In a review of Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps, Henry James begins, "It has been a melancholy task to read this book; and it is a still more melancholy one to write about it" (Phillips 422). James's attack on Whitman and his writing in this review is out of proportion. At certain moments in the text James's shrill rejections leave the reader to question if James objects to the writing or the author. Could it be that Whitman's "love of comrades" struck a nerve in James? As James's tirade continues he seems less concerned with Whitman's writing than with the artistic ideology of self-censorship; "...art requires, above all things, a suppression of one's self, a subordination of one's self to an idea" (Phillips 428). James's "suppression of one's self" extends beyond the expression of poetry and prose, reaching into the realm of social behavior. In his description of James's attitude towards Oscar Wilde, Fred Kaplan, a noted Jamesian scholar and author of a recent biography, captures the anxiety James felt in regard to his sexually "inverted" contemporaries such as Wilde: "He found Wilde's conversation pretentious, his presence vulgar, his sexual ambivalence and its association with art threatening to his own sexual identity and to his identity as an artist" (Kaplan 245).

Given James's attitude towards non-heterosexual writing and behavior, it is not surprising that he struggles with his sexuality throughout his writings. That James is unwilling, or perhaps unable, to come to terms with his own homosexual feelings does not mean that he is not of interest to gay and lesbian studies. On the contrary, James supplies an interesting link in the evolution of homosexual awareness. Four years after his attack on Whitman, James wrote "A Light Man." Kaplan refers to this story as James's "most explicitly homoerotic" (Kaplan 91). I would disagree with Kaplan. While "A Light Man" is an important text for gay and lesbian studies, "The Pupil" is a much stronger candidate for James's most overt expression of his apparently never-acted-on sexuality. These stories plot a course across James's sexuality. By comparing and decoding the two we can see how James, as a young man of the nineteenth century, struggled with negative preconceptions about homosexual men and how, in his later life, he began to understand his own sexuality.

As James became older he also became more in touch with his homoerotic and homoromantic feelings. By the turn of the century he was able to write letters of love and compassion to other men. Among them was Hendrik Andersen. James's correspondence with the younger sculptor is infused with romantic and erotic sentiments. Even though biographers such as Leon Edel attempt to heterosexually sanitize such relationships by calling into question whether they were physically acted on, the correspondences leave little doubt as to James's affection for Andersen. Edel's own quotations from James's correspondence with Andersen defeat any attempt at denying James's affection. " 'I hold you close,' 'I feel, my dear boy, my arms around you....lean on me as on a brother and a lover.' " (Edel, Life 497). Not surprising, James's attitudes towards and representations of homosexuality become less homophobic as he grows older. Once he was safely established both in his writing career and the heterosexual guise of the bachelor, James could then allow the expression of a sexuality that took him several decades to come to terms with.

Before he had the emotional conviction to express his love for other men, James had to deal with his own homosexual feelings, anxieties about which could not help but surface in his writing. At first, these feelings illustrate a raw and seedy interpretation of sexuality. "A Light Man" presents a unique look into James's early, general perception of homosexuality and specifically his own struggles with his homosexual identity. Edel describes "A Light Man" as part of the "deeper realm of the homoerotic feeling that Henry must have had" (Edel, Life 82). Edel goes on to link James's homoerotic feelings to his brother, William. It is not surprising, then, that James's first tale of homosexual panic has to do with two men who are as close as brothers and who also compete for the affection or wealth of an older parental figure.

The plot of "A Light Man" revolves around three men: Theodore, who is portrayed as a man who is attempting to be virtuous; the narrator, Max, who is debauchedly portrayed; and Mr. Sloane who is portrayed as a fickle lecher. Each of these characters represents a homosexual type as viewed by James and informed by his internalized homophobic notions. Theodore is perhaps the most curious of the three men. He is hard working, self-sacrificing, and seemingly celibate outside of Max's influence. Theodore represents a homosexual with a conscience, one who tries to live without acting on his sexuality. When he is faced with his sexuality, he attempts to do the only "respectable" thing: take a vow of chastity and become a priest. Fate directs him away from his calling, implying he is unfit to serve the priesthood, and back into the secular world where he finds himself embroiled in Sloane's affairs. Theodore represents James's struggle between homosexuality and what society tells him is an acceptable expression, or rather non-expression, of sexuality. This anxiety is portrayed in Theodore's wanting to like Sloane, who is offered as the grotesque end result of a homosexual life, but he is not able to reconcile Sloane with the "fastidious deity" which Theodore follows.

