When the author begins to study the personality of Isabel Archer who is the heroine of” The Portrait of a Lady” written by the English novelist Henry James, there is a question—is Isabel a flat or round character? Before we come to the answer of the question, we should know what Henry James thinks of his heroine. “When Henry James sat down to write The Portrait of a Lady, he had, as he recalls in his preface to the New York edition of 1908, the sense of a single character, the character and aspect of a particular engaging young woman, to which all the usual elements of a “subject”, certainly of a setting, were to need to be superadded!”［3］ Prissily, Isabel is a round character. She has all the usual elements, good characters and weaknesses. We are told that she is innocent, vigorous, and thirsty with know ledge. She has a great passion for life and pursues freedom and independence in her life while she is stimulating, incompatible and self-esteeming. However, what is the main character of Isabel? The author will concentrate on the question in this article through analysis on Isabel’s idea. The chapter one will analyzes Isabel’s representative. The chapter two analyzes Isabel’s Emersonian individualist ideology and liberalism. The chapter three analyzes Isabel’s idealism and her transition. The chapter four analyzes Isabel’s sexuality and marriage.
1 Isabel’s representative
Whenever people talking about Henry James, The Portrait of A Lady will come to our minds. Whenever people talking about The Portrait of A Lady, Isabel will come to our minds. Why Isabel continuously attract the people’s interest. In this chapter maybe we will find some reasons.
1.1 Isabel, a typical cultural merger representative
In 19th century, the world’s economy and culture were under going great change. All the economies and cultures experience merger. Like all writers, Henry James is concerned with the human situation, interpreting characters and life, in the actual situation of Americans confronted by the European scene he finds material that is in its very nature admirably suited to express his ideas about life and the general human condition as he understands it. James contrasts the two societies very carefully and presents their conflicting values: American culture is provincial, but it can produce people with moral and natural spontaneity; European culture is dense and rich, representing an accumulation of history and custom and a complexity of manners and types, but it is decaying and corrupt. Thus under the surface contrast of national cultures and societies lies a metaphoric theme how one can reach his perfect maturity, both moral and cultural. Under such circumstances, James brought Isabel to us. The Portrait of a Lady presents us an innocent and independent American girl-Isabel Archer, who gets involved the international situation: the learning experiences of Americans and conflicts between Americans and American expatriates. Isabel’s story reveals Americans’ contradictory combination of the new and old culture on the way to questing experience in Europe.
1.2 Isabel, a typical Henry James lady
The Portrait of A Lady authored by Henry James is perhaps one of the best depictions of the life during the era of the two decades 1860 and that of 1870. A newly arrived American on the continent of Europe, James was a truly talented novelist, and he used this talent to gain fame and popularity in a region through such works as The Portrait of A Lady. This was not because of his abilities to compose the contents of good story into a novel, but more so for the excellent style of capturing the life and people of the era around him. In writing of "Portrait of A lady", the character of Isabel Archer has been expertly molded to perhaps depict his own style of entering Europe. Archer's character is of an American girl who, like the author, has just entered Europe in search of self-knowledge, yet in doing so; she is caught amongst the two categories of people both good and evil. Faced with another character, a witch-like woman, the character of Archer is faced with a task of at once handling three different people, the good man, the evil man, as well as the old lady. Using her foresight and the self-knowledge gained through the encounters with these characters, the author has expertly gathered the various moments in the life of the young American woman, and presented one of the greatest novels of modern times.
Though The Portrait of A Lady is an excellent presentation of a young lady, her aspirations, dreams, and views on life, including her own personality, as well as of those around her. Yet the one aspect which has perhaps made the young women stand out apart from the rest of the characters in the said novel, and one which also proves the principle character's stature as a true lady is her approach towards metaphysics. One may note that Archer's views on the physical aspects of this world are opposite and contrary to what an ordinary individual's perception would otherwise be. For example she cares less for such aspects as house, the clothes she wears, the furniture around her, the books one reads, and the company one keeps. All these aspects may provide and express an individual's taste and views on life in general, yet for Archer, these aspects were of no importance at all. Perhaps best expressed about these things, in particular the clothes worn by her, one may observe her comments, when she responds by saying that "Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't express me; and heaven forbid they should!"［4］Yet, the only clear aspect for Archer seems concerned for, and takes particular pride is her success, though this too remains more than ambiguous and unclear as to what success really implies.
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