512
PARTISAN REVIEW
phere o f exacerba ted idealism which is peculia rl y American . In a
justly-celebrated essay, "The H eiress of All the Ages," Philip R ahv sees
Isabel, like o ther of James's American hero ines -Da isy Mill er, Mill y
Theale, Maggie Verver-as " the ch aracter-image o f aggrandizement on
every level o f meaning and existence ... the prime consumer o f the
resources bo th spiritual and emotional of bo th the new world and the
old." She represents, Rahv reminds us, America's rise as a na tional
power in the late nineteenth century. Isabel Arch er enacts her life
again st the background of an economic expansion tha t spirituall y
certifi es itself through the moral strenuousn ess o f art, in the exercise o f
tas te. She is a young woman of recentl y-acquired independent wea lth
trying to di scover a meaning for her life. Despite h er intelli gen ce, she is
unabl e to find it on her own. She makes the decision-it is the same as
Dorothea's in
M iddl em arch-to
seek her self-rea li zation in ma rriage:
she will be the perfect wife of the perfect male surrogate; she chooses a
gentl eman of impeccabl e taste in a rt. The cho ice turns out to be a
disas trous one; Osmond, the man she ma rries, is not the vehicl e for
aspira ti ons such as hers. James's report of Isabel's fa il ed effort to ma ke
the life sh e could make, and ought to have made, is a moving
lamenta tion for the di sappointment o f fema le possibility-perhaps as
he wro te it he was unconsciou sly thinking of the inability of hi s
brilliant but neuroti call y tormented sister Ali ce to live wha t after h er
dea th he would call " the reciprocal life of a well person in society."
Isabel Archer is a well person but she is as fearful o f her own mind and
sexuality as Ali ce was-men too can be fearful of their minds and
sexuality but society gives them better compen sa ti on or cover for their
impulse to deny their powers than it gives women . The book ends with
Isabel's decision to stay with h er husband. Male readers commonl y
cha racterize thi s as an heroic defeat; women readers, including myself,
are more likely to read it as defea t mitigated onl y by di gnity. And the
sociobio logi cal note is struck, although di stantl y: Isabel will try to
rea lize herself in motherhood; she will bring up the ill eg itima te
dau ghter of Osmond and Madame Merl e, perhaps to a better outcome
than her own.
Ri ght down
to
our own time the actua lity tha t James found in
Engli sh society tends
to
persist in the fi ction of tha t country and it
gives the work of even the most self-involved novelists in Britain a
substance, or at least a context, missing in our American fi ction of
libera tion . I am not saying by this that even in Britain the strugg le
between female self and society h as always kept soc iety in as full view
as it has the self.
It
has not. As a matter of fact, the hero ine o f
