The Bostonians

Olive Chancellor is an affluent young Boston woman who dedicates her life to the cause of women’s equality. Described as “[u]nmarried by every implication of her being” (16), Olive seems to Basil “morbid” (11), with a “nature […] like a skiff in a stormy sea” (10). The novel’s tension centers on her competition with Basil for control over Verena Tarrant. Olive invites Basil to visit her in Boston because her mother felt sympathy for the Mississippi Ransom relations who lost everything in the Civil War. Though at first Olive is interested in her “exotic” Southern cousin (11), it isn’t long before Basil’s traditional beliefs earn her ire. Basil attempts to placate her, but she responds coldly, irritated by his values and fearful that he will steal Verena away from her. By the end of the novel, she and Basil are equally embittered toward each other.

Deeply suspicious and self-protective, Olive is prone to righteous outbursts. Though it “cost[s] her tears, headaches, a day or two in bed, acute emotion” (13), she finds “contention” to be “most sweet to her” (13). Much of her behavior is inspired by the fact that she “hate[s] men, as a class” (19). Olive never laughs and has “absolutely no figure” (16), suggesting she does not dress to impress men. Her psychological unattractiveness reflects poorly on feminism as hollow, ineffective, and driven by emotion rather than reason.

Olive is plagued by debilitating shyness, which prevents her from speaking publicly for the cause, and motivates her friendship with gifted public orator Verena Tarrant. As time goes on, Olive manipulates Verena more and more, until Verena struggles to make decisions without Olive’s input. Olive separates Verena from her parents, secretly paying Verena’s father to allow Verena to live with her. When Olive fears Verena may fall in love, she takes her to Europe to prevent her from marrying. She coerces Verena into promising not to marry, and she convinces Verena that decisions Verena would not otherwise make—such as leaving New York—are actually her own. Verena turns down two marriage proposals into order to please Olive and avoid her dramatic moods.

Olive’s greatest fear is that Verena will fall in love with Basil Ransom, and she is devastated to discover that Verena has hidden her relationship with him. She recognizes that Verena enjoys new experiences and prevents her from having too many of them. At the end of the novel, when it becomes clear Verena is falling in love with Basil, Olive acknowledges that the friendship always meant more to her than it did to Verena.

Olive, and the feminists she is a stand-in for, is man-hating and histrionic. However, she is not irredeemable. In the final chapter, when it is clear that Verena will not give her speech, Olive, despite her shyness, rushes onto the platform herself. Even Basil must acknowledge that Olive is a “heroine” (348). Olive ends the novel running toward what she fears most is one more way the novel demonstrates sympathy to feminism and progress.

Basil Ransom is a Mississippian in his late 20s who, after his family is devastated by the Civil War, moves to New York City in an attempt to start a law practice. A Confederate veteran, he struggles to assimilate in Northern society. He is conscious of the fact that those around him represent those who vanquished his beloved South, and he finds that many of his ideas appear old-fashioned compared with the progressive views of many Northerners. In New York, he begins to feel as if potential clients hold his Southernness against him. Formally dressed but “crumpled” in appearance (6) and unable to escape poverty, Basil represents the devastated post-war South. He clings to his traditional values even in the face of the forward progress around him, a contrast exacerbated in Boston, where he first encounters to the feminist movement. Basil is tall and physically conspicuous in crowds. His inability to fit in physically reflects his inability to assimilate socially.

Basil’s strict adherence to the code of chivalry epitomizes his Southernness and what the Southern means in post-war America. He frequently refrains from making comments he worries will offend women, and he mollifies women with compliments. However, beneath this respectful behavior is an underlying belief that women are “essentially inferior to men” (151). Though he believes women deserve men’s “generosity and tenderness” (151), it is only because men are “the stronger sex” (151). Women should be “gracious and grateful” (151) for men’s protection, devoting themselves to “mak[ing] some honest man happy” (186). These beliefs put him at odds with publishers, who decline his articles as “about three hundred years behind the age” (148).

