The Real Thing and Other Tales
An artist is visited by Major Monarch and his wife, genuine aristocrats fallen on hard times who wish to model for him. They are, in every observable way, 'the real thing' - and yet something is terribly wrong. James constructs an uncomfortable, quietly devastating premise: what happens when authenticity fails to transcend itself? The artist finds himself drawn instead to a shameless charwoman and a guttersnipe with theatrical instincts, because they possess what the Monarchs cannot - range, hunger, the capacity to become something other than themselves. The tragedy deepens when the Monarchs, dignified and ruined, cannot understand why their impeccable breeding produces nothing of artistic value. This is James at his most precise, dissecting the uneasy distance between genuine article and genuine art. The collection continues to resonate because it asks questions we still avoid: What is the relationship between authenticity and art? Between class and possibility? Who deserves to be represented, and by whom?
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“She sat with great intensity, giving the whole of her mind to it, and was capable of remaining for an hour almost as motionless as if she were before a photographer's lens. I could see she had been photographed often, but somehow the very habit that made her good for that purpose unfitted her for mine. At first I was extremely pleased with her lady-like air, and it was a satisfaction, on coming to follow her lines, to see how good they were and how far they could lead the pencil. But after a few times I began to find her too insurmountably stiff; do what I would with it my drawing looked like a photograph or a copy of a photograph. Her figure had no variety of expression -- she herself had no sense of variety. You may say that this was my business, was only a question of placing her. I placed her in every conceivable position, but she managed to obliterate their differences. She was always a lady certainly, and into the bargain was always the same lady. She was the real thing, but always the same thing. There were moments when I was oppressed by the serenity of her confidence that she WAS the real thing.””
— Henry James
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James, Henry. The Real Thing and Other Tales. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-real-thing-and-other-tales-ee192083-eb65-46a7-9b33-b5dec39f8575.James, H. (n.d.). The Real Thing and Other Tales. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-real-thing-and-other-tales-ee192083-eb65-46a7-9b33-b5dec39f8575James, Henry. The Real Thing and Other Tales. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-real-thing-and-other-tales-ee192083-eb65-46a7-9b33-b5dec39f8575.
