Poor Alice

HAD ALICE James not been born into the family of intellectuals that she was her life would be of little interest to the literary public. When she died at the age of 41, she had been an invalid since her first nervous breakdown at 19, and her only accomplishment was the diary which she had dept for the last three years of her life.

But Alice James was the sister both of the pioneering psychologist Williams James and of the tremendously successful author Henry James, and an account of her life is therefore illuminating for two reasons. First, Alice's experiences and observations shed light on the environment in which her brothers grew up and excelled Second, the brilliance of her two oldest brothers and the "nervous" nature of her own illnesses suggest that Alice's poor health was the direct result of inhibitions and frustrated talent.

In her biography of James just released for the first time in paperback Jean Strouse examines both Alice's place in this unusual family, and her own personal struggles Unfortunately, while Strouse has done a good job of gathering information, she draws few useful conclusions about the wasted potential of her subject Despite Strouse's clear intent to avoid speculation, it is impossible not to wonder what Alice James could have accomplished in a more supportive family or a more receptive society.

Alice's life was not highly eventful She was born in New York City in 1848. Her father was independently wealthy, and the family moved frequently as Henry James St. sought intellectual stimulation for himself and the best possible education for Alice's four older brothers. As each of the schools the boys attended failed to live up to their father's demanding expectations, the family traveled through Europe and lived briefly in Newport Finally, when Alice was 16, they settled at 20 Quincy St. in Cambridge now site of Harvard's Faculty Club.

EXCEPT FOR a summer tour of Europe and visits to New York for medical treatment. Alice lived in Cambridge or Boston for the next 18 years Despite her poor health, she participated in social life, joined a sewing circle and made friends. Although her upbringing did not incline her to participated in any of the more radical agitation for women's rights, such as the founding of the Harvard Annex--later Radcliffe in the 1880s, she taught history to other women through a correspondence school.

Alice's parents both died during the year she turned 34. Although she had developed an intense friendship with Katherine Loring, the head of the history department in the correspondence school, she grew lonely. She moved to London to spend her last seven years near Henry, the brother with whom she had always been closest. Katherine visited her frequently and took on much of the burden of caring for her During her last three years she kept a comprehensive diary, recording and commenting on her past and present experience, and including her views of the political world. Only a few people knew about the diary when she died in 1892, and it was not published until the 1930s.

Her writing indicates a real basis for claims that Alice might have been a successful writer--or even possibly a statesman, since politics were her passion--had she lived in a different age.

Strouse believes that Henry Sr.'s refusal to recognize the existence of evil--particularly in women--as the most powerful stress on Alice. Because his own wife was a model of self-denying maternity and had "rescued" him from a troubled youth, Alice's father insisted on idealizing women without recognizing their potential talents. Men struggled with and conquered evil, women were born above it. Strouse conjectures.

To be innocent and good meant not to know the darker side of one's own nature. To love and be loved, then, required the renunciation of certain kinds of knowledge and feeling.

This caused problems for all the children, but Alice suffered most, being the only daughter, because her father's expectations for her purity were higher.

Strouse defines this central conflict as the struggle between self-knowledge and innocence, and all the James children shared that pressure. But Alice had a second more immediate dilemma of her own. She realized that, on the one hand, she was too gifted and too willful to rival her mother and aunt in the domestic arena. She never had a serious suitor or any prospect of a household of her own On the other hand, she was equally unwilling to challenge her brothers on a broader scale. The combination of these pressures proved too much for her. Although he identifies other causes, her brother Henry seems to have summarized her life accurately her tragic health was in a manner the only solution for her of the practical problems of life."

ALTHOUGH STROUSE'S analysis often fascinates, the biography itself is disappointing, because the central question--the reasons, for Alice James's failure--suffers from incomplete examination Virtually all of the the James children suffered from poor health, and the two younger brothers. Robertson and Garth Wilkinson, were relative failures. Strouse never addresses why or to what extent Alice's ill health and failure were the result of her sex Nor does she explain how Alice differed from women, such as George Eliot, who did manage to succeed

Part of the problem is that Strouse's narrative is oddly impersonal Despite direct quotations and a fair amount of detail, the subject remains distant. Too often Strouse does not successfully relate information about the Civil War, women's rights, or the history of nervous diseases to Alice's own experience. In the end, one feels one knows about Alice James, but one does not really know her.