Europe vs. America: Social Conflict in James and Wharton

Introduction: Two Incomplete Societies

American money is new and hard-won, but it lacks the class and sophistication of European culture. European culture, meanwhile, is ossified, and Europe lacks the social mobility of America — or at least it did, until recently, now that Europe needs American money. Europe possesses a sensitivity that American industry does not foster within the hearts of the capitalists who profit most from the American system. Neither old Europe nor new America constitutes a complete entity in and of itself. Europe desires American money; America desires that elusive concept of European class. Yet despite American brio and wealth, it is Europe that gets her way and triumphs over American values.

This lack of societal completeness is manifest in the social dramas of The American by Henry James and The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton. James's novel suggests that even an American who covets and respects the sophistication of European nobility cannot buy his way into that sensibility, nor shed his American character. In Wharton's novel, the crass, social-climbing heroine Undine Spragg's ambitions triumph over the imitation American aristocracy of her first husband Ralph Marvell, but Undine is ultimately vanquished by the "real" European manifestation of class in the form of her second husband, a French aristocrat.

Christopher Newman and the Limits of American Wealth

James's protagonist is named Christopher Newman. The choice of name is no accident. Newman is "new" not because of any youthfulness — he is described as having taken an early retirement — but because Newman represents the new American values of commercialism in the eyes of his European acquaintances. As James writes, "He [Newman] liked making up parties of his friends and conducting them to the theatre, and taking them to drive on high drags or to dine at remote restaurants. He liked doing things which involved his paying for people; the vulgar truth is that he enjoyed 'treating' them." (James, Chapter 17) Newman enjoys this sense of control through wealth, a distinctly American concept.

At the beginning of the novel, Newman is seen gazing at the paintings in the Paris Louvre, which he experiences as an attractive and beautiful marketplace of old European art and cultural majesty. Newman covets these offerings of Europe much as a consumer might covet objects in a store, but European culture — although it can be experienced visually or aurally in a museum or at an opera — cannot be purchased like a factory-made American commodity. Symbolically, art students in the Louvre are making reproductions of old masterworks, giving the illusion that these works can be taken away from their European home, even though only inferior copies can be removed. This detail foreshadows the copy of European aristocracy that Newman will attempt to make of himself over the course of the novel. Unlike Wharton's Undine, Newman has a genuine appreciation for European class and culture, while Undine simply adores fine food and fashionable dress. Yet Newman's more enlightened and mature quest proves just as quixotic as that of Wharton's less polished heroine.

Newman is described as a muscular, almost physical specimen of American manhood — a figure of strength and power rather than of art. He gives his nationality away almost immediately: "An observer with anything of an eye for national types would have had no difficulty in determining the local origin of this undeveloped connoisseur, and indeed such an observer might have felt a certain humorous relish of the almost ideal completeness with which he filled out the national mould. The gentleman on the divan was a powerful specimen of an American." (James, Chapter 1) Newman is not undeveloped in the sense of being weak or sickly; he is undeveloped in his education in European attitudes and sensibilities.

Newman's Courtship and European Resistance

Far more attractive to Newman than any of the portraits he encounters — for he is initially "baffled on the aesthetic question" of a painting's cultural worth — is Claire de Cintré, with whom he falls in love. At first, her family is intrigued. After all, Newman has made "a pile of money" and is a veteran of the Civil War. (James, Chapter 2) He is neither unintelligent nor lacking in energy. However, when Newman first proposes to Claire, he speaks almost as if he were making a business proposition or opening a negotiation rather than a declaration of love. The real obstacle, however, is not Claire herself, but the social discomfort of her family, who eventually prevent the marriage.

Although Newman's worldly success has bought him the leisure of an old-fashioned aristocrat, it cannot buy him the social cachet that would allow him to transcend European prejudices. Ironically, Newman traveled to Europe partly to escape what he disliked about America — some of the worst aspects he had encountered while making his fortune. But because Newman lacks an old name, both literally and figuratively, and the subtle refinement of bearing and demeanor evident to persons such as Claire's mother Madame de Bellegarde and her older brother Urbain de Bellegarde, his money cannot ingratiate him into the family's social circle. Claire's mother is described, in stark contrast to Newman's evident vitality, as having a "white, intense, respectable countenance, with its formal gaze," and a face whose "circumscribed smile suggested a document signed and sealed; a thing of parchment, ink, and ruled lines. 'She is a woman of conventions and proprieties,' he [Newman] said to himself as he looked at her; 'her world is the world of things immutably decreed,'" unlike the fluid, negotiable world of America to which Newman is accustomed. (James, Chapter 11)

Conclusion: Europe Triumphant

In the end, when Undine believes she has won the ultimate social prize, she has in fact lost everything. She cannot dominate the French any more than Christopher Newman could. The customs of Europe crush her, even though her American commercial enthusiasm and ambition proved more than a match for the pale imitation of aristocracy represented by New England's Marvells. Both Europe and America are incomplete societies, but Europe takes what it wants from America and discards the rest, leaving America forever longing for what it can never attain — because it is too young a nation, and because class cannot be bought with commerce.

Works Cited

James, Henry. The American. The Free Online Library.

Wharton, Edith. The Custom of the Country. The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton. Last updated February 12, 2004. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11052/11052-8.txt