The Paste : Summary

In the story 'Paste', written by Henry James, Arthur Prime is introduced as the son of a clergyman and his wife, both of whom have recently died. The story opens when Arthur as 'he' and his cousin, Charlotte, are discussing going through his parent's belongings after their death. He seems to be reticent to go through the belongings, telling Charlotte that he wishes her to look at the few new things he has found.

The protagonist Charlotte and her cousin, her aunt’s stepson Arthur Prime, find a tin of imitation jewelry which includes a necklace 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 apologises and agrees that the pearls could be nothing more than paste. With Arthur’s enthusiastic approval, she keeps the jewellery in memory of her aunt.

When Charlotte returns to her governess job, her friend, Mrs. Guy, asks her if she has anything to add colour to her dress for an upcoming party. When Charlotte shows Mrs. Guy the jewellery, 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 string of pearls, 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.

As a character in the story, Arthur reveals himself to be deceptive, as he argues that the pearls are indeed "rotten paste", and that he does not believe Charlotte's assertion that they are indeed real and valuable. Rather than standing by his word about the pearls and returning them to Charlotte, he locks them in a drawer and says he will have them assessed at Bond Street, simply in order to prove that they are fakes. It is only later that Charlotte learns through Mrs. Guy that Arthur has disposed of the pearls by putting them up for sale, thus deceiving her. Arthur has clearly been portrayed as a man who is interested in appearances and not generous, and his gift of the pearls is offered in a "tone of relief which expressed somehow more of the eager than of the gracious". Arthur appears to brood without sorrow. This clearly insinuates that he is shallow and unfeeling, and his disdain of his aunt's "awful" and "cheap" jewellery, shows his disregard for sentimentality at least in this regard. He is a man concerned with appearances and propriety, and criticises the jewels as "trappings of a ruder age than ours". He is absolutely insistent that the jewels are worthless, suggesting that any value would suggest that his aunt was once a 'kept' woman of the stage, of less than sterling character.

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 might have obtained the necklace from Arthur in a private transaction rather than at a jewellery store. Mrs. Guy has been especially appreciated as one of James's formidable, intimidating women, with a strong undertone of sexuality.

In such a very short story, the characters can only be sketched in miniature, but they all come into focus.

By his own account in the New York Edition preface, Henry 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.