The Portrait of a Lady

published	1996 by Signet
first published	1983
binding	Paperback
isbn	0451191307 (isbn13: 9780451191304)
pages	560
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 ...more [close] 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.
date added	08-12-07 edit book

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Steven rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

01/15/08

bookshelves: 1001, womenareamystery

Read in January, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

It took forever to finally finish this book. Reading one review of this book, someone called the novel laborious, and while I cannot disagree, there were other redeeming qualities to this novel that I appreciated.

One of the more interesting aspects was the issue faced by Isabel about whether it was wise for her to continue her marriage with her obviously ill-matched husband, Gilbert Osmond. By every objective measure, Osmond is a jerk and their marriage is an utter failure. Isabel is basi...more It took forever to finally finish this book. Reading one review of this book, someone called the novel laborious, and while I cannot disagree, there were other redeeming qualities to this novel that I appreciated.

One of the more interesting aspects was the issue faced by Isabel about whether it was wise for her to continue her marriage with her obviously ill-matched husband, Gilbert Osmond. By every objective measure, Osmond is a jerk and their marriage is an utter failure. Isabel is basically tricked into marrying Osmond by Madame Merle, she discovers that her step-daughter, Pansy, is really the daughter of Madame Merle, and her husband is just sort of a jerk. Throughout the novel, Isabel confesses to basically being miserable. Despite all of this, at the conclusion of the marriage when everybody is rooting for her to end up with the much better for her Caspar Goodwood, and she has the opportunity to do so, she chooses to go back to Osmond.

While in one respect I think her decision is simply James’ commentary on the values about marriage and its sanctity in this era, I think there is more going on than first appears. I took from this plot the debate of whether happiness is the highest value in life. I think most of us are taught that following our happiness truly is the greatest ideal and while most of the time I generally agree, I think there are times when concepts like honor and commitment are maybe the greater value. Is the husband of 30 years watching his wife die of cancer happy? Likely not, but he stays (and we would expect him to stay) because he made a commitment and that commitment to honor his vows are more important than him following his bliss and I think that is kind of a real good thing.

Of course I am excluding the obvious situations of violence or betrayal (in whatever form it might take) but I think I am generally convinced that marriage sometimes changes the rules where happiness is concerned. Happiness is still essential. Nobody wants to be miserable in their marriage and no right-thinking person wants their partner to be unhappy, but I guess I am convinced that sometimes happiness should take an occasional backseat to the sometimes greater values of honor, duty, and commitment. Sadly, it seems like so many married couples I know are just so unhappy together. I will often hear these tales of woe from friends and co-workers (some are pretty benign, some down right sad) and I often think to myself, “why stay in that marriage? Life is too short not to be happy.” I guess becoming older I have learned that happiness is only one of many variables in the equation. Deciding whether to continue a relationship that isn’t all romantic misunderstandings and walks on the beach and all the other things we build love up to be isn’t always as simple as asking the question of whether you are happy at that particular moment. The equation changes even more significantly after entering into matrimony.

People stay for a lot of reasons and I think that is not always necessarily a bad thing. In short, I understand Isabel’s decision, and while I may not have liked it as a reader, I think I understand it, and I think I like what it says about her and her character.

Other thoughts I had about the book: I especially liked the theme of money and having the right kind (or, maybe it is the right amount?) of money. I guess poor Ned Rosier simply didn’t have the right kind when it came to Pansy. The obvious theme of Isabel and her yearning for freedom and how the money bequeathed to her (while given with the intention of helping her find that freedom) turned out to actually be the thing that destroyed her freedom and happiness is yet another element that was interesting.

James is a tough read (and I didn't find the Caspar Goodwood or Lord Warburton characters very redeeming), but all in all I would say it was worth it....less

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Eric rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

09/10/07

bookshelves: absolutefavorites, unexpected

Read in August, 2007

This is my first James (not counting his little book on Hawthorne and scattered essays on French novelists), and I started it out of a sense of dutiful curiosity. I was not prepared for it to be such an engrossing masterpiece. There so much good stuff here: the psychological portraiture, the descriptive scene painting, the simple human energy of the plot.

