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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A dense yet absorbing journey into the hearts and minds of aesthetes in the American upper-crust. The text is much better for its revision; James gets deeper into the things that make his characters tick, and as such becomes an insightful study of liberation, aestheticism and connoisseurship, full of contradictions and melodrama, with some genuinely diabolical villains and a wonderfully fickle protagonist.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Incredible, lovely, a joy to read, etc. Shout out to Ms. Katie Gisondi for oh so graciously sending me this lovely edition of this incredible novel!
Disclaimer: I just wrote this paragraph in a feverish state after reading German for an hour and a half. I feel unwell.
The psychological depth here is indecipherably exceptional. Isabel Archer is described with enough detail that every choice she makes, regardless of our thoughts regarding them, make sense based on where she is in her journey from independence to marital entanglement, and yet she remains somewhat enigmatic, like, as one would expect from a character that feels so real, she may undergo unforeseen changes of heart at any moment and defy our expectations. Those two realities seem like they create a diametrically opposed binary, but somehow I find that James reveals that to be false. That known vs. unknown character binary is collapsed to expose a woman who stubbornly abides by what she personally feels is right, even if that may harm her in the end. But she remains a woman focused on maintaining her own volitional values, even if they tend to the conservative.
Love her. Love Ralph. She should've married Lord Warburton. Hate her husband. I felt many feelings.
Henry James is funny and witty. Let that be known.
Disclaimer: I just wrote this paragraph in a feverish state after reading German for an hour and a half. I feel unwell.
The psychological depth here is indecipherably exceptional. Isabel Archer is described with enough detail that every choice she makes, regardless of our thoughts regarding them, make sense based on where she is in her journey from independence to marital entanglement, and yet she remains somewhat enigmatic, like, as one would expect from a character that feels so real, she may undergo unforeseen changes of heart at any moment and defy our expectations. Those two realities seem like they create a diametrically opposed binary, but somehow I find that James reveals that to be false. That known vs. unknown character binary is collapsed to expose a woman who stubbornly abides by what she personally feels is right, even if that may harm her in the end. But she remains a woman focused on maintaining her own volitional values, even if they tend to the conservative.
Love her. Love Ralph. She should've married Lord Warburton. Hate her husband. I felt many feelings.
Henry James is funny and witty. Let that be known.
I did get into it--found myself getting really annoyed with certain characters' behavior, which is always a sign that I'm engaged. However, I think James spent a lot of time "telling" rather than "showing" in some chapters--my head got a little heavy. I would've preferred more dialog to get things across!
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“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.