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A review by squid_vicious
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
3.0
As can be inferred from the title, this novel is really a character study, and what a fascinating – and occasionally infuriating – character Henry James created with Isabel Archer. As I was reading, I wasn’t sure if I liked or despised her, I recognized myself in some of her behaviors, and shook my head at others. Wonderfully realized and complex, it’s impossible not to be fascinated with Isabel, so I get why her three suitors just won’t leave her be.
Isabel is very modern for the time at which “Portrait of a Lady” was written: stubborn, highly intelligent and fiercely independent; but she lacks worldly experience, so she makes willful choices that aren’t always the smartest. In a typically American way, Isabel desires above all the freedom to make her own choices. But the freedom to choose often entails the freedom to makes mistakes: this is essential to self-discovery, of course, and Isabel being full of contradictions (and a rather high opinion of herself) she will not let herself be swayed from doing exactly what she wants to do…
We all make mistakes: that’s life, and no mistakes would make for rather short and boring novels. But I am confused as to what Mr. James is trying to say about female independence: how independent is Isabel, really? Freedom entails responsibility, and I found Isabel rather capricious and immature in her reasoning: it seems to me that she rejects Goodwood and Lord Warburton more to show that she can than for any other reason, as if to show off her capacity to say no. She admits to wanting to be happy, and not knowing what happiness is all in the same breath. Poor Henrietta tries really hard to tell her she needs to keep her wits about her, but Isabel reacts to that the same way teenage girls react when their mother scolds them: by being defiant and sulky and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. She wants to be strong and assertive and while she claims that bad choices are hers to make, that doesn’t make them any less bad. Her lack of experience allow the deviousness of Osmond to work with ridiculous easiness: he just has to not fall all over himself to get her attention as she is fascinated and seduced. Gawd, teenage girl behavior, again! Idealism is great, but realism is important too: the world does not adapt to our whims, and Isabel learns that the hard way.
In some ways, this felt like the urban version of “Far From the Madding Crowd”: pretty headstrong lady with three beaus who makes all the wrong decision and is too proud to admit she put her foot in it up to the ankle. The difference here being that Mr. Goodwood, Lord Warburton and Mr. Osmond are all detestable. At least Bathsheba had Gabriel Oak, but poor Isabel only has a pile of louts… It was also hard for me to not think of “Liaisons Dangereuses” while reading “Portrait”: Isabel is no hare-brained Cécile, but in Ralph Touchette’s words, she gets caught just the same – there are no scandals, but plenty of misery. The general ambiguity that permeates this novel like a fog is fascinating: Is James praising feminism, or does he think it’s a doomed effort? Is he pro-marriage, or virulently against it (I mean, find one happy union in this book… go on… I’ll wait…)?
When Isabel realizes that she married a pretentious poser, she knows she has no options but to put up with it, because she can’t bring herself to do anything she would consider dishonorable. That, and her pride won’t allow her to show she is unhappy, even to her closest friends. She also considers the welfare of her stepdaughter very carefully: the repercussion of a scandal would affect Pansy and her chances of escaping the scheming her father and his acolyte probably have in store for her.
I am a huge Edith Wharton fan, and I knew James had been her close friend and inspiration, so I knew I would enjoy his work, but I also found it a lot less engaging than Wharton’s. It took me a while to read “Portrait of a Lady” because it was a strangely impersonal reading experience: I didn’t feel much for any of the characters besides a mild pity that they should all make such unhappy lives for themselves. Osmond and Madame Merle are certainly malevolent and manipulative, but I was expecting them to be more outrageous in their behavior towards Isabel: their villainy is not at the same level as the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil. As lovely as the writing was, the whole novel ended up feeling a bit too flat to really be enjoyable: I never felt immersed in the world on the page, and while this might have been deliberate on James' part, I did not enjoy feeling so remote from the story I was reading. This was disappointing, because I had heard so many people rave about this classic, and I thought I would love it. 3 underwhelmed stars.
Isabel is very modern for the time at which “Portrait of a Lady” was written: stubborn, highly intelligent and fiercely independent; but she lacks worldly experience, so she makes willful choices that aren’t always the smartest. In a typically American way, Isabel desires above all the freedom to make her own choices. But the freedom to choose often entails the freedom to makes mistakes: this is essential to self-discovery, of course, and Isabel being full of contradictions (and a rather high opinion of herself) she will not let herself be swayed from doing exactly what she wants to do…
We all make mistakes: that’s life, and no mistakes would make for rather short and boring novels. But I am confused as to what Mr. James is trying to say about female independence: how independent is Isabel, really? Freedom entails responsibility, and I found Isabel rather capricious and immature in her reasoning: it seems to me that she rejects Goodwood and Lord Warburton more to show that she can than for any other reason, as if to show off her capacity to say no. She admits to wanting to be happy, and not knowing what happiness is all in the same breath. Poor Henrietta tries really hard to tell her she needs to keep her wits about her, but Isabel reacts to that the same way teenage girls react when their mother scolds them: by being defiant and sulky and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. She wants to be strong and assertive and while she claims that bad choices are hers to make, that doesn’t make them any less bad. Her lack of experience allow the deviousness of Osmond to work with ridiculous easiness: he just has to not fall all over himself to get her attention as she is fascinated and seduced. Gawd, teenage girl behavior, again! Idealism is great, but realism is important too: the world does not adapt to our whims, and Isabel learns that the hard way.
In some ways, this felt like the urban version of “Far From the Madding Crowd”: pretty headstrong lady with three beaus who makes all the wrong decision and is too proud to admit she put her foot in it up to the ankle. The difference here being that Mr. Goodwood, Lord Warburton and Mr. Osmond are all detestable. At least Bathsheba had Gabriel Oak, but poor Isabel only has a pile of louts… It was also hard for me to not think of “Liaisons Dangereuses” while reading “Portrait”: Isabel is no hare-brained Cécile, but in Ralph Touchette’s words, she gets caught just the same – there are no scandals, but plenty of misery. The general ambiguity that permeates this novel like a fog is fascinating: Is James praising feminism, or does he think it’s a doomed effort? Is he pro-marriage, or virulently against it (I mean, find one happy union in this book… go on… I’ll wait…)?
When Isabel realizes that she married a pretentious poser, she knows she has no options but to put up with it, because she can’t bring herself to do anything she would consider dishonorable. That, and her pride won’t allow her to show she is unhappy, even to her closest friends. She also considers the welfare of her stepdaughter very carefully: the repercussion of a scandal would affect Pansy and her chances of escaping the scheming her father and his acolyte probably have in store for her.
I am a huge Edith Wharton fan, and I knew James had been her close friend and inspiration, so I knew I would enjoy his work, but I also found it a lot less engaging than Wharton’s. It took me a while to read “Portrait of a Lady” because it was a strangely impersonal reading experience: I didn’t feel much for any of the characters besides a mild pity that they should all make such unhappy lives for themselves. Osmond and Madame Merle are certainly malevolent and manipulative, but I was expecting them to be more outrageous in their behavior towards Isabel: their villainy is not at the same level as the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil. As lovely as the writing was, the whole novel ended up feeling a bit too flat to really be enjoyable: I never felt immersed in the world on the page, and while this might have been deliberate on James' part, I did not enjoy feeling so remote from the story I was reading. This was disappointing, because I had heard so many people rave about this classic, and I thought I would love it. 3 underwhelmed stars.