The Portrait of a Lady

“Isabel stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her. ‘I hope they won’t pull it down,’ she said; ‘I’m extremely fond of it […] I like places in which things have happened—even if they’re sad things. A great many people have died here; the place has been full of life.’ ‘Is that what you call being full of life?’ ‘I mean full of experience—of people’s feelings and sorrows.’”

This passage prefigures the importance Isabel ascribes to architectural spaces throughout the text: an increasingly developed metaphor of architecture as representing the condition of life and psychological processes (See: Literary Devices). Here, Henry James characterizes Isabel as prioritizing experience over happiness.

“Altogether, with her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look very well and to be if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader’s part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant.”

James uses a run-on sentence to echo the complex, layered elements of Isabel’s character. The direct reference to the reader emphasizes the novel’s unique use of narratorial voice and point of view (See: Literary Devices).

“She rustled, she shimmered, in fresh, dove-coloured draperies, and Ralph saw at a glance that she was as crisp and new and comprehensive as a first issue before the folding. From top to toe she had probably no misprint.”

This passage exemplifies James’s use of perspective to characterize two individuals at once. Since this description of Henrietta is from Ralph’s perspective, it characterizes both of them. The description of Henrietta as a newspaper was added in the New York edition (See: Background). Therefore, this passage is also an example of the type of vivid character descriptors James added during the revision process.

“We see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us; and I shall never be able to see mine in the manner you proposed. Kindly let this suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that I have given your proposal the deeply respectful consideration it deserves.”

This passage from Isabel’s letter rejecting Lord Warburton’s proposal emphasizes Isabel’s insistence on her independence, reflecting the theme of The Interplay Between Freedom and Gender. Seeing her life from her own point of view is at this point in the novel an important aspect of her freedom. However, it also foreshadows the negative perspective she will develop of her life after her marriage to Gilbert.

“He had never supposed she hadn’t wings and the need of beautiful free movements—he wasn’t, with his own long arms and striges, afraid of any force in her. Isabel’s words, if they had been meant to shock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile with the sense that here was common ground. ‘Who would wish less to curtail your liberty than I? What can give me greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent—doing whatever you like? It’s to make you independent that I want to marry you.’ ‘That’s a beautiful sophism,’ said the girl with a smile more beautiful still. ‘An unmarried woman—a girl of your age—isn’t independent. There are all sorts of things she can’t do. She’s hampered at every step.’”

This speech, in which Caspar attempts to persuade Isabel to accept his proposal, highlights the contradictions of what freedom means for women in society. James highlights The Interplay Between Freedom and Gender as one of the novel’s key themes. Caspar’s view of marriage as facilitating rather than hampering Isabel’s liberty is directly contrary to her own. As the novel progresses, James includes numerous portrayals of women in various states of freedom or constriction in relation to marriage. This passage is significant because it introduces the complexity and irony of what it means for a woman to seek independence.

“I belong to the old, old world. But it’s not of that I want to talk; I want to talk about the new. You must tell me more about America; you never tell me enough. Here I’ve been since I was brought here as a helpless child, and it’s ridiculous, or rather it’s scandalous, how little I know about that splendid, dreadful, funny country […] You should live in your own land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we’re not good Americans we’re certainly poor Europeans. We’ve no natural place here […] A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to crawl.”

Madame Merle’s speech offers a key perspective on the blended American-European identity she shares with Ralph and Gilbert, invoking The Expatriate Experience and Cultural Belonging. This passage is especially significant because James connects the cultural displacement of being an expatriate with the deeper displacement of being a woman in a patriarchal society.

“Take things more easily. Don’t ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don’t question your conscience so much—it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don’t try so much to form your character—it’s like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare, and a comfortable income’s not one of them.”

Ralph’s perspective reflects aestheticism’s shift away from focus on moralizing in favor of a focus on beauty. The simile of conscience as a piano is an instance of James’s focus on music as a motif to represent transitory states (See: Symbols & Motifs). The passage ironically foreshadows the fact that Isabel’s income is what facilitates her disastrous marriage to Gilbert.

“Isabel thought him interesting […] She had carried away an image from her visit to his hill-top which her subsequent knowledge of him did nothing to efface and which put on for her a particular harmony with other supposed and divined things, histories within histories: the image of a quiet, clever, sensitive, distinguished man, strolling on a moss-grown terrace above the sweet Val d’Arno and holding by the hand a little girl whose bell-like clearness gave a new grace to childhood. The picture had no flourishes, but she liked its lowness of tone and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded it.”

Throughout the novel, the motif of portraiture is generally used to characterize Isabel, often superficially (See: Symbols & Motifs). This passage is an inversion of the typical male as viewer and woman as object, as she surveys her image of Gilbert as a portrait. The passage also emphasizes a disconnect between idealized image and the reality of Gilbert’s antagonistic character.

