The Portrait of a Lady

by Henry James
Life and Work
Henry James (15 April 1843 – 28 February 1916) was an American-English writer who
spent most of his writing career in Britain. He is regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-
century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr. and the brother of philosopher and
psychologist William James and diarist Alice James.
James alternated between America and Europe for the first 20 years of his life; eventually
he settled in England, becoming a British subject in 1915, one year before his death. He is best
known for a number of novels showing Americans encountering Europe and Europeans. His
method of writing from the point of view of a character within a tale allows him to explore issues
related to consciousness and perception, and his style in later works has been compared to
impressionist painting.
James contributed significantly to literary criticism, particularly in his insistence that
writers be allowed the greatest possible freedom in presenting their view of the world. James
claimed that a text must first and foremost be realistic and contain a representation of life that is
recognisable to its readers. Good novels, to James, show life in action and are, most importantly,
interesting. His imaginative use of point of view, interior monologue and unreliable narrators in
his own novels and tales brought a new depth and interest to narrative fiction. An extraordinarily
productive writer, in addition to his voluminous works of fiction he published articles and books
of travel, biography, autobiography, and criticism, and wrote plays, some of which were
performed during his lifetime, though with limited success when compared to the success of his
novels. James was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911, 1912 and 1916.
The influence of James' European experience and, ultimately, the "idea" of Europe as it
relates to his work are central to an understanding of James' fiction. As a young man, James
sensed the freedom of Americans to "deal freely with forms of civilization not our own . . . and
assimilate"; in 1869, at the age of twenty-six, he traveled again to Europe, entered the
mainstream of London intellectual life, and formed friendships with leading literary figures of
the time. He returned to America in 1870, went abroad again in 1872 for two more years, spent
the winter of 1874-75 in New York, and finally left America in 1875, this time for good. In
Europe, James could best deal with his dominant theme: the illumination of the present by "the
sense of the past," the American present illuminated by the sense of the European past. James
saw, in his own words, the manifest "possibility of contrast in the human lot . . . encountered as
we turn back and forth between the distinctively American and the distinctively European
outlook." This contrast forms the basis of the Jamesian "international theme."
James' literary career has been divided into three stages or "periods": the early period, the
middle years, and the "later manner" or, more popularly, the major phase.
The period of James' apprenticeship and first success — the early period of his career —
is characterized by his discovery and development of the "international" theme: the study of the
American abroad, the juxtaposition of New World innocence and Old World experience,
American freedom and European convention, and an examination of the conflicting values of the
two societies. Works of this period include Roderick Hudson (1875); The American (1877),
James' first really successful novel; Daisy Miller (1879); The Europeans (1878); and the
triumphant novel which ends this period, The Portrait of a Lady (1881).
 James' second period, the middle phase of his career, has also been labeled the period of
his "social" novels, involving a turning from the international theme to complex social and
political issues set against both New England and European backdrops. These novels include
The Princess Casamassima (1886) and The Bostonians (1886). These books were not well
received by his public. By 1889, James' income from his writings had dropped considerably. He
abandoned fiction for the next five years in an unsuccessful attempt to write for the stage. He
wrote seven plays, of which only two were produced: one of them, a dramatization of The
American, was moderately successful; the other, Guy Domville, proved a distinct and, for James,
humiliating failure. He left London, moving to Rye, Sussex, a picturesque coastal town. There he
returned to the writing of fiction and produced a series of tales (the best known of which is The
Turn of the Screw) and the novels The Spoils of Poynton (1897), What Maisie Knew (1897),
and The Awkward Age (1899).
The final period of James' career — the major phase — produced the novels that are
today regarded as the peak of his achievement: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The
Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl (1904). In these three novels, James returned to his
"international" theme, but with a more subtle, mature, and deeper exploration of its implications.
The Ambassadors is perhaps the most widely admired of James' novels and is an excellent
introduction to his work, for it embodies his most significant themes and the best of his style and
technique. The Ambassadors presents Henry James at the peak of his literary career.
Style and themes
James is one of the major figures of trans-Atlantic literature. His works frequently
juxtapose characters from the Old World (Europe), embodying a feudal civilization that is
beautiful, often corrupt, and alluring, and from the New World (United States), where people are
often brash, open, and assertive and embody the virtues—freedom and a more highly-evolved
moral character—of the new American society. James explores this clash of personalities and
cultures, in stories of personal relationships in which power is exercised well or badly. His
protagonists were often young American women facing oppression or abuse.
Critics have jokingly described three phases in the development of James's prose: "James
I, James II, and The Old Pretender." He wrote short stories and plays. Finally, in his third and
last period he returned to the long, serialised novel. Beginning in the second period, but most
noticeably in the third, he increasingly abandoned direct statement in favour of frequent double
negatives, and complex descriptive imagery. Single paragraphs began to run for page after page,
in which an initial noun would be succeeded by pronouns surrounded by clouds of adjectives and
prepositional clauses, far from their original referents, and verbs would be deferred and then
preceded by a series of adverbs. The overall effect could be a vivid evocation of a scene as
perceived by a sensitive observer. It has been debated whether this change of style was
