The Portrait of a Lady: A Question of Freedom

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T H E P O R T R A I T O F A L A D Y : A Q U E S T I O N O F F R E E D O M WAYNE TEMPLETON Simon Fraser University S u c h is the complex and subtle nature of The Portrait of a Lady that any of a myriad of interpretations is possible, and applicable, but no matter what the critic’s particular perspective is, he must eventually involve himself, as does the novel, as does the reader, with the question of Isabel Archer and her quest for freedom. She will be free, and in that this passionate desire of hers involves itself ultimately, as the title suggests, with seeing, with the develop­ ment of mature perception or expanded consciousness, the quest directs, even motivates, the entire action of the novel. It is a quest both social and philosophical, for it involves a woman who is at once a nineteenth-century American in Europe, married, and thus to some degree inhibited, and a human being, a kindred spirit, as it were, whose pursuit of freedom is as old as Plato and Kant, and as modern as the most recent reader of the novel. Such, in fact, is the vast and immutable nature of this concept that one may, as Arnold Kettle does, see the novel as one of theme rather than character. As James informs us in his Preface, the novel has as its cornerstone “the conception of a certain young lady affronting her destiny,” to which Kettle adds, “The Portrait of a Lady is a novel about destiny. . . a novel about freedom. It would not be outrageous, though it might be misleading, to call it a nineteenth-century Paradise Lost.”1 Cer­ tainly the novel does not derive its seriousness from the plot, which, as Leon Edel notes, would almost deny the theme its integrity, for it is “almost pure fairy-tale — a rich banker fairy-god father, a poor niece, a sickly renunciatory cousin, glamorous suitors. . . when the fairy-tale ceases, the story acquires melodramatic overtones. The Portrait of a Lady derives its authority not from these curious elements of its story, but from the nature of the heiress’s ‘American dream’ and her rude awakening.”2 ■ The novel is all these things, for while it cannot be denied that certain thematic philosophical concerns are projected through the character rather than plot or setting, as an individual Isabel also projects her own very hu­ man, very complex problems, of which just one is the socio-moral dilemma common to nineteenth-century married or even single women, concerning inE n g l is h St u d ie s in C a n a d a , vii, 3, F all 1981 dividual rights.3For Isabel, an intelligent young woman, theoretically knowl­ edgeable and practically naive, the conflict is intense; she is able to under­ stand the origins of her situation, and is therefore able to prescribe what she sees as a viable alternative, while having the greatest difficulty in achieving that end. In her youth Isabel has been encouraged, even trained, to ignore life’s harsh realities. She is ignorant not only, as she tells Mrs. Touchett, of money matters, but of sex, vice, or anything else in the world outside the printed page. Raised by a father whose own habit of “doing as one liked” sharply contrasted his edict prohibiting anything disagreeable from reaching the senses of his aesthetically pure daughter — and the similarity with Osmond would seem more than coincidental — Isabel “had had everything that a girl could have: kindness, admiration, flattery, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, the latest publications, plenty of new dresses, the London Spec­ tator, and a glimpse of contemporary aesthetics.” 4 In other words, she had been made a recluse by the very liberalism with which her father sought to free her, and to the extent that her journeys into the real world have been superficial, she has gleaned experience, such as it is, from books and an overactive imagination. The effects of such a...