s matchmaking of Newman with Claire de Cintré, the 25-year-old widowed daughter of a deceased French aristocrat father named Bellegarde and an English mother. Her name suggests she possesses a clarity of self-vision, which Newman lacks. Entranced by her beauty and grace, made all the more stunning in contrast to her formal and cold family, Newman does not question her loyalty to that family.
Mrs. Tristram explained to Newman that in a family with a French head, “you must act, not for your own pleasure, but for the advantage of the family,” a warning he ignores. Even when Madame Bellegarde, Claire’s mother, admits, “I am on my knees to money,” Newman feels he can overcome their influence with Claire. He later learns that from her brief, unhappy marriage to a much older gentleman, she should have inherited wealth. However, his family fought the young widow, and due to some unpleasant information, she gave up her suit, angering her mother, who expected to share in her fortune. All these facts foreshadow an unhappy future.
Befriended by Claire’s brother, Valentin, whose name signals an affair of the heart, Newman succeeds in becoming engaged to Claire, accepted by family vote, including that of Claire’s older brother, Urbain. She agrees to marry after Newman tells her she is the woman he always imagined marrying, except far more perfect. He is puzzled when his words seem to hurt her. Newman persists in the romance despite Valentin’s warning regarding old established families like his: “[O]ld trees have crooked branches.” The Bellegarde family, as suggested by its name, guards a dark secret.
Newman assures Claire that she can trust him. When Mrs. Bread, another symbolically named character and an old Bellegarde servant, tells Newman to take Claire far away from the family, he begins at last to wonder about the household.
Through Newman, Valentin falls in love with Noemie, the artist from the Louvre. When Valentin learns Noemie has moved out of her father’s house, he shares his concern with Newman that she has chosen some other man. After six months of romancing Claire, Newman wonders at her continued sadness. She declares, “I’m old, I’m cold, I’m a coward,” but he protests her low self-assessment and rejoices over Madame Bellegarde’s announcement that she will give a party to celebrate the couple’s engagement.
Shortly thereafter, Valentin passes along what he has learned of Noemie’s lover, but she later contradicts Valentin, telling Newman she has not left her father. On the evening of the party, Urbaine’s wife wears a crimson dress decorated with silver moon slivers, which Newman describes as “moonshine and bloodshed,” echoed in her delighted cry of “murder by moonlight!” Their interchange foreshadows a tragic turn.
When Newman later visits Claire, Mrs. Bread takes him upstairs, where he discovers Claire is moving to the country, and she breaks their engagement, again declaring herself a terrible person. Despite his demand for an explanation, Madame Bellegarde declares only, “We are very proud.” When he learns from Mrs. Tristram that the family wants Claire to marry Lord Deepmere, an English nobleman, he becomes incensed.
As Deepmere’s name suggests, he possesses no “deep” qualities, but only an outward appearance of value. As Newman becomes more upset, Valentin exchanges words with Noemie’s escort to the theater, a duel transpires, and Valentin suffers a mortal wound. Just before dying, he shares with Newman the key to reclaim Claire. Something terrible happened to his father, and Mrs. Bread knows the story. Valentin tells Newman that he can blackmail the Bellegardes with the information, forcing the marriage.
Newman appeals to Claire, who again rejects him, claiming a curse on her family, “like a religion,” forces her to leave Paris, but she will not marry Lord Deepmere. Instead, she will become a Carmelite nun. The news infuriates Newman, filling him with a “sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known.” Newman speaks with Mrs. Bread, declaring of the Bellegardes, “I want to bring them down, down, down . . . to mortify them as they mortified me!”
Mrs. Bread hesitates, and then tells Newman of the count’s long illness, his rally toward health, then his sudden relapse, which ended in death. She suspected that Madame Bellegarde instigated the relapse, a fact the count verified. Mrs. Bread cautions Newman that Urbain alone knew of Madame Bellegarde’s actions; Claire and Valentin only suspected them. Part of Madame’s plot was to force Claire to marry a wealthy man she did not love, something that her husband had forbidden. Only with his death could Madame accomplish the match that she believed would bring her future wealth.
Mrs. Bread provides Newman with a piece of paper written in the old count’s hand that states his wife had murdered him. Although Newman does not know the exact means she used, circumstances indicate that she administered an overdose of painkiller to the count. Newman understands that he can ruin the family that has caused him so much grief with the evidence. He also understands, however, that he can never reclaim Claire, who has committed herself to the convent, where she refuses to see her family.
In the novel’s conclusion, he elects to accept his fate and, true to his character, rejects the temptation for revenge. He has asked Mrs. Bread to join him as his housekeeper and makes plans to return to America. Before leaving, he visits Mrs. Tristram to explain that he could have ruined the Bellegardes but decided against it. This decision echoes the business decision made before he left the States and signals a permanent adoption of compassion. He burns the letter in the fireplace, with the fire symbolizing purification through destruction.
Bibliography
Cargill, Oscar. The Novels of Henry James. New York: Macmillan, 1961.
Chen, Shudong. Henry James: The Essayist Behind the Novelist. Studies in American Literature, vol. 59. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2003.
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