One of the crucial differences between the Merchant Ivory film version of The Europeans (1979, UK) and Henry James's novel is that the film omits the novel's striking opening chapter. In this chapter James establishes with wonderful exactness the differences between a brother and sister in their approaches to America. This brother and sister – Felix, who earns his living precariously “by going about the world and painting bad portraits” and Eugenia, the Baroness Munster of Silberstadt-Schreckenstein – are “the Europeans” of the title, though they are actually expatriate Americans returning home. The title is thus ironic: they are not so much Europeans as Europeanized and must learn again to be Americans if they are to find their niche in the closely organized world of New England.

This opening chapter establishes with wit and subtlety what this pair of siblings is up to. Eugenia is in retreat from an unsatisfactory marriage: she has been the morganatic wife of a minor German princeling, and she has come to America quite explicitly to seek her fortune. Felix has come seeking entertainment: if the Wentworths, the New England cousins they have come to visit, are rich, so much the better, but this is not a condition of his entertainment. To him, it will be merely “pleasanter” if they are rich (they are), whereas Eugenia can ask rhetorically, “Do you suppose if I had not known they were rich I would ever have come?” (13).