The Aspern Papers

“Every one of Aspern’s contemporaries had, according to our belief, passed away; we had not been able to look into a single pair of eyes into which his had looked or to feel a transmitted contact in any aged hand that his had touched. Most dead of all did poor Miss Bordereau appear, and yet she alone had survived.”

This passage includes corporeal elements of looking into eyes and touching hands, which emphasizes the intimacy with which the narrator and Cumnor view Aspern. The final sentence emphasizes Juliana’s age, particularly as it begins with an allusion to death, before concluding with her survival.

“It was a large shabby parlour, with a fine old painted ceiling and a strange figure sitting alone at one of the windows. They come back to me now almost with the palpitation they caused, the successive feelings that accompanied my consciousness that as the door of the room closed behind me I was really face to face with the Juliana of some of Aspern’s most exquisite and most renowned lyrics.”

James introduces conflict between the setting’s previous glory and its current state using diction, particularly “shabby” as opposed to “fine.” This foreshadows the conflict between representation and reality that occurs throughout the narrative between the long-ago Juliana of Aspern’s lyrics and the Juliana who exists in the present.

“Then came a check, with the perception that we were not really face to face, inasmuch as she had over her eyes a horrible green shade which, for her, served almost as a mask. I believed for the instant that she had put it on expressly, so that from underneath it she might scrutinize me without being scrutinized herself.”

Juliana’s eyes, allegedly beautiful but always hidden, symbolize the Aspern papers themselves—which are also of great supposed value but inaccessible. This passage, in which the device that obscures her eyes is introduced, is significant because it represents the narrator’s reaction to the “horrible” shade she wears over her eyes. The vivid description of the narrator’s perception as he realizes her eyes are obscured, and the fact that he thinks it an intentional choice to allow her to scrutinize him, characterizes his strong reaction to her as an individual.

“Besides, though Miss Bordereau could not to-day be called personally attractive and there was something even in her wasted antiquity that bade one stand at one’s distance, I felt an irresistible desire to hold in my own for a moment the hand that Jeffrey Aspern had pressed.”

James introduces conflict between the narrator’s desire for intimacy with Aspern and his negative reaction to Juliana. The contrast between the impulse to keep distance from her “wasted antiquity” and his desire for physical touch emphasizes the complexity of the narrator’s feelings.

“I remained a while longer, wandering about the bright desert (the sun was pouring in) of the old house, thinking the situation over on the spot.”

James uses metaphor in this passage to develop the setting of the house, comparing it to a desert—a vast, desolate, lifeless space. This description aligns with many of the narrator’s impressions of the house’s occupants. The parenthetical clause in this sentence creates a rapport between the narrator and reader, as it provides additional explanation that seems to be directed to the audience to whom he is relating his story.

“The two ladies appeared to have no visitors whatever and no sort of contact with the world. I judged at least that people could not have come to the house and that Miss Tita could not have gone out without my having some observation of it. I did what I disliked myself for doing (reflecting that it was only once in a way): I questioned my servant about their habits and let him divine that I should be interested in any information he could pick up. But he picked up amazingly little for a knowing Venetian.”

James reflects on the mystery associated with the Bordereaus’ isolation and emphasizes the theme of Privacy and Reclusiveness in this passage. The use of the parenthetical clause reflects the narrator’s thought process as he seeks to justify his dishonest actions.

“The real reading of the matter, I afterwards perceived, was simply the poor old woman’s desire to emphasize the fact that I was in the enjoyment of a favour as rigidly limited as it had been liberally bestowed. She had given me a part of her house and now she would not give me even a morsel of paper with her name on it.” 

This passage emphasizes the retrospective nature of the narrative, as the narrator is telling the story some time after it has occurred. The focus on the receipt as a symbol of the relationship between the narrator and Juliana is indicative of both her cunning character and his editorial tendency to create narrative and analyze events in detail. It also relates to the motif of money and transaction in the novella.

“My eccentric private errand became a part of the general romance and the general glory—I felt even a mystic companionship, a moral fraternity with all those who in the past had been in the service of art. They had worked for beauty, for a devotion; and what else was I doing? That element was in everything that Jeffrey Aspern had written and I was only bringing it to the light.”

This passage characterizes a contrast between the narrator’s self-awareness and his tendency toward self-justification. He is aware that his is an “eccentric” errand, which suggests a sense of the unusual nature of his actions; however, the use of the question “what else was I doing?” and the language of “I was only” suggest justification of one’s actions.

