The Undependable Bonds of Blood: the Unanticipated Problems of Parenthood in the Novels of Henry James

The novels of Henry James provide a wide spectrum of figures that lack the flexibility to adapt and meet the needs of their children. Louise Barnett asserts that James's literary families are a group of people ?whose underlying constant is the tragic paradox that blood relations are both essential and unreliable? (Barnett, 144). The figures placed within these settings are often a grotesque conglomerate of unsuccessful marriages and absentee relations in which parents practice unhealthy patterns of behavior and negatively influence their children before they have a chance to mature into full grown adults.