The portrait is never fixed, but extends through the plot and beyond, flowing into the reader's imagination. Although Lames was interested in the transatlantic influences of the 'international theme', he clearly used it more as a means to study the more complicated and complex theme of character. The young American girl Daisy Miller charms and shocks her new European in the short story of the same name.
There is no predictable future path for either Chad or Strether in The Ambassadors, just as Kate and Densher's futures are uncertain in The Wings of the Dove.
THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY
Isabel Archer: The Slim Conception
James' allusion to Isabel's "flame-like spirit", Edel suggests that Isabel may be, just as Milly Theale would later be in The Wings of a Dove. Almost as soon as Isabel sets foot in the green flowing lawns of Gardencourt, Isabel wins both the heart of Ralph, her cousin, and proposals from both sides of the Atlantic. Original female nature reflects the "original" nature attributed to Isabel by other characters in the novel.
The episode can also be viewed in symbolic terms, with references to James' recurring interest in the "international theme".
Caspar Goodwood: The American Industrialist
Part of the problem is that she can't completely refuse at an early stage. His consistency and persistence serve well, over the course of the novel, as both a test and catalyst of Isabel's development. For most of the novel she is as blind as Caspar Goodwood to his incompatibility with Isabel, and equally unaware of Isabel's inner feeling about him.
It is a clear measure of the growth in Isabel's understanding of herself and of her direction that she is able to turn Henrietta to her point of view and have her instruct Caspar Goodwood on the implications.
Madame Merle: The Lady of Charm
This is a clear summary of Mrs. Merle's, and for that matter Osmond's, understanding of social existence, and is immediately countered by Isabel in the clearest terms: "I do not agree with you. Mrs. Merle represents the rich tradition of Structure and Letter European, something that is perhaps best symbolized in the structured, ritualistic and overflowing religious services of the high church traditions of Europe, where the symbol is made. It is significant that their exchange of views occurs before Isabel inherits her fortune, and before Madame Merle begins to make her plans for him.
Madame Merle could have otherwise been a little more circumspect, either about her ideas, or what she has to say about what Osmond is, as she tells Isabel. At this early stage in her acquaintance with Isabel, Madame Merle gives a fairly truthful account of her perceptions of Osmond. It is particularly noteworthy that Madame Merle feels perfectly free to pursue her own purposes, her own designs on Isabel, although she clearly holds her in high esteem.
Even when her deceit must inevitably be exposed for Isabel to see, with all its shocking implications regarding Madame Merle's integrity, James is careful to avoid a full-blooded confrontation and condemnation of her by Isabel. The scene would still be there, and with it the now softened punch, for Madame Merle would reflect the depths of her own corruption in the clear views of her opponent, with whom she could still sympathize and identify. Yet, for all the horror of the deception she has suffered, she gains such self-control that the only revenge she has on Madame Merle is to remain silent, and leave everything unsaid, hidden beneath the surface of form.
Isabel has now shown Mrs. Merle that the student has succeeded where the master has failed. Her suggestion of Ralph's responsibility for Isabella's fortune surprises Isabella, but also reveals the source of Mrs. Merle's deception and part of her justification for it, a deep envy of Isabella's good material fortune.
Gilbert Osmond: The Aesthetic Egotist
His approval of her is subject to the same kind of reservations that have governed his daughter's rule. She receives little concrete help from her cousin Ralph's deliberately ambiguous doubts, which in any case arise from his oblique criticism of Madame Merle. This important reference to Isabel's imagination is the touchstone of her later belief in Osmond, the ultimate source of her little mistake that Ralph so sympathetically dismisses at the end of the novel.
He drops the stone into the well of her consciousness almost immediately after encouraging her future travels and possible long absences from Italy. In marked contrast to the ultimatums of her earlier encounters with suitors, he has made no demands on her, except for a seemingly harmless request to visit his daughter. The determination to live with the consequences of her own decisions has been one of the moral guards that have served to protect her imagination.
