Henry James' The Beast in the Jungle and The Ambassadors

The Beast in the Jungle was published in 1903 along with The Ambassadors and is the product of “late” Henry James. By that year James was more conscious of his own stylistics, which include verbal irony, ambiguity, and a peculiarly convoluted way of stating facts that adds immeasurably, however, to their accuracy and subtlety. This style of writing belongs to the man and to the age in which he wrote: the fact that James rewrote some of his earlier works in his later, more complicated style attests to his sensitivity to his milieu but also to his own particular view of art. In the end the psychological novel as a form belongs to many writers, but the style of The Beast in the Jungle belongs to James alone.

Similarly, the older, nonaggressive, mature hero of James, whether he is Lambert Strether or John Marcher, for whom time is running out, has the unmistakable stamp of James' own personality. John Marcher, as one of a series of James' passive heroes, is the opposite of the “knight in shining armor.” In the first place, he is an antihero whose essential passivity makes him an ironic victim of life; second, his tragic isolation makes him very much the precursor of the alienated man of the twentieth century. As an antihero, he is James' own particular psychological projection; he is Jamesian to the core.

Translated into dream terms the romantic quest represents the hero's search for libidinal fulfillment and release from the anxieties of life. The ironic quest leaves Marcher as the hunted and the beast, a woman as the hunter. The crouching beast in the jungle lay in wait for him amid the twists and turns of the months and the years. Marcher is prevented from marrying: