On Friday, Oct. 17, the Brandeis English Department held its annual Novel Symposium. This year’s event focused on the novel “The Bostonians” by Henry James, and it featured a series of three panels consisting of both graduate students and professors.
“The Bostonians” is a novel written by Henry James in 1886. The novel is set in post-Civil War America and follows three main characters: Basil, a conservative southerner who lives in New York; Olive, his feminist Bostonian cousin; and Verena, Olive’s protege and Basil’s love interest. Throughout the story, Olive and Basil are constantly at war for Verena’s attention. Basil stands in opposition to both women’s morals and philosophy, believing that women should stay in the house. Olive sees Verena as the future of the feminist movement, and the women live together, developing a homoerotic relationship along the way.
There were eight speakers at the event: Theo Davis, Chair and Professor of the English department at Northeastern University; Holly Jackson, Chair and Professor of the English department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; David Kurnick, professor of English at Rutgers University; Louis Menand, professor of English at Harvard University; Alan Nadel, professor of English at University of Kentucky; Kevin Ohi, professor of English at Boston University; Sierra Eckert, Assistant Professor of English at Wesleyan University and Haley Suh, English PhD at University of California, Irvine.
The Novel Symposium covered three overarching applications of the novel over the course of its three panels: future, past and character types. Within these panels, individual speakers delved into the implications of the post-Civil War setting, looking into the historical implications of the novel, including the pairing of Basil and Verena and the ways in which James’ themes can be applied to the future of protest movements. Other speakers looked closely at the characters themselves, including the queer implications of the character Olive. Olive is seemingly in love with Verena, but, due to the time of the novel’s release, it is never explicitly stated that their relationship had a romantic quality to it.
Brandeis’ English Department planned and put on this event, which included a free copy of the novel and a showing of a film adaptation. Talk at the event alluded to a more modern novel selection for next year’s symposium.
