The Henry James Review

Abstract:

The idea that one's class position determines one's suitability for overturning bourgeois society was once a staple of communist thought worldwide. Henry James was no radical. But in The Princess Casamassima, following his commitment to a realistic depiction of the political underground of London of the 1880s, James gamely entered into questions of revolutionary strategy. Curiously, the novel rejects the nascent Fabian belief that upper classes, and elite class traitors, can contribute to the overthrow of bourgeois society and instead, in the figure of Paul Muniment, acknowledges the advantages of revolutionary groupings made up of workers with no illusions about their origins.