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    The Portrait of a Lady (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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    The Portrait of a Lady (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
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    The Portrait of a Lady (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Ebook877 pages14 hours

    The Portrait of a Lady (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    By Henry James and Gabriel Brownstein

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics:
    • New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars
    • Biographies of the authors
    • Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events
    • Footnotes and endnotes
    • Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work
    • Comments by other famous authors
    • Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations
    • Bibliographies for further reading
    • Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate
    All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works.

     

    Widely regarded as Henry James’s greatest masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady features one of the author’s most magnificent heroines: Isabel Archer, a beautiful, spirited American who becomes a victim of her provincialism during her travels in Europe.

    As the story begins, Isabel, resolved to determine her own fate, has turned down two eligible suitors. Her cousin, who is dying of tuberculosis, secretly gives her an inheritance so that she can remain independent and fulfill a grand destiny, but the fortune only leads her to make a tragic choice and marry Gilbert Osmond, an American expatriate who lives in Florence. Outwardly charming and cultivated, but fundamentally cold and cruel, Osmond only brings heartbreak and ruin to Isabel’s life. Yet she survives as she begins to realize that true freedom means living with her choices and their consequences.

    Richly complex and nearly aesthetically perfect, The Portrait of a Lady brilliantly portrays the clash between the innocence and exuberance of the New World and the corruption and wisdom of the Old.

    Gabriel Brownstein is the author of a collection of stories—The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Apt 3W—which won the 2002

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBarnes & Noble Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 2009
    ISBN9781411432949
    Unavailable
    The Portrait of a Lady (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)
    Author

    Henry James

    Henry James (1843-1916), the son of the religious philosopher Henry James Sr. and brother of the psychologist and philosopher William James, published many important novels including Daisy Miller, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Ambassadors.

