Summary
Summary of The Jolly Corner
Key ideas
Key idea 1
An unlived life becomes a haunting
The Jolly Corner turns a question about choice into a ghost story. A man returns to New York after decades abroad and wonders what he would have become if he had stayed. The haunting grows not from a death, but from the possibility of another life.
Henry James places that possibility inside an empty house, where a candle gives only a little light. Curiosity, tenderness and dread belong together here: looking back at a choice can mean meeting something strange in yourself.
Key idea 2
Home reveals an unused talent
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Key idea 3
Alice takes his question seriously
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Key idea 4
The house seems to hold someone
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Key idea 5
The hunter begins to feel hunted
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Key idea 6
Choice leaves other lives behind
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Key idea 7
The haunting stays inside Brydon's view
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Key idea 8
A question takes a ghostly shape
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
For readers who love ghost stories with a thoughtful center, and for anyone who has wondered about a different path in life.
What this book is
The Jolly Corner is a long short story by Henry James, first published in 1908, near the end of his career. It tells of a man who comes home to New York after more than three decades abroad and finds that the city, and his own past, have moved on without him. James wrote many tales of the supernatural, but here the haunting is not about the dead. It is about the life a man did not live.
You get a story you can hear in one sitting, built around an empty house, a flickering candle and a very strange question. What would I have become if I had stayed? The story asks this with humor, tenderness and real dread. Along the way you meet a man who is vain, curious and a little lost, and a woman who understands him better than he understands himself. Let us begin with Spencer Brydon, stepping off the boat into a New York he barely knows.
In this summary
- 1Spencer Brydon comes home a strangerFree
- 2Alice Staverton sees him clearly
- 3The empty house starts to call him
- 4Brydon hunts, and is hunted
- 5What the story says about regret and choice
- 6How James tells the tale
Key point 1 of 6
Spencer Brydon comes home a stranger
Spencer Brydon is fifty-six years old. He has lived in Europe for thirty-three years, and now he returns to New York to look after some property he owns. He has not seen the city in all that time, and he finds it loud, tall and strange. Buildings he remembers have vanished, and new ones rise where they stood.
Brydon has two properties. One is a house that has been divided into rental flats, and he watches its repairs with a curiosity that surprises him. The other is the house where he was born and grew up. It stands on a street corner, and he and his family once called it the jolly corner. It is nearly empty now, kept by a caretaker couple, the Muldoons.
He has lived abroad in comfort, without a profession and without much to show for his years, though he has enjoyed them. Old friends in Europe would not have called him a man of action. Yet in New York something odd stirs in him. He finds he has a lively interest in building, in money and in the practical business of rents and plans.
This interest troubles him in a pleasant way. It makes him wonder about a talent he never used. Standing in a city that rewards such talents, he begins to suspect that another Spencer Brydon might have grown from the same seed. That thought, small at first, is the start of everything that follows.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
What possibility draws Brydon into his ghost hunt?
Right. “He feels that his old fancy, the idea of the other Spencer Brydon, has found a place to live.”Not quite. “He feels that his old fancy, the idea of the other Spencer Brydon, has found a place to live.”
What makes Brydon suspect the presence is acting independently?
Right. “Then a door that he had left open is found closed.”Not quite. “Then a door that he had left open is found closed.”
What kind of knowledge does Alice represent?
Right. “Alice stands for another kind of knowledge, the knowledge that comes through love and attention.”Not quite. “Alice stands for another kind of knowledge, the knowledge that comes through love and attention.”
Who’s who
- Spencer Brydon
- A wealthy American returning from decades in Europe, he confides in Alice while questioning the life he might have lived.
- Alice Staverton
- Brydon's longtime friend lives quietly in New York and listens sympathetically to his thoughts about his unlived life.
- Mrs. Muldoon
- The caretaker of Brydon's empty family house looks after the property he visits during his return to New York.
- The other Spencer Brydon
- Brydon's imagined alternative self represents the American life he abandoned and seems to haunt his empty family house.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 15,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 1 h
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 11 other languages
Questions about The Jolly Corner
What is The Jolly Corner about?
It is about Spencer Brydon, who returns to New York after living abroad for decades. In his old family house he becomes haunted by the idea of the man he might have been if he had stayed.
Who is Alice Staverton in The Jolly Corner?
Alice is Brydon's old friend who stayed in New York. She is patient and perceptive, and she understands his thoughts about his other self better than he does.
What does the jolly corner mean?
It is the family's name for the street corner where the old house stands, and so for the house itself. It carries Brydon's childhood memories and becomes the place where his past and his imagined life meet.
Is The Jolly Corner a real ghost story?
It is a ghost story, but a psychological one. James keeps it open whether the presence is really in the house or in Brydon's mind, which makes the haunting about identity and regret.
Is The Jolly Corner hard to read?
The story is short and tightly focused, especially when read aloud.
