Though he had wanted to join the Union cause, a childhood injury prevented Henry James from fighting in the Civil War. In 1915, he renounced his American citizenship, partly because of his frustration that America had not yet entered World War I. He lived for the rest of his life in England, where he spent much of his time performing relief work with soldiers. How might these events be reflected in Basil Ransom’s view of masculinity and the “womanisation” of his generation? 

Is the novel told from Basil’s point of view, or the narrator’s, or James’s? Where does the narrator appear to disagree with Basil, and what is the effect of the narrator’s editorializing throughout the novel?

James said of The Bostonians that he wanted to write “a very American tale.” What is the vision of America presented in The Bostonians?