Henry James' The Third Person: A Detailed Summary and Literary Analysis
- Michael Kellermeyer
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Henry James’ ghost stories are almost always elegant and stately, wrapped in psychological tension and emotional complexity, and bereft of any Gothic indulgences – blood, rotting flesh, “horribly thin” legs, eyeless sockets, the odors of the grave. The following story is remarkable in that it breaks from James’ more serious entries and offers a moment of ghoulish fun, while still holding horror at bay.
The tale is, in fact, a comedy – part of one of the most underrated subgenre’s in speculative fiction: the supernatural burlesque.
Dry, ironic, and gently mocking, this genre has been a favorite of Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, and Oscar Wilde, and although it was popular during the Fin de Siècle, it has been unjustly neglected for the past century. The farcical ghost story is a staple of the genre, one which is accepted by critics and readers alike as an acceptable variation of the Poe-esque/Lovecraftian terrors and miseries that make up that vast majority of the tradition. W. W. Jacobs’ “In Mid-Atlantic,” Stephen Crane’s “The Ghoul’s Accountant”, Saki’s “The Open Window,” Oscar Wilde’s “The Canterville Ghost,” Dicken’s “Baron Koeldwethout’s Apparition,” Washington Irving’s “The Spectre Bridegroom,” E. Nesbit’s “Number 17,” and “The Haunted Inheritance,” and Poe’s “Some Words With a Mummy” are all exemplars of farcical horror.
There are several things that an excellent supernatural farce does, three which are necessary to be very good: it manipulates tropes and expectations to highlight our prejudices, hidden biases, cultural expectations, emotional desires, and socio-political investments by setting up one (or more) predictable scenario and delivering something entirely different (our response to the twist informs us more about ourselves than anything); it uses fear unapologetically for entertainment rather than philosophical or literary value; and it pokes fun at the reader either for hoping for a supernatural plot (in this case the reader is hooked and wants to see ghosts!), or for being cynical (in this case the reader groans – oh boy, here’s another predictable ghost story) – in either case the reader either must confess to being a sensationalist, or to having underestimated the writer’s ability to entertain. So ease back, and enjoy.
SUMMARY
The story opens in the old seaside town of Marr, where two distant cousins, Miss Susan Frush and Miss Amy Frush, unexpectedly come to live together. Though they share a family name, they had never been close. Susan, the elder by ten years, is described as a shy and timid figure, the sort of “English old maid” one might expect to find in Swiss or Italian pensions, equipped with her sketch-book and Tauchnitz novel. Amy, by contrast, is brisk, expressive, and still carries the traces of youthful showiness. Each thinks the other a little absurd: Susan regards Amy as frivolous, while Amy privately deplores Susan as a goose. Yet circumstance forces them together after they inherit their late aunt’s property at Marr. What begins as a compromise becomes a settled life, the two realizing that the house offers both a safe haven and a shared sense of belonging.
They soon develop a fond, if sometimes prickly, companionship. Each tolerates the other’s quirks, such as Amy’s habit of monopolizing sofa cushions or Susan’s inability to nap at convenient hours. More importantly, they discover that their lives, though very different, furnish endless stories to exchange. Susan reminisces about foreign pensions and eccentric acquaintances abroad, while Amy recalls her years in London literary circles and even reveals that she once published an anonymous novel and a typewritten play. Both delight in the history of Marr itself, and especially in the aura of their inherited home, with its panelled rooms and relics of the past. As the narrator remarks, “The country was at any rate in the house with them … two hundred years of it squared themselves in the brown, panelled parlour, creaked patiently on the wide staircase and bloomed herbaceously in the red-walled garden.”
Their interest in the past takes on a sharper edge when they stumble upon a small chest of old papers discovered in the cellars. Though disappointed not to find treasure, they thrill to the “fluttered hope of old golden guineas” the box first inspired. Instead, they pore over faded letters and documents, finally appealing to the local vicar, Mr. Patten, for help deciphering them. Patten, a jovial, history-loving clergyman, accepts eagerly, exclaiming with unclerical relish: “My eye, what a lark!” The women are both thrilled and uneasy, particularly when Amy suggests that if the papers reveal something shameful, perhaps it should be left unsaid.
Soon after this discovery, the quiet life of the Misses Frush takes a chilling turn. One night, Susan is horrified to see a man suddenly standing in her room, “in strange clothes – of another age; with his head on one side.” Terrified, she runs to Amy, who quickly realizes that this is no burglar but something otherworldly. The cousins spend the night together, whispering and clinging, until they accept that their house is haunted. Far from despairing, however, they feel oddly gratified: “There had been something hitherto wanting, they felt, to their small state and importance; it was present now.” The haunting, in fact, gives them a sense of grandeur and mystery that their lives had lacked.
