Isabel Archer is an enigma. When we first meet her there was something splendid in her charm, her openness, and her candor. Fresh. Yes, that is the word. She wanted to take charge of her life.

Rich men like Lord Warburton and Caspar Goodwood fall head over heals all over her and want to marry her. She is aloof and says no to these offers. She seemed very much in control of her life. She impresses her sickly cousin Ralph Touchett.

When she inherits a large amount of money (thanks to her cousin), it allows her to choose what she wants to do in life. Not bad start. In the fashion of the day, she heads to Italy to travel and then see the world.

Except this is where she meets the expatriate Gilbert Osmond via a mysterious Madame Merle. Osmond is an eccentric who has lofty values, a meek daughter Pansy, who he raises in a convent, but has no real money. What to do? Easy, marry Isabel for her money.

This is the time of class and wealth and marry to climb that social ladder. Is Isabel too much of an idealist? Why does she seem to change when she marries Osmond? Why does she defend Osmond so adamantly to the point of annoying her friends? Why does she take her husband’s view on marrying off his daughter to someone with money? Didn’t she try to avoid this at all costs?

Is this part of the class image that so many fought for? It’s easy from our modern perspective to dismiss these issues but Henry James digs deep. At times Isabel seemed like a lost case. Her friend Henrietta Stackpole and her cousin Ralph, work hard to to get Isabel to see where she is in her marriage. It is a big pit and it takes a lot of work to see the surface.

It is no easy ride. I stuck with the book, but to be honest, Isabel punched the limits of patience with me. Thankfully James explained a lot but one can see, no relationship is ever easy. Why we stay and why we leave are never simple solutions.

This is the story of Isabel, an American who goes to England to meet new people and see more of the world. Isabel is very curious of nature, and when she gradually starts receiving different proposals from various men, she declines them all - that is because she wants to maintain her freedom which is very important to her.
I really liked this story. I felt like it was very easy to read and connect with the main character as well as a lot of the other characters. The first pages of the story were deeply descriptive of the English landscape and the house where Isabel goes to at first, and I instantly felt at ease with reading about this peaceful setting.
I was a bit reluctant when going into this novel because I'd heard that Henry James was rather derogative towards women. While I did see glimpses of that here and there, I also felt like Henry James really came through with the protagonist, Isabel, who is a carefree woman who lusts for adventure. She is the opposite of the women of those days and I loved her for that.
All in all, I really enjoyed my reading of this story, and the ending was surprising but very suitable to the narrative.

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.

Le "Portrait de femme" est le chef-d'oeuvre d'Henry James, le plus important romancier américain pour la periode entre la fin de la Guerre de secession (1861-1865) et la première grande guerre. Ce roman raconte l' histoire d'une jeune héritière qui se fait prendre par un chasseur de fortune. L'idée est très simple voire banale. Le brio est dans les détails.
L'héroine Isabel Archer est aimée de quatres hommes. D'abord il y a Gilbert Osmond un être tout à fait abject qui l'épouse pour son argent. Il y a Ralph Touchett, l'alter ego d'Henry James, qui a les sentiments les plus délicats et les plus purs envers Isabel mais qui est trop bon pour ce monde et meurt à la fin du roman. Viens ensuite, Lord Warburton qui a des intentions honorables britanniques envers elle et Caspar Goodman qui a des intentions honorables américaines. Lord Warburton a le bonheur de finallement jeter l'éponge. Le pauvre Goodman persiste et est train de souffrir au dernier paragraphe du roman parce qu'Isabel l'a encore une fois fuit.
Henry James est la voix d'une époque révolué où les États-Unis etaient à 100 pourcent anglo-protestants et que les seules personnes de couleur vivaient au sud da la ligne Mason-Dixon. Ligne (39°43′15″ N). Il a fait partie d'une genération des Nouvelle-Anglais qui sont allés en Europe afin de devenir artistes. (On pense notamment aux peintres Mary Cassatt et Henry Whistler; aux architectets Louis Sullivan et William Jenney; et aux écrivains Edith Wharton et à la limite T.S. Eliot)
Les rapport sociaux entre les membres de la noblesse anglaise et les patriciens de la Nouvelle-Angleterre constitituent un des thèmes dominants de l'oeuvre d'Henry James. Personnellement je m'en sacre royallement et c'est pourquoi je ne lis jamais plus qu'un roman d'Henry James sur dix ans. Pourtant, il faut reconnaitre que dans le "Portrait de femme" Henry James se sert brillament de ce thème qui normallement m'agace profondement. C'est l'obsession avec la mode de vie de la noblesse anglaise qui pousse le vilain du roman à tous ses actes déloyalles.
Le "Portrait de femme"livre incontournable pour tous ceux qui veulent connaître l'histoire de la littérature américaine.

