The Spirit of Electricity": Henry James's In the Cage and Electric Female Imagination at the Turn of the Century (2018)
Larsen, Haley (Author)
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Volume: 26
Issue: 4
Pages: 357-387
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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