39 pages • 1 hour read
Henry JamesThe Aspern Papers
Fiction | Novella | Adult | Published in 1888A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Distorting Effects of Hero Worship
James represents the narrator’s interest in Jeffrey Aspern as an obsession. The defining feature of the narrator’s character is the degree to which he idolizes Aspern, and this obsessive fandom is the impetus that drives the novella’s plot. The narrator’s obsession with a dead poet distorts his understanding of himself and prevents him from empathizing and connecting with real, living people.
The narrator is aware of how his obsession with Aspern appears to others: When Mrs. Prest suggests that he seems to expect “to find in them the answer to the riddle of the universe,” he thinks he would prefer the papers to that answer (51). The extreme degree of the narrator’s desire for connection with Aspern is prevalent throughout the novel. He notes that he has “invoked” Aspern and that “it was as if his bright ghost had returned to earth to tell me that he regarded the affair as his own no less than mine and that we should see it fraternally, cheerfully to a conclusion” (76). Because the narrative is in first-person perspective, it is difficult to arrive at an objective view of any of the other characters, especially the posthumous object of the narrator’s obsession. This vision—in which the poet speaks directly to him from beyond the grave, blessing his exploits—is transparently self-serving. Aspern is dead and cannot speak for himself. In his absence, the narrator concocts a version of the poet that confirms his own worthiness—as a critic, as an aesthete, as the ultimate sympathetic reader whose virtue is confirmed by his singular ability to “get” the poet’s work. As the narrator skulks around Juliana’s rooms in the dark, the novella creates suspense around the question of how far he will go to obtain the papers.
The narrator’s obsession with Aspern is ultimately about himself. In addition to uncanny and ghostlike imagery, descriptions of Aspern are often connected with religious imagery through James’s diction. The narrator refers to Aspern as his god, notes that he “hangs high in the heaven of our literature” (52), and contrasts the multitude of people who “flocked to [Aspern’s] temple” (52) with his view of himself (alongside his friend, John Cumnor) as a minister of it. The consummate fan, he elevates himself above all the other devotees of the same figure. He also describes Aspern as “immortal” (76) and focuses extensively on being connected, via Juliana or the papers as a conduit, with the poet even posthumously. It is this connection—rather than any knowledge or understanding he might gain from the papers—that he seeks.
The choice of how far to go to obtain the Aspern papers is the key climactic moment for the narrator as a character. He considers marrying Tita in order to obtain them, though he is not at all attracted to Tita and even holds her in disdain. His marriage to her would be profoundly damaging to both his life and hers—a rejection of the possibility of real love with a living person, in favor of cementing his connection with a figure who lives primarily in his imagination.
The Archive as a Source of Connection
The Aspern Papers is focused on an archive. The papers themselves are the impetus for the events of the narrative, as the narrator’s desperate desire for them drives the action. James cultivates nonliteral ideas of archive throughout the novella, suggesting that the archive is ultimately a work of collective imagination whose boundaries are undefined and whose function is to facilitate connection between artist, audience, and community across geographical and temporal distances.
First, while the narrator has guesses about the nature of the relationship between Juliana and Aspern and what is included in the archive based on the fact that they are in her possession, their contents are never revealed. The ambiguous archive has only imagined value (sentimental to Juliana, editorial to the narrator) because its actual contents are unknown. James builds significant suspense throughout the novella by providing unconfirmed speculations about the archive, and as the narrator considers increasingly desperate choices to obtain it.
James also expands the concept of the archive beyond a physical collection of important documents to include intangible and communal memory. The narrator considers the papers an archive in that they function as an imagined conduit between himself and Aspern. He feels “joy at being under the same roof” (77) as them, and notes that “they had not escaped me yet; and they made my life continuous, in a fashion, with the illustrious life they had touched at the other end” (77). The idea of making the narrator’s life continuous with Aspern’s suggests the archive as having relational importance for the narrator as a way to connect with Aspern, rather than only editorial value (i.e., in understanding Aspern’s life better or having increased ability to interpret his poetry).
Both Juliana and Tita also function as archives themselves. Of Tita, the narrator thinks that “she had lived for years with Juliana, she had seen and handled the papers and (even though she was stupid) some esoteric knowledge had rubbed off on her” (77). The prospect of knowledge being transmitted through osmosis emphasizes archive as an ethereal concept. Juliana herself is an archive, which is emphasized by the narrator’s compulsion to touch her hand because it touched Aspern’s.
Overall, James cultivates a pervasive sense of missed opportunity regarding archives. The papers are burned before the narrator sees them, and the reader never learns their contents. Similarly, the narrator’s sole focus on obtaining the papers means that he misses the opportunity to access the archive that is Juliana.
Privacy and Reclusiveness
By placing Juliana’s jealous guardianship of the Aspern papers in the context of her isolated life, James suggests a link between the impulse to preserve privacy and the losses that come with refusal to interact with the world. The Bordereaus were not always so isolated. The narrator notes that their “name had been mixed up ages before with one of the greatest names of the century and they lived now in Venice in obscurity, on very small means, unvisited, unapproachable, in a dilapidated old palace on an out-of-the-way canal” (50). The first description of the women emphasizes their current isolation in contrast with their family’s lost prominence. Even Juliana’s long-ago affair with one of the greatest and most famous poets of his era suggests that her life was once far more glamorous than it now appears. In this context, her privacy regarding the Aspern papers looks like both a result and a cause of her retreat from public life. Her great romance ended (though the rumors about Aspern’s treatment of her suggest that it may have always been greater in reputation than in reality), and she keeps her memories to herself, isolating herself further in the process.
Throughout The Aspern Papers, the narrator wonders often about the reclusiveness of Juliana and Tita. During the period before he begins to interact with them, he thinks about it often, and is surprised that he doesn’t become tired of speculating about “what mystic rites of ennui the Misses Bordereau celebrated in their darkened rooms; whether this had always been the tenor of their life” (79). The fact that the Bordereaus’ reclusiveness appears to have developed over time is a comment on a process of becoming more insular and isolated as life progresses, as well as the costs of that process. The progression toward reclusiveness also suggests the romanticization of the past, which is fitting in connection with the Aspern papers as an important archive of a romance that occurred long ago.
The focus on the theme of privacy and reclusiveness emphasizes the contrast between an adventurous, romantic youth and an isolated state later in life. While Juliana has clearly experienced adventure and romance, Tita is characterized as largely having missed these aspects of life, and her interactions with the narrator sometimes show an awareness of this. He observes that she “had forgotten what an attractive thing the world is, and it was coming over her that somehow she had for the best years of her life been cheated of it” (101), indicating the association between reclusiveness and missed opportunity. The narrator is fascinated by how Juliana and Tita live, commenting that they are “worse off than Carmelite nuns in their cells” and asking how the pair “exist without air, without exercise, without any sort of human contact” (84). James presents the narrator’s appalled reaction as ironic, given that he remains isolated for the duration of the novella as well, enjoying the time he spends reading and writing and seeing very few people.
Through the focus on the theme of privacy and reclusiveness, James emphasizes the idea that reclusiveness can be a refuge, as it seems to be for Juliana, or a hindrance, as it is for Tita. The difference is that Juliana has previously had adventurous relational experiences, whereas Tita has not. Privacy is similarly double-edged, as the Aspern papers are represented as important to Juliana, and worthy of being kept safe, but ultimately destroyed in order to maintain their privacy.
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