The Real Right Thing

• Ashton Doyne is a successful writer who died from undetermined causes. He was a very rich and fake man, always striving to make himself look the absolute best in front of his rich friends. He kept a lot of his personal journals and writings to himself in order to never be judged.

• Ashton Doyne's spirit comes into the study where Ashton always worked in order to keep his own watchful eye on what his wife and friend were doing with his belongings. It becomes apparent toward the end of the story that Ashton's ghost doesn't represent the Ashton people knew when he was alive; he is cold and distant to his wife and friend. He haunts George and Mrs. Doyne in order to stop him from writing the biography; he didn't want the biography to lead to an inaccurate perception of him to those who read it. Eventually he gets his wish when George and Mrs. Doyne stop working on the biography.

• George Withermore is a young, conscientious journalist and critic who lives a lower class lifestyle with little to show for himself. He had very few writings, and there were not a lot of people he associated with. However, he was a good friend of the more famed writer and recently deceased Ashton Doyne. George goes to meet with the widow Mrs. Doyne in order to collect materials of Ashton. It is very clear that George was very attached to his friend, and still was even after he died. As George compiles information for the biography on his friend, he notices a ghost-like character in the room with him, who he believes to be Ashton himself. He found this spirit to be a stranger; it wasn't kind and warmhearted to him like he remembered his friend as. George eventually gives up on writing the biography when he is haunted and scared too many times by Ashton's ghost.

• Mrs. Doyne: Her walk was "ugly and tragic" but also very striking; she gave off a rather elegant presence to those around her. Mrs. Doyne has superficial qualities; she wants complete control of what Mr. Withermore writes in the biography about her husband. She wants to make sure she doesn't come out looking bad to the circle of people her husband and she surrounded themselves with. She cares about "quantity" not "quality" for his book, only caring about how many volumes will be involved, not the context of what will be written. She often speaks for her husband, even though she barely knew him and it is determined that she didn't care to know him. She is a perfectionist who doesn't want to look anything less than stellar. She keeps a very watchful eye on what sources George is using and how he is using them. Like George, she starts to feel the presence of her deceased husband in the office where they work, and she agrees that they should give up on the biography.

In J.P Telotte's article "The Right Way With Reality," the significance of the supernatural is an important element to note in discussing “The Real Right Thing” by Henry James. The ghost of Ashton Doyne is ambiguous in appearance. Therefore, Telotte notes that the “significance of this distinction, and thus of the haunting and problematic vision it notes, rests, on the one hand, in its reminder of the many similar “ghosts that haunt James’s short fiction in his later period, and, on the other, in its pointed parallel to another problem of removed perception that dominates this story-- Withermore’s attempt to write Doyne’s biography, to reconstruct a life from the paper trail a man has left behind. In the conjunction of the modes of approaching reality, which this supposedly supernatural vision and the act of writing imply, we might discern not only a basic tension informing this story, but also a larger concert with presences and absences and a desire-- common to both readers and writers—to close the gap between the two, for it is a gap that informs much of James’s fiction and gives the reason to his recurrent “ghosts.”[4]

Telotte discusses the play between the perceptions of our reality and the more concrete forms of reality, like written work, that James uses as a technique for his stories. In the "Real Right Thing", it is Ashton's ghost and the biography that represent these two forms of reality. What is the "Real Right Thing"? Is it this mysterious apparition or is it the biography? The difficulty in answering this question can be found in all of James's works. As readers, we have the desire to "fill in the gaps" and seek some sort of knowledge and certainty within James's works. Henry James poses this question but purposely leaves out the answer.”[5]

In the reading "Resistance of Queory" by Hugh Stevens, Stevens' argument is that in the short story "The Real Right Thing" it suggests the theory of homosexuality between the characters Mr. Withermore and Ashton's spirit.”[6] The dialogue between the two characters "is described in the kind of erotically charged language and overflowing with innuendo."[7]

Stevens makes a reference to the story's text to support this theory:

"When once this fancy had begun to hang about him he welcomed it, persuaded it, encouraged it, quite cherished it, looking forward all day to feeling it renew itself in the evening, and waiting for the evening very much as one of a pair of lovers might wait for the hour of their appointment...Withermore rejoiced at moments to feel this certitude: there were times of dipping deep into some of Doyne's secrets when it was particularly pleasant to be able to hold that Doyne desired him, as it were, to know them."[8]

Stevens suggests that the presence of the ghost is much more than its mention. Its presence is Doyne "coming out of the closet."[9] Henry James was interested in J.A. Symonds theories of sexuality involving homosexual men. Therefore, Stevens suggests that James's interest in Symonds work is reflected in "The Real Right Thing."[10]

"There is no certainty that James and Symonds shared a homosexual relationship but it is implied that they could have. James was asked to write Symonds biography."[11]

However, James found the task difficult because James did not want to leave out information about Symonds' life. He felt that if he had to keep certain details out of the public's attention than he did not feel fit in writing a biography that does not present the entire colorful personality and life of the dead author.[12]

Therefore, "The Real Right Thing" "meditates on the problematic relationship between a private sexual life, a marriage, and how these two things might be represented in the public biography of a dead writer-- all factors that James perceived as important in writings on Symonds after his death.[13] It is implied that this attempt to write Symonds biography was the inspiration for the short story "The Real Right Thing."