Gilbert Osmond came to see Madame Merle, who presented him to the young lady lurking at the other side of the room. Isabel took on this occasion little part in the talk; she scarcely even smiled when the others turned to her invitingly; she sat there as if she had been at the play and had paid even a large sum for her place.［4］
Significant in this passage is the idea that Isabel’s alienation from Madame Merle and, more importantly, Gilbert Osmond, is rooted in never being allied with anyone in spectatorship. In other words, Isabel is often caught apart from her friends and acquaintances when she is observing and being observed. Here, Isabel is a member of an audience and cannot connect with the players in the production. She has, furthermore, paid for her place.
Isabel is also, of course, isolated when she is the object of observation. She is initially described by Lord Warburton as “the independent young lady” when he, Ralph, and Mr. Touchett gaze upon her for the first time. Throughout the novel, Isabel is described in similar terms by those around her. She, more than any other in the story, exists as an experiment under observation.［9］ For Ralph, her beloved cousin; she is the opportunity to make something of a healthy life – something he does not have. As Laurel Bollinger notes: “When Ralph arranges for Isabel to inherit much of the fortune his father intended for him, he is fully aware she will be sought after by fortune hunters, saying of the ‘risk’ that ‘it’s appreciable, but I think it’s small, and I’m prepared to take it” He here speaks as if the ‘risk’ were his own, as if his amusement were more at stake than Isabel’s vulnerability. It is not only Ralph who finds the opportunity to experiment using Isabel. For Osmond and Madame Merle, as mentioned above, Archer is simply a means to an end. She is chosen by the two schemers because of her fortune and inexperience, not because she is admired. One must not, as Isabel does, confuse alienation with freedom. In surrounding herself with those who choose to use her for their own means and estrange her from those who actually care for her, Isabel is not exercising independence. The narrator of the story notes:
The discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin made on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was simply that they disliked Gilbert Osmond. This dislike was not alarming to Isabel; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honorable, that she married to please herself.
Isabel’s logic, here, is quite peculiar. That her husband is an unappealing personality whom is disliked by her loved ones has less to do with her enacting her independence than it does with her making a choice that – in no circumstance – can she admit (or perhaps understand) is foolish. If we are to read Osmond, as noted above, as a man who – for Isabel – represents the pinnacle of choice, than her decision to marry him, in all its stubbornness, is quite simply a forfeiting of the responsibility that comes with her opportunities. There are no choices left to be made. It is only later that Isabel feels the strain of her decision: “Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life?”［4］.
This idea leads directly into the notion that, as Isabel parts with her freedom, she becomes less and less a person, and more a possession of Osmond’s: “He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that she must get rid of them […] He had really meant it – he would have liked her to have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance”［4］. It is appropriate here to draw parallels between Isabel and those pieces in Osmond’s collection. Her choice that is supposed to bring more choices – that to marry Osmond – actually serves to rob her of decision-making abilities altogether. Isabel’s existence, like that of a rotting painting or a neglected home, is “shut up with the odor of mould and decay”. Seeing herself for the first time in this light, Isabel is horrified:
Isabel saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large clear glass She saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already become a part of experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in which it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry staring fact that she had been an applied handled hung-up tool, as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and iron.［4］
Fittingly, and appropriate for our discussion of visualization, Isabel finally sees the truth as it exists in glass. As others have made her a means to their purpose and a piece in their collection, Isabel has a vision of the realities of her life as if they are mirrored in front of her. Her life is not a three-dimensional existence with choice and opportunity, but the reflection of unfulfilled promise.
Despite this realization, Isabel makes what can be described as an unpredictable decision in regards to her situation and returns willingly to her life after Ralph’s death. Critic Annette Niemtzow asserts that Isabel’s ultimate decision to return to Rome – and Osmond – is rooted in a moral obligation:
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