The narrator of the story, Max, is Theodore's foil. Max is constantly shown as, and admits to being, lazy. Where Theodore is hard working and industrious, Max is idle, manipulative, and petty. For James, Max represents the kind of man who allows his homosexual urges to be acted upon. Max makes no effort to steer his path from its self-destructive conclusion represented by Sloane. Sloane's "sin" is not resisting his non-conventional sexuality. Edel asserts that Sloane is described "as if he were a homosexual" (Edel, Life 83). Indeed Sloane is a homosexual figure in the story, as are all the main characters. James offers Sloane as the end result of a person who does not have the courage to suppress his homosexuality. Ironically, James's own suppression of his sexuality left him an old man living alone on his estate, eager for the company of young men.

James wastes little time in introducing Sloane's homosexuality. He does this by labeling Sloane and the things which reflect his personality as feminine. While Max is waiting to greet his host he notes that the apartment is "of the feminine gender" (James, Light 66). In his journal, Max makes the connection between being feminine and homosexual; "He's of the real feminine turn--I believe I have written it before--without the redeeming fidelity of the sex" (James, Light 83). James's comment that Sloane embodies "the" real feminine turn rather than "a" feminine turn illustrates that James is not generally referring to characteristically feminine behavior. Rather, he is referring to something specific. "The feminine turn" is homosexuality. James is tapping into the social construction that characterized homosexual men as being innately feminine (i.e., an internal androgyny).

When Max meets Sloane, he is described as wearing a dead black wig. By choosing the feminine "wig" rather than the masculine "toupee" James is commenting on the gender confusion Sloane embodies as a homosexual. His wearing a wig not only sets him up to be something other than heterosexual but also signals the reader that Sloane has a secret to hide. The fact the wig is so obvious implies that Sloane is unable to keep this secret (his homosexuality) from those he meets.

Upon meeting his host, Max pronounces Sloane to be one of the ugliest men he has ever met. James does not tell the reader why Max finds Sloane so ugly. Although a thorough description is given to the reader, there is nothing inherently ugly in Sloane's physical features. Rather, it is the features of Sloane's character, Sloane's soul, which Max finds so hideous. The idea of Sloane's soul showing on his physical visage is reinforced by Max explaining that Sloane's ugliness is a physical residue of the life he has led. This idea of a physical representation of wickedness is not uncommon among homosexual writers who are trying to deal with a sexuality that is outside societal mores. James's treatment of Sloane being made ugly by his wickedness is a precursor to Wilde's homosexually suggestive story The Picture of Dorian Gray. In "A Light Man" we learn that Sloane's features are not ugly but rather the "incomplete remains of good looks" (James, Light 66). Sloane has ruined his good looks with the life he has chosen, and he unfortunately does not have a portrait such as Dorian's on which his sins can be marked. Instead his sins take their toll on his body. James makes it clear that Sloane was not always the decrepit creature Max has encountered. Rather, a life led in trivial pursuits of pleasure, in not controlling and suppressing his homosexuality, has left the old man in his wretched condition.

Although Max comments on a number of Sloane's physical attributes, he fixates on Sloane's skin, "a kind of opaque yellow pallor" (James, Light 66). It is not a dull yellow but rather a "magnificent" one. The colors James associates with his characters are, of course, important. Sloane being described as yellow implies that he is a kind of coward. I would assert that his cowardice is a moral one. Sloane is the decrepit result of one who did not have the courage to resist his homosexual impulses. James interprets this lack of control as cowardice, a cowardice the reader soon learns is shared by Max.

James begins his story with Max telling the reader how pleasure, "crude, brutal and vulgar," (James, Light 62) had lost its charm and that he shall "never again care for certain things--and indeed for certain persons. Of such things or such persons, I firmly maintain, however, that I was never an enthusiastic votary" (James, Light 62). James's vagueness, as to what these "certain things" refer to and who these "certain people" are, is of the utmost importance. There is a consistent pattern of vagueness in James's writing when he is talking about homosexuality. At first glance it appears that James is being lazy when he uses such an obviously imprecise phrase as "certain things." This is not the case. James intentionally uses bland phrases in order to draw attention to something he cannot bring himself to commit to paper: openly homosexual content. James's substituting an exceptionally vague or bland text for homosexual content is one way he codes texts. Such patterns guide a reader to recognizing James's attempts to discuss homosexuality.

