Character Sketch of Isabel Archer

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Henry James (1843-1916) one of the major figures of Trans-Atlantic literature spent much of his life in Europe and became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily known for novels, novellas and short stories based on theme of consciousness. The Portrait of a Lady, his masterpiece is a study of young woman from Albany who brings to Europe her narrow provincialism and pretensions but also sense of her own sovereignty, her free spirit, her refusal to be treated in the Victorian world merely as a marriageable object.

Isabel Archer is the lady whose ‘portrait’ James offers us in the novel. She is the woman “affronting her destiny”. In the beginning of the novel Ralph wonders, “What will she do?” Towards the close of the novel, Henrietta asks Isabel, “What have you done with your life?” Between these two questions lies the tragic-comedy of the life of Isabel.

The character of Isabel Archer is fully developed by James. Her development is the development from happiness to suffering, from love to hatred, from vivacity to dispiritedness. Isabel’s character is the central character around which other characters such as Ralph, Caspar, Lord Warburton, Henrietta, Osmond, Madam Merle and the Touchetts rotate and become rotund.

One of the distinguishing features of Isabel’s character is her deep love for liberty and freedom. It is her innocence and independence which attracts Daniel Touchett to allocate her financial freedom. She tries her best to maintain her mental freedom even in the face of adversity and also to maintain her dignity and individuality throughout. It is this quality that draws Ralph to her. Neither Ralph’s sympathy nor Lord Warburton’s glamour can overcome her sense of freedom and eventually both are fascinated by her.

Another feature is her romantic idealism. From the very beginning Isabel’s approach to life is romantic, idealistic and theoretic. James observes of her,

Isabel Archer was a person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active.

One can notice how Isabel put her theories of self-development into practice. One of the methods is that of refusal or rejection. She avoids any commitment to anyone. Caspar Goodwood suggests coercion, oppression and constraint on the plain physical level. Lord Warburton suggests immobilization on the social level. Isabel rejects the first on physical reasons and the second on theoretic grounds of indefinite expansion.

Isabel is a pretty young woman of sparkling vivacity. She brings freshness and charm wherever she happens to be, however, is sexually colds and frigid. When she is faced with an emotional situation, such as her suitors proposing to her, she becomes unnerved and fear-ridden. From her lovely physical make-up, mental independence and rich legacy the reader can well deduce that Isabel was apparently made for happiness, but events took such a sharp turn that she fall a victim of her own idealistic notions. Her ‘sentience’ is the vital force of her ‘choice’, but her choice deceives her because she wishes to see life whole and full. She chooses Osmond prompted by his idealism and sophistry, and this wrong choice lands her in misery and sorrow.

Isabel’s choice of Osmond as a husband is result of both admirable and not so admirable elements in her nature. Her excessive confidence in her own judgement, her sense of her own superiority, her shying away from indications of violent passion are no less weighty elements in her decision than her eagerness for experience, the liveliness and freshness of her responses, her admiration for what seems to be unworldliness, the superiority to things material, a devotion to things beautiful. The qualities and shortcomings of Isabel pointed out explain even her return to Osmond- her fear of sex, her high sense of marriage, her moral seriousness, her pure conscience, her linking to a civilized way of life, her promise to Pansy and her preference to a life of suffering.

In words of Richard Chase,

Despite her deeply repressed sexuality, Isabel remains among the most complex, the most fully realized and the most humanly fascinating of James’s character.