I would recommend this book if you like:
- Extremely entitled and capricious main protagonist ;
- Very poor decision making ;
- Claustrophobia from being inside a character’s dull head for so many pages ;
- A true effort to convince the reader that Isabel is interesting (EVERY man is love with her, isn’t that the best proof??) while giving her the enticing personality of a plastic chair ;
- People that just sit around to discuss things and never resolve anything ;
- Pointless thoughts, interminable dives into internalized masochism and the queen of denial ;
- A character study from someone that writes like he has never met a woman in his life (or just insufferable ones) ;
- The “I’m not like other girls” of Victorian era.

No offence to Henry James but I was bored out of my mind by this book and never want to read something like this ever again. I can’t remember the last time I disliked a main character that much.

I had many wonderful moments while reading this book, moments when the writing halted the reading, when I had to pause and admire and wonder.
Moments when the book seemed to speak to my own experience as if it were written expressly for the girl who was me at twenty-two, causing me to wonder how Henry James could have guessed so well the presumptuous ideas I had about life and love at that early stage.

All of that is very personal, of course, and not necessarily of interest to other readers, but there were other moments in my reading of The Portrait of a Lady that better merit mention in a review. I had read this book before, about twenty years ago, so although I knew the bare bones of the story, I remembered few of the details. I certainly had no recollection of reading a particular scene from early in the story, the one in which Isabel Archer meets a stranger in her aunt’s house.
And yet there was something about the lead-up to that scene that caught my attention this time: the house is very still because Isabel’s uncle is dying. Out of the silence comes the sound of someone playing the piano. Wonderingly, Isabel makes her way toward the source of the harmony.
Those six words were like a bell ringing in my mind. I felt a sharpening of interest, an awareness of how pivotal this moment would be in the story. I remember thinking: I've been reading this book with all senses on alert and this is my reward; I've sensed the author’s excitement at the turn his story is about to take.

There was another scene later in the book when I had a similar feeling of change about to happen: Isabel sits up late one night in Rome pondering a difficult decision, indeed pondering all the decisions in her life so far. The reader watches with her and wonders how she will act. And wonders again when she finally does.

There are other major shifts in the narrative but none stood out for me quite the way those two did. In fact, Henry James purposely avoids describing the most significant shift of all, by skipping a three-year section of Isabel’s life completely—which is a very effective narrative device of course, introducing both surprise and suspense in a story that has only a six-year span in total.
As a reader I appreciated both strategies: the emphasis he seemed to place on some scenes and the complete omission he allowed to others. It was all very wonderful.

In fact this book has revised my idea of what ‘wonderful’ means. 'The Portrait of a Lady' is vying for a place as the highlight of my Henry James reading year even though The Ambassadors was already firmly camped in that position. I've decided they can be the joint highlight—they have a lot of wonderfulness in common.

When I finished 'The Portrait', I turned to HJ’s 1906 appendix and found a paragraph about his concerns for the reader. He writes that he has purposely piled brick upon brick for our benefit, carefully including the details that will enable us to grasp the totality of his creation. And among those details, he mentions two in particular, keystones in the building of the story as it were.

The first is the piano scene I described earlier. He speaks of the rare chemistry of that scene in which Isabel recognizes that a huge change is about to happen in her life. I felt really validated as a reader to have been aware in advance of the significance of what I was about to read, and so I wasn't surprised when his other pivotal scene turned out to be the one where Isabel sits up late into the Roman night, pondering her decisions. This is the sixteenth Henry James book I've read in six months. Perhaps I've learnt something of the way his writer’s mind works!

