It is very unlikely that anyone would be able to articulate as well as Henry James himself did his intentions and method of writing The Portrait of a Lady in his New York Edition Preface, which was included in my Penguin edition. For this reason I recommend the edition over the Library of America version, or any other which lacks the Preface. He describes the building of his novel-cathedral as an effort of placing brick upon brick. Truly, each brick is well-moulded, carven with impressions of great interest to the reader of 19th-Century fiction. Henry James is very much of that particular century a paramour, if not the Demi-god, who employed all known instruments of the human intellect to construct a virtual portrait of several character archetypes in prose which seems in itself alive, even as it confounds with its arabesques, its circumlocutions, and its encumbrances. That there is any question whether it is relevant or readable is a testament to the author’s inscrutable style - an acquired taste if there ever was one. Insinuating that he utilized a large number of superfluous words is unnecessary. One acquainted with James should know that words were more of a malleable clay, the mere molecules of the organisms he crafted.

The Portrait of a Lady is as overwrought and sumptuous as anything else he wrote - a judgement based solely on the 1500 pages from his oeuvre I’ve thus far read. It is simple of plot and complex of texture. It is a potent and aromatic tincture. Only a refined connoisseur might pick out all its manifold emanations and insinuations. ****Trigger Warning **** There is quite a lot of gratuitous syntax in this book - but mentioning this again is extraneous. Furthermore, he is fond of the emdash. —As am I. I might also warn the reader that the level of obsession with the institution of marriage goes beyond unhealthy into the territory of the uncanny, even - dare-I-say - into the obscene. It was a common practice around this time for pudgy, well-leisured, stocky, balding, over-educated men to write of nothing else. James was perhaps leader and prime advocate for this cause. In fact the subtleties of his fictional universe might all trace their gravitational attraction to this central source. Put simply, this is a book about marriage. Women, according to the characters in this novel, had a duty to marry, and above all, to marry well. She, as a species, was capable of little else, one might gather from James’s theories. Isabel, our central character, throws a wrench into this mechanistic worldview - at least for a good half of the novel. She remains a captivating character nonetheless, as do even the least woke of James’s brainchildren.

Of course, the characters have no day jobs to trouble them. Not a single one of them has worked a day in his or her life. Their time is amply consumed sniveling and braying, offering a grotesque variety of overarching societal observations. The commentary is in large part as spinsterish as was James. The discussions are speculations and measurements upon the manifestations of propriety, also stipulating upon the various measures of men and women within the household - which in itself is a vehicle of procreation - and yet this facet of human existence, i.e. sex, was apparently a vast, unknowable mystery to our poor author. All of this immanent melodrama is inflicted unfairly upon the unsuspecting natives of the trendy European locales frequented by our players. They cannot spend their money fast enough. It flows like manna. Nor can they hope to inherit enough for their needs. James is so phobic of bachelorhood, so consumed with the importance of marriage, one wonders if he was at all a fisherman of eligible women, if he was not the most eligible of them all.

Furthermore, the story is not of much concern here, but the people are. James is capable of tenderness, as well as a lot of snideness. His powers of dialogue are only equalled by his extraordinary description. This novel offers ample prestidigitation in that regard. You will not tire of viewing the landscape he has painted, if you can stand the people in the foreground. Above all, this is a masterpiece of elocution, enlarging upon the above-mentioned questions and tensions, arising from quite natural human associations. The verisimilitude is a superstructure upon the underlying themes. The flabby sentences take on weight as they accumulate, barreling forward in that Jamesian snowball, until they finally hit home, touching upon the elusive natures of our fellow sufferers, gracing that beautiful pinnacle of textual refinement, sought after by such purveyors of the experimental mode as David Foster Wallace. No one else approaches James in my opinion when it comes to thick and rich adornment. The superhuman powers of articulation were possibly James’s forte, if not his charm.

Look for the clear signs of faith in the study of physiognomy. Bask in the splendor of the author's rhetorical aplomb as his inexhaustible sea of atmospheric minutiae congregates into a finely stippled rendering of moral ambiguities. Relish the witty banter, envy the swaggering Lord Warburton as he fulfills what you suspect will be a major role in the heroine’s life. This is an idyllic document of great power, if one can weather the grueling mental maneuvers required to keep pace. At bottom, it asks whether marriage is a prison or the relief from a meaningless existence. It would be a pity if James never defined the answer in his own case.

Elegant. Brooding. Curated. These are the three words that spring to mind when I consider how I might best describe this novel to others.

In his preface to The Portrait of a Lady, written decades after original publication, Henry James famously reported his method of first envisioning a forceful, vivid central character and only then supporting that individual with setting and circumstance. Isabel Archer is the maypole around which everyone else prances and weaves throughout this story. Her author was evidently quite taken with her, and places countless male characters in her way to give effusive narrative expression to his own infatuation.

