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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.4
EAN: 9780141439631
ISBN: 0141439637
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 656
Publication Date: 2003-09
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Product Release Date: 2003-09-30
Studio: Penguin Classics

When Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American, is brought to Europe by her wealthy Aunt Touchett, it is expected that she will soon marry. But Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, does not hesitate to turn down two eligible suitors. She then finds herself irresistibly drawn to Gilbert Osmond, who, beneath his veneer of charm and cultivation, is cruelty itself. A story of intense poignancy, Isabel's tale of love and betrayal still resonates with modern audiences.

Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Classic
Review: Isabel Archer is a young, spirited American who travels to England stay for a bit with her aunt's family. Hungry for adventure and fiercely independent, she figures she'll marry at some point but only when it suits her and only to satisfy herself rather than any familial obligations or societal pressures. She's already spurned one suitor, the determined Caspar Goodwood, and soon after her arrival in England she's hotly pursued by Lord Warburton, a friend of the cousin she's staying with. She turns him down too, and then, inexplicably, allows herself to be wooed and won by fellow American Gilbert Osmond. Everyone but her can see what Osmond really is - a cruel and controlling would-be snob who's only after Isabel's money, but machinations behind the scenes manage to completely fool the otherwise intelligent and intuitive Isabel. By the time she realizes what a terrible mistake she's made and how she's been coldly manipulated by someone she thought was a friend, it's too late to undo and she feels trapped and angry with herself, but also too proud and dignified to admit her error.

The story is subtle but powerful in its unfolding, and perfectly captures the essence of a truly tragic situation - a loveless marriage. It doesn't sound particularly compelling, perhaps, since we tend to just accept the fact that there are a lot of unhappy marriages in the world, but somehow James spins the story out with such nuance and detail that it really drives home how easily anyone can end up in a similar situation, no matter how sincere and right a decision may have seemed at the time. I've never been divorced and have been happily married for eleven years now, but even I couldn't help but shudder at Isabel's situation and how that one fateful decision, one she was so sure was the correct one, ended up bringing her so much misery. Even more tragic is how easily she could have taken the other fork in the road and ended up in a much happier union with someone who truly loved her, and continues to even after her marriage. It makes you realize just how precarious and chance-ridden all our life decisions are.

The only odd thing is the ending. It's VERY ambiguous, so much so that I was a little taken aback and not entirely satisfied. I can take an uncertain ending, but it was the abruptness of it that puzzled me. Overall, though, it was a very fulfilling read and does make me want to read more by Henry James. Before this the only other work of his I'd read was Turn of the Screw, which is a very different kind of story. I saw the movie Washington Square and thought it was excellent, and it seems a similar kind of story to Portrait, so I think I'll check that out.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: This is the 1908 Edition!
Review: Harold Bloom, in his book How to Read and Why, strongly recommended the 1908 edition of James' Portrait of a Lady over his earlier 1881 edition. At Bloom's urging, I have combed through dozens of used book stores over the years and have always found only copies of the 1881 edition. I don't know why that would be because one would think that when an author like Henry James sets upon improving an earlier work that the revised version would be superior. Even if it is not superior, it is at least what he intended to leave for posterity. Anyway, I finally gave up hope on finding a 1908 edition in a used book store and found this on amazon, but it was unclear what edition this Penguin version was. One reader's comment said she thought it was 1908, but I needed to know 100%, so I ordered it through a nearby B&N, that way, if it turned out to be another lousy 1881 edition, I could easily just hand it back to them and say I don't want it. But I am happy to report that when it finally arrived, I carefully read the "Note on the Text" and I can confirm that Penguin is indeed offering the 1908 edition - the version Henry James himself considered to be the best.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: hmm.
Review: I like this book. Have to say though, I found it to be a tough read. I hestitate to say anything bad about it, because everyone else gave it 5 star reviews, so I feel like I must've missed the real magic in it. overall, it was ok. I never found the plot to be very well organized-it seemed like the author just kind of wrote whate came to mind and then went where it led rather than work from a definite plan. In fact, it never seems to have much of a plot at all, its really more of a psychological study of the nature of the characters. hence, it is not called the " The Adventures of a Lady." I also would have appreciated a little more dialogue to move to story along, as sometimes it does get rather heavy and dull. However, if you can overlook that, Henry James has a beautiful writing style, creates beautiful characters, and is a necessity on the bookshelf of any serious reader.

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Remarks
Review: Perhaps an alternate title for The Portrait of a Lady might be The Velvet Pit and the Silk Pendulum. It is a kind of blend of the sensibilities of Oscar Wilde at his "aesthetically" sunniest, and of Poe in the grimmest of his catacombs.

Probably the most striking feature of the book is what is usually called "style." In my view this is a misleading and inadequate term because it implies that style is something essentially separate from content, rather like suits of clothes that can be changed as fashion changes, with the inner content and substance remaining unaffected. But in a novel, there literally is no content without its creation through language, and the particular, artful, "signature" quality of that language, in all its specificity-paragraphs, sentences, phrases, individual words-literally forms, gives existence to, content.

And this signature style is at bottom nothing more than what could be called the state of consciousness of the author, of the storytelling subject generating the linguistic "world of objects"of the book. The exact language employed, and the images it forms, weaves a kind of virtual tapestry of the mind of the author. We are made, through reading, to "see" the world and events of the story ("objects") but what we consequently see is not the world of the novel, but that world only as filtered through, and created by, the consciousness of the author.

