Alice James

Photograph of Alice James.

Alice James (August 7, 1848 – March 6, 1892) was a U.S. diarist. The only daughter of Henry James, Sr. and sister of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, she is known mainly for the posthumously published diary that she had kept in her final years.

Life

Born into a wealthy and intellectually active family, Alice James soon developed the psychological and physical problems that would end her life at age 43. The youngest of five children, she lived with her parents until their deaths in 1882. She taught history from 1873 to 1876 for the Society to Encourage Studies at Home, a Boston-based correspondence school for women. By 1882 she had suffered at least two major breakdowns and would experience several more before her death from breast cancer.

James sought various treatments for her disorders but never found significant relief. In 1884 she and her companion, Katharine Loring, settled in England, where she remained until her death.

The diary

James began to keep a diary in 1889. Full of witty, acerbic, insightful comments on English life and manners, it included excerpts from various publications to support her opinions. The diary was not published for many years after her death due to sharp comments on various persons whom she had mentioned by name.

A badly edited version of the diary was eventually released in 1934. Leon Edel published a fuller edition in 1964. The diary has made James something of a feminist icon: she was seen as struggling through her illnesses to find her own voice. This view of the diary's significance, however, has been criticized as a facile and inaccurate tale of victimization.

References

Jean Strouse published what has become the standard life (Alice James: a Biography) in 1980. Strouse steered something of a middle course between Alice-as-icon and Alice-as-victim. Ruth Bernard Yeazell published James' correspondence in The Death and Letters of Alice James (1981). Susan Sontag wrote a play about James, Alice in Bed (1993), which seems to waver between sympathy and impatience with its subject.

External links

• Genius in the Family: Cameo Biography by Abby Wolf
• Visiting the Emerson Girls by Frank Albrecht
• "Illness as Metaphor" Susan Sontag's only play: Alice in Bed