“I sat spinning theories about her in my arbour and the bees droned in the flowers. It was incontestable that, whether for right or wrong, most readers of certain of Aspern’s poems (poems not as ambiguous as the sonnets—scarcely more divine, I think—of Shakespeare) had taken for granted that Juliana had not always adhered to the steep footway of renunciation. There hovered about her name a perfume of reckless passion, an intimation that she had not been exactly as the respectable young person in general.”

James creates intertextuality through the allusion to Shakespeare in this passage. The passage also performs literary analysis, characterizing the narrator’s editorial mindset and enhancing the novella’s metafictional character.

“She told me more about their affairs than I had hoped; there was no need to be prying, for it evidently drew her out simply to feel that I listened, that I cared. She ceased wondering why I cared, and at last, as she spoke of the brilliant life they had led years before, she almost chattered. It was Miss Tita who judged it brilliant; she said that when they first came to live in Venice, years and years before (I saw that her mind was essentially vague about dates and the order in which events had occurred), there was scarcely a week that they had not some visitor or did not make some delightful passeggio in the city.”

This passage emphasizes the disconnect between the previous “brilliant life” the Bordereaus reportedly lived and their present isolation. The shift emphasizes the theme of Privacy and Reclusiveness and suggests the tendency to romanticize the past.

“She had in fact had a glimpse of the Venetian world in its gossiping, home-keeping, parsimonious, professional walks; for I observed for the first time that she had acquired by contact something of the trick of the familiar, soft-sounding, almost infantile speech of the place. I judged that she had imbibed this invertebrate dialect, from the natural way the names of things and people – mostly purely local—rose to her lips. If she knew little of what they represented she knew still less of anything else.”

James employs unique diction and alliteration in this passage to characterize Tita’s adoption of Venetian speech patterns. The terms “infantile,” “imbibed,” and “invertebrate” are aurally poetic, as well as connoting both instinct and immaturity.

“‘I don’t care what she cares for! She must tell me – it’s not a chance to be lost.’ ‘Oh, you should have come twenty years ago: then she still talked about him.’ ‘And what did she say?’ I asked, eagerly. ‘I don’t know—that he liked her immensely.’ ‘And she—didn’t she like him?’ ‘She said he was a god.’ Miss Tita gave me this information flatly, without expression; her tone might have made it a piece of trivial gossip. But it stirred me deeply as she dropped the words into the summer night; it seemed such a direct testimony.”

This passage includes repetition of the narrator’s earlier statement that Aspern is a god to him, which creates connection between the narrator and Juliana in their view on the poet. It also suggests Tita’s longing for an idealized past with the “you should have come twenty years ago.” Given her proposition that the narrator marry her, this suggestion also alludes to her wish that she could have married earlier and avoided being unwed.

“‘Inhuman? That’s what the poets used to call the women a hundred years ago. Don’t try that; you won’t do it as well as they!’ Juliana declared. ‘There is no more poetry in the world—that I know of at least. But I won’t bandy words with you,’ she pursued, and I well remember the old-fashioned, artificial sound she gave to the speech.”

This passage suggests a theme of romanticization of the past with Juliana’s statement that there is no more poetry in the world. Her word choice of “bandy words” and the narrator’s description of the old-fashioned, artificial sound of the speech make the dialogue vivid and emphasize the antagonistic relationship between these characters.

“My attention wandered from her; her words of a while before, ‘Oh, she has got everything!’ echoed so in my consciousness.”

James represents the narrator’s thought process in detail in this passage, including his distraction and focus on Tita’s earlier statement. The narrator’s meditation on the idea that “she has got everything” emphasizes the ambiguity of the archive, both because it is vague and because the narrator and reader never learn what the archive contains.

“Do you mean don’t people buy them? A little—not so much as I could wish. Writing books, unless one be a great genius—and even then!—is the last road to fortune. I think there is no more money to be made by literature.”

This passage emphasizes the metafictional component of the novella, as James has his narrator write about the pitfalls of a career in writing. The use of hyperbole, “no more money,” has a comedic and self-deprecating effect.

“‘Oh, I’ve seen you enough for to-day. I’m satisfied. Now I’ll go home.’ Miss Tita laid her hands on the back of her aunt’s chair and began to push, but I begged her to let me take her place. ‘Oh yes, you may move me this way—you shan’t in any other!’ Miss Bordereau exclaimed, as she felt herself propelled firmly and easily over the smooth, hard floor.”

The narrator’s gesture of asking to push Juliana’s chair suggests his desire to be close to Aspern by being close to her. Her use of double entendre about moving her physically but not in terms of persuading her to give him the papers suggests her wit.

