Even in Sedgwick's iconoclastic, homoerotic reading, however, it is possible to argue that the moral of The Beast in the Jungle is the same: living in fear of disaster leads to a life without love, whether life is spent separating one's self from others because of fear of losing them, or fear of social censure. The story takes the form of a psychological narrative more than a conventional marriage plot: since it is about a man opting out of conventional social norms, rather than engaging in them. It features Marcher deciding to ignore May's obliquely expressed interest, a few dinners enjoyed by the two of them, and then her eventual demise. Marcher's "imaginative concrete image" of the beast, a metaphor made real, is the most dramatic aspect of the novel (Gottschalk 43).
While it is possible to use the still-unknown reasons for James' unmarried existence to interpret The Beast in the Jungle, regardless of what personal elements were used to create the tale, without the tools of modernist story-telling, the drama conveyed by the story would be impossible. The story is a psychological tragedy that details the horrors of an unlived life, and a man who is unable to make meaningful connections with others, only obsess about himself. Through the use of the metaphor of the deadly beast that is far more of a killer in the mind than in live, James creates the ultimate psychological 'horror' story of romantic love, where the spirit of the protagonist is destroyed not through longing, but his own egoism. Ultimately, Marcher...
"The Continuity of American Letters in "The Scarlet Letter" and "The Beast in the Jungle." Wisconsin Studies in Literature, (1967): 39-45. [May 25, 2011]
http://eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED021826.pdf
James, Henry. The Beast in the Jungle. CreateSpace, 2002.
Sedgwick, Eve K. "The Beast in the Closet." From The Masculinity Studies Reader.
New York: Wiley- Blackwell, 2002.
Outline
Thesis: Living without egoism and fear is the only solution to avoiding the Beast in the Jungle, according to James' story of the same name.
I. Introduction
A. Plot summary
B. Use of irony in the novel
C. Metaphor of the beast for an unlived life
D. Egoism and fear
II. Unrequited love motif
A. John Marcher's self-love
B. Loss of a sense of 'specialness'
III. James' own life
A. Homoerotic metaphor of 'the beast'
B. Parallels between James' unmarried existence and Marcher's
IV. Use of psychological modernism
A. Fear as a more potent 'killer' than a physical beast
B. The living beast is more deadly as a metaphorical killer in the form of fear
V. Conclusion
A. Modernity of conveying the message through psychological drama
B. Restatement of thesis
