Article ID: CBB205119278

The Spirit of Electricity": Henry James's In the Cage and Electric Female Imagination at the Turn of the Century (2018)

unapi

At the turn of the century, scientists, physicians, and novelists grappled with new electrical technologies—like telegraphy—that threatened to forever alter communication, human connection, and social boundaries. In his 1898 novella In the Cage, Henry James posits the telepathic powers of electricity through his female protagonist, a telegraph operator who feels her consciousness expanding beyond the limitations that cage her. While many scholars read In the Cage as upholding a closed narrative circuit, I argue instead that James's female protagonist manages a brief escape from social cages through her chaotic and electric imagination, inspired by the electric and enigmatic powers of telegraphy that surround her. Reading In the Cage as in conversation with contemporary scientific and medical discourses on electrical sciences provides new pathways for understanding the ways early twentieth-century writers and thinkers across disciplines perceived electricity as offering ever-expanding boundaries of human subjectivity—particularly for women.

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Authors & Contributors
Balbi, Gabriele
Banfield, Marie
Billington, David P., Jr.
Calvo, Spartaco
Carlson, W. B.
Halliday, Sam
Journals
American Journal of Physics
British Journal for the History of Science
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Journal of the History of Ideas
Victorian Literature and Culture
Publishers
IEEE
University of Minnesota
Stanford University
Cambridge University Press
Australian Scholarly Publishing
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Concepts
Telegraphs; telephones
Electricity; magnetism
Technology
Telegraphy
Science and literature
Inventors and invention
People
James, Henry
Bellamy, Edward
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne
Dickens, Charles
Eliot, George
Elliot, John
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
20th century, late
Places
United States
Great Britain
Australia
China
Germany
Switzerland
Institutions
British Association for the Advancement of Science
Great Britain. Royal Navy
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