James is such an odd bird because he was so steeped in the 19th century French fiction, was a social intimate of such Continental wellsp...more This is my first James (not counting his little book on Hawthorne and scattered essays on French novelists), and I started it out of a sense of dutiful curiosity. I was not prepared for it to be such an engrossing masterpiece. There so much good stuff here: the psychological portraiture, the descriptive scene painting, the simple human energy of the plot.

James is such an odd bird because he was so steeped in the 19th century French fiction, was a social intimate of such Continental wellsprings of modern fiction as Flaubert and the Goncourts, but he doesn't really resemble them. The need to nimbly and precisely render the meaningful trifles of physical appearance and gesture that you find in Flaubert, and in his faithful heirs Joyce and Nabokov, is nowhere in James. He can evoke and scene-paint with the best of them (Osmond's Florentine villa, Isabel's melancholy wandering around Rome), but it's not his obsession. In his essay on Turgenev, James spends many pages almost chuckling at the energy and time Turgenev spends visually distinguishing and individuating his characters. James is, in that way, backward: by which I mean that his fictional aesthetic is very 18th century, aiming not at visual peculiarity and novelty, but at what Johnson called "the grandeur of generality." The style too is very redolent of Johnson and Gibbon in its rounded, formal pomp, in the pageantry of its circumlocutions. This backwardness may be one significantly "American" trait of James. Henry Adams, George Santayana and Van Wyck Brooks in various places point out that New England intellectual life remained firmly fixed in the 18th century well into the 19th. Johnson, Gibbon and Pope were the household gods of the colonial elite circa 1776, and they remained so long after the American Revolution. In his book on Hawthorne, James actually singles out Hawthorne's vestigially "Augustan" style for special praise. In a book so mindful of American deficiency, the preservation of Britain's 18th century literary aesthetics is viewed as one of the new country's few cultural strengths.

So James's descriptive forbearance makes the vividness of the characters all the more spooky. I can't put my finger the device that does it. It's certainly well hidden (as Walpole said in praise of Gibbon, he is strong but doesn't show off his muscles). Maybe it's the close attention to how a voice quavers or modulates in emotionally significant ways throughout the course of conversation, or the pictorially vague but atmosphere-altering metaphors. I'm impatient to reread this novel, in order to become more actively conscious of its magic. I can count on my fingers the number of times he tells you what Madame Merle is wearing or how she's moving, but she's as alive and embodied as the more closely drawn Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina. I mention Merle in connection with Flaubert's and Tolstoy's heroines and not Isabel because, after this reading at least, I prefer Isabel as a foil for the more interesting Merle, with her deceptively amiable social masks (Merle is a very 18th century figure as well--her scenes always made me think of Lytton Strachey's descriptions of the ready wit, the tact, the armoring poise and the smooth, faultless sociability of ancien regime manners). My interest in the book actually lagged for a month, after Isabel's marriage to Osmond--that is, when Merle was out of the picture. Not that I'd want Merle as the heroine--no, she's a secondary character, and, like Ralph Touchett, like Pansy, she goes away having only insinuated or at most only partially revealed her inner life and history. Poignantly mysterious is how I like it.

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Martine rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

03/01/08

bookshelves: favourites, film, nineteenth-century, north-american, psychological-drama

Read in January, 1995

recommends it for: lovers of good nineteenth-century drama

The Portrait of a Lady has to be my favourite of the fifteen or so Henry James books I've read. The crowning achievement of James' middle period, when he had honed his powers of observation to perfection but had not yet slipped into the long-winded obscurity that makes his later novels so hard to read, it is in my opinion one of the most perfect novels of the nineteenth century. Very little actually happens in it, but what little does happen is described so exquisitely that you hardly not...more The Portrait of a Lady has to be my favourite of the fifteen or so Henry James books I've read. The crowning achievement of James' middle period, when he had honed his powers of observation to perfection but had not yet slipped into the long-winded obscurity that makes his later novels so hard to read, it is in my opinion one of the most perfect novels of the nineteenth century. Very little actually happens in it, but what little does happen is described so exquisitely that you hardly notice it's a whole lot of nothing spread out over 600+ pages. That's masterful story-telling for you.

