| Henry James and the Suspense of Masculinity Subjects: James Henry 1843–1916 -- Knowledge -- Psychology; James Henry 1843–1916 -- Characters -- Men; Psychological fiction American -- History and criticism; Homosexuality and literature -- United States; Masculinity in literature; Sex role in literature; M; Using insights from feminist studies, men's studies, and gay and queer studies, Leland Person examines Henry James's subversion of male identity and the challenges he poses to conventional constructs of heterosexual masculinity. Sexual and gender categories proliferated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Person argues that James exploited the taxonomic confusion of the times to experiment with alternative sexual and gender identities. In contrast to scholars who have tried to give a single label to James's sexuality, Person argues that establishing James's gender and sexual identity is less important than examining the novelist's shaping of male characters and his richly metaphorical language as an experiment in gender and sexual theorizing. Leland S. Person is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. |