Portrait of a Lady

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Portrait of a Lady (in the English original: The Portrait of a Lady ) is the title of a novel by Henry James . The novel was first published in book form in 1881 , and it is probably James' best known work.

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Isabel Archer, from Albany, New York State , is invited to England by her maternal aunt, Lydia Touchett, after the death of Isabel's father . She is supposed to visit Lydia and her husband Daniel at their country estate near London . There she meets her cousin, Ralph Touchett, a doomed invalid, and the Touchett's neighbor, Lord Warburton. Isabel rejects Warburton's sudden proposal of marriage. She also rejects Caspar Goodwood, the heir of a wealthy Boston mill owner . Although Isabel feels drawn to Caspar, her need for independence and her hunger for experience prohibit an early wedding. When her uncle Daniel Touchett dies, he bequeaths a large part of his fortune to Isabel - at the urging of his son Ralph.

Equipped with a substantial income, Isabel travels the European continent and meets Gilbert Osmond in Florence , a widowed American and father of a teenage daughter, Pansy, who is attending a convent school in Rome. Although Isabel had denied Warburton and Goodwood's proposals, she now agrees to marry the intellectual and "superior" Osmond. She does not know that the marriage is mainly due to the conduct of Madame Merle, an urbane, cultured, apparently ideally independent American, with whom Isabel became friends at the Touchett's country estate.

Isabel and Osmond settle in Rome , but their marriage soon suffers from Osmond's pronounced selfishness and lack of affection for his wife. Isabel takes a liking to Pansy, who wants her to marry Ned Rosier, a young American art collector living in Paris. Snobbish Osmond would prefer Pansy to comply with Lord Warburton's proposal, who had previously wooed Isabel. Isabel, however, suspects that Warburton's interest in Pansy may only have been faked to get Isabel back.

The conflict tears further rifts in the unhappy marriage of Isabel and Gilbert. When Isabel learns that her cousin Ralph is dying in England, she wants to visit him, but Osmond resists selfishly. Meanwhile, Isabel learns from her sister-in-law that Pansy is actually the daughter of Madame Merle, born of an adulterous affair with Osmond many years ago.

Isabel visits Pansy, who her father has meanwhile sent back to the monastery to "think" there. During the visit, Isabel meets Madame Merle, who apparently realizes that her relationship with Osmond and Pansy has been revealed. There was no open discussion between the two women, but Madame Merle announced that she wanted to return to America. Pansy desperately asks Isabel to return one day, which she reluctantly promises. She travels to England against her husband's will to help the dying Ralph. Ralph, who sees through Osmond's nature, urges her on her deathbed to stay in England. After Ralph's death, she meets Goodwood. He urges her to leave Osmond and go with him instead. He hugs and kisses her passionately. Isabel lets this happen in an attitude of dying resignation in order to then flee. She makes up her mind: “She hadn't known where to turn; but now she knew. There was a very straight path. ”Two days later, Goodwood learns that she has left for Rome. What Isabel ultimately decides remains unspoken.

Themes and motifs

James' first thought for The Portrait of a Lady was simplicity itself: a young American woman faces whatever fate it may bring her. Only then did he begin to develop a plot around his main character in order to illustrate their character. Ironically, the plot turned into a relentless story of the free-spirited Isabel, who loses her freedom even though - or perhaps because - she unexpectedly makes a fortune and thus gets “caught in the mill of the conventional”. The conflict between freedom and responsibility runs through the picture . In this sense, in retrospect, the book can be interpreted as downright “ existentialist ”, as Isabel is determined to live with the consequences of her decisions, sincerely, but also in a certain way stubborn.

From the beginning, Isabel appears to be driven: She rejects two very strong, masculine figures in Lord Warburton and Goodwood and opts for the apparently less threatening and cold Osmond. Even if the conventions of Anglo-Saxon literature of the 19th century prevent a more open portrayal of this part of Isabel's character, James makes it clear that Isabel's fate also rests on her shying away from passionate devotion.

