Henry James’s the Bostonians : the vulnerability of the female politician in a capitalist Milieu

Abstract EN

Henry James's political novel The Bostonians exposes the strengths and weaknesses of the feminist movement just after its foundation in the US in the nineteenth century.

His female characters are feminist zealots par excellence.

However, the reader may realize their vulnerability in the newly emerging consumer culture then.

The book argues for the threat that awaits the feminist leaders as well as the female public performers under a capitalist system that tends to exploit them for materialistic ends and commercialize their spectacles.

The female politician becomes a prey to a new commerce that relies on publicity to promote the spectacular.

The capitalist system reduces oratoresses to commodities in an age of advertising and transforms political performances into erotic exposures.

James unveils the vulnerability of the feminist movement since it is exposed to the danger of the mass media apparatus whose central aim is commercial gain.

He stresses woman's saleability as a product of discourse featuring in journals and a consumed object in posters and photographs.

He warns about the complicity between capitalisnn and patriarchy and shows that, ironically, feminism which endeavors to fight patriarchy is entangled with its complicit since feminist campaigners unwillingly engage in a world of commerce and publicity.

The novel represents the vulnerable female political activists who risk falling into an unwitting collaboration with capitalism and therefore with patriarchy