dianne b.'s Reviews > The Bostonians

This is one of those books i’ll continue to ruminate on and most likely decide my thinking was awry, maybe often. I have a difficult time believing Verena - i guess what i mean is suspending my disbelief for her. How anyone could live a couple of decades and apparently not develop any predilections, any thoughts of her own, even about herself? She is presented as a pure vessel (empty?) gifted with a divine afflatus of enthusiasm, and the capacity to engage any audience.

“The worst of the case was that Verena was sure not to perceive this outrage - not to dislike them in consequence. There were so many things that she hadn’t yet learned to dislike, in spite of her friend’s earnest efforts to teach her.”

This is classic James wit, but also speaks to Verena’s lack of an opinion; sadly, the humor wouldn't work if we thought she had one. She has a certain unformed and vanishing quality which for me was much more difficult than any of the crusty, selfish, atavistic behaviors of Ransom, the goofy nihilism of Adeline or the austere, obdurate Olive. Verena’s desperation to please whomever she’s facing, to take the shape of the container she’s offered - the soft, attractive, fluffy girl/woman contrasted with the rigidity of the hyperintellect Olive - may be the point. I hope not. I would like to think James made Verena so malleable, albeit unrealistically so, as she had been reared to do this - be a source of funding for her much less talented sleazeball mesmerizing parents - to be able to speechify about anything. I prefer to think this rather than think James was really against suffrage.

“... said Ransom, smiling as men smile when they are perfectly unsatisfactory.”