The Real Thing (1892) was written at a time when James, distressed by the public's seeming indifference to his novels, courted a wider audience with stage plays, and set himself to ration his prose fiction. One aspect of the life-art antithesis that preoccupied him at this time is illustrated by this story, an engaging sermon of "the perverse and cruel law in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than the unreal." The narrator is a painter who is unable to use a model Victorian couple as subjects because they are, indeed, too authentic. Sir Dominick Ferrand (1892) is a James potboiler—a tale with vague touches of the supernatural, the uncanny. James displays his interest in the theatre with Nona Vincent (1892), in which the author of a play is encouraged in his career by a married woman who acts as his "angel." At the same time, he is intrigued by the young actress who plays the title role, although her professional skills are only moderate. The Chaperon (1891) tells of a girl who volunteers to share the social ostracism of her errant mother. In no other tale does James display so much anger against the hypocritical harshness of late-Victorian London society than he does here, especially as it is manifested in the self-righteous vindictiveness of the heroine's family towards her divorced mother. Greville Fane (1892) tells the story of a writer of best sellers. Vulgar and tasteless, but of a kind disposition, the protagonist writes himself to death to support a lazy ingrate son and a snobbish daughter.