Had I been similarly enchanted by her, I would have liked the novel that much more. The first half of this long work found me smitten, it's true; sadly, my fascination was not sustainable. I did not find that the Mrs. Osmond of the second half was entirely believable based on what James had so clearly shown of Miss Archer prior to marriage. Surely they are both still Isabel? While marriage and commitment certainly bring about changes - some of them massive - I don't see how such an independently-minded, spirited, iconoclastic heroine can so quickly become submissive, fearful, and chronically miserable. Given that she has an intelligent mind, financial means of independence, countless admirers, and is acquainted with several women who did not allow husbands to clip their wings, her choices after saying "I do" were unconvincing.

The writing is excellent, of course. This is said to be one of this writer's most accessible novels, and many readers really like Isabel, so perhaps this will be more to your liking than it was to mine. As it is, there are still several Henry James novels awaiting me in my TBR stack. I hope most of them are this good. I also hope some of them are much better.

The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all

Perhaps one of James' most accessible novels, this asks moral questions which still trouble us: what does it mean to live a 'free' life? how can we balance the constrictions and responsibilities of marriage, family and friendships with a sense of an independent self? how to negotiate the ethical character of having/not having money? That James manages this without preaching, without offering up easy or polemical answers, and wraps the whole thing up in elegant, nuanced prose is an art.

The social comedy is both sunny and deeply ironic, and the labyrinthine architecture of the novel which turns back upon itself a number of times is masterful. Reading this for the second time, I was struck by how many feelers this book puts out to previous and future literature: it looks ahead to James' own The Wings of the Dove but surely also back to Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke, as well as forward to Virginia Woolf's heroines who also have a sense of 'affronting [their] destiny'.

James' style is definitely more 'telling' than 'showing' but proves the inadequacy of any easy 'creative writing' hierarchy: in the hands of a craftsman, 'telling' enables polyphony and debate as much as dramatising.

Close attention to words, detail and imagery is absolutely essential to navigate our way through this narrative - the first description of Gilbert Osmond's Florentine villa, for example:

this antique, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality looked another way

or an early description of Osmond himself: 'he was the elegant complicated medal struck off for a special occasion', which intersects with the systematic imagery of expensive objects throughout the book - paintings, porcelain, bibelots.

So a wonderfully complex, subtle, nuanced story that kept me both gripped and enthralled.

This is a novel of education, but it is education which is forced upon an independent mind: Isabel Archer learns the interplay of moral systems and natural systems. She is immoral in her continual rejection of conventional, systematic solutions for her life, both the male ideals of the British Lord W and the American O.G. But her life is also the problem of evil, in a curious way: not that she is really Eve, for she is anti-Eve, anti-seduction; but that she is woman, even though she tries not to be. She fights what she is, as both conventional and natural inheretrix of womanhood, but her knowledge is not sufficient--not God's, or Fate's, perhaps--to face the problem of evil on her own. She is prey to the most profound threat to her independence. Osmond is an unnatural male; he is the solution to Isabel's rejection of the natural subordination of womanhood through sexual passion: Osmond is sexually passionless. But he is convention itself in his desire to subordinate her, "Osmond possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting one's weakness" (497, S.C. ed)
In Ch. 26, Osmond articulates his intent to "sacrifice" Isabel's "ideas"; that is, James discloses universal evil, an evil which Isabel has no way to deal with. Isabel's "generosity" assumes, at the start, sincerity at least, from her top-of-the-heap moral position, based on her arrogant intellectual comprehension. Through the novel she confronts a villain with no extentuating moral qualities, who is blind to her generosity--not to mention her womanhood.
In Ch 16 she says to Goodwood, "Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?" And he, "Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice." Isabel, "There is no generosity without sacrifice. Men don't understand such things." Isabel knows she is sacrificing something in her marriage to Osmond, but she does not at that point know she is sacrificing her womanhood.
Isabel's "ideas" are to be understood more in the context of continental philosophy, not American: they are part of her direction, her intention. She sacrifices herself to conventional evil in order to avoid a universal subjection born in her as woman, the dependence on passion and subjection to male. Isabel chooses to be, finally, a lady, but not a woman. She loses her arrogance, but also her moral appeal. She sacrifices her womanhood for her "personal independence," which turns out to be morally inadequate for happiness.
But perhaps Feminism has changed that, made independence adequate for happiness?

review to come!

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3.25 stars

“A large fortune means freedom, and I’m afraid of that. It’s such a fine thing, and one should make such a good use of it. If one shouldn’t one would be ashamed. And one must keep thinking; it’s a constant effort. I’m not sure it’s not a greater happiness to be powerless.”