engendered by James' shifting from writing to dictating to a typist, a change made during the
composition of What Maisie Knew.
In its intense focus on the consciousness of his major characters, James's later work
foreshadows extensive developments in 20th century fiction. Indeed, he might have influenced
stream-of-consciousness writers such as Virginia Woolf, who not only read some of his novels
but also wrote essays about them. Both contemporary and modern readers have found the late
style difficult and unnecessary; his friend Edith Wharton, who admired him greatly, said that
there were passages in his work that were all but incomprehensible. H.G. Wells harshly
portrayed James as a hippopotamus laboriously attempting to pick up a pea that has got into a
corner of its cage. The "late James" style was ably parodied by Max Beerbohm in "The Mote in
the Middle Distance". He was afflicted with a stutter and compensated by speaking slowly and
deliberately.
More important for his work overall may have been his position as an expatriate, and in
other ways an outsider, living in Europe. While he came from middle-class and provincial
beginnings (seen from the perspective of European polite society) he worked very hard to gain
access to all levels of society, and the settings of his fiction range from working class to
aristocratic, and often describe the efforts of middle-class Americans to make their way in
European capitals. He confessed he got some of his best story ideas from gossip at the dinner
table or at country house weekends. He worked for a living, however, and lacked the experiences
of select schools, university, and army service, the common bonds of masculine society. He was
furthermore a man whose tastes and interests were, according to the prevailing standards of
Victorian era Anglo-American culture, rather feminine, and who was shadowed by the cloud of
prejudice. Edmund Wilson famously compared James's objectivity to Shakespeare's:
“One would be in a position to appreciate James better if one compared him with the
dramatists of the seventeenth century—Racine and Molière, whom he resembles in form as well
as in point of view, and even Shakespeare, when allowances are made for the most extreme
differences in subject and form. These poets are not, like Dickens and Hardy, writers of
melodrama—either humorous or pessimistic, nor secretaries of society like Balzac, nor prophets
like Tolstoy: they are occupied simply with the presentation of conflicts of moral character,
which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for
these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for
allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life.”
It is also possible to see many of James's stories as psychological thought-experiments. In
his preface to the New York edition of The American he describes the development of the story
in his mind as exactly such: the "situation" of an American, "some robust but insidiously
beguiled and betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot..." with the focus of the story being on
the response of this wronged man. The Portrait of a Lady may be an experiment to see what
happens when an idealistic young woman suddenly becomes very rich. In many of his tales,
characters seem to exemplify alternate futures and possibilities, as most markedly in "The Jolly
Corner", in which the protagonist and a ghost-doppelganger live alternate American and
European lives; and in others, like The Ambassadors, an older James seems fondly to regard his
own younger self facing a crucial moment.
Major novels
The first period of James's fiction, usually considered to have culminated in The Portrait
of a Lady, concentrated on the contrast between Europe and America. The style of these novels
is generally straightforward and, though personally characteristic, well within the norms of 19th
century fiction. Roderick Hudson (1875) is a Künstlerroman that traces the development of the
title character, an extremely talented sculptor. Although the book shows some signs of
immaturity—this was James's first serious attempt at a full-length novel—it has attracted
favourable comment due to the vivid realisation of the three major characters: Roderick Hudson,
superbly gifted but unstable and unreliable; Rowland Mallet, Roderick's limited but much more
mature friend and patron; and Christina Light, one of James's most enchanting and maddening
femmes fatales. The pair of Hudson and Mallet has been seen as representing the two sides of
James's own nature: the wildly imaginative artist and the brooding conscientious mentor.
In The Portrait of a Lady (1881) James concluded the first phase of his career with a novel that
remains his most popular piece of long fiction. The story is of a spirited young American
woman, Isabel Archer, who "affronts her destiny" and finds it overwhelming. She inherits a large
amount of money and subsequently becomes the victim of Machiavellian scheming by two
American expatriates. The narrative is set mainly in Europe, especially in England and Italy.
Generally regarded as the masterpiece of his early phase, The Portrait of a Lady is described as a
psychological novel, exploring the minds of his characters, and almost a work of social science,
exploring the differences between Europeans and Americans, the old and the new worlds.
The second period of James's career, which extends from the publication of The Portrait
of a Lady through the end of the nineteenth century, features less popular novels including the
The Princess Casamassima, published serially in The Atlantic Monthly from 1885-1886, and The
Bostonians, published serially in The Century Magazine during the same period. This period also
featured James's celebrated novella, The Turn of the Screw.
The third period of James's career reached its most significant achievement in three
novels published just around the start of the 20th century: The Wings of the Dove (1902), The
Ambassadors (1903), and The Golden Bowl. Critic F. O. Matthiessen called this "trilogy"
James's major phase, and these novels have certainly received intense critical study. It was the
second-written of the books, The Wings of the Dove (1902) that was the first published. This
novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her
impact on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honourable motives,
while others are more self-interested. James stated in his autobiographical books that Milly was
based on Minny Temple, his beloved cousin who died at an early age of tuberculosis. He said
that he attempted in the novel to wrap her memory in the "beauty and dignity of art".
Shorter narratives
The Aspern Papers
The Beast in the Jungle
The Figure in the Carpet
The Lesson of the Master
Madame de Mauves
A Passionate Pilgrim
The Story of a Year
A Tragedy of Error
Daisy Miller

