As Michael Gorra says, "her unlived future goes on in his head". Everyone notes that the early death of his lively, clever cousin Minny Temple, in 1870, when she was 24 and he was 27, was the great blow that provoked the invention of Isabel. James's biographers always compare Isabel and her novel to his own life. James's life-story could also be read as an ebullient comedy which turns to tragic sadness. Isabel Archer starts out full of hope, independence and ambition, and becomes "ground in the mill", entrapped and disillusioned. After that came the harsh, unpopular novels of social analysis ( The Bostonians, The Princess Casamassima), the ill-fated involvement with the theatre, the awkward, darkly complex novels of the 1890s ( What Maisie Knew, The Awkward Age), the epic, inward-looking subtleties of the mighty late works, and the financial catastrophe of the New York edition. But Portrait can also be seen as a point of no return. From being a popular and promising author specialising in Americans in Europe ( Daisy Miller, The Europeans, The American), he became an important, renowned figure, acknowledged as a "master" of consciousness, cultural perceptions, humour, subtlety and depth. All his critics and biographers put it at the centre of his life and work. H enry James's great, humane masterpiece, The Portrait of a Lady (1881), the story of a young, spirited American woman "affronting her destiny", is many readers' favourite of his books.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |