Crapy Cornelia

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Henry James

Crapy Cornelia

(written 1909, text of 1910)

Introduction

by Adrian Dover

This tale is one of Henry James’s last handful of short fictions; a group which consider, in the main, his reaction to the changes he saw in New York on his extended visit to the USA in 1904-1905, after an absence of some two decades. In this particular example of the genre, the reluctant hero is so affected by the contrast between the current brash, noisy, uncaring materialist atmosphere, when forcibly reminded of the contrastingly quiet civilisation of his youth there, that he makes a dramatic change of mind.

Having given away what plot there is in Crapy Cornelia, I’ll not say too much else here, but do note how the disconnectedness of the new New York is conveyed by James. The scenes of White-Mason alone with his thoughts in a strangely deserted Central Park, which put one vaguley in mind of the famous 1950s ‘Strand’ cigarette adverts, and the off-stage reporting of Mrs Worthingham both have a distancing effect. Also we don’t, as we might expect, find out the forenames of White-Mason or Mrs Worthingham and we don’t know whether Cornelia is ‘Mrs’ or ‘Miss’ – does her Germanic surname indicate the former through a marriage in Europe, or the latter as an imigrant family? Even the Park is not specified as ‘Central’. In all, a typical Edam cheese of a late James text... full of suggestive holes.

For details of the text sources and subsequent critical discussion see the bibliography. Full details of the source text for its presentation here can be found on a separate page, otherwise just start reading.