Christopher Newman is a Jerk
An American behaves badly in Henry James' 1877 novel
“A basically passive and passionless woman.”
In Dan Simmons’ The Fifth Heart1, the author gets inside Henry James’ head and shares the above judgement as if James would honestly believe this of his character Claire de Cintré.
The following is the result of my surprise at such a claim, because of course he didn’t.
Christopher Newman is a jerk.
In James’ The American, Newman and his big fat bank account (earned, not inherited) travel to Paris, where he is wide-eyed and open to whatever experiences come his way. Two young women draw his attention, an impoverished yet ambitious painter he discovers in the Louvre and a well-born widow introduced to him by an acquaintance - an acquaintance who practically dares Newman to make a go of proposing to the unsuspecting lady.
This, of course, is a cruel joke, because Madame de Cintré is of noble stock; her family are royalists. They would never agree to such a match (he worked for his money!). Newman falls for her immediately, in predictable fashion, but Claire does not refuse him on the grounds of their class difference. She couldn’t care less that he is a commercial person, but rather, she has decided to live the rest of her life unmarried, as her personal preference.
As a teenager, Claire was married off to an older man who, it is insinuated, was abusive. What form this may have taken is anyone’s guess, but Claire has made her family promise not to ask her to remarry for a decade following his death (this involves her concession to them regarding her dead husband’s money, which she did not want and they did). At first, she insists “there are a great many reasons why I should not marry . . . more than I can explain to you . . .” She asks Newman to “please never speak of this matter again.”
Eventually she tells him if he wants any chance with her, he needs to stop pressuring her about marriage for six months. Money and title aside, her “vicious old husband,” as a servant who has been with the family for decades explains, was a “bad bargain” and “no husband for a sweet young lady.” Claire has been a party to her mother and brother’s desire to do what they believe is best for the family’s reputation, but she has fought back in the only way she knows how within their parameters.
Until Newman.
Newman believes his enormous fortune should be enough to convince Claire’s mother and brother to let him have her, and for short while after Claire accepts his proposal (after the aforementioned waiting period, during which his behavior convinces her that he is sincere), they seem agreeable. But ultimately, they can’t stomach letting her marry outside of her class, to one who has no title and a bank account full of commercial earnings. It would be a blot on the family’s reputation, and besides, there is someone more appropriate interested in marrying her. If she’s ready to marry Newman, surely she is ready for marriage to a man of their choosing (they did such a fine job discerning a husband at the last go around - there is, of course, much more to that story, including a murder, but I won’t go into it here).
When the two of them tell Newman the engagement is off, he isn’t broken-hearted. He is furious. The very idea that Claire would change her mind about him is preposterous; they must have forced her hand. He is correct in that they did pressure her, but he also doesn’t realize, or rather, he doesn’t care enough about her as a person, to understand she is done. Done with being an object for her family’s use or a man’s desire.
She has chosen not to fight her mother and brother regarding the marriage to Newman, but she will not marry anyone else, either. With less than a day’s notice to her family, she runs to a future of her own choosing. When Newman confronts her, certain she has only succumbed to her family’s expectations, Claire insists: “I am my own mistress.” Instead of becoming his or anyone’s else’s wife, she will enter a Carmelite convent, where, she explains to her thwarted suitor, “it is only peace and safety. It is to be out of the world, where such troubles as this come to the innocent, to the best.”
These are not the words and actions of, as Simmons’ Henry James claims, “a basically passive and passionless woman.”
The American has always caused me a great deal of discomfort, and my re-reading of it has not entered the double digits of say, The Portrait of a Lady or The Golden Bowl for this reason. There is something about this story and the way it is presented that makes me want to take a hot shower with bleach every time I pick it up and read another few pages.
On taking a closer again for purposes of defending Claire, I am closer to knowing why, and it isn’t just because her family bartered her off to a disgusting, abusive old man for his name and his old money. It isn’t just because there’s a murdery secret tied to this hideous alliance. It isn’t just because Newman turns against the first woman who interested him in Paris, Noémie, and resorts to calling her a prostitute because she will do what she must to pull herself out of poverty, including befriending (ahem) Claire’s second, kind-hearted brother, Valentin.2
It’s also because Christopher Newman is a jerk when Claire’s wishes do not align with his own, or rather, when he doesn’t get what he wants - the wife he believes he deserves. Claire stealthily dodges a bullet, and she knows it.3
Newman’s selfishness knows no bounds. He feels entitled to everything he wants because of his fortune, which he talks about all the time. After he meets Claire, he becomes fixated on her as a priority addition to his collection of property, to carry at his side as a decorative item to prove his value. Early on, he is expansive in his approval of her as a prize to be won. He speaks to her as if he is praising a pretty doll someone has given him as a gift, and when he discusses her with others, he doesn’t bother to couch his descriptions in more human language, because he doesn’t consider his perceptions (or his expression thereof) offensive.
