The Portrait of a Lady

The Portrait of a Lady (1881) is Henry James's early novel of psychological realism, in which various types of American character are transplanted into the European environment. Upon her father's death, the high-minded heroine Isabela Archer is visited by Mrs Touchett, who decides to give the girl the advantage of cosmopolitan experience, and Isabela is taken to Europe to see the world of culture and fashion. But what does she actually find there? How does the penniless girl inherit a property through the persuasion of a terminally ill cousin, who wants to make her economically independent, and how after turning down two proposals of marriage eventually she gets trapped in an unhappy marriage with the selfish, dilettante Osmond? Would she leave Osmond on realizing his vileness or would she continue with the worthless man? The novel illustrates the Jamesian method of using an individual temperament as a prism to refract life. Read more