The Portrait of a Lady focuses on a young American woman, Isabel Archer, who comes into a large inheritance. Even before Isabel becomes financially independent she was unwilling to fulfil the responsibilities and obligations her gender thrusts on her. To restrict herself to the role of wife would not only be oppressive but it could hinder her journey of self-discovery. It is because Isabel craves to experience the world—free of wifely and motherly constraints and duties—that she declines some rather promising marriage proposals.
Ralph Touchett, Isabel’s newly acquainted not-quite-American cousin, perceives in Isabel a latent potential for greatness. Believing that his cousin is meant to “rise above the ground”, Ralph decides to provide Isabel with the means to do so: a lot of money. It just so happens that Ralph’s father, Mr. Touchett, possess a vast fortune. Ralph convinces his sick father to bestow on Isabel a large part of his estate. During their conversation Mr. Touchett asks his son the following question:
“Tell me this first. Doesn’t it occur to you that a young lady with sixty thousand pounds may fall a victim to the fortune-hunters?”
As with Chekhov's Gun, the fact that ‘fortune-hunters’ are mentioned pretty much insures their appearance. The story that follows sees Isabel predictably falling into the path of two wannabe Machiavellian American expats.
Set against a European backdrop, the narrative contrasts the values and customs of the New World against the ones of the Old. This juxtaposition of New vs. Old, America vs. England, English-speaking countries vs. the rest of Europe, serves as a backdrop to the exploration of themes such as personal freedom, duty, ambition, wealth, art, self-sacrifice, and morality.

“She lost herself in a maze of visions; the fine things to be done by a rich, independent, generous girl who took a large human view of occasions and obligations were sublime in the mass. Her fortune therefore became to her mind a part of her better self; it gave her importance, gave her even, to her own imagination, a certain ideal beauty. What it did for her in the imagination of others is another affair.”

The first ‘volume’ of this novel introduces us to the various players of the story. The narrative, which occasionally slips into a first-person point of view, presents Isabel Archer as its central figure, often affectionately referring to her as “our heroine”. This switch between perspectives and seeming self-awareness, brought to mind Middlemarch. Contrary to popular belief, James’ writing is far from stale. While it would not be wholly inaccurate to describe his prose as being the antithesis of concise, the fact that he seems to lose himself in long-winded observations and digressions does not mean a lack of clarity on his part. In fact, his narrative has a really nice flow to it. His refined use of the English language gives his prose an almost polished quality.
While James' narrative is not as effervescent as the one of Edith Wharton in
The Age of Innocence (which also happens to have an Archer as its protagonist), he is nevertheless able to inject his portrayal of this upper society with a subtly oppressive, and very Whartonesque atmosphere.
Money and class do not necessarily provide his characters with happiness or love...if anything they seem to make them all the more miserable. In spite of her attempts to carve her own path Isabel is still a woman, one whose financial independence does not result in actual personal freedom.
I really enjoyed the character dynamics that were explored in this novel's first volume. The characters were nuanced and compelling and it was interesting to hear their views on America, England, and Europe. Given their contrasting beliefs, they are all eager to influence Isabel one way or another. Isabel’s resolve, admiringly enough, does not waver. Even if she unsure what she is ambitious for, she remains firm in her desire not to marry, opting instead to travel and to gain some life experiences.

The second volume of this novel was tepid at best. Our heroine is pushed to the sidelines, with the narrative focusing instead on Gilbert Osmond, his “attractive yet so virginal” daughter Pansy, and her self-pitying suitor, Edward Rosier. These three characters were annoying and uninteresting. Gilbert was presented as some sort of clever manipulator but he struck me as a half-unfinished caricature of the fastidious and cold husband (Casaubon’s less convincing descendant).
Isabel’s sudden character change was almost jarring, especially if we consider until that point James had taken his sweet time exploring her sense of self and her various ideas. Worst still, Ralph and Isabel suddenly became martyrs of sorts. Isabel in particular spends the remaining narrative doing Mea culpa...which struck me as quite out of character.
Gilbert and Madame Merle are presented as this morally-devious duo, the typical fox and cat who try—and often succeed in—tricking our hapless and helpless protagonist. Which...fair enough. I have been known to enjoy villainous duos (such as Count Fosco and Sir Percival Glyde in
The Woman in White)...Gilbert and Madame Merle however seemed to lack purpose. Their characters do not seem to be as important or as profound as they are made to be. Later on other characters (who have no reason to defend them or forgive Gilbert and Madame Merle) make it seem as if these two have their own valid feelings, of tortured variety, so it would be unfair for us to judge or dislike them or their actions.
I was so irritated by the story’s direction and by Isabel’s character regression that I was unable to enjoy the remainder of this novel.
My interest was sparked only when the characters discussed their cultural differences. As an Italian I always find it vaguely amusing to read of the weirdly incongruent way Italy is portrayed by non-Italians during the 19th century. James’ clearly appreciated Italy’s history and its landscapes, but throughout his narrative a distaste for Italy’s ‘present’ state (Italians are regarded as lazy and somewhat primitive). I also appreciated the way in which James' depiction of masculinity and femininity challenges and questions established norms (such as the qualities that the ‘ideal’ man and woman should posses). However cynic, his depictions of love and marriage could be deeply perceptive.

