Text 1: Critic Halberg reads Henry James's late style as a triumph of psychological realism. The labyrinthine sentences, with their nested qualifications and delayed verbs, mirror the way the mind actually works — circling, doubting, revising. To simplify James, Halberg argues, is to falsify consciousness itself.
Text 2: Critic Drummond does not deny that James's style produces psychological effects, but she notes that James himself dictated his late novels to a stenographer. The famously convoluted sentences, she argues, may reflect not the architecture of consciousness but the rhythms of speech, complete with pauses, restarts, and afterthoughts. The "mental" reading, she suggests, mistakes performance for thought.
Based on the texts, how would Drummond (Text 2) most likely respond to Halberg's interpretation?
- Acheck_circle
She would suggest an alternative origin for the style that Halberg attributes to mental processes.
- B
She would argue that James never wrote in a difficult late style.
- C
She would agree that James's style perfectly captures the workings of the mind.
- D
She would deny that James's style has any psychological effect on readers.
Explanation
Drummond doesn't deny stylistic effects; she proposes that the dictation method, not consciousness itself, explains the style. C captures this counter-explanation. A, B, and D mischaracterize her position.