A woman of uncommon sensibilities
Other Press, 248 pp., $23.95
The author of fiction, travel pieces, and poetry, Constance Fenimore Woolson is better known as a mystery woman in the life of Henry James, the fellow expatriate who fell to her death from the window of her Venetian apartment building in 1894. Was she a sad, frustrated woman in love with James, as some accounts have suggested? In her novel "The Open Door," Elizabeth Maguire imagines Woolson's life in less conventional ways. Maguire's Woolson is far from a lovelorn figure: She is contentedly single, proudly earns her own living, takes a lover, relishes travel and vigorous exercise, and, like James, devotes herself to her writing.
The novel takes the form of a memoir narrated by Woolson; she emphasizes her life in Europe, beginning in 1880, and her long relationship with James, which proves as turbulent as a love affair. Isolated in their literary endeavors, the two writers want everything from the friendship -- companionship, sympathy, unstinting support and admiration. Leaving America for Europe at the age of 39, Woolson seeks to be a serious artist and to escape the dreaded label of "lady scribbler." In James's company, she hopes to find a teacher and soul mate: "What compelled me was the writer." James, for his part, disdains the work of "literary ladies" even as he covets their commercial success.
Woolson and James at first create a university for two, "our own little world apart." They enjoy lively conversations about new possibilities for fiction and ponder the situation of women as the ideal subject for the modern novel. At last, the elated Woolson feels, she has exchanged the usual run of tedious sociability for the "deep connection" she has always craved: "I smile to recall the unequaled joy of never running out of things to say." The sharing of ideas and interests becomes the ultimate experience, a way of finding a home.
The drama lies in the fraying of the relationship. Into the wondrous "marriage...of minds" the two have forged soon seep very ordinary human weaknesses. Tensions simmer until James, ever so delicately, inflicts a wound. Yet even as the novel probes the effects of competitiveness, insecurity, and possessiveness, it is generous in spirit, a tribute to the range and depth of emotions that friendship stirs. Woolson calls her story "the magnificent tragedy of a friendship gone wrong," acknowledging failure and disappointment, but still recognizing the value of her experience.
Maguire, an editor and publisher, completed "The Open Door" in 2006, just before she died of cancer. It is a quiet, pensive novel, as much about determining one's own path as navigating friendship. Maguire does not romanticize that experience. Woolson is a character both strong and struggling -- "ravenous to see and live as much as possible" and undeterred by disapproving looks and words. She endures her share of hardships: illness, loneliness, and homesickness. Still, Woolson finds refuge and abundance in solitude; she is most at peace, and most herself, on her own and free. In lyrical passages, she records the delights of being alone with her thoughts, of taking rambling city and country walks, of creating a home that provides what matters most to her: "harmony among work and beauty and other people." Portraying Woolson, Maguire has realized the character's own aspirations for the novel -- the creation of "a woman who interests us for reasons other than romance."
Judith Maas is a freelance writer and editor 