The Portrait of a Lady

Henry James - The Portrait of a Lady

 

The Portrait of a Lady was published in 1881, and is a realist novel. Literary realism is a movement that took place from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century. Contrasting with idealism, realism aims to present things realistically.

 

Form and Structure:

'The Portrait of a Lady' has a third person omniscient narrator, giving insight into the thoughts and feelings of the characters. Although the narrator mainly does not overtly pass judgement on the characters, it seems to admire the character of Isabel, repeatedly referring to her as a ‘heroine’, perhaps portraying a biased view of her character (unreliable narrator?). It is an episodic novel as it follows the life of Isabel Archer and her transformation from a naïve, optimistic young woman into an unhappily married woman, discontented with her life. The portrait of a lady is a bildungsroman (coming-of-age) novel, yet the progression seems inverted as Isabel's life becomes more and more unsatisfying and she becomes less individualistic and freethinking.

 

 Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady seems almost shockingly contemporary in its exploration of the conflict between an individual's - a woman's - needs and desires and society's expectations. What fascinates, however, is the way James uses the medium - the novel as a form, language itself - to explore and reveal the complexity of any set of responses and judgements he or I might make. In the latter stages of the novel, as Isabel conforms to society's expectations, he uses elliptical techniques which distance Isabel from the reader, signifying the repression of Isabel's voice as she succumbs to society's pressures. But the reader remains conscious of an alternative view, that Isabel's independent decision to marry the relatively poor Gilbert exemplifies her defiance of societal expectations. Is her fall caused by an unforgiving society? Or are her own misjudgements the cause? Perhaps such moments are always a mysterious combination.

 

Quotations:

Marriage
‘Make up to a good one and marry her, and your life will become much more interesting'

Married couple ‘she hasn’t seen him in a year’ ‘she appeared to perceive nothing irregular about the situation’

‘Usually came once a year to spend a month with her husband, a period in which she apparently took pains to convince him that she had adopted the right system’

‘Lillian had occasionally been spoken of as a woman who might be thankful to marry at all – she was so much plainer than her sisters’

 ‘I wanted to see her safely married – that’s what I wanted to see’ safety in marriage – societal pressures.

‘Do you mean that you’re going to be married?’ ‘Not till I’ve seen Europe’ – Implication that a certain youthful, free stage of life ends after getting married.

‘She couldn’t marry Lord Warburton; the idea failed to support any enlightened prejudice in favour of the free exploration of life that she had hitherto entertained or was now capable of entertaining’

‘She liked him too much to marry him’

‘You really like me?’ ‘Ah, you must never doubt that’ said Isabel. ‘Well then I don’t see what more you ask!’ – Lord Warburton’s idea of the criteria to accept a marriage proposal (no practicality)

Warburton almost bribes Isabel for her hand in marriage; ‘You afraid – afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over’ and then almost tries to guilt her into accepting the proposal in the statement ‘remember how absolutely my happiness is in your hands’. James refers to this, stating ‘looking so straight at Lord Warburton’s big bribe and yet turning away from it’.

This juxtaposes Osmond’s proclamation: ‘I’ve too little to offer you’

‘It’s not my fate to give up – I know it can’t be’ ‘Do you call marrying me giving up?’ ‘Not in the usual sense. It’s getting – getting – getting a great deal. But it’s giving up other chances’

‘He has immense possessions, and his wife would be thought a superior being. He unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic advantages’ – Practicality of marriage, marrying for money and status.

‘I refused him because he’s too perfect then. I’m not perfect myself, and he’s too good for me. Besides, his perfection would irritate me’.

‘I don’t want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do’

‘People usually marry as they go into partnership – to set up a house’ ‘But in your partnership you’ll bring up everything’

‘Marriage is a grave risk’

‘I believed you’d marry a man of more importance’ ‘Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that one’s husband should be of importance to one’s self’.

‘There’s nothing higher for a girl to marry a – a person she likes’

‘She married to please herself’

 Marriage ruins friendships – a ‘barrier’ between Isabel and Miss. Stackpole, ‘Ralph had seen nothing of her for the greater part of two years’, ‘she rarely encountered’ Mrs Touchett, Isabel had not seen much of Madame Merle since her marriage’

‘They were strangely married, at all events, and it was a horrible life’

‘When one’s married one has so much more occupation’

All marriages explored are void of love – Touchetts, Osmonds, Osmond’s sister.

Love
‘He’s trying hard to fall in love’

‘I don’t recommend you fall in love with him’ – Mr. Touchett (Everyone gets a say in who Isabel ends up with) ‘I shall never fall in love but on your recommendation’

Caspar Goodwood represents romanticised love; ‘I came to England simply because you are here; I couldn’t stay at home after you had gone: I hated the country because you were not in it’. ‘If I like this country at present it is only because it holds you’

‘Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he had calculated that he had spent twenty-six hours in her company’

Cliché view of love – ‘Of course I’ve seen you very little, but my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you. It was at very first sight, as the novels say; I know now that it’s not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels evermore’

A non-superficial meaning to love, no superficiality on looks. Isabel is not pretty yet wealthy and intelligent men fall in love with her.

