"Mah tongue is in mah friend's mouf."

Ed. Note – the above quote is from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God and is in no way a quote from The Portrait of a Lady. That being said, I find it appropriate concerning the subject matter below, so it fits the bill.

It is likely that the primary point of discussion in today’s blogs is going to concern Isabel Archer, the protagonist and ideal heroine of our novel, but I argue that her character would be so much less without the involvement of Ralph Touchett, whom I would like to call the “peripheral protagonist”. In the triad of men that we meet at the beginning of the novel, Ralph enters as a gangly, emaciated creature that leans over rather than standing upright, slouching by necessity. He is clearly not well and we quickly learn that he is suffering from a serious lung disease, but there is still something disturbing and unwell about all matters of his appearance and personality. If this were any other novel Henry James could easily made him the antagonist or a reprehensible cretin like Dostoevsky’s Smerdyakov or Tolkien’s Grima Wormtongue (HAPPY HOBBIT DAY!)

                Fortunately, James has Ralph serve a much a greater purpose as Isabel’s other half and her contrast. Yes, I mean to say “other half” because that’s exactly what Ralph wanted to be when he first met Isabel (how could he not, considering her brilliant and unabashedly feminine entrance), but realized that he could not and did not want to try and marry her, one reason because they are first cousins and the second simply because he inherently realizes that it would never work out. He makes this decision because is constantly and painfully aware of his illnesses and considers that his demise is not too far away, so to burden Isabel, who has so much life and youth left ahead of her, is a dreadful path for him to take. However he quickly becomes Issbel’s best friend and confidant, and throughout the reading Isabel trusts her heart in his hands, much like Gatsby and Carraway in a certain other American novel. In this way Isabel is a sort of contradiction, for despite her free spirited individualism she is nevertheless tethered to Ralph simply by tapping into his wisdom and friendship, which Ralph uses a means to live vicariously and happily in the only way that he can physically manage. Ralph, too, is a sort of contradiction, for despite his welcoming heart and unending admiration for Isabel, he is cynical and ill tempered on an almost constant basis, driven primarily by the effects of his illness and the way that it has ruined his prospects of a happy life.

They are in love, that is for certain, but Lewis would agree that this is a quality practice of phileo rather than eros taking place, which is ironic in that Isabel tries so desperately to remain free and uncontrolled by the guiles of romance but finds her truest love in the comfort of her own cousin. How far this friendship will go and to what ends it will achieve are yet to be seen, for there is a scent of tragedy about both of these characters that may test their love to its breaking point.