Paste (story)

After the death of her aunt, the protagonist Charlotte and her cousin, her aunt’s stepson Arthur Prime, find a tin of imitation jewelry which includes a string of pearls. Charlotte is immediately fascinated with the pearls, and wonders if they could be a gift from when her aunt was an actress. Arthur disputes this and is insulted at the thought of some gentleman other than his father giving his stepmother such a gift. Charlotte quickly apologizes and agrees that the pearls could be nothing more than paste. With Arthur’s enthusiastic approval, she keeps the jewelry in memory of her aunt.

When Charlotte returns to her governess job, her friend, Mrs. Guy, asks her if she has anything to add color to her dress for an upcoming party. When Charlotte shows Mrs. Guy the jewelry, she too becomes fascinated with the string of pearls, insisting that they are genuine. Mrs. Guy wears the string to the party; and when Charlotte finds out that everyone believed that they were real, she insists that they must be returned to her cousin. Mrs. Guy claims that it was Arthur's foolishness to have given away the necklace, and that Charlotte should feel no guilt in keeping it.

However, Charlotte decides to return the pearls to her cousin, who still refuses to consider the pearls real. A month later Mrs. Guy shows her a wonderful string of pearls, telling Charlotte that they are the same ones that Charlotte had inherited from her aunt. Charlotte is surprised because Arthur claimed he had shattered them, when in fact he had sold them to the store where Mrs. Guy bought them.

"Paste" is one of James' briefest and lightest fictions, but the story explores the contrast between reality and illusion that often fascinated its author in such longer and weightier tales as The Turn of the Screw. By his own account in the New York Edition preface, James consciously reversed Maupassant's grim melodrama of a fake necklace thought to be real into a pleasant comedy of a real necklace thought to be fake.

In such a very short story, the characters can only be sketched in miniature, but they all come into focus. Charlotte is charming and naive, Arthur priggish and pompous, and Mrs. Guy managerial and sensuous. The story ends with a "lurid" suggestion that Mrs. Guy may have obtained the necklace from Arthur in a private transaction rather than at a jewelry store.

James's inclusion of this concise and carefully crafted story in the New York Edition (1907–09) indicated his own high opinion of it, and critics have generally agreed. While hardly one of James's most significant stories, "Paste" shows his ability to turn round in the tight space of the five-to-ten thousand words editors of his time often demanded. He produced a number of such brief stories in the late 1890s when he was writing prolifically to pay for Lamb House in Rye, East Sussex.

Mrs. Guy has been especially appreciated as one of James's formidable, intimidating women, with a strong undertone of sexuality. James makes it credible that she may have seductively coaxed the necklace away from Arthur instead of buying it in a store.

• The Tales of Henry James by Edward Wagenknecht (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1984) ISBN 0-8044-2957-X

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Paste

• The New York Edition text of the story, with the author's preface (1909) Archived 2017-05-18 at the Wayback Machine
• Note on the texts of Paste at the Library of America web site