This is what is so distinctive in The Portrait of a Lady. Much of the novel takes place in Italy, with all of the "fine" artifacts and objects d'art on display there. But the mind of Henry James is itself a kind of Titian; consider, for example, the following passages:

A genteel young man trying to look fierce, but "who smelled more of heliotrope than of gunpowder." A young lady determined to improve her mind who sits with a book, "trudging across the sandy plain of German Thought."

The same young lady, introspectively contemplating her own habit of happy introspection, but who is not, perhaps, quite as wisely Socratic as she imagines: "Her nature had, in her conceit, a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one's spirit was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses."

And a Countess, mature in years if not in outlook, of dubious morality: "[This] lady had so mismanaged her improprieties that they had ceased to hang together at all-which was at the least what one asked of such matters-and had become the mere floating fragments of a wrecked renown, incommoding social circulation....[She was married] to an Italian nobleman who had perhaps given her some excuse for attempting to quench the consciousness of outrage. The Countess, however, had consoled herself outrageously, and the list of her excuses had now lost itself in the labyrinth of her adventures."

These sallies are not isolated flashes in the dark; the entire novel is made of various textures of language-of symbolic consciousness-resembling the above.


James has to some degree a reputation as a mere glider through drawing rooms, a cerebral houseguest of life who closely observes but never really lives. He "thinks" life; he does not really experience it. This idea is simply ludicrous. I know little of the circumstances of his life, but unless he be a God, it is simply impossible for the author of The Portrait of a Lady not to have lived, and lived deeply, and from that indispensable perspective comprehended all of the deep structures of human nature that are so truthfully on display here.

There is a scene in the novel in which character "A" makes a titanic appeal, a beautiful appeal, to character "B.." We had not before seen such as this from "A." His/Her entreaty arises from a place, a depth, in which "Nature" and human nature, merge and become one. It is a place of unique power. The rest of the novel follows inevitably from this scene (I am being deliberately obscure so as not to spoil the story). Only a real human being living a real human life could have written such a scene, with all it contains and implies. If this is not enough, Chapter 42 alone should serve. If this won't do, the totality of The Portrait of a Lady is an annihilating piece of evidence. Read the book!

And it is not just "deep stuff" that recommends the novel, but all manner of drama! You will encounter a lounge lizard who hangs out in his Louvre, a pimp who plays Schubert, a wind-up toy standing in for a daughter, and a spirited young lady who takes a trip to the taxidermist. Upon discovering that it is she who is the object of that worthy's attentions (a gentleman of exquisite sensibilities!), she naturally resists. Thus, in due course, she is deposited in the velvet pit. And the pendulum begins to swing.

Will she escape? The book ends in a manner that in many ways is reminiscent of Ibsen's Ghosts, and for similar reasons (form & theme, not content). Only Mrs. Alving is doomed, but Isabel? Well....

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Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A masterpiece: timeless view into a lady's decision making
Review: The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James sketches the account of life and times of most memorable heroine Isabel Archer. Isabel leaves US and arrives in England with her Aunt. Her cousin, Ralph, who ails from tuberculosis takes active interest in her, and Henry James creates highly realistic and entertaining conversations, which shed light into the character and thoughts of both these characters and the uncle and the aunt. The story gets interesting with presence of two suitors, each highly successful in their respective country (US and UK). The dying uncle leaves his neice a fortune, and she finds herself independent enough to pursue her whims and life.

Her marriage to Gilbert Osmond, the events that lead to it and how Isabel comes of age is the reason why Portrait of a Lady is a must read novel for every person. After denying two apt and deserving suitors, Isabel ventures to make a tragic choice and the intricate interplay of her perception or rather lack of it with the circumstances and events makes novel a masterpiece. The strains between the Old Europe and New America, the idiosyncracies associated with each come to fore, both through Isabel's life and through that of her journalist friend's, Henrietta Stackpole's.

Be it plain Pansy, the perfectionist Madame Merle, the cold and practical Aunt, the socialite Countess Gemini, each woman, like Isabel, is portrayed in sufficent detail. The two suitors engage as character studies, while the cousin Ralph is the character that shall stay with me forever. Admirable even in adverse circumstances, he is for me besides Isabel, the greatest creation of Henry James.

The story could have become melodramatic, but that is highly understated. The dialogues could have filled it to make it like screenplay, but James supplies nice descriptions of both the physical world and that of what goes in Isabel's heart to make it substantial. The commentaries on love and marriage that are subtly built into the novel, and the picture of both US and Europe seem quite contemporary. For a novel written in 1881, it shows how acute the observations of the author were, as well as the fact that we, humans, live life with similar choices, mistakes and feelings irrespective of the age. The novel has enough element of suspense, and events unfold in unexpected ways, making each discovery a pleasant or unpleasant surprise.

Having read many bleak American novels, this Henry James novel allows one to see how a Jane Austen type entertainer can be generated with sufficient origanility by a masterful writer. I am spellbound by the analogies in many of the most memorable actresses, espicially in how they make their choices between men.

Four excerpts from novel shows one the essence of the book:

"Justice to a lovely being is after all a florid sort of sentiment."


"She had had a more wondrous vision of him, fed though charmed senses and oh such stirred fancy!- she had not read him right. A certain combination of features had touched her, and in them she had seen most striking of figures. That he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble- that was what had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There had been an undefinable beauty about him - in his situation, in his mind, in his face. She had felt the same time that he was helpless and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken a form of tenderness which was very flower of respect."

"It was not till the first year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it was as if Osmond delibrately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one."

"How could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life?"

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