Written at the end of the 1890s, when issues such as female emancipation and the double standard were in fierce debate, James's novel enacts the tension between various views of women and also of a aristocracy that was fading.
The novel traces the experiences of 18-year-old Nanda Brookenham, who is exposed to corruption in the salon of her youthful modern mother and the shockingly sophisticated talk of the circle she maintains. Here, the theme of virginal innocence and its importance in the marriage-market is handled in terms of a well-bred urbanity which somehow fails to suppress a lurking sense of violence.
The Awkward Age anticipates the experimental fiction of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. Unlike most other existing texts, which are based on the earlier serial version of the novel, this is the first edition as published in book form in 1899.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Back Cover:
Henry James had arrived at such mastery of the forms and uses of fiction by the time he published The Awkward Age in 1899 that this story of a young girl introduced into a casually corrupt circle of sophisticates is at once a universal drama of innocence confronting evil, a detailed examination of a social order, and a stunning picture of a civilization in crisis.
From the Inside Flap:
Introduction by Cynthia Ozick
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