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PARTISAN REVIEW
Young American bred in a land "offering opportunity to the
human mind not known in any other region" and hence possessed
of an "organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses its
balance, redresses itself presently...." Witness the following
passage of character·analysis, with its revelation of Isabel's shin·
ing beneficient Emersonianism:
Every now and then Isabel found out she was wrong, and then
she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After that
she held her head higher than ever; for it was of no use, she
had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had
a theory that it was only on this condition that life was worth
living: that one should be one of the best, should be conscious
of a fine organization ...
should move in a realm of light, of
natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration fully chronic.
It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of oneself as
to cultivate doubt of one's best friend....
The girl had a certain
nobleness of imagination which rendered her a good many
services and played her a good many tricks. She spent half her
time in thinking of beauty, and bravery, and magnanimity;
she
had
a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of
brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action; she thought
it
would be detestable to be afraid or ashamed.
(Italics not in
the original.)
Still more revealing is the exchange between Isabel and the
thoroughly Europeanised Madame Merle on the subject of the
individual's capacity for self-assertion in the face of outward
circumstances:
Madame Merle: "When you have lived as long as I, you will
see that every human being has his shell, that you must take the
shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of
of circumstances. There is no such thing as an isolated man or
woman; we're each·of us made up of a cluster of circumstances.
What do you call one's self? Where does it begin? Where
does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to me–
and then it flows back again. I know that a large part of myself
is in the dresses I choose to wear. I have a great respect for
things!"
Isabel: "I don't agree with you.... I think just the other way.
I don't know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know
that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is
a measure of me; on the contrary, it's a limit, a barrier, and a
perfectly arbitrary one."*
*Note the close parallel between Isabel's reply to Madame Merle and
the
Emersonian text. "You think me the child of my circumstances: I make my cir·
cumstances. Let any thought or motive of mine be different from what they
are,
the difference will transform my condition and economy.. . . You call it the power
of circumstance, but it is the power of me"
(The Transcendentalist).
