The Diary of Alice James: A Portrait of the Artist as a Reader
Résumé
Sister to Henry, the novelist, and William, the psychologist and philosopher, Alice James (1848-1892) won fame posthumously thanks to her diary. Gifted with exceptional intellectual talents but confined to her room by illness, she was an avid reader whose curiosity ranged across all genres. Drawing upon Marielle Macé’s analysis of reading as a process of “individuation” and upon Jacques Rancière’s concept of “subjectivation”, the article would like to show that Alice James’s attraction to books was bound up with a quest for identity. Through the conjoined activity of reading and writing, she claims legitimacy for herself as an invalid, as a James and as a political subject. The fragility of her body leads her to emphasize the powers of her mind; borrowing from various authors and genres, she turns herself into an active, powerful consciousness endowed with acute discriminating powers. The room where she is confined becomes a vantage point from which she observes and brilliantly comments on the comedy of life. The first part of this article shows that the diary can be analysed as an extension of the practice of reading – reading books but also reading the body. The second part examines four major intertextual influences that enabled her to assert herself as a subject: late 19th century French literature, her brother Henry’s novels, drama and, finally, newspapers.