I am not suggesting that all of James's homosexual implications go unsaid. On the contrary, while Max ponders "what" Sloane is, turning him into an object rather than a person, he suggestively comments on how Sloane has "intimate friends of both sexes" (James, Light 77). Further, Max tells of Sloane's "latent wickedness" (James, Light 79) and how "men have forever addressed you [Sloane] on their knees" (James, Light 78). Max himself falls to his knees at Sloane's bedside in an attempt to gain the old man's fortune. Max wonders about "the nature of his [Sloane's] relationship with Theodore" (James, Light 63). The sexual relationship between secretary and employer is hinted at by Max referring to Theodore as "penetrating" Sloane. Directly after this reference Theodore, because he is James's figure of suppressed homosexuality, is described as disapproving of Sloane. Further, when Theodore falls ill and Max takes over the "secretarial" duties, Max tells of Sloane making "advances" towards him and finally how Sloane "devours" him. These images of penetration, advances, and oral stimulation are James's subtle description of a sexual exchange that he cannot broach more frankly. Ironically, to be more explicit he would have to use his technique of substituting vague imagery for homoeroticism.

The relationship that Sloane has with Theodore can only be a lascivious one as Max characterizes Sloane as being a "reprobate." Max's description of Sloane as such speaks to James's internalized homophobia. It must have been clear to James that being homosexual was not so much what you do but rather who you are. The idea of being rejected by God (or society) with no hope of salvation is in part what "A Light Man" is about. When the three men talk about religion, Sloane declares that he "disbelieves in a future life" (James, Light 67). As the negative homosexual figure, this anti-Christian position is not surprising. Such a position also places a distance between Sloane and Theodore, who suppresses his homosexuality and tries to embrace religion. Max, the homosexual character who does not suppress his sexuality, is moved a little closer to Sloane's position by refusing to argue the point of an afterlife. When Sloane forces Max to clarify his spiritual position, he responds, "Don't ask me to disbelieve, and I'll never ask you to believe" (James, Light 68). This statement establishes Max as being something other than a Christian yet as someone who has not strayed so far from the socially accepted path as to call himself an atheist, yet. Instead, to Theodore's alarm, Max explains that he has spent the last ten years in Pagan lands.

The use of the word "Pagan" introduces something of a Hellenic note to Max's character. James is using "Pagan" as a code word for homosexuality. When Max says he has been in Pagan lands, the underlying message is that he has been to places that are not governed by Christian morals. James is not alone in using this strategy to hint at and discuss homosexuality. His contemporary, H. H. Munro, was using Pagan images in short stories such as "The Music on the Hill" to express homosexual bonds. James could not have been unaware of the word's connotations.

Once Max is established as homosexual through the use of the Hellenic reference to paganism, he settles into Sloane's estate. His lack of moral character fits into his host's environment, "The house is pervaded by an indefinable, irresistible love of luxury and privacy. Mr Frederick Sloane is a horribly corrupt old mortal. Already in his relaxing presence I have become heartily reconciled to doing nothing" (James, Light 69). James is illustrating the lack of moral character Max represents as a man who, like Sloane, does not suppress his homosexuality. Theodore stands in contrast as a "tall interrogation point" (James, Light 69) who studiously reads Emerson in his room.

After James has established his characters' identities, he begins to introduce more suggestively homoerotic language and imagery. As Max thinks about his and Theodore's past together, he muses on how Theodore had "inoculated me...with some of his seriousness, and I just touched him with my profanity" (James, Light 70). The use of the word "inoculated" has at least two significant meanings here. First, Theodore has penetrated Max. Second, Theodore has given to Max some of his "seriousness" which can be read as "religiousness" since Theodore was planning to join the priesthood. What Theodore inoculates Max with is a dose of religion, a dose which allows Max to resist and emboldens him against religion in the future. His resistance allows him to then wander in Pagan lands and further indulge his homosexuality.

For his part, Max recalls how he "touched him [Theodore] with my profanity" (James, Light 70). Rather than being distressed by inoculating and profaning each other, the couple enjoy the few good things in life, "health, friendship, a summer sky, and the lovely byways of an old French province" (James, Light 70). Instead of James's usual homosexual panic, he pictures a rather romantic relationship between his characters. Granted, the relationship is couched in clinical (inoculate) and anti-Christian (profanity) language, but the fact that the two men could, for a brief moment, have loved is a step in the direction that James's own life would eventually turn toward.

