Dwelling in the Shadows of the Righteous:Some Thoughts on Alice James

Alice James, as with so many ambitious siblings of the famous, spent a lifetime struggling against her lesser fate. Her ultimate solution, which surely contained as much cunning strategy as helpless surrender, was a uniquely Victorian one:playing the invalid.It was a niche which her celebrated elder brothers would never fill,nor aspire to;she took on the role--and a role it certainly was--with remarkable deftness,humor and astringency.Years after this self-amputation, she privately picked up a pen of her own and became a diarist.Her slight, yet solid, critical reputation rests solely on the musings, opinions and observations recorded in this written web of balm and anguish, helplessness and bravery.No other writings are known to have been created.
In life, she was known, and only in private circles, as the sick younger sister of novelist Henry and psychologist William.Since her death, in 1892, she has gained,inch by painful inch, acclaim as an able wordsmith,wedding grace of language with honest psychological insight.Yet,even in the after-life of their fame, it is just as impossible to separate Alice from her brothers.She was intellectually gifted but a combination of circumstance,personality and family dynamics made her unable to compete on the same playing field as William and Henry.In creating her own uncontested place within the family, and society at large, she was finally able, toward the end of her life, to give voice to her talent.Had she not chosen to disengage herself from the world to the extent she did, she may never have found such a suitable medium of self-expression, or one at all. The threads of choice, action and reaction are too knotted to unravel.
Female invalidism, with no physical or pathological basis, was wide-spread and accepted within Victorian culture to an extent that boggles the modern mind. There were myriad reasons for opting out of an active role in society. Fear of growing up and taking on all of the attendant responsibility (i.e. marriage, childbirth)and attracting attention and love within a large family are two of the reasons that seem to pop up repeatedly in the lives of these women.In the end, it is entirely too easy for us to judge their choices or to assign pat, easy answers to questions that it is not within our ability to understand.Society, resources and attitudes have been altered many times over since the days of Alice James and her peers.Life cannot be tested or its components reconfigured in a lab like a science experiment. There are things that we will simply never know,beyond surface conjecture;the convoluted,deeply personal processes that drove masses of women to take up a life of unnecessary invalidism is surely among them.
The certainties of Alice James's life, therefore,are limited.She had two gifted, tenacious brothers who happened to be famous. She traveled. She lived both actively and passively, in the world's eyes and out. She wrote. She died of a very real disease, cancer.A legacy born of a mix of self-abrogation, association, and ability has sprung up since her death.She will never be judged solely on her writing yet, thanks to this posthumous awakening, she is no longer seen just as the odd sister of the James brothers.She made something of her life,by whatever unconventional means were necessary.She achieved this on her own terms,to her own satisfaction and not the world's. This is a triumph.