The Portrait of a Lady centres on Isabel Archer, a young, lively and intelligent American who is taken to Europe by her eccentric expatriate aunt. In Europe, she is courted by eligible bachelors who appreciate her independent-mindedness and wish to see where it will lead her, but for all their attentions, she ends up marrying a cold-hearted bastard who treats her like an ornament and all but breaks her spirit. The rest of the book revolves around the question whether Isabel will stay with her husband out of a sense of duty or live up to her old ideals of independence.

As I said, there's not an awful lot of story here (the above paragraph is a near-complete summary of the plot), but James makes the most of it. With his powerful observations and descriptions and superb characterisation, he paints a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century womanhood and the institution of marriage, of love, loyalty and longing, of purity versus artificiality, of betrayal, of the differences between Americans and Europeans (a recurring theme in his oeuvre) and of major themes in life: duty, honour, commitment, freedom. Isabel Archer is a likeable heroine whose dreams are quite recognisable to the modern reader, so while James keeps his distance from her, analysing her as a case study rather than as a flesh-and-blood human being, the reader feels for her; it's quite torturous watching her go and make the mistakes which will ruin her life. Both Isabel's struggles and the other characters' are described in elegant but sharp and incisive prose. The result is a big book that is subtle yet dramatic, understated yet powerful, and that ranks among the best things James ever wrote.

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Nico rated it:

(review of isbn 0375759190)

08/24/07

Read in August, 2007

I finished Hanry James' Portrait of a Lady last night, six months after beginning it on the L train into Brooklyn. Like Middlemarch last year it dragged on and there were times where I stared at it in my hands, wondering whether I should or could go on—yet another drawn out three page paragraph on the near Confucian systemization of place settings—and yet, like Molloy— I can't go on, I must go on, I go on—I do go on, to delirious and wonderful effect. I have entered into a union with I...more I finished Hanry James' Portrait of a Lady last night, six months after beginning it on the L train into Brooklyn. Like Middlemarch last year it dragged on and there were times where I stared at it in my hands, wondering whether I should or could go on—yet another drawn out three page paragraph on the near Confucian systemization of place settings—and yet, like Molloy— I can't go on, I must go on, I go on—I do go on, to delirious and wonderful effect. I have entered into a union with Isabel Archer and shall name a daughter after her. I have admired, after initially scorning, Caspar Goodwood—the names, the names—and have hated, after intially loving Gilbert Osmond. Oh the tragedy of Isabel and why does she finally return? She returns because she must, because she is—like all of us in the dull prsuit of our lives—like a vast oil tanker trying to turn in a narrow strait, slow slow slow to come around, and once she does, slow again to straighten out. She returns as I return to my boat, as you have returned countless times to Rachel. And like you, she harbors the question—always—of what might have been if she had never turned, if she had climbed out of that window in Morrocco leaving her best friend and newly taken lover to each other, and instead of returning walked into the quiet, still gloaming of a desert night...It is a magnificent tale and sad and frustrating and all too too contemporary. You asked me in the laundromat why I bothered to read that stuff, a comment you have since explained, but I understand now reading it, in a way I was unable to answer a few months ago; I read James because he explains myself to me, because he shows compassion to me, and allows me to be compassionate to others as well, in my mistakes, in my joys, in my fears. It is only his honesty that does it—a dishonest writer should be shot—and it is only my honesty that allows me to apreciate it. In a rare act of self recognition, an act totally the oppsite of solipsism, I see myself in each of his characters—my meaness, my grumpiness, my lust and my ecstasy reflected and refracted like jewels in Indra's net, perfectly reflected again and again...
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Velcro rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