The sense of a terrible human past was heavy to her, but that of something altogether contemporary would suddenly give it wings that it could wave in the blue. Her consciousness was so mixed that she scarcely knew where the different parts of it would lead her, and she went about in a repressed ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often in the things she looked at a great deal more than was there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Ralph said, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reëchoing tourists had departed and most of the solemn places had relapsed into solemnity. The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains in their mossy niches had lost its chill and doubled its music.”

In this passage, James blends vivid sensory descriptions of both the visual and psychological effects of Rome on Isabel. The content of the passage echoes its form. Isabel’s “mixed” state of consciousness is echoed in the combination of abstract and physical concepts like human history as a winged, waving object.

“‘I’m afraid that what I heard the other evening is true: you’re rather cruel to that nobleman.’ Isabel looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. ‘It’s not true. I’m scrupulously kind.’ ‘That’s exactly what I mean!’ Gilbert Osmond returned, and with such happy hilarity […] now that he had seen Lord Warburton, whom he thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand.”

James critiques Aestheticism in this passage by suggesting that Gilbert’s obsession with collections extends to perceiving Isabel as a valuable object. The rejection of Lord Warburton’s proposal was for Isabel an expression of her freedom. Ironically, it is part of what Gilbert’s attraction to her and thereby leads to her entrapment in their marriage.

“Ralph had listened with great attention, as if everything she said merited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself to the weight of his total impression—the impression of her ardent good faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was dismally consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that, having invented a fine theory about Gilbert Osmond, she loved him not for what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as honours.”

James characterizes both Ralph and Isabel in this passage: Ralph in terms of his deep care for Isabel and incisive understanding of other people, and Isabel for her stubborn commitment to her (in this case wrong) understanding of Gilbert’s character. James uses parallel syntax in “she was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was dismally consistent” to syntactically echo the inevitability of her decision to accept Gilbert’s proposal.

“He took his course to the adjoining room and met Mrs Osmond coming out of the deep doorway. She was dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had said, and yet oh so radiantly gentle! […] Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that secret of a ‘lustre’ beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him to recognise.”

James critiques Ned’s aestheticism in this passage by emphasizing how easily he regards both Isabel and Pansy as valuable in the same manner as the other decorative objects in his collection. This passage parallels Gilbert’s view of Isabel as valuable due to her position in his “collection” of possessions rather than for her character or intelligence.

“There was a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of her experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that she even spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her marriage. Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations—she who used to care so much for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great delight in good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked so charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a crushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she appeared now to think there was nothing worth people’s either differing about or agreeing upon.”

This passage exemplifies the contrast between the aestheticism of Ralph and of Gilbert. Gilbert has insisted on the removal of Isabel’s ideas and considers her only an ornament and a representation of himself. Conversely, Ralph admires her beauty, but thinks of it in relation to, rather than opposing, her intellect: specifically, the fact that he thinks that she looks the most charming when she is in the midst of an intellectual argument.

“To associate Madame Merle with its disappointment would be a petty revenge—especially as the pleasure to be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; it ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to repair it—just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it.”

After the passage of years and several chapters that omit Isabel’s interiority from the narrative perspective, this return to her mind is jarring and significant. It characterizes Isabel as self-critical, blaming herself rather than Madame Merle or even Gilbert for her misery and raising The Interplay Between Freedom and Gender. It emphasizes Isabel’s perspective of the hopelessness of her situation. James builds syntactical suspense in the final sentence of this passage, with the use of the em dash and parenthetical, to delay what repair will be suggested; this expectation is undercut by the conclusion that the only choice is to accept this type of mistake.

“‘It seems to me he’s attentive. Isn’t that what you call it?’ ‘I don’t call it anything,’ said Isabel; ‘I’ve waited for you to give it a name.’ ‘That’s a consideration you don’t always show,’ Osmond answered after a moment. ‘I’ve determined, this time, to try and act as you’d like. I’ve so often failed of that.’ Osmond turned his head slowly, looking at her. ‘Are you trying to quarrel with me?’ ‘No, I’m trying to live at peace.’ ‘Nothing’s more easy; you know I don’t quarrel myself.’ ‘What do you call it when you try to make me angry?’ Isabel asked. ‘I don’t try; if I’ve done so it has been the most natural thing in the world. Moreover I’m not in the least trying now.’”

While James alludes to Mr. and Mrs. Osmond’s unhappiness from the point at which the narrative shifts forward in time, this scene is the first instance of dialogue that evidences their relationship directly. It reveals Gilbert’s insidious malice toward Isabel and their dismal relationship. This dialogue functions as conclusive evidence of the bad state of their marriage after oblique references to it by others.

“It had come gradually—it was not till the first year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it was as if Osmond deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again it had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect that were impenetrably black […] She knew of no wrong he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated her.”