The vicar soon provides a grim key to the ghost’s identity.
From the documents he has examined, he reports that one of their ancestors, Cuthbert Frush, had been hanged in the eighteenth century. For what crime, he cannot yet say. The cousins, though shaken, are oddly exultant: “‘Hanged!’ said Miss Amy – yet almost exultantly.” They speculate that his twisted neck explains the dreadful sideways angle of his head. A later revelation brings the details: Cuthbert was executed for smuggling, a common enough crime along the coast. At first, the ladies are disappointed that the offense was not grander. “Smuggling?” Miss Susan echoes, dismayed by what seems merely vulgar. But as Mr. Patten insists, smuggling was the very life of the coast, and its practitioners had a certain reckless bravery. Amy, more daring, insists that their ancestor must have been splendid.
The haunting continues in various forms, with each cousin sometimes encountering the specter alone. This gradually strains their relationship, as they suspect each other of enjoying some secret communion with the ghost. Jealousy simmers. Susan insists she once spent an entire night in her wrapper, too frightened to go to bed because the figure sat “in the high-backed chair … and there he stayed.” Amy, secretly resentful that the spirit prefers her cousin, longs for her own encounter – which finally comes. When she at last beholds him, she admits, “He’s handsome! Splendidly … It’s the wonderful eyes. They mean something.”
The cousins begin to argue over what the ghost wants.
Susan believes it is remorse, and she attempts to appease the spirit by sending “conscience-money” – twenty pounds – to the government in atonement for the smuggler’s defrauding of the revenue. Amy, on the other hand, rejects this view. She believes the ghost desires not repentance but bravado, a bold act in his spirit. Secretly she travels to Paris, then smuggles a contraband item – another gaudy, sensational Tauchnitz novel – through Customs, thrilling at her success: “To appease him – I braved them. I chanced it, at Dover, and they never knew.” To Susan’s shocked question whether she might have been hanged too, Amy replies proudly that she risked it all for the ghost’s satisfaction.
After these acts, the haunting ceases. Both women, in their own way, have appeased the restless ancestor: Susan by sacrifice, Amy by daring. They agree he has left them, though their interpretations differ. Sitting together in their garden one summer night, they share a moment of quiet triumph. Susan muses ruefully, “Well, he’s satisfied.” Amy, more pleased, adds that she also gained “at last your week in Paris!” The ghost has given them not only a sense of heritage but also an unexpected adventure and intimacy.
ANALYSIS
Both playfully and a little ghoulish, this pleasant tale (Leon Edel calls it “the sunniest and most humorous of James’ ghostly tales”) is a delightful little break from the paranoia, self-consciousness, and anxiety that so powerfully haunt the vast majority of James’ supernatural stories (cf. the psychological murk of “The Jolly Corner” and The Turn of the Screw). Here there is no sisterly resentment, no daughterly deception, no wifely betrayal, no familial death wish, no spectral affairs, and no youthful regrets. Consequently, it is a charming bit of literary fluff that reminds one of Charles Dickens and Washington Irving’s best Gothic farces – “The Bagman’s Uncle,” “The Adventure of My Grandfather,” “The Lawyer and the Ghost,” “Golden Dreams,” etc. – masterpieces of black humor that are far more humorous than black.
Like Dickens and Irving, James presents us with a satirical tableau that is only enhanced by the presence of the supernatural, healthy doses of irony, and a surprise twist.
Now about that surprise twist: you may be saying to me right now “yes, yes, yes… But what the devil is a Tauchnitz?” And it’s time you were answered: the gleeful irony that James builds up to is, of course, that the ghost is not exorcised by mollifying his crime, but by perpetuating it. The spirit is unabated by attempts to pay off the government, but when his descendants – respectable spinsters in good standing – sink so low as to copy the crime that he was hanged for, the phantom is put at rest – assured that his hobby has continued onto the next century – and he fades away, satisfied that his fiery, Georgian spirit has not been snuffed out by prim, Victorian decency.
A Tauchnitz is – in a sense – what we would today call a pirated book. These were cheap, English-language copies of American and British writers’ works which were sold in Continental Europe. The authors were compensated, so it wasn’t pirating in the manner we think of today, but since the works were under a separate contract with their American and British publishers, the books were banned from entering England (and thus competing with British printing presses).
Their distinct yellow covers were all embossed with the print: NOT TO BE INTRODUCED INTO THE BRITISH EMPIRE OR U.S.A. To top this off, the spinsters acquire a book which has been banned for some perceived indecency. And so – pirated smut in hand – they saunter into the 20th century newly emboldened by the additional inheritance of their 18th century ancestor’s wild ways. James, who spent a good deal of time on the Continent was very familiar with the books, and likely found the strict ban of these inexpensive volumes humorous.