11/09/07

Read in November, 2007

This is a funny book to read in comparison to Restless House. So much of James' drama comes from his setting you up to admire or be attracted to certain characters for various reasons, and then slowly or suddenly revealing them to be despicable (or vice versa). Zola doesn't give a damn - he expects you to find his characters disgusting, and can't seem to imagine that you wouldn't. Maybe that's part of their different scope of view: James repeatedly addresses us as readers, with flourishes lik...more This is a funny book to read in comparison to Restless House. So much of James' drama comes from his setting you up to admire or be attracted to certain characters for various reasons, and then slowly or suddenly revealing them to be despicable (or vice versa). Zola doesn't give a damn - he expects you to find his characters disgusting, and can't seem to imagine that you wouldn't. Maybe that's part of their different scope of view: James repeatedly addresses us as readers, with flourishes like, "You might have thought, looking at her sitting there, that[...], but you shall see, as I explain, that[...]" Which gets old real quick. But Zola just assumes you're right along with him, with editorial commentary inserted seamlessly into the narrative, as in "He was such a drunk old lecher that he didn't even see how repulsive he was," which is entertaining, too, to some extent, but ends up pathetic.

ANYWAY - James = suspense, intrigue, social niceties. All the private concerns that novels were designed to satisfy: will I fit in? will they like me? how am i supposed to act? now, how have authors adapted his techniques to different purposes? that's what i'm excited to see.

‘I think one ought to be liberal,’ Mildred argued gently. ‘We’ve always been so, even from the earliest times.’

- from Chapter 9

Ah, James is so good at revealing peoples' blind spots, especially when it comes to their own characteristics; he does it so softly that he allows us the gift of not condemning them: at the same time that he delights in their inconsistencies, he forgives them. His narrator is so distant and self-aware that he probably couldn't even sell it to an agent today, and yet the florid and languid pace of his sentences (with their open and crenellated structures) allow for such intimacy that it becomes easy to forgive his assumed authority, because it's seductive. He switches tact from light to pointed, aimless to determined, with a quick agility. Sherman Alexie does similarly.

Fascinating tidbit of the day: Samuel Delaney named James as one of his childhood favorites....less

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Elizabeth rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

03/20/08

bookshelves: carp-500

Read in December, 2007

Henry James is, admittedly, long winded. At times, one does feel like you want him to move along already. However, he is always worth the read to me.

In this book, I love the character of Isabel Archer. She is young, full of ideas, wants to travel and see the world and have experiences (i remember being that way!). One must also remember that society for young women at this time was much more restrictive and Isabel's ideas less likely to be satisfied. Her greatest quality, however, is her de...more

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Eleanor rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

05/07/08

Read in May, 2008

I picked up this book because I have a (personal) interest in the theme of "The American Woman Abroad." This is the quintessential novel that deals with that idea and at first I wasn't dissapointed in the setting, character or drama that was unfolding. I found myself loving the brave, spirited protagonist, Isabel Archer, and imagined that for her challenging 19th century conventions was no small feat. I have to wonder though, what was Henry James thinking when he thought that by &q...more

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Anne rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

07/26/07

Read in July, 2007

After reading Colm Toibin's The Master a couple months back, I was interested in reading Henry James. I thought it would take a lot of effort to make it through the 19th century classic, but I was shocked to discover after only about ten pages in that I was hooked. James is the king of description - he can spend pages telling you just how someone sat in a chair, or describing a look on someone's face - presumably this is why it has been said that he does not translate so well to film or stage. T...more

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Beth rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

09/09/07

Read in August, 2007

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 th...more

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yulia rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

05/02/08

bookshelves: happy-reads

Read in January, 2007

What I love about this edition is that the James expert in the introduction cites all the flaws that were so glaring to me in the beginning of the book: Ralph and his father's constantly applauding Lord Warburton for his fine conversation, the father telling Lord Warburton not to fall in love with his niece (I didn't see that coming!), one of them mentioning how amusing the other is (hahaha). It was just intolerable how heavy-handed the dialogue was. Nor did I find it cute how much of a carica...more

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Juliana rated it:

(review of isbn 0393966461)

05/02/08

Read in April, 2008

recommends it for: people with a large vocabulary and a good attention span

When I finished this book, I threw it down on the table in anger and walked away muttering. I guess we all want books to end like.. well, books! Not like real life. We have enough real life around us. Aren't books for escaping all that?

