30 pages • 1 hour read
Henry JamesThe Real Thing
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1892A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Allusion
Through an allusion, or indirect reference, to Mrs. Monarch’s experience as a photographer’s model, the narrator expresses a disdain for photography’s limited ability to reveal authentic truths. Photography in “The Real Thing” emphasizes the story’s deconstruction of what it means to look at art pieces and how our level of understanding can never be fully determined. At the time of Henry James, photography was making rapid advances and beginning to become widely accepted as art. This posed a legitimate threat to painterly art, which had long been diminished toward mere duplication and vulgarity. In response to this growing trend, many painters turned inward—developing an extreme form of withdrawal from reality—to preserve their craft.
Irony
“The Real Thing” exhibits irony in how people with a lack of self-awareness can be transformed into art, while those who remain authentic are too real to inspire creativity. As he moves from working with commercial models to aristocrats, the artist’s progress stalls, and he puts himself at risk of losing an important project. It is ironic how, much like the people being represented in his art pieces, the artist’s success is determined by a set of rules related to his own vanity and commercialization—the same rules that are ultimately revealed to be trivial. When the artist paints the Monarchs, he is forced to confront his own lack of understanding about what it means to be authentic. By attempting to capture the intricate and ambiguous truths of another person, he is confronted with his own limitations as an artist. In the end, the truth he seeks lies beyond what is achievable by mere imitation or fabrication.
Metaphor
The artist’s failure to create a satisfactory likeness of the Monarchs symbolizes his inability to capture the depths and truths of their characters. The Monarchs in the story are much more than just a means for the narrator to discover his weakness as an artist; they are a powerful metaphor for how rigid societies will discard those with no perceivable value. Through the Monarchs, James explores the relationship between truth and art, and suggests that truth may be found even within artificial constructions. In this sense, it is not about creating a perfect representation of reality, but rather understanding the complexities of truth and conveying them accurately.
Subversion
“The Real Thing” subverts traditional social roles and expectations of the period: The upper-class Monarchs, whose good fortune and societal status have reversed, are prepared to act as attendants to secure income. The working-class Miss Churm and immigrant-class Oronte prove to be more adept at portraying the upper classes than the Monarchs. The subversion of roles provides a satirical social commentary: The working-class models are adaptable professionals, whereas the aristocrats are amateurs without marketable skills.
The Monarchs awkwardly present themselves to the narrator, viewing their solicitation of work as an embarrassing necessity below their social strata. Meanwhile, the working-class Englishwoman Miss Churm impersonates a Russian princess with no sense of shame or degradation; she knows her worth and her skills better than anyone else. Similarly, Oronte successfully dons the role of “an English gentleman” even though he does not speak English. James uses the rhetorical device of chiasmus—a grammatical inversion— to solidify the Monarchs’ role reversal: “If my servants were my models, my models might be my servants” (161). This underscores that class distinctions serve no purpose in the pursuit of art. Despite the Monarchs’ elevated social position, their status has no bearing on their success in the working-class sphere.
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