But Theodore, like James himself, cannot seem to break from his homosexual proclivities and keeps looking to Max. Max recalls "he [Theodore] sees in me my latent talents, my underlying 'earnestness' " (James, Light 73). Again we see what at first could appear to be James laziness in not expounding on what he means by Max's "latent talents." By not specifying James focuses attention on the talents. He forces the reader to interpret the text that he cannot write by giving subtle clues like "latent" and "earnest." The word "latent" is associated with the term "latent homosexual tendencies" which later became the term for homosexuality while "earnest" was a nineteenth-century euphemism for homosexual. James, being a literate person, would have certainly been familiar with the way "earnest" was used in society. Wilde's play on the word in the title "The Importance of Being Earnest" is one example of how the word's double meaning was used by homosexuals of the late nineteenth century. The fact that James puts the word in quotation marks speaks to the fact that he understood its dual use.

If there is any doubt as to James's intention, his possible naiveté is disproved by the sentence which follows: "Oh, for a man among them all--a fellow with eyes in his head--eyes that would know me for what I am and let me see they had guessed it" (James, Light 73). Again the reader is given a pronoun with a mystery referent. "It" would seem to refer to what Max is but what he is we are not told. James does not leave us without clues such as the emphasis on "man." James is making quite sure the reader knows Max wants a man. Curiously, Max is not interested in just any man (which is the usual stereotypical portrayal of homosexual men). Instead, he is looking for a man who would not only see what he is (homosexual) but who would also not rebuff him or pretend that he was not different, one who would let him know that he shares his secret. As if to make sure his homosexual content is not missed before he buries it within the story, James offers the following sentence: "Possibly such a fellow as that might get a 'rise' out of me" (James, Light 73). Again the reader is burdened with deciphering the meaning of James's quotation marks. Given the two sentences that come before, the emphasis of the word "rise" seems embarrassingly suggestive of Max getting an erection from a man who has guessed he is homosexual.

This kind of overt expression is not anomalous in James' writing. Years after writing "A Light Man" and after coming to terms somewhat with his own sexuality, James met Morton Fullerton. Kaplan refers to Fullerton as being "sexually flexible," and asserts that "James's response [to Morton's correspondence] was quickly intimate. 'Do come on Thursday at 2, as the nearer day. And don't dear boy, insert the hard wedge of "Mr"--as if for splitting friendship in twain.' The choice of metaphor was characteristic of the mystery of James's sexual self-consciousness; it seemed either impossibly innocent or embarrassingly explicit" (Kaplan 406). What motivated James to be so explicit at times is hard to say. Perhaps it was a cry for help, for someone, everyone, to see through his bachelor facade.

In regard to the text of "A Light Man," James is quite explicit in pointing out to the reader the parallels between Max and Sloane. Halfway through the story James begins to link Max and Sloane. After, at first, being disgusted with Sloane, Max comes to a point where his "only complaint of Mr Sloane is that, instead of an old widower, he's not an old widow (or a young maid), so that I might marry him, survive him, and dwell forever in this rich and mellow home" (James, Light 74). What the reader finds out later in the story is that Max's exact wish to acquire Sloane's estate is how Sloane himself gained it. He married a woman of immense wealth who was much older than he and after three years she "very considerately took herself off" (James, Light 76). At this point in the story James's moral tale comes fully into the light. Max is the sexually unrestrained homosexual figure and Sloane is the end result of such a life. The reader can now see that the continuation of the extravagant, life-sapping homosexual lifestyle will be Max's goal and possible fate.

As Max fantasies about inheriting Sloane's estate if only he were "an old widow," Max's mind muses on the garden, the night sky, and the moon. His comments become more suggestive; "the mountains . . . seem to bare their heads and undrape their shoulders . . . " (James, Light 74). As Max waxes romantic, he notices the boat and his passionate musings incorporates his companion, "a boat, in which Theodore and I have indulged in an immense deal of irregular navigation" (James, Light 74). In a rather simple phrase James so accurately and poetically captures what must have been the feeling of homosexuality in a pre-Stonewall age. James was aware of John Addington Symonds pamphlet on homosexuality; in fact he shamelessly extracted every bit of information and gossip he could from their mutual friends. What James was searching for in these titillating tales of homosexuality was a way to navigate through the waters of his own sexuality.

