Monster Hotels, Elastic Men, and the Bourgeois Age

By constructing a sociological portrait of the long-legged man in Henry James's early work, this article focuses on the relationship between Jamesian bodies, habits, and architecture. The longlegged man, drawn to the radically new space of the urban commercial hotel, is a dangerous creature. With his elasticity, he challenges social good form, confounding the margin between self and other; with his intermingled subjectivity, he challenges novelistic form, confounding the margin between major and minor characters. The long-legged man is a case study in the ways in which Jamesian bodies can alternatively reproduce or revolutionise the social order.