Description:

The American is a novel by Henry James. The novel is an uneasy combination of social comedy and melodrama concerning the adventures and misadventures of Christopher Newman, an essentially good-hearted but rather gauche American businessman on his first tour of Europe. Newman is looking for a world different from the simple, harsh realities of 19th-century American business. He encounters both the beauty and the ugliness of Europe, and learns not to take either for granted. The core of the novel concerns Newman's courtship of a young widow from an aristocratic Parisian family. The American generally flows well and is easily accessible to today's reader, more so than some of James's later novels. Newman's friendship with Valentin de Bellegarde is particularly well drawn, and the descriptions of upper-class Parisian life are vivid. Newman seems to see Claire de Cintre only in terms of her elegance and suitability as a consort for a rich and accomplished man like himself. As for Claire, we learn nothing about what transpired between her and her first (much older) husband, nor is anything significant revealed about her feelings for Newman. Only the mercenary Mademoiselle Nioche is presented as a sexual being, and this only in the most oblique and negative terms. Even by Victorian standards, James's reticence on sexual matters is striking.