"Paste" is a 5,800-word

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

first published in '' Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly'' in December 1899. James included the story in his collection, ''The Soft Side'', published by Macmillan the following year. James conceived the story as a clever reversal of Guy de Maupassant's " The Necklace".

Plot summary

After the death of her aunt, the protagonist Charlotte and her aunt’s stepson Arthur Prime, find a tin of imitation

jewelry Jewellery (or jewelry in American English) consists of decorative items worn for personal adornment such as brooches, ring (jewellery), rings, necklaces, earrings, pendants, bracelets, and cufflinks. Jewellery may be attached to the body or the ...

which includes a string of

pearls A pearl is a hard, glistening object produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle (mollusc), mantle) of a living Exoskeleton, shelled mollusk or another animal, such as fossil conulariids. Just like the shell of a mollusk, a pear ...

. Charlotte is immediately fascinated with the pearls, and wonders if they could be a gift from when her aunt was an

actress An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

. Arthur disputes this and is insulted at the thought of some gentleman other than his father giving his stepmother such a gift. Charlotte quickly apologizes and agrees that the pearls could be nothing more than paste. Arthur offers them to Charlotte, who accepts them in memory of her aunt. When Charlotte returns to her governess job, her friend, Mrs. Guy, asks her if she has anything to add color to her dress for an upcoming party. When Charlotte shows Mrs. Guy the jewelry, she too becomes fascinated with the string of pearls, insisting that they are genuine. Mrs. Guy wears the string to the party; and when Charlotte finds out that everyone believed that they were real, she insists that they must be returned to Arthur. Mrs. Guy claims that it was Arthur's foolishness to have given away the necklace, and that Charlotte should feel no guilt in keeping it. However, Charlotte decides to return the pearls to Arthur, who still refuses to consider the pearls real and says that he will take them to a store to determine whether they are real or merely paste. A month later Mrs. Guy shows her a wonderful string of pearls, telling Charlotte that they are the same ones that Charlotte had inherited from her aunt. Charlotte is surprised because Arthur claimed that the store had "pronounced them utter paste" and "that he had smashed them", when in fact, if Mrs. Guy was telling the truth, he had sold them to the store where Mrs. Guy bought them. But Charlotte wonders whether Mrs. Guy had "dealt with Arthur directly", and she realizes "that she had had his address".

Major themes

"Paste" is one of James's briefer short stories, but it explores the contrast between

reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of everything in existence; everything that is not imagination, imaginary. Different Culture, cultures and Academic discipline, academic disciplines conceptualize it in various ways. Philosophical questions abo ...

and

illusion An illusion is a distortion of the senses, which can reveal how the mind normally organizes and interprets sensory stimulation. Although illusions distort the human perception of reality, they are generally shared by most people. Illusions may ...

that often fascinated its author in such longer and weightier tales as ''

The Turn of the Screw ''The Turn of the Screw'' is an 1898 gothic horror novella by Henry James which first appeared in serial format in '' Collier's Weekly'' from January 27 to April 16, 1898. On October 7, 1898, it was collected in ''The Two Magics'', publis ...

''. By his own account in the ''

New York Edition The ''New York Edition'' of Henry James' fiction was a 24-volume collection of the Anglo-American writer's novels, novellas and short stories, originally published in the U.S. and the UK between 1907 and 1909, with a photogravure frontispiec ...

'' preface, James consciously reversed Maupassant's grim

melodrama A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on ...

of a fake necklace thought to be real into a more pleasant tale of a real necklace thought to be fake.

References

* ''The Tales of Henry James'' by

Edward Wagenknecht Edward (Charles) Wagenknecht (March 28, 1900 – May 24, 2004) was an American literary critic and teacher who specialized in 19th-century American literature. He wrote and edited many books on literature and movies, and taught for many years at v ...

(New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1984)

External links

The ''New York Edition'' text of the story, with the author's preface (1909)
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170518150429/http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~hathaway/paste.html , date=2017-05-18
Note on the texts of ''Paste''
at the

Library of America The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published more than 300 volumes by authors ...

web site 1899 short stories Short stories by Henry James Works originally published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper