This study concentrates on hitherto neglected areas of James's representational practice. James's works reveal an increasing emphasis on the portrayal of consciousness as his fictional world becomes ever more consistently filtered through one or more central characters, or "reflectors." And yet the complex repertoire of formal devices James deployed in his representation of the inner world (and the implications of these procedures) have not as yet been systematically examined.

This, then, is the central focus of Adre Marshall's study of James's fiction. James's narrative strategies are discussed in the context of the techniques employed by his literary predecessors. Illuminating comparisons are made with novelists such as Jane Austen and George Eliot, and particular attention is paid to the French novelist Flaubert, who was probably the most significant influence on James.

The author examines James's stylistic devices in a selection of representative works from his early, middle, and late periods (Roderick Hudson, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Golden Bowl).