    Read more from Henry James

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    Reviews for The Portrait of a Lady (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      The story of a young, orphaned woman, Isabel Archer who arrives in England with her aunt. She is 23 years of age and is filled with bright optimism and doesn't want to settle but desires freedom. Men fall for her and she refuses them. Isabel had no money but when she inherits a large sum that she had no idea was going to come her way, this changes everything. She is no longer free but burdened by the burden of this inheritance. She is taken in by some two ex patriots who have their eye on this fortune. The rest of the story is about the choices she made and will make and the effects it has on her. I loved the prose, the characters, and the themes.
    • 5/5
      I LOVE this book and have read it several times. Yes, James's sentences tend to be long and involved, but I like that--it slows down my reading and makes me pay attention to all the words.
    • 4/5
      Yet another book I've studied, so i've little memory of it, it was so long ago. I do remember liking it lots though. There, that's my analytical response.
    • 4/5
      There is a reason some books will last through the centuries as classics and thousands of others will float off into the land of anonymity. There is really not too much to this story, yet I was captivated the whole way through. There is so much happening underneath the actual events that if you do not allow yourself to be fully engaged you will miss and not be as struck by the ending.There is such a shift in your interpretation of characters as the book goes on and you do not fully realize until you step back and think back. Doing this now and realizing the shift that takes place in Isabel is so odd because you are along the whole process and you do not fully realize what is happening.This was an excellent book and comes highly recommended!
    • 4/5
      Scintillating dialogue, fine observation, antithetical development, The style is breathtaking. yet I have rarely been so annoyed with the characters depicted in a fiction. Increasingly as the tale unravels they seem to merge into a portrait of an under-employed over-privileged class of snobs, preening around European palaces like ancestral jet-setters with too much time on their hands. Despite this the heroine is complex and compelling and the loose ends of unresolved lives illuminated
    • 2/5
      The Portrait of a Lady. I expected more from this book than it was able to give me. True, this is my first book by Henry James, and I have not heard much of his work, but my expectations were yet high. The title was enchanting and romantic, and I could only hope that the book would be equally so. Alas.It started out well enough-romantic, interesting, and very English. But I didn't even much like Isabel. She seemed conceited and unnatural-and trying so hard to be "American." All of her suitors were too likable-except for the one she ended up marrying. Why couldn't one have them been extraordinarily repulsive, or something? I wanted her to marry Lord Warburton, Caspar Goodwood and Ralph Touchett. I could never quite make up my mind which was best of the latter two. Lord Warburton got disgustingly sentimental and selfish towards the end.And the whole outlook of the book seemed so-immoral. Not at all in the usual way-there was nothing "improper," and only one kiss-at the end. Just the attitude of it, I suppose-so independant. Isabel didn't want to get married the whole book-and when she finally did, she had to chose the wrong husband. And then they hated each other and all that . . .And the ending was unsatisfactory. Of course I couldn't help hoping she'd end up liking Caspar Goodwood-but she was still married, even though her husband's adultery was a tidy excuse for leaving him.Pshaw. Caspar and Ralph were the only good parts of the book, and they deserved better fellow characters and plot.She wasn't at all what a lady should have been-she was immature, rushed into things, had not much discretion or foresight-it would have better been titled, "A Portrait of a Girl."A disappointment. If she had not married, it would have been altogether better.
    • 4/5
      A young American lady thrown into 19th century European bourgeois society, into a balancing act between freedom and possession.Henry James takes his time in making us acquainted with the lady to be portrayed: The story unfolds rather slowly only to gain immense momentum in the final third. I especially enjoyed reading James' vivid descriptions of settings and situations and the witty dialogues. While at the end of the novel I feel I 'know' many of the book's prominent characters, the central figure, Isabel Archer, remains more complex and mysterious to some extent. A trait of her character and a fine mist on her portrait. All in all a delightful read.(By the way: I don't think the lady looks one bit like the one shown on the Wordsworth cover.)
    • 2/5
      Fairly agonizing to see how the lovable protagonist moves steadily forward towards marriage to a jerk.
    • 5/5
      Mind which edition you're reading; the earlier one, published in the 1880's, is very different from the final one.
    • 5/5
      An exquisite and timeless study of an American archetype. A woman undone by a foreign environment, victim of other people's treachery and of her own gullible nature. Hmmm, am I talking about myself? This book most certainly influenced my own writing.
