The novels of Henry James provide a wide spectrum of figures that lack the flexibility to adapt and meet the needs of their children. Louise Barnett asserts that James's literary families are a group of people ¿whose underlying constant is the tragic paradox that blood relations are both essential and unreliable¿ (Barnett, 144). The figures placed within these settings are often a grotesque conglomerate of unsuccessful marriages and absentee relations in which parents practice unhealthy patterns of behavior and negatively influence their children before they have a chance to mature into full grown adults.

Il dottor Benjamin Hart Fishkin è uno studioso della letteratura del XIX secolo. Insegna all'Università di Tuskegee. Il dottor Fishkin ha conseguito un dottorato di ricerca in letteratura inglese presso l'Università dell'Alabama, dove ha prestato servizio come Junior Fellow in The Blount Undergraduate Initiative.