Portrait Of A Lady

Plot summary

Isabel Archer, originally from Albany, New York, is invited by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, to visit Lydia's rich husband Daniel at his estate near London, following the death of Isabel's father. There, she meets her cousin Ralph Touchett, her friendly invalid uncle, and the Touchetts' robust neighbor, Lord Warburton. Isabel later declines Warburton's sudden proposal of marriage. She also rejects the hand of Caspar Goodwood, the charismatic son and heir of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Although Isabel is drawn to Caspar, her commitment to her independence precludes such a marriage, which she feels would demand the sacrifice of her freedom. The elder Touchett grows ill and, at the request of his son, leaves much of his estate to Isabel upon his death.
With her large legacy, Isabel travels the Continent and meets an American expatriate, Gilbert Osmond, in Florence. Although Isabel had previously rejected both Warburton and Goodwood, she accepts Osmond's proposal of marriage. She is unaware that this marriage has been actively promoted by the accomplished but untrustworthy Madame Merle, another American expatriate, whom Isabel had met at the Touchetts' estate.
Isabel and Osmond settle in Rome, but their marriage rapidly sours due to Osmond's overwhelming egotism and his lack of genuine affection for his wife. Isabel grows fond of Pansy, Osmond's presumed daughter by his first marriage, and wants to grant her wish to marry Edward Rosier, a young art collector. The snobbish Osmond would rather that Pansy accept the proposal of Warburton, who had previously proposed to Isabel. Isabel suspects, however, that Warburton may just be feigning interest in Pansy to get close to Isabel again.
The conflict creates even more strain within the unhappy marriage. Isabel then learns that Ralph is dying at his estate in England and prepares to go to him for his final hours, but Osmond selfishly opposes this plan. Meanwhile, Isabel learns from her sister-in-law that Pansy is actually the daughter of Madame Merle, who had an adulterous relationship with Osmond for several years.
Isabel pays a final visit to Pansy, who desperately begs her to return some day, something Isabel reluctantly promises. She then leaves, without telling her spiteful husband, to comfort the dying Ralph in England, where she remains until his death. Goodwood encounters her at Ralph's estate and begs her to leave Osmond and come away with him. He passionately embraces and kisses her, but Isabel flees. Goodwood seeks her out the next day, but is told she has set off again for Rome. The ending is ambiguous, and the reader is left to imagine whether Isabel returned to Osmond to suffer out her marriage in noble tragedy (perhaps for Pansy's sake) or whether she is going to rescue Pansy and leave Osmond.

Major themes

James's first idea for The Portrait of a Lady was simple: a young American woman confronting her destiny, whatever it might be. Only then did he begin to form a plot to bring out the character of his central figure. This was the uncompromising story of the free-spirited Isabel losing her freedom—despite (or because of) suddenly coming into a great deal of money—and getting "ground in the very mill of the conventional." It is a rather existentialist novel, as Isabel is very committed to living with the consequences of her choice with integrity but also a sort of stubbornness.
The richness of The Portrait is hardly exhausted by a review of Isabel's character. The novel exhibits a huge panorama of trans-Atlantic life, a far larger canvas than any James had previously painted. This moneyed world appears charming and leisurely but proves to be plagued with treachery, deceit, and suffering.
Several themes are predominant in Henry James’ novel The Portrait of a Lady, such as the main themes of Romance, freedom,and vagueness, and the minor theme of defiance of the traditional female role in the twentieth century. Throughout the novel Isabel seeks to assert her independence through denying marriages to eligible suitors and instead seeking adventure; through her “Romantic” and vivid imagination James creates a character ripe with pragmatic ideals. Isabel claims on several occasions that she desires to be placed in a difficult situation so that she can have the chance to be “as heroic as the occasion demanded” (James 64). Through this quote it is made obvious that Isabel serves to embody the theme of Romance by daring to embrace the unknown and give up a life of predictable stability in order to assert her independence. In this sense Isabel addresses the “philosophical problem of [her] freedom” (Jottkandt) by breaking away from sheltered married life and instead exploring the life of a financially independent single woman. In the spirit of a true pragmatic character, Isabel refuses to succumb to the traditional role that places women at the mercy of men through marriage, she struggles to “shape [her] world rather than be shaped by it” (Lamm). Although she defies traditional roles and establishes her own rules by finally marrying a man with less money and status than she (on account of her coming into a large fortune through the death of her uncle), she does eventually relapse into a pre-romantic character when her marriage turns into a virtual prison. The theme of independence in the novel comes full circle here when we see “Isabel’s naïve and unreflective embodiment of American ideals” (Lamm), in the sense that we see her express her independence only to be ironically imprisoned in her marriage because she was naive enough to marry strictly for love in a society where women married for security and political reasons. The vagueness of twentieth century Romance is another evident theme in the novel on account of the fact that Isabel refuses to divulge her plans for the future to her suitors and says instead that she wishes to travel and experience adventure. Everything about Isabel’s motives, from her emancipation to her eventual decision to marry and then leave Osmond is not directly revealed to the reader, and instead must be inferred based on the qualities of her character that are revealed. Even the ending of the novel in which the reader is uncertain as to whether Isabel returns to her horrific marriage is an embodiment of the vagueness theme because it leaves the reader to create a conclusion based upon their interpretation of Romance in the novel as a piece of American modernist literature. Sigi Jöttkandt, in an article written on aesthetics and ethics in the novel, makes the argument that “The problem facing the reader…is that nobody seems to agree on exactly what it is that Isabel "learns”’ (Jottkandt). The theme of vagueness is articulated perfectly in the quote because the reader is indeed left wondering what exactly Isabel has gained from the attainment and loss of her freedom, and from her unhappy marriage. Rather than assuming she would make the logical conclusion to leave with Caspar Goodwood and abandon her marriage, the reader is instead left to wonder about her choice that was based on emotion and not logic. With both sides of Isabel’s pre-romantic and romantic character revealed, the vagueness at the end of the novel leaves the reader to determine what really happened, and if her assertion of independence will return or if her rebellion is over and she is willing to settle into a life of predictability that is expected in the twentieth century. It has been speculated that “her dream of freedom has been defeated by the limited range of possibilities for being free” (Lamm), meaning that Isabel finally comes to terms with the fact that her options for living a Romantic life are limited and she must return to her married life with Osmond if she hopes to have a bleak, but stable future. James manages to touch on the themes of “Romance” and what it means to embrace the vague, all while focusing on the personal emancipation and fall of his protagonist Isabel. To conclude, the predominant themes of the novel, namely: vagueness, freedom, and Romance, all reflect the author’s preoccupation with the pragmatic views common in twentieth century literature.