“The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his—attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already far-reaching.”

Having now read one of James’ novels, I’m not at all surprised that his work has gained him a reputation for wordiness and digression. Yet, his logorrhoea aside, I’m puzzled by the dislike his work seem to entice, especially in other writers (Mark Twain, Jonathan Franzen, Virginia Woolf, Arnold Bennett, Jorge Luis Borges...you can read some of their comments here:
Writers on Henry James).
One of my favourite ‘harsh’ comments was made by Lawrence Durrell: “Would you rather read Henry James or be crushed to death by a great weight?”. Although many of these writers/readers make rather exaggeratedly disparaging observation about James and his writing, some of them hit the nail on the head. Oscar Wilde, for instance, wrote that: “Mr. Henry James writes fiction as if it were a painful duty, and wastes upon mean motives and imperceptible ‘points of view’ his neat literary style, his felicitous phrases, his swift and caustic satire.”
I, for one, was not annoyed or deterred by Henry James’ prolixity. However, as noted by Wilde, I do think that James occasionally overworked certain passages and that his story/characters never seem to reach their full potential. And while I am not entirely sure why Vladimir Nabokov called Henry James a “pale porpoise” (alliteration?), I do agree with him when he says that James’ writing has “charm . . . but that's about all”.

Why did I read a book that was authored by someone who has gained such an unappealing reputation? Curiously enough, part of me wanted to ‘read for myself’ whether James’ style was as frustrating as some made it out to be. What finally convinced me however was that his name kept popping up in the introductions to Edith Wharton’s novels. Having now read a novel by James’ I find myself wondering why his name needs to feature in so many reviews and articles discussing Wharton’s works...yes, he could certainly write well, and they do explore similar themes, but his work is far less insightful, engaging, and memorable than Wharton’s.
Sadly the clarity and nuances demonstrated by James' narrative in the first half of The Portrait of a Lady are then obscured by a predictable storyline. With the exception of busybody Henrietta Stackpole (easily my favourite character), the characters become shadows of their former selves (I could not see why Isabel fell for Gilbert) and I no longer felt invested in their stories.
Given that this novel is considered one of James' best, I'm unsure whether to try reading more of his work...perhaps I will give his novella The Turn of the Screw a try.

I've been reading a lot of Anthony Trollope's books recently and the stories, characters and writing is so much superior to this that I just can't get into it. "Frothy" is a word that comes to mind, also "was he paid by the word?" like Dickens.

I finished the book, finally. It was a chore. I did not find James' portrayal of a woman's personality convincing. That even though she had the financial power which was the reason why her husband had married her, she would still allow herself to be physically and emotionally abused and humiliated. It seemed to be a very conventional view of a woman, that eventually she would give in to her Lord and Master. A woman with an ounce of independence (she did have an ounce, maybe even two) at the beginning would not be the sad creature she was at the end. Marriages were made in light of money and status in those times, in this book, she had both, he had neither, there had to be some sort of mental shift that that would allow her to pretend that these were her husband's and she was in the lower and grateful position. But James didn't write it, so 'Portrait' really didn't make sense.

None of the characters, evil, good or milk-water gained my sympathy. Pansy, the daughter, nearly did, but I wanted to shake her and say 'how could you have lived all these years and not suspected who your mother is? Your father has palmed you off on the nuns all these years, what's with this unquestioning obedience? Its your step-mother has the money, not him, she's the one who can help you, would help you,not your daddy who just wants you to achieve his own social-climbing ambitions'.

I just don't see James as a man who understood women enough to write about them from any but a man's perspective.

I watched the Nichole Kidman film of the book and although Kidman did her best to flesh out the character she was no more rounded than in the book. And Poppy's submissiveness and ignorance were even more unbelievable. Obviously, to James, the main characteristic he associated with women and interpreted thusly by the director, was submissiveness.

Henry James may have deserved his reputation as a Grand Old Man of (American) letters, but not through this book, it just didn't do it for me.