 Forbidden love for Warburton? Mr. Touchett forbid him from marrying his niece.

‘What kept Ralph alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough of the person in the world whom he was most interested: he was not yet satisfied’

Gender
‘You ought to take hold of a pretty woman’ – Ralph Touchett

‘The ladies will save us’ Mr. Touchett

Isabel ‘held that a woman ought to be able to live by herself in the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of another sex’

‘Few of the men she saw seemed worth a ruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of them should present himself as an incentive to hope and reward to patience.’

‘Most women did with themselves nothing at all; they waited, in attitudes more or less gracefully passive for a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny. Isabel’s originality was that she gave one the impression of having intentions of her own’

‘You can’t stay alone with the gentlemen. You’re not – you’re not at your blest Albany my dear’

‘Young girls here – in decent houses – don’t sit alone with gentlemen late at night’

‘In America the gentlemen obey they ladies’

‘It’s a very good thing for a girl to have refused a few good offers – so long of course they are not the best she is likely to have’

‘I’m confident that we shall someday have the pleasure of looking for a husband for [pansy] together’ – Husband is chosen for young girls, and they actively ‘look’ for him.

Mr. Osmond – ‘I think young girls should be kept out of the world’, ‘she’s not too disagreeable’, ‘she has only one fault’ ‘too many ideas’.

‘Is she in need of help?’ ‘Most women always are’ said Henrietta

 Enduring love – Goodwood, Ralph and Warburton love Isabel after the years apart

‘Love remains’

Relationships

‘Lord Warburton, who appeared constantly desirous of a nearer view of Miss Archer.

‘Is she very fond of him?’ ‘If she isn’t she ought to be. He’s simply wrapped up in her’ - obligation to reciprocate feelings.

Madame Merle: ‘What have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor fortune, nor position, nor the traces of a beauty I never had’ – the things that are considered important. And the syntax shows ‘husband’ to be the most important.

Osmond and Isabel’s relationship: ‘Does she take the opposite line from him’ ‘In everything. They think quite differently’

‘I’m not yet interested in myself, and I’m deeply interested in Mrs. Osmond’

‘It was astonishing what happiness [Isabel] could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband’

Osmond would have liked her to have ‘nothing of her own but her pretty appearance’

Isabel ‘knew that she had thrown her life away’

Osmond ‘wished her to have no freedom of mind’

Isabel won’t leave him because ‘I can’t publish my mistake. I don’t think that’s decent. I’d much rather die’, ‘One must accept ones deeds’

‘She found herself confronted with the conviction that [Osmond] married her for money’

‘I have an ideal of what my wife should do and should not do’

Osmond would not marry Merle as ‘she had no money'

John Donne

John Donne

 

John Donne is a metaphysical poet (the name given to a diverse group of 17th century English poets whose work is significant due to its innovative use of intellectual and theological concepts in unusual conceits, paradoxes and strange imagery). Donne was the leading poet in this field, distancing his conversational, argumentative rhetoric from Elizabethan love poems.

 

The Flea (1633)

 

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,   

How little that which thou deniest me is;   

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;   

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

    Yet this enjoys before it woo,

    And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

    And this, alas, is more than we would do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.   

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;   

Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,   

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

    Though use make you apt to kill me,

    Let not to that, self-murder added be,

    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?   

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?   

Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou   

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

    ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

    Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

    Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

 

 Form and structure:

   'The Flea' alternates between lines in iambic tetrameter and lines in iambic pentameter, and each stanza ends with two lines written in iambic pentameter, maybe reflecting the separation of the couple until the last two lines. The regular rhyme scheme follows an A A B B C C D D D structure, perhaps using the couplets to reflect the narrator and his subject (reflecting the unity represented by their 'mingled' blood), and the rhyming triplet at the end of the stanza to represent the speaker, his 'lover' and the flea, or the thought of pre-marital sex. The first stanza ends with the rhyming triplet 'woo', 'two' and 'do', the second stanza ends with the triplet 'me', 'be' and 'three', whilst the final stanza ends with 'be', 'me', and 'thee'. 'Woo' alludes to the act of courtship, 'two' reiterates the unity that Donne tried to create with his rhetoric and he uses the verb 'do' to allude to the action of sexual intercourse and the proactive nature of it. In the final stanza 'be' is used to perhaps suggest how natural it would be to have sex after the flea has 'mingled' their blood. Whilst 'me' and 'thee' reiterate the pairing and, by ending with 'thee', the lover is ultimately given the power in that they can grant or deny him of what he wants. Additionally, Donne uses three stanzas to represent himself, his subject, and the flea.

