Confidence

Confidence is a short novel by Henry James, first serialised in Scribner’s Monthly from 1879 to 1880 and published in book form in 1880. It is one of his lesser known early novels, sitting between The Europeans and Washington Square. James himself was not entirely happy with it and left some of its weaker elements behind as he moved into the major work of the early 1880s.

The novel follows two friends, Bernard Longueville and Gordon Wright. Gordon is a serious young American with an interest in scientific subjects who is considering a marriage and asks his more worldly friend Bernard to look over the young woman and offer an honest opinion. Bernard does so. He returns a negative verdict. Gordon marries another woman instead. Then, years later, Bernard meets the woman he rejected, Angela Vivian, again and falls in love with her himself. The complications that follow involve Gordon’s unhappy marriage and the question of whether Bernard’s original judgement was honest or whether it was already shaped by feelings he did not admit to himself.

The book is interested in the way self knowledge is always belated. Bernard thinks he is being a good friend when he is actually being something else, and he only sees this years later. James is gentle on him but is not letting him off the hook. The same delayed recognition runs through Angela Vivian’s behaviour. She knows more about what Bernard said years ago than she lets on, and her patience is one of the strangely satisfying things in the book.

The novel reads quickly compared with the late work. The plot moves and the characters are easy to follow. James later thought the European settings were used too thinly here and the central premise required a more careful working out than he gave it. As a transitional book, Confidence is interesting now mostly to James readers tracing his development. It pairs naturally with The Europeans, which is shorter and stronger, and with Washington Square, which is the book where his early style fully arrives.