earticle

영어

Henry James, a cosmopolitan, is not an indifferent and ignorant of Christianity though he is known as a writer who is unrelated to Christianity. James is not a devout Christian but as part of his identity, his values and worldview are deeply rooted in Christian culture. Among his many works, his Christian worldview is evident in The Ambassadors. He implicitly depicts the Christian worldview by figuratively portraying the characters of the Bible. In particular, he associates Jesus Christ and his crucifixion with the main character Strether who reflects the suffering of self-denial and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which constitutes the main frame of the Christian worldview. In doing so, James criticizes the collapsed morality and duality of the Newsomes and Waymarsh like Pharisees, pointing to the limits of the value of the dualistic, narrow-minded Wollett, which is dominated by moral absolutism. Finally, he emphasizes the necessity of moral relativism, not the absolute moral standard, by suggesting the necessity of flexible way of thinking through Strether’s final decision which is different from Jesus. (Yeungnam University)