Basil’s battle with Olive for control over Verena reflects the nation’s struggle to rebuild after the Civil War. It represents the battle between tradition and progress—how the lingering past is irreconcilable with the future. His possessiveness of Verena reflects the tight hold of the past. Because he believes women should be “private and passive” (11), he is appalled by Verena’s speaking for her cause, thinking her too beautiful to defile herself like other feminists. He concludes that she does not truly believe in the cause and that she is “meant for love” (286). By the end of the novel, Verena has decided she agrees with his beliefs but still feels the pull of Olive and of the movement. Basil wins—Verena does not speak in the Music Hall—however, the fact that he must pull her forcibly from the Hall while she cries suggests that the past is no longer satisfactory.

Despite being a main character, Basil does not have a strong arc in the story. By the novel’s end, Basil has not changed his views on women; in fact, he is so sure of them that he insists Verena wants him to save her without having seen her for months. His imperviousness to her pleas shows he has not grown any less obstinate. Throughout the novel, the narrator subtly criticizes Basil’s “narrow notions” (260). That the last line references Verena’s tears suggests they will remain narrow in perpetuity.

Mrs. Adeline Luna is Olive’s older sister. Though she lives in New York, she has spent time in Europe and also visits her sister in Boston. Whereas Olive is solemn and serious, Mrs. Luna wears glamorous clothing, attends parties and concerts, and seeks to remarry. Olive finds that her sister lives an “egotistical” life and is “unconscious” of the changing times (124). At their first meeting, Mrs. Luna warns Basil that Olive is “a female Jacobin” (7) and that the people she associates with are “witches and wizards, mediums, and spirit-rappers, and roaring radicals” (7). Mrs. Luna is a conservative not only because it is her “temperament,” but also “by reaction from her sister’s ‘extreme’ views” (152). She hopes to marry Basil, for she “sympathizes with “the dilapidated gentry” (161) and is drawn to the idea “a husband who should owe her something” (152).

Mrs. Luna resorts to emotional manipulation in her attempt to marry Basil. She sends him many letters chastising him for failing to visit her. She also hires him to take care of her business affairs and to tutor her son Newton, who is spoiled and ill-behaved. She is jealous of Basil’s interest in Verena Tarrant and teases him somewhat maliciously. Mrs. Luna’s attentions become so oppressive that even Basil, an adherent of Southern chivalry, finds it difficult to be kind to her. Mrs. Luna’s cruelest manipulation occurs the night Basil goes to Mrs. Burrage’s house to hear Verena speak. Knowing Basil wants to hear Verena in the music-room but is too chivalrous to leave Mrs. Luna alone, Mrs. Luna refuses to enter the music-room, “determined to keep him” (204). She also coerces Basil into revealing his correspondence with Verena and threatens to tell Olive if he does not stay with her—a threat she carries out the next morning.

Affluent and widowed, Mrs. Luna spends her time scheming and socializing. In trying to obtain what she wants, she relies on her wit, and she is flexible in her tactics. Though she serves as a foil for Olive, she and Olive share the goal of keeping Basil away from Verena, and Mrs. Luna is willing to engage in a truce with her sister in order to see this accomplished. In some ways, she is a critical portrait of an aimless upper-class woman. In other ways, she shows the limited options for women who, with no skills and no husband, survive by any means necessary. Ultimately, she is a conniving and petty woman who “is perverse for the sake of perversity” (204).

Miss Birdseye is an elderly philanthropist and activist who belonged to “any and every league that had been founded for almost any purpose whatever” (23). She has remained poor, having given all her money to “a negro or a refugee” (23). Now that slavery has been outlawed, Miss Birdseye fights for “the other slaves” (168)—women. To Basil, she represents “a multitude of socialistic figures” (23). James infuses into her character an element of humor. Miss Birdseye’s laments the end of slavery and the deposing of dictators because she has fewer people to save, making her philanthropy appear counterproductive and futile. James’s description of her as a “humanitary hack” (13) makes Miss Birdseye appear foolish at best and self-serving at worst.

Miss Birdseye’s features have been erased by “[t]he long practice of philanthropy” (22). Her voice is like “an over-worked bell-wire” (23), and “the whole moral history of Boston was reflected in her displaced spectacles” (28). Miss Birdseye’s charity work has been self-effacing: She has literally become her work. Like other feminists in The Bostonians, Miss Birdseye’s independence and her adherence to a cause counter to traditional female roles have obliterated her femininity.

