Key themes
- The women's suffrage movement and the men who resist it
- Olive and Verena — a relationship that refuses easy categorisation
- The battle for a brilliant young woman's future
About this book
First published in 1886, The Bostonians is one of James' wittiest social satires. It begins with the arrival in Boston of Basil Ransom, in search of a career. The book turns on the relationship betwee
Published serially 1885-86, The Bostonians is James's most directly political American novel and his most accessible. It was poorly received on publication and James rarely referred to it afterward.
Discussion questions
- Olive Chancellor is deeply invested in Verena Tarrant's suffragist future. How does James develop this relationship — and what is he saying about its nature without naming it?
- Basil Ransom wants Verena for himself and for domesticity. How does James present the conflict between Olive's vision and Basil's — and whose does the novel ultimately endorse?
- The novel was published in 1886 and engages with the real suffragist movement. How does James handle the politics — with sympathy, satire, or ambivalence?
- The Bostonians is one of James's more accessible novels. What does this relative accessibility say about how his concerns were evolving — and does it sacrifice the Jamesian precision?
- The novel was initially poorly received but is now one of James's most discussed. What does the critical rehabilitation say about what readers now find in it that James's contemporaries did not?
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