The Portrait of a Lady-Summary

Isabel Archer is a woman in her early twenties who comes from a genteel family in
Albany, New York, in the late 1860s. Her mother died when she was a young girl, and her father
raised her in a haphazard manner, allowing her to educate herself and encouraging her
independence. As a result, the adult Isabel is widely read, imaginative, confident in her own
mind, and slightly narcissistic; she has the reputation in Albany for being a formidable intellect,
and as a result she often seems intimidating to men. She has had few suitors, but one of them is
Caspar Goodwood, the powerful, charismatic son of a wealthy Boston mill owner. Isabel is
drawn to Caspar, but her commitment to her independence makes her fear him as well, for she
feels that to marry him would be to sacrifice her freedom.
Shortly after Isabel's father dies, she receives a visit from her indomitable aunt, Mrs.
Touchett, an American who lives in Europe. Mrs. Touchett offers to take Isabel on a trip to
Europe, and Isabel eagerly agrees, telling Caspar that she cannot tell him whether she wishes to
marry him until she has had at least a year to travel in Europe with her aunt. Isabel and Mrs.
Touchett leave for England, where Mrs. Touchett's estranged husband is a powerful banker.
Isabel makes a strong impression on everyone at Mr. Touchett's county manor of Gardencourt:
her cousin Ralph, slowly dying of a lung disorder, becomes deeply devoted to her, and the
Touchetts' aristocratic neighbor Lord Warburton falls in love with her. Warburton proposes, but
Isabel declines; though she fears that she is passing up a great social opportunity by not marrying
Warburton, she still believes that marriage would damage her treasured independence. As a
result, she pledges to accomplish something wonderful with her life, something that will justify
her decision to reject Warburton.
Isabel's friend Henrietta Stackpole, an American journalist, believes that Europe is
changing Isabel, slowly eroding her American values and replacing them with romantic idealism.
Henrietta comes to Gardencourt and secretly arranges for Caspar Goodwood to meet Isabel in
London. Goodwood again presses Isabel to marry him; this time, she tells him she needs at least
two years before she can answer him, and she promises him nothing. She is thrilled to have
exercised her independence so forcefully. Mr. Touchett's health declines, and Ralph convinces
him that when he dies, he should leave half his wealth to Isabel: this will protect her
independence and ensure that she will never have to marry for money. Mr. Touchett agrees
shortly before he dies. Isabel is left with a large fortune for the first time in her life. Her
inheritance piques the interest of Madame Merle, Mrs. Touchett's polished, elegant friend;
Madame Merle begins to lavish attention on Isabel, and the two women become close friends.
Isabel travels to Florence with Mrs. Touchett and Madame Merle; Merle introduces
Isabel to a man named Gilbert Osmond, a man of no social standing or wealth, but whom Merle
describes as one of the finest gentlemen in Europe, wholly devoted to art and aesthetics.
Osmond's daughter Pansy is being brought up in a convent; his wife is dead. In secret, Osmond
and Merle have a mysterious relationship; Merle is attempting to manipulate Isabel into marrying
Osmond so that he will have access to her fortune. Osmond is pleased to marry Isabel, not only
for her money, but also because she makes a fine addition to his collection of art objects.
Everyone in Isabel's world disapproves of Osmond, especially Ralph, but Isabel chooses
to marry him anyway. She has a child the year after they are married, but the boy dies six months
after he is born. Three years into their marriage, Isabel and Osmond have come to despise one
another; they live with Pansy in a palazzo in Rome, where Osmond treats Isabel as barely a
member of the family: to him, she is a social hostess and a source of wealth, and he is annoyed
by her independence and her insistence on having her own opinions. Isabel chafes against
Osmond's arrogance, his selfishness, and his sinister desire to crush her individuality, but she
does not consider leaving him. For all her commitment to her independence, Isabel is also
committed to her social duty, and when she married Osmond, she did so with the intention of
transforming herself into a good wife.
A young American art collector who lives in Paris, Edward Rosier, comes to Rome and
falls in love with Pansy; Pansy returns his feelings. But Osmond is insistent that Pansy should
marry a nobleman, and he says that Rosier is neither rich nor highborn enough. Matters grow
complicated when Lord Warburton arrives on the scene and begins to court Pansy. Warburton is
still in love with Isabel and wants to marry Pansy solely to get closer to her. But Osmond
desperately wants to see Pansy married to Warburton. Isabel is torn about whether to fulfill her
duty to her husband and help him arrange the match between Warburton and Pansy, or to fulfill
the impulse of her conscience and discourage Warburton, while helping Pansy find a way to
marry Rosier.
At a ball one night, Isabel shows Warburton the dejected-looking Rosier and explains that
this is the man who is in love with Pansy. Guiltily, Warburton admits that he is not in love with
Pansy; he quietly arranges to leave Rome. Osmond is furious with Isabel, convinced that she is
plotting intentionally to humiliate him. Madame Merle is also furious with her, confronting her
with shocking impropriety and demanding brazenly to know what she did to Warburton. Isabel
has realized that there is something mysterious about Madame Merle's relationship with her
husband; now, she suddenly realizes that Merle is his lover.
At this time, Ralph is rapidly deteriorating, and Isabel receives word that he is dying. She
longs to travel to England to be with him, but Osmond forbids it. Now Isabel must struggle to
decide whether to obey his command and remain true to her marriage vows or to disregard him
and hurry to her cousin's bedside. Encouraging her to go, Osmond's sister, the Countess Gemini,
tells her that there is still more to Merle and Osmond's relationship. Merle is Pansy's mother;
Pansy was born out of wedlock. Osmond's wife died at about the same time, so Merle and
Osmond spread the story that she died in childbirth. Pansy was placed in a convent to be raised,
and she does not know that Merle is her real mother. Isabel is shocked and disgusted by her
husband's atrocious behavior—she even feels sorry for Merle for falling under his spell—so she
decides to follow her heart and travel to England.
After Ralph's death, Isabel struggles to decide whether to return to her husband or not.
She promised Pansy that she would return to Rome, and her commitment to social propriety
impels her to go back and honor her marriage. But her independent spirit urges her to flee from
Osmond and find happiness elsewhere. Caspar Goodwood appears at the funeral, and afterwards,
he asks Isabel to run away with him and forget about her husband. The next day, unable to find
her, Goodwood asks Henrietta where she has gone. Henrietta quietly tells him that Isabel has
returned to Rome, unable to break away from her marriage to Gilbert Osmond.