Despite disagreeing with her feminist beliefs, Basil takes a great liking to Miss Birdseye, telling her that wherever she goes, she will “always carry [her] goodness” (168). He shocks her by telling her that “women have no business to be reasonable” (169), and she sheds a tear that he sees women as “lovely baubles” (169). She believes that Verena will “bring [him] round” to the feminist cause (172). Miss Birdseye has long desired to “bring round a Southerner” (309), and Verena and Basil let her pass away believing she has done so. On her deathbed at the Marmion house, where she used to sit gazing out onto the sunset over the bay, Miss Birdseye proclaims that we “mustn’t think there’s no progress” just because progress is not yet evident (310). She looks back on her years of service and sees that in fact, much progress has occurred.

When Miss Birdseye dies, despite all the people she has helped, “the only persons […] to whom death made a real difference” (312) are the three young residents of the Marmion house. Miss Birdseye’s lack of physical form and the inconspicuousness of her facial features mirror the self-sacrificing work that brings her no glory. That she is widely recognized for her good work yet missed by only a few says as much about society as it does about her. She is buried in a cemetery “in sight of the pretty sea-view she loved to gaze at” (312), suggesting her eternal belief in unlimited possibilities.

In The Bostonians, women who deviate from traditional passive roles appear unfeminine or without identity. Dr. Prance’s dedication to a career typically reserved for men results in the erasure of her femininity. Dr. Prance is to Basil the epitome of a “Yankee female” (33) in that she is a product of “the New England school-system, the Puritan code, the ungenial climate, [and] the absence of chivalry” (33). She is “[s]pare, dry, hard” (33) and, like other feminists in the novel, “without a curve, an inflection of a grace” (33). Dr. Prance “look[s] like a boy, and not even like a good boy” (33). She has “no features to speak of” (33), with the exception of her “intelligent eye” (33). She is “tough and technical” (34), and Basil finds that she favors practicality over emotion or niceties. In fact, given her busy life, she often forgets “that she [is] a woman” (39).

Basil first meets Dr. Prance at Miss Birdseye’s house, where Dr. Prance has a room, the night he hears Verena speak. Dr. Prance has no interest in hearing the speech and appears only because Miss Birdseye has asked her to. She agrees that women are discriminated against, but she does not believe the suffrage movement is the way to remedy this. She recognizes that men do not call for female doctors; and she has no desire to treat men. She is dedicated to her studies because she does not “want the gentlemen-doctors to get ahead” of her (38).

Dr. Prance is irritated with suffragists because they “waste time” (39); she resents their telling her “what a lady can do” (39). In Book Third, when she goes to Marmion with Miss Birdseye to stay with Olive and Verena, she complains to Basil about the unpleasantness of living “four ladies grouped together in a small frame-house” (274). Dr. Prance also takes Basil fishing while Olive and Verena practice her speech, for she does not like to be in the house at these times. It is significant that Basil likes Dr. Prance so much.

The Bostonians is not wholly unsympathetic to the feminist cause—readers are invited to acknowledge the offense of Basil’s words, and even the narrator laments his obstinacy. However, feminists are generally portrayed as self-serving misandrists. Dr. Prance seems to be the only true feminist, one who does not “waste time” with movements but instead lives a sincere and independent life. Eschewing dramatic protests and speeches, her career shatters boundaries with a humility many of the feminists lack.

Mr. Pardon is the prematurely white-haired 28-year-old editor and reporter for the Transcript. Mr. Pardon believes that people are “food for newsboys” (96) and that “everything and every one were every one’s business” (96). The press should be prompt and “abusive when necessary” (96).

After Verena speaks at Miss Birdseye’s house, Basil overhears Mr. Pardon saying that he knows people who “would want to engage Miss Verena at a high figure” (51) and that “[t]here’s money for some one in that girl” (51). This is the first of many incidents in which Mr. Pardon expresses a desire to capitalize on Verena’s talent. Mr. Pardon desires “to see her name in the biggest kind of bills and her portrait in the windows of the stores” (98), for he believes there is “a great demand” for “new ideas” (98). If Olive does not intend to propel Verena into the public eye, Mr. Pardon wants to do it himself, for Verena is “a great card, and some one ought to play it” (110). When Olive rebuffs him, he threatens to print unflattering stories about her in the newspaper.

