The Invalid's Future: Queer Negativity in The Portrait of a Lady

Abstract

The Portrait of a Lady is the story of Isabel Archer's search for a suitable husband, haunted by the sickly presence of her dying cousin Ralph Touchett. The novel is energized by the search for marital success yet driven by the patient, yet inevitable, culmination in Ralph's death. The two plots of death and marriage come to mirror each other through a dynamic affective exchange between Ralph and Isabel. While the marriage plot envisages what Lee Edelman calls reproductive futurism, the parallel death plot defies the logic that present decisions ought to be subservient to a prosperous future.