The Portrait of a Lady

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1881

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-7

Chapters 8-14

Chapters 15-21

Chapters 22-27

Chapters 28-35

Chapters 36-46

Chapters 47-55

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Politics of Marriage

Henry James presents an array of unique marriage situations in Portrait. Proposals are central to the novel’s plot, and marriages are closely connected to characterization. James emphasizes unconventional marriage situations, the gender politics of marriage, and the role of duty and obligation to emphasize the complex marriage politics women experience.

Mrs. Touchett and Countess Gemini are significant representations of unconventional marriage situations. Mrs. Touchett’s unique estrangement from her husband is detailed early in the novel: “It had become clear, at an early stage of their community, that they should never desire the same thing at the same time, and this appearance had prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar realm of accident. She did what she could to erect it into law” (35). This passage is significant in its inclusion of diction like “vulgar” and “law,” emphasizing an unromantic view of marriage.

It is also important that Mrs. Touchett and her views are introduced early in the novel. Rather than an ideal of a typical or effective marriage, the first marriage portrait in the novel is characterized by distance. James characterizes marriages like individuals; this one functions as a foil to the characteristics of the Osmonds’ marriage. Like the Touchetts, Isabel and Gilbert never want the same thing at the same time, but Isabel’s insistence on doing what’s right means that they don’t have the benefit of long-term distance from one another. Mrs. Touchett’s situation suggests that there can be freedom in marriage, but only if one takes “not the sentimental, but the political, view of matrimony” as she does (277).

Gender politics are central to James’s representations of marriage. Like Mrs. Touchett, other characters take a similarly political view of women’s choices in marriage. Madame Merle suggests to Isabel, “It’s a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few good offers […] Only don’t keep on refusing for the sake of refusing. It’s a pleasant exercise of power; but accepting’s after all an exercise of power as well” (209, emphasis added). By characterizing both refusal and acceptance of proposals as “power,” James emphasizes the complex and limited ways women can exercise power in society.

Marriage is also described as obligation. When Isabel is considering returning to Rome after Ralph’s death, she thinks about the state of her marriage independently of her duty to it: “He was not one of the best husbands, but that didn’t alter the case. Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were quite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it” (572, emphasis added). Isabel’s character traits of justice and loyalty ultimately ensure that she remains trapped in her marriage at the end of the narrative.

The novel’s publication in the late 19th century and republication in the early 20th century reflect significant and changing periods in regard to women’s roles in society. James complicates the choices and obligations women have in marriage at a time when those were in flux to suggest the complexities and negative effects of different types of marital relations.

The Interplay Between Freedom and Gender

James emphasizes the difficulties associated with Isabel’s desire for liberty. Both her own choices and society (particularly in Europe) are barriers to her attempts to exercise that freedom. James emphasizes facetious and contradictory intersections between freedom and gender to suggest that freedom is illusory for women.

Isabel’s attempts at freedom are often described as contradictory. When Mr. Touchett and Ralph are discussing her inheritance, the former asks, “You say you want to put wind in her sails; but aren’t you afraid of putting too much?” and Ralph replies, “I should like to see her going before the breeze!” (191). Ralph’s facetious reply emphasizes her passivity even within freedom: subject to the movements of the wind rather than exercising her own agency. James also emphasizes the underlying irony that men are discussing and designing Isabel’s liberty.

Similarly, the narrator suggests that, in New York, Isabel “had everything a girl could have: kindness, admiration, bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing” (48). This passage is important because of its comical pairing of trite objects and opportunities alongside the broader and more significant lack of exclusion from the privileges from the world. James thus highlights the limited freedom women can expect. While in London, Isabel takes a short walk by herself and “performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations” (321). Her reckless if brief solo walk in London suggests her lack of the freedom she expected to attain. Since Isabel isn’t experiencing the overall freedom in life she desired, she exercises a small, reckless type of freedom.

When Isabel marries Gilbert, her freedom becomes entirely compromised. In trying to exercise her will despite others’ warnings, she inadvertently loses the very liberty she once wanted so badly to maintain. She also marries without realizing that, as with her inheritance, her marriage is partly the result of other people’s scheming, with Madame Merle and Gilbert arranging it beforehand. Isabel directly compares her situation to that of Lord Warburton when he visits Rome after her marriage. She observes that he seems happy and “gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action” (382). In these ways, James emphasizes the contradiction between the freedom Isabel desires and the realities of her life as a woman in society.

The Expatriate Experience and Cultural Belonging

James explores the experience and characteristics of Europeanized Americans throughout The Portrait of a Lady. The novel includes several subthemes related to the expatriate experience: loss vs intrinsic belonging; a spectrum of cultural assimilation; and the failure of Isabel’s belief in self-determination. James explores cultural belonging and its absence to highlight the complexity of cultural identity and its influence on characters’ choices.

James highlights loss of identity as part of the expatriate experience. Madame Merle suggests that Americans “have no natural place” (202) in Europe and are “mere parasites” (203). Similarly, Henrietta asks Ralph if he thinks it’s right for him to give up his country, suggesting the loss of national and personal identity. However, Ralph’s reply refutes the idea that one’s current geographical location can expunge their underlying national identity: “[O]ne doesn’t give up one’s country any more than one gives up one’s grandmother. They’re both antecedent to choice—elements of one’s composition that are not to be eliminated” (101). James thus creates a dichotomy between lack of belonging and unchangeable identity. This suggests the complexity of cultural identity and the possibility of multiple experiences of exile.

Similarly, James describes a spectrum of cultural assimilation. Although Mr. Touchett has been in England for 30 years at the beginning of the narrative, he “had no intention of disamericanising, nor had he a desire to teach his only son any such subtle art” (50). Similarly, Ralph describes his father as having learned the things the English say during his lengthy tenure there, but he suggests that Mr. Touchett has “never learned the things they don’t say” (26). Conversely, Gilbert has virtually no sense of American identity and is represented as completely European. The degree of cultural assimilation is not necessarily related to time spent in a place, but rather to differences in individual character. Again, James highlights the array of expatriate experience to suggest the complexity of cultural belonging.

James represents Isabel’s central conflict in relation to American versus European sensibilities. Isabel has a typically American view of self-determination. However, in Europe, she falls victim to convention and societal expectation in spite of her focus on her own freedom. The clash between her new world perspective on her own independence and the realities of the “old world” and its social mores is a significant factor in Isabel’s loss of freedom. Isabel’s expectation that she will be able to decide her own destiny is ultimately and ironically what causes her failure to do so. Through these explorations of loss, assimilation, and cultural conflict, James suggests the complexity of the expatriate experience of Americans in Europe.