Word: humanism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SATISFACTION of reading a Henry James novel is seeing through eyes that penetrate the surface of Victorian manner and dress, and resolve scenes of human life into clearer images of human nature. The appeal is surely intellectual rather than emotional--the beauty of a James' novel is not so much in the characters' intrigues, but in the author's view of them...
James' characters, without James' words, seem thin even to a ready observer of human nature...
Without an analytical personal of Henry James to crystalize these routine affairs into clear gems of human nature, we have to trust that the characters are the way they appear to be or are the way they say they are. When Felix wears bright flowered suspenders with checkered pants he looks like a fool. When Gertrude says that her family makes use of all 1000 ways to be dreary; when Felix says that in marrying him Gertrude would be hiding her light under a bushel, he being the bushel; and when Eugenia says she is a deserted baroness left with...
...analytic persona. The director, James Ivory, as well as both Wentworth and James himself are, as Wentworth states in the novel, aware that "Forming an opinion--say on a person's conduct--was a good deal like fumbling in a lock with a key chosen at hazard." As analyzing human nature can be slightly slow, clumsy and difficult on paper, so much harder is it to render it on film ready made for passive viewing in a theater. Without an insightful narrator or character who is willing and able to pronounce judgements on the characters, only the formal, though charming...
...students who incorporate into their own psyches the standards of evaluation set by the Educational Testing Service. ETS and the other major testing firms decide who has 'aptitude' and 'intelligence,' decide who has access to educational and professional opportunities. They are regulators of the human mind...