Character Analysis
Isabel Archer is the central concern of the novel. She possesses all the attributes of
James' typical American. She is innocent, but also intelligent. In contrast to the European such as
Madame Merle, she does not possess a great amount of experience, but she does have the
capacity to appreciate any new experience.
Isabel has an expansive personality. Ralph Touchett and others are attracted to Isabel
because she apparently has a great capacity for growth. This quality allows her to react
spontaneously to any new experience. Her response indicates a depth of perception missing from
other people. It is a compliment to Isabel's combination of these qualities that she is able to
attract so many divergent types of personalities to her. She excites the admiration of people as
different as Madame Merle and Henrietta Stackpole, or as different as Gilbert Osmond and
Ralph Touchett. Furthermore, men as divergent in personalities as Caspar Goodwood and Lord
Warburton both fall in love with Isabel. Therefore, part of her greatness lies in her ability to
attract all sorts of people to her.
Even though Isabel is not considered a great beauty, she is attractive enough to win
attention. She possesses a natural charm and a sincerity that add to her looks.
Perhaps her most striking qualities are her desire for independence and her imagination.
She believes strongly in her own opinion and cherishes the right to evaluate independently any
person or situation.
 This note of independence is struck in the first chapters of the novel. It is the trait which
Ralph admires greatly. In conjunction with her independence, Isabel is also a very imaginative
person. Ralph Touchett thinks that in order for Isabel to realize her imagination, she must be
made financially independent. Thus, her inheritance gives her the freedom to allow her
imagination to soar.
One of the first uses of her free imagination is in evaluating Gilbert Osmond. He told her
that he had lived a dull life, but Isabel's imagination took flight to create for him a very
interesting life. In her imagination, she filled in the vacant spots and saw him as a much more
interesting person than he actually was.
It is ironic that Isabel's desire for complete independence causes her to marry Osmond. In
her determination to follow only her own evaluation, she refused to listen to her many friends
who cautioned her against such a marriage. Consequently, her highest quality also became her
downfall.
Isabel also possesses a rather over-strong sense of pride. Even after she recognizes that
she made a mistake in her marriage, she cannot admit this publicly. It took a great effort to
confess her error to Ralph, and at the end of the novel, she has too much pride to confess her
mistake to the whole world. Thus, partly for this reason, she returns to Rome to continue her life
with Osmond.
Isabel, therefore, represents the innocent young American who is deceived by the
superior cunning and deceit of Osmond and Madame Merle, who are representatives of the old
order of European thinking. Isabel was capable of great potential and of great development —
she had a large capacity for growth and for life. Her tragedy is in her mistaken judgment of
Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond. Once, however, she has recognized her error, she is
determined to try to make the best of it.
Ralph Touchett - Isabel's wise, funny cousin, who is ill with lung disease throughout
the entire novel, which ends shortly after his death. Ralph loves life, but he is kept from
participating in it vigorously by his ailment; as a result, he acts as a dedicated spectator,
resolving to live vicariously through his beloved cousin Isabel. It is Ralph who convinces Mr.
Touchett to leave Isabel her fortune, and it is Ralph who is the staunchest advocate of Isabel
remaining independent. Ralph serves as the moral center of Portrait of a Lady: his opinions about
other characters are always accurate, and he serves as a kind of moral barometer for the reader,
who can tell immediately whether a character is good or evil by Ralph's response to that
character.
Madame Merle - An accomplished, graceful, and manipulative woman, Madame Merle
is a popular lady who does not have a husband or a fortune. Motivated by her love for Gilbert
Osmond, Merle manipulates Isabel into marrying Osmond, delivering Isabel's fortune into his
hands and ruining Isabel's life in the process. Unbeknownst to either Isabel or Pansy, Merle is
not only Osmond's lover, but she is also Pansy's mother, a fact that was covered up after Pansy's
birth. Pansy was raised to believe that her mother died in childbirth.
Gilbert Osmond - A cruel, narcissistic gentleman of no particular social standing or
wealth, who seduces Isabel and marries her for her money. An art collector, Osmond poses as a
disinterested aesthete, but in reality he is desperate for the recognition and admiration of those
around him. He treats everyone who loves him as simply an object to be used to fulfill his
desires; he bases his daughter Pansy's upbringing on the idea that she should be unswervingly
subservient to him, and he even treats his longtime lover Madame Merle as a mere tool. Isabel's
marriage to Osmond forces her to confront the conflict between her desire for independence and
the painful social proprieties that force her to remain in her marriage.
Lord Warburton - An aristocratic neighbor of the Touchetts who falls in love with
Isabel during her first visit to Gardencourt. Warburton remains in love with Isabel even after she
rejects his proposal and later tries to marry Pansy simply to bring himself closer to Isabel's life.
Caspar Goodwood - The son of a prominent Boston mill owner, Isabel's most
dedicated suitor in America. Goodwood's charisma, simplicity, capability, and lack of
sophistication make him the book's purest symbol of James's conception of America.
Henrietta Stackpole - Isabel's fiercely independent friend, a feminist journalist who
does not believe that women need men in order to be happy. Like Caspar, Henrietta is a symbol
of America's democratic values throughout he book. After Isabel leaves for Europe, Henrietta
fights a losing battle to keep her true to her American outlook, constantly encouraging her to
marry Caspar Goodwood. At the end of the book, Henrietta disappoints Isabel by giving up her
independence in order to marry Mr. Bantling.
Mrs. Touchett - Isabel's aunt. Mrs. Touchett is an indomitable, independent old woman
who first brings Isabel to Europe. The wife of Mr. Touchett and the mother of Ralph, Mrs.
Touchett is separated from her husband, residing in Florence while he stays at Gardencourt.
After Isabel inherits her fortune and falls under the sway of Merle and Osmond, Mrs. Touchett's
importance in her life gradually declines.
Pansy Osmond - Gilbert Osmond's placid, submissive daughter, raised in a convent to
guarantee her obedience and docility. Pansy believes that her mother died in childbirth; in reality,
her mother is Osmond's longtime lover, Madame Merle. When Isabel becomes Pansy's
stepmother, she learns to love the girl; Pansy is a large part of the reason why Isabel chooses to
return to Rome at the end of the novel, when she could escape her miserable marriage by
remaining in England.
Edward Rosier - A hapless American art collector who lives in Paris, Rosier falls in
love with Pansy Osmond and does his best to win Osmond's permission to marry her. But though
he sells his art collection and appeals to Madame Merle, Isabel, and the Countess Gemini, Rosier
is unable to change Gilbert's mind that Pansy should marry a high-born, wealthy nobleman, not
an obscure American with little money and no social standing to speak of.
Mr. Touchett - An elderly American banker who has made his life and his vast fortune
in England who is Ralph's father and the proprietor of Gardencourt. Before Mr. Touchett dies,
Ralph convinces him to leave half his fortune to his niece Isabel, which will enable her to
preserve her independence and avoid having to marry for money.
Mr. Bantling - The game Englishman who acts as Henrietta's escort across Europe,
eventually persuading her to marry him at the end of the novel.
Countess Gemini - Osmond's vapid sister, who covers up her own marital infidelities by
gossipping constantly about the affairs of other married women. The Countess seems to have a
good heart, however, opposing Merle's scheme to marry Osmond and Isabel and eventually
revealing to Isabel the truth of Merle's relationship to Osmond and Pansy's parentage.

