Major Themes
The place that Dane visits in his dream—or his supernatural and time-expanding experience, as James cleverly doesn't specify—seems a combination of retreat house, convent, country home, hotel, spa, resort and club. It's a very worldly place, not at all an earthly paradise or a Dante-like afterlife or an achievement of nirvana. Dane does not become a different person or encounter strange beings. He just meets ordinary people like himself who need a break from the grind.
Leon Edel even sniffed that the place seems rather "mundane and country-clubbish." James might not have taken this as particularly hurtful criticism, because he seems to have intended the great good place as something not out of the realm of normal human experience. Rather it's a temporary rest-stop to recharge and refresh, an accessible and comforting place instead of a weird or frightening one.
Read more about this topic: The Great Good Place (Henry James)
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