 

Language:

    Donne uses the flea to symbolise their existent intermingled state and therefore suggest there would be no harm in having sex before marriage: 'This flea is you and I, and this /Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is'. Donne uses the unlikely, repellent conceit of the flea to represent the romantic ideas of courtship and marriage. The poem starts with the line 'mark but this flea, and mark in this', in a commanding lecture style, setting the tone for the rhetoric. Donne uses provocative language such as the repetition of the verb 'sucked', to emphasise the vulgarity of the flea's act, suggesting that the object of his affections has nothing to lose (innocence, purity) by having sex with him. At the end of the second stanza, Donne pleas with his subject to not squash the flea as that would be 'self-murder' and would 'kill three' as their blood represents their lives. In the last stanza, the beloved squashed the flea; 'purpled thy nail in blood of innocence', and, in turn, squashed his argument. Donne goes on to highlight 'how false fears be' of pre-marital sex and loss of virginity, arguably presenting a shockingly contemporary attitude to women or equality of the sexes, or presenting this argument purely for his own gain and to satisfy his desires.

 

 

The Sun Rising (1633)

 

 BUSY old fool, unruly Sun,
      Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains, call on us?
Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?
      Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
      Late school-boys and sour prentices,
   Go tell court-huntsmen that the king will ride,
   Call country ants to harvest offices;
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

 

      Thy beams so reverend, and strong
      Why shouldst thou think?
I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,
But that I would not lose her sight so long.
      If her eyes have not blinded thine,
      Look, and to-morrow late tell me,
   Whether both th' Indias of spice and mine
   Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me.
Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,
And thou shalt hear, "All here in one bed lay."

 

      She's all states, and all princes I;
      Nothing else is;
Princes do but play us; compared to this,
All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.
      Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,
      In that the world's contracted thus;
   Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be
   To warm the world, that's done in warming us.
Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;
This bed thy center is, these walls thy sphere.

 

 Form and structure:

'The Sun Rising' consists of three 10-line stanzas, with an A B B A C D C D E E rhyme scheme. The separation in this rhyme scheme could represent how the sun, or time, is a barrier between the lovers, yet ultimately love triumphs as the stanza ends with a rhyming couplet. The poem starts, as a lot of Donne's poetry does, with a grandiose, shocking line; 'Busy old fool, unruly sun', personifying the sun as an intruder.

 

Language:

'The Sun Rising' focusses on the common literary theme of time vs. love. The idea that the sun is an intruder is sustained throughout the poem. The poem states 'why does thou thus, through windows and through curtains, call on us?'. Donne presents the sun to be powerful as it penetrates into the lovers' world. The end of the last stanza reads 'Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime/ Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time'. Donne clearly presents love as being superior, and the use of the word 'rags' represents the useless and insignificant ripped portions of time. Donne uses hyperbolic romantic imagery in 'I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,/But that I would not lose sight of her', suggesting that his power, and the power of his love, supersedes the power of the sun. In the beginning of the third stanza, Donne writes 'She's all states, and all princes I'. This could be interpreted as giving his lover a lot of power as, in the Ptolemaic/Geocentric model, the earth is more powerful as the sun orbits it. However, as the speaker gives himself the title of the princes, he rules over her, placing him in a superior position. Donne ends the poem with the line 'This bed thy centre is, these walls thy sphere'. Donne gives the lovers full power by placing them at the centre of the universe, and their love is so fulfilling that their room is the whole Earth.



A Woman of no Importance

A Woman of no Importance

 

 

Brief Synopsis:

A Woman of no Importance follows a group of upper class English people, satirising their views and behaviour. The main storyline follows Mrs Arbuthnot, a single mother. Gerald, her son, is offered a job by Lord Illingworth who is, unbeknownst to Gerald, his father. Lord Illingworth is an scandalous, immoral man who left Mrs Arbuthnot after promising to marry her. The play explores mocks the attitudes towards marriage, gender, love and society.

 

Context:

Published in 1894, A Woman of no Importance challenges Victorian notions of gender, love, marriage and society.

 

Form and structure:

 Act I introduces the characters, their relationships and the main themes. The act ends with Lord Illingworth's line 'No one in particular. A woman of no importance', using foreshadowing and dramatic irony to allude to Mrs Arbuthnot and her relationship with Lord Illingworth.

 

The beginning of Act II shows the women on their own (as the stage directions state [Ladies seated on sofas]), discussing their opinions. Wilde juxtaposes the opinions of Lady Caroline and Mrs Allonby. Lady Caroline represents traditional Victorian attitudes towards gender: calling wives their husbands 'property', stating a man's 'proper place' is 'looking after their wives and saying 'a law should be passed to compel [bachelors] to marry within twelve months. In contrast, Mrs Allonby is positioned as a predatory sexist woman; stating 'I don't think we should ever be spoken of as other people's property. That is the only true definition of what married women's property really is. But we don't belong to any one.'

