Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady: Review

The Portrait of a Lady 

by Henry James 

The Atlantic Monthly and Macmillan's Magazine 1880 - 1881

published in book form 1881 

Classics Club Review #1/50

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG-POST ARE ENTIRELY MY OWN AND DO NOT REFLECT THOSE OF ANY ONE ELSE WHO DOES NOT SHARE THEM.

THANK YOU.

Starting off with a bit of weird humor, always a good choice. My first review!! This was really exciting to write, if a tiny bit intimidating, and I hope it proves enjoyable to read! I had only a few thoughts to share, and I've tried to put them down clearly - more clearly, at least, than would James. (Haha!) My apologies if it's a bit all over the place; the post-maker/editor thing went haywire - rearranging paragraphs, sizes, formats, the whole lot - so it was a bit of a rush job at the end to get it fixed, finished, and 'published' before my computer blew up. I suppose that's just life on the net: never a dull moment. Anyway, enjoy my subjective academia! (More weird humor, madam? Such excesses!)

We start off with the English country house of Gardencourt, a center of tranquility in the novel, with plenty of late 19th Century philosophy stemming from it, first by way of the conversations of our lead's cousin Ralph Touchett and Lord Warburton, and then Madame Merle. The first and the latter characters serve as Lord Henry Wotton (The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1890) types, if you will, and act upon the youthful, Romantic spirit of our heroine in much the same way as Harry upon the impressionable Dorian. Isabel Archer is an American in her earliest twenties, whose father has recently died and who has been taken up by her independent, eccentrically cynical aunt who takes her to Gardencourt in preparation for a trip through Europe. 

In spite of the heady possibilities laid out for Isabel while at Gardencourt, it is essentially a neutral point, an Eden from which she sets out and to which she eventually returns for reformation before stepping forth again, to what we have only vague clues. Her early life was spent in sheltered, indulgent neglect with her two elder sisters. From a young age, Isabel has wanted to see 'the world'; this is first manifested in the street outside her house, which she cannot see, but as a little girl stands before the bolted door in wonder at the fantasy of reality she has unknowingly cultivated through her imagination and her intensive reading. She is curious, intelligent, individual, and has a desire for independence with a disdain for the 'conventional'. She seems to be, like A Room With a View (1908) 's Lucy Honeychurch, or Dracula (1897) 's Mina Harker, née Murray, an epitomical heroine, and someone to whom we readers can relate in thought and/or feeling. However, there is some key element which she does not share with these women, and which seems to bring about her downfall (an appropriate choice of word, which I will return to later, however briefly). 

Mina, Lucy, and Isabel are three very different people in three very different books; but difference does not equal unsimilarity, and it is along these lines I wish to ponder a moment. 

The 19th Century saw nearly everything that set up the rise of the modern world: the invention of photography, the telephone, the typewriter (so very important to Dracula), the whole Industrial Revolution - more than one can summarize; and as scientific and technological horizons were broadened, so too were those of society, and activism and literature centering on the lives and rights of women began to grow larger in body and presence. 

The New Woman is in many ways embodied in Mina Murray/Harker, but there is also a large dose of the traditional type of Victorian in her, in her Christianity and devotion to her fiancé, later husband, Jonathan Harker. The infectiously brilliant thing about her is that she is not a stereotype of either the progressive independent or the quiet, deferential housewife: she acts as a fully formed person in the story, with her mind, tastes, virtues, and flaws entirely her own. She is, perhaps, the Ultimate of female or male characters. Such things are, I appreciate, very subjective, but while there are characters for whom I feel greater affection, in whose motivations and traits I have a deeper interest, Mina remains in my eyes one of the most wonderful, inspiring characters I've had the pleasure to encounter in my reading. 

What ties Mina together, I believe, is her strength, her resilience. When we look at Isabel Archer, she possesses a sort of lethargy of will, except when it comes to risk-taking. In her leaps into the unknown she exhibits a great deal of willpower. In Mina's personal story, she is plunged into both a mortally and soulfully perilous scenario. Lucy Honeychurch goes down much the same path, facing a death of person, spiritually, and exhibits a similar strength and passion. 

A Room With a View has the most in common with The Portrait of a Lady in that it has very much more to do with the politics and societal beliefs of its time than does Dracula, which truly is a gothic horror novel first and foremost. I am well aware that there are nearly thirty years between Forster's wonderful book and James', but I wish merely to showcase, as it were, with what I can pull out of my still blossoming (i.e., limited) reading experience, some examples of characters similar to Isabel in some elements of personality, who, like her, offer potential for discussions surrounding 'the woman question', and in whom we can see what this novel's lead lacks. 

I've shown my hand there, I know: the truth is I have to say that at the end of the day this book wasn't very good. It wasn't bad, it was simply lukewarm, if you get me. I can hardly believe I'm saying that about a proper classic, but that is my honest opinion however much it may disappoint me. And books should not be placed upon pedestals; if they were, we wouldn't have any classics, just a tower of nonsense with some nice bits here and there. It is most definitely an interesting book, and although James stretches his sentences out a little too far sometimes and has some very unique phraseology, I know such comments are rich coming from me. Besides which, I think the writing is saved by the style; he has taste, and you can tell where he's coming from regarding feeling and effect in the manner he puts things, but he did need to tweak it a little bit. The first volume is very enjoyable. In it James sets up his characters and some of his story, and prompts some thoroughly investing speculations on where he's going to go in the novel. You feel interest in and companionship with Isabel, and follow her thoughts and actions with alertness and not a little compassion. She's setting herself up for failure, you know that; but the expectations roused about her conduct and fate keep you reading with enthusiasm. They slowly diminish, however, in the second half, and what we're left with in the end is a bizarre, vague feeling of incompleteness and a sense of distaste for Isabel (see disclaimer at the top). This may be entirely appropriate considering the way down which Isabel's life went, represented so well by her incredibly Dorian-esque walk through the backstreets of London:

. . . Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching its height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver things than spending the winter in Paris - Paris had sides by which it so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose - and her close correspondence with Madame Merle did much to stimulate such flights. She had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to their ship at Liverpool . . . Isabel watched the train move away. . . and then she walked back into the foggy London street. The world lay before her - she could do whatever she chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed in; the streetlamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly. But Isabel performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again. She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets - the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything.