    • 5/5
      Dieses Buch habe ich förmlich verschlungen, so sehr war ich fasziniert von der Geschichte, vor allem aber von der ungeheuren Treffsicherheit in den Formulierungen des Autors. Die Beschreibungen der Charaktere und die herrlichen Dialoge sind voll sanfter Ironie. Dabei befasst sich James intensiv mit der Weltsicht und der inneren Motivation seiner Figuren und lässt sie für den Leser lebendig werden. Besnders gelungen ist für mich die Figur des Gilbert Osmond, dessen herablassende Arroganz und Selbstgefälligkeit mir bei manchen Dialogen (mit seiner Frau) kalte Schauer über den Rücken gejagt hat. Mag die Welt, die Henry James beschreibt, uns zwar heute fremd sein, aber sein Schreibstil ist für mich sehr modern!
    • 2/5
      I'm not sure why I ended up taking this book out of the pile my mom was throwing out. At the time I either thought it was important? Or I thought that she really liked it and wanted to read it because of that? I talked to her about it later and it turns out she was pretty indifferent to it, and so was I. Parts of it were well written, and I liked the ending, but 600 pages is way too long to spend on how little happens in this novel (three marriage proposals and one entirely unshocking plot twist, which is visible from miles away). Unlike Madame Bovary there was a point to the fact that nothing interesting happens; the author gives every impression of the belief that he's telling a legitimate story.
    • 4/5
      My first thought was along the lines of "Alright, but Jane Austen did it better," and then halfway through my esteem somewhat increased as I began to hear the music of James' prose. I see now the roots of elements I enjoy in William Gass' work and understand why he holds James in such esteem, but I still think Austen did it better. Also, Pansy and her father, EVEN as characters, just plain CREEPED me out.
    • 4/5
      This book took me about two months to read! I read it at my son's urging. Happily, in the end, I thought it was worthwhile. I enjoyed a number of good moments and, in comparison to other "epics" (e.g. "One Hundred Years of Solitude") which I have recently tackled, the gain was worth the pain. It was quite a story! I really enjoyed the way in which James sketched the characters in terms of their motives and attitudes within the context of societal norms (both prevalent and evolving). It was too bad that the goodies were buried in tons of 19C bloated verbiage and, surely, hundreds of impossibly long (and yet so exquisitely constructed) paragraphs, And despite all of the palpable passion, the total absence of steamy sex scenes was a bitter pill to swallow. Throw us a bone, Henry James! In sum,however, the book was worth reading, and parts of the story are bound to stick with me. As an aside: I am looking forward to renting the movie version (1996) of the novel, in which Nicole Kidman plays Isabel. (Sadly, the preview looks awful!) I hope the protagonists -- for their own sake and that of the novel's dramatic integrity as a 20C interpretation --- will share at least a few moments of lust. Because that's what most people are and do. But my expectations are low.
    • 3/5
      I haven't read much Henry James before (I might possible have read The Europeans previously but I couldn't swear to it, and to be honest if The Portrait of a Lady is representative then I'm not sure if I'm going to be reading much in the future. I had great difficulty maintaining any interest at all in any of the characters, even in the heroine Isabel Archer (who is supposedly a remarkable woman) and I couldn't get a sense that the characters could ever have been real people. Isabel Archer is a young American woman who is invited by her aunt to spend some time with her in Europe. Mrs Touchett has her permanent home in Florence, only visiting her husband at his house of Gardencourt, overlooking the Thames Valley in England, for a month or so each year. But it is to Gardencourt that she initially takes Isabel, to meet her husband and her invalid son Ralph. Appreciating Isabel's determination that she must do something with her life, which has caused her to reject two offers of marriage during her stay in England, he is instrumental in obtaining for her the legacy which allows her to pursue the true freedom that she craves. But Isabel's new independence takes her to Paris, Florence and Rome the freedom which she craves remains elusive...To be honest I've never come across an account of the grand European tour that has just come across as so boring! The lives that are being led just seem so stultifyingly dull. I had hoped that when the novel reached Florence it would catch my attention as I've spent a lot of time there in the past, but no! According to the blurb on the back this is 'one of the finest novels in the English language' but do fine novels have to be so dull? It's not just that nothing seems to happen for long stretches, that I can cope with, but I can't cope with the artificiality of the characters.I'm giving this three stars because it seems too well written to give it less but I can't say that I enjoyed it.
    • 5/5
      Give the book its deserved five stars, but Isabel is boring. In fact, everybody in the book is boring except Ralph. Isabel and Ralph are the yin and yang of good and truth; Merle and Osmond the yin and yang of evil and deception. And who cares about little Pansy? She is simply the vapid cement bonding together the evil duo, as the blood tie bonds together the hero and heroine.

