Her final acceptance of her oppressive condition is predicated on her sense that a woman accepts public responsibilities to the marriage institution itself when she becomes a wife,James creates a character too moral to flee what is abhorrent and smothering.［10］
This claim is difficult to accept in light of the rest of our exploration. Morals play little part. It is, however, the only decision that is safe for her. Joanne Thomas notes of Isabel’s childhood:
The inability to confront reality becomes the nucleus of Isabel’s story, and the reason she is unable to do so is not only because she wishes to avoid unpleasantness, but also because she is blinded by her romantic sense of imagination.［11］
This is relevant in that any romantic imagination Isabel might have had in childhood has vanished after her marriage. Thomas equates Isabel’s avoidance of reality in youth to keeping a door to the outside world bolted. This door is torn down for Isabel and her only way to avoid more surprises after the death of Ralph (she states sadly to her cousin as he dies: “Here on my knees, with you dying in my arms, I’m happier than I have been for a long time.” is to return to the most restricting atmosphere. She is, with Osmond, able to hide away from everyone in a similar space to the one where she dreamed as a child, despite the fact that she must do this alone.
Perhaps relevant to this discussion about Isabel being unfit to negotiate reality is the assertion that she sees aspects of her own self as threats to her freedom. As suggested by Bonnie Herron, Isabel initially goes so far as to repress her sexuality so as to protect herself: “Isabel sees her sexuality as a threat to her freedom. Isabel aware that she is sexually attracted to Warburton – she is ‘caught up’ in her sexual feelings and resists the temptation to succumb to them”.［12］ Instead of giving into her desires and submitting to any relationship with Warburton, Isabel rejects her instincts. It is not her sexuality that threatens her, but her assumptions about the world. She does, in fact, enact her sexuality when she marries Osmond. Herron notes:
Clearly, Osmond and Isabel possess each others’ bodies, but she misjudges her ability to treat him as her ‘property,’ and their relationship becomes a battle of wills in which she loses her independence; Isabel had not counted on having to submit to his will.［13］
Isabel’s romantic ideas about life may indeed include the notion that one’s husband is her protector and her partner. As Melissa Gregory notes, however: “James reveals that marriage fails to protect women from abuse and oppression”［14］. That which Isabel expected to find in marriage is not present. With her physical relationship does not come with love, with her marriage does not come happiness, and, ultimately, with her capital does not come freedom.
Isabel Archer’s quest for personal freedom is, indeed, squelched by novel’s end. Though she is presented with the financial opportunity to make something of her life, she instead enters into a marriage of an asphyxiating nature. Her dreams are not met and much of this has to do with the fact that they are never solidly carved out to begin with. There are also restrictions that she cannot control and these are born in the realm of spectatorship. As the observer, Isabel is equally as alienated as when she is being observed. She does not, furthermore, enjoy the partnership she expects from marriage, or the companionship she needs in the dying Ralph. Whether Isabel is a representation of Henry James or not, it is certain that she is a symbol of lost potential and a warning to all about the dangers of confusing reality and fantasy.
3 Isabel’s Idealism and her transition
Isabel is the perfect Henry James heroine, embodying all of the major preoccupations of his writing career. As such, she is also a mix of unlike elements. Isabel Archer is both innocent and knowing, even as the untutored, naive American, she marries the most European of re-made Americans, she loves liberty and yet she marries a man who would guarantee her constraint, and she has a strong distaste for the emptiness of conventionality while submitting to it readily and consistent［1］. In this part, it will discuss how Isabel’s idealism incarnates in the story and her transition from an innocent abroad into a knowing one.
3.1 Isabel’s Idealism
At the beginning of The Portrait of a Lady the reader sees the young American Isabel as a character who is an idealist, a girl who spends most of her time thinking of beauty and freedom, and who is imbued with theoretical standards that work only in her own private “Isabelian” world. She is determined to regard the world as a “place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action”［3］; and she is always “planning out her development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress”［3］. Her basic concern is to be “of the best.” Her philosophy of life renders her personality ambiguous to those around her. Even she herself is confused: 转贴于 酷文网-论文下载中心 http://www.coolwen.net
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