More confirmation of that possibility came when he began to discuss the shape of this novel. He continues to speak in terms of bricks and architecture and proportions, and he says that of all his novels, 'The Portrait' is the best proportioned with the exception of a novel he was to write twenty-two years later: The Ambassadors. Alongside a certain ‘roundness’ in shape which they share, he finds they also share a kind of supporting beam or rib that runs through them. This rib is made from two minor but key characters, Henrietta Stackpole and Maria Gostrey. Both seem extraneous to each story at first glance yet both are central to the architecture of their particular story. I remember noting that Maria Gostrey was the thread that allowed me to find my way through the labyrinth that was 'The Ambassadors' so it was wonderful to hear Henry James confirm that, and underline the links between the two books as well.
I was also reminded that I had begun to look at his books in terms of architecture while reading The Wings of the Dove, so I really appreciated his architectural metaphors.

In fact the appendix left me amazed and wondering at every turn. In the updates, I quoted part of a paragraph on his theories about the ‘house of fiction’. I'd like to quote the whole thing here because it is really worth reading—and it provided me with huge insights into some Gerald Murnane books I've puzzled over in the past, The Plains and Inland, and offered a strong desire to read Murnane's Million Windows:

The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million—a number of possible windows not to be reckoned, rather; every one of which has been pierced, or is still pierceable, in its vast front, by the need of the individual vision and by the pressure of the individual will. These apertures, of dissimilar shape and size, hang so, all together, over the human scene that we might have expected of them a greater sameness of report than we find. They are but windows at the best, mere holes in a dead wall, disconnected, perched aloft; they are not hinged doors opening straight upon life. But they have this mark of their own that at each of them stands a figure with a pair of eyes, or at least with a field-glass, which forms, again and again, for observation, a unique instrument, insuring to the person making use of it an impression distinct from every other. He and his neighbors are watching the same show, but one seeing more where the other sees less, one seeing black where the other sees white, one seeing big where the other sees small, one seeing coarse where the other sees fine. And so on, and so on; there is fortunately no saying on what, for the particular pair of eyes, the window may NOT open; “fortunately” by reason, precisely, of this incalculability of range. The spreading field, the human scene, is the “choice of subject”; the pierced aperture, either broad or balconied or slit-like and low-browed, is the “literary form”; but they are, singly or together, as nothing without the posted presence of the watcher without, in other words, the consciousness of the artist. Tell me what the artist is, and I will tell you of what he has BEEN conscious. Thereby I shall express to you at once his boundless freedom and his “moral” reference.

…………………………

This book is the final one in my 2017 Henry James season and I can't think of a better title to finish on. But in every ending there are beginnings—'The Portrait' has led me to another book: Henry James says he took the slight ‘personality’, the mere slim shade of an intelligent but presumptuous girl and created what he called ‘an ado about Isabel Archer’. That reference has prompted me to go back to Shakespeare and read Much Ado About Nothing.
I do love when one book leads to another!

“The great thing is to love something.”

Set in England and Italy, The Portrait of a Lady is the story of Isabel Archer, a young, beautiful, strong-willed and free-spirited American.
She is proud to be independent and has plans for the future. She wants to make something of herself. She wishes to travel the world and see everything there is to see. And when she inherits a great sum of money from her uncle, she realizes there is nothing to hold her back from fulfilling her dreams.
But life has other plans for her.

This is a story about choices and consequences; about honoring promises and about decency and integrity as opposed to perfidy, vanity and conceit.

There is no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we’re each of us made up of some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our ‘self’? Where does it begin? Where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us – and then it flows back again.

The edition I read from was by the Easton Press. A leather (faux)-bound book the size of a phone directory with a cloth bookmark and gilt edging and illustrations inside. I suppose that is nice, but it had this most god-awful smell every time I opened the book. And every time I opened it, I wondered to what chemicals I was exposing myself to. If I drop off the face of the earth on Goodreads it is possibly due to my demise from inhaling noxious fumes from a book!!

