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"The Noble 'Shopkeeper of the Mind': Henry James, Cosmopolitanism, and 'The Jew'"
Sharon Oster, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, UCLA
April 18, 2002

"The Noble 'Shopkeeper of the Mind': Henry James, Cosmopolitanism, and 'The Jew'" argues that in The Golden Bowl (1904) and The American Scene (1907), James's figurations of "the Jew" complicate a prevalent dichotomy of philo-Semitic and anti Semitic representations in American literature of the period. James compares himself to the Jewish pawnbroker, in a comparison based not on identity but on function: the writer's role in the production of value--at once economic, aesthetic and ethical. In spite of persistent associations with avarice and usury, the liminal figure of the Jewish pawnbroker demonstrates how value is not intrinsic, but socially negotiated, and therefore best captures the position of the modern cosmopolitan writer at the nexus of capitalist exchange and the gift economy.