“Only let yourself go!”: Giving and Taking in Henry James’ The Spoils of Poynton

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This paper explores Henry James’ imaginative accounting of the archaic social interactions (especially those that leave women with no autonomy) in The Spoils of Poynton through the cultural and anthropological theory of gift culture as set out by Marcel Mauss, James Derrida, and James G. Carrier. It addresses James’ own scathing indictment of social and legal laws that often left women dispossessed of ownership, self-possession, property, and propriety when young disadvantaged women, like Fleda Vetch, and disenfranchised wives/mothers, like Adela Gareth, are asked to simply “give themselves away.”