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Portrait Lady

Folks

• Isabel Archer, a fallen empire despite having had the catalog of values: beauty, wealth, intelligence, vivacity, culture; values her freedom until it lands her straight into the meshes of people plotting around her; she must learn what freedom truly means

• Mr. Touchett, the American banker moved to England, gives her the inheritance when son insists

• Mrs. Touchett, an independent, arid lady – a fascinating character, witty and dry – who realizes after the loss of her husband and son that she had her freedom at the cost of spending time with her loved ones: she’s alone because she valued her freedom; she brings Isabel to Europe

• Ralph Touchett, the tubercular son whose curiosity lands Isabel in a trap; truly her friend, he sparks off the crisis in Isabel’s marriage

• Madame Merle, the perfect social body with cosmopolitan flair, she uses Isabel; her hard surface masks her disappointment: refusing to marry her love, Osmond, because he doesn’t satisfy her ambition, she ends up trying to make him care for her again and provide for their love-child by giving Isabel to him – but he doesn’t thank her for it, and she is miserable

• Gilbert Osmond, a lazy emigre in Florence who has the best of taste, and no other good quality about him; his poverty and good taste inspire love and generosity in Isabel, who wants to give him money to justify his good taste; completely cold, he wants Isabel to obey him and lose her grand ideas, esp. that of her freedom

• Pansy Osmond, Gilbert’s daughter (Merle’s daughter too but no one knows), she wants to marry Rosier, of whom Gilbert doesn’t approve, thus setting off one of the marital disputes

• Edward Rosier, the perfectly acceptable mate in terms of money, looks, and personality, he is rejected by Gilbert because of the latter’s ambition

• Henrietta Stackpole, comic relief, Isabel’s lady correspondent friend who represents America; she is against the marriage from the first but ends up herself marrying a British citizen

• Caspar Goodwood, love interest no. 1, the American business man who is firm and forceful and won’t give up—so much so that Isabel must flee from him at the end, despite loving him

• Lord Warburton, love interest no. 2, the English lord who shows that Isabel won’t be cowed for a “good match” (money, position, good looks, intelligence) but wants to be herself FOR herself; his later interest in Pansy (faked so he can be near Isabel) prompts trouble in the household

• Countess Gemini, sister of Gilbert’s, a wise fool who ends up telling Isabel about Merle and Gilbert’s former relationship

Themes

Feminism

• Isabel and James both say she lives for herself, not for others
• She gets punished for her independence, says Ralph (world not ready for feminists)

Freedom

• Freedom will not make you happy
• Freedom is not one of controlling your own actions (Isabel doesn’t freely make the decision to marry Gilbert; her cousin, her aunt, her uncle, Madame Merle, and Pansy all “conspire” to make her)
• Freedom requires affirming your decisions, even if they’re flawed, even if they weren’t technically your “own” choices independently
• Also, it could be in avoiding the love-chains of Goodwood and thus understanding that you make your freedom without regard to happiness, that your decisions occur within an overdetermined minefield of causation (ie, you can’t control your decisions), and that therefore true freedom is making the decision despite being not truly independent (in my opinion)
• In other words, her freedom lies in choosing to keep making more decisions and living more, not by dying or escaping (we are told she will be happy again)

America v Europe

• America is innocent and energetic while Europe is jaded and lazy, full of emotional baggage
• Europe is happy with class differentiation and new types of slavery

Bibelots

• Everyone in Europe seems to have a collection: Rosier, Merle, Osmond…
• People are treated as objects: gifts to give away, pieces of currency to pass around: first people are compared to bibelots and money, but then they are treated as such
• Rosier ends up selling his stuff to get Pansy: he’s the only object-lover who transcends materialism

Money Metaphors: People are constantly compared to money transactions or commodities (Pansy and Isabel are costly bibelots; people “profit” from their relationships; a name is a type of currency; a story someone tells you is a commodity; your actions are arranged like account-keeping)

Other Themes: tourism, leisure (American characters think European ones need to work more: Henrietta suggests that Ralph find a real job), spectatorship and surveillance (Ralph and everyone else wants to watch her), wealth (what it does is make you vulnerable if you’re not wise)

Relation to Comps Questions

Modernism: Preface shows that James thinks that thoughts and states of consciousness are just as deserving of depiction as action (indeed, the book is slammed by critics as having not enough “red blood” and plot), and descriptions of emotions last longer than real time (he even says that his best scene is a night of meditation by Isabel about her marriage, sitting in front of a fire)

Leisure: Preface explains how the pull of Venice is one to be leisurely and not to work (an economy of attention)