Beware the aristocrat who claims to be a friend of the workers: The Princess Casamassima

So finally, in part 2, 150 or so pages in, we meet the eponymous Princess Casamassima in Henry James's novel - and we can immediately see that there will be various forces contending for the soul of "our hero," as James calls him, Hyacinth (!) Robinson, the young bookbinder who has become attracted to radical political ideas and ideals and imagines a working-class revolt that will destroy the British aristocracy - as in the French Revolution but with more enduring effects. Despite his attraction to radical ideals and to activist political groups, Hyacinth feels that he is acting sometimes in bad faith, has he has the romantic notion that he may actually be of aristocratic birth - in fact, he's been raised by a stepmother as his mother is imprisoned for murder. At the end of part 1, he takes a young woman, the flirtatious and completely apolitical Milly Henning, to a popular show at a theater, and there, at the outset of part 2, a mutual friend brings Hyacinth into one of the boxes to meet the Princess - a beautiful young woman who likes to meet different "types" to broaden her horizons and who expresses deep sympathies for the working class and says she would be glad to give up all her advantages to right the injustices of society. The novel will obviously explore how she changes Hyacinth and whether she can be true to her expressed ideals or whether they are just postures that she adopts without thinking of the consequences- consequences that no doubt Hyacinth will feel, not her. Beware the aristocrat who claims to e a friend of the workers. The Princess C. also will no doubt be contrasted with the other noble lady who visits the invalid sister of one of Hyacinth's friends - a gentle and charitable soul, perhaps to be contrasted with the egoistic and maybe delusional Princess.