The Portrait of A Lady (2 page)

Isabel differs from many of her textual peers—and no doubt most of her readers—insofar as she does not regard marriage as the inevitable consequence of her adventures. ‘‘Among her theories,'' the narrator tells us, ‘‘this young lady was not without a collection of views on the subject of marriage.'' Of course she has opinions about marriage—what heroine doesn't? But this heroine is different: ‘‘The first on the list was a conviction that it was very vulgar to think too much about it.'' She is determined to resist the seductions of the easy, domestic and appropriately feminine path. She wants to plot a course of her own, but she has no idea yet what that course will be.

Isabel first refuses the marriage proposal offered by Lord Warburton, a charming, sophisticated, rich English peer with liberal ideas, who would clearly be regarded as a great catch by any young woman—but who is not regarded in that light by Isabel. Isabel tests the strength of her will toward independence against the enticements offered by Warburton. He has grand and effective ideas about changing the world for the better. He is clever and sincere. He has an enormous estate that—to put the finishing touches on the fairy tale—even includes a moat.

Offering to leave his family's mansion and land to live in a place of Isabel's choosing, Warburton declares that he's had the house ‘‘thoroughly examined; it is perfectly sanitary. But if you shouldn't fancy it you needn't dream of living in it. There's no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I would just mention it; some people don't like a moat, you know. Good-bye.'' In contrast to his rather fumbling erasure of his own love for her, Isabel's reply is a classic moment of self-assurance and composure. ‘‘I delight in a moat,'' says Isabel. ‘‘Good-bye.'' Why does Isabel refuse Warburton's offer?

In at least one respect the answer is the same as the answer to the question of why Hamlet does not immediately kill Claudius: there would be no story if these two acted with alacrity. George Eliot, a near contemporary of James, wryly noted that ‘‘the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.'' Isabel, for better or worse, is destined to have a history. She tries to explain as much to Warburton when she announces: ‘‘I can't escape unhappiness. . . . In marrying you, I shall be trying to.'' So that he does not misunderstand her, Isabel explains that ‘‘I am not bent on being miserable. . . . I have always been intensely determined to be happy. . . . I've told people that; you can ask them. But it comes over me every now and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by turning away, by separating myself.'' If Isabel had married Warburton her life would have been the stuff of romantic fantasy, but Isabel's fantasies lie elsewhere.

Not for this heroine the quiet pleasures of the hearth and the joys of a safe and uneventful passing of days. Isabel reveals to her best friend, Henrietta, that instead of wanting safety, she longs for a taste of uncertainty. Her imagination is captured by the idea of ‘‘a swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see—that's my idea of happiness.'' Henrietta accuses her of sounding ‘‘like the heroine of an immoral novel,'' and she may well be right. Isabel's tastes run toward the edge of experience and the margins of acceptability. She regards herself in the light of an intellectual adventuress, willing to barter the ordinary for the uncommon.

The luxury of the ordinary is not completely lost on Isabel, however. James tells us that ‘‘she would have given her little finger at that moment, to feel, strongly and simply, the impulse to answer: ‘Lord Warburton, it is impossible for a woman to do better in this world than to commit herself to your loyalty.' But though she could conceive the impulse, she could not let it operate; her imagination was charmed, but it was not led captive.''
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Ralph Touchett shores up Isabel's idea of herself as a woman whose unique character will place her in remarkable circumstances. As fond as Ralph is of Warburton, he is even more attached to the idea of Isabel as a woman who is destined to carve out an unusual destiny. Arguing that, had she married Warburton, she would still have had a good life, ‘‘a very honourable and brilliant one,'' he goes on to claim, ‘‘But relatively speaking, it would be a little prosaic. It would be definitely marked out in advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected.''

Lord Warburton is not Isabel's only suitor; neither is he the first to sense that recognizing Isabel's independence of spirit might be the easiest way to gain her affections. When her American suitor, Caspar Goodwood, offers to allow her to ‘‘keep'' her independence, Isabel believes that true independence rules out the idea that another person can award it; if someone ‘‘allows'' you your independence, you are no longer independent. ‘‘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?'' asks Caspar Goodwood, because ‘‘it is to make you independent that I want to marry you,'' to which Isabel, always on her guard around Goodwood, replies, ‘‘That's a beautiful sophism.''

When she turns down Warburton she is pleased with her gesture; when she sends Caspar Goodwood away she is devastated, even though she makes the choice deliberately. Turning down
two
good, intelligent, and wealthy men forces Isabel to confront her own ambitions. When her aunt questions Isabel's motives for turning down Warburton's offer, Mrs. Touchett intuits that Isabel might ‘‘expect to do something better.'' Isabel's belief, as she tells Goodwood, is that she will probably never marry. But that is before Ralph persuades his father to give Isabel a large inheritance and before she has even tasted the first mouthful of life as a woman of means. It would be a misreading to think that Isabel believes she will marry a man greater than Goodwood or Warburton; instead she desires merely to write the script of her own life in her own hand.

