Here's what I wrote after reading in 1988: "It is to be feared that with the union, so far from brilliant, into which she was about to enter, these were not the last (tears) she was destined to shed." Wirtten in 1885, Henry James' study of "the situation of women, the decline of the sentiment of sex, the agitation on their behalf". WIth characters Verena Tarrant, Olive Chancellor and Basil Ransom, James creates a love triangle of sorts. Olive attemps to, and nearly succeeds at, leashing Verena to a public life of speaking on behalf of feminism. Basil attempts to, and cruelly succeeds at, leashing Verena to a private life of wifely cares and responsibilities." This is another I don't recall reading. ( )

The Bostonians is a novel of manners. We can appreciate is much more pleasurably when taking the role as observers than when trying to analyze of explain the characters. While the 1820s - 1840s are traditionally described as the hey-day of the American reform movement, culminating with the triumph of the abolitionist movement at the end of the Civil War, the reform movement picked up unabated after the Civil War with idealists striving for women's rights, both voting and emancipation, the abolition of tobacco use, vegetarianism, health reform, homeopathic medicine, and pacifism among others. Henry James describes Boston as the city where this activism thrived in the circuit of lectures, together with lectures by quacks, cranks, faddists, and “do-gooders". The best part of Book 1, running well over 80 pages is all devoted to describing a single event like that, where the reader is taken on a tour observing speakers and attendants on an evening.

This type of environment exists up until the day of today: magical healers, homeopaths, veganists, religious fanatics, environmental activists: and the three characters as embodied in The Bostonians are also still found in the same scene: Olive Chancellor as the establishment within a movement but possible with a hidden agenda, some personal interest, Verena Tarrant, the child who grew up within the movement, lacking critical judgement, and Basil Ransom, the common-sense skeptic.

While the scene itself is described to make it amusing, neither pro nor contra, the substance of the novel focuses on the competition for Verena's heart. ( )

First off one minor quibble. This has THE worst use of chapters i've ever seen! I mean almost every chapter felt like it was starting in mid-sentence. Chapters are supposed to distinguish particular scenes but the chapter ends in this all felt like they were in the wrong places.
Social satire/drama romance thing... i don't really know how to characterize it properly. Set amongst the Suffragette movement in America and with some battle-of-the-sexes goings on.
Its VERY well written with a nice way of painting people and places. I'm not going to say whether it was depressing or uplifting as this might spoil it, suffice to say which ever one it was it did so to an extreme degree.
The authors slow burn writing style became quite annoying later but that was due to how compelling the story was and how desperately i wanted to know what was going to happen. ( )

The part where Olive literally buys Verena from her father, for use in the cause of emancipating women, showed me a quite startling sense of humor on the part of the author.

Read this in the 1970s, and remembered liking it. This time around, I read it with a more critical eye. First thing I realize it that this book was published first in serial form, which explains how the story, which is really very simple, just goes on and on. You see how James is making fun of feminists, Boston spinsters, and post-Reconstruction southerners. But the mystery is: why is anyone so taken with Verena? Because she's such a beautiful vessel into which others can pour their thoughts and opinions, I guess. The way Basil Ransom pursues Verena is improbable, but the outcome is not, I expect, even today. It just would have made a better short story. I think if I were going to reread Henry James, whose work I very much liked, overall, I might have picked a better book to start with. I guess I'm just partial to anything having to do with Boston. ( )