Every scene in which these characters appear adds to the pleasure in being
able to know and love them, even though they are merely characters in a
book.
Only a few such persons as these, so rich in the qualities of the heart,
appear in James's novels. He has portrayed a greater variety of men and
women than any other American writer, but they usually interest him for
some other quality than their power to love and suffer. He is tempted to
regard life from the intellectual viewpoint, as a problem, a game, and a
panorama. He does not, like Hawthorne, enter into the sanctuary and become
the hero, laying the lash of remorse upon his back. James stands off, a
disinterested onlooker, and exhibits his characters critically, accurately,
minutely, as they take their parts in the procession or game. Brilliant and
faultless as the portraits are, they too frequently appear cold, pitiless
renditions of life, often of life too trivial to seem worthy the searching
study that he gives it. Ralph Touchet, Roderick Hudson, Isabel Archer, and
Miss Light are sufficient to prove the tremendous power possessed by James
to present the emotional side of life. Both in theory and practice,
however, he usually prefers to remain the disinterested, impartial,
detached spectator.
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