“If you only knew, how exactly you are what I coveted!”
“Never was a man so pleased with his good fortune. You have been holding your head for a week past just as I wanted my wife to hold hers. You say just the things I want her to say. You walk about the room just as I want her to walk. You have just the taste in dress that I want her to have. In short, you come up to the mark; and, I can tell you, the mark was high.”
“What else have I toiled and struggled for, all these years? I have succeeded, and now what am I to do with my success? To make it perfect, as I see it, there must be a beautiful woman perched on the pile, like a statue on a monument. She must be as good as she is beautiful, and as clever as she is good. I can give my wife a good deal, so I am not afraid to ask a good deal myself. She shall have everything a woman can desire; I shall not even object to her being too good for me; she may be cleverer and wiser than I can understand, and I shall only be the better pleased. I want to possess, in a word, the best article in the market.”
She seemed “rare and precious - a very expensive article.”
“He stood ready to accept the admired object in all its complexity.”
“He had already begun to value the world’s admiration of Madame de Cintré, as adding to the prospective glory of possession.”
When her family calls off the engagement, he is irate over his loss. Instead of expressing concern for Claire and her feelings or needs, he openly seethes as he plots his revenge:
“He was disposed to sip the cup of contemplative revenge in a leisurely fashion.”
“Nursing a vengeance was, it must be confessed, a rather fatiguing process.”
“His consciousness began to throb again, on the very instant, with a sense of his wrong.”
“The very prison walls to which they had consigned the promise of his joy.” (the convent)
When he sneaks around the convent later, after Claire has explained her determination, he gets “what comfort he could” in staring at her new home, which is “too mocking to be real,” as if it exists only to taunt him about his loss (yes, everything is all about him). As he waits to confront her family after he lurks creepily around the convent, he feels “how fiercely his quarter of an hour in the convent chapel had raked over the glowing coals of his resentment.” His “rightful wrath” leads him to demand through blackmail4 her mother and brother “give me back Madame de Cintré, in the same state in which you took her from me.” He is child insisting on the return of a favorite toy, not a man concerned for a human being with whom he wished to share his life.
Claire has foiled both him and her family to become the author of her own fate. Her earlier efforts (bargaining with her family for what she wants, playing the piano for her own enjoyment and telling Newman just that when he praises her for entertaining him, choosing a dress in shocking crimson because “anyone could have chosen blue”) are but practice for the ultimate leap she takes to control her own life. Peace and safety from “such troubles” as abusive husbands, manipulative mothers, and obsessive suitors, all determined to use her to their own ends, await her within the convent walls she chooses as her home. James shares with us a woman who finds her own agency and passion by focusing on her own needs in a world that cares little for her beyond her usefulness to their desires.
Have you read The American? Do you think better of Christopher Newman than I do? I think anyone must, perhaps before reading the above, and if you do after, well, there is no explaining how one’s mind works, is there?
The American quotes are taken from the 1879 second British edition (Macmillan/Charles Dickens and Evans, Crystal Palace Press), because that’s what I have on hand. I discovered it several years ago online for less than a dollar. I paid more for shipping than for the hardback itself, which is falling apart in my hands.
For further reading pleasure, take a gander at Vern Wagner’s “Henry James: Money and Sex.” The Sewanee Review, vol. 93, no. 2, 1985, pp. 216–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27544440.
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I did enjoy Simmons’ book in spite of my disapproval of his characterization of James. I needed to find out how the strange pairing of Sherlock Holmes and James solved the primary mystery. I am always curious about how Henry James is fictionalized, but rarely am I pleased with what I find. Perhaps I am too close to the subject.
I need another thousand words to vent on Newman’s disgusting thoughts and words regarding Noémie. He badmouths her to Valentin, who cares for her more than Newman cares for Valetin’s sister. Noémie “has determined to be something - to succeed at any cost,” and Valentin defends her to Newman time and again: “In the way of resolution and capacity she is a rarity.” Newman, who had a chance with her at the beginning of his Parisian adventures, is certainly jealous: “She was very elegant, and prettier than before . . . her present self-possession and aplomb struck Newman as really infernal.”
The aforementioned “it is to be out of the world, where such troubles as this come to the innocent, to the best” absolutely includes Newman’s stalking as one of said troubles. Is it a hill to die on? YES
Did I mention a murdery secret? You’ll have to read The American to find out more.
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The endnotes! ❤️