The Portrait of a Lady

Waiting-room reading

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Category: I started this book in the summer of 2010, read about 200 pages, then stopped. I picked it up again at the beginning of 2011, read about 100 pages, and stopped again. At last, I’ve finished reading it!

 My thoughts: This is an intriguing book. It’s a great story and is really beautifully written, but it’s not exactly what one would call a page turner—at least not until the last 150 or so pages. It is not a boring book, but there were a couple of times I had to encourage myself to stick with it, and I’m glad I did. It’s an amazing reading experience. However, if finishingWashington Square left me in a somber mood, finishing The Portrait of a Lady made me downright sad.

 The lady in The Portrait of a Lady is Isabel Archer, who I think has one of the most beautiful names in literature. Isabel has a lot going for her, but she lacks street smarts. My favorite character is Ralph Touchett, Isabel’s infirm cousin, who she meets for the first time when her aunt, Ralph’s mother, brings her to England (Ralph has tuberculosis, and I thought of him when I recently read an article about how there is currently a strain of TB that doesn’t respond to most medication. Yikes!). To me, Ralph is truly the heart of this story. Isabel turns down marriage proposals by two suitable suitors, Caspar Goodwood (a Bostonian) and Lord Warburton (an Englishman), because she does not want to give up her independence so soon. She meets the mysterious Gilbert Osmond on her very independent travels throughout Europe, and a union between the two is encouraged by Madame Merle, Osmond’s creepy “friend.” Isabel marries Osmond and settles in Rome. Ralph, like Catherine Sloper’s father in Washington Square, is against the marriage. Isabel, unlike Catherine Sloper, marries the person about whom others have expressed doubts. After the wedding, Osmond’s true evil nature reveals itself (isn’t it always after the wedding?), and Madame Merle’s motives are also revealed. These two are truly horrid people. Isabel is confronted with the fact that she made a bad decision. And she decides to live with it. It’s the grown-up thing to do, but as a reader, you really feel for her.

 Because I read them back to back, The Portrait of a Lady and Washington Square are linked in my mind. Henry James uses the same technique of addressing the reader that he uses in Washington Square, with the same result of making the reader feel invested in the story. However, I think The Portrait of a Lady showcases James’s brilliant writing skills better than Washington Square. Edith Wharton and Henry James get compared to each other a lot. Like Wharton, James writes about what happens after the wedding. And both authors, it seems, preferred realistic endings to traditionally happy ones. But I think I will always prefer Edith Wharton. Around page 450 or so of The Portrait of a Lady, I thought that I probably wouldn’t reread it. But after I finished the book, I changed my mind. But I would like to reread it in the same manner in which I originally read it—dropping in occasionally to see what the characters are doing.

 P.S. One benefit of finishing this book now is that I get a lot of the art history references that previously went right over my head, because I took an art history class last year. It’s quite a nice feeling to know who Henry James is talking about when he mentions Bernini and Caracci. Also, this novel reminds me of Madame X, by John Singer Sargent.

Great passage (Ralph says this to Isabel): “Don’t ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don’t question your conscience so much—it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don’t try so much to form your character—it’s like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself.”

Up next, Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

Washington Square

Category: A few months ago, I mentioned to my friend Carey that I have been in the process of reading The Portrait of a Lady for about two years. I can’t seem to finish it. She suggested that I read one of James’ easier novels—Washington Square.

I love books that can fit into my purse!

My thoughts: I really liked this book, but it left me in a very sober mood. I read the Introduction of my copy, which was written by Clifton Fadiman. I mention this because I fell out of the habit of reading Introductions to novels when I read one that revealed a plot twist that I probably would not have predicted. I hate that. Anyway, one thing Fadiman wrote about Washington Square stuck with me—he wrote that “our literature was enriched by an acute study of a small segment of American culture.” That’s not only true about this novel, but also about The Living Is Easy.

The novel is set in pre-Civil War New York. It’s a New York before new money and robber barons invaded society and changed things forever. It’s an era, actually, before that of Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country. The novel is a very insular novel (in fact, it even seems as if most of the novel takes place indoors). There are only a handful of characters, but because of this we can focus intensely on them. Washington Square is the story of Catherine Sloper, a New York heiress of average looks and personality (that’s her main point, it seems). A pauper named Morris Townsend wants to marry her, and Catherine’s father, Dr. Sloper, thinks Morris is a golddigger. Dr. Sloper is absolutely right about Morris’s motives and character, but, as Fadiman points out, “to be right is not enough.”

Henry James uses first person a great deal—he writes “I,” “we,” and “our.” This really brings the reader into the story, and makes it seem as if James is sort of an old friend who’s telling us this interesting story. The conversational tone is constant (which makes me happy—constancy in using a literary device is a virtue). When Dr. Sloper wants to take Catherine to Europe in order to distract her from her, Henry James writes, “Catherine had many farewells to make, but with only two of them are we actively concerned.” There is something really endearing about that.

