The Portrait of a Lady
Henry James (1843-1916)
7th July 1997 at Sam's House
Synopsis
Just reread this book nearly thirty years after doing it
at university (gulp). Still a great book with lots of prescient
sexual politics, but why on earth she goes back to him and
why she married him in the first place... Would highly recommend
the old TV dramatization (available from your local library)
with Richard Chamberlain as Ralph Touchett -terribly nineteen
sixties man . He does have his hands in his pockets, but the
trousers being sixties and very tight, it's more Carnaby Street
than Gardencourt. LR
It was great and very interesting. Ann
I have read 420 pages of this book and it seems to me still
very interesting. I like the characters described in this
book, their relations, but sometimes, of course, I don't understand
them. What are they doing? They seems to like and hate each
other at the same time. The most of all I am worried about
Isabel, why had she made herself unhappy by becoming Osmond's
wife? I will know it when I finish reading the book and I
am really looking forward it.
Now as I have read 400 pages I can say that lastly the book
has some intrigue and has become interesting enough for me.
But I would rather prefer to read some other authors' works
like Dickens, Verne, Christi or some other books of a completely
different style. Isabel is too highbrow but appearing not
to be such one, I do not like her, she lives with rosy spectacles
till she marries Osmond, but to my mind she deserves it. Such
a "clever" girl! Sandija
I've also read for about 400 pages. I find this book sometimes
dull, sometimes it seems interesting for me. Which aspect
seem interesting? Definitely- relationship between all the
characters. But sometimes it bores that the only thing that
they are able to speak and think about is marriage, love and
money. m.e.
The thing about Isabel's freedom is that she finally grasped
it after disappointment, after her disillusionment. When she
opened her eyes to what she really had been, and was a a moment,
she was free to do whatever she wanted to; to leave her husband
or to come back to him. Of course, the sense of duty was very
strong, but it was her own deliberate decision to come back:
finally an act of freedom, for she made it without anyone
else's will, except her own. Although she was going back to
imprisonment, it was still her own will. That is why she withdraws
when Goodwood approached her with his proposal: to accept
it would mean to submit his will.
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