The Product of Woollett: The Ambassadors Return

The Ambassadors Return The Product of Woollett, a sequel to The Ambassadors by Henry James, is meant to be enjoyed on its own, even with readers unfamiliar with the original Jamesian masterpiece. In The Ambassadors, Strether had been sent to Paris as the widowed Mrs. Newsome's ambassador, commissioned to bring her son Chad home to run the family business in Woollett, Massachusetts. The family in Woollett had assumed the boy was entangled with some woman of ill repute, leading a desultory Parisian life. What Strether discovers, however, is a new Chad of cosmopolitan sophistication at the heart of a fascinating social circle, having been transformed by the Comtesse Marie de Vionnet - whom Strether comes to regard as the most charming woman in the world. Confronted by an unexpected revelation that forces him to re-evaluate his own values and actions, Strether still repudiates his Woollett instructions and urges Chad to remain in Paris, more loyal to Madame de Vionnet than to his mother. At the end of The Ambassadors, Strether has chosen to return to Woollett, sacrificing a life in Paris close to Chad and Madame de Vionnet so as not to profit personally from his breach of trust with Mrs. Newsome. He knows that he returns home to a great difference: his presumed betrothal to Mrs. Newsome - had he brought Chad back with him - is now in grave doubt. In The Product of Woollett, Strether discovers the extent of that difference in Woollett. But he little anticipates that all of his Parisian friends will soon follow to see for themselves what he will make of it, creating completely new complications for him to resolve as well as a new revelation to confront.

J.S. Berkman is a graduate of Harvard and Oxford. Once a lawyer, he has also been an English teacher, soccer coach, rower as well as the Head of School at two independent schools. He and his wife McKey live in Boston’s Back Bay. They have four grown children, two married, and a golden retriever.