Academic literature on the topic 'Archer, Isabel (Fictitious character)'

This paper attempts to develop a comprehensive analysis of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady from the perspective of spatial theory. It analyses the houses Archer settles down to expound that the physical surrounding constitutes not only the background setting but also the influential part of narration and character-shaping, explains how Archer deals with the conflicts between American and European culture through her marriage choice, revealing James’ aspiration for cultural integration, excavates Archer’s mental space to indicate her cognitive development of self-identification and growth from an innocent girl to a mature lady, so as to develop a profound understanding of the novel.

I had long considered Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady the quintessential study abroad novel, not just for the extensive travel that takes place within the storyline but for the “drama of the perceiving mind” (to use Michael Gorra’s words) that James presents us with in his heroine, Isabel Archer. If the most important outcome of education abroad is intellectual development, we must attend to what happens to students’ consciousness, and therefore The Portrait of a Lady, despite what might seem old-fashioned in its setting and plot, still benefits American students venturing out into the world. I assigned the novel for a senior seminar entitled “English Majors in the World” and instructed students to tell the story of their experience reading the novel by tracking their evolving response to Isabel Archer. Almost immediately they resisted Isabel, whom they found cold, incomprehensible, and foolish. (Even though she shares many traits of the so-called Millennials.) They demanded another assignment: to track their responses instead to her freewheeling journalist friend Henrietta Stackpole, a minor character whom I had always seen as a mere comic foil to Isabel. Moving Henrietta to stand alongside Isabel, the novel was turned into a comparative tale of two travelers, two learners abroad: one of old-world introspection and ruin-wandering, the other of new-world group travel and freedom from “drama.” The students’ struggles cast us into current debates in the field of education abroad over what conditions and assignments produce the best learning experiences. James gives only Isabel, not Henrietta, an inner life, a complex consciousness; therefore, following Henrietta forestalls the difficult but indispensable inner work of comprehending one’s own experience, which is essential to intellectual development abroad. The Portrait of a Lady remains for me the quintessential study abroad novel. Just not in the way I once thought it was.

Abstract: This essay argues that The Portrait of a Lady evinces a radical imagination in its treatment of the character Ralph Touchett. It examines Ralph's attitudes and behaviors through the lens of nineteenth-century anarchist political philosophy, including the writings of Peter Kropotkin, Paul Lafargue, and Mikhail Bakunin. Focusing on Ralph's self-presentation as a dissident, decision to share his inheritance with his cousin Isabel Archer, and later rethinking of that decision, this essay contends that Henry James critiques but ultimately does not disavow the radical ideas his novel explores.

Henry James, in his novel The Portrait of a Lady, builds a world around a main character who temperamentally and then circumstantially appears to every chance for happiness, especially when compared with others. As many critics have noted, Isabel Archer experiences tragedy because of this great potential for fulfillment rather than in spite of it. However, what critics have tended to overlook is the other parallel, though “minor,” irony of the novel: her friend Henrietta Stackpole’s fulfillment and move to England. The infamous ending of Isabel can be better understood by looking at it through the lens of intercultural competence and by comparing it with that of Henrietta. Building off the theory of unconscious versus conscious cultural identity that James sketches in his essay 1878 “Americans Abroad,” this article analyzes the role self-consciousness and awareness of cultural differences in the development of the novel’s characters.

This article aims to raise crucial aspects of the philosophy of habit found in late 19th-century literature, particularly through an examination of Henry James’ portrayal of his character Isabel Archer. This goal is pursued through the analysis of two interconnected aspects forming the theoretical core of this contribution. Firstly, the focus is on Isabel Archer’s psychological depiction as a fundamental contribution of the English and American literature on the theme of habit, especially during the latter half of the 19th century. By contextualizing James’ work, exploring links to Peirce’s pragmatist philosophy and habit theory, the centrality of habit reflection in the psychological structuring of characters, interwoven with philosophical and narrative theories of individuality, is revealed. Furthermore, this reflection provides interpretative keys to understanding Henry James’ narrative choices concerning Isabel’s fate in the novel. Then this article directly specifically examines the construction of Isabel’s self which unfolds through the entire narrative events. The interpretative hypothesis guiding the investigation focuses on the connection between Isabel’s attempts to conduct life without habit and the resulting errors in judgment. To support this hypothesis, the importance of comparing key characters such as Gilbert Osmond and Madame Merle is highlighted. Through the narrative, it will emerge a peculiar ontological structure of the concept of habit. Moreover, through the psychological portraits in the novel, a critical exploration of James’ idea of individuality arises — acknowledging social dynamics and the ontological force of habit, rejecting the dichotomy represented by an optimistic individualism and a degenerate conventional life. The conclusion asserts that Isabel’s pursuit of an unhabitual life inevitably leads to failure. The solution does not lie in a rigid, conventional, dichotomous view of habit. Instead, James argues for a dynamic, relational view of habit: a fundamental aspect of being that must be acknowledged to understand the mechanisms that lead us from the variety of possibilities to the limited “actualities” of life. Through these two interrelated perspectives, the article aims to illuminate the psychological depth of Isabel Archer’s character, demonstrating how her story represents a cornerstone in the broader discussion of the nature and evolution of habit in 19th- century literature. From that, it sets the stage for a more comprehensive discussion on habit’s role in shaping characters and narratives during this historical period.

Abstract Thus Henry James in “The Art of Fiction.” James, in that essay, displays little sympathy for the “queer predicaments” of critics and for their “clumsy separations,” such as the “celebrated dis tinction between the novel and the romance.” ( This attitude, however, did not prevent James from making his own elegant “separations” when he chose. Still, we begin this discussion of character with James’s statement not to convict the master of inconsistency but to illustrate something about conceptions of character in general.) James, consciously or unconsciously, refers all judgments of fiction to the novels written by himself or by those authors most like himself. The very incident he selects to illustrate the interdependence of character and incident is a Jamesian incident. The woman is a Jamesian character. She could easily be Isabel Archer, or Milly Theale, or Fleda Vetch; and the incident could be expanded in the hands of the master to a full chapter’s worth of consideration. What might that look signify? What volumes of meaning are expressed in the position of that hand? And so on.

Abstract James’s cousin Minny Temple died of consumption in America in 1870 while James was at Great Malvern. Ten years later The Portrait of a Lady was unimpededly under way; a work whose germ James recalled in his NYE Preface years later as residing in his ‘grasp of a single character’ (LC ii. rn75). The ‘single character’ in the book is Isabel Archer; but James’s ‘grasp’, his sense of ‘complete possession’ as he calls it, was derived from his knowledge of the remarkable girl dead a decade before.

It is a common occurrence, too little remarked on, that speakers (with or without an audience) work with words in order to convince themselves. Characters in fiction may not consciously trace a path of persuasion, but great writers are adroit at doing so. Shakespeare, for example, in the soliloquies by Brutus in Julius Caesar and Angelo in Measure for Measure; Milton in the speeches of Satan in Books I and V of Paradise Lost; and Henry James in the recognition scene in the mind of Isabel Archer in The Portrait of a Lady. The train of thought of a speaker may afford a clue—by means of language that inseparably mixes motives with reasons—to the definiteness and the elusiveness of personal character.