“None the less I scrutinized every article of furniture, every conceivable cover for a hoard, and noticed that there were half a dozen things with drawers, and in particular a tall old secretary, with brass ornaments of the style of the Empire—a receptacle somewhat rickety but still capable of keeping a great many secrets. I don’t know why this article fascinated me so, inasmuch as I certainly had no definite purpose of breaking into it.”

The focus on the details of the physical object of the secretary emphasizes the narrator’s obsession with obtaining the papers. His emphatic “certainly had no definite purpose of breaking into it” contrasts with his focus on the physical attributes of the piece of furniture, and suggests his potential unreliability as a narrator.

“‘Does she never show you her eyes then? Have you never seen them? Miss Bordereau had been divested of her green shade, but (it was not my fortune to behold Juliana in her nightcap) the upper half of her face was covered by the fall of a piece of dingy lacelike muslin, a sort of extemporized hood which, wound round her head, descended to the end of her nose, leaving nothing visible but her white withered cheeks and puckered mouth, closed tightly and, as it were, consciously. Miss Tita gave me a glance of surprise, evidently not seeing a reason for my impatience. ‘You mean that she always wears something? She does it to preserve them.’”

This passage emphasizes the symbol of Juliana’s eyes. Like the narrator’s initial description of the horrible green shade, James describes the covering itself as unappealing through the word choice of “dingy” and emphasizes contrast between the covering and her eyes, and between representation and reality.

“There was no light in the room; this ought to have prevented me from going in, but it had no such effect. If I have candidly narrated the importunities, the indelicacies, of which my desire to possess myself of Jeffrey Aspern’s papers had rendered me capable I need not shrink from confessing this last indiscretion. I think it was the worst thing I did; yet there were extenuating circumstances.”

This passage includes direct reference to the fact that the narrator is describing the events after they have taken place, with the distance of hindsight. The passage builds suspense, as it describes the worst thing the narrator did before the reader knows what that action actually was.

“Miss Bordereau stood there in her night-dress, in the doorway of her room, watching me; her hands were raised, she had lifted the everlasting curtain that covered half her face, and for the first, the last, the only time I beheld her extraordinary eyes. They glared at me, they made me horribly ashamed. I shall never forget her strange little bent white tottering figure, with its lifted head, her attitude, her expression; neither shall I forget the tone in which as I turned, looking at her, she hissed out passionately, furiously: ‘Ah, you publishing scoundrel!’”

Though the narrator sees Juliana’s eyes in this passage, he doesn’t describe them beyond being extraordinary. This enables the reader to envision them, as well as producing an empathetic response to the feelings of shame they inspired in the narrator. The vivid physical descriptions of Juliana’s posture and gesture also make the scene vivid and experiential for the reader.

“But historic truth compels me to declare that Tita Bordereau’s countenance expressed unqualified pleasure in seeing her late aunt’s lodger. That touched him extremely and he thought it simplified his situation until he found it did not. I was as kind to her that evening as I knew how to be, and I walked about the garden for half an hour.”

This passage is a rare shift from first to third person. The narrator distances himself from the retelling of this portion of the narrative, suggesting that he still feels embarrassment about it.

“With this it was the end of my experiment—or would be in the course of half an hour, when I should really have learned that the papers had been reduced to ashes. After that there would be nothing left for me but to go to the station; for seriously (and as it struck me in the morning light) I could not linger there to act as a piece of middle-aged female helplessness. If she had not saved the papers wherein should I be indebted to her? I think I winced a little as I asked myself how much, if she had saved them, I should have to recognize and, as it were, to reward such a courtesy.”

This passage foreshadows the climax of the narrative, as he suggests that he won’t stay for Tita and wonders how indebted he would have been to her if she had saved the papers. The use of a question and the narrator’s wince foreshadow the difficult decision that is imminent for him.

“‘Ah, Miss Tita—ah, Miss Tita,’ I stammered, for all reply. I did not know what to do, as I say, but at a venture I made a wild, vague movement, in consequence of which I found myself at the door. I remember standing there and saying, ‘It wouldn’t do—it wouldn’t do!’ pensively, awkwardly, grotesquely, while I looked away to the opposite end of the sala as if there were a beautiful view there.”

This passage represents the narrator’s distraught and confused emotional state at her proposition. The focus on the gesture as a “wild, vague movement” that takes him to the door is ambiguous because it lacks a clear physical description, which enables the reader to picture it individually and builds suspense for where he will go and what he will do.