236
PARTISAN REVIEW
As the 1870's come to a close, James is done with the pre–
liminary studies of his heroine. Now he undertakes to place her
in a longer narrative-The
Portrait of a
Lady-the
setting and
action of which are at last commensurate with the "mysterious
purposes" and "vast designs" of her character. In the preface to
the New York edition (written nearly a quarter of a century later)
he recalls that the conception of a "certain young woman affront–
ing her destiny had begun with being all my outfit for the large
building of the novel"; and he reports that in its composition he
was faced with only one leading question: "What will she 'do'?"
But this is mainly a rhetorical question, for naturally "the first
thing she'll do will be to come to Eurppe-which in fact will
form, and all inevitably, no small part of her principal adven–
ture."
The Portrait
is by far the best novel of James's early prime,
bringing to an end his literl!ry apprenticeship and establishing
the norms of his world. Its author has not yet entirely divorced
himself from Victorian models in point of structure, and as a
stylist he is still mindful of the reader's more obvious pleasure,
managing his prose with an eye to outward as well as inward
effects. It is a lucid prose, conventional yet free, marked by
aphoristic turns of phrase and by a kind of intellectual gaiety
in
the formulation of ideas. There are few signs as yet of that well–
nigh metaphysical elaboration of the sensibility by which he is to
become known as one of the foremost innovators in modern writing.
Isabel Archer is a young lady of an Emersonian cast of
mind, but her affinity as a fictional character is rather with those
heroines of Turgenev in whose nature an extreme tenderness is
conjoined with unusual strength of purpose.* No sooner does
Isabel arrive at the country-house of her uncle Mr. Touchett, an
American banker residing in England, than everyone recognizes
her for what she is-"a delicate piece of human machinery."
Her cousin Ralph questions his mother: "Who is this rare creature,
and what is she? Where did you find her?" "I found her," she
replies, "in an old house at Albany, sitting in a dreary room on a
rainy day.... She didn't know she was bored, but when I told
*The influence may well be consicous in this case, though in the preface to
the
novel James admits to being influenced by the Russian novelist only on the technical
plane, with respect to the manner of placing characters in fiction. James's criticll
essays abound with favorable references to Turgenev, whose friendship he cultivated
in Paris and of whom he invariably spoke with enthusiasm.