I made my way to the strange and lovely The Portrait of a Lady (1881) via a series of James’s earlier novels and novellas: Roderick Hudson (1875); The American (1877); Daisy Miller (1878). That made an appealing approach route. There are strong thematic continuities among all these fictions, so you have a sense of James working through the same concerns from a variety of different angles. At the same time, Portrait seems a clear advance on the earlier novels and a kind of consummation or climax, perhaps a breakthrough: an indisputable masterpiece, in any case.

The introduction to my edition (Oxford World’s Classics, ed. Roger Luckhurst) points to analogies between James’s Portrait and Sargent’s oblique, evocative, “hauntingly incomplete” female portraits, citing especially the compelling 1882 group portrait The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, which James praised in an essay. I found that parallel hugely suggestive. In his introduction to Portrait for the New York edition (1908), James draws on architecture as an analogy when speaking of his novel, yet Sargent’s portrait, with its elliptical framing and free, sketchy handling of paint and air of suffused mystery—and sheer beauty—worked better for me.

The plot of The Portrait of a Lady is somewhere between sentimental education and tragedy, in classic sense of great man, or great woman, brought down by a fatal flaw. We are supposed to fall in love with the heroine, Isabel Archer, I think, as does just about every man in the novel, not to mention its author. I’m not sure I did, exactly, but she is certainly absorbing, and she grew considerably in stature for me as the novel progressed.

The surrounding characters are also very successful in the main, although I shared James’s later reflection there is a little too much of Isabel’s bustling lady journalist friend Henrietta Stackpole. I especially loved Ralph Touchett, Isabel’s witty, wise, brave, cousin, who spends the entire novel gradually dying of consumption. In Jane Campion’s 1996 film, Ralph is styled in a way that recalls Sargent’s wonderful 1885 portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson. I’d love to believe that Ralph was James’s own portrait of Stevenson, but the two writers didn’t meet until 1885, so I guess I will have to abandon that theory.

Two novels I was strongly reminded of while reading The Portrait of a Lady were Les liaisons dangeureuses, for certain details of the plot (Jane Campion cleverly underlines this subtext by casting John Malkovich, who played Valmont in the 1988 film of Laclos’s novel, as Gilbert Osmond), and Middlemarch, for the character and predicament of Isabel, who has quite a bit of the Dorothea Brooke in her literary DNA. Her surname, Archer, for me, recalled the tradition of the huntress goddess Diana and her free-spirited nymphs. Isabel, too, has a kind of restless, free-wheeling, huntress spirit at the beginning of the novel; she wants to do something and be something, other than the romance heroine whose sole possible plot line leads inexorably to marriage. That is part of her resemblance to Dorothea, as is her fatal naivety and her disastrous taste in men.

Among James’s own novels, one that I kept thinking of as I read Portrait—apart from the 1870s works mentioned above—his much later The Spoils of Poynton. As in Spoils, houses and art collections and object collections feature very large in Portrait, similarly infused with desire and entangled with human relations and human identities. Among the houses, the Touchetts’ idyllic Gardencourt is beautifully evoked, as is Gilbert Osmond’s exquisite, over-curated hothouse of a Florentine villa.

In an important exchange early in the novel, Isabel professes disdain for the appurtenances of a discarded suitor—she doesn’t care whether he lives in a castle or an ugly townhouse—and her worldly new friend, Madame Merle, lectures her instead on the importance of externals in defining our identity for others (“I’ve a great respect for things! One’s self—for other people—is one’s expression of one’s self; and one’s house, one’s garments, the books one reads, the company one keeps—these things are all very expressive.”) As in Spoils, James shows himself morally wary of this investment in “things,” even as he polishes them up as the sumptuous settings of his novels. Madame Merle’s stated credo of artful self-staging gains a dire dramatic irony as the novel plays out.

Ora poi, incorniciata com’era dal vano dorato della porta, fece al nostro giovane l’effetto di un magnifico ritratto di signora.

E magnifico davvero è il ritratto che Henry James fa in questo romanzo.
La giovane Isabel Archer parte da una delle tante città americane, Albany, per intraprendere un viaggio in Europa a seguito della zia. Il suo desiderio più grande è quello di studiare la natura umana e conoscere il mondo. Non è la più bella delle sorelle Archer, ma è la più brillante. Entusiasta, aperta, moderna, affascinante… tanto che nessun uomo che incrocia la sua strada riesce a resisterle.
A dirla tutta, nella prima parte del romanzo sembra vivere in una bolla di felicità, e a me è risultata anche un po’ antipatica.