The literary wealth of the portrait is not limited to the multi-layered character of the main character Isabel. Rather, James shows in his novel a broad panorama of life on both sides of the Atlantic. The wealthy world of its actors seems pleasant and carefree, but it is permeated with resentment, betrayal and suffering.

Literary importance and criticism

With a few exceptions, Portrait of a Lady has received very favorable critical acclaim since the novel was first published in sequels in the Atlantic Monthly in 1880 . To this day, it is one of the most famous of James' stories and novels. Most of all it is now recognized that Henry James raised the analysis of human consciousness and motivation to a previously unknown level; this relates primarily to the passage in chapter 42 of the book, in which Isabel ponders her marriage and the dilemma in which she finds herself until late at night. James celebrated this portrayal of Isabel's horror himself in his preface to the New York edition of his novel.

The extensive revisions James made to his work for the New York edition of 1908 have been widely recognized as improvements to the work, in contrast to the negative reactions his adaptations from The American or Roderick Hudson have generated. Especially the redesign of the last meeting between Isabel and Goodwood received critical acclaim. Edward Wagenknecht writes: James “makes it as clear as any modern novelist could make it by using all the four-letter words in the dictionary that [Isabel] has been roused as never before in her life, roused in the true sense perhaps for the first time in her life. "

The novel originally ended with the passage: "Look here, Mr Goodwood 'she [Henrietta] said;' just you wait! ' On which he looked up at her ... "But after the literary critic RH Hutton interpreted the ending in such a way that Henrietta Goodwood promised happiness in love with Isabel, James added the ending in the 1908 version.

Adaptations

The Portrait of a Lady was filmed in 1996 by New Zealand filmmaker Jane Campion, starring Nicole Kidman as Isabel, John Malkovich as Osmond and Barbara Hershey as Madame Merle. The film, titled Portrait of a Lady , received moderate reviews.

In 1968 the BBC produced a mini-series of The Portrait of a Lady for television with Suzanne Neve as Isabel and Richard Chamberlain as Ralph Touchett.

expenditure

  • The Portrait of a Lady: An Authoritative Text, Henry James and the Novel, Reviews and Criticism edited by Robert Bamberg (New York: WW Norton & Company 2003) ISBN 0-393-96646-1
  • Portrait of a lady , translated by Hildegard Blohmeyer, Insel-Taschenbuch, ISBN 3-458-34674-0
  • Portrait of a Lady , Heyne, ISBN 3-453-12244-5
  • Portrait of a young lady , translated by Gottfried Röckelein, ars vivendi Verlag, ISBN 978-3-86913-584-7

Secondary literature

  • The Great Tradition , FR Leavis, London: Chatto and Windus 1948
  • The Novels of Henry James , Oscar Cargill, New York: Macmillan Co. 1961
  • The Novels of Henry James , Edward Wagenknecht, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. 1983 ISBN 0-8044-2959-6
  • Modern Critical Views: Henry James , ed. by Harold Bloom, New York: Chelsea House Publishers 1987 ISBN 0-87754-696-7
  • The Portrait of a Lady: Maiden, Woman and Heroine , Lyall Powers, Boston: Twayne Publishers 1991 ISBN 0-8057-8066-1
  • Meaning in Henry James , Millicent Bell, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press 1991 ISBN 0-674-55763-8
  • A Companion to Henry James Studies , ed. by Daniel Fogel, Westport (CT): Greenwood Press 1993 ISBN 0-313-25792-2
  • Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays , ed. by Ruth Yeazell, Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice Hall 1994 ISBN 0-13-380973-0
  • The Cambridge Companion to Henry James , ed. by Jonathan Freedman, Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press 1998 ISBN 0-521-49924-0

credentials

  1. ↑ Betty Suchar: Henry James' 'Portrait of a Lady' - Proceedings of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution Proceedings Vol. 7 ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.brlsi.org
  2. ^ Henry James: 'Portrait of a Lady' New York Edition with a Preface of the author
  3. ^ Edward Wagenknecht: "The Novels of Henry James"
  4. ↑ John Sutherland: Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Puzzles in 19th Century Fiction. Oxford 1996, p. 176 ff.

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