Themes
Old World vs. New World
Henry James often addresses the difference between the "old world," or European values
and culture, and the "new world," or American values and culture. Literature and art are often
considered to be places where a culture can showcase its sophistication, traditions, and values in
their highest form. For Europeans during the mid to late 19th century, it was a novel idea that
Americans were developing a higher culture capable of producing works of great literature. By
the time The Portrait of a Lady was written though, several American authors had already gained
respect in the Old World, such as Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, and
Walt Whitman. Yet, the question remained: what cultural ideas and values did Americans
represent? Could such new ideas change European culture? The literary tradition associated with
the Old World at the time was after all, in a state of decadence. This is represented by the
character of Lord Warburton. He has many political ideas about revolution and change, but he
benefits from the very institution which he rebels against in thought. Madame Merle and Gilbert
Osmond, although both Americans, are examples of Old World values -- they are Americans who
have come to Europe and fully adapted to the lifestyle of the Europeans. When Isabel Archer
arrives in the first scene at Gardencourt, the men are discussing the possibility of women
bringing new ideas with them. Isabel Archer represents American modernity and culture. When
she walks in, she is the materialization of the hope that a fresh perspective on things could help
revive old European traditions which are decadent and rigidly formal. However, in the book, she
falls under the power of an American who has committed to Old World values; she falls for the
illusion that there is a real system of value behind his aestheticism.
The contrast between the American character and the European character is a theme that
appears throughout James's work. This is not surprising, since it is a contrast he observed
throughout his life as an American who spent most of his adulthood in Europe. According to
James, Americans tend to be naive, energetic, practical, sincere, direct, and spontaneous, and
they value the individual above society. Conversely, Europeans are sophisticated, lethargic,
formal, insincere, obtuse, and scheming, and they value society above the individual.
This theme is especially interesting in The Portrait of a Lady because most of its
characters are Americans who have been living in Europe for varying periods of time. In general,
the longer an American-born character has been in Europe, the more European traits he or she
has. Gilbert has lived nearly his whole life on the Continent and is completely European in
character. James uses him to personify the worst manifestations of European traits. At the other
end of the spectrum is Isabel, who is just arriving in Europe as the novel opens. The things that
make her distinctively American, such as her energy and independent attitude, are fresh and
interesting to the European characters. They are also, however, the things that lead to her
downfall. By refusing to take the counsel of those who care about her, Isabel falls prey to the
more sophisticated Europeans who manipulate her for their own purposes.
James does make a moral judgment about which culture produces better people; he
clearly portrays the Americans as having more integrity. But he also shows that, taken as
individuals, most Americans and Europeans alike have both good and bad qualities. While Isabel
is almost wholly admirable and Gilbert is almost wholly despicable, the other characters are
drawn in shades of gray. Henrietta is an example of an American whom James portrays less
positively. Her American qualities are exaggerated so that her directness is actually rudeness.
Her lack of regard for society and convention is so extreme that she offends as routinely as Isabel
enchants. Lord Warburton, on the other hand, exemplifies European qualities in their most
positive form. He is sophisticated and conventional, but he is also courteous, sensitive, and
gracious even in defeat. Ralph is also a positive European character, a physically weak man who
is nevertheless morally strong.
 Aesthetics
Gilbert Osmond is the villain of the novel. He is characterized by his fine taste and fine vision,
but, practically speaking, he is incapable of taking action in life. Although he is a very capable
curator of his own home, he is not even very good at making art himself. For example, Madame
Merle, who also is known to have very fine taste, dislikes his drawings. Thus he is the
characterization of a person who lives aesthetically by collecting objects, by doing nothing in life
but looking and judging things. He does not create anything. Isabel however, originally believes
that there is a system of value behind the way Gilbert Osmond judges things. She only later
learns that he is only superficial, and he creates the illusion that there is some inscrutable secret
behind his judgments that only he has access to. Because she believes that there is some sort of
value behind his appearances, she believes she is "doing" something in enabling him to continue
living as an aesthete by giving him money. Recall that all characters in the novel are constantly
discussing what Isabel Archer will "do" in life. How will she exercise her ideas? She ends up
believing that to marry Gilbert Osmond is a way of helping him exercise his ideas -- that
ultimately ends up being her "idea" -- helping another person to express himself. However, the
truth comes out that he has no ideas; he just likes appearing as if he does have higher ideas by
mystifying other people. This kind of inactive life of aesthetic judgment without moral value or
substantive ideas behind it is being critiqued by Henry James.