      James mercifully kills off the narrative ten pages after Ralph's demise, as if he knows who the main character really is. The best part of the whole book is when Ralph calls Osmond a "sterile dillettante." You go, Ralph.

      James rewards the reader's perserverance with plenty of depth. The novel is a psychological gold mine. It's only flaws are:

      1. a superfluity of suitors. There is a veritable swarm of them. They come out of the woodwork; lurk in every bush. The women in the book can't sit down in the park without lighting on a hopeless suitor. It gets really old.

      2. a gross, unforgiveable scarcity of Ralph.
    • 5/5
      this is a wonderful book, while the language is more flowering and complex then current speech, the story is very modern. the story of the mystery of love, who we love, what happens to that love, and how love with the right people can endure. the main character, Isabel, is a strong intellegence kind woman that struggles to be true to yourself and to find values that endure beyond her. excellent book
    • 5/5
      This was an interesting psychological study of an independent woman given a chance to live financially independently and what she chooses to do with that chance.
    • 5/5
      "She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted clear perception — at her companion, at the two dogs, at the two gentlemen under the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded her. 'I've never seen anything so lovely as this place. I've been all over the house; it's too enchanting.'" These are the words of our spirited and lovely heroine, Isabel Archer when she arrives at Gardencourt, an English country estate which features a Tudor mansion with a long lawn sloping down to the Thames. Isabel's father had recently passed away when her aunt, Mrs. Touchett came to visit her in Albany, New York and proposed to take Isabel away with her to Europe with a first stop in England. On her arrival, Isabel meets with a trio of gentlemen which includes the ailing Mr. Touchett Senior, a retired banker with a vast fortune who is attended to by his son Ralph, who suffers from very serious lung disease, and who nevertheless possesses a warm and loving spirit, and finally Ralph's good friend Lord Warburton, who is immediately smitten with our young lady. Before long, Warburton proposes to Isabel; he is an attractive gentleman with good manners and a fine intellect, who also commands a vast estate and a seat at the House of Lords. In short, the sort of man any woman would be thrilled to take on as a husband, but not Isabel. Our heroine is a headstrong young woman who feels she must face her destiny, which she believes doesn't include a husband. Shortly thereafter, Isabel's longtime and determined admirer Casper Goodwood arrives from Boston, also to ask her to marry him, but Isabel is adamant that marriage is not in the cards for her and turns him away as well. When a longtime friend of Mrs. Touchett comes to visit at Gardencourt, Isabel immediately takes to Madame Merle, an accomplished, mature woman of many talents, who is equally appreciative of the young woman. Soon, as Mr. Touchett Senior lies on his deathbed, Ralph secretly makes an arrangement with his father so that his cousin may inherit half the fortune meant for him. Ralph adores Isabel, and believes that by making her a rich woman, she will truly be independent and will be able to accomplish great things. But of course, this being a 19th century novel, our heroine is in for her share of troubles in the form of one Mr. Gilbert Osmond, a sinister character and a poor American expatriate, who's main virtues are a love of beautiful things and a desire to secure a brilliant future for his docile young daughter Pansy.This was my first time reading a novel by Henry James. Having long believed that he was difficult to read, I had tested the waters with two short stories first, and found his prose imminently approachable. It's true that he can be verbose and that this novel plods on at a slow pace, with little action and an accent on his character's interactions and inner workings. But I found myself quite wrapped up in the rich complexity of these characters, and can fully understand why this novel is an enduring classic. I already look forward to reading it again.
    • 5/5
      Another excellent read. I decided to read this one because I hadn't read any real James before and I felt like that was a situation that needed to be remedied. Although a bit arduous at times, and I am still a bit puzzled about the ending, this book was a delightful read. Another 19th century realist novel full of rich character development, although they were not as sympathetic here as they were in Eliot. James seems to examine his characters more than he loves them, even though it is clear he loves some of them. The book did feel a little dry and removed at times, as if you could feel the ticking of an almost mechanical examiner or observer, but the insights and characters were intriguing and thought-provoking. I probably would not recommend this one to the casual reader--too many dry spells to get lost in--but it is a rewarding read, especially if you like to examine some great writing yourself. A great artist and a good read, I really liked this book.
    • 5/5
      I read The Ambassadors last year and found it almost totally impenetrable, so I was honestly dreading this one a little bit. Unlike The Ambassadors, however, Portrait of a Lady was clear as a bell. Moving and wonderful.
    • 4/5
      Okay, to be honest, I didn't read the middle 300 pages. But it's 600 pages long! And besides, it was originally serialized. I don't think it's necessary to read serialized stories in their entirety, any more than it's necessary to see every episode of a television drama in order to claim familiarity with it. Anyway, I was reading for style, not plot, and the style was wonderful. I love his way of writing all the way around a subject, instead of addressing it directly.
    • 5/5
      The only Henry James novel I've read (albeit I have not read many) in which the emotional elements cut through his thick prose and really moved me deeply. I cried at the ending-
    • 2/5
      I attempted this work because it was so highly recommended by Timothy Spurgin in his Teaching Company lectures on the British Novel. I was unable to make it past the first third, however, and finally peeked at a synopsis of the plot on the web. I have no doubt that my failure to cope with this book reflects a weakness in me, rather than the author, but I found it unbearably tedious.
    • 5/5