The psychology of the novel is fascinating to me. Dr. Sloper and Mrs. Penniman (Catherine’s aunt) pretty much stunt Catherine’s growth. Both are unlikable, but Dr. Sloper’s sarcasm is a little funny (but sad, ultimately, as it usually comes at the expense of his own child). He is an intriguing character, and his conversation with Morris Townsend provides some amazing dialogue from Henry James. Dr. Sloper wants to bend Catherine to his will, and is amused to discover that she has a will of her own. It’s hurtful that he has such a low opinion of his daughter (maybe this was common for fathers at this time…if so, that’s pretty unfortunate). And Mrs. Penniman is downright inappropriate…weird, truth be told. She wants the relationship between Morris and Catherine to be a great love story, and sticks her nose in where it certainly doesn’t belong in order meet this goal. She’s irritating, creepy, and crosses a lot of boundaries (if only therapy were around for our dear Catherine). Catherine, we are constantly told, is dull and unremarkable. But in the end I came to admire her. Mrs. Almond, Catherine’s other aunt, seems to be the lone person with common sense, but because she minds her own business, we don’t hear much from her corner.

Great passage: There was something hopeless and oppressive in having to argue with her father; but she too, on her side, must try to be clear. He was so quiet; he was not at all angry; and she, too, must be quiet. But her very effort to be quiet made her tremble.

Up next: I decided that I need more Henry James in my life, so I am going to pick up The Portrait of a Lady again—and finish it!

A quote on one of my tea bags by Henry James's brother William

The Living Is Easy



My copy from grad school...with tabbed pages

The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West

Category: I first read this book in 2005, when I wrote about the works of the spectacular and underrated Dorothy West for my master’s thesis.

My thoughts: This is such an intriguing and thought-provoking read. The Living Is Easy is about the life and machinations of Cleo Judson, a member of Boston’s black elite in the early 20th century. This is a precarious world, which one enters by being rich or light-skinned or from being a member of a handful of old families. When I first read this novel, it reminded me of the world of Edith Wharton, and Cleo Judson reminded me of Wharton’s intriguing and frustrating heroine, Undine Spragg. Like Undine Spragg, Cleo is full of ambition, cunning and manipulation. She is married to Bart Judson, a well-off man known as the Black Banana King, and plays him and their daughter Judy like a fiddle. Cleo seems to want more people to rule over, so she sends for her three sisters and their kids (but not their husbands) in order to be surrounded by people of whom she could be the leader.

Also like Undine Spragg, I can’t bring myself to completely hate Cleo Judson. According to the liner notes of the book, critics believe that Cleo is loosely based on West’s mother, Rachel. I admire the fact that such a woman (fictional or otherwise) could carry herself with the enormous amount of pride that Cleo has at a time when, all over the United States, blacks had to swallow their pride and lived in fear of death.

I love West’s dry humor when documenting the skewed belief system of this social group. For example: “Mr. Binney could say with pride, right up to the day of his death, that he had never lived on a street where other colored people resided”. The entrenched black middle and upper classes look down (way down) on Southern blacks who are migrating to the northern city (as seen in The Warmth of Other Suns). Cleo herself has a negative attitude toward the recently arrived Southern blacks—although she is from South Carolina. Also, West writes about the intraracial discrimination based on skin shade. Cleo is blatantly disappointed in her daughter Judy’s coffee brown skin and unpointy nose.

Another interesting element is the sense of place in the novel. The Boston of this novel was a “melting pot” of WASPs, the Irish (who were looked down on by some WASPs), black middle and upper class families (who, no matter how wealthy or educated, were living under Plessy vs. Ferguson), and the recent Southern black migrants (who were looked down on by the upper-class blacks). As one can imagine, they all move around each other uneasily.

Although Cleo is a very compelling character, the novel also has compelling secondary characters—one of whom is Vicky, Cleo’s niece, who is scrappy and shrewd (Cleo in miniature) and who answers the Irish kids’ racial taunts with her fists. As I said before, Cleo may be based on West’s mother, and autobiographical overtones abound in this book. West’s father, Isaac West, was actually known as the Black Banana King. West, like Judy, grew up surrounded by an extended family of aunts and cousins. Dorothy West wrote a dear little essay called “Rachel,” about her mother (which is in a collection of her writing called “The Richer, the Poorer.”) She wrote, “My mother had done what she felt she had to do, knowing the risks, knowing there would be no rewards, but determined to build a foundation for the generations unborn.” This is why I can’t completely condemn Cleo…although she makes it hard. Cleo wanted the children to be proud of themselves in a world where that was pretty much forbidden. There’s so much more I could say, but brevity is the soul of wit!

Great passage (that, if this is an autobiographical novel, shows how West felt having such a mother): There were times when [Cleo] was thoroughly disconcerted by the fact that her child was a separate being with independent emotions. To her a child was a projection of its mother, like an arm which functioned in unison with other component parts and had no will that was not controlled by the head of the woman who owned it.

Next up, Washington Square