Maybe. This book is probably a classic because it is complex enough to actually resemble the real world. People make mistakes. Small mistakes. Big mistakes. Life-changing mistakes. They also show a lot of spirit and charisma, which is also real. None of the ch...more

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Pa rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

01/02/08

Read in September, 2007

I only faintly remember the moment I fell in love with Paul, but I remember distinctly and vividly the moment I fell in love with The Portrait of a Lady--or more precisely with Henry James' beautiful mind and his art. A masterpiece of intellectual and psychological insight, the Portrait of a Lady tells the story of Isabel Archer, a beautiful young American woman venturing in Europe who after having rejected a couple of marriage offers from very eligible suitors (an English lord and an heir to a...more

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Georgia rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

08/12/07

Read in August, 2007

It's quite good, of course, but I read 90% contemporary fiction, such that all of the things that writers would rarely do now really stand out, for example: three years skipping between two chapters; the narrator sometimes cutting in as a narrative (not authorial) I, to deliver commentary; no one in the book having any sort of job or work to do whatsoever and this being totally normal.

That said, I do love 19th century novels about clever woman, but strange how in Jane Austen cleverness gets ...more

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Das rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

04/23/08

bookshelves: surprisingly-good-

Read in March, 2008

Not too many authors compare to the beautiful prose and style of Henry James. At times "dense" with description and detail, Portrait of a Lady, was a surprisingly good read.
An American by birth, Isabel Archer, moves to Europe and turns down countless offers for her hand in marriage.
She finally accepts Gilbert Osmond, a man with no rank in society, no profession and no money.
She still travels (without Gilbert), entertains on Thursday nights and develops a close relationship wit...more

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Bre rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

01/26/08

Read in April, 2003

Isabella, the incredibly beautiful, smart, funny and all powerful heroin of the story inherits a fortune and travels the world. Only to make a bad choice in marriage and ruin her life.
I love this book. I love the description of the travels and the unveiling of the evils of the Victorian era. Henry James tells it like it is and he's brilliant at telling it with sharp details and the best character descriptions I have ever read. He was also an American who spent a great deal of time in Englan...more

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Vicki rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

04/21/08

Read in April, 2008

The Portrait of a Lady examinins the life of Isabel Archer, a young American woman who must choose between her independent spirit and the demands of social convention.
She moves to England with her aunt and is adored by her uncle and her cousin Ralph. Isabel longs to be an independent woman, answeringe only to herself, Her uncle leaves her enough money to allow her to indeed be independent. Here is where the plot thickens, Isabel falls in love with and marries the Gilbert Osmond, who is very i...more

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Natalia rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

10/17/07

bookshelves: readforschool

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: english majors and masochists

Ugh.

If I could describe this book in one word it would be "Laborious."

If I were allowed more space, which apparently I am, I would go on to say that in addition to being deathly slow and horrifically boring it is also a little brilliant, a little impressive, and, if you have the patience to look for it, more than a little interesting.

There's a LOT in here. James wanted this novel to be the antidote to the Jane Austen romance. He wanted to show life as it is- money as a ...more

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Alyssa rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

01/21/08

Read in December, 2007

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Rebecca rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

01/22/08

bookshelves: fiction

Read in May, 2007

I give this four stars instead of five because James is sometimes just too damn clever for me and I have no idea what the hell he's talking about. I think he could mean one thing but in fact, that 55 word sentence might have meant the exact opposite. I've read the book now three times and like it more each time. He isn't convoluted. He isn't boring. He isn't obtuse. His writing is sensuous and loving and brilliant. There is more real life in the novel than in any of those later American n...more

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Suelynn rated it:

(review of isbn 0141439637)

02/04/08

Read in February, 2008

Wow, amazing book, but I only gave it 4 stars because of the ending. It wasn't a bad ending. I believe it reflected the authors beliefs, but it wasn't the ending I wanted. Then again it wasn't a complete ending. It did leave much to the readers imagination. I do firmly recommend this book. I think it gave great light to the weight and effect our choices have on our lives. Perhaps if more read it they would think more carefully of their choices. Perhaps they would put aside pride and allo...more

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