      Henry James published THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY in 1881 with an aspiration to scale new literary height that would surmount DAISY MILLER. THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY dawns on his perception of betrayal. In this extremely poignant novel, James toys with the paradoxical idea that one can come to the full possession of his power only to realize that he really has no way out once he has lived long enough to achieve the goal. James's purpose of the novel is to show his heroine, Isabel Archer, confronting her destiny. When her aunt appears at the house and brings her to England, Isabel is in a situation to value any change that will rid her past. She is clever but not bookish; she has an immense curiosity about life and is constantly staring and wondering. Her presence at the Touchetts' residence in Gardencourt dictates an irresistible air of independence that is conducive to her strong but undemonstrative condition to control her fate. She is very fond of her liberty, as she has stated peremptorily from the very beginning, almost like an omen of her fate. The story of Isabel Archer is straightforward and nothing as complicated and melodramatic as that of the people surrounding her. The peripheral figures who supply the momentum of the plot also support the entire scaffold of the novel. Happenings of these peripheral figures construct Isabel's story. The importunate suitors whom she rejects constantly hover around her and create an effect that accentuates the assumption of a simplicity about her, whereas those who are to launch her on her destiny are relatively opaque and obscure. She is like an ideal entity that ambitiously but somewhat naively embodies a nobleness of imagination. She maintains an infinite hope that she should never do anything wrong. Her cousin Ralph Touchett almost plays the conscience of the novel as he gives up half of his inheritance to make her rich: Isabel is rendered independent in pursuing her exploration and enlightenment in life and is not put at the expense of anyone. He confronts her being obdurate in exploring something unknown and cajoles her that such persistence will only reap utter disappointment. But fate intervenes the stubborn mind in the shape of Ralph's friend, Lord Warburton, whose magnanimous offer she refuses at the revelation of her steel proof independence. Knowing his cousin's impregnable resolve to meet her destiny, Ralph wishes to make her rich and keeps her from marrying for money. He hopes he shall live long enough to see what Isabel does with herself, who lives too much in the world of her own dreams and has not enough contact with reality. Ironically her new fortune could have possibly shut her up more and bound her to a man to whose ego she succumbs and for whom she contrives to procure pleasure. His austerity, poverty, and loneliness, which Isabel associates to nobleness, interest her at first but manifest into an egotism that he takes as a personal offense of her having her own mind. In a way, Isabel's attempt to her fate ends up forfeiting it. His virtue implies a sovereign contempt for everyone. He has pointed out to her the baseness and shabbiness of life; he has opened her eyes to the stupidity, the depravity, and the ignorance of mankind. But he cannot tolerate her possession of her own mind. THE PORTRAIT OF A LADY paints the picture of the unhappiest of a woman whose fruit of life-long solitary experience turns out to be discernment of her short-coming. Her enlightenment is as hopeful an outcome as her poignant marriage: she must not lose all her life simply because she has lost a part. In her lonely search with an inquiring spirit, she finds herself always at the mercy of others less scrupulous than herself and those who confront her own simplicity and naiveté.
    • 5/5
       Ralph Touchett has to be one of the saddest characters I have ever come into contact with.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating to think about (and possibly disagree with) the heroine's choices throughout the book. I didn't love the ending, but I believed that Isabel would have made this choice. I didn't find this an easy or quick read; in fact, it took me most of a busy June to finish it. I started it in Modern Library edition (500+ pages) but was too overwhelmed by it and switched a to a Barnes and Noble edition that was a Nook freebie some time ago. Somehow the smaller e-page size was right for me with this book. It's fun to remember that the book originally was published in Atlantic Magazine and Macmillan's over the course of years - similar to how some Dickens novels were published. Members of book club who did not have time to read "Portrait" tackled the shorter "Daisy Miller" by Henry James instead; one of them liked it well enough to continue on to "Washington Square."
    • 4/5
      Isabel Archer, a young headstrong American, arrives in England and everyone she meets is completely taken with her. Three separate men pursue her, but she’s unwilling to settle for a marriage without mutual love. She smart, kind and witty, but not easily swayed in her beliefs.I was in love with this book for about the first 1/3 (maybe more), but then it took a drastic turn. I loved Isabel’s character and her refusal to take the easy road in life. Unfortunately her decisions seem to lose all logic at a certain point and that’s when I lost my respect for her. I never want books to have a perfectly happy ending just for the sake of pleasing the reader, but I was heartbroken for Isabel and incredibly disappointed in her choices. I always root for characters I love, but it’s easy to feel betrayed by them if they make a choice that you wouldn’t have made. Despite the plot, James’ writing is beautiful. He catches the nuances of importance in a single glance or polite conversation. He makes you question who is acting out of Isabel’s best interests, who is making selfish choices, who should you trust, etc. The book isn’t just about Isabel in the end, it’s about the delicate balance people maintain in their own lives, often choosing the lesser of two evils and settling in, even if they’re unhappy, instead of rocking the boat.I loved much about this book, but I don’t think I could bring myself to read it again now that I know how it all turns out. “You’ve lived with the English for 30 years and you’re picked up a good many of the things they say, but you have never learned the things they don’t say.” “The great thing about being a literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do everything.” 
    • 4/5
      The Portrait of a Lady is the story of an interesting woman, an attractive woman with many "theories".Isabel leaves America to travel to England with her aunt, rejecting an offer of marriage from a good and successful man. She arrives at the home of her uncle and cousin, Henry and Ralph Touchett. In no time she has captivated everyone. An English lord proposes marriage to her, and again she refuses, saying she is not interested in marriage.Henry and Ralph are intrigued by their lovely relative who keeps refusing marriage offers from these very good, suitable men. When Henry is on his deathbed, he and Ralph decide to leave Isabel a fortune. With a fortune, she will have independence and the freedom to remain unmarried if she chooses. Ralph in particular is very interested in seeing what she will do with her life.Sadly, Isabel's life is not as easy or as happy as her friends had hoped for. What will she do with her life when her "theories" don't work out?This book was my first by Henry James. It was much easier to read than I expected. HJ does write very long paragraphs, but I got used to them. I like the way HJ pulls the reader inside Isabel's mind. The more I read, the more I was determined to find out what would happen to Isabel and her friends. There are a lot of great characters here, to analyze and enjoy. This is a book to sink your teeth into.
    • 5/5
      This book flows smoothly, gently propelled by James's magnificent prose. Not over-written, but rather a precisely-written work designed to tell a very specific story. Isabel, a young woman from New York, recently orphaned, is swept up by her aunt and carried off to England and Europe. She's a wonderfully intelligent, beautiful girl, inherits a fortune, and makes an unfortunate marriage. The unfolding of Isabel's sad decline from being an earnest, eager young woman who wants to experience everything to a much sadder but much wiser woman is amazingly done; James really understands psycology and motives. There are many well-drawn supporting characters, none of whom seems far-fetched or unreal. A most ingruing and marvelous novel.