**spoilers**
Portrait is a beautifully written novel that exhibits Henry James unique writing style and addresses the social customs and differences in Americans, the English, and continental Europeans. Isabel Archer is a young American lady, for whom the novel is titled, who is adventurous and very independent. She turns down two marriage proposals in the 1st half of the book to preserve her independence, one from Casper Goodwood, a young wealthy American, and one from Lord Warburton, a wealthy English aristocrat. When her English uncle dies, she inherits a large sum of money and travels with her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, to her Italian villa where she eventually meets, falls in love with, and marries Gilbert Osmond. All of her family and friends try to dissuade her from this, but to no avail, and she finally learns that Osmond doesn't love her, married her for her money, and to own her as another of his possessions. Obviously there is a lot more intrigue to the story and the enjoyment for me came from the wonderful writing of James.

I feel like I have read almost 700 pages of emptiness. This book was SO boring. It was quite interesting at the beginning; the first characters we meet at the beginning of the novel were cool, we wanted to know what happens next with them but very quickly, it's always the same story. This novel is a 100% patriarchal story and I just hated it. Despite this, it was simply empty. Only the last 100 pages were interesting, there is a little twist that makes us want to read what's next but the end is just.... I have no words. The end is just so so bad; basically, NOTHING HAPPENS??? there's nothing????? The book ends up just like this with nothing, as if it was just the end of a basic chapter. Anyway, I hated it because of the emptiness of the words, the story itself that is so long and boring, and the bad ending of the story.

Un capolavoro fra i capolavori.
Un personaggio splendido, Isabel Archer, la Nuova Ragazza Americana che rifugge anche la più dorata gabbia matrimoniale pur di non rinunciare al suo sogno di totale ed inattaccabile indipendenza, che finisce per trasformarsi nell'antitesi della contemporanea Nora di Ibsen, attuando una ribellione al contrario che la porta non a sbattersi definitivamente la porta di una vita infelice alle spalle ma a rinchiudersi consapevolmente all'interno di essa.
Splendide anche le altre figure femminili presenti nel romanzo, soprattutto alla luce dei loro rapporti con Isabel; la non bella Madame Merle, descritta tuttavia come incredibilmente affascinante, abile manipolatrice degli stessi pensieri della protagonista della quale si finge amica; la giornalista Henrietta Stackpole, eccessiva fin quasi al ridicolo nella sua instancabile difesa dello stile di vita americano ai danni di quello britannico, annientata alla fine del romanzo in tutto il suo essere attraverso il matrimonio con il gentiluomo inglese Bantling ed il suo trasferimento definitivo in Europa, ma tuttavia sincera e sempre presente, con la sua affettuosa amicizia, per Isabel; la dolcissima Pansy, una pagina bianca; la contessa Gemini, chiacchierata e ormai totalmente priva di morale, un foglio su cui troppe mani avevano scritto, cancellato e scarabocchiato.
Un romanzo di incredibile spessore, una prosa inimitabile, il ritratto di una donna - che l'autore non descrive mai nella sua fisicità - che a poco a poco permette inconsciamente che anche tutto ciò che avrebbe dovuto garantirle l'agognata indipendenza la spinga con crescente decisione verso il baratro dell'infelicità; il tutto, simboleggiato dal personaggio di Ralph Touchett, forse fra tutti l'unico veramente innamorato di Isabel, l'unico a non cercare di rinchiuderla in una propria gabbia ma a spingerla, cercando di donarle ciò che ella desidera, in quella fabbricata per lei con grande ed astuta perizia da altri.
Imperdibile.

It's tempting to think that very little happens in a Henry James novel. However, in terms of the Isabel Archer's moral development and growth in awareness, there is a wealth of material. This is a beautiful, but tragic novel. I sometimes wonder if Gilbert Osmond (the most memorable character) is a blackened self-portrait of James - fastidious, tasteful, brilliant, and yet entirely empty and wicked. I also wonder whether there is a feminist bent to this novel, as Isabel Archer is a beautiful and brilliant woman who is ultimately trapped by her grasping suitors. James is a wonderful novelist, though certainly not for everyone.