Perhaps one covers the ground by saying that the James of this period is "light literature," entertaining if one have nothing better to do. Neither "Terminations" nor (1896) "Embarrassments" would have founded a reputation.
1896-97. Improvement through "Other House" and "Spoils of Poynton." I leave the appreciation of these, to me, detestable works to Mr. Hueffer. They seem to me full of a good deal of needless fuss, though I do not mean to deny any art that may be in them.
1897. The emergence in "What Maisie Knew." Problem of the adolescent female. Carried on in:
1899. "The Awkward Age," fairy godmother and spotless lamb and all the rest of it. Only real thing the impression of people, not observation or real knowledge. Action only to give reader the tone, symbolizing the tone of the people. Opening tour de force, a study in punks, a cheese soufflé of the leprous crust of society done to a turn and a niceness save where he puts on the dulcissimo, vox humana, stop. James was the dispassionate observer. He started with the moral obsession; before he had worked clear of it he was entoiled in the obsession of social tone. He has pages of clear depiction, even of satire, but the sentimentalist is always lurking just round the corner. This softens his edges. He has not the clear hardness, the cold satiric justness that G.S. Street has displayed in treating situations, certain struggles between certain idiocies and certain vulgarities. This book is a spécialité of local interest. It is an étude in ephemera. If it contained any revelation in 1899, it no longer contains it. His characters are reduced to the status of voyeurs, elaborate analysis of the much too special cases, a bundle of swine and asses who cannot mind their own business, who do not know enough to mind their own business. James's lamentable lack of the classics is perhaps responsible for his absorption in bagatelles.... He has no real series of backgrounds of mœurs du passé, only the "sweet dim faded lavender" tune and in opposition to modernity, plush nickel-plated, to the disparagement, naturally, of the latter.
Kipling's "Bigod, now-I-know-all-about-this manner," is an annoyance, but one wonders if parts of Kipling by the sheer force of content, of tale to tell, will not outlast most of James's cobwebs. There is no substitute for narrative-sense, however many different and entrancing charms may be spread before us.
"The Awkward Age" might have been done, from one point of view, as satire, in one-fourth the space. On the other hand, James does give us the subtly graded atmospheres of his different houses most excellently. And indeed, this may be regarded as his subject.
If one were advocate instead of critic, one would definitely claim that these atmospheres, nuances, impressions of personal tone and quality are his subject; that in these he gets certain things that almost no one else had done before him. These timbres and tonalities are his stronghold, he is ignorant of nearly everything else. It is all very well to say that modern life is largely made up of velleities, atmospheres, timbres, nuances, etc., but if people really spent as much time fussing, to the extent of the Jamesian fuss about such normal trifling, age-old affairs, as slight inclinations to adultery, slight disinclinations to marry, to refrain from marrying, etc., etc., life would scarcely be worth the bother of keeping on with it. It is also contendable that one must depict such mush in order to abolish it.[10]
The main feeling in "The Awkward Age" is satiric. The dashes of sentiment do not help the work as literature. The acute observer is often referred to:
Page 131. "The ingenious observer just now suggested might even have detected...."
Page 133. "And it might have been apparent still to our sharp spectator...."