Tra gli uomini ammaliati c’è suo cugino Ralph. Gravemente malato sarà l’unico a non corteggiarla, ma sarà colui che più influenzerà il suo destino. Farà in modo che riceva una cospicua eredità perché non sia costretta a sottostare a prosaici calcoli economici e sia libera di scegliere cosa fare della sua vita, libera di seguire la sua immaginazione. Il “dono” di Ralph, come spiega a suo padre, non è del tutto altruistico. Egli è felice di osservare la cugina e si riserva per sé la gioia di vederla andare a vele gonfie.
E così Isabel sarà libera di scegliere e di conoscere il mondo e di sbagliare.

Attorno ad Isabel ruotano una schiera di personaggi, alcuni molto interessanti. La trama, non troppo complessa, riesce ad avvincere e a riservare anche qualche sorpresa. La prosa di Henry James è ricca, elegante, ironica. Il finale aperto ha un suo fascino, anche se devo ammettere che se non avessi avuto il libro in mano, con le pagine tra le dita ormai finite, avrei pensato che mi mancasse un pezzo…

For my dear friend Jeffrey Keeten: I would not have read it if it were not for you. Thanks!

Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady touched me deeply. Since I finished this novel a few days ago, I could not seem to stop thinking about it as I tried to organize my feelings. That I was mesmerized by it, there is no doubt. So much that the search for its understanding has occupied practically all my free moments. And to fully grasp it I could not do without Henry James masterful help, so forgive me if you find I quote him too often. Oh, but this is a work in progress, so forgive me again for any inaccuracy or inconsistency.

1. The complexity of Isabel Archer
n  

"Millions of presumptuous girls, intelligent or not intelligent, daily affront their destiny, and what is it open to their destiny to be, at the most, that we should make an ado about it? The novel is of its very nature an ado, an ado about something, and the larger the form it takes the greater of course the ado. Therefore, consciously, that was what one was in for—for positively organising an ado about Isabel Archer."

n
Portrait of a Lady is the story of a young American woman, Isabel Archer, and her voyage of self-discovery. I loved getting into Isabel's conflicted mind, her doubts and her confidence, her wishes and her choices. I went even further and identified thoroughly with Isabel Archer. I could relate to her conflicted mind, her dreams and ultimate choices. She was a pleasure to know, because she is so extraordinarily complex, complex in a way that fictional people seldom are.

From the first we learn how Isabel valued her freedom, in a dialogue with her cousin Ralph:
n  

"‘Adopted me?’ The girl stared, and her blush came back to her, together with a momentary look of pain...
‘Oh no; she has not adopted me. I’m not a candidate for adoption.’
‘I beg a thousand pardons,’ Ralph murmured. ‘I meant...
‘You meant she has taken me up. Yes; she likes to take people up... but,’ she added with a certain visible eagerness of desire to be explicit, ‘I’m very fond of my liberty.’"

n
The secondary characters are there to explain Isabel Archer, as Henry James tells us “they are there, for what they are worth… the definite array of contributions to Isabel Archer’s history. I recognized them, I knew them, they were numbered pieces of my puzzle, the concrete term of my ‘plot’.”

Mrs. Touchett, her aunt, brings Isabel to Europe but is indifferent and unfeeling; Ralph is initially amused by her and helps her to inherit a fortune, only to guarantee her choices and the freedom to follow them (he probably is the only one that thoroughly loved Isabel); Madam Merle manages her meeting with Osmond and makes sure they end up married; Osmond thinks of her as one more item for his collection; Mr. Goodwood is persistent and never loses interest in her life (coming back again and again to see how she is), but seems to offer nothing more; Lord Warburton is a fair aristocratic friend to Isabel, but was he truly in love with her or merely looking for a trophy wife?; Henrietta Stackpole, is a true friend and probably an antithesis to Isabel; and Pansy, the artless creation of her husband, depends on Isabel as the only person who throughly loves her. So everyone, including the reader, look upon her, judge her decisions and contemplate as she takes each of her fateful steps into her destiny.

Oh, there is much more about Isabel, and I hope I will be able to know her better once I am finished.

2. The images and metaphors of Isabel Archer’s life

To discuss this I first I want to tell you about a recurrent dream I had for a very long time. Sometimes, I dreamed that I was walking down the corridor on my home and discovered a door I had never realized existed; deciding to explore I would open it and it led me to a new, endless row of rooms, all grand with high windows and sunny, overlooking majestic gardens that I had never observed existed before. As I opened each door amazing new discoveries were revealed to me. My feelings were of exuberance, of happiness to have discovered so much beauty inside my home. But there was a variation to these recurrent dreams, or worst, there were also nightmares. In these I also discovered new places never visited before, however they would be dark and looked nowhere. As a result of this oppressive atmosphere I used to feel like I was in an endless prison inside my own home. I rejoiced in the first and feared to revisit those nightmares.

