Three Aesthetes in Profile

Gilbert Osmond, Mark Ambient, and Gabriel Nash

Abstract

This essay, which is part of a work in progress, opens with a sketch of the fin de siecle aesthete, a figure who appears to question some of the basic categories that contribute to shape identity, i.e. nationality, culture, and gender. Against this backdrop, three jarnesian characters play their respective roles: Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady, Mark Ambient in "The Author of Beltraffio", and Gabriel Nash in The Tragic Muse. Their highly individual profiles seem to participate in an underlying dynamics of art, whose axes are defined by opposite poles such as here vs. elsewhere and mobility vs. immobility. Thus, these three complex and intriguing characters, who may be seen as "variations" on James's nomadic choice of expatriation, help us to problematize the author's ambivalent relationship to the aesthetic movement and his allegiance to realism.