Vol. II, Ch. XXXI

I can understand the quiet thrill of an evening walk alone, and I can understand the beauty she sees in this escapade, but it is reckless. I genuinely don't mind when characters are foolish. For instance: what was Lucy Honeychurch thinking? CECIL? But I don't mind. Dorian Gray destroys his life much more intensely than any one else I've ever read including Dr. Jekyll, and even before he did so was a spoiled self-centered boy. The Picture of Dorian Gray is my favorite book. I really don't mind foolery, but Isabel Archer left me flabbergasted. I like the twists of the plot, and I feel that James had a very good idea in his head with this novel. But I feel that we were not shown enough foundation of obstinance before Isabel's return from travels alluded to elsewhere in chapter XXXI. At this point, the time of the quote above, she has been travelling and developing for an unseen year. Before she left, she was given this advice, with this response:

        ". . . 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 paused, smiling; Isabel had listened quickly. "You've too much power of thought - above all too much conscience," Ralph added. "It's out of all reason, the number of things you think wrong. Put back your watch. Diet your fever. Spread your wings; rise above the ground. It's never wrong to do that." . . .

. . . "All the same what you say is very true," Isabel pursued. "You could say nothing more true. I'm absorbed in myself - I look at life too much as a doctor's prescription. Why indeed should we perpetually be thinking whether things are good for us, as if we were patients lying in a hospital? Why should I be so afraid of not doing right? As if it mattered to the world whether I do right or wrong!" 

Vol. I, Ch. XXI

Again, I understand the basis of her feelings, and to a certain extent I agree with her: but she goes too far. This is not suppression of self-doubt, or a growth in personal strength and confidence. The note I made on this at the time: I think Ralph exudes semi-Hedonistic philosophies because he cannot live them in his condition of illness. In blunt terms, he has no life. He doesn't fully realize the actuality of Isabel's, either, or what might happen were she to follow his doctrine,  indeed even that she might do so: and if she did, from his point of view of the world nothing that bad could happen. But his view is, while not misled exactly, one which only encompasses his necessarily limited sphere. And he does not know Isabel quite as well as he thinks, or what she might get into before 'a discovery or two' is made; he doesn't see that it may be too late by then.  

 

The biggest spoiler: Isabel marries, against the advice of actually everyone she knows, Gilbert Osmond. Osmond is one slimy, unfeeling creepy-crawly of a man who, instead of giving Isabel the freedom of soul and mind and the sensation of the world she believes he will, turns her into the portrait of a lady, a picture of convention in the worst way possible. She is an ornament, one of the curios that make his houses so pretty and cold and which make him feel richer and better than other men. She, her soul, self, and mind were to be ''like a small garden plot adjoining a deer park'' which he would water and weed and ''gather an occasional nosegay''. He wanted her to be richly receptive to his ideas and standards, to be a more intelligent and capable version of Pansy. As for Pansy, his daughter, she is a China doll, another fetching bibelot.  

 

It is therefore I found the end very confusing, and rushed. I wasn't sure at first what exactly had happened; where had she gone? what to? But I get the impression now in concurrence with opinions on the web that she went back to Osmond, I don't know what for or for how long.  The end, really, is the defining 'what?' moment of the novel. Up until then I was there for Isabel's revolution against Mr. I'm-So-Special-Because-I'm-a-Nasty-Piece-of-Work (I dislike this man), but Isabel goes back, even after calling his ultimatum and returning to Gardencourt to attend her cousin Ralph in his final days. She made a promise to Pansy, whom she feels affection for, that she would come back. If that was all, then I would feel more uplifted in thoughts of her future, but she decides to go when Mr. Goodwood, her suitor from America, tells her yet again that he wants her to marry him and kisses her. She may have thought, I fear, that she could make it work and that it was wrong to leave her marriage like this. THAT is not the Isabel we were introduced to, I didn't think, even broken-spirited. And yet, perhaps. She has cared so much about what people think, except when it came to getting herself into this mess, and she has been both easily led and easily deluded. That sounds more heartless than I mean it to! Let me qualify that I do not blame Isabel for her unhappiness; I blame Henry James for not executing the plot of his novel to fit the plot of his story (again, more intense than I intend). It is within my opinion that he did not set up Isabel's motivation to lean into her more dangerous characteristics well enough for a smooth evolution in the work. 

 

When push comes to shove I really don't know what to think about this book. It did a complete 180 on me in terms of content. I got the impression in the beginning that it was going to be a coming of age, a journey of strength with our young heroine. I mentioned Mina Harker and Lucy Honeychurch as examples of what I thought Isabel's story would be like: a descent and a return. Ralph likens Isabel to a creature of grace and beauty flying high in the air, and her marriage to Osmond as a dart and a falling down of her winged soul. He and I thought she would rise up again. Perhaps that was what James wanted to write; it's not a success story. O, there is so much more a person could say: so much more depth that could be fathomed! But I must refrain from trying to make this a dissertation, and leave it a wee commentary on some elements which really stuck out to me. It's already a little longer than I meant for it to be, and certainly more haphazard!

 

I had tremendous fun, no matter how I felt about the book in the end, in reading/writing about my first Classics Club classic, and I look forward to my next read, A Handful of Dust (1934) by Evelyn Waugh!