James continues with a passionate description of the landscape but given his use of "irregular navigation" it becomes clear that he is talking about the landscape of the body, of Theodore's body: "What lovely landward coves and bays--what alder-smothered creeks--what lily-sheeted pools--what sheer steep hillsides, making the water dark and quiet where they hang" (James, Light 74). This almost subliminal sexual reference is reinforced by the bed reference in "lily-sheeted pools." James gently creates a homoromantic situation which ironically allows him to express both his romanticism and his understanding of two men in love.

Max comments that Sloane avoids the water "on account of dampness, he says; because he's afraid of drowning, I suspect." (James, Light 75). If water is sexuality, then Sloane's fear of the damp or drowning can be read as a fear of sexual inadequacy in respect to the two young men or the fear of being rejected by them. Sloane's awareness of his romantic and sexual distance from his young guests is made apparent when he tells Max he fears Max will get tired of him and want him to go away. Max assures him that he is devoted to the old man and then excuses himself to "go up and look at poor Theodore." Note that Max is going to look "at," not "in on," Theodore, a detail which suggests a voyeuristic element. Sloane exclaims, while holding Max's hands, "I wish very much that I could get you to be as fond of me as you are of poor Theodore" (James, Light 28). When Max asks Sloane not to talk of fondness, for he does not "deal much in that article," the following dialogue takes place between them:

"Don't you like my secretary?"

"Not as he deserves."

"Nor as he likes you, perhaps?"

"He likes me more than I deserve." James, Light 82

James's use of such a weak verb as "like" is odd. Obviously Max and Theodore find each other more than mildly agreeable. James uses a weak verb in order to gesture to the word that makes much more sense. The word that has been substituted also begins with the letter "l," ends in "e," and is also four letters long: love. Do you not love my secretary is far more logical a question. Max's answer fits better with this substitution. Max does not love Theodore the way he deserves because if he cared about Theodore he would not be tempting him into physical and romantic interludes which lead to a miserable end, according to the portrayal of Sloane. Nor as he loves you, perhaps? asks Sloane. He loves me more than I deserve, replies Max. He is undeserving for at least two reasons: he is not an acceptable recipient, according to James, of Theodore's love because they are both men and also because he is tempting Theodore down the dark path James sees as the homosexual lifestyle.

During this discourse Sloane is still holding both of Max's hands and pitifully begs, "For God's sake, don't leave me to pine and die alone!" (James, Light 82). As Sloane takes on the role of the soon-to-be-jilted lover, his tone becomes more supplicatory. And as the positions of power are reversed and Sloane begs Max for fidelity, the homoeroticism of this sadomasochistic relationship comes to fruition, "prompted by the irresistible spirit of my desire to leap astride of his weakness and ride it hard to the goal of my dreams" (James, Light 89). As Max keeps Sloane's spirit at the fever point so, too, does he continue with his sexual escapade. Max tells of the feel of "a heated human heart throbbing and turning and struggling in my grasp; know its pants, its spasms, its convulsions, and its final senseless quiescence" (James, Light 89). James, obviously, is not talking literally or figuratively about a human heart. It was not Sloane's heart that Max could manipulate in order to get him to change his last will and testament. Sloane has dispatched many who have tried that route to his fortune. The spasms and convulsions are thinly veiled allusions to ejaculation. To strengthen this reading, Max refers to Sloane's "heart's" "quiescence." But his heart is not inactive. In fact, after his exchange with Max it would be racing. The word "quiescence" is referring to Sloane's penis after orgasm.

Once Sloane's death is achieved and his last will and testament is destroyed, both men are left without financial gain. At this point Max and Theodore finally confront the difference in their view of their relationship. Theodore speaks openly of how he cared for Max, while Max admits the he does not "understand the feeling of affection between men" (James, Light 95). In the end all three men must be punished for their transgression of the cultural taboo of homosexuality. Sloane dies piteously; Theodore loses his deserved fortune; and Max, who is now penniless, waits for Sloane's niece to come and claim her inheritance, suggesting that he will follow in Sloane's footsteps and marry for money.

The rampant homophobia in "A Light Man" is quite understandable given the time in which James wrote it and what he must have been going through as a young man of twenty-five who was confused by his sexuality. He would be much older before he came to terms with his own homoerotic feelings. In fact, it would be more than a decade before he could write "The Pupil," a tale of love between two men. As James began to come to terms with his love for men in his correspondences with men such as Hendrik Andersen, Morton Fullerton, and Hugh Walpole, his greater ease in dealing with same-sex love revealed itself in his writing.