The shine is taken off of Isabel's triumphant moment of what she believes are the unique gestures of independence in turning down not one but two excellent proposals of marriage, however, when an experienced woman of the world tells Isabel she should not consider her refusal of a good proposal as so important or creative: ‘‘We have all had the young man with the moustache. He is the inevitable young man; he doesn't count,'' says her coolly sophisticated and world-weary friend, Madame Merle. Every attractive young woman with money has refused offers, Madame Merle implies, and Isabel should set her sights higher when looking for triumph. Drawn into a web of fascination woven by Madame Merle, Isabel believes that she is being advised by an older, trustworthy, sincere counsellor, who wishes only the best for her. She could not be further from the truth. Madame Merle wants Isabel to act in ways she herself could not, but she has breathtakingly selfish reasons for this, as Isabel will discover.

Ralph, too, wants Isabel to do what he cannot. With exhilaration Ralph anticipates a future full of voyages into unmapped emotional territories for his cousin, imagining experiences for her that he himself could never embark upon. In fact, the invalid Ralph is in love with Isabel because she is the only individual, among all the human beings about him, able to relieve his ennui; he is thrilled by the state of happy uncertainty into which he is plunged when he is in her company or when he observes her career. Ralph believes that he wishes only to observe and be left to his own interpretations of her actions, but of course it is his action—the insistence that his father give Isabel a large inheritance—that redirects the course of Isabel's life.

Ralph is no casual observer, no matter how he defines himself. Despite the fact that he, too, adores Isabel, Ralph is delighted by the parade of prospective bride-grooms at her door. Taking vicarious pleasure from his cousin's flinging aside the fears and doubts usually ascribed to young women, Ralph believes that she will reject the men who offer their hands in marriage, and he eagerly awaits this spectacle. ‘‘He knew that she had listened to others,'' remarks James,

 
Watching Isabel as if she were on stage, Ralph applauds her emotional and intellectual improvisations with all the possessiveness of one of the show's backers.

For her cousin, Isabel is an oasis of mystery in the desert of convention. This is a twist on the usual state of the lover, who typically desires complete knowledge of the beloved's every thought, and who laments the barrier of the individual self that comes between them. For Ralph, however, Isabel comes to represent all the joys of a world still mysterious, of a future left open to conjecture. He watches the expression on her face and speculates on its meaning; he asks for her opinion with the real interest of ignorance, and she holds for Ralph the fascination of an unraveled destiny.

These comments bear directly on the structure of
The Portrait of a Lady
, which is characterized by the withholding, rather than the dissemination, of information. What is revealed to the reader is revealed through a complex labyrinth of emotional curves, swerves, turns, and dead ends. The story is set up like a maze, where the reader eagerly pursues one path that promises enlightenment, only to find the narrator undercutting what has just been read. It is as if a route taken by the reader ends in a blank wall so that the reader must make an about-face and retrace steps to seek again what is of importance. This complicated method for the disclosure of information must be foregrounded in any discussion of
The Portrait of a Lady
for one crucial reason: the central concern of the story itself is the revelation of information and the epistemology of truth. The way the novel is written, with its sudden turns and mysterious hints of what is to come, is in complete contradiction to the honesty insisted upon by many of its characters.

As the novel progresses, the now wealthy and well-traveled Isabel becomes deeply attracted to Gilbert Osmond, introduced by Madame Merle as a man having ‘‘no career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please. . . . His painting is pretty bad.'' Osmond, like Dracula, sleeps much of the day, has no employment, but still manages to make people around him ‘‘feel that he might do something if he would only rise early.'' Why is Isabel attracted to so unlikely a candidate for her affections?

In one sense, Isabel Archer can be seen as James's ‘‘portrait of a lady as a young artist.'' Isabel doesn't paint or write, but at the beginning of the novel she views the blank canvas of her own future with what can only be regarded as an artistic vision. Believing that she is responsible for creating and crafting her own destiny, she thinks she picks up and puts down her fate the way a painter would a brush or a writer would a pen. Instead, the reader realizes that Isabel is not the creator of her own life.

But she is the creator of a fantasy about Gilbert Osmond. She holds in her mind, early on in their relationship, an image of him that is quite telling:

 
It is clear that Isabel has invented and projected whatever integrity, sincerity, and passion she sees in Osmond, much as a child projects personality and responsiveness onto a doll, or a painter creates something beautiful out of ugliness.

Clearly Isabel confuses imagination with desire. Drawn to Osmond because he represents much more than he actually offers, Isabel tries unconsciously to overlook his selfishness, his whining, as well as his lack of accomplishments, because she regards him as authoritative and powerful; she regards him as someone who has achieved independence. James suggests that Isabel's image of Osmond springs directly from her imagination rather than from his actual nature: ‘‘It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that distinguished him; he was an original without being an eccentric.'' Isabel, then, turns away the traditional and ‘‘nice'' men who want her and finds someone whom
she
wants, someone whom she believes she is freely choosing. In marrying Gilbert Osmond, and in rejecting the men who offered her easier lives, Isabel believes she is carving out her own destiny. She sees herself as a heroine or, at the very least, regards her choice as heroic.

Ralph understands why Isabel would make such a choice, even though he can also see that it is disastrous for her.