 

By attributing the conventional beliefs to Lady Caroline, a character used to satirise upper class women (domineering over her husband), undermines these beliefs and ridicules those who possess those opinions.

 

Mrs Arbuthnot enters on Hester's line 'Let all women who have sinned be punished'. This is mirrored in Act IV, when Hester enters during Mrs Arbuthnot's speech on marriage, leading Hester to change her puritan views on sin, or at least branding Mrs Arbuthnot as an exception.

 

Act II ends dramatically with Mrs Arbuthnot unable to give Gerald a reason why he should not take the job with Lord Illingworth. The stage directions state '[Lord Illingworth] exits with Gerald. Mrs Arbuthnot is left alone. She stands immobile with a look of unutterable sorrow on her face'. This is used to reflect a woman's position, left helpless after being maltreated by a man, due to society's view of her.

 

The play ends with the line 'a man of no importance', spoken by Mrs Arbuthnot. This marks the revenge on Lord Illingworth and the inversion of gender roles in 1894's society.

 

 Key quotations:

Love

‘When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself’ - Lord Illingworth

‘Nothing is serious except passion’ - Lord Illingworth

‘The secret of life is to never have an emotion that is unbecoming’ - Mrs Allonby

 One love could have kept you alive. One love can keep anyone alive’ - Mrs Arbuthnot

‘How could I repent of my sin when you, my love, were its fruit! Even now that you are bitter to me I cannot repent. I do not. You are more to me than innocence’ - Mrs Arbuthnot

‘Hearts live by being wounded. Pleasure may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrow – oh, sorrow cannot break it’ – Hester

‘God’s law is only Love’ - Hester

Marriage

‘I have noticed a very, very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men’ – Lady Stutfield

‘Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious: both are disappointed’ – Lord Illingworth

‘This marriage, this necessary marriage’  ‘It is a duty that you owe, not merely to yourself, but to all other women –yes: to all the other women in the world, lest he betray more’ – Gerald on Mrs Arbuthnot and Lord Illingworth

‘Marriage is a sacrament for those who love each other’ – Mrs Arbuthnot

Interaction between Lady Caroline and Sir John:
LC: John, do you have your overshoes on?
SJ: Yes, my love.
LC: I think you better come over here, John. It is more sheltered.
SJ: I am quite comfortable, Caroline.
LC: I think not, John. You had better sit beside me. [SJ rises and goes across]

'She implored him for the child's sake to marry her, that the child might have a name, that her sin might not be visited on the child, who was innocent'

Gender

‘Women are always on the side of morality, public or private – Kelvil

‘Lord Illingworth regards woman simply as a toy’ - Kelvil

‘Femininity is the quality I admire most in women’ - Lady Caroline

‘Women kneel so gracefully; men don’t’ - Lord Illingworth

‘The thing to do is keep men in their proper place’ - Lady Caroline

‘All men are married women’s property’ – Mrs Allonby

‘Men always want to be a woman’s first love…What we like is to be a man’s last romance’ – Mrs Allonby

‘[The Ideal man] is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments’ – Lady Caroline

‘If a man and woman have sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded’ ‘Don’t have one law for men and another for women. You are unjust to women in England’ – Hester

 ‘What a typical woman you are! You talk so sentimentally, and you are thoroughly selfish the whole time’ – Lord Illingworth

‘If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him’ - Lord Illingworth

‘No man has any real success in this world unless he has got women to back him, and women rule society’. - Lord Illingworth

‘Women are pictures. Men are problems. If you want to know what a woman really means – which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do – look at her, don’t listen to her’ - Lord Illingworth

‘Women represent the triumph of matter over mind – just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals’ - Lord Illingworth

‘I don’t believe in women thinking too much. Women should think in moderation, as they should do all things in moderation’ – Lady Hunstanton

‘She is a woman who drags a chain like a guilty thing’ – Mrs Arbuthnot on losing her virginity without being married.

‘Well men are different from women, mother. It is natural that they should have different views’ - Gerald

 ‘But mothers are so weak’ ‘We are all heart, all heart’ - Lady Hunstanton

'But we are disgraced. We rank among the outcasts. Gerald is nameless' - Mrs Arbuthnot

‘Ordinary ending. The woman suffers. The man goes free’ - Mrs Arbuthnot

 

Society

‘To be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays’ - Lord Illingworth

‘To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it simply a tragedy. Society is a necessary thing.’ - Lord Illingworth

‘Only two kinds in society: the plain and the coloured’ - Lord Illingworth