This tale has been a very popular subject for critical work on James over the last 30 years, especially since its use in 1986 by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in developing her concept of the rise in late-nineteenth century Anglo-American of a ‘male homosexual panic’. However it is important not get carried away with reading between the lines of the text or imposing a preconceived interpretation on this, another of James’s stories centred on a ‘nothing’. So if you’ve reached this edition by virtue of academic work on the tale, please forget anything you may already have ingested about it while you are reading it. In fact, forget anything you have read before of the tale itself and start over. (That can of course be good advice when re-reading any fiction.)

James wrote the idea for this story in his notebook in 1901 and pulled it out the following year when subjects for additional stories were required. Unfortunately the notebook entry doesn’t identify the spark which gave rise to the idea, nor did an original inspiration appear in the author’s mind when he was composing the New York edition preface covering the tale. This despite his wishing at the same time to ‘hold [it] a successful thing only as its motive may seem to the reader to stand out sharp’. Obviously it has to reveal its own motive from within and not rely on ‘outside’ help (another reason for forgetting previous encounters or explanations!).

Although one of the tales written specifically to make up the collection The better sort (1903), and therefore probably not submitted for publication in a monthly magazine to suffer rejection like The altar of the dead, it is hard to see the average magazine reader of the period responding well to The beast’s oblique narrative and bleak outcome. James confesses in his preface, sailing close to the revealing double entendre once again, that it concerns ‘[a]nother poor sensitive gentleman, fit indeed to mate with Stransom of The altar – my attested predilection for poor sensitive gentlemen almost embarrasses me as I march! – …’. Late-nineteenth century Anglo-American society seems to have had little time for sensitive gentlemen. Nowadays we are, I hope, more tolerant, although that shouldn’t stop us judging the extent of John Marcher’s egotism.

Having warned you above about having preconceived ideas I don’t want to put you off following up any of the critical essays listed in my bibliography after you have read The beast. One very odd feature of most critics’ written work on this tale is the patriarchal hegemony they display, regardless of their own sex/gender, in referring to the chief male character as ‘Marcher’ and to the chief female character as ‘May’. In this they are of course falling into mid-twentieth century gender discourse, but once one has noticed this it becomes a really significant element in interpreting the arguments they, severally, present. In this connection the third ‘epilogue’ in Donna Izzo’s 2001 book provides some very useful clues as to what is going on. James, more constricted by nineteenth-century Anglo-American upper- and middle-class custom, refers, in the tale itself, to the lady as ‘May Bartram’ (25 times) or ‘Miss Bartram’ (5 times) and never, of course, by the overly-familiar ‘May’. He does however follow the male homosocial custom of using the unqualified ‘Marcher’ (26 times, compared with 12 occurrences of ‘John Marcher’) and never the formal Mr Marcher. Interestingly, in the preface, he names neither, restricting himself to ‘he’ for John Marcher and not even mentioning May Bartram, let alone discussing her role, which has come to seem, to some modern critics, to be crucial.

For full details of the text sources and some references to subsequent critical discussion see my bibliography for this tale. You may be interested in details of any problems I encountered while editing the source text for its presentation here, which can be found on a separate page, otherwise just start reading.