Vulgarity and the Pedestrian Life

     Vulgarity is a word that almost every character uses in The Portrait of a Lady; it is something that they despise because they all pretend to be aesthetics. The characters try to focus on the beautiful and desirable in everyday life. When something negative comes up, they refer to it as being vulgar. They seek to overcome the pedestrian, by living supposedly interesting lives as they concern themselves with the personal lives of everyone else. No character's private life is sacred when they are the center of attention. James paints his characters as true aesthetics, but ironically, through the way the characters act and treat each other, they become vulgar and commonplace.

     Isabel Archer is the focus of attention of almost every male character in the novel. She claims to be a strong, independent woman, but this is not the case because through her own ideals and conception of herself, she restrains and traps herself to one art form. She desires to be more than just another ordinary woman who marries someone and lives an ordinary life; she wants to be adventurous and to never make a decision that could possibly restrict her liberty. She fails though, when she marries Osmund, who restricts her more than any other man would have. She becomes the vulgar that she so detests because she becomes a wife to controlling, cruel man. Osmond destroys the future she could have had. He pretends to be an interesting art collector, but in reality, he is a low class man who is desperate for attention from others. He is the epitome of vulgar in this novel, and Isabel too becomes vulgar when she marries him.

    The other characters are just as bad though, they all put on airs of superiority and pretend to live such high and interesting lives as they involve themselves in the affairs of others. They all seek to be aesthetics, but in reality, they are vulgar and commonplace. What makes them so extraordinary? Nothing. They are just regular people with lots of money and too much time on their hands. None of the characters rise any higher as individuals. The pseudo-aesthetics are only what they try to avoid being: vulgar and commonplace.

The Villainous Madame Merle

Madame Merle, one of the characters involved in my mini-rant about manners last week, has become a character I absolutely despise. She befriends Isabel and gets her married to Osmond all the while lying about her own relationship with Osmond. On top of that, she has abandoned her daughter, leaving Pansy with the belief that her mother died in childbirth. The lack of remorse Madame Merle shows throughout the novel is appalling.

However, she is a very realistic character. There are many people out there who only care for themselves. These kinds of people do not think twice about doing something as horrible as plotting to steal someone’s inheritance by marrying her to someone who is already in love with someone else. They do not think about the repercussions of their actions. The consequences and collateral damage are nothing to them.

It is for the above reason and the above reason only, that I understand exactly why James created Madame Merle. She is the epitome of a self-absorbed woman. I hesitate to use the word villain here, though I do think that she is a villain, because this is a realist novel and not a romance wherein the lines between good and evil are quite distinct. She is the antagonistic presence in Isabel’s life, even though for a long time she seemed to be the friend that Isabel needed.

Even though I realize that Madame Merle is definitely there to be the antagonist and the realistic picture of a self-absorbed person, I still despise her with every fiber of my being. I see no redeemable qualities in her. The very fact that she abandoned her daughter is detestable to me.

Isabel from the Inside

As we delve into the life and mind of Isabel Archer, we begin to see many characteristic approaches taken by Henry James. As Dr. Mitchell mentioned in class, the reader does not look at Isabel from the outside-in, the reader sees Isabel from the inside-out.  There are many very candid moments between the narrator and the reader.

James describes Isabel’s view of herself and her defenses. He also describes her mode of thinking. I have noticed that often her mode of thinking is juxtaposed next to the reality outside her which can seem rather apparent to the reader. She desires to travel and be independent; however Ralph realizes she does not have enough money to survive on. He sees her reality before she does and provides for her from his Father’s will.

Isabel also seems to have this strange sense of idealistic suffering.  She turns down Warburton because marrying him would make her less capable of experiencing life and hardship. Marrying Warburton is not an option to her—it would make her life too simple. She wishes for no one to broach upon her freedom, even if that freedom might be violated unintentionally.  She said to Merle, “No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have always been happy wouldn’t have found out…a great many people give me the impression of never having for a moment felt anything” (168).James presents Isabel as one who values feeling and experience to a high degree.  It is arguable whether or not her ideal of life is wise or realistic. Isabel wishes for a glamorous story. One can only wait and see whether or not that ideal will be futile, if not dangerous.

My Wifi is Awful; This Post is a Miracle

Does anyone else get the notion that the second part of this novel feels so much less of everything?  It has the effect of having come down from something like a very high, almost metaphysical consciousness to something lower, a more mundane sub-consciousness. 

Isabel’s actions and conversations occur in this fast forward skim over the heart of the situation.  Take, for example, Lord Warburton’s final interview with Mr. and Mrs. Osmond in Rome.  James spends more time telling about the happening than letting his audience experience the situation.  And such occurs for the vast majority of the second half.  With that, the explicit dialogues become much more valuable.  It is in these that it is possible to reconnect with Isabel again; she seems more alive.  But when James returns to accounting for the events, she comes off as someone in a reality show.

