A note on the Bostonians

 The Bostonians Overview (a video summary)

The Bostonians (1886), by Henry James, is a satirical novel about the American women’s-rights movement, centered on a love-and-ideology triangle among a conservative Southerner, a Boston feminist, and her young protégée.

Main Characters

·        Basil Ransom: A poor Mississippi lawyer and former Confederate officer; eloquent, reactionary, and convinced women belong in the domestic sphere, he becomes romantically fixated on Verena and seeks to pull her away from feminism.

·        Olive Chancellor: Basil’s wealthy Boston cousin, an intense and idealistic feminist who dislikes men; she “adopts” Verena as a protégée and emotional center of her life, grooming her as a star orator for the women’s movement.

·        Verena Tarrant: Beautiful, charismatic young speaker from a dubious spiritualist family; torn between Olive’s reformist cause and Basil’s personal charm, she is pulled between public mission and private marriage.

 

Other notable figures include the elderly reformer Miss Birdseye, the practical physician Dr. Prance, Verena’s showman-healer father Selah Tarrant, and Olive’s more conventional sister, Mrs. Luna.

Plot Summary

Basil visits Olive in Boston and, at a reform meeting, both become fascinated by Verena’s oratory, though Basil despises her feminist message. Olive draws Verena into her household and movement, building an intense partnership and extracting from her a promise never to marry, while Verena’s parents and various suitors also press their claims. Basil, struggling in New York, repeatedly re-enters Verena’s life, arguing against women’s rights and urging her to marry him, which triggers Olive’s jealous fear of losing both Verena and the “cause”. The tensions culminate at Boston Music Hall: about to give a major feminist address, Verena sees Basil in the audience, breaks down, and elopes with him, leaving Olive devastated and Verena in tears that, the narrator suggests, will not soon end.