Chapters 33 and 34 Summary and Analysis
Summary
Basil asks Verena to come out for a walk with him. However, Verena is unwilling for some reason, although she realizes that in Cambridge she had no qualms about doing so. But at that time, it was she who did the asking; it is different somehow when it is Basil making the request. He says that he wants to show her New York just as she wanted to show him Harvard. More than anything, he does not want to face the possibility of seeing Olive Chancellor. Verena tells him that she has seen it; she went for a ride there the day before with a friend. Basil understands her to mean that the friend was Henry Burrage. He insists that he wants to say some very important things to her. Verena does not feel comfortable going out, as Olive herself has just left to go to Mrs. Burrage’s. Basil asks if she has no liberty at all; does Olive have such a tight leash on her that she cannot go out without Olive’s permission? He wants to point out that she went out with him in Cambridge without telling Olive, but he sees that he has made his point. Without a word, Verena gets ready to go with him.
As they walk through Central Park, Verena reflects on the fact that, at that moment, Olive is “disposing of her somehow at Mrs. Burrage’s.” As Basil talks once again about his disdain for the women’s rights movement; Verena silently muses on how opposite they are from each other. She was brought up to admire new ideas, but he was an “intense conservative.” Moreover, he was an angry conservative, seemingly bitter about the world he now lives in. Feeling sorry for him, she thinks about this walk being the last time they will talk together.
The conversation turns and Basil is the one defending his views. Verena asks him why he does not write out his ideas and get them published. This is an unconscious blow, as he has tried to do just that and failed. She feels that his inability to get published is somehow an injustice and encourages him to keep on writing, even giving him permission to attack her by name. He states that he will not do that as he does not wish to destroy women, but to keep men from being destroyed, as Olive Chancellor would have them be. He fears that instead of equality, it will be the same situation with the genders reversed. To him this is not progress. He says that what is agreeable to women must be agreeable to men. While he does not believe in the equality of women in the public arena, he feels that they hold a much superior position than men in the private one. Verena is shaken and states that she must return to the hotel. She does not want to convert Basil any longer, but to have him remain as he is. Crying as she enters her rooms, she throws herself on Olive, begging to be taken away from New York immediately.
Analysis
Success and failure are another way character's live at odds with one another. Verena has achieved great success as a speaker; her photograph is even sold in the local stores. Basil, on the other hand, has not been able to be published. His ideas and his ability to share them with the public have led him to failure. To him, in his very conservative views, to have a woman be a public and financial success, while a man is a failure, is a...
(This entire section contains 921 words.)
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disruption of the order of civilization as he knows it. The reversal of roles to him does not look like progress, but a continuing slide down to destruction. There is no equality; there are no clearly defined roles; there is chaos as society makes way for the new ideas by pushing out or as the old ones are flipped around.
As Basil is given an opportunity to display that he has indeed put some thought into his views, as opposed to simply being reactionary in the face of the coming reform, his character is seen in a different light, both by the reader and by Verena herself. Showing a more sympathetic side, Basil shows an intelligence that James has cleverly hid throughout the story thus far. With Basil’s words to Verena, James is able to show that the women’s movement, as portrayed by him in this satire, is not what it purports to be. It is a revenge of the embittered, rather than a correction of wrongs. Yes, the conditions of women and other minorities are deplorable in the face of the spread of democracy, but the avenues taken by the people as satirized in The Bostonians will not achieve their stated purposes, but only the intents that they keep hidden. Through the character of Olive Chancellor, James is showing the true nature, as he sees it, of the reform movements of the nineteenth century. It is not so much their views that are objectionable but their hidden agendas. Basil sees that change is inevitable, but he wishes to be a voice of reason, or in his mind moderation, within that change. It is Verena’s ability to suddenly see the vulnerability, rather than the stubborn conservatism, of Basil that shakes her to the point that she cannot stay at Mrs. Burrage’s as planned, but must escape New York and return to Boston.