This passage appears in a significant chapter in the novel that focuses entirely on Isabel’s interiority. After the distance of both time and narrative perspective, it constitutes a drastic shift back to Isabel’s consciousness. James uses imagery of light and shadow throughout this chapter. In this passage, shadows represent the gradual but complete decline in the Osmonds’ marriage. James highlights Gilbert’s agency in this relational decline, as he puts the lights out one by one. James’s diction with the progress from “vague and thin” to “impenetrably black” suggests the insidious, gradual nature of the darkening relationship.

“‘You think of those who think of you,’ she said with a faint smile. ‘I know Mr Rosier thinks of me.’ ‘He ought not to,’ said Isabel loftily. ‘Your father has expressly requested he shouldn’t.’ ‘He can’t help it, because he knows I think of him.’ ‘You shouldn’t think of him. There’s some excuse for him, perhaps; but there’s none for you.’ ‘I wish you would try to find one,’ the girl exclaimed as if she were praying to the Madonna. ‘I should be very sorry to attempt it,’ said the Madonna with unusual frigidity. ‘If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you think of him?’”

The religious imagery in the passage emphasizes Pansy’s history in the convent, which is part of her characterization as a passive and impressionable version of a woman. The assignation of “Madonna” rather than Isabel as a dialogue tag after the first reference recalls the narrator’s wry comments in early sections of the novel.

“I can’t say much more for the great Warburton. When one really thinks of it, the cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes and looks at one’s daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he tries the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls and almost thinks he’ll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a lease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he doesn’t think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for a piano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month’s lodging in the poor little apartment for nothing.”

Gilbert’s assessment of Warburton after he fails to propose to Pansy indicates his view of women as objects. James uses architectural metaphors throughout the text: For example, Isabel thinks about architectural images during scenes that reflect her psychology. In this instance, the extended metaphor of Pansy as an apartment that hasn’t been rented is decisive evidence of Gilbert’s disregard for women except as objects of ownership.

“She had suffered a disappointment which excited Isabel’s surprise—our heroine having no knowledge of her zealous interest in Pansy’s marriage; and she betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs Osmond’s alarm. More clearly than ever before Isabel heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from she knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare that this bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her destiny.”

James employs the narrator’s suggestion of something Isabel doesn’t yet know to build suspense and foreshadow the reveal that Madame Merle is Pansy’s mother. The reference to the “dim void” recalls the imagery of shadows that characterizes Isabel’s life and her experience of The Politics of Marriage.

“‘What have you to do with me?’ Isabel went on. Madame Merle slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes from Isabel’s face. ‘Everything!’ she answered. Isabel sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman’s eyes seemed only a darkness. ‘Oh misery!’ she murmured at last; and she fell back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a high-surging wave that Mrs Touchett was right. Madame Merle had married her.”

James builds suspense with the imagery of Madame Merle’s ominous gesture of stroking her muff while gazing at Isabel. The simile of the realization as a crashing wave suggests violence and certainty of the belated knowledge of Madame Merle’s having manipulated her into marrying Gilbert.

“‘That’s why you like him—because he hates me,’ said Osmond with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. ‘I’ve an ideal of what my wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin’s nothing to you; he’s nothing to us. You smile most expressively when I talk about us, but I assure you that we, Mrs Osmond, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to have found a way of not doing so […] I think we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!’”

Gilbert articulates some of the reasons that Isabel herself remains committed to her marriage. Throughout the novel, there is much more evidence of Isabel’s commitment to honor and accepting the consequences of one’s actions than Gilbert; this suggests that he is manipulating her here. James complicates The Politics of the Marriage by representing several different and negative portrayals of marriage.

“The portress returned at the end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Isabel got up, expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her extreme surprise found herself confronted with Madame Merle. The effect was strange, for Madame Merle was already so present to her vision that her appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a painted picture move. Isabel had been thinking all day of her falsity, her audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these dark things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the room. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in court.”

The inclusion of “probable suffering” in Isabel’s list of negative thoughts about Madame Merle indicates her kindness and empathy, in spite of what she has learned. The imagery of seeing a picture move connects to the question of appearance versus reality symbolized by portraits throughout the text (See: Symbols & Motifs).

“‘You don’t hurt me—you make me very happy.’ And as Ralph said this there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her head again, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. ‘I always understood,’ he continued, ‘though it was so strange—so pitiful. You wanted to look at life for yourself—but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!’”

Ralph’s speech highlights the irony that Isabel succumbed to conventional repression of women in part because of both her own and Ralph’s attempts to free her from it. James thus develops the theme of The Interplay Between Freedom and Gender. James includes intimate imagery in the scene, including the gladness in Ralph’s voice and Isabel kissing his hand. She later calls him “brother,” suggesting the familial redemption in Ralph and Isabel’s final meeting.