Isabel would have to learn during the first years of her marriage that she was deceived in her idea of Osmond. She had found an essentially egoistic man, and her inevitable failure to live up to his conceptions of her would betray all the hard selfishness that egoism implies. He never realized the strength of Isabel's moral fiber or the strength of her desire for a spiritual freedom and independence.
It was something he had not foreseen: 'that she would turn the hot light of her contempt on his. She had the example of her Aunt Touchett before her: a figure of authority who made her marriage bearable and respectable through an almost independent life whose circles only briefly crossed those of her husband.
THE AMBASSADORS
Strether: The Man of Imagination
However, Wutz's rather extreme comment ignores the fact that Strether found Mrs. Inzijn's notebooks, and in the 'Project of the Novel' that James sent to his publisher it is made clear that the main reason for the Ambassador's plot was a quote that contained a few words of advice from W. It is a quote given, almost entirely, by Strether to use about little Bilham, in a middle chapter of the novel.
Strether takes Chad's young, laid-back friend aside for his advice, his great lesson in life, in the Parisian garden of the "great" sculptor Gloriani. To understand how different, some understanding of the elements of that past is necessary. Clearly, the style James uses does not allow for a simple narrative account, and the reader only gradually becomes aware of the facts of Strether's past as they slip into the process of his new experience.
Usually a few steps ahead of Strether in her reading of the circumstances of his situation, Maria is able to derive and mention some important points, the value and validity of which he will only discover some time later. Maria would prefer that the cause of the "imprisonment" was the result of Strether's own realization of his true worth. Perhaps she already sensed a hint of the full irony in the future turns of Strether's mind.
In the next meeting with Strether, Maria again raises some doubts about the validity of Strether's conclusions, both regarding the degree of advancement of Chad's character and the degree of "virtue" assumed in Chad's "relationship" with Madame de Vionnet. The change for him may not inconceivably be an arrest of his independence and a change in his attitude—in other words, a repugnance in favor of Woollett's principles. And yet Mary may have erred on the side of caution, given that Strether's unexpected discovery had none of the dire consequences upon her.
When he does, in the novel's final scene, it is with all the grace and delicacy of Strether's new level of consciousness that Maria pays him her greatest compliment.
The Influence of Paris
We are all looking at each other - and in the light of Paris one sees what things look like. In the garden of the Tuileries he had stood, at two or three points, to watch; as if the wonderful spring of Paris had stayed with him as he wandered. It is a difference, as Strether later reveals, that is entirely due to Chad's relationship, in the context of Paris, with the gracious Madame de Vionnet.
Through his continued acquaintance with little Bilham, his poor quarters in the Latin Quarter, and his "genius." Strether focuses on a more formal understanding of the word—an attachment that could be openly considered right in the eyes of official moral authority, which in his case would be the public and generally puritan sentiment of New England. I could compare her to a goddess still partially ensconced in the morning cloud, or a sea nymph waist high in the summer waves.
Above all, she suggested to him the reflection that the femme du monde—in these finest developments of the type—was, like Cleopatra in the play, truly diverse and manifold. While quite unaware of her identity, Strether observes Madame de Vionnet in Notre Dame and imagines that she is. Strether has been given space to reflect on his case and adjust to it in his hotel, just as Isabel has on the train to England.
Despite Strether's tolerant view, the deception inherent in Chad's relationship with Madame de Vionnet reflects a certain falsity, a critical flaw in the relationship, and Strether's leniency about it may derive in part from his recognition of the pain it must have caused. He had formerly heard only what he could hear then; what he could do now was think of three months ago as a point in the distant past. What Madame de Vionnet had not anticipated was how much Strether understood and was prepared to help alleviate the root of her grief, the cause of her underlying insecurity, what had most likely rested on her mind and lips as she sat impetuously at Notre Dame.
34;The Female World of Exorcism and Displacement (of, Relations Between Women in Henry James's Nineteenth-Century The Portrait ofa Lady)." Studies in the Novel v.
