The Portrait of a Lady (Penguin Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Glad I returned to James
Review: I vaguely remember encountering Henry James in an American Literature course when I was in high school. At the time, I recalled the short stories by James as long-winded and I wearied of the descriptions of meaningful looks and various brocades and expansive gardens. I returned to Henry James and chose Portrait of a Lady based on an online review I read. I was instantly absorbed in the tale and those once exhausting passages only pulled me in further into the time period. I would also like to recommend the Nichole Kidman film as a companion -- it stays remarkably close to the story. Brew some tea and then indulge in the captivating tale of an independent woman and the society that represses her spirit.

Rating:
Summary: Glad I returned to James
Review: I vaguely remember encountering Henry James in an American Literature course when I was in high school. At the time, I recalled the short stories by James as long-winded and I wearied of the descriptions of meaningful looks and various brocades and expansive gardens. I returned to Henry James and chose Portrait of a Lady based on an online review I read. I was instantly absorbed in the tale and those once exhausting passages only pulled me in further into the time period. I would also like to recommend the Nichole Kidman film as a companion -- it stays remarkably close to the story. Brew some tea and then indulge in the captivating tale of an independent woman and the society that represses her spirit.

Rating:
Summary: Long, but rewarding
Review: The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, tells an intricate tale of lust, greed, revenge and corruption. It is a timeless story dealing with the clashes of cultures and the timeless struggle for individuality and independence. Isabel, the main character within this anecdote, is thrown into a world where everything she thought she knew is false. As she explores her new world in England and Italy, she learns about misrepresentation of the European culture in America and American culture in Europe. Her trust in people disintegrates as she is betrayed by a person she has trusted and confided in. She learns the true meaning of love through the understanding and acceptance of hate. "She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and comfort of his life." (413) To love this book, is to love conflict and all of the intrigues that are parallel to it. For me, it is the deception and plots within Isabel's life that captured my interest. For other people it might be her struggle for independence, or her search for a self indentity. While the book begins slowly, it ends with a rapid succession of events, each being an important piece of the final portrait of a young lady from the United States.

Rating:
Summary: Not easy going...
Review: This book is good, but it's very... very... very... long winded. Maybe it was also that I was trying to read it in a short period of time, but I never got to the point where I wasn't checking the page number every five minutes.
Not a personal favorite of mine

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant work that contains penetrating character studies
Review: This book shows the adjustments that a young American girl must make in order to fit into an older less stringent European culture. We follow Isabel as she gets caught up in a strange romantic liaison. James' genius is to make his characters so real, that we feel that we actually get to know them, and that they actually existed. I think it is safe to say that James' creation of Isabel Archer is one of the most memorable fictitious women in the history of the novel. This is a wonderful novel and I recommend it highly.

Rating:
Summary: "The real offense was her having a mind of her own at all."
Review: 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 rigid social codes. 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, with 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

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, Flawed Characters
Review: While THE WINGS OF THE DOVE and THE GOLDEN BOWL may be structurally more sophisticated works than THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY, for me, it is this book that most clearly defines Henry James.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY contains all the long, convoluted sentences that characterize James's middle and later work, the rather stilted artificiality, the melodrama, the extraordinarily memorable scenes (the tea party and the scene of Madame Merle at the piano come instantly to mind, but there are others), but THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is set apart, I think, by the very "humanness" of its characters. None of them, with the exception of perhaps Gilbert Osmond are wholly "good" or wholly "bad" (and if we knew more of Osmond's background, we could probably make allowances for him as well). They are flawed human beings who (sometimes) try to do what's best, but, like all human beings, they often fail. The only other book I've read that portrays men and women so superbly in all their human frailty is ANNA KARENINA, another timeless classic.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY centers around young, beautiful, naïve Isabel Archer who travels from the United States to visit her wealthy relatives on an English estate, Gardencourt. Her aunt, Mrs. Touchette, needs her; her uncle, Mr. Touchette, likes her; her cousin, Ralph Touchette, loves her...perhaps not unselfishly, but he does care for her. In traveling to England with Mrs. Touchette, Isabel leaves behind one very serious suitor, Caspar Goodwood.

From the very beginning of the book, Isabel makes some disastrous choices, choices that could be ascribed to her youth and naïveté, but disastrous nonetheless. For one thing, she turns down a very sincere proposal from a very eligible bachelor (Lord Warburton), a bachelor most women would love to marry. Isabel has her heart set on things other than marriage. She wants to be independent, she wants to be free, she wants to experience the world. Ralph makes this possible and, in doing so, he has a hand in Isabel's ultimate destiny. However, it is when Isabel meets the very worldly and cosmopolitan Madame Merle, that her destiny is sealed. Isabel, in all her innocence, is fascinated by Madame Merle and wants to be more like her.

It gives away nothing of the plot to tell you that eventually Mr. Touchette dies and Mrs. Touchette and Isabel set off for Paris and, ultimately, Florence. It is in Florence that Isabel once again meets the enigmatic Madame Merle and seals her (Isabel's) fate with Gilbert Osmond.

While some readers might see Isabel as a beautiful, young, innocent girl who simply fell prey to the machinations of others older and more inexperienced than she, this would be selling both James, and Isabel, short. Isabel is certainly youthful and she does have some degree of innocence and she was certainly a pawn in a very dangerous game, but, as in most "real life" situations, she's not wholly without blame, herself. It really is not "others" who cause Isabel's distress...it is Isabel, herself, for she is possessed of much ambition, much stubbornness and some degree of vanity. These qualities, more than the evil machinations of those around her prove to be her undoing.

And what about Caspar? Is he really as "good" as some readers would have us believe? I don't think so. Caspar is a complex character, just as Lord Warburton is a complex character. Both of them represent, to me, something that Isabel can't, or doesn't want to deal with. It is this "something" that draws her, in part to Gilbert Osmond. Ralph Touchette, too, is a very flawed character. He loves Isabel, yes, but does he love her in the way a woman deserves to be loved? Is he really a fine and trustworthy friend or is he, underneath his veneer of illness, as manipulative and cunning as both Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond?

And what of Madame Merle? So many people see her as simply devious, underhanded, manipulative. Yes, I saw her as all those things and plenty more besides. But I also saw her sadness at growing older, her pain over the "loss" of her child, her desperation to cling to what respectability she could. In short, I saw her as a very complex and complicated woman.

Nothing in THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is "black and white." This is a book painted in every shade of gray and that is what causes it to be a masterpiece and makes it so fascinating despite its rather trite and dated plot. Plot is secondary in THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY. Plot, in this book, exists only in order for James to showcase his vast knowledge of human frailty and ultimate truth.

THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is recommended for readers who enjoy slower-paced, deeply insightful novels. While this is an ensemble character study, it is in no way a psychological treatise (Henry James was the brother of William James). However, those readers needing a fast-paced plot with plenty of story tension should be warned they won't find it here. This book is definitely a five-star treat to be slowly savored and long remembered. THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY is a classic that everyone deserves to read twice: once for the story and once again to revisit and reacquaint themselves with James's fascinating and flawed characters.