Freedom and Independence

What does it mean to express one's own freedom? How can one go about expressing it? This is
an issue in the novel. Isabel enjoys her independence, and one of our first characterizations of her
is from Mrs. Touchett, who in a telegram describes her as"quite independent." The telegram
represents the difficulty of finding the means for an expression of "freedom": because the
telegram is such a limited means of communication, it is hard for Mr. Touchett and Ralph to
understand what Mrs. Touchett means when she says Isabel is independent. Does she mean
Isabel is financially independent? Spiritually? Unmarried? The telegram then represents how
language limits our ability to express the meaning of freedom, because we are dependent on the
limited nature of signs for expression. To express the concept of freedom, we are dependent
upon a system of convention that other people agree upon-language. Thus, in expressing
freedom-our independence from the world and others-we necessarily must show our dependence.
This is dramatized in the telegram's lack of clarity, which is an even more restricted method of
communication than language in general. Likewise, Isabel's grand "idea" that she would like to
express throughout the book seems to be the concept of freedom, but she has no means to do so
other than rejecting the opinions and desires of others. So she expresses her freedom by turning
down Caspar Goodwood and Lord Warburton's marriage proposals. Freedom is expressible only
negatively. Ralph believes he is simply providing her with the "means" to better express her
freedom of thought when he gives her half of his inheritance. However, this means of expression,
money, ends up determining the events of the novel, and the content of her idea. The medium is
the message, as Marshall McLuhan says- the way she expresses herself ends up determining
what she has to express.

Morality
This novel deals with the mistreatment of other people. Madame Merle keeps hidden the nature
of her relationship to Osmond from Isabel, and she also calculates such that Isabel will end up
marrying Osmond. She does this for Pansy. There is the suggestion that Madame Merle has
treated Isabel only as a "tool" for an end in the scene where Isabel confronts Merle in the
convent. We can understand this in a Kantian formulation: one should not treat others as means,
but rather only as ends in themselves. That is, we should not use others to achieve something we
would like, but we need to recognize the way they have their own desires in life. Isabel
demonstrates her moral superiority by wanting to aid Pansy in what Pansy herself wants-not
what she personally has determined is "best" for Pansy. This shows a commitment to allowing
people to choose their own path in life rather than determining what they should do in life.

