Secondly, by surveying its Jamesian themes, the Jamesian ambiguity of the story will be highlighted. Firstly, taking a look at the Irish-American background of the novel will clarify the speci cally moral implications of the plot. This position is going to be explained in three separate steps. The question is this: what role does Jamesian ambiguity have in the representation of the heroine's, Eilis's, immigrant experience? It appears that the use of Jamesian secrets and ambiguity in the novel enhances the uidity and socially preprogrammed nature of the immigrant experience Eilis undergoes. The complications involve the betrayal of her lovers and I would like to look into the use of Jamesian ambiguity in the complications of this immigrant story. At the same time, Brooklyn is a speci cally Irish-American immigrant novel in which a young rural Irish girl goes to America for a job, gets married and, after some complications, settles. One can even see it as Tóibín's version of James' transatlantic story of the innocent immigrant girl in The Portrait of a Lady. Brooklyn itself is a Jamesian story of a young girl moving to a new country and learning to play along new social rules, to understand di erently, a story of migration and transculturation in the 20 th century transatlantic context. The essay focuses on the intersection of Jamesian features and the representation of Irishness in his Brooklyn. Tóibín is an accomplished Jacobite both as an author (Tóibín 2004) and as a critic (Tóibín 2010), but he is also an internationally acclaimed Irish author with a serious interest in Irish issues. The task at hand is to look into the Jamesian legacy in Brooklyn, by our mutual favourite, Colm Tóibín. Email: This paper discusses some secrets concerning Colm Tóibín and Henry James-some open secrets. She has published two books, The Function of the Imagination in the Writings of Henry James (Mellen, 2006) and Literature in Context (Jate Press, 2010).

Her current research into travel writing involves re-reading texts by Edith Wharton and Henry James as travel accounts.

Brooklyn de colm toibin