The Sacred Fount: Labyrinth or Parable?

In an unpublished letter to the Duchess of Sutherland, Henry James called The Sacred Fount “a profitless labyrinth,” and most reviewers have been quick to agree with that view. But seen from the distance of almost sixty years, the novel assumes a stature and importance that cause one to challenge its critics and that lighthearted appraisal by its author. And if James himself spoke of the book as a labyrinth, “a small fantasticality,” perhaps it was because it so mercilessly reflects the turmoil of his own conscience at the time he wrote it. Considering the events surrounding the actual writing of the book, we can justifiably speak of it in terms not only of what it is in itself, as a piece of art, but of what it tells us about the novelist who produced it. It is as close to autobiography as James ever came in a work of fiction. Using parable as his medium, he speaks to us of the grave burden of doubt under which he labored.

The book was written in the period directly following James’ disastrous and traumatic attempt at playwriting. (F. W. Dupee calls this “the awkward period” of James’ career.) The major novels—The Wings of the Dove, The Ambassadors, The Golden Bowl—were still to be published. James’ readership, never large, had been steadily diminishing for two decades. More than ever, the nature of his audience was discouragingly special: William Dean Howells and a handful of others still thought of him as the literary master of his age, but to most readers he was an author important enough to respect and discuss but too troublesome to read.