By choosing the alliance with Gilbert, which is a less deserving term for all its actuality, Isabel forsook her consciousness.  Now she lives in something like subconscious or perhaps skewed-conscious.  She knows him well, and she knows many others just as well.  No longer is she highly self-conscious; her self-consciousness is subdued.  Her own consciousness seems to serve only the benefit of the others.  And perhaps that is the great fear Mazzella attributed to her in the article, though I still do not agree with it being a fear of sexual possession.  That makes it sound so much like a psychological issue, and I do not believe that is what James would have us believe.

Hunter brings up a great point in labeling Isabel a knight of infinite resignation.  I certainly see that in Isabel.  She could have been a knight of faith, but Gilbert’s presence denied her the possibility—as would any of her suitors for that matter, except perhaps Ralph.  

What's More Important?

In my opinion, Portrait of a Lady asks the question of what is more important, doing what one wants or doing what society wants. At first I thought it was going to be a love-triangle story, but as I kept reading I realized it's more about Isabel, her independence, and her struggle between doing what she wants and doing what is expected of a lady. I love strong female characters, so I was immediately drawn to Isabel, but I was kind of disappointed when I finished the book. I really wanted her to stay in London. She seemed like she had a miserable life in Rome, and I wanted her to choose happiness over duty. "When it comes down to being happy or making the world happy, be selfish,". That is a quote I live by and I very much wanted Isabel to be selfish and not go back to Rome. I think I lost a little bit of respect for her in the end, but I still enjoyed the book very much.

The Portrait of a Resignation

[Special thanks to Sam, who reintroduced this concept to me in Abernathy’s Russian Novels course]

           It has been supposed that Portrait's Isabel is justified in her deference to Osmond in Ch. 41-2 and in her somewhat ambiguous return to him at the novel’s conclusion because she finds her own moral/ethical convictions that allow her to retain her independence and humanity even while trapped in the confines of her adverse marital and social circumstances. As Will correctly mentioned, this falls under the branch of phenomenology, which enables Isabel to attain an authentic personal existence despite outsider opinions and Osmond’s disdain for her. However, I wonder if there is an alternative means of reading Isabel’s choices, perhaps in another existential perspective that says something contrary to James’ intention. Perhaps Isabel is not a maiden of individual victory, but a knight of infinite resignation.

           According to Kierkegaard, the Knight of Infinite Resignation is a type of person who, when in love with another person, finds it impossible to give up on that person because that person is the entire substance of his life and will never go back on the promise of devotion to that person despite the evidence that he should. He never contradicts himself or his love and willingly suffers all manner of pain and disgrace because he has merely reconciled that suffering is inescapable, making an ethical stance to stoically and humbly walk through the storms of life without resistance or hope for change. He will abandon peace and happiness dutifully for the sake of his love, which distinguishes him from the Knight of Faith that seeks justice and truth in his life no matter what the cost and exemplifies his own title of INFINITE (constant) RESIGNATION (compliance).

           Consider now the fate of Isabel in the second half of The Portrait of a Lady, wherein she has foolishly bound herself to a husband that has dedicated himself to extinguishing her personal freedoms for the sake of his own societal benefit and would marry his own daughter away for the same reasons or lock her up in a nunnery as the case may be. They are housed in Rome, an ancient city of timeless traditions and constraints, and wed in a social contract that would be grossly dishonorable to break, so divorce is out of the question and cruel defiance far from her nature, so what is he to do? Suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, that's what, which is not a choice as base as throwing her hands up in frustration and crying out futily into the uncaring night but not the same as internally deciding to find a new hope within herself that can give her the strength to not just make the most of her life but reclaim ownership of it. Instead, she resorts her to her pride and falls back on ethical obligation to her husband and stepdaughter, suffering great emotional distress but still following through with her role in society, despite her former wishes to the contrary. I now wonder if the important point is not whether she is a KoIR, but if she ever had any possibility of becoming anything greater within the framework of James' prose.

Isabel as James

In the second half of Portrait of a Lady, Henry James reveals some of his own belief regarding industrialization and empiricism through the marriage of Isabel and Gilbert Osmond.

After all of Isabel’s fretting over her life and denying all the men who pursued her for the sake of individuality, she entwines herself with the one man who may very well be able to sap all individuality from her. James must have also seen industrial Western society (in which Osmond participates wholeheartedly) the same way.

In chapter 42, Osmond reveals himself to be an egotistic snake hidden in his flowery façade. He sees the world as something to be consciously calculated—and James apparently hated that as much as Isabel does. The last thing either of them wanted was to succumb to the meaningless and calculated life that the Western world presented in the late 1800s. James did not want to be told how to think and what to believe, and neither did Isabel.

James’s apparent repulsion with the emerging society provoked his belief in the idea of phenomenology, a belief totally rooted in the personal experience of the human and his consciousness of it. He claimed a well-defended philosophy that could not be easily disproved despite its inherent difficulty to be definitely proven. It undermined the empirical belief that both Westerners and his representative character Osmond held, refuting them not on their logic, but rather in their perception of the world itself. Without a universal perception, calculated people like Osmond would find it difficult to impose their beliefs upon others. Isabel could, by clinging to a phenomenological belief, defend and retain her life dreams and individuality without having to prove the worth to others.