The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James

According to writer and academic Michael Gorra, author of Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, this is the novel in which Henry James first allowed his imagination full stretch. It was certainly his first big success and remains the most popular of all his longer works.

The Portrait of a Lady tells the story of Isabel Archer, a young American woman arriving in Europe with money, independence and a determination to “see life”. She is intelligent, self-confident, perceptive and curious, even though some find her presumptuous and naive! In James’ own words, he is writing about ‘a certain young woman confronting her destiny’.

For most young women in the 1880s that destiny centred on marriage. At the start of the book, it looks as if Isabel is about to accept this by marrying a forceful, prosperous young man in New England, but when this is postponed by an aunt whisking her off to Europe it seems to open up a world of possibilities curiously attractive to Isabel, in much the same way as visiting Europe proved irresistible for Henry James himself.

Henry James seems to identify deeply with the character of Isabel. In his prelude to the book, he quotes George Eliot’s words about young women, ‘In these frail vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affection’. His admiration for Eliot and his own inclinations clearly combine to lead him to centre his story on a female character, and to raise fundamental questions about what possibilities there are for women to act independently. He probes the influential Emersonian vision of untrammelled self-reliance, inviting us to consider the extent to which a woman can create her own life when convention offers no more than a frame into which she can step, to become an agreeable but mute and unchanging portrait.

In the context of literary history, this novel is often seen as a link between George Eliot and Virginia Woolf, a kind of bridge between Victorian fiction and modernism. This applies to both content and form, as the novel focuses on the drama of the interior life and, according to Michael Gorra, offers ‘the most searching account of the moment-by-moment flow of consciousness that any novelist had yet attempted’.

For all the possibilities of intellectual engagement with the book, we should never forget the power it has to make us believe in, care for and be deeply moved by the troubled life of the central character. Isabel hopes for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but Henry James’ novels always warn us of the difficulty of achieving these goals in the face of the powerful influence on human affairs of money and deceit. There are elements of the fairy tale in this novel, but don’t expect it to have a happy ending. 

JOINING DETAILS:

• 8 meeting study, live on Zoom, led by Keith Fosbrook and Sarah Snoxall
• Tuesdays, 12 January – 2 March 2027, 5.00-7.00 pm (UK time)
• Recommended edition: The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James, edited by Michael Gorra, Norton Critical Edition, ISBN: 978-0393938531
• £320 for eight two-hour meetings

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