The Portrait of a Lady

I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed The Portrait of a Lady.  It’s not perfect by any means, but I got into it very easily which really surprised me given how long it’s been since I read something like this.  Maybe that’s why I got into Henry James’s novel so quickly; it’s different from the stuff I’ve been reading of late.  For a book written in the late 1800s by a man that is essentially about marriage, it had some real feminist moments that I found myself cheering along at.  And for a long time, it didn’t feel anything like the 660-something page behemoth that it is.

The book is really split into two parts in my mind.  The first part follows American Isabel Archer navigating English and, more broadly, European society.  It features her rejecting marriage proposals like an absolute boss and taking very little shit from anyone looking to tell her how a lady ought to behave- all encouraged wonderfully by her aunt Mrs Touchett who, frankly, answers to no-one.  I like these two ladies, in case you can’t tell.  The second part is less enjoyable.  Isabel Archer becomes Isabel Osmond and her (much older) husband is a fortune hunting dick who, not content with having come into Isabel’s money, spends his time encouraging his utterly bland daughter to marry a rich man.  I liked this part less.

As I mentioned, there are some parts of The Portrait of a Lady that are screamingly feminist and, given that the book was written in 1881, before the suffrage movement really kicked off feminism as we know it today I have to give James some serious kudos.  There is a part early in the book in which the previously lovely Lord Warburton is demanding that Isabel give him a reason that she does not want to marry him, because he’s such a good guy , you know.  And when he demands her excuse for not marrying him is just, “An excuse?  Must I excuse myself?”  It’s another one of those scenes that are from old books that are still worrying familiar.  How many times are young women still forced to justify not wanting to sleep with or date a guy just because, “I don’t want to,” isn’t deemed a sufficient answer?

James’s novel does go off track after Isable gets married.  It’s only partly her husband that I object to in that it’s a shame to ruin such a good character with such a poor excuse of a man.  The marriage itself comes about through the machinations of Madame Merle.  I wish I could enjoy Madame Merle, but really she is just a pale imitation of Dangerous Liaisons’s Marquise de Merteuil, so obvious in her treachery that it is impossible to fathom how Isabel doesn’t spot it a mile off.  The fact that Madame Merle is pretty unsuccessful in her later plots doesn’t help her case.  If you’re going to make a villain like that, make her bloody brilliant at manipulation.  Her motives are too human to be evil enough to really enjoy her.

Anyway, to summarise; The Portrait of a Lady was far more enjoyable than I was expecting. I didn’t really enjoy What Maisie Knew or, to be honest, The Turn of the Screw so I was a bit put off by the book’s length at first.  But something about Isabel Archer resonated with me.  She’s so easy to get behind as a protagonist and that makes her a hell of a lot of fun to read about.

I’ve now moved on to Franz Kafka’s Amerika (The Man Who Disappeared).