Psychological Realism
Another aspect of morality that is important is the recognition of motivation as determining the
moral content of an action. This shows how psychological realism, an understanding of what
goes on in the mind of another person, is an important aspect of Henry James' moral vision. For
example, both Ralph Touchett and Madame Merle are agents in Isabel's fate. They both deceive
Isabel by keeping a truth from her knowledge: Ralph Touchett does not tell Isabel that it was his
idea to give her his inheritance, and Madame Merle does not tell Isabel that she knew Gilbert
Osmond intimately. Isabel would not have been a target if Ralph had not given her the money.
Mr. Touchett, Ralph's father, even recognizes that fortune hunters may come after Isabel, and
that Ralph's action may not be moral. However, we recognize Ralph as a good friend, and
Madame Merle as a traitor of Isabel. Ralph only intended to help Isabel express her own idea,
whereas Madame Merle's intention was to trick Isabel into marrying Osmond, a man she knew
would make Isabel miserable. The evaluation of whether a good or a bad intention was the
motivation for an action is important for the novel. In Henry James' world, a person who is very
perceptive is able to attribute various motivations to others, while also seeing these other people
as whole human beings. They are able to perceive the different possibilities of how other people
think, of what other people want, rather than imposing conventional desires upon their readings
of these people. This is what is occurring in Chapter 42, which Henry James believes is his great
achievement of the novel. Isabel sits up and begins to read the people around her: she begins to
wonder what they really want, trying to figure out how their relationships to each other might
provide her with some sort of clue.

Marriage and the Modern Woman

Women were expected to marry at this time, and they were flaunting convention when they did
not. While the concept of romantic love did exist in the late 19th century, it was still more
common to marry for social status and wealth. Isabel however chooses not to marry for social
status or wealth. We might assume that she marries instead for romantic love. But if we look
closely at Isabel's psychological motivations, the narrator does not explicitly say that she is in
love with Osmond. Why should one marry? Henry James remained a bachelor his entire life.
Isabel does not exactly choose the path of romantic love either. It seems instead that she has
another idea: she wants to use her marriage to help others, so as to be able to "do" something in
life. Her idea of taking action is still to marry, but it is to marry for reasons other than money,
love, or social status. Henrietta serves as an interesting contrast to Isabel because she is the
depiction of a modern woman who does actually have an occupation. Yet, Henrietta is a limited
character because she often does not care very much for the nuances of other people. She is
somewhat intolerant of other people's views. Isabel on the other hand, is too generous when it
comes to the view of others: she has a talent for caring. The implication is that Isabel has no
talent in writing, and that there are no real pathways for women who have other talents during
this time period.

The Bildungsroman and Idealism

Some critics have called this a Bildungsroman. In a Bildungsroman, a hero undergoes a process
of education in society -- he has life experiences which then teach him how to live in the world,
how to realize his goals in the world. This novel is a more interior exploration of that process of
education. We meet Isabel in the library reading a book of German philosophy. Likely she is
reading a book of German Idealism, which is interested in how ideas actually can make the
world - how the world is made up of ideas. However, in practice she ends up learning that such
ideas end up being very much influenced by the world. There is no pure idea that exists separate
from our world experiences. Her process of education then reveals the gap between the internal
nature of ideals and how they can actually be concretely carried out in the world.

