HEIRESS OF ALL THE AGES
239
In
The Portrait
James is still hesitating between the attitude
of Madame Merle and that of Isabel, and his irony is provoked
by the excessive claims advanced by both sides. But in years to
come he is to be drawn more and more to the "European" idea
of the human self, his finer discriminations being increasingly
engaged by the "envelope of circumstances" in which it is
contained.
Isabel is above all a young lady of principles, and her most
intimate decisions are ruled by them. In refusing the proposal
of the grandiose Lord Warburton, she wonders what ideal aspira–
tion or design upon fate or conception of happiness prompts her
to renounce such a chance for glamor and worldly satisfaction.
Never had she seen a "personage" before, as there were none
in her native land; of marriage she had been accustomed to Vtink
solely in terms of character-"of what one likes in a gentleman's
mind and in his talk . . . hitherto her visions of a completed life
had concerned themselves largely with moral images-things as
to which the question would be whether they pleased her soul."
But if an aristocratic marriage is not to Isabel's liking, neither
is the strictly hometown alternative of marrying a business man.
The exemplary Gaspar Goodwood, who owns a cotton-mill and
is the embodiment of patriotic virtue, likewise fails to win her
consent.-"His jaw was too square and grim, and his figure too
straight and stiff; these things suggested a want of easy adaptability
to some of the occasions of life."
Isabel having so far lacked the requisite fortune to back up
her assumption of the role of the heiress, her cousin Ralph pro–
vides what is wanting by persuading his dying father to leave
her a large sum of money. "I should like to make her rich,"
Ralph declares. "What do you mean by rich?" "I call people
rich when they are able to gratify their imagination." Thus Isabel
enters the uppermost circle of her author's hierarchy, the circle
of those favored few who, unhampered by any material coercion,
are at once free to make what they can of themselves and to
accept the fullest moral responsibility for what happens to them
in
consequence. Now the stage is set for the essential Jamesian
drama of free choice. In this novel, however, the transcendent
worth of such freedom is not yet taken for granted as it is in
The
Wings of the Dove
and
The Golden Bowl.
There is the inter-
