Coast of Bohemia
Cornelia Saunders has everything a woman of her station could want: looks, comfort, and a revolving door of respectable young men eager to marry her. Yet something gnaws at her. When she ventures into the margins of Boston's bohemian world, half in terror and half in hope, she discovers that both spheres are performing. The bourgeoisie pretend their emptyness is contentment; the artists pretend their poverty is passion. Howells, the great realist who defined American literary taste, wrote this novel to explode the sentimental conventions of his era, and he does so with a wit that still cuts. Cornelia's question, is her artistic gift real or imagined?, becomes a mirror for larger ones about autonomy, identity, and what we sacrifice when we choose a life. The ending refuses easy resolution, because Howells understood that freedom and uncertainty are often the same thing.
X-Ray