So, when I started reading The Portrait of a Lady, it was fascinating to read how Henry James uses symbolic or metaphorical architectural spaces and places to tell us about Isabel Archer and her life. This was something I knew and it remitted directly to my dreams and my deepest self.
n  

"Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out of the window. She was not accustomed indeed to keep it behind bolts; and at important moments, when she would have been thankful to make use of her judgement alone, she paid the penalty of having given undue encouragement to the faculty of seeing without judging."

n
We first meet Isabel at Gardencourt,
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"Her uncle’s house seemed a picture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon Isabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need. The large, low rooms, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always peeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a ‘property’—...much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions"

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By marrying Osmond Isabel ends up enveloped in a palace dark and suffocating:
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"She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation. Osmond’s beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air; Osmond’s beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her."

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There, she seeks refuge or consolation on the ruins of Rome, for her a symbol of hope for despite their long sufferings they are still standing.
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"She had long before this taken old Rome into her confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a winter’s day, she could smile at it and think of its smallness."

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But, ultimately, she seeks refuge once more at Gardencourt.
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"All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire too save the single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge. Gardencourt had been her starting-point, and to those muffled chambers it was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone forth in her strength; she would come back in her weakness, and if the place had been a rest to her before, it would be a sanctuary now."

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3. Isabel’s choices and freedom

Isabel's ability to choose, and the choices she makes are the thread that is carefully woven throughout the novel, and it raises her stature as a fictional heroine, in my opinion, to the level of that of an Anna Karenina or an Emma Bovary. For better or for worse.
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"‘I’m not bent on a life of misery,’ said Isabel. ‘I’ve always been intensely determined to be happy, and I’ve often believed I should be. I’ve told people that. But it comes over me every now and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by turning away, by separating myself.’
‘By separating yourself from what?’
‘From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most people know and suffer.’"

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The moment Isabel inherits starts the process whereupon she loses some of her freedom…
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"There’s one remarkable clause in my husband’s will,’ Mrs Touchett added. ‘He has left my niece a fortune.’
‘A fortune!’ Madame Merle softly repeated.
‘Isabel steps into something like seventy thousand pounds.’
Madame Merle’s hands were clasped in her lap; at this she raised them, still clasped, and held them a moment against her bosom while her eyes, a little dilated... ‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘the clever creature!’"

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And around Isabel there is always a sense of danger:
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"‘I try to care more about the world than about myself––but I always come back to myself. It’s because I’m afraid.’ She stopped; her voice had trembled a little. ‘Yes, I’m afraid; I can’t tell you. A large fortune means freedom, and I’m afraid of that. It’s such a fine thing, and one should make such a good use of it. If one shouldn’t one would be ashamed... I’m not sure it’s not a greater happiness to be powerless.’"

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But was she really free or were her choices not as free as she dreamed? Or was it all inevitable to some degree? It seems that Isabel Archer's life was to some extend inescapable and this fact was not totally unknown to her. However, she thoroughly recongnizes how misguided she had been in her choice of husband.
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"It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This mistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered."

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Subsequentely, Isabel remains too proud to show it to the her friends. But despite all her efforts to conceal her misery, she cannot camouflage it from Ralph and Caspar:
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"‘Watching her?’
‘Trying to make out if she's happy.’
‘That's easy to make out,’ said Ralph. ‘She’s the most visibly happy woman I know.’
‘Exactly so; I’m satisfied,’ Goodwood answered dryly. For all his dryness, however, he had more to say. ‘I’ve been watching her. She pretends to be happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to see for myself what it amounts to. I’ve seen,’ he continued with a harsh ring in his voice, ‘and I don’t want to see any more. I’m now quite ready to go.’"

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Sorrowful and heartbroken, that's how this passage made me feel. But she is never to be pitied, she always stands upright despite doomed adversity.

Yes, I suspect there is a sense of inevitability (what choices did she have, where her other suitors conductive of real happiness? I think not!) which could have made Isabel Archer’s into a tragedy. But she is far from it, she still has choices. Nevertheless, James’ work is not merely that. It is a reflection upon the ideal of a relative freedom and a play with its execution in a woman’s life; the actions, its struggles and the consequent decisions taken by choice. This is what James has achieved with this work; that liberty is not only an ideal but a responsibility too. Though the reader may not approve of all her choices at the end, keeping in mind the betrayal of trust brought about by Madam Merle and Osmond, they were all freely taken or the result of her own will. A will which comes not merely from the limitations imposed by society, but by a newfound maturity, result of all her suffering, and above all from the vow to remain true to oneself.

