The Jolly Corner

“The Jolly Corner” is an unusual ghost story in that the entity haunting the titular home is not dead. Rather, it is Spencer Brydon’s alter ego—someone who never existed. The story is therefore, in large part, an exploration of The Fear of Missed Opportunity, and many of the details of its exposition establish this theme. Chapter 1 follows Brydon as he returns to New York after decades abroad. He is in his mid-fifties and therefore poised to begin looking back on his life, and the clear contrast Henry James draws between Europe and the US delineates two distinct life paths: the leisurely decadence of his travels overseas, which he describes as a “selfish frivolous scandalous life” (Chapter 1, Paragraph 26), versus industrious accumulation of wealth as a Gilded Era businessman. His reunion with Alice Staverton and her obvious romantic interest in him also introduce the possibility that he might have married if he stayed in the US.

While Brydon insists that he does not like modern American culture, he quickly becomes obsessed with how life in New York City might have shaped him. His fascination likely stems in part from real dissatisfaction with how he has led his life; his references to his time in Europe are consistently disparaging and hint at behavior he is ashamed of. However, it also reflects a more generalized discomfort with the notion of losing any opportunity, regardless of what that opportunity is. This is part of what draws him to Alice. His insistence that she has no alter egos reassures him that such an existence is possible: “[Y]ou’re a person whom nothing can have altered. You were born to be what you are, anywhere, anyway” (Chapter 1, Paragraph 28). To Brydon, it seems Alice can have no regrets—not because of how she has lived but because she could not have lived differently. The same anxieties partially explain Brydon’s attachment to the jolly corner, which he feels contains “the impalpable ashes of his long-extinct youth, afloat in the very air like microscopic motes” (Chapter 1, Paragraph 10). The house represents a period when Brydon’s life was entirely before him, and it allows him to access that feeling even in his middle age.

Brydon’s fear of missing out on life paradoxically manifests as inaction. By doing nothing—e.g., drifting aimlessly around Europe—he believes he can avoid decisively closing off any opportunities. Part of what his encounter with his alter ego reveals is that inaction is a type of action. Confronted with the shut door, which his fear prevents him from opening, Brydon reflects, “Not to have acted—that was the misery and the pang—was even still not to act; was in fact all to feel the thing in another, in a new and terrible way” (Chapter 2, Paragraph 15). The moment epitomizes Brydon’s life, and its meaning is twofold. The most straightforward interpretation of Brydon’s words is that he is lamenting his failure to open the door, which he recognizes as a turning point in his life. However, in the context of Brydon’s debate over whether he himself shut the door (and later forgot it), it also invites reflection on another act; the prior closing of the door itself becomes a symbol of decisive action, which Brydon did not perform but which someone else did. This foreshadows his agonized meeting with his alter ego, who upsets Brydon partly because he seems to be what Brydon is not—strong-willed, with a “rage of personality” (Chapter 2, Paragraph 25).

However, the contrast between Brydon and his alter ego is not as stark as it might seem. In fact, there is little but Brydon’s word to suggest that the two are opposites, as the story never ascribes any definite qualities to Brydon’s alter ego, merely saying he “might be […] evil, odious, blatant, vulgar” (Chapter 2, Paragraph 25). The clearest thing about the alter ego is his identity as a businessman, as it’s this idea that sparks Brydon’s interest in him. However, this is also increasingly true of Brydon himself. The opening of the story juxtaposes the jolly corner against another of Brydon’s properties. This one has become an experiment for Brydon, who is turning it into an apartment building and exploring his own business acumen in the process. His traumatic experience in the jolly corner seemingly convinces him to develop that property as well. Meanwhile, Brydon’s language throughout the story implies that he is not actually as opposed to New York’s mercenary culture as he says he is. At one point, for example, he reflects that “[h]e knew what he meant and what he wanted; it was as clear as the figure on a cheque presented in demand for cash” (Chapter 2, Paragraph 4). Not only is the simile overtly monetary, but it stands in for Brydon’s intentions and desires (“what he meant and what he wanted”).

Brydon’s estrangement from this side of himself is key to the story’s depiction of The Discontinuity of Identity. Although Brydon expresses interest in learning more about who he might have been (or could be), his actions suggest otherwise. His exploration of the jolly corner, which in this sense symbolizes Brydon’s own self, is more of a game than an actual effort at self-scrutiny. Furthermore, when he finally confronts his alter ego, he rejects this other version of himself. This can be interpreted as an act of self-acceptance—i.e., of Brydon finally putting an end to his fascination with an aspect of himself that can never be. An earlier remark that Alice makes tends to support this idea; she notes that if Brydon truly believed his alter ego to be “monstrous,” he “wouldn’t wonder [about it]. [He would] know, and that would be enough” (Chapter 1, Paragraph 21). This apparently foreshadows the story’s ending: Brydon now does know what his alter ego is like and seems content to let the matter rest.

However, it is telling that Brydon’s rejection of his alter ego is so absolute; he denies that he could ever have been such a person, suggesting that he finds the repressed parts of himself too alien, too ugly, and too monstrous to acknowledge even as a hypothetical. This casts a shadow over the story’s seemingly happy ending. Alice tries to do the work of reconciling his conflicting impulses for him, remarking that she would have loved him regardless of the course his life took. However, Brydon does not take to this idea, and Alice eventually reassures him that the ghost is, as he insists, nothing like him. The tentative beginnings of their relationship therefore seem premised on mutual denial of core elements of Brydon’s personality.