In Book Third, Mr. Pardon visits Mrs. Luna and eagerly takes down her complaints about her sister Olive’s cause—immediately family disagreeing over feminism “would be a charming note” (330). He appears again at the Music Hall and expresses concern that Verena will not speak. Mr. Pardon appears to be everywhere there is excitement or drama. His almost callous ambition and his insistence that someone take advantage of Verena’s talent make him a caricature of the press.

Dr. Tarrant, Verena’s father, is a bohemian mesmeric healer who first appears at Miss Birdseye’s house the night Olive and Basil meet Verena. He is eager for his daughter to speak to the party because she is a gifted public speaker, and he insists her gift is a force that comes from outside. Dr. Tarrant helps Verena speak through a “mysterious process of calming her down” (47) by laying on hands, seen by Basil as “grotesque manipulations” (47). Basil finds him to be a “detested carpet-bagger” who is “false, cunning, vulgar, ignoble; the cheapest kind of human product” (46).

The lowborn Dr. Tarrant is unable provide for his family, who frequently go hungry. Though his solemnity suggests he “look[s] at his child only from the point of view of the service she might render to humanity” (79), in truth, “he had one all-absorbing solicitude” (80), which is to be in the newspapers. He believes that Verena speaking at Miss Birdseye’s means “the fruitful time [is] not far off” (81), and he secretly allows Olive to pay him to let Verena live with her. He is one of many who seek to benefit personally from Verena’s talent.

The daughter of abolitionist Abraham Greenstreet, Mrs. Tarrant yearns to become a part of high society and to hold “a position in the world […] she had never had” (56). Frequently hungry because of her husband’s inability to provide, she has “had a great deal to put up with” (57), and only “her belief in his genius” (57) has “sustain[ed] her” (57).

Mrs. Tarrant is delighted that Olive takes an interest in Verena because it means there is a possibility she herself can rise in society. She encourages Verena to visit Olive frequently. When Olive pays Dr. Tarrant to let her take Verena, Mrs. Tarrant “embrace[s], tenderly, the idea of a pecuniary compensation” (129). Like her husband and others in The Bostonians, Mrs. Tararant exploits her daughter, hoping her talent can restore the family’s financial stability and reputation.

Mrs. Burrage is the mother of Mr. Henry Burrage, a suitor of Verena’s. Described as “a woman of society, large and voluminous, fair (in complexion) and regularly ugly” (118), she looks “as if she ought to be slow and rather heavy” (118) but in fact is quick in her laughter and her jokes. She is “civil enough to everyone, but not in any case endearing” (118). When she invites Verena to live with her in New York, Mrs. Burrage assures her “that it was impossible to be more in sympathy” (120) with Verena’s views than she is.

Mrs. Burrage’s Wednesday Club is an effort to “make New York society intellectual” (200). While attending Verena’s speech at this would-be cerebral salon, the partygoers seem indifferent to each other, their faces containing “a harshness of contemplation, a kind of cruelty” (193) Basil often finds “in the fashionable world” (193). Mrs. Luna does not believe Mrs. Burrage truly cares about suffrage or any of the causes discussed in the Wednesday Club: At first, Mrs. Burrage decided on lectures because “the vulgar set can easily keep up with them on music” (200). 

Olive senses that Mrs. Burrage is “clever” and “unscrupulous” in getting what she wants (237). When Olive and Verena visit New York, Mrs. Burrage sends a large check to entice Olive to let Verena stay with her, arguing that her son wants to marry Verena and that Olive should recognize the “immense advantages and rewards there would be for her in striking an alliance with the house of Burrage” (237). In response to Olive’s skepticism, Mrs. Burrage reminds her that Verena is better off with her son than with Basil.

Mrs. Burrage, like many characters in The Bostonians, professes to revere Verena and to care for her cause while she exploits her. She is a wealthy, upper class, society woman who is concerned more for what progress can do for her image than for progress itself.