In order to investigate the category of the double or the Doppelgänger, this paper examines both the short story "The friends of the friends", by Henry James, and its literary creation. By checking the primitive sources of such category against its adoption in the 19th-century narrative, we suggest a key for interpreting the Jamesian fiction, and also discuss the survival of the supernatural in a society that favors the spectacle, the advertising, the novelty, the consumption of goods, and the progress.
Henry James; 19th-century narrative; Doppelgänger; modern society