The Ambassadors
The Ambassadors consists of twelve books written originally for serial publication in
monthly installments. James conceived of each of the twelve books as "a rounded medallion, in a
series of a dozen, hung, with its effect of high relief, on a wall." Each book, then, can be viewed
as both a complete artistic entity in itself and an integral part of the whole novel.
The first six books are concerned with Strether's gradual conversion from the values of
Woollett as represented by Mrs. Newsome to the values of Paris as embodied by Madame de
Vionnet. The concluding six books develop an ironic reversal in the narrative movement
whereby Strether, whose original embassy was to rescue Chad from Paris and secure his return to
Woollett, now finds himself unsuccessfully urging Chad to stay. Because of this balanced
movement and inversion, the structure of the novel has been viewed as the shape of an hour-
glass, with Paris its pinched center. While the underlying structure of the book may be said to
derive from this somewhat mechanical scaffolding, further unity is provided by a more organic
consideration: the point-of-view of the story, which is to say the development of Strether as the
"central consciousness." It is Strether's particular consciousness, what he sees, that is the content
of the story and that shapes the events of the novel. Every detail must be observed and then
analyzed by Strether; the result is an intensified unity of vision, and this device both frames and
interprets experience in the narrative.
James employs other structural devices to achieve symmetry in the novel; characters, for
example, are contrasted for balance: Madame de Vionnet and Mrs. Newsome, Maria Gostrey and
Waymarsh, Jeanne de Vionnet and Mamie Pocock, and ultimately even Strether and Chad. The
most obvious contrast is of course that of Woollert and Paris.
The Ambassadors, which Henry James considered his best work, is the most exquisite
refinement of his favorite theme: the collision of American innocence with European experience.
This time, James recounts the continental journey of Louis Lambert Strether--a fiftysomething
man of the world who has been dispatched abroad by a rich widow, Mrs. Newsome. His mission:
to save her son Chadwick from the clutches of a wicked (i.e., European) woman, and to convince
the prodigal to return to Woollett, Massachusetts. Instead, this all-American envoy finds Europe
growing on him. Strether also becomes involved in a very Jamesian "relation" with the
fascinating Miss Maria Gostrey, a fellow American and informal Sacajawea to her compatriots.
Clearly Paris has "improved" Chad beyond recognition, and convincing him to return to the U.S.
is going to be a very, very hard sell. Suspense, of course, is hardly James's stock-in-trade. But
there is no more meticulous mapper of tone and atmosphere, nuance and implication. His hyper-
refined characters are at their best in dialogue, particularly when they're exchanging morsels of
gossip. Astute, funny, and relentlessly intelligent, James amply fulfills his own description of the
novelist as a person upon whom nothing is lost.
James's novels take us into the minds of his characters who are lively and true to life. The
Ambassadors is the story of its narrator and major character Lambert Strether who goes to Paris
to rescue his benefactress, Mrs Newson's son Chad, whom they believe to be under the clutches
of a Parisian seductress because he has not returned home for five years- a stay which was
originally supposed to be limited to six months. Strether goes to Paris with a lot of illusions
about life in Europe. moreover he comes from provincial America with its conservative and
Puritanical outlook. But he is a sensitive man with an open mind. When he arrives in Paris and
meets Chad he realizes that notions about him harboured back at home are not completely
correct and Chad has changed but Europe has had good effects on him. Strether himself is
impressed by the European culture the range of which is much more than the constricted one of
Woollett, Massachusetts. Strether is attracted by the gracious Madam de Vionett. Now he does
not know whether he should work to achieve the original errand with which he came to Paris or
he should follow his instincts. He decides to do the latter. Impatient at home Mrs Newsome
sends three more ambassadors, her daughter Sarah Pocock, her husband Jim Pocock and Jim's
sister Mamie. Sarah unlike Strether, does not romanticize Paris and its inhabitants and She
quickly convinces Chad to return home though Strether now advises him against it. But he has
obviously over estimated Chad's capability for finer perceptions. It is suggested at the end that
Chad will choose the more comfortable option of settling in Woollett in the family business
marrying Mamie, and Strether's hopes of marrying the rich widow, Mrs Newsome, won't
materialize and he also refuses Maria Gostrey's virtual proposal for marriage. But his European
experience we know, has changed him. He has no more illusions about america as well as
Europe. He now judges every situation on its merit but perhaps because he has perceived the
truth and does not have any misconceptions and illusions about life and people around him that
he remains isolated and lonely at the end. Strether is partly successful and partly defeated and
says ruefully that he does not get anything for himself "out of this whole affair" except a better
understanding of people and situations in life.
Major themes
Henry James got the central idea for The Ambassadors from an anecdote about his friend
and fellow-novelist William Dean Howells, who, whilst visiting his son in Paris, was so
impressed with the amenities of European culture, that he wondered aloud if life hadn't passed
him by; from that intriguing suggestion grew Strether's long speech to Little Bilham about living
"all you can".
The theme of liberation from a cramped, almost starved, emotional life into a more
generous and gracious existence plays throughout The Ambassadors, yet it is noteworthy that
James does not naïvely make of Paris a faultless paradise for culturally stunted Americans.
Strether learns about the reverse of the European coin when he sees how desperately Marie fears
losing Chad, after all she has done for him. As one critic proposed, Strether does not shed his
American straitjacket only to be fitted with a more elegant European model, but instead learns to
evaluate every situation on its merits, without prejudices. The final lesson of Strether's European
experience is to distrust preconceived notions and perceptions from anyone and anywhere, but to
rely upon his own observation and judgment.
 Mediation/Intermediation: a major theme of the novel involves Strether's position as an
ambassador. Strether, when giving his final account to Maria Gostrey, justifies his decisions by
connecting his intermediary position to his concerns about gaining experience (and pleasure)
whilst working in behalf of others. This conflict between personal desire and duty is important to
consider when thinking about Strether's psychology.
Literary significance and criticism
In the New York Edition preface Henry James proclaimed The Ambassadors as the best
of his novels. Critics have generally agreed that this novel ranks high in the list of his
achievements, although there have been notable dissenters, such as E.M. Forster and F.R. Leavis.
James's evocation of Paris has gained many plaudits, as the city becomes a well-realized symbol
of the beauty and the sorrow of European culture.
Critical controversy has swirled over Strether's refusal of Maria Gostrey, with some
seeing it as a perverse rejection of his best chance for happiness. Others have said that Strether,
whilst a great friend of Maria's, is not in love with her, and that the couple couldn't have made a
successful marriage. Critics also have speculated about whether or not Chad will heed Strether's
advice to remain with Marie, or if he'll return to America for the substantial rewards of family
business – their general verdict is that Chad will follow the money.
In a letter to a friend, James said that Strether bears a vague resemblance (though not
facial) to his creator. It is true that Strether shows an ability to grow in understanding and good
judgment, although some critics have seen him as limited and timid, despite his European
experiences.
A continuing literary mystery is the nature of the "little nameless object" made in
Woollett. Strether calls it: "a little thing they make—make better, it appears, than other people
can, or than other people, at any rate, do"; and he calls the business: "a manufacture that, if it's
only properly looked after, may well be on the way to become a monopoly". In an article in Slate
magazine, Joshua Glenn proposes that the nameless object is a toothpick, while other critics have
proposed matches, toilet articles, button hooks.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Ambassadors 27th on its list of the 100 best
English-language novels of the 20th century.

Ciomag Diana Madalina