4. Henry James gives the reader plenty of room to imagine

There’s something about Henry James’ work, and here in particular, that flares, tosses back and forth with unspoken frustration and desire. James’ art, the one thing that makes him stand out for me, is in how he somehow implies, suggests, hints, but never outright tells the reader the ins and outs of his story. He even skips years, and it only adds to its enjoyment. If you want to live along with Isabel Archer, and I felt like I did, is to be conquered by infinite possibilities. Here we are not mere spectator or bystanders but may live everything along with her, if we want to. It is a hard reading that requires effort, but if we invest in it we can grasp the possibilities the whole world that exists beneath the surface of his work.

5. Her ultimate choice

Isabel falls for Gilbert Osmond, to my mind, partly because he does not mindlessly adore her, does not fawn over her. He takes his time in the courtship, he (with the help of Madame Merle) has a clear strategy and it works. He is mysterious, indolent; and there is the hint of a darker side. He appears to be tired of everything, simply bored, so Isabel feels like for once she is helping somebody. That her inheritance has a meaning, a destiny. She seems to feel recompensated and fulfilled.
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"...‘What has he ever done?’ he added abruptly.
‘That I should marry him? Nothing at all,’ Isabel replied while her patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. ‘If he had done great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr Goodwood; I’m marrying a perfect nonentity. Don’t try to take an interest in him. You can’t.’"

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And we are not the only ones to be surprised by her choice to marry Gilbert Osmond. Ralph was appalled:
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"‘I think I’ve hardly got over my surprise,’ he went on at last. ‘You were the last person I expected to see caught.’
‘I don’t know why you call it caught.’
‘Because you’re going to be put into a cage.’
‘If I like my cage, that needn’t trouble you,’ she answered.
...‘You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty beyond everything. You wanted only to see life.’"

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But she still has another choice ahead of her. Her ultimate choice is whether or not to return to Osmond after she goes to Gardencourt to visit her dying cousin. Again Henry James gifts us with a superb image that could not translate better the pervading dread of what she is about to do:
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"There was a penetrating chill in the image, and she drew back into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day, postponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She knew she must decide, but she decided nothing; her coming itself had not been a decision. On that occasion she had simply started."

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And at last we understand her ultimate decision, although such resolution is not easily reached.
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"There were lights in the windows of the house; they shone far across the lawn. In an extraordinarily short time—for the distance was considerable—she had moved through the darkness (for she saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked all about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the latch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a very straight path."

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In the end I recognized a worthier and more mature Isabel Archer, and I think that she comes out of her sufferings stronger. I would like to imagine Osmond would be surprised by her when she gets back to Rome, and that she would be able to change her standing. Their roles perhaps altered. Although there should certainly be more anguish ahead of her, given what she is going back to, I imagine there is always the possibility of happiness.
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I expected to like this more than I did. I found it needlessly long, occasionally pompous, and ultimately unsatisfying. Still, there's a lot of good stuff in here: the exciting independence of Isabel in the early chapters, her palpable misery in her marriage, the vivid and memorable secondary characters, and above all (for me, at least) the set pieces. James was always able to make me feel like I knew just what a room or garden looked and felt like -- though he also frequently made me feel as though I was observing it from behind a glass wall.

I read somewhere that Edith Wharton was always striving to be as good a writer as Henry James; frankly, I think she's much better. Wharton's work is far more elegant, focused, economical, and empathetic. There were moments in this book when James convinced me that he understood what it's like to be a human, but for the most part his prose seemed strangely removed and difficult to penetrate -- and therefore kind of annoying. I got used to it, but I never fully warmed to it.

It took me the entire month to get through this; on some days I avoided it like a chore, but on others I couldn't wait to curl up in bed with it. I'm glad to have read it, but I don't feel like I *needed* to have read it.

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ایزابل دختری کاملا و مستقل که بسیار مورد ستایش دیگران است. کتاب از ورود شخصیت ایزابل آغاز شده و تا ازدواج او و اتفاقات بعد از ازدواج او پیش می‌رود. مسئله مهمی که اینجا پیش آمده انتخاب درست یا غلط ایزابل، با توجه به شرایط حاکم در آن زمان و با توجه به دامنه‌ی روابط اوست. دختری که به قول پسرخاله‌اش، رالف، اگر مورد بی‌مهری قرار گرفته است، مورد مهر هم بوده. از این کتاب به عنوان یک رمان قوی یاد شده که خود هنری جیمز وصفی از این کتاب دارد که: «تصویر بانوی جوانی که تقدیر خود را خوار می‌کند.»
در این کتاب در گیر و دار دنیای آدم‌ها قبل و بعد از ازدواجشان، افکارشان و عقایدشان و نگرشی که به زندگی دارند؛ هستیم. مفهوم عشق و زندگی برای هریک متفاوت‌تر و پیچیده‌تر از دیگری‌ست.
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