American Realism versus French Naturalism: Henry James, Émile Zola and the Negotiation of Ideology

As students of nineteenth-century American literature know, one issue that has aroused controversy is whether Henry James was, at least during the decade of the 1880s, a Zolaesque naturalist or not. The strongest argument comes from Sergio Perosa who writes that “James . . . for some time at least, felt at heart, and was in his fictional practice, a full-fledged scientific ‘naturalist’ in the sense that [Émile] Zola had given to those terms” 18 . Donald Pizer in turn casts James as a naturalist when he states that James incorporates naturalistic themes in his later fiction, depicting life as “extraordinary and sensational rather than as placid and commonplace” xii . In more general terms, Edwin Fussell explains James’s factual “depth” and “detail” in French morals, culture and ideology as “the French side of Henry James” 115-116 ; while Richard Grant maintains that “Mr. James does not belong to the English school English and American being in literature but one , but rather to the French. His cast of thought is French” qtd. in Pollak 2-3 . Finally, Philip Grover prudently considers the influence of Zola to be a minor one, although acknowledging its existence 87, 94, 117, 151 .

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