Essays that Henry James wrote in 1897, 1902, and 1914 make clear that George Sand destabilized his authorial identity by appearing to be a more masculine writer than he. She forced him to suspend his idea of the masculine, to accept a plurality of masculinities and the freedom to construct a “plural” male self. In a 1902 essay James incorporates Balzac's masculine authority to broaden the concept of masculinity, enabling him to improvise a new masculine position for himself. In The Ambassadors James's solution to Lambert Strether's suspense between genders resembles Balzac's solution to James's own identity problem. In rejecting Maria Gostrey's proposal, Strether rejects one masculine role for another, aligning himself more with Balzac than with Sand. Overall, however, coming to terms with George Sand challenged James to define masculinity in what he calls the plural term.

Reason as the medium of truth and freedom—though suppressed, the idea returns; it is presumed by our very participation in discourse. Its opponents say that only practices are real. But, as Milton and Habermas know, reason is itself a practice. Milton's “free and lawful debate at all times … of what opinion soever” recognizes interestedness, perspectivity, and struggle; Habermas's unconstrained communication is a never-achieved goal (an “ideal”) regulating discursive practices here and now. Both writers recognize that meanings are cultural, social, and existential, that knowledge cannot be separated from interests; but they do not therefore stand outside praxis rhapsodizing about struggle and contingency. Instead, they seek to move toward social freedom and individual autonomy through reason-able communication—that ongoing search for unforced agreement which is our usual and best alternative to violence, our usual and best way to find meaning in the world, in our selves, and in one another.