Product Description

When Isabel Archer, a young American woman with looks, wit, and imagination, arrives in Europe, she sees the world as `a place of brightness, of free expression, of irresistible action'. She turns aside from suitors who offer her their wealth and devotion to follow her own path. But that way leads to disillusionment and a future as constricted as `a dark narrow alley with a dead wall at the end'. In a conclusion that is one of the most moving in modern fiction, Isabel makes her final choice. The Portrait of a Lady is the masterpiece of James's middle period, and Isabel is perhaps his most engaging central character. This edition provides a challenging new introduction and detailed notes; the text is that of the New York Edition and includes Henry James's own Preface.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #325958 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 672 pages

About the Author
Nicola Bradbury is Lecturer in English at Reading University.

Customer Reviews

"The real offense was her having a mind of her own at all."
When Isabel Archer, a bright and independent young American, makes her first trip to Europe in the company of her aunt, Mrs. Touchett, who lives outside of London in a 400-year-old estate, she discovers a totally different world, one which does not encourage her independent thinking or behavior and which is governed by strict rules of behavior. This contrast between American and European values, vividly dramatized here, is a consistent theme in James's novels, one based on his own experiences living in the US and England. In prose that is filled with rich observations about places, customs, and attitudes, James portrays Isabel's European coming-of-age, as she discovers that she must curb her intellect and independence if she is to fit into the social scheme in which she now finds herself.

Isabel Archer, one of James's most fully drawn characters, has postponed a marriage in America for a year of travel abroad, only to discover upon her precipitate and ill-considered marriage to an American living in Florence, that it is her need to be independent that makes her marriage a disaster. Gilbert Osmond, an American art collector living in Florence, marries Isabel for the fortune she has inherited from her uncle, treating her like an object d'art which he expects to remain "on the shelf." Madame Serena Merle, his long-time lover, is, like Osmond, an American whose venality and lack of scruples have been encouraged, if not developed, by the European milieu in which they live.

James packs more information into one paragraph than many writers do in an entire chapter. Distanced and formal, he presents psychologically realistic characters whose behavior is a direct outgrowth of their upbringing, their conflicts resulting from the differences between their expectations and the reality of their changed settings. The subordinate characters, Ralph Touchett, Pansy Osmond, her suitor Edward Rosier, American journalist Henrietta Stackpole, Isabel's former suitor Caspar Stackpole, and Lord Warburton, whose love of Isabel leads him to court Pansy, are as fascinating psychologically and as much a product of their own upbringing as is Isabel.

As the setting moves from America to England, Paris, Florence, and Rome, James develops his themes, and as Isabel's life becomes more complex, her increasingly difficult and emotionally affecting choices about her life make her increasingly fascinating to the reader. James's trenchant observations about the relationship between individuals and society and about the effects of one's setting on one's behavior are enhanced by the elegance and density of his prose, making this a novel one must read slowly--and savor. Mary Whipple

A masterpiece of world litterature
What makes this book a masterpiece is the incredible art of creating characters. The complexity, the nuances and the strength of the characters created can only be compared with stendhal or flauber. James also succeeds in portraying british and american society in the beginning of the century forming a comparison still quite relevant. The language is brilliant and the story beautiful. A must-read.

New World womanhood suppressed but triumphant
Isobel Archer, the cream of American womanhood, makes an unhappy marriage and lives in a fascinating but decadent Italy. Her New World classlessness belies her ease and familiarity among English aristocracy. Isobel's willingness to endure her living despair at her domestic and Europe-bound constraints results from her personal moral values which her North American Puritan background has given her.

Being British myself, I took 'The Portrait of a Lady' more seriously at first than when I reflected hard upon the declining Henry James's own succumbing to Old Europe's temptations by becoming a British subject in 1915, shortly before his death. But its sheer power as a novel stands. A must for Donald Rumsfeld's retirement reading.